Around four o’clock that afternoon Eleanore Murdoch knocked on the back door. I answered it, wondering what had brought her to the Gaheimer House. Eleanore and I are not enemies per se, but we try to avoid each other whenever possible. She’s outlandish, large, speaks in riddles half the time, and wears color-coordinated hats and socks with every outfit. Most of the time, her jewelry and her clothing have a food- or flower-related theme. Today, it was poinsettias. She had big red poinsettias appliquéd on her blouse and a black hat with a red plastic poinsettia sticking out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike her for her appearance; in fact, she can liven up any room. We just sort of clash.
“Hi, Torie,” she said. “I just came by to let you know that you will be my partner for the birding Olympics. I expect my partners to be on time and quiet. Be at the park a half hour before six.”
I blinked. After I’d gotten over the cruel joke of the universe that I’d be spending the next twenty-four hours with her, I said, “The Olympics do not start until six in the morning.”
“Exactly why you must be there a half hour early. We must prepare and meditate.”
“‘Meditate’?”
“Become one with nature.”
“Why?”
“It will draw the birds to us.”
“Meditating will draw the birds to us?”
“Yes. They will feel our presence and will know that we mean them no harm, and they will come and be curious. And then you will write them down on our sheet. After I’ve identified them, of course.”
“But…”
“No buts, Torie. We shall be the champions.”
“Right,” I said, with the lyrics to the Queen song running through my head. Bet Freddie Mercury never thought his song would be the anthem for a bunch of crazy birders in Missouri.
“We shall be triumphant,” she said, raising her head a notch.
“Right,” I said. “Wait, Eleanore, I have question. Why are we doing the Olympics in the winter? Wouldn’t we see more birds in the summer?”
“Well, there is a birding Olympics in the summer, too. We’ve just never participated in it. This is our first year, and I am so excited!” She took a deep breath and continued. “Basically, it’s just a fun way to track the migration patterns of different bird species during the winter.”
“Why?”
“Because the birds that live here in the winter are different from the ones in the summer. Some are the same, obviously. But some are different. At the end of the Olympics, we turn all of our data in to the local birding chapter, which then turns the data in to whatever university was sponsoring it.”
“I gotcha,” I said.
“By the way, I have some photographs to give you from the horse show we had awhile back. I’ll bring them tomorrow.” My mind was still reeling with how impressed I was with Eleanore’s knowledge of birds, so I didn’t really pick up what she was saying when she shook her finger at me, showing off her rambunctious red fingernail polish.
“Oh, and no bright colors. Blend.”
“Blend.” Did Eleanore really just tell me to blend?
“Tah tah, see you in the morning.”
I shut the door and banged my head on the pane of glass. I closed up the Gaheimer House, picked up pizza from Chuck’s, went home, scarfed my dinner, and went to bed. I let Rudy take care of the nighttime routine on this night, since I had to get up at like four in the morning. The next twenty-four hours were going to be the longest twenty-four hours of my life.
Three
I held an extra-big cup of hot cocoa in my left hand as my right hand scratched my tummy in the dark. I yawned as Eleanore pulled up in her big station wagon. Everybody participating in the birding Olympics was meeting at the commuter parking lot just on the edge of the south part of town. I waved, blithely thinking that she’d be happy that I was on time for this stupid meditation. I was mistaken.
“Caffeine! How do you intend to meditate if you’re hopped up on caffeine?”
“Geez, Eleanore, it’s not like I’m taking speed,” I said defensively.
Before I could say anything more, Eleanore moved in front of the headlights on her station wagon. She was dressed entirely, from head to toe, in camouflage. Her face was painted various shades of green and tan. And somehow Eleanore had managed to find a lady’s wide-brimmed hat in camouflage colors. She had a big feather of some sort sticking out of the back of it. Upon closer scrutiny, I noticed that she’d even painted her fingernails alternately with green and tan. Well, when Eleanore decided to blend, she could blend.
I, on the other hand, was wearing long underwear, a pair of jeans, Doc Martens, a Rams sweatshirt, and a big fuzzy blue hat that Rachel had knitted for me in her crafts class at school. I don’t own any camouflage clothes. I don’t own any khaki, unless you count my shorts, and it wasn’t warm enough for those. But I thought at least the hat was the same color as the sky.
Eleanore glared at me, looking from my shoes to the floppy ball on the end of my hat. “If you ruin my chances of winning the first ever New Kassel Birding Olympics, I will hunt you down.”
“Hunt me down? Eleanore, you know my address.”
“I mean it, Torie. You may ruin everything, but you’re not ruining this!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I was just about to say the same thing about you. So if you don’t win, sweep in front of your own door!”
“But I am not the one—” She raised her hands and stopped midsentence. “We must meditate.”
She spread a blanket on the gravel and sat down.
“Okeydokey,” I said. I gulped as much of my hot chocolate as I could and sat down across from her.
“Ankles folded. Fingertips touching the thumb. Relax. Breathe.”
“Right.” I did as she instructed and wondered when in the world Eleanore had started meditating. It sure as heck had made no difference in her outward personality, so it was either something brand-new or there was no hope for Eleanore ever being anything other than Eleanore. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was okay to think about Eleanore during meditation.
“Open the back of your throat,” she said.
“I thought I had.”
“No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong.”
“The back of my throat is open!” I argued.
“No it’s not.”
“If it wasn’t open, I’d be dead, you idiot!”
“You have to sound like Darth Vader when you’re breathing.”
“You do? Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“All right,” I said.
So we sat there facing each other, sounding like Darth Vader, although I thought we sounded like we had head colds. Even though there was a blanket beneath me, the rocks were grinding into my butt cheeks, and it was nippy outside—about forty degrees. So pretty soon my teeth were chattering and my butt was numb and Eleanore was attracting all sorts of attention with her breathing, but it wasn’t from the birds.
“Imagine you have wings,” she said in some far-off, dreamy voice.
I didn’t want to imagine that I had wings, but I said nothing.
“Now you’re soaring on the wind,” she said.
“Soaring on the wind,” I repeated.
“The wind ruffles your feathers. You’re as light as a feather. Suddenly, you see a big juicy beetle. You swoop down—”
“Eleanore, I don’t want to eat a bug.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed. Then she got up and began tugging on the blanket while I was still on it. I rolled backward after I grabbed my cocoa cup, so she could get the blanket out from under me. “Let’s get our numbers—they identify us to the judges—and head into the woods.”
“Sure thing,” I said from the ground.
* * *
Four hours later, I was yawning so loudly that I thought I would fit in more with hyenas than birds. Eleanore sat perched on a tree branch on a bluff on the side of the Mississippi River with her binoculars raised to he
r eyes. I was on a rock with a notebook, and I was writing down the names of the birds as she called them out to me. So far, we had seen that bird Stephanie had talked about, the Eurasian tree sparrow, a cardinal—I identified that one—a mockingbird, a starling, and about a dozen hawks. Eleanore didn’t like the starling very much and made a puckered face when she reported it to me.
There was a knocking sound from somewhere in the distance. “Hey, you hear that?” Eleanore asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s a woodpecker.”
I wrote down “woodpecker,” only to have her throw a stick at me. “What?” I asked.
“I don’t know what kind of woodpecker it is yet, you moron.”
“Oh,” I said. I had no idea there was more than one kind of woodpecker.
A few minutes later, Eleanore said, “Oh sweet Jesus, it’s a pileated.”
“It’s affiliated with what?” I asked.
“No, the woodpecker. It’s a pileated woodpecker.” She pointed across the way to a tree right on the edge of the river. I grabbed my binoculars and there was this huge prehistoric-looking bird with a bright red head banging the heck out of the tree with its bill.
“Wow,” I said.
“Oh, wait until Elmer Kolbe hears about this.”
I wrote down what type of woodpecker it was, wondering if I’d spelled “pileated” correctly and if it would matter in the long run. About an hour later, I pointed out another starling to Eleanore. I thought I was doing a good thing.
“That is not a starling,” she said. “Really, Torie, we are doomed if you can’t tell the difference between a common grackle and a starling.”
I said nothing for a minute. Then I said, “So what does an uncommon grackle look like?”
Really, I’m not this stupid ordinarily. I’m much better with dead people and ancient documents.
“Just try not to speak,” Eleanore said, disgusted.
“Fine, I won’t speak.”
Two hours later, my stomach growled so loudly that it was chasing away any birds that might have stopped by. Eleanore threw a granola bar at me from her perch. She made horrible disapproving noises as I noisily opened the wrapper, but she seemed to be all right once I started chewing. Then my cell phone rang.
“You brought a cell phone?” she asked.
“Everybody knows where I am, Eleanore, so if somebody is calling me, it’s important.”
“You brought a cell phone!”
Things scuttled across the forest floor and birds took flight from the trees as Eleanore screamed at me. “How could you do this! You have disturbed the sanctuary of our Olympics!”
“No, I didn’t. You screaming disturbed the sanctuary.”
I looked at the screen on my cell phone. I didn’t recognize the number. “This is Torie,” I said as I answered it.
“Mrs. O’Shea,” a male voice said. “My name is Glen Morgan. I must talk to you about your grandfather’s music. I’ve discovered something … amazing.”
“Yes, my sister said that you’d called. I’m tied up today, but I can meet with you tomorrow.”
There was a silence on the other end. “Hello? Mr. Morgan, I’m in the woods, so I’m afraid I might lose our connection.”
“In the woods?”
“My town is hosting a bird Olympics.”
“It is of the utmost importance that I speak to you today,” he said. The only people who actually use the word “utmost” in a casual conversation are people trying to sell you something, or they’re British. This guy wasn’t British, but the fact that he went right by the whole birding Olympics without asking for an explanation actually had me thinking that whatever he had to say to me must be pretty important. At least important to him. “I’m not sure how much longer…”
“How much longer, what?” I asked.
“Do you remember a man named Scott Morgan?”
Then it hit me. Of course, I should have recognized the last name Morgan. Not that it’s an uncommon name, but anytime you put the name Morgan with music in the southeast Missouri area, you come up with one family: the Morgan Family Players. During the twenties and thirties, they were famous for their music in about five states—mostly in the areas of southeast Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and southern Illinois. They were not unlike the Carter Family, but they never established nationwide fame. Also unlike the Carter Family, the Morgans seemed to fade into anonymity once the Depression ended.
Scott Morgan was also the man primarily responsible for my grandpa being the fiddle player that he was.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“I thought you would. Scott Morgan was my grandpa. Look, I’ve found a tape. I really need to see you right away.”
“I’m sorry, Glen, but I can’t see you until tomorrow. You can speak with my sister in town. She should be at the Gaheimer House today. If you go there, she’ll help you with whatever it is that you need. But I can’t see you until tomorrow.”
“This is very disconcerting, but I suppose if there’s no way around it…”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I said, glaring at the back of Eleanore’s head.
“All right, then, I’ll call you in the morning. I’ll meet you in town.”
“Sure,” I said, and hung up the phone. “Hey, Eleanore. What do I do if I have to pee?”
She threw a roll of toilet paper down at me. “Find a bush. And put the used toilet paper in a Baggie until we get back to town. I’ll not have you littering—on top of everything else that you’ve done today.”
My, my, she could be so persnickety.
Four
Putting used toilet paper in a Baggie was a first for me, but I did as Eleanore instructed and pretty much kept as quiet as I could the rest of the day, for fear of Eleanore having a stroke in the middle of the woods.
By about 6:00 P.M., we had identified twenty-seven different bird species, including five different woodpeckers. Who would have thought there were so many woodpeckers in the world, let alone in Missouri? The river ran below our rocky perch, and the sun was setting behind us. Across the river in Illinois, the purple skies of dusk had already settled in, casting eerie shadows from the naked trees, and the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees. Thoughts of having to stay awake in the cold all night with Eleanore made me want to cry, but I was a big girl and told myself that I could do anything for a limited amount of time and that within twelve hours it would all be over.
“I can’t imagine doing this on a day when it’s really cold,” I said out loud. Realizing that it was going to get down to about twenty-eight later, I shivered. Ten or fifteen years ago, it would have been down to single digits.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said.
“You’re not still mad over that whole bluebird thing are you?” I asked.
She held her hand up in my direction. “I don’t wish to hear your voice.”
“Fine, fine, fine, whatever,” I said.
Fifteen minutes went by. I couldn’t take it. I could not take the silence any longer. I’d rather have had Eleanore running off at the mouth and saying stupid things to me than have to go on in complete silence another minute. This was unusual for me. I actually like silence. A lot of times when I’m driving in my car, I won’t turn on the radio just because I love to hear nothing for a change. As much as I love music, I will work for hours in my office with no sound whatsoever except the clacking of my keys and the white noise of the street in the distance. I think the difference there is that it’s self-inflicted silence. I have control of it. It’s when I want it to be quiet.
Right then, I didn’t want it to be quiet, and as if God had somehow heard my prayer, the silence was broken. Not necessarily in the fashion that I would have liked, but still …
The gunshot that sounded in the distance nearly frightened Eleanore into jumping out of her tree. “What the…?”
“Hunters?” I asked.
“Probably, but Sheriff Joachim was supposed to make sure there
was no hunting activity within ten miles today.”
Then another shot. Then another.
“Hey,” I said to her. “Is it me, or were those shots getting closer?”
“It sounded like it to me,” she agreed.
A few minutes went by and then another gunshot. This one was a lot closer than the others had been. Then another report sounded, and a bullet hit the bark of the tree that Eleanore was sitting in.
“Oh, good Lord in heaven!” she shrieked.
“Eleanore, get down out of that tree!”
“Oh, I…” She raised her foot to try to swing it around the tree branch that she was straddling, but Eleanore, being the size she was, couldn’t quite raise that leg up and over in a hurry. I jumped up and went over to the tree and began pulling on the leg that was closest to me.
“Ouch! Torie, stop pulling my leg!”
“Eleanore if you don’t get down out of that tree now, your leg is going to be the least of your worries!”
Another bullet, but this one hit the bark right by my head.
I screamed, Eleanore cried for her mother, and then the tree branch broke. Eleanore came tumbling down out of the tree and landed on top of me.
She knocked the wind clean out of me, and for a moment I thought I was a goner. Eleanore was screaming, bullets were flying everywhere, and I couldn’t breathe. It felt as though my lungs had collapsed.
Eleanore turned toward me, grabbed me by the coat, lifted me off of the ground, and banged my whole body up against the tree. “This is your doing! I know it! You ruin everything!” she screamed.
My arms were flaying all about and everything was turning sort of white around the edges. About the third time she slammed me into the tree, my breath came back to me. Big gasps of air filled my lungs and for about twenty seconds I just drank in as much sweet air as I could get.
The Blood Ballad Page 3