A Redbird Christmas

by Fannie Flagg

  Oswald felt his ears turn red. After a few minutes Boone stood up and walked over to the large wooden barrel that had THE PATSY FUND written across it, threw in ten dollars, and headed up the aisle right toward him. As he walked past Oswald, who had stopped breathing, he looked down at him and said out of the side of his mouth, “Mexico, my ass,” and kept going.

  As August approached, Oswald wanted to do something for Patsy, but of course he had no money. But there was one thing he could try. Even if he only got a few dollars it might help.

  Butch drove him over to the big Grand Hotel on the Bay in Point Clear. The last time they had been there with Patsy, he had noticed an art gallery in the lobby. Today he mustered up all his courage, walked in, and a nice lady looked at his watercolors, one at a time, but did not offer an opinion.

  When she finished, she asked, “How much are you asking for these, Mr. Campbell?” He was thrown completely; he had never sold anything in his life, much less his own work, so he said, “Why don’t you name a price?”

  She looked at them again and counted. “You have eighteen paintings here, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked again and then said, “I can offer you two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said, thrilled beyond belief that she was willing to buy them for so much money.

  “I wish I could offer you more, Mr. Campbell, these are just excellent, but we’re just a small shop.”

  “No, that’s fine. I’ll take it.”

  When she handed him the check, she said, “I’d be interested in seeing anything else you have, Mr. Campbell.”

  When he got outside and looked at the check, he almost fainted.

  She had meant $250.00 dollars apiece!

  By the end of July, almost all the money they needed had been raised and everyone was pretty optimistic that the rest would be there on time. The morning before Patsy was to go to Atlanta for her operation, Oswald and Roy had planned to have a little going-away party for her up at the store. Roy came in around 6:45 A.M. to get ready to open and whistled for Jack. “Hey, buddy, your girlfriend is coming to see you.” No answer. “What have you gotten yourself into today, you nutty bird? You better not be in the marshmallows again; I don’t have time to give you another bath.” He wandered around whistling and looking for the bird, and when he walked toward the front of the store he saw Jack over in the corner on the floor by the produce, his favorite place to scavenge. “What do you have down there? You better not be pecking the tomatoes again. Mildred will be after you for sure.” He went over and looked; Jack was lying on his side. “What are you doing, you silly thing?” When he picked him up, Jack’s body felt stiff, and his usually bright eyes were strangely dull and glassed over. He looked at the bird again. Then it suddenly hit Roy like a ton of bricks. Jack was dead.

  Roy stood there in shock. He could not believe that this cold lifeless thing he held in his hand was really Jack. At that moment it seemed the whole world went silent and all Roy could hear was the sound of his own heart beating. He continued to stand there stunned and not moving until after a while he finally heard Oswald knocking loudly on the front window. He looked up and Oswald waved at him. Roy went over and opened the door. Oswald could see that Roy was white as a sheet. Something was wrong.

  Roy said, “Come back to the office.”

  Oswald followed him back. “What’s the matter, Roy?”

  Roy closed the door and held him out. “Jack’s dead.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Oswald. “What happened?”

  Roy sat down at his desk and shook his head. “I don’t know. I just found him this very minute.” Roy picked up the phone and called his veterinarian friend, who told him to look and see if Jack seemed hurt in any way. Roy looked him over. “No, he looks fine, there’s no blood or anything unusual anywhere.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Roy, he could have eaten something, or caught some virus; it could have been one of a hundred things. But these things can happen very fast with birds. One day they’re OK and the next day they’re gone. I sure am sorry.”

  Roy hung up and looked at Oswald. “He doesn’t know.”

  The two men just sat there, not knowing what to say, when Oswald suddenly thought of something.

  “Hey Roy,” he said. “What about Patsy? What are we going to tell Patsy?”

  Roy looked up. “Oh, God, I didn’t think about that. Get Frances on the phone and tell her not to let Patsy come up here until we figure out what to do. I’m going to put the CLOSED sign on the door.”

  Oswald dialed Frances while Roy closed the blinds and turned out the lights. Frances picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  Oswald said, “Frances, it’s Oswald. I’m at the store. Where’s Patsy?”

  “She’s right here, Mr. Campbell, just finishing her breakfast, why?”

  “Thank goodness she’s still there. Whatever you do, don’t let her come up to the store today.”

  “Oh?” she said, looking over at Patsy and not quite understanding. “Well, that’s going to be mighty hard.”

  “I know it is but you have to do it. I’ll explain later. You just keep her there.”

  Frances could tell by the tone in Mr. Campbell’s voice that whatever was going on must be pretty serious. Patsy was just standing up to leave, and Frances blurted out, “Oh, honey, I can’t let you go up to the store today.”

  Patsy’s eyes got big. “Why?”

  “Oh, the most awful thing has happened.”

  “What?”

  She looked at the little girl who stood waiting for an answer. “Poor Roy has the measles!” she said, thankful that something came to her at the very last second.

  Patsy suddenly looked frightened. “Oh, no! Does Jack have the measles too?”

  “No, darling, birds don’t get measles, only people.”

  Frances could not imagine what had really happened. Both of them knew Patsy was leaving for the hospital tomorrow and not seeing Jack before she left would upset her terribly. The only thing she could imagine serious enough was that maybe that crazy Julian LaPonde had finally come across the river and gone on a shooting spree and shot Roy.

  In a few minutes Oswald came into the backyard and caught Frances’s eye from the kitchen window. He motioned for her to come over to his house.

  Frances dried her hands. “Honey, I have to run over to Betty’s but I’ll be right back. Now promise me you will not move from this house, OK?” She handed Patsy a coloring book and went next door. Betty and Oswald were in the living room, huddled together in hushed conversation. “What in the world is going on?” she asked.

  Betty said, “Sit down, Frances, we have terrible news.”

  Frances put her hand over her mouth, “Oh, no, it’s Roy, isn’t it? He’s been shot, hasn’t he? Is he dead?”

  Betty said, “No, it’s not Roy, it’s Jack. Roy came in this morning and found him.”

  “Oh, my God, what happened?”

  “We don’t know, but that’s why we didn’t want Patsy coming down to the store,” Oswald said.

  Frances sat down, “Oh, dear God in heaven, what in the world are we going to tell her? You know how she feels about that bird.”

  Oswald said, “Yes, I do. How did you keep her home today?”

  “I told her Roy had the measles, I didn’t know what to say; I wasn’t thinking straight. I also promised her she could go up to the store and say goodbye to Jack tomorrow. I didn’t know he was dead.”

  Just then Mildred came barging in the front door. “What’s going on? I went down to the store and it was closed.”

  Betty shut the door behind her. “Jack is dead.”

  Mildred gasped and looked at her sister.

  Frances said, “It’s true. Roy came in this morning and found him on the floor.”

  “Oh, no,” cried Mildred, and then proceeded to collapse on the couch in a heap, wailing “Oh, no! Oh, poor little Jack. . . . Oh, t
hat poor little bird. Oh, I just feel so terrible! Oh, the poor little thing.”

  Frances looked at her like she had lost her mind. “Mildred, what is the matter with you? Why are you suddenly carrying on like that? You did nothing but complain about him when he was alive.”

  “I know I did,” Mildred wailed, “but I always liked him. It never occurred to me he would die! Oh, poor little Jack.” She then grabbed a lace doily from the back of Betty’s couch and used it as a handkerchief, which Betty did not appreciate.

  “Mildred,” said Frances, “you are, without a doubt, the strangest woman I ever knew. All you ever did was to threaten to cook him.”

  “Oh, I know I did!” Mildred wailed even louder, and threw herself back down on the couch again.

  Frances said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mildred, pull yourself together,” and turned to Betty and Oswald in amazement. “The very time I need her is the very time she decides to fall apart.”

  Later that afternoon, while Patsy was having her nap, Butch, Betty, Dottie, Frances, and Oswald gathered in Roy’s office, trying to figure out what to do. Frances explained the problem. “The doctor told us that the operations are going to be very difficult and dangerous and right now, that bird is the one thing in this world she cares the most about. Jack is her best friend. How do you tell a child who’s getting ready to go through major surgery that her best friend is dead?”

  Oswald agreed with Frances. “I don’t see how we can tell her. I think we have to figure out what is more important here, telling the truth or taking a chance on her not making it through the operation.”

  Dottie said, “But we can’t lie to her, can we? That would be wrong, wouldn’t it?” She looked around the room. “We can’t lie to a child, can we?”

  Betty said, “Why not, Dottie? You do it every year at Christmas. What’s the difference? Speaking as an ex-nurse with some psychological training, I say just go on to Atlanta as if nothing happened. Then later after her operations and her therapy is over, when she’s healthy and out of the woods, then we tell her.”

  “Yeah, Frances,” said Butch. “Just don’t tell her now.”

  Frances shook her head. “That sounds easy and I agree with you, but the problem is that I know she will not want to leave here in the morning until she tells Jack goodbye. It was all I could do to keep her at home today.”

  Dottie thought for a moment. “Could we get another redbird by morning? They all look pretty much alike, don’t they? I couldn’t tell one from another myself.”

  Betty looked at Dottie as if she were insane and asked, “How are we going to catch another redbird by morning? Besides, she’ll know that’s not the same bird. Do you think a strange bird is going to sit on her finger and do tricks?”

  “Well, you think of something then,” said Dottie.

  After everybody left, Roy sat holding Jack in his hand. He had been the one to realize that the only person who could help them was the one man in this world he hated. The one man he had vowed never to forgive. But there was no other way. After trying their best to think of something else, they all came to agree that this was the only solution. Poor skinny, brave Butch offered to go, and so did Betty Kitchen, but since neither of them were familiar with the other side of the river, it was decided that Roy had to go, and he had to go alone. It was the hardest thing he would ever have to do in his life: swallow every ounce of pride he had. But he made the decision to do it anyway. He had to forget about the past just this once. This was for Patsy.

  He wrapped Jack in a handkerchief and placed him in his jacket pocket. Just as the sun was starting to get low in the sky, he rowed across the river to a place where he had spent most of his childhood playing on the river with the Creole families and children he had grown up with, eating gumbo and jambalaya at their mothers’ tables. The happy, sunlit place he had once loved was now nothing but a shadowy murky swamp full of painful memories.

  Around dusk, he pulled his boat up to the dock, walked to the long gray wooden Creole cottage where Julian LaPonde lived, and knocked on the door. No answer.

  After a while he called out, “Julian, it’s Roy. I need to talk to you.” Still no answer, but someone was moving around inside. A few seconds later, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun click, he knew it was Julian on the other side of the screen door.

  Roy was suddenly overwhelmed with old feelings of rage and humiliation. Rage at the fact that this man had ruined his life, humiliated that he had to ask for a favor instead of doing what he wanted to do—reach through the door, pull Julian out into the yard, and stomp him to death. As he continued knocking, he was even further humiliated because, for some inexplicable reason beyond his control he began to cry. He stood there with tears running down his face, as he tried to talk and hold back the sobs at the same time.

  “Julian, I know you hate my guts and I hate you . . . but I want you to look at a picture of this little girl.” He took out the photograph of Patsy and Jack and held it up against the screen so he could see. “She’s a little crippled girl, Julian, and she’s going off to have a really bad operation tomorrow, and the bird who was her friend died last night. If she finds out, I don’t think she can make it. So I need your help.” Then he broke down completely and stood sobbing on the porch like a ten-year-old.

  Julian, who had the gun aimed right at his chest and was fully prepared to shoot, hesitated for a moment. He must have seen the boy in Roy he had once known so well. After another moment he slowly put the gun down at his side and walked up closer to the door, looked at the picture, and then said to Roy in his thick Creole accent, “I tell you . . . I kill you dead if you ever was to come over here.”

  “I know.” Roy sighed. “You can kill me later if you want to, I don’t care anymore, but tonight you have to help me. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

  Julian stood staring at him but made no move. He could see that in the years that had passed Roy had grown into quite a man. The only thing Roy noticed in the dim light was that Julian’s thick black curly hair had turned silver. As they stood there, with Roy still pressing the picture of Patsy and Jack against the screen, Roy heard a woman’s voice from inside the cottage say “Let him in.”

  After another moment, Julian growled. “Well . . . I do it for the little gull, not you, you understand?” Roy nodded. “Come on then,” Julian said roughly.

  As Roy stepped in the room, someone said, “Hello, Roy,” and as his eyes adjusted to the light he saw the woman, looking more beautiful than she had the last time he had seen her years ago. It was Marie.

  Time had not changed the way he felt about her, and from the look in Marie’s eyes, it seemed she felt the same.

  As the sun was coming up Julian came in the kitchen and handed Jack’s body back to Roy. He had worked all night and done a skillful job. All of Jack’s feathers had been carefully cleaned and fluffed up, and his eyes were bright and shiny. Somehow Julian had managed to take the poor dead bird he had been handed the night before and make it look alive again. Even the way the head was cocked to one side and the expression was Jack’s. Roy looked at Julian and shook his head. “It’s better than I could have hoped for. I don’t know what to say, Julian, except thank you.” Roy stood up and reached for his wallet in his back pocket. “How much do I owe you?”

  Julian’s eyes flashed with anger. “I tell you, I do it for the little gull. Now go.” Roy looked at Marie and nodded goodbye and then rowed back across the river with his friend.

  What Roy didn’t know was that the Creoles already knew about the little crippled girl named Patsy and the redbird who lived on the other side of the river. Their parish priest had been in the audience at one of the shows with Jack that he and Patsy had done for the Catholic Church over in Lillian. When he had talked about it in his sermon the following Sunday, all the Creole children who were not allowed to go across the river longed to see the redbird and the girl. And later, when the priest heard about the Patsy Fund, he had taken up a collection for her in
church and sent it over as an anonymous gift. Julian, who had grown even more coldhearted over the years and hated everybody on the other side, had not donated a dime to the fund and resented those who did. Why should they care about those people? He wouldn’t lift a finger to help any of them. But last night, seeing Patsy’s face in the photograph smiling at him through the screen door, something happened that made him change his mind. He really had done it for the little girl.

  Leaving Home

  THE NEXT MORNING, from the moment Patsy awakened all she did was ask when she could see Jack. Frances didn’t know what to tell her until she heard from Roy. Roy had gotten back to the store at around eight and Oswald was there waiting for him with his painting kit. It was around eight-thirty when Oswald finished painting red spots all over Roy’s face to back up the measles story. Roy finally called a nervous Frances. When the phone rang she picked it up on the first ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” said Roy. Frances, pretending the call was from a boyfriend she had dated thirty-seven years ago who had been dead for six years, said, “Oh, hello, Herbert, what a surprise to hear from you after all these years!” She was not sure if Patsy could hear her conversation but she did not want to take any chances. “Well. So everything is OK with you?”