The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

One thing I was absolutely sure about: Munoz would be calling Jim up by now. Munoz was a good guy. He’d figure Jim would want to know his wife was having car trouble and needed help. That she looked really upset. Maybe she was sick. Maybe someone could call the motor club. Maybe Jim could swing by in his unit and help her out himself. Wives appreciate that sort of thing.

  I sat idling in the motel parking lot, gripping the wheel, weighing terrible options. But the one image that crowded out every other was that of the shed behind the house and what was buried behind. The machete on the wall.

  Laurel was staring at me. Willing me to do the right thing. More than ever, I felt the weight of her little life in my hands.

  As I looked back into those frightened eyes, it was clear what I had to do. For her sake, if not for mine. She’d lived long enough in the shadow of a psycho.

  I shoved the car in gear and pulled from the lot, beelining for the highway.

  For Albuquerque, for freedom, one way or another.

  The insurrection was still on.

  * * *

  The gas got us to the big truck stop near Continental Divide, about halfway to Grants. Grants is a good-sized town, and there’d be more stations once we got there. By now I was beginning to believe we might.

  I bought three plastic gas cans, gallon size, and filled them. I loaded them in the trunk, then started to tank up.

  It’s a popular truck stop along Interstate 40. A family-style restaurant inside, and a bank of showers for truckers and long-distance travelers. The pumps were busy. I glanced around uneasily, trying not to stand out. Laurel’s face was fixed on me through the rear window.

  There was an undersized, tinny-looking car at the next pump. The driver gassing up was a young man who looked sixteen trying to pass for thirty. He wore a torn T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black skinny jeans. His red hair was cropped close, except where it spiked into a cowlick at the crown like a rooster, or some ironic Dennis the Menace. He was wearing earbuds, listening to music on a player that was bulging in his back pocket. His leg jiggled to a beat only he could hear. The lobes of his ears looked freakishly large, till I realized they were stretched out by plugs the size of wine corks.

  Red Dennis pulled his music maker from his pocket and was glancing down at it when something on the ground caught his eye. He looked over at me and pointed under my car.

  “Whoa, lady!” he said. “You’re leaking!”

  He said it loud enough to hear himself over his own music. Loud enough for half the people at the pumps to hear. Some of them turned to stare.

  I yanked the nozzle from my car and shoved it hard back on the pump cradle. Red Dennis was heading toward me, tugging out his earbuds. His T-shirt had a Rolling Rock beer logo and a big picture of a baby in a diaper lying on its back sucking on a beer bottle. No harm here, the shirt read. The kid’s already shittin’ green.

  Before he could get anywhere close, I was in the car slamming the door and locking it, cranking the ignition and aiming for the highway.

  A quarter tank and three gallons extra would get us to Grants. Yes, yes, I was sure of it.

  I checked the speedometer, determined to stick to the limit and under. I noted the mileage. I gripped the wheel with sweating palms, holding it steady, smack in the center of the right lane. I wouldn’t give a patrolman any excuse to pull me over.

  Two miles out, I glanced in the rearview mirror.

  And there in the distance I saw it: flashing lights, red and blue. Far off, but coming up fast as a bullet train.

  And I heard it: the scree and whoop of a siren.

  It was eating up the distance between us with a vengeance. And I knew exactly who was behind the wheel.

  Laurel heard it, too. She twisted in her seat to peer through the rear window and started to whimper.

  I could barely draw a breath.

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered. “Help.”

  Part II

  Borne Away

  No rack can torture me,

  My soul’s at liberty

  Behind this mortal bone

  There knits a bolder one.

  You cannot prick with saw,

  Nor rend with scymitar.

  Two bodies therefore be;

  Bind one, and one will flee.

  —Emily Dickinson

  The First Day

  There was an open window with white eyelet curtains. There was a breeze through it. There was a brass footrail with porcelain finials. A rocking chair. The smell of baking bread. Laurel’s voice outside, the call of birds.

  The Second Day

  An old woman came with a bowl. Chicken broth. A napkin. She tucked it under my chin and fed me with a spoon. She had a severe face, thin, but her eyes were kind. Her hair was gunmetal gray, pinned back in a bun. She wiped my chin when I spilled. I tried to thank her, but my voice wouldn’t come. “You sleep now,” she told me, turning out the lamp, so I did.

  Morning

  “Mommy?”

  Laurel’s voice pulled me from a jagged sleep. A dream where I was running knee-deep in red sand and rattlesnakes. I could taste blood, like sucking on a copper penny. Someone was screaming.

  I opened my eyes and Laurel was standing by the bed with a tray. It was laid with a bowl of oatmeal, a plate of apple slices, orange juice, a slice of toast.

  “Let me take that, child.” The old woman was there, too, lifting the tray from Laurel’s hands, setting it on the nightstand. I pulled myself up, arms shaking with the effort. The woman adjusted the pillow so I could sit, then settled the tray in my lap.

  “I feel better,” I told her, my voice strange, croaking out of a throat nearly too parched for sound.

  “Now, that’s a blessing,” said the woman. “You eat now.”

  As I did, she sat down in the rocking chair, its rails clicking against the pine floor. Laurel climbed onto the bed with me, handing me a spoon as if I were younger than she was. Then the napkin, the oatmeal bowl.

  “My name’s Jessie,” the woman said. “Jessica Farnsworth—but you call me Jessie. This here is our farm. My husband’s out sneakin’ a smoke, as if I don’t know. You remember how you got here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Simon found you out in the scrub wandering around with your little girl here. You couldn’t tell us much—you were in a bad way. Laurel says you had some trouble with her daddy out there on the road.”

  The oatmeal caught in my throat. I took a sip of juice. When I could speak again, I said, “My name is Joanna . . . Benneman.” I threw a warning glance at Laurel. “Simon’s your husband?”

  Her severe face broke into a delighted cackle. “Lord, no! My husband’s Olin, the old fool. Simon Greenwood—he’s a local man. Works in our café. Short-order cook.”

  I licked my lips with a tongue as dry as ashes.

  I didn’t remember anything about being found. Nothing about how we got here, or even where here was. I remembered leaving the Palomino, making for Albuquerque. Had the car run out of gas? Broken down? Did I ditch it somewhere and try to hike with Laurel through the desert? To Grants or Thoreau or some other town?

  I shoved feebly at the tray with arms like bricks, the food half eaten.

  “Let me take that.” Jessie pushed herself up from the rocking chair. “You’ll have a real appetite before long.”

  She smiled down, her gray eyes steady. Her skin was thin and clear and remarkably unlined. It seemed to radiate like rice paper backlit by a candle.

  “You rest.”

  She bustled off with the tray.

  When she was gone, Laurel nestled next to me on the pillow. “Mommy,” she whispered. “Our name’s not Benneman.”

  “I know, sweetie. But that was my Oma’s name when she was a little girl like you. So I think it’s okay if we use it for a little while. Can you do that?”

  She nodded solemnly,
her pointer finger tracing a big X across her heart. “Our secret.”

  Rain

  I slept so much, I felt hungover with it. I didn’t ache or hurt; I was just tired—down to my last particle. Eating wore me out. I slept through so many meals, I couldn’t tell you. I’d hear kitchen noises downstairs—the rattle of pots, the clatter of dishes, the murmur of voices. Laughter. Then I’d sleep again for hours. Or years, for all I could tell.

  Sometimes images of Jim flared up, but they didn’t linger. He seemed to come on like a bloodhound fixed on a scent he couldn’t quite make out.

  I thought of Terri, too. Waiting in vain at the airport, glancing at her watch. Wondering who to call to find out why I wasn’t on that plane when it landed.

  But I didn’t have the strength or the will to hold on to such thoughts for long.

  The room kept me quilted up and safe. I drifted in and out of sleep. When I woke, I’d watch sunbeams slant their way across the wood floor. Or listen to raindrops pinging against the roof and the windowpane in a broken staccato, like Morse code.

  Laurel would visit to tell me stories of her day. Chattering on about helping Miz Jessie with the baking, the sweeping. How she went with Mr. Olin to feed the chickens and hunt for eggs. She felt bad for the hens, she said, when they discovered their eggs were gone.

  Sunshine

  One morning, Jessie came to help me out of bed. She laid out a white blouse with pearl buttons, a simple skirt. They fit well. She brushed my hair till it gleamed and snapped in a barrette as if I were Laurel’s age.

  “Now,” she said. “Aren’t you the prettiest thing?”

  I wasn’t at all sure I was ready or able to leave my little cocoon, but she led me by the hand out the bedroom door and down the stairs. My legs weren’t as wobbly as I’d expected after lying in bed for so long.

  Through a big kitchen, then a rear screen door to a long trestle table under a giant oak tree. Half the table was laid with embroidered white linen and floral china. Laurel was there on a wooden bench, her slim legs kicking back and forth. She jumped up and ran to me.

  “Mommy!” She wrapped her arms tight around my waist. “Come sit beside me.”

  Someone had managed to clothe her in nearly every color found in a crayon box. A feather boa of pink and white was looped around her neck. She took my hand from Jessie and brought me to the table.

  The sights and smells were overwhelming. Smoked ham, bacon, sausage. Sliced tomatoes, home fries, biscuits, pots of jam. A pitcher of orange juice and a pot of coffee. My mouth watered painfully.

  “How’d you like your eggs?” Jessie asked.

  Such plenty—I thought she was joking.

  A man with a rough shag of white hair and a handlebar mustache was rounding the corner of the house. He was compact, dressed in a worn work shirt and a straw hat, wiping sawdust from his dungarees.

  Jessie wagged her head at him. “Sneakin’ another smoke, I see,” she scolded. “Breakfast is on. Pour out the coffee.” She headed back to the kitchen.

  The man set his hat next to his plate and took a seat. He ran his hand through hair that lifted from his scalp in thick, cottony tufts that looked fit to blow off like dandelion seeds. His face was leathery and lined.

  When he reached to shake my hand, his grip was firm but gentle, his calloused fingers as coarse as pumice stones. He took me in with eyes that shone a vivid blue.

  “We ain’t been properly introduced, ma’am. I’m Olin.”

  “Joanna,” I said.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance. And pleased you’re feelin’ better.”

  I tried to smile. He poured out the coffee and juice while I looked around at their farm. Their house nestled in a narrow green valley that ran east to west in a long arcing curve; it was bordered on the north by a crooked line of midrange hills.

  I turned in my seat toward the south and couldn’t help but gasp.

  At my back was a toothy break of foothills . . . and they fed into the biggest mountain I’d ever laid eyes on. I had to crane my neck to take it all in.

  Its face was deeply scored, with jagged outcroppings thrusting through thick green forests that covered all but the snowbound crest. The crest jutted into a rocky, bladelike ridge that looked sharp enough to cut steel.

  The mountain dominated the valley, swallowing up a quarter of the sky. It seemed out of all time and place, like a transplanted Alp.

  And it seemed almost . . . animate.

  Aware.

  And staring back at me.

  I started to shiver, the ground shifting under my feet. I felt a force pulling at me. Summoning me. I gripped the edge of the bench seat to anchor myself in place.

  It was as though the mountain had its own force of gravity. As if it were pivoting slowly on its axis, reaching down to collect me in its orbit. I was sure I was about to take a tumble—but just as sure I’d be rolling up the mountainside, not down, and plunging off—

  “A sight, ain’t it?”

  It took what strength I had to drag my eyes away and turn back to Olin. When I did, he was cradling his coffee cup, watching me calmly. I tried to answer, but words wouldn’t come, so I nodded.

  “Folks give it all sorts of names,” he continued. “Hereabouts, we just call it the Mountain.”

  I pressed my napkin to my lips. I felt flushed—a mild fever was muddling me, that was all. I’d overdone it coming down to breakfast.

  “You have a pretty place,” I managed finally.

  Their farmhouse was stately—two stories of smooth gray stones, facing west, with wide windows and a deep porch wrapping around.

  “Built it myself,” Olin said. “We had ourselves a little low-slung place snug to the road at first, but I kept plowin’ up fieldstones every year, and the missus, she hankered for a stone house like she seen in some magazine. So I put fieldstones by till I had enough to make it for her. Sure took a while.”

  A red barn and a slope-roofed coop for the chickens stood behind the house. Next to the barn was an empty corral, and farther down the valley were thick groves of nut trees and fruit trees, shade trees and varieties of pine. There were many others I couldn’t identify. Beyond that stood half-grown fields of wheat and corn.

  I could hear water running nearby that Olin said was Willow Creek, cutting down from the Mountain. A hundred yards or so out was a little arching footbridge. And on the far side of the bridge was a boxlike building of yellow stucco with turquoise trim. It sat along a hardpan road that bisected the valley north to south, with a neon sign on the roof facing away. I couldn’t make out what it said.

  “Yonder’s our place—the Crow’s Nest Café,” said Olin.

  A pickup truck, mustard yellow, sat in the shade of the building. I could only guess it belonged to the short-order cook who worked there—the one Jessie said had found us and brought us to their door.

  “You can’t get much business out here,” I said. “Remote as it is.”

  There looked to be miles of empty in every direction, and I was grateful for it. A moat of wilderness to keep the world out.

  “We get enough,” said Olin. “Not brisk—regulars, mostly. And every now and then strangers blow through.”

  I checked out both ends of the road. If Jim were to find us, that was how he’d come.

  Olin nodded south.

  “Up the road there, round the bend, is our little town—Morro. Used to be mines all through here till one day the copper played out. Most folks up and left, but some of us stayed on.”

  He looked about, taking in the landscape in a way that was almost loving. As if all he surveyed in every direction was as much a work in progress as his house and his fields.

  Jessie was back with the eggs. “Here, honey,” she said, sliding two of them onto my plate and two onto Laurel’s. “Eat up.”

  “It’s our little corner,” said Oli
n. “Summers are hot, but they don’t burn you. Winters are cold, but they don’t bite. A few of us, we was born hereabouts. Others was movin’ through and decided to stay on. But nobody makes it here that don’t make for good company.”

  His blue eyes locked with mine as if he were scouting for something. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to.

  Finally he nodded.

  “And every now and again,” he said, “we get us a short-timer. I figure you for one of them.”

  For some reason, it stung me to hear it.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  He smiled encouragingly.

  “I figure you for a gal with a thing or two to accomplish yet,” he said. He chucked Laurel under the chin. “This li’l gal, too.”

  Jessie turned to Laurel. “My, my! You ate every last bit on your plate,” she said. “You want seconds?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m full,” said Laurel.

  “Run along, then, and take your plate to the kitchen. Then I know for a fact there’s a new swing under that tree yonder, made for a little girl just your size.”

  Laurel ran to the kitchen with her plate and fork, then over to a big chestnut tree near the barn. She slid into a wooden swing seat that looked freshly hewn and sanded, and kicked off. Her slim legs pumped hard. Her hair and feather boa flew.

  “Mommy, watch!” she called.

  “I see you, sweetie! Hold tight!”

  “She’ll be fine,” Olin said. “She’s a strong little thing.”

  Higher and higher she swung till she was almost parallel to the sky. She looked tiny and fragile next to the craggy old chestnut. If she lost her seat and flew off, if the rope broke, she could break a bone, or worse. But she wasn’t thinking about disaster. She had a sure reservoir of courage.

  “She doesn’t get that from me,” I murmured.