The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  What was it Olin had said? Get straight and strong inside. And apparently outside, too.

  Jessie called up the stairs. “Joanna! Best set out now!”

  I smoothed the skirt over my hips and gave myself a last once-over. Jim would never have approved of these clothes—not the cardigan that flattered me, not the skirt sized to fit, not the sleek pumps with their pointed toes.

  But Jim wasn’t here.

  I undid the top button of my sweater and headed downstairs.

  * * *

  The Periwinkle House had a tiny landing at the top of the side stairwell, with a lavender door under a striped awning.

  I’d never met Bree’s fiancé and knew nothing about him other than his name and that he worked on a ranch. So I expected a polite and reserved young man sunburnt to beef jerky. But when the door opened, it was a young Navajo standing there, flashing white teeth in a handsome, round, inquisitive face. He wore cowboy boots, black jeans and a silver-tipped bolo with his dress shirt.

  “Joanna, right?” he said. “Reuben. Let me help you with that.”

  He reached for the cheesecake I’d brought as Bree called from inside. “Sweetheart, don’t leave her standing there.”

  Reuben stepped aside, and I could see Bree at a little gas stove in a pink sundress and thick oven mitts.

  “Look at you!” she said. “You should wear yellow more often. Reuben, honey, put that in the fridge.”

  “Sure there’s room?” I asked.

  The refrigerator was sized to fit the tiny apartment, which was a half story with sloped ceilings. The main room was an open kitchen and living room with a white couch and chair spaced around a Navajo rug. Off the kitchen was a small round table that was laid, I noticed warily, with four place settings.

  Bree hadn’t mentioned another guest.

  “Can I help with anything?” I asked.

  “Just grab a wineglass,” said Bree. “Sweetheart, can you pour? Tell me what you think of the Riesling, Jo. It’s from Virginia. And the fish”—she lifted the lid off a narrow steamer pot—“the fish is domestic, too. The boys caught them.”

  “The boys?” I asked.

  She pulled off the oven mitts. “Reuben and Simon. He should be here any minute.”

  And that explained the fourth place setting.

  “How about some music?” Bree said.

  There was a small stereo on a console behind the couch. Reuben switched it on and turned the knob, catching station after station. When he hit soft jazz, Bree smiled.

  There was a knock at the door and Reuben answered it. It was Simon, and he didn’t look the least surprised to see me. He stepped in, kissed Bree on the cheek and handed her a small paper bag. She opened it and began to set cucumbers and tomatoes on the counter. Simon wasn’t wearing jeans this time, but a dark sports coat and slacks.

  “Evening, Joanna,” he said as Reuben handed him a glass of wine.

  “Why don’t you two have a seat?” said Bree. “Dinner won’t be a minute.”

  Simon pulled out a chair for me and waited.

  I found myself unsure how to act with him. This wasn’t a Saturday supper at the farmhouse, so what was it? A double date? A setup? I felt blindsided.

  This was also the first time I’d seen him since the trail ride to his cabin. Since Davey.

  Altogether, it left me feeling vaguely bruised and resentful.

  “How’s Laurel?” he asked as I took the chair he offered. “Does she like her new school?”

  I nodded.

  “She making friends?” he asked.

  “She’s my little helper,” Bree called from the kitchen.

  “I want to thank you for the book,” I told him a little stiffly.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Maybe it can help you find your voice again.”

  Before I could answer, Bree was standing over us with a platter.

  “All set?” she asked. “I hope y’all have an appetite.”

  She and Reuben brought more food dishes, nearly overwhelming the little table. Reuben uncorked a second bottle of wine.

  “My father says you’re getting to be quite the rider, Jo,” he said. “He’s not an easy man to impress.”

  “Your father?” I asked blankly. As far as I knew, I’d never met the man.

  “Morgan Begay—he brought the horses.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “But I haven’t seen him since.”

  “He must get updates from Olin. They’re tight.”

  “Reuben’s been teaching me, too,” said Bree. “I have more room for improvement than you, Jo.”

  “You didn’t ride back home?” I asked. “Virginia, right?”

  “Hampton Roads. Very old family. My parents are both at NASA Langley. I, on the other hand, always wanted to teach.”

  “But not in Virginia . . .”

  “Oh, I did, for a while. After I graduated William and Mary, I taught for a bit in Norfolk. Third grade. But one night . . .” She frowned as if trying to pull up a faded memory. “One night, that all changed.”

  She sounded oddly wistful.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Bree concentrated harder. “I was out with friends at a concert at the Coliseum. Little Phish. I was heading home right after, and there was a trucker talking on the cell with his boy, saying good night. The phone slipped. He went to catch it and jerked the wheel just enough to cross the center line. Hit me head-on.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Were you hurt bad?”

  “About as banged up as you can be. I’m fine now, of course. The poor trucker, though—I doubt he’s gotten over it.”

  “I don’t know if I could be so forgiving,” I said.

  “I bet you would,” she said. “Anyway, I needed a change. That’s how I ended up in Morro—just felt drawn to the place. And after I met Reuben, I knew why.”

  Drawn to the place? I wondered if she had the same reaction to the Mountain as I did.

  Bree took Reuben’s hand and squeezed it, and Reuben gazed back at her with every ounce of heart and soul right there in his eyes. I felt a pang of envy—no man had ever looked at me that way.

  “How’d you two meet?” I asked.

  “She stabbed me,” said Reuben.

  Bree groaned. “I didn’t. It was a little dart and never touched a lick of skin. It hit your boot!”

  Simon noticed my confusion. “The pub down the road has dartboards,” he explained. “And, well, some people have better aim than others.”

  Reuben pointed to the toe of one worn cowboy boot. “I still have the hole.”

  “I’ll buy you another pair,” said Bree.

  “I like these just fine,” he said, pulling her hand to his lips to kiss her fingertips. “Even if they do leak when it rains.”

  That was when my old habit kicked in, and I began to watch them over my wineglass for telltale cracks in those happy, shiny surfaces. For a note too sour, a look too sharp . . .

  But I could detect nothing wrong. Nothing rang false or out of place between them—not a single, solitary fraudulent thing.

  And I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself.

  “Joanna,” said Simon, “you and Reuben have something in common. You both studied in Albuquerque, right?”

  “Another Lobo, eh?” Reuben asked.

  “It was years ago,” I said. “Only three semesters.”

  “Double features at Don Pancho’s . . .” he said with a smile. “Ice cream at the Purple Hippo . . .”

  I smiled back. I knew those places well. “Cinnamon buns at the Frontier—that’s where I packed on my freshman ten,” I said. “The Living Batch Bookstore . . .”

  Memories that had been long dormant came rushing back in an instant—familiar, yet foreign, too. As if they were from somebody else’s life. It didn�
��t seem possible it had once been mine.

  “I had no idea those places were still around,” I said. “But they must be—you couldn’t have graduated that long ago.”

  “I didn’t graduate, either. A couple years, I was back home. I missed my family. I missed—” He shrugged. “I missed my father. And by then I was drinking. My uncle in Shiprock took me to help with the ranch. Herding ponies on motorcycles, whipping in and out of arroyos . . .” His eyes began to shine. “That was a good year. But even that wasn’t enough. We’d go to Wheeler to drink our paychecks—no alcohol sales on the rez. I started to hate the idea of going back to the ranch. And one day, I didn’t.”

  I understood. Wheeler used to be notorious for weekend bar traffic—thousands pouring in from reservations or rural towns. A core group of alcoholics never left. At night, cops would round them up and haul them to the drunk tank at the edge of town to sleep it off. Come morning, they’d be sober enough to straggle to the nearby soup kitchen run by Catholic nuns. After that, they hit the streets again—panhandling, petty theft, pawning their blood—to score more alcohol.

  When the weather was good, the system worked—even when officers couldn’t find everyone who’d passed out in the bed of a pickup or collapsed in a dark doorway.

  But in winter the temperatures could drop to freezing at night, and it wasn’t that unusual to find someone dead of hypothermia by sunup. The city kept a running tally. Jim called them popsicles.

  Reuben leaned close. “You know Mother Teresa?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “She came to the mission once. One morning we were sitting there with our cheese sandwiches and heard a ruckus. I looked up and there was this shrunken little woman in white robes, face like a walnut and the saddest eyes. My first sober thought that day was, ‘Holy shit, it’s Mother Teresa.’ She was walking through, nuns at her heels. Photographers, TV cameras. An hour out of the drunk tank, this is the last person you expect to see, right?”

  I knew about that day—Mother Teresa had come to town several years before Jim brought me to Wheeler. It was her Sisters of Charity that ran the soup kitchen. People still talked about that visit.

  But that happened—what, fifteen years ago? Twenty? If Reuben had seen her in town, he would’ve had to be around Laurel’s age at the time . . .

  “So she’s passing my bench,” Reuben continued, “and I stagger to my feet. Then I drop to my knees, holding my arms up like I’m a referee and somebody just nailed a field goal. And I’m not even Catholic. She totters over and for a second or two lays her hand on mine. Then she goes on her way.”

  He shook his head slowly. “It was one of those moments, you know?”

  I nodded. “Life-changing.”

  “Hell, no! I went out, pawned some stolen hubcaps, bought myself a bottle—business as usual. Things didn’t change till that winter. I was in an alley one cold night, massively stoned, thinking how strange it was that I couldn’t feel my arms or legs anymore. And that if I wasn’t careful, I could lose everything. That was my wake-up call.”

  Bree was giving him a small, consoling smile.

  * * *

  After dessert, Bree suggested a walk to Schiavone’s bakery down the block to cap off the evening with genuine Italian coffee. It was mid-September by my best guess and the air had chilled considerably. It felt like the first bite of autumn, and I chafed my arms against the cold.

  Simon peeled off his sport coat and, before I could object, draped it over my shoulders. It was warm and smelled of cedar wood.

  “But now you’re in shirtsleeves,” I protested.

  “I’m fine. We mountain men defy the cold.”

  “I thought mountain men defied the cold by wearing animal pelts, not by shucking their clothes.”

  He chuckled and fell in beside me on the sidewalk.

  Bree and Reuben were a few paces ahead, arms linked. Bree was leaning into Reuben, whispering in his ear. Now and then she glanced back at us, her expression conspiratorial.

  Lampposts were lit all along the main street and strings of lights were wound around tree trunks and branches. Most stores had already closed for the day, but others remained open: a fifties-style malt shop, its counter packed with young people; a steakhouse and saloon, the kind with swinging doors and frisky piano music inside. The Wild Rose had a candle burning in each window, and the pub looked like it had been transported stone by stone from an Irish village. I imagined it was there that Bree had punctured Reuben’s boot with the dart.

  Schiavone’s had a half dozen café tables on a patio, and most were taken. Bree and I found an empty one while Reuben and Simon went inside for the coffees.

  The lights were still on at the town hall across the street, and Bree explained it doubled as a community center for plays and concerts; some evenings they hung a screen for a movie projector.

  At the next table sat three older men with intense, angular features, wearing worn cloth coats and drinking from espresso cups. They were deep in conversation in a language I couldn’t begin to place.

  “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen in Wheeler,” I murmured.

  “I’ve been to Wheeler, so I know what you mean,” said Bree. “Me, I prefer farther afield. Reuben and I just trekked through Scotland. Next summer, we’re hitting the Amalfi Coast.” She laughed. “My Reuben may come from a desert people, but he loves the sea.”

  Reuben was approaching with a tray, Simon close behind. He placed four foaming glasses on the table, along with four forks. I thought he’d made a mistake in the cutlery till Simon set down a small plate: on it was a huge cinnamon bun—exactly like the ones from my late-night binges in college.

  Simon handed me a fork. “They even warmed it,” he said. “Shall we?”

  They waited for me to take the first bite. It tasted just as I remembered, down to the sweet, dripping butter.

  “They make these here?” I asked.

  “Not ordinarily,” Simon said vaguely. “You have to know who to talk to.”

  * * *

  Later that night, Simon insisted on driving me home. He opened the passenger door of his truck and offered his hand to help me inside. I ignored the hand and climbed in on my own. The bench seat was upholstered in soft cowhide that warmed my legs, despite the deepening chill.

  Simon started the engine, then turned a knob on the dashboard. “Doesn’t take long for the heat to kick in.”

  “I’m fine.”

  I slid his coat from my shoulders and folded it neatly. I laid it on the seat between us.

  “Are you?” he asked. I knew he wasn’t talking about the chill.

  The evening had been surprisingly pleasant, but now that Simon and I were alone, the resentment was back and doubling down. Just how was he expecting this lift back to the farmhouse to end? With the two of us parked in the driveway steaming up the truck windows? Sloppy kisses on the porch?

  Besides, I couldn’t look at him without seeing Davey pulling off his cowboy hat, exposing that face . . .

  I turned toward the side window and watched as Morro swept past. The truck left the asphalt and hit the dirt road with a faint bump. As we drove on toward the farm, I shifted in the seat to look behind us.

  Tonight the snowcap on the Mountain shone with a kind of phosphorescence. And there near the top was Olin’s night-light.

  If I climbed up and found that light, if I touched it, would it burn like fire? Or like ice?

  Simon was reaching for the knob on the dash again.

  “Corral’s almost finished,” he said as warm air fanned my legs. “Pegasus has even jumped the rails a few times, but he always comes back. I wouldn’t have thought he could hurdle that high—not in his shape. Maybe he’s got wings after all.”

  I dragged my eyes from the Mountain and straightened in my seat. “You’re keeping the name?”

  “Wouldn’t
want to disappoint Davey,” he said.

  “He seems like a nice boy.”

  “He is.”

  “Yes,” I said tonelessly. “And he looks exactly like a nine-year-old version of my husband.” The words tasted bitter as rue on my tongue. “Except he has my eyes. Didn’t you notice?”

  I turned to stare at the window glass. I could feel Simon studying me, but he was silent for a long while. Then, “I knew there was something.”

  We were almost at the house now; the drive from town wasn’t long. Despite the warm air in the cab, I was shivering all over again.

  “Yes,” I said. “There was something.”

  Simon didn’t answer. He kept his hands level on the wheel, his eyes on the road. And just . . . waited.

  I felt no demands from him. No expectations. No judgments.

  I knew we could ride the rest of the way without another word being said—we could drive clear up to Canada as silent as two monks—and it would be perfectly fine with him.

  But this time the truth sat painfully in my throat, straining to burst free. This time there was no one compelling me to speak.

  And that meant no one to resist.

  “I was pregnant once before,” I began quietly. “Before Laurel, I mean. I lost the baby early. If he’d been born—” I shook my head. “His name was David. At least, that was my name for him. His due date was in June. Nine years ago. Sound familiar?”

  I was startled to realize my cheeks were wet. I wiped at the tears, then stared at my fingers.

  We were drawing up on the farmhouse, pulling into the drive. The porch light was on; a single lamp shone through the front window. The rest of the house was dark. It wasn’t late, but Olin and Jessie kept farm hours.

  Simon switched off the engine and made no move to exit or to help me out. Instead, he rested his left arm on the steering wheel and eased himself in his seat, angling in my direction. Still he said nothing.

  If he’d questioned me then, I couldn’t have gone on. I would have shut down, just as I’d done with the doctor in the clinic and with Alicia from the prosecutor’s office. It wasn’t from obstinacy or defiance. It was just that some wounds run so deep, they can cut you all over again in the telling.