The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  “You smell nice,” Laurel told him.

  “Not me,” he said with a smile. “That’s bay rum.”

  Olin stood and stretched, his joints cracking. “Let’s dig in!”

  Laurel claimed the seat beside Simon, stealing sidelong glances. He took the chair across from me. Soon he, Olin and Jessie began rattling on about who was traveling where, building what, spending time with so-and-so.

  If I’d been uneasy before, it was all the worse now. Family dinners back home were strained, even on good days. Small talk only irritated Jim, and for me it carried risk. I never knew from one day to the next which word or comment, however innocent, might set him off. Silence became my sanctuary.

  Suddenly I was picturing that table again—wondering if Jim was sitting there, a single plate in front of him, a single glass, a knife, a fork, a spoon. Did he even bother with such things anymore? Or did he just root through the fridge, then stand at the counter eating over the sink like a bachelor? Was he thinking of us, wondering where we might be, biding his time, stoking his rage?

  I glanced furtively around Jessie and Olin’s table, only vaguely aware that Olin was regaling them with a story about a horse he’d had as a young boy—a big, feisty Appaloosa that first taught him to swear. The others were laughing—even Laurel, her eyes bright. I took the cue and forced a smile.

  A faint ringing started in my ears, growing louder.

  More words then, more banter, but coming as if from a distance—disconnected, like static buzzing on that old radio in the front room, the needle casting back and forth for a clear signal to lock onto.

  I wiped cold sweat from my upper lip and sipped at my water, willing my hand not to shake, fighting the rising panic.

  I’d dreaded—even resented—the thought of company tonight, as if it were an intrusion on me. But now it was clear that I was the intruder. I was the outsider, a stranger in every sense, not this man sitting so easy, so appreciated, at their table.

  I took up my knife and fork and began to saw pieces of chicken—sweet with the pear glaze but tasteless on my tongue. I cut the bits smaller and smaller and smaller . . .

  Finally I stopped and stared at my plate, now sliding out of focus. My chest was tightening, squeezing the air from my lungs. I could feel myself surrendering to the growing static, drifting with it, the voices fusing together, receding to a rushing noise not unlike that creek outside . . .

  “How about you, Joanna?”

  The sound of my own name cut through the panic—through the rattle and noise filling my head to bursting. It seemed to come from a far place, but it was coming only from across the table, where Simon was watching me, holding the wine bottle, waiting. I blinked at him stupidly.

  “Sorry?”

  “More wine?” he asked.

  I drew a steadying breath. “Yes, please. A little.”

  He poured a small glass. “I understand you like to write. You must like books, then.”

  “Yes.”

  He waited, apparently expecting I had more to say on the subject. I struggled to oblige him.

  “I don’t read much anymore,” I said. “Not since . . . not for a long time.”

  “What did you like to read, when you did?”

  His expression was open, friendly. He was only trying to engage me.

  “Poetry,” I said at last.

  “Anyone in particular?”

  At least that question was easy. “I always liked Yeats.”

  Simon paused, then began to recite: “‘Where the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glen-Car . . .’”

  I gave him a thin smile. This poem I knew—as familiar as Laurel’s favorite bedtime books, read and reread a thousand times.

  I finished the line for him: “‘In pools among the rushes that scarce could bathe a star.’ That’s from ‘The Stolen Child.’”

  Laurel looked startled. “Somebody stole a child?”

  “It’s a poem, sweetie,” I said. “About a fairy that tries to tempt a mortal child away from the troubles of the world.”

  “Did she go?”

  “Well, yes. The last stanza goes like this:

  ‘He’ll hear no more the lowing

  Of the calves on the warm hillside

  Or the kettle on the hob

  Sing peace into his breast,

  Or see the brown mice bob

  Round and round the oatmeal chest.’”

  I surprised myself, recalling those lines. I hadn’t thought of that poem in years. And the book was long gone.

  “That’s sad,” said Laurel. “Not seeing the mice anymore. Or the calves.”

  “That would be sad,” I said. “But think of the wonderful life with the fairies. And no reason to be unhappy again, ever. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. But if you didn’t come, too, I wouldn’t go.”

  “That’s right, honey,” Jessie said, patting her hand. “You stick with your mama. And if those fairies come round, you tell ’em to scat.”

  * * *

  Later, as Jessie passed around the dessert plates, I felt Simon’s eyes on me. I forced myself to glance up. His gaze was steady, speculative.

  Olin cleared his throat, then spoke: “Simon, how you holdin’ up down at the café? We sure did leave you shorthanded of late.”

  “I understand—you’ve been busy.”

  Jessie was shaking her head. “Still, a shame you don’t have some help. Even for a day or so a week.”

  I took their meaning then. It wasn’t that I was unwilling to help out in their café, but I’d never done restaurant work before. Or held any real job. After we were married, Jim wouldn’t allow it.

  But it wasn’t only lack of experience that unnerved me. It was imagining Jim pulling up at that café one day—stepping out of his unit with his spit-shined shoes, his Sam Browne and .40-caliber pistol, unsnapping his holster. Working there, I’d be sticking my head out of my hiding place.

  On the other hand, I realized he could just as easily pull up at Olin and Jessie’s door.

  So what I really had to decide was when I would stop letting Jim make my decisions for me—control me, even in absentia. Again I was staring at my plate, this time wrestling down my own survival instinct. I took a deep breath.

  “If you like,” I said at last, “I could help. But I’ve never waitressed before—I might be lousy at it.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Jessie, “the way you do around here, you can handle yourself. I’ll teach you all you need. Then I’ll leave you in Simon’s hands.”

  I glanced at Simon, who was still watching me steadily. And for some unearthly reason, I blushed.

  The Café

  It took a few days to muster the nerve to cross the footbridge, but one morning I woke before dawn feeling something like resolve, pulled on a skirt and blouse and left a note for Jessie.

  I paused on the front porch. The yellow pickup was already parked next to the building and the neon sign and windows were lit up.

  To the left of me, the Mountain was a massive silhouette under its snowcapped peak. I stepped off the porch, averting my gaze even as I sensed it still watching me.

  I started toward the café, my eyes fastened on the path. There was little ambient light, but enough to navigate. My movement must have startled something in the brush—I could hear a rustle and scurry of some small animal, receding fast. Something was throwing shadows of piñon and juniper all around me, and I glanced up ahead to see a full moon on the wane, low and fat in the sky and visible just above the flat roof of the café.

  And there it was again—that inescapable force of gravity, latching on to me. It wanted me to turn. Wanted me to look. The prospect was terrifying—and yet thrilling at the same time.

  I’m not sure it was my decision to stop.

  Or to tur
n.

  The sun hadn’t breached yet, but light was spreading out from the east. There was an anemic layer of stratus clouds hanging low in the sky, and as the dawn grew their underbellies bled out from scarlet to salmon to pink.

  The face of the Mountain was changing, too—from flat silhouette to deep shadows, cut with shards of light. It seemed to be shifting, rearranging, from the rising sun or some other catalyst.

  And there at the summit I saw it, shining from the crags.

  A fixed, flawless white light.

  I’d never noticed this before—in fact, I’d never seen the top of the Mountain except in daylight. The light seemed set at such an altitude, and so inaccessible, I couldn’t imagine what it might be. Or how someone had managed to put it there. Or why.

  It didn’t move or blink or strobe. A beacon of some kind? A warning?

  A cool breeze swept in from the east and I pulled my sweater close.

  The sun was cresting now, inching higher with each passing second. As it rose, the light on the Mountain faded in kind, shrinking to a pinpoint, then to extinction, even as the Mountain itself seemed to rouse to life.

  It took an effort to disengage and turn back to the path. The air held a new snap and static, as if a thunderstorm had just passed through.

  * * *

  Across the footbridge, I rounded the café to the front. Through the windows I could see the place was compact and retro, with little red tables and a curving Formica counter. In a corner was a large, silent jukebox with art deco chrome and blinking colored lights.

  I opened the door and a bell jangled overhead; I could hear soft music coming from the back. There was movement near the jukebox, where Pal was rising stiffly from a rag rug. He pushed his nose into my hand till I scratched his ears.

  “It’s me!” I called out. “Joanna!”

  Simon’s head appeared above the half wall that separated the dining area from the kitchen. He broke into a smile.

  “You’ve come to rescue me.”

  “I’m hardly the cavalry,” I said.

  “Can you tell time?”

  “I . . . Of course.”

  “Then in ten minutes, open this oven and pull out the biscuits.” He handed me a pair of oven mitts. “I got a feeling we’ll be busy today. Relatively. Jessie on the way?”

  “I left a note,” I said. “But this morning I wanted to . . .”

  “Fly solo?”

  “I guess. Can I help with anything while I wait on the biscuits?”

  The next half hour flew. I wiped down tables and counters, wrapped sets of silverware in paper napkins, refilled napkin holders, straw dispensers and condiment bottles.

  When Jessie arrived, she walked me through the menu, showed me how to take orders and leave the slips for Simon. To serve and clear and work the cash register. She was direct and encouraging.

  Soon customers began filing through the door. My heart skipped with every jangle of the bell, but every face was that of a stranger. The first time I screwed up an order, I froze and braced for the fallout. But the customer waved off my apologies, insisting the blueberry pancakes I brought him were better than the buttermilk he’d ordered.

  A dozen people must have come through that morning—farmers, ranchers, store owners, laborers. None of them asked prying questions. At lunchtime came a second round.

  “To get a look at the new waitress,” said Jessie.

  “They didn’t know there’d be a new waitress,” I said. “Even I didn’t know till I woke up this morning.”

  Jessie smiled but didn’t answer. By two o’clock, she untied her apron and left for the day. Only four customers remained. I refilled their coffee mugs as Simon beckoned me to the counter.

  “How about lunch?” he asked.

  I’d been so busy, I hadn’t thought to break for a meal.

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Just tell me what you’d like.”

  I hesitated. It had been a long time since I’d ordered in a restaurant.

  “Well,” I said, “I haven’t had a cheeseburger and shake in ages.”

  I took a seat by a window on the western end of the valley. The sun through the glass was warm on my face and arms. Only two trucks remained in the parking lot, belonging to the last customers.

  Simon set two plates on the table—one in front of me with a cheeseburger and fries, and an identical plate on the other side. He left and returned with a chocolate shake for me, a vanilla one for himself. He sat down and thumped a ketchup bottle over his fries.

  “So tell me,” he said. “How was your day?”

  I shook my head. “I’m surprised I survived.”

  “You did great.”

  “How would you know? You were back at the grill.”

  “I see and hear plenty back there,” he said. “And careful—you have a limited quota of discouraging words before you violate the menu.”

  I blinked at him. “What?”

  He flipped over a menu and ran his finger along a line at the bottom: Seldom is heard a discouraging word.

  “Olin’s idea,” he said. “To keep folks civil. And if they aren’t . . .”

  “You kick them out?”

  He paused, considering me carefully. “For you, a new rule,” he said. “You’ll have to drop a coin in the jukebox over there and play any song I choose.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You might have rotten taste in music.”

  “I happen to have swell taste in music. And every record is crackerjack.”

  “Are those real vinyls? Forty-fives?”

  “Not just forty-fives,” he said. “Some are seventy-eights—all of them requests from customers. Jessie orders them special. Sometimes people would just like to hear a song that means something.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  He smiled at me over his burger. “One of these days, I might tell you.”

  I pegged him for country-western. A ballad, though, not a rowdy bar song. Nothing about cheating—Simon didn’t seem the type. And not a patriotic anthem, either. Not after what Jessie had told me about his war experience.

  Jim had a particular taste for country-western. I’d listened to song after song about whiskey and beer and pickup trucks, true lovers and cheaters. After a while, it all ran together like manic-depressive white noise.

  A few years ago, though, Jim took a break from music. All of it. That was after a country band came out with a song about a wife who’d had enough of her abusive husband and decided to get rid of the problem—rat poison in the grits and rolling out the tarp . . .

  One day Jim came home from work and caught me listening to it. I hadn’t planned to—it just came over the radio as I was cooking. But as it began, as I listened, it stopped me in my tracks. Jim caught me standing there, so focused, so fascinated. Maybe he thought I was taking notes. Maybe I was.

  He yanked the power cord from the wall, then slammed the radio against my head.

  It was cheap plastic and splintered easily, so it didn’t do as much damage as you’d think. Jim must have thought so, too, because for good measure he took the pot of stew cooling on the stove, stood over me where I lay stunned on the linoleum and poured it on my back. I was five months’ pregnant with Laurel then.

  “Is something wrong?” Simon asked.

  I couldn’t look at him.

  “If I ask you something,” I said, “will you answer it?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “That day . . . that day you found us. I don’t remember it. Any of it. And I need to know what happened.”

  “It’s no mystery, Joanna. I was driving down the road here, heading toward the highway. Once you’re over that hill, it’s all steep curves toward the interstate, and soon enough you hit desert again. I
saw buzzards circling half a mile or so from the road. And on the ground right under them, I thought I saw something move.”

  His tone was mild. Matter-of-fact. Almost indifferent. When he said the word “buzzards,” I looked up to lock eyes with him.

  I didn’t see indifference there, but sympathy. It stung me.

  “I was able to off-road the pickup halfway in,” he continued. “By then, I could tell it was someone staggering along, barely able to keep to their feet. I got out and sprinted the rest of the way. You were stumbling, but still standing. You were holding Laurel, and she was passed out—it was all I could do to pry your arms off her. You didn’t want to let her go—in fact, you fought me quite a bit.

  “You must have been out there awhile. You were dehydrated, sick from the heat. Your clothes were ripped up, legs swelled from cactus spines. I slung Laurel over my shoulder, propped you up as best I could and half carried you back to my truck. Olin and Jessie were the closest. I knew they’d take good care of you.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, and turned to stare out the window. But this time I wasn’t seeing the green valley, but the awful scene Simon had just described.

  “Did you find our car?” I asked finally. “A little Toyota. Silver.”

  “No car. I even drove back along the road once you were safe at the house, and back and forth along the interstate looking for one. In case there was an accident and someone else might be hurt.”

  “Did I . . . Was there blood . . . on my clothes?”

  Simon might have been picturing an accident, but I wasn’t. I was picturing rat poison and just deserts with a sick fascination.

  “Some,” he said. “From scrapes and cuts. Not much, though. You heal up fast.”

  “I have lots of practice with that,” I said bitterly.

  We both went quiet.

  It was nearly three o’clock—closing time—and the last customers were leaving, calling their good-byes to Simon, dropping cash on their tables. The bell on the door jangled as they left. Their trucks pulled out and headed south toward the foothills.