Chapter 14
The rain fell in silver sheets. There were no humans on the park benches, so Bitty and the pigeons stayed on the balcony, hugging the building for warmth and finding none. Every now and then, a pigeon would leave to scout for food left by the passengers. But with the rain, the passengers hurried from one spot to the next, clutching their umbrellas; they didn’t spend much time eating, and when the pigeons did find food, it was so soggy it disintegrated on contact.
Finally, after a day and a half, the gray skies parted. The rain stopped. White clouds hovered low, as if the mountains were blowing smoke rings. Then they, too, lifted and the sun appeared, drying the station and the ground and the gutter. A little shaky from lack of food, Bitty flew up to inspect the remains of his nest. He found one twig lodged near the top of the drainpipe; that was all. But worse than the destruction of his new home: his letter to the mining committee had disappeared completely. He checked the ground beneath the drainpipe. It wasn’t there, either. He couldn’t find one word that he’d collected and pasted. And the Committee on Mines and Mining was scheduled to meet the day after tomorrow.
“You can write a new note,” Clarence said. “But you’d better make it quick.”
“I know.” Bitty’s voice warbled strangely. His chest hurt. He shivered, despite the sun, which might as well have been made of ice instead of fire.
“Achooo.”
“Gesundheit,” Clarence said. “Hey. Maybe you’re catching a cold.”
“Achoooo.”
“Rain’ll do it to you,” Clarence said. “I’ll get my mom. She always takes care of me when I’m sick.”
Bitty didn’t tell Clarence how dangerous a cold could be for a canary. His throat felt as if he’d swallowed a porcupine.
“Oh, poor dear,” Clarence’s mother said when she saw Bitty, whose eyes were watery and who, now that he knew he was sick, was coughing nonstop. “We need to get you warm, that’s all. You’ll be fine in a jiffy.”
“Wh-wh-where’s it warm?” Bitty asked.
“I know a spot,” Clarence’s mother said. “Inside.”
“Inside?” Clarence said. “But the last time—”
“Inside,” his mother said. “If only a few of us go, we won’t be caught.”
The birds moved close to the heavy doors that led from the balcony to the second-floor waiting room. The next time someone stepped out for a breath of air, Bitty followed the pigeons into the station and headed straight for the ceiling.
“This way, this way,” Clarence’s mother said. She led him to a high beam bathed in sunshine, which was streaming through the arched windows. There was no wind. Bitty could now see not just the waiting room, which covered only part of the second floor, but all the way down to the great room below.
“My letter—” Bitty was coughing too much to finish his sentence.
“He’s got a fever,” Clarence’s mother told her son. “Find something we can use as a blanket. A piece of fabric or . . . that. That would be a perfect nest.”
Bitty followed her gaze to the room below, where a woman sat perched on her suitcase, wearing a red wool hat.
“Won’t she miss it?” Clarence said.
“That hat’s too warm for this time of year,” Clarence’s mother said. “We’d be doing her a favor.”
“If I take it, they’ll spot us.” Clarence looked at Bitty, who shivered back at him. “Okay. I’ll try.”
The pigeon did a perfect dive toward the lady’s head. He snagged the hat with his brick-red feet and started to carry it skyward.
“Thief!” the woman shrieked. “A lady never goes anywhere without a hat!”
The humans looked around, perhaps for a pickpocket. When they spotted Clarence, they pointed and laughed. He looked like a flying strawberry. Bitty laughed, too, but his laugh turned into another cough as Clarence landed, breathless, on the beam beside him.
“Good work,” said Clarence’s mother. She laid out the hat like a sleeping bag and Bitty climbed inside. Warm at last, he slept. When he awoke a few hours later, he was tired and dizzy and hot. Clarence’s mother dropped some water from her beak and Bitty opened his mouth to catch it. He felt like a baby. He swallowed and slept again.
Sometimes he opened his eyes and saw Clarence beside him. Sometimes it was Clarence’s mother or Miss Mona or Dolly, the chimney swift. Once he saw Aunt Lou and called to her, wondering how she had found him, but she disappeared without answering. The next time he awoke, it was his mother and father he saw, dancing. Bitty danced with them, his wings touching theirs.
“Dance with us,” he told Clarence when he opened his eyes and found his friend beside him. But Clarence just gave him a worried look and hurried away. When Bitty closed his eyes again, his parents had gone, too. Everybody keeps leaving, he thought, and then he remembered: he was the one who’d left. He slept again and dreamed of home.
He woke up hungry. Clarence was sitting with him and whooped when Bitty asked for food.
“You got it,” he said, and disappeared into the station. He came back with a piece of cinnamon bun. “I was saving it,” he said, “for when you were well.”
“How long have I been out?” Bitty asked.
“Five days.”
“That’s almost a week!” Bitty said. “I missed the committee meeting. I’ve got to—”
“First things first, dear,” said Clarence’s mother, who had come to check on her patient. She put a gray wing against his forehead. “Fever’s dropped. But I want you in bed for the rest of the day. Tomorrow you can get back to work.”
He’d lost six days already. Now it had been fifty-two days since Boggs had died, which left fifty-one days until the record. But it was called the record for a reason. Sometimes the accidents didn’t wait. Bitty couldn’t wait, either.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
“You’ve already missed the meeting,” Clarence reminded him. “One more day won’t hurt.”
“You could have gone to the meeting for me.” Bitty sounded meaner than he meant to. “You could have written a new letter.”
“Aw, I’m not as good with words as you are.”
“You wrote that poem.”
“But you’re the canary,” Clarence said. “How would it look, getting a report on mining conditions from a pigeon? I don’t know a coal mine from a drinking well. Listen, we can still go find your politicians. We can still get the letter to the right place.”
“But I—”
“You can’t help anybody if you don’t get completely well. You just need a plan B.”
Bitty sighed. At the rate he was going, he needed a plan for every letter of the alphabet. He nibbled on a piece of his cinnamon bun, which made him feel a little better. He finally remembered to thank Clarence, which he should have done first thing.
“I’m sorry,” Bitty said. “I’m mad at myself, mostly.” He wished again that he had been able to talk Miss Mona into including “pigeons aren’t lazy” in his message to the Big House. Which reminded him:
“I didn’t get a message from Coalbank Hollow, did I?”
Clarence wobbled his head “no.”
Bitty shivered, as if he still had a fever. Maybe his message had never reached the hollow. It was better to think about that than to think about all the reasons his friends might not have sent a message back. He brushed the thoughts away. “Thanks,” he told Clarence. “For everything.”
Clarence shrugged. “Well, after all, I’m a company bird.”
The next morning Bitty took a short test flight around the station. Then, when a man stepped onto the balcony to light up a cigarette, Bitty shot outside. The fresh air felt wonderful. It had grown warmer during the week, and the tulip magnolias were in full bloom now, their pale pink blossoms enveloping brown branches in soft pink clouds. Bitty flew behind the station to what he had started referring to as Grackle Creek and tasted the sweet water as it rushed down the mountain to meet him. V and the Boys screamed at him from the trees above,
but they did not swarm or send torpedoes, and Bitty stood firmly on his rock. He didn’t leave until he’d drunk his fill.
He wanted to go see Miss Mona, and to visit the temporary capitol to see when the next mining meeting had been scheduled. But he figured the least he could do was to join Clarence on his morning rounds first. He owed him. Besides, he could keep an eye out for more newspaper.
Mrs. Gillespie greeted him with a shower of bread. “Hello, pretty. I wondered what happened to my pretty.”
“I’m back,” Bitty chirped without coughing.
Hobo Pete had given up his bench, but they found him lounging under a maple, his beard looking scruffier than ever.
“Sorry, friends,” the hobo said. “I got nothing today. No crumbs. No stories. Might be time to strike out and find some new ones.” Bitty stood near Pete’s left knee, but the man remained silent. It was time to move on.
When their shift was over, they flew back to Court Street and landed on the steps of the courthouse. The calendar that was posted on the door didn’t list any more meetings for the Committee on Mines and Mining; it didn’t list anything at all. Bitty spotted Cato, with his red fathers and black goatee.
“Hello, young squire. How are you feeling?” the cardinal asked.
“Lousy,” Bitty said. “I missed the mining meeting and I need to find someone to help me. Is there anyone inside? Someone on the committee?”
“The only person in there right now is the judge, son,” Cato said. “Session’s over.”
“What?” Bitty must have heard wrong.
“The legislative session has ended,” Cato repeated. “I’m afraid everyone’s gone home.”
“Home? For how long?” Why, why, why had he gotten sick?
“Let’s see. Unless they call an extra session, no one will be back until . . . January.”
“January?” Bitty looked at Clarence, who wobbled his head sympathetically. “I can’t wait. I’ve waited too long already.”
“Well, now, hold on, let’s see,” Cato said, backtracking. “When I said everyone’s gone home, I didn’t mean they’d all gone directly home. You might find a few still about the city, tying up some loose ends, as it were. Maybe you can make a direct appeal.”
“Is there anyone here from Coalbank Hollow?” Clarence asked.
Of course! Bitty should have thought of that.
“The Honorable Delegate Finch lives somewhere near Coalbank. He’s a real bird lover, too,” the cardinal said. He looked at Clarence. “You’d know where to find him better than I would.”
“I never heard him mention Coalbank Hollow,” Clarence said.
“Wait,” Bitty said. “You know him?”
“Yeah, and so do you,” Clarence said. “He’s the nose honker. But he wasn’t in the park this morning. I only saw him once while you were sick.”
“You might try the new capitol,” Cato suggested. “Some of them like to go there to watch the progress. And Bitty: if I see anyone come by here, I’ll get a message to you. You’ve got a worthy cause. I want to help.”
Plan C. Bitty and Clarence set off again, weaving quickly through the streets of the East End, until they came upon the construction site. The main building stood, already majestic, alongside the river, just across from the university. The dome was farther along than it had been when Bitty first arrived in Charleston, but he still didn’t trust it.
Some distance away, resting on an outcropping of rock, he saw two men, their backs to the river. Each man had a pair of binoculars dangling around his neck.
Bitty heard a familiar honk and saw one of them blowing into a handkerchief. He looked somehow taller than he had on the bench, and less bald. Mr. Campbell always said the politicians he knew were “crooked as a dog’s hind leg.” And he thought the capitol building was a gold-plated luxury, given the times. Still, Bitty couldn’t help being impressed.
The birds landed, hidden by the tall grass. The hammering on the capitol was far enough away that they could overhear the two men.
“By the time we come back, she’ll be done,” said Mr. Finch.
“Yep,” said his friend.
“For better or for worse,” said Mr. Finch.
“Yep.”
“You know, I saw the old one burn?”
“You been here that long?”
“Fire was right after New Year’s,” said Mr. Finch. “They’d stored the guns they’d confiscated from the mine wars up on the top floor, and when it went up? Whoo-ee, let me tell you. It was like fireworks. Of course, no one was celebrating. We were running, is what we were doing.”
“Those miners went crazy, didn’t they?” said the man who was not Mr. Finch.
Crazy? Bitty thought. Uncle Aubrey had always described it as the miners’ finest moment—standing up to the coal operators and their hired hands, to corrupt politicians and the government. Of course, they’d lost in the end, but they’d been on the front page of the Charleston Gazette and newspapers everywhere else, too. People knew about them. Then they forgot.
“They were trying to get someone to listen,” said Mr. Finch. “We plugged our ears. You know, my brother used to be a doctor in a coal camp—his first job out of medical school. The things he saw! Men with their legs crushed. And no money waiting for them when they couldn’t work anymore. The miners, though, they took care of their own. Tried to, anyway.”
“Mmm-mmm.” The man shook his head. “When are you headed back?”
“Thursday. You?”
“Same.”
“You want to meet up Wednesday morning, then?” the politician asked.
“Yep.”
“Round eight?”
The man stood and began walking away. Mr. Finch stayed on the rock another moment, gazing at the building. Then he turned his binoculars toward the river.
“A grebe! A horned grebe!” he said, pulling a notebook from his breast pocket. Boldly, Bitty lit on the rock beside him.
Delegate Finch looked down. “Well, well. It’s my canary friend, is it?”
Bitty stared at him, willing the man to read his mind. The man stared back, waiting.
“Is this supposed to be part of the plan?” Clarence called from the grass.
“Shhh. Yes.”
Slowly, the man put his hands to his lips. “Howdy!” he said distinctly in Bird. He said it again. “Howdy!”
“He speaks Bird!” Bitty yelled. At last! A breakthrough! He turned back to Mr. Finch. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’m Bitty, a canary from Coalbank Hollow, and we need your help.”
“Howdy!” said Mr. Finch.
“Um, howdy,” Bitty repeated. “As I was saying, my friends and I work at the Number Seven mine and we risk our lives every day. But there’s other equipment that can detect gas almost as well as we can. And, sir? The mine has bad ventilation. The company doesn’t treat the miners the way people should be treated, and you’re a politician. You could make things better. You could pass another law—”
“Howdy!” said Mr. Finch. “Howdy! Howdy! Howdy!”
Bitty stopped talking and looked at Clarence. This wasn’t a proper response at all. Was this what Uncle Aubrey meant when he talked about “crazy politicians”? Mr. Finch took his hands away from his lips, and Bitty saw a glimmer of metal. A bird whistle.
“I should have known,” Bitty said, kicking the rock. “He doesn’t speak Bird at all.”
“We’ll just have to find another way,” Clarence said, waddling out of his hiding place.
Plan D.
“Yeah,” Bitty said. “By Wednesday morning. Come on. Let’s go see Miss Mona and Walter. I need to find out what else I slept through.”
As they flew off, they heard Mr. Finch holler “Howdy!” one more time. When they looked back, he was watching them with his binoculars. Then his attention shifted back to the grebe.
Chapter 15
Aunt Lou always said no news was good news. Bitty didn’t believe that. Sometimes, no news meant the worst. He checked in with Miss
Mona first, and Bitty greeted her in Bird, Cat and Squirrel. Miss Mona returned the greeting but had no message from the Big House.
“I wish I did,” she said, shifting her feet to keep her balance on the wire, which was sagging a bit under Clarence’s weight. “But I do have a message from your mouse friend.”
“Eck? What did he say?”
“ ‘Inventor back at work,’ ” she said. “ ‘Visit.’ ”
“Well, at least that’s good news,” Bitty said.
“And that’s not all. Your classmates are telling your story to everyone they know. They’re behind you, Bitty. We all are.”
That just left the humans to win over.
Bitty and Clarence went in search of Walter next. They found her with her ear glued to the wire.
“Fire in the theater district,” she said before Bitty could ask about Coalbank Hollow. “There is still heavy smoke in the area, and birds are advised to stay clear. In construction news, the capitol dome is almost complete, as is the world’s tallest building, which will be opening in New York City. Meanwhile, back here in Charleston, the hawk population continues to rise.”
“What about Coalbank Hollow?” Bitty asked, forcing the hawks from his mind.
“Most people don’t ask for news from there,” Walter said. “But I have some.” She paused. “It isn’t good.”
Bitty’s heart jumped to his throat, which was still sore from his cold. One look at the sparrow’s face told him that the news was much more than Aunt Lou’s arthritis acting up. “Go on.”
Walter twitched her head to the right, then up toward the clouds. When she spoke, her voice was as smooth as a radio announcer’s: “Two mining canaries, one male and one female, were killed early this morning in what is just the latest tragedy at the Coalbank Hollow mine. The canaries were found before the mine officially opened for the day, when they accompanied the fire boss on his morning rounds. The fire boss returned to the surface unharmed.”
She looked at Bitty, her voice no longer smooth. “I’m sorry,” she said. The wire seemed to sag even more with the weight of the news.
Canary in the Coal Mine Page 9