The Nutting Girl

by Fred DeVecca

She opened the Plexiglas doors to the machine and stuck her head in it.

  “Be careful,” I told her. “It’s still hot.”

  “I know. I burned myself on it before. Do you have a screwdriver?”

  There was one in the back. I found it and handed it to her. She was fiddling away inside the popper.

  “You gotta reach around to the back of the kettle,” I told her, pointing. “And you gotta tilt the screwdriver up a little.”

  “I can fucking see that.”

  “Don’t swear at me,” I told her. “It’s very unbecoming behavior in a nice young woman like you.”

  “You swear.”

  “Well, I’m not a young woman. And I’m not nice. Don’t swear.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Oh, shit … this little jigger is totally busted.”

  I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a tug, pulling her out from the guts of the machine.

  When she was out, and looking at me, I said, “I mean it. Don’t swear.”

  Her eyes met mine and I could tell she got it. Then she held her palm out to me, showing me the popcorn stirring arm that rested there.

  “See, it broke off here at the base. It’s no good.”

  “They’re hard to find,” I said. “I used to be able to order parts, but this machine is too old now. Nobody handles them anymore.”

  She started walking around the lobby, and then in the refreshment room, she looked at the assorted crap lying around.

  “What’s this?” she asked, holding up an ancient metal table fan from back in the days before we had air conditioning put in. “Does this still work?”

  I looked at it. “No. That hasn’t worked in years.”

  “Do you have any pliers?”

  I found some and handed them to her. She started prying the old-fashioned iron grill off the fan’s face. When she had the grill off, she twisted at one of its cross-spokes until it broke away from the frame. She eyed it, then used the pliers again, this time to break it down to the length she wanted it to be.

  “This’ll work,” she said.

  She stuck her head back into the machine, and in deft movements of her delicate, tiny hands and fingers, operated with surgical precision for a good ten minutes.

  “Try pushing the kettle over on its hinge,” I suggested.

  She didn’t reply but kept at it even more intently than before.

  “Here,” I said, pointing at the glass in the back of the contraption. “You gotta line up those three holes.”

  Her voice echoed out from inside the glass box. “I know what I’m doing. Do you want me to do this or not?”

  “I’m just trying to help,” I pleaded.

  “Just let me fucking do it, okay? Oops, I’m sorry.” She pulled her head out and looked at me. “I really am sorry, Mister Theater Man.”

  “That’s all right. You gotta find that tiny connecting piece—that little bridge thing.”

  She stuck her head back in and said from inside, “I know … Jeez ….”

  Three minutes of intensive care later, she emerged, saying, “Voilà. It is done.”

  “You gotta tighten it securely,” I told her, “or it’ll just fall off again.”

  “Check it yourself.”

  I did. It was hard getting my head and hands into the works back there. It was a job for a smaller person, like her.

  “Looks okay,” I reported.

  “Let’s check it out,” she said. She poured a cup of popcorn and some oil into the drum and turned the machine on. It churned away happily, the improvised new arm stirring the kernels smoothly and superbly. Soon we had a perfect batch of fresh popcorn, which I scooped into a bag.

  She stuck her hand into the bag and sampled a mouthful.

  “Oh, that’s real good. That’s the best batch yet …. So, I want to see the rest of those cartoons. Those were funny.”

  “Yeah, but first we gotta do this,” I said.

  I made her pick up the bottle of vodka and the bag of powder and flush them down the toilet. She put up only token resistance.

  We went back up to the theater and I turned out the house lights and cranked up the projector again. We both sat down to munch popcorn and watch the show.

  I asked if she wanted to drink some of the remaining orange juice, but she preferred a Diet Coke instead, and I went back to the refreshment room and got one for each of us.

  She howled at the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote stuff.

  I howled too. Those things are hilarious.

  After they ended, she helped me clean up a bit. Not much cleaning was needed. We went down via the elevator and back onto Bridge Street.

  “That was fun,” she said. “But you lied to me, Mister Theater Man.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. You told me you weren’t nice. That was a lie. You are.”

  Chapter Five

  Too Much Red?

  VelCro returned herself to Mooney’s care. He couldn’t believe she had given him the slip so easily.

  It was simple—it took her a fraction of a second to duck into Town Hall as he chased her. She did it in a flash. Once inside the building, she saw an elevator and took it wherever it went, which was up just one floor—there were only two floors in that building. Much to her delight, she found herself in a theater. She was a movie star. She felt at home in a theater and decided to stay a while.

  But first, she re-veiled herself and went across the street to the Keystone Market. She bought the OJ, walked over to Good Spirits for vodka, and settled in for her own private film festival. We had stacks of DVDs in the projection booth, and the new digital projector was simple to operate for any young person raised on ubiquitous electronics. Popcorn was relatively nutritious and she figured she could hide out there until the next movie played, which wasn’t until the following weekend. Or she got bored, whichever came first.

  She had no plans for what to do after she got bored. It wasn’t her style to think that far ahead.

  And that’s when I found her.

  Mooney and VelCro left town. I had no idea if Shelburne Falls had passed Mooney’s test to serve as the location for his next picture.

  Life went on, as it tends to do, and the next morning found me up at dawn going for my constitutional into town to buy my morning paper.

  The street leading from my house to the center of town is known as the “Hill of Tears.” In the town’s center, you’ll find the shops, the people, and the excitement. The name “Hill of Tears” comes from its heartbreaking, tear-inducing role in the town’s annual 10k road race. The path climbs dramatically from flat land to a thousand-foot peak, and then, near my house, it runs like a sliding board down to the village and skids back to level ground near the river. This was my route into town and back each day—easy going in, excruciating coming back.

  Near the bottom of the hill stood a ramshackle and rambling brown house with yellow trim and a bit of peeling paint, despite being kept up pretty carefully. It was located at the entrance to the village proper, on a dead-end side street branching off the Hill of Tears, not far from the railroad trestle. Set back from the road, it usually gave no sign of life as I strolled by each day. There were no cars in the driveway and no lights on. Thus, the slightly haunted appearance.

  At this point in my walk, the sounds of the village began to emerge—the rumble of traffic and the muffled roar of the river. When a train passed by, the earsplitting clamor of cars was so close and strong that the ground shivered like a death rattle, and its whistle was piercing. It always whistled—long and loud—and reverberated over the hills that held the village like a mother’s kind arms.

  Somehow, out of these noises, I would detect at each passing the sharp tweeting of a bird emanating from the home. It was a sweet song arising from the industrial cacophony. If I paused for a second, sometimes all the competing sounds would cease and nothing would be heard but the tweeting of the bird.

  This morning, bright and crisp, it happened again. It was just after dawn. The
sounds of the village halted, the bird sang a merry fweep-fweep, and I stopped to listen. I took out my smartphone and recorded a full minute of chirping. Almost magically, just after I stopped recording, the town reawakened and the competing noises began anew. I finished my trip, bought my Shelburne Falls Independent—yes, we have our own newspaper—and huffed back up the hill to my home. It was part of my morning constitutional to record birds whenever I could.

  The next morning, with a red sun rising over the river, I again walked down the Hill of Tears. This time a totally different scene was taking place in front of the usually still house.

  A tiny, slim redheaded woman of roughly my age and her teenage doppelganger were frantically running around the place, the girl flopping a large blue towel around. A town fire truck was parked in the driveway, and two intrepid firemen—one brandishing a fish net on a long pole—purposefully worked the perimeter. All were gazing upward. A black cat, along with a gray one, stalked the scene hungrily. All the doors and windows to the house were open.

  Above it all, deliciously free but not at all sure what to do with its freedom, darted a small, evanescent, deep-red, plumed parakeet. The bird did not seem inclined to travel far. It flew around the house and circled the maples in the yard, just high enough to stay out of reach of anyone, including the net. Attempts to approach it were futile. It would fly away again. It landed temporarily on the railing of the front porch, but took off each time a human approached. The girl tried in vain to shoo it into the house with the towel.

  “Here, Penelope,” called the woman, pursing her lips with a kissing sound.

  The girl admonished her, “Mom, that’s no good. She won’t listen.”

  I walked over. “Can I help?”

  The woman had the bemused look of someone who had already been through a lot at this early hour when many had not yet even awakened. “Thank you. We’re just trying to get Penelope. There she goes ….”

  She dashed off on a brief parakeet quest and quickly returned. “She got out while Sarah was feeding her. She’s never done that before.”

  “Can you show me her cage?”

  She took me inside to a home where the daily routine had clearly been interrupted mid-getting ready for school/work. A half-drunk cup of tea sat on the table next to a partially consumed English muffin and a soggy bowl of shredded wheat. The morning’s Independent was folded and open to the local news page. There was a notebook and a math textbook. The place smelled of warmth and goodness and love.

  There was an unused dining room next to the kitchen, and just beyond that, a living room with mismatched furniture, shelves crammed with books, and a partially reupholstered, overstuffed chair. In a far corner was a birdcage sitting on a homemade platform, spilled birdseed on the floor nearby. The window just above the cage was open, the cool morning breeze wafting in.

  The woman turned, standing only inches away. She looked up at me. This close, I could see the lines in her face and the gray streaks in her red hair. She was lovely. She smiled as if this was just one more crazy, funny event in her crazy, funny life.

  “Darn bird. Sarah does love her though.”

  The birdcage door was still open. “Do you have any string?” I asked.

  She rummaged through a few drawers before emerging with a nearly empty spool of twine. Taking one of the pens out of my pocket, I used it to prop open the door to the cage and tied one end of the twine to the pen. Then I picked up some of the feed from the floor and spread it on the bottom of the cage.

  I went outside, asked the others to stop their quest for a few minutes, and returned inside with the woman. The girl, Sarah, followed. That stillness was there again.

  In the silence, I held up one end of the string. On my phone, I found the recording of the bird from yesterday, cranked up the volume to eleven, and played back the full minute of song.

  Nothing.

  I played it again.

  Then Penelope swept in through the open window with a flourish of crimson, through the door to her cage, and began to munch happily on the seed. I pulled the string, knocking over my pen. The door slammed shut and Penelope was safe at home.

  Sarah clapped her hands. The woman maintained that same bemused bearing, but I could detect relief too.

  I explained, “They respond to their own voice. Or even to the voices of other birds. They love their songs. She’s not adapted to the wild. She belongs here. Most beings end up where they belong. Once they adapt to being somewhere, they stay. ”

  The firemen left. The two humans cooed at the birdcage, one on either side—three shades of red lined up beautifully. The older one saw me and smiled.

  “Too much red for you?”

  “No such thing. I like red. I like birds and I like red. And that’s about it. Dogs too, I guess. Maybe movies. But that’s a pleasing shade of red.”

  “She’s an unusual mutation.”

  Sarah said, “Not me! Penelope.”

  The woman went on, “Yes. The bird, not the girl. Some have red crowns or red breasts. Even red rumps. Almost none are all red like her.”

  Sarah said, “At least my butt and boobs aren’t red.”

  Her mom glared at her, but soon I saw a smile in there. I like smiles. I need them. This one warmed me up.

  We all sat at the table. Sarah finished her soggy shredded wheat and left for school.

  I had a cup of tea with the woman. Her name was Clara. She thanked me and I walked back up the Hill of Tears to my home, where I read my own copy of the Independent and had another cup of tea. Usually I drink coffee. This time I had tea.

  Chapter Six

  The Nutting Girl

  Mooney and VelCro were beginning to disappear into my memory banks. I started to run into Clara in front of her house every so often. Truth be told, I was taking more walks into town in hopes this would occur. I tried to milk these encounters, to steal as much of the lovely lady’s time as I could, but she wasn’t around much. On the few occasions when I saw her, she was in the middle of something. Most people have more obligations than I do.

  I learned a few minor facts about her life and Sarah’s. She told me little about Penelope the Parrot, however. These encounters were gradually becoming the highlight of my day, brief and seldom though they were. I was reluctant to make them happen too often, mainly because it felt so damn good to be connecting even in this quick and superficial way with a female. I was afraid that if they were any longer or more regular, they would not fit comfortably in my solitary life.

  The more dependable bright spot of my week came on Tuesdays, my one un-solitary night. This Tuesday evening found me, as it had for the past thirty-five years, back at the theater for the weekly practice of the Shelburne Falls Morris Men.

  Morris dancing is a form of ritual dance to celebrate the change of seasons. It originated in agrarian England hundreds of years ago and is mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays as an ancient activity. During the 1960s “folk revival,” teams sprouted up in America, and here in New England especially. Many towns have their own troupe. We don’t get paid for it. We dance at local fairs and town events, but mostly in the woods and streets, just for fun and usually for ourselves alone. It’s invigorating and athletic. Singing and camaraderie and drinking beer are a big part of the culture. I like all of it, except for the beer part, but even that’s fine as long as I’m not the one drinking. How often in our society do men get a chance to dance together?

  We practiced our dancing on the cleared-off stage. We were in two lines, three men in each line, with five other guys standing off to the side watching and kibitzing and chiming in with observations and the occasional joke. Danny stood in front of us, playing his accordion. The bells on our legs accentuated every beat. Stanley was leading us in drills. Each line surged up to the other, did a hop, and back-stepped to its original position. The half-gyp. We did it over and over and over. The intent was to travel as one, stay in line, jump high, and look good while doing it. The new, younger guys were performing the mo
ve with gusto and leaping up toward the stars. We old dudes had less lift in our weary legs, but the young guys spurred us on, and we tried to match them step for step, jump for jump.

  I was succeeding. I was, right? Sam, our youngest lad at fifteen, stood across from me, and damn it, even though I had forty years on him, I could jump as high as he could. I knew I could.

  “Lines!” shouted Stanley.

  You were allowed to look to either side while you danced, at least at practice, and see how good the lines were. They were supposed to be straight. Ours sucked. Some guys were way out front, others behind, like pistons misfiring.

  I sat a few out, hands on knees, bent over, puffing, while the music and the rest of the team continued. Then Danny stopped playing and Stanley said, “There were some good parts to that.”

  Michael added, “And a lot of suckitude too.”

  We worked on whole gyp and then rounds. Stanley and Michael did a two-man jig that the new guys had not seen before. “The Nutting Girl,” a very old classic.

  This particular dance ends with all the guys singing a verse together:

  With my fal-la-lal to my ral-tal-lal

  Whack-fol-the-dear-ol-day

  And what few nuts that poor girl had

  She threw them all away.

  There are more lyrics to this song, but we only sing the last chorus in the dance. It’s a traditional English tune about a fair maiden gathering nuts in Kent. She meets a young plowboy who enchants her with his singing and “lays her down.” Soon she can “feel the world go round and round.” Not long after, she forgets entirely about her nuts and “throws them all away.”

  The night wore on. Blessedly, since I was now exhausted, it was 8:30 and time to go to the pub. I locked up the theater, and the guys, still dressed in all-white costumes, went outside and crossed the bridge to the West End Pub.

  Even a loner, at times, needs his tribe around him. These guys were my tribe, and we watched one another’s backs. This stuff is important.