Sparrow Migrations
Page 30
Christopher turned.
“Robby! You made it. Welcome to bird camp.” He put out his hand.
Robby grasped back, reminding himself to look at the man’s face.
“I barely recognize you. You’ve gotten a lot taller.”
“He’s grown four inches this year,” said his mom, walking up behind him with his dad.
Robby shrugged. “When do we see the birds?”
“Not till tomorrow. Let’s see if we can find you one of these luggage carts,” Christopher said, casting about for one unclaimed. He explained, “The Ornithology Lab’s actually separate from main campus, about a ten-minute drive. Starting tomorrow, there’ll be shuttles going over every day.”
Robby’s face drooped. “I wanted to go today.”
“You’ll have plenty of time with birds, Robby. I promise. Today we just want to get you settled, meet your roommate.”
Trepidation rushed through Robby. His heart beat faster. “Is he here?” He knew his roommate’s name was James, thirteen years old, too, from Pittsburgh. That was all.
“We’ll find out upstairs.”
The elevator was too small for the cart and the four of them. “Why don’t you and Robby take the cart and go first. We’ll get the next one,” Linda said to Sam.
“Thank you for contacting us about Dr. Felk,” Linda said after the stainless steel doors closed.
“Of course. How did Robby take it?” Dr. Felk had never left the hospital after the February fall that broke his hip. Pneumonia followed, potentially a flare-up of a low-grade respiratory infection that had abided for some time, Christopher was told.
“He didn’t say much. Of course, he never says much, especially about feelings. But I have to imagine he felt a loss. Dr. Felk was the first adult who accepted him just for who he is.”
Christopher nodded, wondering if Robby’s parents knew about Benjamin Felk.
“Dr. Felk requested a memorial service here on campus. At Sapsucker Woods, the sanctuary around the Lab of Ornithology. We’ve scheduled it for the end of next week.” Christopher paused. “I think he would have liked Robby to be there, if that’s OK with you. I was able to tell him about Robby’s camp acceptance before he died in March, and he was so pleased.”
Linda hesitated only a moment. “You’d be there, too?”
“Yes. And my wife, Deborah. She helped execute the terms of Dr. Felk’s will. He’s endowed a chair here.” The endowment had been one of Deborah’s last projects before she took a job at the Ithaca Interfaith Alliance. She could work from home and be with Gracie, or from Seattle and be with Helen. Brett’s daughter Amanda helped with babysitting. It had been a good change for all of them.
“All right, then,” Linda said, pressing the button for the elevator. “I think Robby should be there.”
Upstairs, Robby opened the door to room 224. A fan whirred loudly. A skinny boy wearing a baseball cap was sitting at a laptop at the desk in front of the window. He turned.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Robby managed back.
“You’re Robby, right?”
Robby nodded.
“I’m James.”
Robby nodded again. His dad reached over the luggage cart to shake James’s hand. “I’m Robby’s dad.”
“Nice to meet you,” James said.
On the desk next to his laptop, Robby saw a pair of earbuds, like all the other kids at school wore. He looked at the floor.
Professor Goldman and his mom walked in. James helped them unload his stuff, and his parents took the cart to bring up another load. Robby opened his laptop bag, placing his computer, brown notebook, and Sibley’s guide on the other desk.
“Oh. That reminds me.” Professor Goldman said. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out Robby’s thumb drive, the one he’d given him at the Lansing conference so long ago. “I think this belongs to you.”
Robby accepted it silently, his head down.
“I’ve made some notes in some of the files,” Professor Goldman continued. Robby’s head flew up.
“I think you’re on to some interesting ideas. That database you set up comparing the bird strike crashes over the last ten years was especially intriguing.”
Robby smiled.
“Bird strike plane crashes?” James asked.
Robby nodded.
“Cool.”
Robby felt his smile grow wider.
“The file organization is sloppy, though. I renamed the files I worked with, adding my initials and the dates. That’s standard scientific file naming protocol,” Professor Goldman said. “Got it?”
“Got it.” Robby nodded.
“I’ve got to get back downstairs. I’ll see you guys later, OK?”
“OK,” James said. Robby nodded, turning the thumb drive over and over. He could feel James looking at him.
“Can I see the database?” James asked. “My laptop’s all ready to go.”
“Sure,” Robby said, sitting down in James’s chair, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt.
Robby shifted in the folding chair, the last in the front row set up on the observation deck. Professor Goldman’s jacket was on the next one. A pink polka-dot baby bag staked a claim to the next chair, and a purse on the one next to that. Since the deck was crowded with people in black and the day was too hot for his new, hooded Cornell sweatshirt, Robby felt grateful for the three-chair buffer.
He gazed at the pond and the sanctuary before him. He tried not to look at the table covered with the plain white cloth and the urn precisely centered on it. At least there wasn’t a coffin, like at his great-grandfather’s, the only other funeral he’d attended in his life. As he bounced his knees up and down, he spotted a reedy strand of grass growing between the planks of the deck. As he twirled it first clockwise, then counterclockwise, clockwise then counterclockwise, his knees steadied.
“How’s it going, Robby?” Professor Goldman slid along the empty seats to the one beside his. “We’ll start in a few minutes.”
Robby nodded.
“You’re sure about doing your part?”
Robby nodded again, vigorously.
“OK, then. I’ll introduce you like we practiced.”
“Dada!” Even at a memorial service, Gracie’s nine-month-old voice drew smiles. Behind the chairs, she squirmed in the arms of Professor Goldman’s wife.
“Dada!”
Professor Goldman waved at his daughter.
“Dada!”
Robby looked back. Gracie’s voice was getting louder, her squirms more insistent.
“I’d better go see to her.” He squeezed Robby’s shoulder. “This would have meant a lot to Dr. Felk, Robby.”
Robby looked at the urn again. It was hard to imagine a body fitting inside. What was being dead like, anyway? People said heaven was in the sky. So Dr. Felk was closer to the birds. That meant it had to be good. Still. He twirled the weed, wishing he could talk to him again.
Professor Goldman was standing back at the podium positioned next to the white-covered table. “If you’ll all take your seats, please, we’ll begin.”
Robby listened to speaker after speaker. A Cornell chaplain. Fellow alumni, former students, colleagues. The chaplain again. An old woman who said she was his sister and cried as she talked about some new chair that she said Dr. Felk was endowing. Robby didn’t understand why a new chair would make her cry. He felt Professor Goldman stand up next to him and return to the podium.
“We’ve heard a lot today about Dr. Felk’s lifelong vocation as a teacher and mentor. I experienced that more than twenty years ago. I’d like to introduce you now to the young man who had the privilege of being his final pupil. Robby Palmer. Robby?”
Robby slid off his chair and walked to the podium. He twirled the grass between his fingers until he could force himself to look out over the crowd
. He saw James, sitting in the back. Next to him was Sophie, that red-haired girl from Ohio who always wore owl T-shirts. Today she had on a dress, though. She looked nice.
Besides James and Sophie, everyone else there was an adult. Robby didn’t see any of them. He saw Dr. Felk. He saw the man he remembered from the museum’s basement, the man who shared his books and birds. The man who believed him at the Lansing conference. He lifted his audio recorder from the podium shelf and poised his finger over “Play.”
“Canada goose. Branta Canadensis.” His voice enunciated each syllable of the bird’s common and Latin names. Then came the recording, a flock of noisy, reverberating honks that Robby imagined were heard over Manhattan eighteen months earlier.
“Trumpeter swan. Cygnus buccinator.” Like the geese, another member of the Anserinae family that Dr. Felk had quizzed him on in the museum archives. More honking.
“Swamp sparrow. Melospiza Georgiana.” The familiar high-pitched trill of one of the Sapsucker Woods locals.
On it went, Robby’s narration alternating with the birdcalls. The waterfowl that had first engaged him. The birds of New England, the territory of Dr. Felk’s life’s work. The birds of the Great Lakes that Robby was just beginning to explore.
In the midday heat, the resident population of Sapsucker Woods remained mute throughout Robby’s tribute. Later, the chaplain would tell Robby it felt more sacred than any prayer she could recall.
“Piping plover. Charadrius melodus.” The sequence of clear, paired peeps, unheard in the wild to everyone there but Robby.
“Bicknell’s thrush. Catharus bicknelli.” The short, low notes followed by the longer, higher song of Dr. Felk’s favorite.
The mourners remained reverently silent as the last echo of the Bicknell’s thrush faded into the pond and the woods and the thick, humid air. Above their bowed heads, a silent, streaking jet painted a gauzy white stripe across an almost perfect, blue summer sky.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sincere thanks to Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo, which led to the first draft in November 2010. Also, author Audrey Niffenegger, whose answer to my question at the National Writers Series allowed me to develop Robby, my protagonist, in a new way.
My very first readers: Sonja Somerville—who went on to read multiple drafts—Mary Pollock, Kimberli Bindschatel, and Carolyn Lewis. More beta readers: Lois Orth, John Pahl, Christine Noga, Joyce Duell, Meg Young, Marsha Buhr, Nancy Gray, Anna Bachman, Maureen Botteron, and Amy Hartzog.
Carrie Bebris, Christine DeSmet, Jennifer Rice Epstein, and Arielle Eckstut.
My book club: Linda Butka, Diane Lundin, Janet Wolf, Flora Biancalana, Misty Sheehan, and Lynn McAndrews, whose comments led to one of the biggest, best changes in the plot.
My writing group members: Mardi Link, Anne-Marie Oomen, Teresa Scollon, and Heather Shumaker, who put up with reading bits and pieces out of sequence.
The birders: Daniel Kerby and Bill, the Grand Traverse Audubon Club, which hosted me at meetings and outings; and Alice Van Zoeren, piping plover expert at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
The Ithacans: Jocelyn Bowie, Lynette Hatch, David Stewart.
Anie Knipping, for sharing her talent on my original cover. And David Drummond, for this newly created one.
Editors Tiffany Yates Martin, Zane Schwaiger, and Heather Shaw for their keen attention to detail. Of course, Danielle Marshall and the Lake Union team.
To my family—my son, for serving as my inspiration. John Irving’s taken the title “A Prayer for Owen . . .” but that doesn’t make this any less of one. My mom for providing the extra childcare that allowed me to push through the key first draft. My daughter for providing respite. And my husband who hung in there with me on the roller coaster ride it’s been from page one through draft nine to self-publication and now re-release with a fantastic publisher. I’d have gone off the rails without you.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
WARNING–SPOILERS!
Do you agree with Deborah’s decision not to have genetic testing before getting pregnant? Why or why not?
Do you think Christopher’s reaction is justified? Why or why not?
What do you think about the portrayal of the female characters vs. the male characters? Does one gender seem more sympathetic than the other?
Despite significant strains, both of the heterosexual relationships in Sparrow Migrations are resolved, while the lesbian relationship is not. Why do you think that is the case? What do you think about that as a reader? Is it fair?
Did the novel change any perceptions you held about autism? How so? Why do you think Robby is an only child?
Does the likelihood/risk of special needs factor into whether you would have children, as it does for Christopher?
What do you think about the depiction of Christianity in the novel? Which character better upheld Christian ideals, Richard or Brett? Why?
What meaning do you derive from the title?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Sarah Brown Photography
A professional journalist for twenty years, author Cari Noga has published nonfiction (Road Biking Michigan: Globe-Pequot Press, 2005) and essays (Chicken Soup for the Wine Lovers Soul, 2007) and is the mother of a child with autism. She lives with her family in northern Michigan. You can read more about her work and sign up for her author newsletter at www.carinoga.com.
Sparrow Migrations was a semifinalist in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest (top 1 percent).
Plover Pilgrimage, a companion short story excerpted from the novel, is available on Amazon.com and appropriate for middle-grade readers as well as adults.
Connect with Cari or sign up for her newsletter at carinoga.com.