Bird Skinner (9780802193636)

by Greenway, Alice

  The car bounces along a white road made of sand and crushed seashell, imprinted with tire tracks, perhaps its own from the trip down. Uncle Fergo drives casually, one hand loose on the wheel, his elbow jutting out the side. His other arm, stretching along the back of the seat, seems to reach out to Jim, strong, protective, and welcoming. So that he feels a sudden, unexpected lightening of spirit. His grief and anguish begin to lift. And in their place, a sharp desire and eagerness, and anticipation he’s almost ashamed to feel.

  He swivels further round in his seat, away from the girl and his uncle. Resting his arms up on the open side of the car, he leans out, trying to hold on to this fragile sense of pleasure. The thick oaks arched overhead make the road flicker, light and dark, like a movie reel, and the car casts a stunted shadow in the sand. He breathes in the hot moist air. A smell of sulfur that can make his heart ache even now. The openings between the trees offer sudden glimpses of dunes. Further on, they pass wild ponies, an alligator basking in a weedy swamp. Turkey vultures tearing at rotten carrion lift their ugly bald heads to meet his eye.

  He sees now how this lush barrier island, just a few miles off the coast of Georgia, unveiled itself to him as a place of exploration and discovery—his own Treasure Island. It’s part of the reason Helen disturbs him, sitting up on the front of the car. He felt like Crusoe finding a man’s footprint in the sand, or young Jim Hawkins coming across Ben Gunn. It sits uncomfortably that this uncharted wildness is already hers, her home.

  He tries not to look at her, her long fingers spread over the tan paint of the car, her thin wrist bent sharply. The white dust from the road collects in the fine line of hair along her arm.

  “Young Jim,” Uncle Fergo calls from the garden the next evening, which isn’t any formal garden at all. Just grass and big flowerpots with ferns and sweet-smelling gardenias.

  Jim’s lying flat across his bed, watching the ceiling fan circle round in a lazy, halfhearted way. His uncle’s voice reaches up through the shutters, drawn to keep out the heat, along with the smell of his cigar smoke that wreathes up the side of the house. Jim can hear the scuttling of the two hunting dogs as they bound up the porch steps. Helen greeting them. A tail thumping.

  “Yes, what?” he calls back, his voice cracking. Trying to shake himself free of the damp, smothering gloom that threatens to settle down on him again, to emerge from it, which is what he wants most.

  “Your pa tells me you’re a good shot,” his uncle calls up.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Then come on down, boy. I’d like to see that.”

  He throws on a clean shirt, splashes water on his face from the washbasin on the dresser. Relieved to be told what to do, he tumbles down the big staircase, his face still wet.

  Helen sits on the top step of the porch, cleaning a shotgun. One of the dogs thrusts its head between her legs, angling to have its ears scratched. That would be nice, Jim thinks, without intending to. He looks guiltily at his uncle but can’t see his face under the wide brim of the bark-cloth hat. Just the tip of his cigar moving in circles as he chews it. Foot up on the balustrade, he polishes his boot with the gun cloth, then spits out a piece of loose tobacco.

  Helen hands Jim the gun then follows, slinging her own gun over her shoulder. She hunts in what she’s wearing—her dress and sandals. The dogs lope about her.

  “Bet I can shoot that plum right out of your mouth,” she boasts.

  He plucks the fruit quickly from his mouth in case she means it. Holds it at arm’s length, offering her the chance to shoot his hand off but not to blow out his brains. They’ve been target shooting or plinking, lining up bottles on the low branch of a live oak.

  She lifts the rifle and peers carefully down the sight. He should have taken the plum with his left hand. Too late now. He misses his pa with a sudden intensity, realizing how reassuring it was to have a doctor at home. He watches her and concentrates on keeping completely still when the gun goes off. Her shot lifts the plum neatly off his outstretched palm.

  She walks forward with solemnity, pushing his shoulder down with the gun barrel. He can see she’s shaking. He kneels.

  “You’ve passed the test of gallantry,” she says. “I dub thee Sir Jim of the Plum Pit.” He bows his head, the heat of the gun barrel burns his skin through his thin shirt as she lowers it on each shoulder like a sword.

  When he looks up, he sees her eyes widen, as if she realizes all of a sudden what she’s done, or what she might have done.

  “Poor Jim.” She drops down on her knees in front of him, laying the gun on the grass. Her arms hang limply by her sides. Her eyes, level with his, are green, blue, and yellow and flecked with brown. “Don’t ever let me do that again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ll kiss you now to make up for it.” She places her lips lightly on his. Is this what she wanted all along? To kiss him, or to blow his ear off? He doesn’t know. Still he’d have her kiss him every day. He’s fifteen. He’s never been kissed before. Her lips are warm and moist. He closes his eyes and he can smell her skin.

  Fox Island, Penobscot Bay, Maine,

  August 1973

  Soaked, Jim turns and goes back into the boathouse. The rain on his face mixes with the salt of his skin and tears. He can taste it, fresh and salty. Like rain in the sea. He sits and peels off his clothes, pulling the wet shirt off over his head, then leans up against the weathered planks to pull his trousers down over his stump. Wet and cold, he hops to the counter and pours a neat Scotch to warm him. He feels a strange euphoria, naked, with the Scotch burning inside. As if he’d like to whoop out loud.

  From the cupboard, he takes a threadbare cloth, an old picnic blanket Helen used to like, and wraps it around his waist like a sarong in case the others arrive. He pours himself a second shot of Scotch, then thinking better of it, picks up the bottle. Wheels it over to the potbellied stove.

  The fire burning well, the rain still pouring down out the big open doors, speckling the sea, he flips through his old copy of Treasure Island. Given to Jim by his pa on his eighth birthday. He reads the inscription in the front. It was the first edition to include the now familiar, well-loved illustrations of N. C. Wyeth, and he admires these anew.

  Long John Silver sitting back in the galley, arms crossed, smoking a pipe—his one leg with a buckled shoe stretched out before him. The boat’s keel cleverly shown by the way the parrot’s cage lurches overhead. It was something to see him wedge the foot of the crutch against a bulkhead, and . . . get on with his cooking, like someone safe ashore, Jim reads.

  Or Silver pulling the boy Hawkins along by a rope. For all the world, I was led like a dancing bear, Hawkins says. Wyeth paints the pirate’s stocking half down, as if to show he’s coming undone. Yet, at the same time, he celebrates the pirate’s strength: Silver’s muscular calf bulges above the sock as if it might have burst the button itself, a large hand clutches the rope, the other clasps the crutch as Silver rushes forward. The parrot squawks from his shoulder. His gun is strung across his back.

  Wyeth doesn’t paint in a peg leg, only cliff and rock and empty space where the pirate’s leg should be. In the book, Silver bemoans my timber leg once or twice, but all other times it’s just his left leg cut off close by the hip or he and his crutch.

  Jim turns the dog-eared pages, searching for Stevenson’s first description of the pirate navigating his way between the tables of the Spy Glass Tavern—hopping upon his crutch like a bird. A little later, Hawkins marvels at his ease up on deck: He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the widest spaces—Long John’s earrings, they were called; and he would hand himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now trailing it alongside by the lanyard, as quickly as another man could walk.

  Is this what draws him back to the book after so many years? Is it what truly interests him—Silver’s missing leg? More than th
e identity of the island?

  He was twice the man the rest were, Hawkins says, still awed by the pirate even after foiling him at his own game. Still impressed by the sea cook–crook, despite having seen Silver hurl his crutch and strike the honest Tom between the shoulder blades, then drive his knife twice into the defenseless seaman’s back.

  Reaching down for the Scotch, Jim finds he’s finished the bottle. Whisky bringing its own specific form of intoxication: a sharp clarity that cuts through the haze. Like the sun now peering out under the dark clouds, dazzling on the sea.

  As they flee the island, Hawkins describes Silver leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst. How he was set to an oar, like the rest of us although almost killed already with fatigue.

  Silver, the murderous, duplicitous, one-legged sea cook. Named for his silver tongue, like a double-edged sword. Buttering up young Hawkins with his grotesque, obsequious banter, all the while ready to slit his throat if it pleased him. Which was all part of the fascination, the horror. Or Silver, so called for his insolent, bloodthirsty pursuit of one thing only—treasure. He had still a foot in either camp, Hawkins says, although he only had one.

  Silver: two-faced, one-legged. Foiled but not broken. He was brave, and no mistake. You had to admire him. He was the real hero of Stevenson’s book. Jim would not have read the tale this way as a boy. Then, he would have put himself in the shoes of the boy Hawkins.

  But it’s Silver you grow into.

  When Cadillac returns from Rockland, she walks down to the boathouse to bring Jim the cigarettes and typewriter ribbon he’d asked for and is surprised to find he’s rigged the place with ropes. Ropes tied to eyeholes screwed right into the wall. One strung across from the door to the kitchen, so she’ll either have to duck under it, or jump, like a child in a game of skip rope.

  “Come aboard, me matey,” Jim cries, pulling himself up by one of the ropes to show her how they work. He’s wearing a cloth wrapped round him like a laplap, his wet clothes drying by the burning stove. “Long John’s earrings,” he explains enigmatically, relieved the boy isn’t with her.

  She’s impressed by his high mood as usually he lapses into silence or anger when he drinks too much. She looks round at the empty bottle by the chair, the discarded crutch, the doors open over the sea. And wonders if it’s quite safe for him.

  “Come aboard,” he repeats. Then whistles with admiration when she jumps the first rope.

  “Mind the parrot,” Jim says, as she leaps over the second rope. He veers precariously close to the open doors and sea as he pulls himself along the rope. “Yo ho ho and a bottle of sake.”

  Cadillac laughs.

  She hands him the ribbon and cigarettes.

  On the ferry to Rockland, Cadillac had described a diving frame Tosca used to make at home from tall, straight saplings of bamboo. Passing a timber store on Main Street, he’d taken her in to buy some wood. That’s just before the wind whipped through, swinging shop signs on their hinges and blowing over sidewalk displays.

  When the shopkeeper opened the door again, wood shavings flew all about the store. And they’d raced across the street to the Rockland Diner to get out of the rain. Inside, there was a brisk business in coffee and syrupy pancakes, and a happy crush of locals and visitors. Even Cadillac could distinguish the two by clothing and accent, though the drama of the storm momentarily broke through any barriers. The glances folks gave Cadillac too, looking up as she walked in, were friendly if curious. Fergus felt he’d like to protect her from people’s stares though he suspects she’d laugh it off.

  The rain reminded her of home. She’d thought of how her brothers would cut wild banana leaves to hold over their heads to keep dry. Huge crashes of thunder were followed by excited laughter and through the back windows of the diner, which hung over a breakwater and muddy flats, she could see great bolts of lightning sizzle from the dark sky into the gray sea.

  Sitting at a Formica table, they’d ordered hot chocolates and a single helping of the pancakes, which could have fed five.

  The following morning, they lay the plywood down along the grass: four twenty-five-foot slats, which were as long as they could get. They come into the boathouse for tools and rope. Jim hears them outside, discussing some plan.

  To start, they must tie two slats together at the top, Cadillac instructs. She pulls them apart to form a tall A-frame. Then they must cut struts to build a tapered ladder. Fergus lays a third piece of wood across and marks off lengths with a soft pencil. Balancing the slat of wood across the picnic table, he saws the measured pieces, then watches while Cadillac ties them to the frame knotting figure eights at each end. She moves easily, used to working on the ground, and he admires her straight back and broad shoulders.

  “When we were small,” she says, kneeling back on her heels and looking up, “we couldn’t imagine countries without sea. We’d heard of places far away: America, England, Germany. But we believed each was an island like our own. Maybe they were bigger, with taller hills, like Papua New Guinea or Bougainville, but not so different.”

  There’s an English word for that, for countries without any coast. She struggles to think of it. “Countries like Switzerland, states like Idaho?”

  “Landlocked?” he suggests.

  “Yes, that’s the one!” It’s how she’d feel—locked in. She’d miss the smell of sea, the way Rockland smelled of its mudflats and fish cannery. She’d miss being able to rest her eyes on the wide blue line of the horizon. The feeling, however misplaced, that she could jump in a boat and paddle home if she needed to, or swim. Besides, how could you ever tell where your own place ended and where another’s began? How would you know where you belonged, if you couldn’t row out in a canoe or kayak, or even ride out on the ferry to take a good look?

  It’d be nice to see the world as one great palm-fringed archipelago, Fergus thinks. Comforting for a child to assume all countries were like your own. To see yourself at the center of the world, which technically she was: the Solomons being tucked right up under the equator. From the age of four, he’d been aware of other places that were far away and frightening—where the war was. He kneels down beside her, clutching a handful of small nails.

  “When I was at school, we had two games,” he tells her. “Americans versus Nazis and Americans against Japs. If you were one of the older boys, you got to be a GI, or even better a marine. The younger boys, like me, had to be goose-stepping Nazis or buzz around the playground like kamikazes.”

  Strange that he’d imagined himself flying around the Pacific. Even now, he remembers the names of battles they’d fought and refought, racing around the climbing frame, swinging hand over hand along the bar of the swing set, ducking under low branches or behind the trunks of oaks and beech trees. Midway, Guadalcanal, the Coral Sea, Saipan, Iwo Jima. Not New Georgia. He doesn’t remember the name of her island, though Jim evidently fought there. He doesn’t remember Jim ever speaking of it.

  “We often pretended to be American Wildcats,” she says eagerly.

  Whenever Cadillac talks of her childhood, he notices she uses the word we. It makes him imagine her amid a band of children running about together: black, curly-haired, barefoot. Swimmers. Canoers. Tree climbers. She’d be one of the ringleaders. Also one of the smartest and most good-natured. He admires her open manner and wonders if her ease and poise come from a sense of place. Whether she carries an equatorial balance within her. By comparison, his own upbringing, on the slanted northern curve of the globe, has left him feeling unmoored and adrift.

  He leans forward to hammer the nails through the ends of each strut: to reinforce the knots and keep them from slipping. Probably a good idea, Cadillac agrees. Unlike tree saplings, the plywood has no natural grooves to hold the steps. She slips an unused piece of wood under the frame to absorb the force of the hammer and he feels her arm against his. Warm and
strong.

  He keeps his shoulder steady as he finishes hammering in the nails, then tugs each strut to test its strength.

  Cumberland Island, Georgia, 1917

  He was sick and they sent him away and it changed him forever. That hot steamy air, the oaks dripping with Spanish moss, the cry of strange birds waiting for him to discover them, armadillos that unfurled and scuttled away under palmetto palms.

  He sees now how his life followed a distinct trajectory, veering ever south from the islands of the Penobscot, down to Georgia, out into the Caribbean, across to Indochina, finally landing him on the shores of the equatorial Pacific. As if he’d succumbed to some gravitational force or instinct.

  His uncle’s house off the coast of Georgia, with its great porch, slatted shutters, and wide steps running down to the grounds, prefigured the resident superior’s verandaed house in Hue. The live oaks and gatored swamps drew him in toward the muggy, tangled wildness of the Solomons.

  It was here, on this barrier island off Georgia, Jim learned that the study of birds was no longer a hobby but a necessity. Offering purpose. It was here he fell in love.

  “You know why this is called resurrection fern?” Uncle Fergo asks. He leans against the low branch of an oak, chewing a cigar, and gently runs his fingers along the bark, covered with what looks like dried scabby lichen. “It’s because during a period of drought, it dries up and looks completely dead. But as soon as it rains, it unfurls and is green again.”

  Uncle Fergo is a congressman. But he only stays in Washington, he says, to protect Teddy Roosevelt’s national parks. There’s no real hunting on this island. Scavenging, he calls it. But he heads off anyhow, in the evening usually to avoid the heat, taking Jim and Helen with him on foot with their guns, or sometimes in the open-top Ford he’s teaching Jim to drive. They go right to either end of the island or to the swamps in the middle. They shoot deer and rabbits and quail. They catch an armadillo, and a snapping turtle, which Aunt Susu makes into a soup. Uncle Fergo lets Jim shoot an alligator, a twelve-foot male. They skin it, dry and cure the leather for Jim to take home with him. Aunt Susu makes gator steaks.