The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  At the general store, its massive front windows were papered with flyers for club meetings, recitals, the weekly farmers’ market, a school play. And inside, the building seemed cavernous, with row after row of well-stocked aisles.

  Jessie led us to the shoe section, where we searched the shelves for rain boots in Laurel’s size. But we found few children’s boots at all, and none small enough for her.

  Jessie called out for assistance, and a big man sorting boxes nearby left his pallet and joined us. I recognized him from the café—Faro LaGow was the customer I’d brought blueberry pancakes by mistake but who graciously took them anyway.

  He was muscular and ruddy, with a short graying beard and close-cropped ginger hair. He put me in mind of an old ring fighter.

  He grinned at Jessie. “What can I do you for today?”

  “We’ll take a pair of rubber boots. For this child here. Something sturdy.”

  Faro considered Laurel for a moment. “You’re seven if you’re a day.”

  Laurel nodded.

  “Not sure we got anything on the floor to fit,” Faro said. “But a shipment’s just come in. First, young lady, why don’t you tell me what sort of boots you had in mind.”

  Laurel’s eyes widened. I could tell she was delighted to be consulted, but with an imagination like hers the possibilities were endless. So I answered for her: “Just rain boots. Anything her size.”

  Laurel yanked her hand from mine and tossed her head at me. “No!” she said.

  Faro leaned low till he was level with her. “I take it you got your own ideas.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. Of course Laurel would have ideas, but they would likely be wildly unrealistic. Faro seemed to be needlessly stoking her hopes, inviting disappointment. Just the sort of game Jim liked to play.

  Laurel took a moment to consider the options, biting her lip thoughtfully.

  “Yellow boots,” she said finally. “With polka dots.”

  “What color polka dots?”

  This time she didn’t hesitate: “All colors.”

  Faro straightened, rubbing his chin with a hand the size of a boy’s baseball mitt. His knuckles were stitched with faint scars. “Well, now, let me go poke through my stock.”

  By now I was sure the man was toying with her. Whether he meant it unkindly or not didn’t matter.

  “No,” I insisted. “Don’t bother.”

  “Worth a look,” he said, and winked. Then he turned on his heel and headed toward the back, disappearing behind an unmarked door.

  “Laurel, honey, he’s gone to check,” I said. “That doesn’t mean he has them.”

  “If he doesn’t,” she said, “I don’t want any.”

  Her young face was pure petulance now, and I only hoped she wouldn’t pitch a fit right there in the aisle when Faro LaGow showed up empty-handed.

  While we waited, Jessie wandered off for boxes of salt crackers and roasted coffee beans. She collected a can of boiled linseed oil and a horsehair brush for Olin to refinish his gunstocks.

  At last Laurel hissed with excitement. “Here he comes!”

  Faro was approaching, his hands hidden behind him. “Well, now, young lady. Will these fit the bill?”

  And from behind his back he drew a pair of rain boots: bright yellow, covered in polka dots of every color.

  Laurel squealed, snatched the boots up and ran to me. I turned them over, checking for signs of fraud, however well intentioned. But there was no drying paint, no stickers. And they were just the right size: seven.

  I stared at Faro in disbelief, and he grinned back.

  “These are . . . perfect,” I managed. Then to Laurel, “What do you say, honey?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Faro. Can I put ’em on now?”

  He looked at me and I nodded. Laurel pulled on the boots and paraded back and forth for us to admire them properly.

  I struggled with how to feel about this. The man had either dug up Laurel’s dream boots back in that stockroom through sheer serendipity or had somehow managed to conjure them out of thin air, made-to-order. I lacked the nerve to ask the obvious question: Where on earth had these come from?

  Jessie linked her arm through mine. She was gazing at Laurel indulgently, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

  We checked out and left with our parcels, returning the same way we’d come, Laurel bounding ahead.

  Let There Be Light

  That evening, Laurel kept her boots on all through supper. She kept them on as she and Olin played checkers at the table, Jessie reading nearby, half-moon glasses tipped low on her nose. The radio was playing a set by the Artie Shaw orchestra.

  I sat for a good hour alone on the dark porch, watching the road, recapping the day, struggling yet again to ground myself. Now and then my attention strayed to the foothills, and to Morro beyond—the pitch-perfect town where whims can come true.

  When I came back inside, I paused at the table lamp by Olin’s empty chair near the fireplace. The base was a ceramic Remington cowboy astride a cattle pony.

  I turned the switch and the lamp sprang to life—the round bulb glowing under the linen shade. I studied the base again, checking all around the pony’s four hooves where they attached to the heavy metal stand. I could find no power cord to run to an electrical outlet. On the nearest wall, there was no outlet.

  I turned the lamp off again.

  Then on.

  Anatomy Lesson

  I slept fitfully. Every time I woke, I’d lie very still and listen to the silence. An old wind-up alarm clock had sat on the nightstand, but I went and buried it in a laundry basket inside the closet where I couldn’t hear its tick-tick-tick—like a heartbeat, but mechanical and mocking. In the dark, too, I listened to my own heart. I could feel the steady pulse at my neck, my wrist. And when I pressed my palm against my chest, there it was.

  Tick-tick-tick.

  The upshot was to make me doubt Olin, or want to. But I couldn’t tell if my resistance sprang from strength or weakness. I kept shifting back and forth. One minute, Olin was an old soul doing me a kindness. The next, an old coot feeding me a line. In the dark, anything and everything seemed possible.

  My brain wouldn’t shut off.

  I rubbed my temples, feeling the soft skin stretch across the hard cradle of skull. Anatomy itself was a mystery now. In the Place of Truth, in Morro, in whatever or wherever this was, how much was illusion and how much was real?

  And what was the purpose? Or even the power source? What keeps a lamp going here? Or a heart?

  One night when I was a little girl my mother drove us down some desert highway in our old Rambler wagon. I lay in the backseat staring at a black sky bristling with stars. My brain wouldn’t shut off then, either. For the first time, I was struck by the vastness of the universe, pure and perfect, and my own place in it. As I stared, the stars began to shift, inching across the sky like a pinwheel. And I knew it was revealing itself to me, and only me. And a voice that was no voice at all began to fill my head with thoughts so big, so frightening, they set it to spinning, too . . . and soon enough my whole body seemed to spiral like those stars, toppling headfirst toward the sky.

  The shock, the enormity, had made me pull back. I closed my eyes and shut my brain down—like pulling a pot off a stove before it boils over. As if whatever I was about to discover threatened to burn me alive. It was all too vast. Too terrible.

  After that, the stars were never the same. In time, like anyone else, I learned the names of the major constellations, the North Star, the Evening Star. But I never again trusted myself to get lost in them.

  That had been a lesson learned, and I decided to apply it again. There are things too big to take in all at once. And thoughts so deep they might send you pinwheeling off to disappear in the dark.

  I couldn’t handle Awe when I was four, and still c
ouldn’t as a woman of thirty.

  I wanted surety and safety and continuity. I wanted to wake in this bed in the morning, wash my face, comb my hair, wake Laurel and get her ready for an unremarkable day. I wanted a long march of unremarkable days just like it.

  I wanted it for as long as I was able. Or allowed.

  The Lady from Mississippi

  Since sleep wouldn’t come, I decided to get up early to make my second trip to the café. This time the dog, Pal, wasn’t dozing in his corner but sitting just inside the door as if expecting me. Simon came from the kitchen to hand me a mug of hot coffee, already flavored with cream and sweetener.

  “How’d you know?” I asked, unable to hide a note of suspicion.

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen how you take your coffee.”

  “No, I meant how’d you know I’d be here this morning?” It had been well over a week since I’d first helped out.

  He nodded toward the back. “There’s a window. I could see you heading down the path. Didn’t think I was psychic, did you?”

  His explanation came as a relief, and I smiled. “Not psychic. Just . . . nosy.”

  “I prefer ‘observant.’”

  “Most nosy people would.”

  He laughed and turned back to his work. He was dressed in a red plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows; his forearms were tanned.

  He gestured toward a radio on a stool. “Mind if I turn this on?”

  Soon a piano was playing in the background—classical, which surprised me. Chopin, I think. Apparently Simon wasn’t such a country-western fan after all.

  I took a deep breath and dove in, setting to work as I had the first day, wiping down surfaces, refilling canisters. I slid trays of loaves and biscuits in and out of the oven, setting them on racks to cool. Now and then I glanced at Simon, moving so easily, so confidently, about his work. I would take my cue from him.

  There weren’t as many customers this morning. One was a plump and pensive woman who said she was the town librarian, although she hardly fit the type.

  Jean Toliver wore a skirt to her ankles, a long-sleeved velour blouse cinched at the waist with a silver concho belt. Hanging low on her chest was a magnificent squash blossom necklace of silver and turquoise.

  I learned she was from a small town in upstate New York near the Adirondack mountains, but had a lifelong interest in Southwestern Indians, so I imagined she meant it as an homage to dress like many traditional Navajo women. I’d also seen very traditional ones wear their hair twisted at the nape into a sort of stiff, vertical double twist, but Jean wore hers in a simple braid down the back.

  Her skin was so milky I suspected she rarely made it beyond the library stacks. Her eyes were the color of nougat behind round-rimmed glasses.

  “You’re the new one,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer her.

  “You like books—I can tell. Not everyone does,” she continued, glancing around the café with disapproval. “A few of us started a monthly book club. You should come.”

  She opened a canvas tote, drew out a flyer and handed it to me. “Our next meeting.” Then she smiled, and two deep dimples gave her a girlish look.

  I slid the flyer into my apron pocket. As I turned to leave, Jean tapped my arm.

  “We have monthly poetry workshops, too,” she murmured. “At the library. You should bring some of your work.”

  I hadn’t told Jean I wrote poetry. Or rather, that I used to, eons ago. In fact, I hadn’t told anyone.

  “I wouldn’t be good enough,” I said. “But I might sit in one day, if that’s all right.”

  Jean nodded. “Anytime.”

  * * *

  By late morning the breakfast shift had eased up, and it was my first chance for a break. I poured a glass of lemonade and took a seat on a stool. Simon turned off the grill and leaned on the counter, a dish towel slung over his shoulder.

  “This is the speed most days,” he said, nodding at the tables, most of them empty. “Second gear. Occasional shifts into fourth.”

  He struck me as a curiosity. A short-order cook who liked Yeats and classical music. Served in the military. Traveled. Had even, as Jessie said, fought in a war.

  “Don’t you ever get bored here?” I asked.

  He paused. “There’s a saying: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ That happens to be a Chinese curse. There’s a lot to be said for the simple life.”

  “That’s funny—I said the same thing once to a college friend about a hundred years ago. But interesting times have a way of ambushing you, don’t they?”

  “They do.”

  Simon had a frankness about him. An easiness that invited conversation. Even, to an extent, confidences. But just how far did that extend?

  I bent over my lemonade, unable to look him in the eye.

  “You’re from Morro originally, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Third generation. My people are from Maryland and Virginia, but my grandparents settled here before the Civil War.”

  “Then you left.”

  “Not strictly by choice. Sometimes there’s a job to do, and you’re called to do it. A lot of men were.”

  “Jessie said you were in the war. Iraq was it?”

  He drew a deep breath and turned away. His strained expression made me regret probing the subject. Roadside bombs, snipers, multiple deployments, post-traumatic stress—not every veteran could reassimilate easily or quickly after trauma like that.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Don’t look so distressed, Joanna. I made it home just fine.”

  “I see.”

  “Besides, simple isn’t the same as simplistic. Don’t get me wrong—some days all I want to do is drop everything and head out for some far corner of the earth.”

  “Why don’t you, then?”

  He grinned. “Who says I don’t?”

  I looked at him then, full on. There was humor in his eyes, but there was earnestness there, too. Did he really get a wild hair some days and strike out for far-flung places? And if he did, did he book a plane ticket or just click his heels together like Dorothy and let out something like, There’s no place like Nepal?

  All at once Simon broke into a laugh that made me blush. Then he turned to head back to the grill.

  * * *

  I was ringing up a customer when the man muttered, “Oh, my Lord.” He was gaping over my shoulder through the front windows, and I turned to look, too.

  The prettiest car I’d ever seen had just pulled up—a two-tone convertible, powder blue and white, stretching from a chrome hood ornament to what looked like chrome missiles mounted on the rear fender. It had whitewall tires with polished rims. The soft top was down, and the noon sun set the white leather seats to shimmer.

  Simon came out front to look, too, and gave a long whistle. “That,” he said, “is a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado.”

  The car door swung open and the driver stepped out—a tiny black woman in a lavender suit and red kid gloves. A red silk scarf was wrapped around her head, its ends dangling down her back like two giant rose petals. She removed oversized white sunglasses to glance at the café sign, then headed inside. She took a seat, stripped off her gloves and untied her scarf to reveal a cap of smooth, marcelled hair.

  “Honey, you got sweet tea?” she asked, picking up a menu. Her voice was high-pitched and Deep South.

  I brought the tea, and the woman ordered pork chops and fried apples. When I gave Simon the order, I asked if she’d been in before.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’d remember the car.”

  Simon brought her plate without waiting for me to retrieve it. Then he stood beside me for a better view of the convertible.

  From what I could see, it had no dents, no scratches, no markings of any kind. As pristin
e as if it were still sitting on a showroom floor.

  “Not a speck of dirt,” I murmured.

  The woman gave me a puzzled look.

  “Take a load off, honey,” she said, nodding at an empty chair at her table. “I know how it is, on your feet all day. My name’s Lula. You had lunch yet?”

  Soon Simon was back at the grill, frying up more pork chops and apples while Lula told me about her home in Mississippi.

  “Natchez—on a bluff over the river, up from New Orleans,” she said. “I was a hotel maid there from fifteen on—and they worked you. Big white house, portico two stories high, big ol’ columns, acres of lawn.”

  “Like a plantation,” I said.

  “Used to be, long time since,” said Lula. “Family fell on hard times and sold it for a hotel. One night a car pulled up like what I got now, and out they stepped—him in black tails and her in yellow satin—lookin’ like somebody. Swore to God one day I’d get me a car like that. See what there was to see in this world. Stay in fine places, too.”

  Simon arrived with two more plates and joined us.

  “What if you break down out there on the road?” I asked.

  Lula leveled her eyes at me over her tea glass. “What if I don’t?”

  And in a flash of certainty I knew that the Eldorado outside would never break down on her. It would take Lula wherever she wanted to go, with never a blown tire or a boiling radiator. It would never run out of gas. And should she ever want to drive to China one day, or whatever destination she might fancy, somehow it would get her there.

  “You still have people back in Natchez?” I asked.

  “Not for ages,” said Lula. “My grandmother, she raised me. We lived in a shotgun shack outside Dunleith till she passed. I took on my two brothers and went to work. Otis, he up and died—wasn’t but seven at the time. Been seizin’ up all his life, and one day he just grabbed ahold of his head and dropped. My brother Lester, he took to the bottle. Gone a long time. Heart give out.”