“Squeeeeeeeem,” Bitty heard Eck say, though he didn’t know if his friend was speaking in Cat or Mouse. “Squeeeeem.” Whatever it was, the cat understood. His ears twitched and he arched his back. Even so, Bitty could see the cat’s ample stomach. Eck had his work cut out for him, all right. Still, the cat was quick.
“Squeeeeem,” Eck said again. The cat pounced, reaching a long paw under the chair. That paw! Bitty hadn’t had any idea a cat could stretch so far. Eck retreated, but only a few steps.
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Bitty muttered.
“Squeeeeem.” This time the sound didn’t come from Eck, and Bitty followed the noise across the room to another hole in the wall, where he saw another mouse about Eck’s size staring the cat in the eye. Quickly, the cat bounded across the room and reached his paw into the hole. As soon as the cat moved, Eck started running toward the hole that Bitty had just popped out of. And as soon as he started running, the cat changed direction. He bounded toward Eck and, consequently, toward Bitty.
“Go, go, go, go, go!” Eck yelled, and Bitty dove into the hole. He felt a push on his rump and then another, and finally he was back in the damp darkness, with the mouse right behind him.
“Keep going!” Eck shouted in Bird. “Run!”
Bitty, who wasn’t very graceful when it came to running, hurled his body forward until at last Eck yelled: “Stop! It’s all right; we can stop now.”
Bitty looked back toward the light just as the cat’s paw came shooting toward him, claws extended like switchblades.
“Reow. Merow.” The paw came to a stop three inches short of where they stood.
“Eow. Mrrph,” Eck replied. He turned to Bitty, breathing hard. “Don’t worry, we’re safe. That was enough of a workout for one morning, I suppose. Come on, follow me.”
“What was he saying back there?”
“Oh, that,” Eck said. “ ‘Retraite.’ French, you know, it’s a fencing term. He also said he was hungry for mouse pâté.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Until next time, foolish feline.’ ”
Bitty was glad to see they were coming to another opening, a warmer spot inside the wall but close to the fireplace. Another mouse joined them, and Bitty recognized her as the mouse from across the room.
“Bonnie, my partner,” Eck said. “Meet Bitty, formerly of Coalbank Hollow.”
“The miner bird?”
“None other. Only his second day out of a cage.”
“Second day out,” Bonnie repeated. “And you’ve already faced a cat.”
“And grackles. And a hawk. And, uh, garbage.” Bitty told his story, pleased that they gasped in all the right places and that neither of them said anything about the way he smelled. “I think the new hawk’s from Coalbank Hollow, too,” he concluded. “She has a taste for canary.”
“Well, she didn’t get you, did she?” Bonnie said. Her smile was as warm as toast and made Bitty think of Alice. “You’re a real adventurer.”
“You’re the adventurers, dealing with those cats every day,” Bitty said. “Not me.”
“An adventure,” said Eck, “is an exciting or dangerous undertaking. By my count, you’ve had nothing but adventures for the past two days, if not for your entire life. Since birth.”
Bitty found it hard to believe that an adventure could happen to someone who lived in a cage, to someone whose wings ached after only twenty minutes of flying. But what Eck said was true. He began to wish that he hadn’t washed his face in the creek or the birdbath; that he’d left it coated with the dust and aromas of worldly experience, even if one of those worldly experiences happened to be garbage. He’d be sure not to bathe as quickly when he returned to Coalbank Hollow.
“So is he here?” Bitty asked. “The inventor?”
Bonnie looked at Eck, who nodded. “He has his usual room at the end of the hall,” Eck said. “It’s rarely occupied, as there aren’t as many people traveling these days who can afford hotels. I think Miss Alma lets him have it for free. He’s her first cousin, only once removed.”
“Can we visit him?” Bitty asked. He didn’t know much about science, but he thought he’d be able to tell right away if the man could help him—could help all of them.
“Naturally.”
Bitty and Eck left Bonnie and hurried down the passageway, stopping now and then to peep through a mouse hole into what Eck promised were the inn’s more interesting chambers.
They visited the bathroom first, with its inside plumbing and a tub that stood on lion’s paws. “A claw-foot,” Eck said. “It reminds Miss Alma of the cats.” They admired the inn’s radio, arched and curved like a church window, though it was silent. In the Campbells’ house, the radio was often on, whether it was music—Aunt Lou loved to hear the Carter Family sing about hard times—or President Hoover talking in his clipped auctioneer’s monotone about his latest plan to end those hard times. Whatever the plan, Mr. Campbell always said, it wasn’t enough.
Finally, they reached the room at the end of the hall that was smaller than the rest. On the floor was a rug, depicting a peacock in its blue-green glory. Bitty and Eck stepped out of the hole. There was nobody there. A suitcase sat latched on a stand at the foot of the bed. Boldly, Bitty took a few more steps away from the mouse hole. His feet touched the carpet, and he might have stayed there, surrounded by the softness, if he hadn’t seen, on a table above him, an instrument surrounded by a jumble of wires, copper and tubes.
He flew to the table and landed, the wires surrounding his legs like tentacles. Eck moved toward the table, too, but did not climb beyond its base.
“Well?” Eck said. “What do you think? Is it the solution?”
“Hard to say,” Bitty said. “Wait a minute. I think these are notes.”
The notes were beneath the object, so he couldn’t see all the diagrams. The writing was much harder to read than the newsprint Bitty was used to. He made out the word gas, and revolutionary and most important of all, miners. And then he spotted, at the bottom of the page, a rough sketch of a bird that looked a little like him.
Focusing his eyes as best he could, he tried to wade through a dense paragraph that was labeled Whatchamacallit.
“As canaries stop singing when gas is identified in mines, thus requiring constant monitoring, this mechanism will behave in the opposite way, featuring an alarm system that will ‘chirp’ loudly when too much gas encroaches upon breathable air.” There were other words written on the page. Bitty saw opposite again, underlined twice and then:
copper? brass?
coils and water
Find better product name!!
Across the bottom of the page, in printed letters, with a signature beneath them, were the words Property of Virgil P. Smith, inventor.
The Whatchamacallit! If they could convince the mine owners to use it, maybe then the canaries could get out! Other mines had replaced canaries with “new-fangled machinery,” as Uncle Aubrey called it. And this would be even newer. Better! There was the price to worry about—the company made the miners pay for most of their equipment themselves, from their coal picks and shovels right up to their headlamps—but this seemed different somehow.
Bitty turned his head sideways to study the sketch from another angle. It was then that he saw, stalking slowly into the room, as if he were the one who had booked it, another of Miss Alma’s cats. The movement of Bitty’s head caught the cat’s attention. The creature stalked toward him—and the table.
Bitty flew toward the bed, knowing the cat would follow. The cat did, and lunged. Bitty dodged the attack with no trouble. The gray cat pounced again as Bitty flew to the top of the suitcase, wishing he had the seagulls’ ability to hover. The cat followed. Bitty zipped across the room again. It was almost fun. He could see why Eck liked his job. With the cat’s attention turned toward Bitty, Eck made his way quietly toward the mouse hole. But the cat saw him and lunged again. Bitty heard a squeak that sounded like pain in any l
anguage.
“FEE-YO. FEE-YO!” Bitty flew back and forth, trying to regain the cat’s attention. “FEE-YO!” With a low growl, the cat switched directions again. He jumped and caught air.
“Missed me!” Bitty shouted, but it was more relief than bragging. The cat jumped again. He missed the bird, but he hit the rickety table that held the invention. Everything moved in slow motion. The table fell toward the floor and the invention began to slide. Bitty swooped in, as if he had enough strength to stop it. Then everything rushed into real time again. The gas detector crashed to the floor, the copper separating along the seam where it had been fused, the glass shattering into slivers. The cat froze, but only for a moment. Bitty turned to follow Eck into the hole, but the base of the Whatchamacallit had landed on his tail feathers. Bitty struggled forward with a jerk. He felt a tug and then a pop as the movement plucked one long yellow feather from his rear end. It lay beneath what was left of the Whatchamacallit like a flower petal in a junkyard. Bitty kept plunging forward, finally making it to the safety of the hole, where he found Eck nursing a J-shaped wound that started on one side of his tail and ended on the other. He had a deep scratch near his eye as well.
“Sorry,” Eck and Bitty said at the same time.
“Are you okay?” they both asked. Bitty would have called “Jinx” and punched Eck in the arm, but his friend had been through enough.
“It was my fault,” Bitty said. “I made us come in here. Now I’ve ruined everything.”
“I should have been paying more attention,” Eck said. “These creatures are in my charge, after all.”
The door of the room was pushed wider open, and a man—Virgil P. Smith, it had to be—entered. He was tall and thin and rumpled-looking, as if he had just gotten out of bed. He cursed the cat, went straight to the table and righted it. As he bent to gather up the metal casing and its tangled innards, he paused. “What in the name of—?” He picked up Bitty’s feather. Then he looked at the cat again. “What did you do, puss? Open up.” But the cat’s mouth stayed closed and he walked slowly from the room, his business there complete.
Thoughtfully, the man twirled the tail feather between his thumb and first finger. He set it carefully on the nightstand, then bent to the floor again and tried to sweep up some of the broken glass with his hand. “Alma,” he shouted. “I’ll be needing a broom.”
He snatched his hand back and squeezed it shut, but not before Bitty saw a drop of red.
“And a bandage, Alma,” Virgil Smith added. He had a face that was probably kind most of the time. But now it wore a look that was worse than anger; it was a look of defeat.
Bitty’s remaining tailfeathers drooped. He had come with a mission: to find help. He’d messed things up instead. “I should go,” he told Eck. “You’ll let me know if he fixes it?”
“Of course,” the mouse said, rubbing his rump. “I’ll send you a message.”
“A message?”
“Naturally.” Eck led the way back to the warm room, where Bonnie fussed over his injuries. “We have a very sophisticated system.”
“If you can get a message to me across town, could I get a message to someone out of town? To Coalbank Hollow?”
“Of course,” Eck said. “Haven’t you ever received a message before?”
“Never.”
“There. All fixed,” Bonnie said. Then, “Well, of course he’s never gotten a message. Who would he know on the outside?” She looked at Bitty. “Homesick so soon?” She said it seriously, not teasing—knowing, perhaps, that Bitty felt as fragile as the invention he’d just destroyed.
“Not for the place,” he said. “It’s just that Aunt Lou’s a worrier and Alice—”
“A girl. Say no more!” Eck said. “I’ll tell you everything I know about sending messages. Though it’s your kind that’s in charge of the telephone company. Not mine.”
“My kind? You mean canaries?”
“Well, no, not canaries per se,” Eck said. “Birdkind. You’re the ones who fly all over creation, so it’s easy for you to get messages back and forth. I’m told there’s quite an advanced relay system. And territories. And zones.”
“Zones?”
“It’s not as confusing as it sounds,” Eck said.
“It’s not as confusing as he’s making it,” Bonnie joined in, giving Eck a gentle jab in the ribs.
Eck winced but grinned. “Look, it’s simple, really. All you have to do is talk to a bird on a wire.”
“A telephone wire?”
“Exactly. Mourning doves, they’re up there a lot. And purple martins and grackles.”
At the word grackle, Bitty cringed.
“Forget I said grackle,” Eck told him. “Kingfishers. Barn swallows. Any bird on a wire is on duty, see? You give them your message and they’ll send it out. It should get to Coalbank Hollow in a day or two, give or take a week.”
Bitty thanked his friend, took a crumble of the inn’s famous corn bread for the walk through the tunnel, and said his final good-bye.
“Be careful of hawks,” Eck said. “They usually attack when you’re alone, you know.”
“I’ve heard that,” Bitty said.
“You’ll be safe with the pigeons. And try not to worry. I’m sure the inventor will fix the Whosawhatsit. If it ever worked in the first place.”
Trying not to think of the solo flight between the mouse hole and the train station, Bitty made his way up the dark tunnel. If a vein of hard coal had replaced the mouse-chewed wood and earth (and if it had been a little larger) it would have felt exactly like Coalbank Hollow.
Bitty emerged from the mouse hole and found the world as dark as the tunnel. Of course—it was evening now. He had lost all track of time inside the walls of the inn. The legislators had probably gone home for the day. It must be way past dinnertime, and he’d promised to meet Clarence. He thought about sending his message home—he could see the black silhouettes of two birds on a telephone wire—but decided the best move was to return to the station. Fast.
Bitty flew through the East End and crossed the river, hovering over the bridge again, for safety. He didn’t look down until he’d made it to the roof of the train station.
Below him, humans called out to each other once again. But up here, all was quiet, save for the gentle cooing of the pigeons. Clarence was already asleep. Bitty scouted out a spot in the gutter a few feet away and tested it for signs of moisture. The tin was cold to the touch, but he found a few sticks for his bed frame. On the ground behind the station he found a piece of cotton and a swath of cloth, and with those materials he built his first nest. If the folks at home could see this! It was his one success. He didn’t want them to know about his failures.
Bitty looked up at the night sky and drew in a breath. Back home, he could see only a few stars, shining like cut glass on the small strip of sky that was visible from Jamie’s bedroom window. But here? Bitty couldn’t even count them all. There must be hundreds. Thousands! He felt as if he could fly up and touch them. He felt as if he could catch them like the summer fireflies that sometimes glowed from a Mason jar on Jamie’s nightstand. He wondered if he could see every star in the sky. And he wondered how many of those stars were shining over Coalbank Hollow.
Chapter 13
Bitty slept the restless sleep that comes from being in a strange place. He dreamed he was in the coal mine, only this time, he wasn’t in a cage. He was free to zip through the tunnels, a blurry speck of yellow in a black world. As he flew, the miners slapped at him the way he’d seen Jamie slap mosquitoes.
“I’m free,” Bitty told them, though of course none of them spoke Bird. “Mountainy Liberty. I mean, monetary library. Montani Semper Liberi. Leave me alone. I’m free.”
The tips of the Gap-Toothed Man’s pudgy fingers flicked Bitty on the head.
Thwack.
There they were again.
Bitty opened his eyes and saw not the miner’s fingers, but Clarence peering down at him.
Peck. C
larence poked Bitty in the head for the third time. “Come on, sleepyhead, get up. My mom says if I work this morning, I can show you around this afternoon. You can help.”
“What time is it?” Despite years of waking up before the sun, this morning, the sun had beaten him.
“It’s six-thirty, so we’ve got to move. Old humans wake up earlier than the rest.”
Sure enough, Mrs. Gillespie was already sitting on a bench.
Bitty took a bath in the creek to make sure he looked and smelled his best for the legislators—and Clarence’s clients. Then he joined the pigeon near Mrs. Gillespie. Her hands were curled like claws, but she dropped a piece of a sticky bun on the ground by her feet.
“Come on,” Clarence called. “She doesn’t bite.”
Bitty looked again at the curled hands, then tried a taste of sticky bun.
“Why, hello, pretty,” Mrs. Gillespie said.
“She means you,” Clarence told him. “She calls me ‘precious.’ ”
“Girls are pretty,” Bitty said.
“She’s a little gushy. But you get used to it.”
For a full hour they sat with Mrs. Gillespie, who went back and forth between cooing at them in baby talk that was more sugary than the sticky buns and railing about President Hoover.
Their next client blew his nose like an elephant. Instead of calling Bitty “pretty,” he went with “Serinus canaria domestica,” which made him sound as formal as Eck. He didn’t offer them any bread, though, so they moved on to Hobo Pete.
“I need to get to the courthouse,” Bitty said.
“But Pete’s the best. You’ve gotta meet him.”
They approached a bench and found a tall, scruffy man with newspaper draped over his legs like a blanket. Bitty tried to read some of the stories, but the news was old and the words were too wrinkled to read.
“I’m surprised you found enough stuff for your nest with him around,” Clarence said. “Hobo Pete is the best scrap finder in the city.” The man’s enormous shoes were laced with brown twine. He had patched the soles with newspaper and masking tape. The birds waited as he pulled a crumpled paper bag from his belongings. He reached inside and came up with some bread crumbs for them. Then he leaned back and shook the rest of the bag’s contents into his mouth.
Canary in the Coal Mine Page 7