Nightingale's Nest

by Nikki Loftin

  Five minutes later, we’d picked three snails out of the rose garden—ignoring the swaying curtains in the house. Gayle had been humming under her breath the whole time. It was like working next to a mockingbird—there was everything from snatches of radio songs to commercial jingles to frog calls in her made-up melodies.

  “Hey, Little John,” Gayle said, tapping me on my arm with an empty snail shell.

  “Just a second,” I said, trying to work a nasty splinter out of my thumb.

  “But your dad’s calling.” She was right. I hadn’t heard him at first, but now I did. And he sounded angry.

  I didn’t blame him. He’d warned me he really needed me today. There was too much work for one man to do. I had to pull my weight.

  “Let’s go,” she said, hanging the wreath back on her arm.

  I took a deep breath. “Just give it to him, and then you’ll leave?”

  “Sure,” she promised, but her voice was full of mischief. Dad wasn’t going to like this.

  “Little John!” I heard again, the voice far away, and then a truck horn honking three times.

  “Better hurry,” Gayle said.

  “I’m gonna run,” I warned her. “Hop on my back?” I held my hands out as stirrups.

  “Pony ride!” she shouted, and scrambled up. If anything, she felt lighter than the day before. Weren’t the Cutlins feeding her?

  “Go!” she yelled, digging her fingers into my shoulders. I galloped with a stride designed to throw off little cowgirls—but she stayed on, hooting and singing, all the way to the far side of the property.

  Dad was leaning on the truck with a bottle of water in one hand. “What’s she here for?” he said, not looking at Gayle or me. “I told you she couldn’t be out here today.” His face was streaked with sweat, even though he’d been working for less than half an hour, and he was rubbing at a spot on his back like he’d pulled something. There was an impressive stack of cut logs next to the truck, though. I whistled. “Nice job, Dad.” Gayle climbed off my back. “I can get these. I’ll load ’em up.” I grabbed the first pecan log—heavy, not rotten wood at all—and rolled it across the truck bed. “Gayle, you stay out of the way,” I warned.

  But Gayle wasn’t there. She was standing next to my dad, who already had a wreath on his neck, and her hand was out. What else was she giving him? A rosebud, it looked like. “This is for you,” she said. “Because you’re sad.”

  “Sad?” Dad reared back, like he’d been stung. “Sad, huh. You get on away from here, now. It’s not safe.” He shot me a look, and I hurried to gather a few more logs. “Fool boy, bringing the little girl out on a work site,” he muttered. “Go on, now. Get.” Gayle just set the rosebud down on top of the biggest log, patting the cut piece like it was a dead pet or something. Eventually, she wandered off, picking dandelions and primroses and weaving the stems together.

  She had walked off a little ways when Dad finally said something, under his breath. “What’s with her?”

  “Huh?”

  His lips quirked. “With the singing and the flowers. You been around her a lot. Is she crazy, like they say?” For a minute, we both got quiet, thinking about someone else we knew who was sort of nuts, but with ribbons instead of flowers. Mom had been . . . a little off, that morning.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Living with Mrs. Cutlin would make anybody nuts, though.” We both stopped loading wood for a second and considered Gayle, who had pulled some small branches and was stripping them and forming them into some kind of a circle. “I think she’s just lonely.”

  “Her parents died how again?” Dad asked, hefting another three logs into the truck bed. I glanced down at my own log and reached for another. If he could do three at a time, I could do two.

  I wasn’t going to tell him about what Gayle had said—that her parents were going to come back. I settled for “dunno” and reached for one more log, trying not to grunt with the effort. We kept on that way for a while, him bending and lifting more and more logs at a time and me trying to match him. We were both sweating so hard by then, it looked like we’d been swimming with all our clothes on.

  We got to the end of the pile, to the biggest ones—stumps, more than logs. There was no way I was going to be able to pick one of those up.

  “Think we can do it together?” Dad pulled one of his work gloves off and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “On three?”

  My stomach flipped at the thought of trying to lift the mammoth log. “Maybe,” I said after a second. “Shouldn’t we cut it up first?”

  “Nah,” Dad said, and put his glove back on. “This one’s for the furniture guy. He’ll make an end table out of it, or something. Nice,” he said, slipping his hand over the cut end. It was beautiful wood, with a pattern I could see even through the cuts from the saw. “Wood like this, it’s worth something.” He stroked it again, but it didn’t look like he was thinking of how much money it was worth. It looked like he was admiring it.

  “One . . . ?” Dad started, settling his hands on one side of the stump. I knelt on the other side. “That’s right, son, bend at the knees. Two?”

  I nodded, hearing my heart pound over the sound of Gayle’s distant singing. “Three!” Dad yelled, and we both lifted.

  At first, I thought the stump was going to tip over onto me—the side Dad held was going up too fast, and my arms weren’t strong enough to catch it. But then he shifted his hand and took some of the weight off my side, and I was able to straighten my knees a little bit. I heard Dad ask something—it sounded like “Got it?”—but I couldn’t answer. The muscles in my chest felt wrong, like something inside was stretching, tearing. I was holding my breath, counting the small, shuffling steps I took to the truck bed. “Now!” I heard Dad shout, and we lifted the log a bit higher.

  Ouch! Something inside me definitely popped, and I felt a sharp, hot pain, like boiling water poured inside my chest, but I held on to my end of the log. Finally, Dad nodded, and we dropped it, letting it roll into the truck bed.

  My ears were ringing, and small bright lights bobbed around in front of my eyes when I let go. I leaned against the open tailgate, sucking in breath after breath, rubbing my chest.

  “You . . . okay?” Dad breathed from the other side of the bumper. I tried to focus on him. He was in the same position as I was, leaned over, huffing and puffing, but he took the steps over and clapped me on the arm. “Great job, son,” he said. “That was man’s work. I’m awful glad I had you here.” He paused. “Proud of ya.”

  I swallowed. It was the first time I could ever remember him saying that. Proud of me. My chest stopped hurting for a few seconds, and I smiled.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. He nodded, and looked away, toward Gayle. We both did, just stared at her, listening to her sing. She’d found something on the ground and was singing to it.

  “She’s not pretty,” he said at last. I felt the corners of my mouth turn down, until he finished. “But it doesn’t matter, not with that singing of hers. It’s . . . beautiful, isn’t it?” I nodded and closed my eyes, listening to it. With every note, it seemed like my chest hurt less.

  Wait. It did hurt less. I knew I’d pulled something; I’d felt it go. But now . . . I took a deep breath. Nothing. I opened my eyes, wondering if Dad had noticed anything. He was leaning back, eyes shut. Gayle was still singing—and what was that in her hand? Something alive, it looked like, but I couldn’t tell.

  “Go on and play with her,” Dad said. “I’ll drive the truck back up to the house and ask Mr. King if this is enough wood for his furniture guy.”

  “Okay,” I said. By the time Dad had gotten into the cab of the truck, I’d reached Gayle’s side and found out what she’d been up to.

  “A bunny, Gayle? Seriously?” I leaned down. Gayle stopped singing.

  “A baby,” she said. “Almost dead. Worse than the f
awn. I sang it better.” I reached down and stroked the tiny thing. It trembled, warm and soft under my hand.

  “It was hurt?” I asked.

  “Almost dead,” she repeated. “I never sung anything back that was so bad off. It means I’m growing up.”

  “What’s that, then? You think you’re big now?” I stood up and pretend-shouted down to her. “I can’t hear you so far down there. You know, you look like an ant from this high up.”

  “Stop making fun, Little John,” she groused. “You know I can heal things. You saw it.”

  “I saw . . . something,” I admitted. My heart was beating faster, remembering the fawn. “I’m not sure.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re just chicken,” she said. “Chicken they’ll think you’re as crazy as they think I am.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” I said slowly. “With you being a nightingale and all. It’s only right I should be a chicken.” I set off clucking and flapping my arms, making rooster sounds and hen squawks. Finally, when I laid an imaginary egg right on top of Gayle’s head, she got up, laughing.

  “It’s not funny, you know,” she said. “This bunny’s the only one left.” She pulled my hand and led me around the tree. There, a few feet away, was a mound of grass, with scraps of fur to one side. From what I could see, there had been at least three bunnies that hadn’t made it. “I think a dog got ’em,” she said. “Jeb said there’s a black dog around here.”

  “I’ve seen it,” I said. I had, the first day we’d come out here to work. It had slunk around the truck, looking for scraps, probably, until Dad had thrown some rocks at it and chased it off. “It’s a stray.”

  “He said he was gonna get it to bite me.” Gayle pushed the grass to one side and settled the lone bunny back in the low place that had been dug out by its mother. “I don’t like Jeb.”

  “Is that why you built that nest?” I asked, watching as Gayle picked up her flower wreaths and settled them around her neck. She had made three, and the pink primroses matched the check on her shirt.

  “No,” she said, rolling her eyes at me again and sighing. “I built the nest so my parents could find me, like they said to if I ever got lost from ’em. And for my treasures.” She held out her hand. “I’ll show you.”

  I just shook my head. “I’m not climbing that tree, and you’re not either. It has a bad limb, you know. Dad and I are supposed to trim it this week.”

  “You won’t hurt it, though?” Gayle said, eyes wide. “You won’t hurt my nest?”

  “Of course not,” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying. For all I knew, the bad limb was the very one she’d built her nest on. But I didn’t say that.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “You promise?”

  “Another promise? I already promised not to let Dad cut the tree down, didn’t I?”

  “But the nest, Little John,” she insisted. “You won’t hurt it either. Right?”

  I shook my head. When I was her age, I guess I wanted promises, too. Heck, I’d spit-sworn with Ernest that we’d be friends forever. And look what had happened there, what I’d done.

  I’d learned better than to make promises. But I could probably keep this one. I mean, I wouldn’t be the one cutting the limb, right? Dad did that part. He just wanted to teach me how to seal the cut. And I had an idea anyway—a way to get that five hundred dollars. “Sure,” I said. “If you’ll do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I want you to sing,” I began.

  Gayle laughed. “Little John, I been singing all day!” She jumped up and grabbed hold of one of my legs. Using my hips and arms like branches, she climbed until she was all the way up on my shoulders.

  “I know,” I said. “I meant I wanted you to sing for the Emperor.”

  She stopped laughing, and swiveled around, so she could see my face. “For . . . for Mr. King?” Her voice trembled when she said his name. “Why him?”

  I shrugged, trying not to meet her eyes. “He likes your singing. It’s not a big deal, is it? He has a room in his house. You’d like it. There’s lots of music stuff in there.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, slowly. “I don’t sing inside very much. It sounds better outside.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to sing one song for him, would it now?” I didn’t mention anything about the recording. It didn’t matter, did it? Maybe once Mr. King recorded it, he’d leave her alone. He could just listen to the recording, right?

  “You want me to do it?” she asked, and her voice was softer now. She had turned back around and was clinging to my neck like a burr. Tight, like she thought I might run off and leave her at any second. “Would you be there, too?”

  “Of course,” I said, remembering the look in the Emperor’s eyes when he’d threatened me and my father. “I’ll stay the whole time.”

  “Okay,” she said softly, and tucked her face against my hair. I could feel her hot breath push against my neck.

  “Fine,” I said. “How about tomorrow?”

  She didn’t answer. I changed the subject. “Aren’t you scared up there, Gayle?” I said. “I used to try to give shoulder rides to”—I almost said Raelynn, but changed it—“to my friend’s sister, Isabelle, and she always screamed like I was gonna drop her. Sometimes I did drop her, you know. Not on purpose.”

  Gayle laughed once against my hair. “Silly,” she said, “you’d never let me fall.” Then she dug her heels into my sides, just hard enough to startle me, and yelled, “Giddyap!”

  I laughed and reared back like a stallion, then started racing around the clearing, swerving past the pecan trees. I held on to her thin legs, though, making sure I didn’t drop her.

  I laughed with her, but inside her words pounded against my racing heart. The same heart that was somersaulting at the thought of five hundred dollars, five hundred dollars for me and Mom and Dad. Gayle believed in me. “You’d never let me fall,” she’d said.

  I prayed it was true.

  But I found out the next day it wasn’t true at all.

  On the way to Mr. King’s the next morning, Dad asked me if Gayle was going to be there.

  “I think so,” I said. “If that’s all right? I mean, she won’t be in the way or anything?” I didn’t think Dad had minded her running around the day before, especially not after she had put those flower wreaths on his head. He’d laughed harder than I’d heard in years when she’d whispered in his ear, “You’re the real Emperor.”

  While they were eating a snack, I’d sneaked back over to the house—I told Dad it was to go to the bathroom, but really it was to tell the Emperor I’d convinced Gayle to sing the next day.

  “Can I have the money now?” I’d asked him. But he shook his head.

  “A deal’s a deal, son,” he’d said. “You’ll get the money after she sings, not before.”

  I worried that he’d try to cheat me, but there was nothing I could do. I shook the thought away to listen to my dad.

  “She’s a strange little thing,” Dad said, looking in the rearview mirror at the car that was honking behind us. We were going pretty slow, but it was just because his truck was so old and broken down. Dad took his foot off the accelerator and pushed the brakes a few times, smiling at the mirror when the car honked again.

  “Gayle?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t one of the kids from school in the car. I scooched down in my seat a little as the car finally passed us. “Yeah, she is. But I told her she could come back over today. I hope that was okay, sir.”

  “Sure, son,” he said, and he laid a hand on my arm. “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. I saw those marks on her arms the other day.” He spat out his open window and shook his head. “Verlie Cutlin shouldn’t be allowed to foster.”

  “Marks on her arms?” I asked, remembering the fingerpr
ints from the week before. I hadn’t seen any marks yesterday, though—she’d mostly been wearing long sleeves. That was why she’d had her shirt all buttoned up.

  “How bad were they?” I asked, not wanting to hear. “Should we tell someone?”

  “Well,” Dad said, “it’s hard to prove anything when you don’t see it happen. But if it gets much worse . . . we’ll see. Not till this job’s done, though. We can’t mess with all that until we have some money.”

  “If she’s really hurt, Dad, we have to say something now!” My voice was too loud, and I tried to talk calmly. “That’s more important than money, isn’t it?”

  “More important than a roof over your head? Than clothes on your momma’s back?”

  I had to work not to roll my eyes. He was one to talk. I couldn’t remember the last time Mom had money enough for clothes that Dad hadn’t gone and drunk it away before she had a chance to drive into Brownwood and spend it.

  I must’ve made some sound, because Dad shot me a look. “You keep your trap shut. The little girl will be all right. She can stay over at Mr. King’s with us.”

  I stared out the window, disgusted with him, until it dawned on me: I wasn’t any better. I had convinced Gayle to do something she didn’t really want to, for money. Even if it was just singing.

  I shut my eyes against the warm wind that blew through my open window, and wished I wasn’t like my father—strong on the outside, weak on the inside.

  Mr. King was waiting for us on his front porch. He was dressed even fancier than the day before, like he was going to the opera or something.

  Or hosting his own little opera.

  He nodded at my dad and asked if I could help out in his garden again that day. “Sure,” Dad said slowly, looking at me with a question in his eyes. I shook my head and—my back turned to Mr. King—rolled my eyes. “I can handle snails, Dad. I’ll get it done in less than an hour so we can trim that sycamore branch.”