The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  Davey stood at an outbuilding with our two horses, a water bucket at his feet.

  Simon pointed toward the apple grove, and I could see nothing at first. But when he whistled, a horse emerged from the trees.

  He was tall—as tall as Tse. And you could tell he must have been beautiful once.

  Now, though, his gray hide stretched across sharp hip bones and jutting ribs. His broad back swayed as if it carried an oppressive weight.

  “Mind if I take a look?” said Olin.

  “He’s gun-shy,” Simon cautioned as Olin headed toward the grove. Then he turned to me. “Well,” he asked quietly, “what do you think?”

  I didn’t know how to answer him. Certainly Jim had proven just how wretchedly an animal could be abused, but I’d never seen neglect like this. Still, I knew Simon wasn’t fishing for compliments.

  “He looks awful,” I said. “What happened?”

  “He was a racehorse once. Not a good one, I guess. Or his owner didn’t think so. He was sold for dog food to some outfit down in Florida. Since he wasn’t worth the cost of feed, they let him starve. He was just skin and bones when I got him.”

  “Worse than this?”

  “He’s improved quite a bit. And he’ll get better still. Watch.”

  He whistled again and gave a call. The horse broke into a canter along the tree line, apparently unwilling to get too close. He pulled up and shook his big head, then finished his circuit across the field.

  “There, now. See?” said Simon. “They didn’t break him.”

  It pleased me to hear him say it. Most people wouldn’t see much worth in salvaging an abused creature like this.

  “He’ll make a good trail horse one day,” I said.

  “No—thoroughbreds don’t do well out here for trails or cattle. Their legs are too fragile; the country’s too rugged.”

  “So you’ll race him?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Then what on earth will you do with him?”

  Simon hesitated, watching the horse turn and bolt back toward the grove.

  Then he shrugged. “Let him run.”

  The horse was moving at a speed that seemed wholly unsupportable for his gaunt frame and gangly legs. But he tore up the distance with little effort, disappearing again in the apple trees.

  “Almost like he has wings,” said a voice behind us. “Like Pegasus.”

  We turned to see the boy, Davey, a few yards away in dungarees and a damp T-shirt, his cowboy hat shading most of his face.

  “Pegasus, huh?” said Simon. “Could be a fine name. What do you think?” He was asking me.

  What I thought was that even if that horse had actual wings sprouting from his withers, he looked barely fit enough to carry a child, much less Zeus’s thunderbolts. But I had to admit he had spirit.

  “I like it,” I said. “Some names you just have to grow into.”

  Simon made the introductions, and Davey stepped forward to shake my hand. The boy pulled off his hat, and for the first time I could see his face clearly . . .

  The slight arc to the bridge of his nose . . . the squared-off chin . . . and the hair—a deep mahogany brown.

  The resemblance to Jim was uncanny.

  I snatched my hand from his. It was then that I noticed the eyes looking up at me from that eerie, familiar, terrible face were the same quartz green as Laurel’s. As mine.

  “Joanna . . . ?” Simon sounded concerned.

  I was staring at the boy with open revulsion. I couldn’t help myself. I stared as he flushed a deep red, then ducked his head in confusion. He took a step back . . . recoiling from me.

  The rational part of my brain was struggling to intervene. This is only a child, it said. We don’t choose the features we’re born with. And yet . . .

  “I—I’m sorry,” I managed to say. “I thought . . . we’d met before.”

  “No, ma’am,” said the boy.

  “No,” I said. “I’d have remembered.”

  I dragged my eyes away from that face and turned toward the apple grove. I cleared my throat.

  “How’d you come up with a name like Pegasus?” I asked finally. “Do you like Greek mythology?”

  “Sure, I like stories about the old gods,” Davey said. “Olympus and the Underworld.”

  “I did, too, when I was a kid,” I said. “I discovered them when I was eleven. How old are you?”

  “I turned nine in June.”

  I swallowed hard. “Nine in June.”

  The boy nodded. “I write my own stories, too.”

  “Best grades in his class,” Simon said. “Davey, can you go water Pegasus?”

  The boy bolted off, eager to please Simon. And no doubt just as eager to escape the crazy woman with the Medusa stare. When he was gone, I turned to Simon: “Tell me about his family.”

  He hesitated. “They have a little place on the other side of the Mountain.”

  “I remember,” I snapped. “From the barbecue—ranch folk, respectable people. And he’s their only child?”

  “They have a couple more. Older boys.”

  “But he’s . . . their natural child?”

  Simon didn’t answer, but watched Davey refill the water bucket, Pegasus at his side. Olin joined them and was running his hand over the horse’s bowing back, then down each reedy leg.

  When Simon spoke again, I could see what a careful, neutral mask his face had become.

  “Davey was a foundling,” he said. “They took him in as a baby. His natural parents—they’ve never been part of his life.”

  “They found him? On their doorstep?”

  “I’m not sure what you want to know, Joanna.”

  I wasn’t sure, either. How do you say, without sounding like a lunatic, that a boy you just met looks like a child version of your husband, but with your eyes? Like he could be your natural-born son?

  A son that, in point of fact, had never actually been born.

  I’d been about ten weeks along when Jim gave me that punch to the stomach. The fetus had barely been an inch long—it hadn’t even registered a heartbeat. But I knew from pregnancy books that all its organs were in place. That it had ears and eyelids and a nose . . . a tiny body cabled with muscles and nerves. That it was distinct down to its fingerprints and hair follicles.

  I’d never had an ultrasound and could never have asked the doctor, but I knew—in my heart I knew—he’d been a boy.

  And for years I’d been imagining him: his features, his temperament. I’d been dreaming him up out of whole cloth, like Laurel with her rain boots. A boy who wouldn’t inherit the malice of his father, but a finer, sweeter spirit.

  And every year he grew older—a presence that only I felt. Only I missed.

  If I’d carried him to term, he would have turned nine this past June.

  And the name I’d chosen for him all those years ago—but never told a soul—was David.

  Tea and Empathy

  Back from Simon’s cabin I withdrew again, hunkering down until it was almost like the bad old days under Jim’s boot. I couldn’t buck the feeling I’d stumbled onto something I shouldn’t have—a glimpse of the baby I couldn’t save . . . the boy he might have become if I had. I couldn’t stop picturing his face—every line, every curve, every inch of it. I was floundering in grief and guilt.

  Olin had said Morro could be a Place of Truth for me, but that nugget of wisdom should have come with a warning label. Truth wasn’t just something that could set you free—it could kick you in the gut ten times over. In its way, truth could be as brutal a bastard as Jim ever could.

  I kept to my room, just like the early days when we’d first arrived. Jessie brought me meals on a tray again and didn’t ask what was wrong or where it hurt. At night, Laurel climbed up on my bed and slipped under the covers.

 
This was new territory. With Jim, it was constant survival mode—every morning armoring up for one more round. I could never have surrendered like this around him, or he would’ve eaten me alive.

  But here . . . here, I could shut down. I could lie in bed—neither asleep nor awake—and just drift. Aimless and mindless as a dandelion seed. And know with utter surety that if I only let go, let go for good and all, I could rise and rise . . . a sweet, numbing nothingness sluicing over me, through me, warm and solacing . . . until I dissipated at last, like the cloud that day in the vegetable garden.

  Courage is a kind of salvation.

  It was Olin’s voice.

  Olin’s words in my ear, so close he might have been drifting on the wind beside me. I could smell the tang of cured tobacco . . .

  My eyes flew open, and instead of a blank, open sky above me there was only the bedroom ceiling. I concentrated until the light fixture slid into focus.

  Courage? Forget it—wouldn’t know it if I tripped over it.

  And what’s courage, anyway, but delusion? You pick yourself up only to get beat down all over again. That doesn’t make you brave—that makes you a punching bag. I stayed ten years with a sadist because I was too witless to see him for what he was. And when I did, I was too big a coward to get the hell out.

  And yet . . .

  I focused again on the ceiling. On its vast, vacant depths.

  And yet . . . I did get out, didn’t I?

  . . . a kind of salvation.

  I did get out. And brought Laurel with me. We broke free of him. Whatever else, we were in a good place now, with good people. And after all this time, he still hadn’t found us. Hadn’t managed to make his own way here, for all his threats to never let us go. Ever. That was something, wasn’t it?

  Whatever else Morro might be, at least it was getting that job done. Even a rabbit hole can keep a wolf at bay.

  I pulled myself up and leaned back against the headboard. My body felt leaden and sluggish, as if it had been weightless for a while and needed to acclimate.

  There was a food tray on the nightstand. The tea was still hot.

  Night-light

  Later, I grew restless in the wee hours and got up. Laurel had slipped into my room again and lay fast asleep on the far side of the bed. I slid into my robe and headed down the hallway to the stairs, then down to the living room. Jessie hadn’t drawn the front curtains—they were still wide-open to the darkened café and the empty road. The room felt exposed. I hadn’t sat vigil on the porch in a while.

  I unlatched the front door and stepped out. The narrow valley was hushed except for the pulsing chirp of crickets. I headed to the railing on the far side of the porch where I could see the Mountain clearly. And, no surprise, that tenacious light. Anywhere else, that light might be nothing more than a cell tower. Here, it was more likely a burning bush.

  It was a riddle, but there were others—the stars here were strange, too. Strangers. For weeks now I’d been trying to trace the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. The Lion, the Hunter, the Big Dog, the Hare . . . any of them. But they just weren’t there. My constellations were gone. The stars here kept to their own patterns, their own boundaries, and I didn’t know their names. Old ship captains used to orient themselves by the stars. Celestial navigation, they called it. If they tried that here, where would these stars lead them?

  A cold wind gusted through, and I pulled my robe close and headed back inside, latching the door and drawing the front curtains. Then I turned.

  Across the living room, a light emanated from the kitchen.

  And there in the open doorway was the dark shape of a man.

  Years of reflex kicked in and I yelped and stumbled back, hitting the wall with a painful thud.

  “Whoa, Joanna, it’s me.”

  Olin’s voice.

  I gasped, clutching my throat. “You scared the life out of me!”

  Then he was beside me, taking my arm, steering me toward the kitchen. “I just made some cocoa,” he said. “Come sit.”

  On the table, a teapot was steaming on a serving tray. He fetched a mug from the cupboard and filled it, then settled across the table. Jessie’s half-moon reading glasses were perched on his nose and there was a magazine in front of him—a Farmer’s Almanac. He gave me a rueful smile. “Better?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just . . . I guess I still startle easily.”

  “What’re you doin’ up this time of night?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Guess I had my fill lately. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” he said. “What for?”

  “Leaving Laurel to you and Jessie. And the horses—all the work.”

  “Don’t you worry—some days I’m not fit company, neither.”

  He took off the glasses and laid them on the Almanac. I examined the cover more closely—even upside down it was easy to make out the year.

  “Olin,” I said. “That magazine is from 1938.”

  “A good year,” he said, wiping cocoa from his mustache. “Got more of ’em in my den. We visit now and again.”

  If he sounded absurd, who was I to judge? I hid scraps of paper in a tea tin under a floorboard.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” said Olin.

  “They aren’t worth that.”

  “Seems to me you saw somethin’ from the porch just now. Ain’t a coyote, was it?”

  “No,” I said. “Not an animal.”

  I might have left it at that, but I was picking up the faint scent of tobacco again, just as in my room earlier when I was ready to give up and scatter to the four winds, until it latched onto me like gravity . . . like a rescue . . .

  Olin’s hair was lifting in white tufts all around his scalp, as if he’d just come from bed without bothering to comb it into place, and for one wild second, backlit by the lamp behind him, it seemed to glow.

  “Olin,” I ventured. “That light on the Mountain—what is it?”

  “Well, now, that’s been there so long, I don’t think about it no more. It just is.”

  “But who put it there?”

  He shrugged. “Always been there, far as I know.”

  “Nobody ever checked it out?”

  “Sure did.”

  “And what was it?”

  “I never asked. They never said.”

  I shook my head in frustration and looked down at my mug. I could feel Olin’s eyes on me for a long moment before he braced his arms on the table and leaned in.

  “Laurel’s got a night-light,” he said finally.

  “Yes . . .”

  “Makes her feel safe.”

  “I guess.”

  “So if she wakes in the dark, scared maybe, she knows it’s just a light, but she feels better. Watched over.”

  “Olin,” I said slowly, “you’re telling me the Mountain has a night-light?”

  “It pleases me to think of it on the same principle.”

  I frowned down at the Almanac again—at the cracked and curling corners, the yellow cover filled with gourds, twining vines and sheaves of wheat, sketches of spring, summer, autumn and winter frozen in time. It read, 146th year. Price: 15 cents.

  I picked up Jessie’s reading glasses and turned them over in my hands. “You two have the same prescription? I guess you really are a perfect match.”

  “Me and her was meant for each other.”

  The phrase was cliché, but he made it sound like truth.

  “Soul mates?” I asked. “What an awful thought.”

  “How you figure?”

  “I don’t mean you and Jessie—you’re happy. But when you’re not—when you’re with someone who makes your life hell—the idea of being bound for eternity . . . God, I’d go insane.”

  “And I wouldn’t blame you—but that ain’t it. The one you’re meant to be with ain�
�t always the one you end up with.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “I figure if soul mates find each other right off,” he continued, “that’s best. But if they don’t, they can still make a good life—with somebody else or on their own. But sooner or later, if you’re meant to be, you find each other.”

  “Olin, you’re a romantic. And how do they manage that?”

  He snapped his fingers. “I forgot. The ol’ woman’ll skin me.”

  He stood and headed for the butcher-block table by the stove. When he returned, he handed me a small parcel in brown wrapping.

  “Simon heard you was under the weather,” he said. “Left this for you.”

  I pulled off the wrapping, and inside was a book of poetry—selected works of Yeats. It was the same volume I’d had in college, only mine had fallen apart over the years. This one was pristine, the spine still stiff.

  I opened to the cover pages, and there Simon had written in surprisingly fine penmanship: Joanna, for inspiration.

  Inspiration? To do what?

  As if in answer, Olin turned to pull open a drawer and fish something out. When he returned, he set a blank notepad and a pen in front of me.

  Dinner at Bree’s

  The next afternoon I stood at my bedroom mirror and for the first time in ages was pleased with what I saw. I wore a light cotton cardigan of buttercream yellow with short sleeves and shell buttons, and a tan pencil skirt. I pulled on flat pumps for the short hike into town for Bree’s dinner.

  I ran my hands down my arms, feeling the firm cords of muscle under the skin. Even after lying in bed for days, they felt strong. I leaned toward the mirror and stared hard. The old scar along my eyebrow—the one Jim sliced open with his pinkie ring with a sharp backhand—was fading. In fact, I could barely make it out now.

  I ran a brush through my hair and noticed my little finger—the one Jim had broken when I dropped a dish—was limbering up, starting to bend. That bone had never been set, and the finger had healed crooked and stiff. Now here it was, straight as a pencil. I flexed my fingers. Even the twinge in the knuckle was gone.