The Hummingbird War

by Joan Shott

  Soft silt oozed between my fingers. I spit out a mouthful of muddy water.

  “Matthew, are you all right?”

  He shook his shoulder-length hair out of his face. “I’m okay. You?”

  I nodded.

  And then he began to laugh. “Gee, Diane, when I thought I was going to be baptized into the science of bird-watching this isn’t what I had in mind.”

  For once it didn’t matter how foolish I felt, how clumsy, how dirty I was with a leaf plastered in the middle of my forehead. I laughed. I laughed until tears rolled down my face. I laughed at the unfamiliar tickle of pure joy against my heart. I laughed at how I had thought I was at the end of my luck, when it had really just begun.

  Chapter Nine

  The Volvo sat in front of the office for more than a week until I asked my father what I should do. He insisted on towing it back to the island where he could fix it. He didn’t trust the mechanics in Seattle, believing they’d overcharge me for incompetent work. After he’d finished the installation of a new starter motor and completed a general tune-up, he called me at work to tell me my car was ready.

  “Can you pick me up on Friday, and I’ll drive back down to school on Sunday night?” I asked. Matthew walked into the office and started his usual coffee-making routine. He pointed an empty cup at me, pantomiming that he would make me the loathed coffee. I waved him away, trying not to laugh out loud.

  “No can do, little girl,” my father said. “It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and the VFW is gonna be marching in the island parade.”

  “I forgot. I’ve been so busy the Fourth of July slipped my mind.”

  “How could you forget the most important holiday of the year?” he asked.

  “Time just got away. I’ll have to wait another week to get the car. Have a good time at the parade,” I said. My eyes followed Matthew as he drank his coffee and sorted through the mail.

  “You sure you can’t get a ride up here and come see the parade? We got a big cookout planned, and we’re setting off a bunch of fireworks. How ‘bout I send Danny down to pick you up. You two could …”

  “No, no. I’ll see what I can do about getting a ride, or maybe there’s a bus. I love you, Dad, and thanks for taking care of my car.”

  “Do us both a favor and get rid of that thing, and get yourself a nice little American model. That starter motor costs twice what a GM part woulda.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.” I put the receiver back into its cradle and shook my head.

  “How’s your father?” Matthew asked.

  “Same as always,” I said. “But he’s busy with his VFW buddies this weekend in the Fourth of July parade, so I’ll have to wait until next week to pick up my car. I’ll do without it for another week. I don’t feel like taking a bus all the way to Oak Harbor.”

  Matthew walked over to my desk, coffee cup in hand. “I’ll drive you up there.”

  “You can’t do that. You’ve done way too much for me lately. I never even got to take you for that dinner I promised.”

  “You could make me dinner. I’d like that as long as no slippery river banks are involved. You know what, even with the baptism, I’d still go with you on that walk again.”

  The day we’d fallen into the river had been one of the best days of my life. Wet and shivering all the way home, I’d still been sorry to see it end. And now I had another chance to begin where we’d left off with the dinner that had never happened. But I imagined him showing up at the apartment, and Nancy asking everything and anything she was dying to know about him and embarrassing both of us. “I don’t think there’s room in our kitchen. My roommates are usually home on the weekend, and they have friends over and all that.”

  The sound of my ridiculous excuse made me wince.

  “I wasn’t thinking about your apartment. How about the house on the island? I want to see the reason you’re fighting to keep that property. And a Fourth of July parade? It sounds like the best idea you’ve ever come up with.”

  “I’ve come up with? I never said anything about…”

  “Come on Diane, you owe me,” he pleaded with his eyes, used his smile as if he knew that was the trump card.

  “I suppose I do.” I felt my feet slipping on those wet leaves, heading for deeper water than I might be able to tread. “Okay, but it’s just for the parade and to pick up the car and dinner.”

  “Sure. I’ll come back to the city afterwards, and you can drive the old beater back like you usually do on Sunday nights.”

  It all seemed light-hearted until I realized once he stepped inside the house on Useless Bay he’d know about Bobby. I’d never put away any of his things, and I didn’t know if I was ready to tell Matthew about my past, although bits and pieces of it had been leaking out to Lilly and Nancy. It was unfair to keep him in the dark, but what if it sent him running? I wasn’t the college coed he thought I was. I was a widow.

  I could think of no good reason not to trust him with the truth after all he’d done for me. The coming Fourth of July weekend was as good a time as any to tell him about the past he once suggested I hid so well. He could come and look around the little cottage, see the photos of Bobby and me, Bobby’s jacket still hanging on the peg by the front door, the flag folded into a triangle with exact corners, untouched since the day it was given to me. He could see how hard I tried to remember a man I’d promised my life to, see me for the steadfast widow I appeared to be. I hoped he wouldn’t dig beyond the thin layers of dust on the photographs, on Bobby’s clothes, on everything I said, only to discover a woman who wasn’t sure what she had wanted, why she’d done what she’d done. Because there were still moments when I wondered which woman I was.

  *****

  There is an old and tired joke in the Northwest that says summer doesn’t start until after the Fourth of July. When we picked up the Volvo at the garage, I wrote a note for my father explaining that I wasn’t in the mood for a parade in the pouring rain, so I’d see him next week. I thanked him for the repairs again and taped the note to his front door. I flipped the hood of my raincoat onto my head and ran to the car, started it up, and listened to the newfound life in my old friend as it rumbled beneath me. I pulled out of the service station as Matthew followed me down the curving ribbon of a rain-slick road to my little house.

  When I opened the front door, the musty smell of a closed life filled my head. Dust covered the tables and pictures and dulled the pottery on the kitchen shelves. Another time I would have cleaned it all within an hour of walking in the back door. “Sorry I didn’t have a chance to clean up. As you know, I don’t have much time to spend here.” I opened the kitchen window to let in some fresh air. Drops of rain splattered on the windowsill’s flaking, white paint.

  “This place is a gold mine, Diane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at the location. On a nice day you can see the Olympics, and the water’s just at the bottom of the cliff, right?”

  I looked west and saw only the gray rain clouds ruffled at the feet of the mountains. “Yes, but I never thought of it as any gold mine.”

  “You don’t know the value of what you have right under your own nose.” He walked through the kitchen and into the little living room. I watched in silence as he picked up the picture of Bobby and me taken the day we were married. Bobby was in his dress whites, and I wore a dress borrowed from a family friend, the best I could come up with on such short notice.

  “Tell me about your husband, Diane. He looked happy back then. He got you,” he said, as he carefully placed the picture in the same little dust-free shadows where it had been. He said it as if he’d known I’d been married all along, no surprise in his voice, but there was a tinge of resentment.

  “My husband is dead. He was shot down over Cambodia last year. Fifteen, almost sixteen months ago. He died on impact, they said, but they couldn’t recover his body out of the wreckage because of governmental bureaucracy. They sent me this.” I pointed to th
e folded flag on the shelf.

  “I’m sorry. I wish you’d told me. There’s nothing to hide. You know how I feel about the war. Look what it’s done to the country, what it’s done to you.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Bobby’s death or our short marriage, so I fast-forwarded to something I could talk about. “I’ve had a hard time moving on with my life, but going to school and working for you have been the best things I could have done.”

  “I’m glad you made that decision. You know that.” He kept his grey eyes on my face, searching for faith on my part, maybe. He seemed to want me to trust him with more than a bird-watching walk.

  What was wrong with me? What was so bad about telling him how I felt? What could happen? I stepped out onto the edge of the thin ice of trust.

  “But I haven’t been doing very well with my life back here.”

  His eyes followed the nervous gestures of my hands.

  “I should move on,” I said, “but I think it’s like saying I’m forgetting about him. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken that jacket down from the wall and tried to put it away. I can’t do it yet.”

  “It’s tough to let go of someone you love,” he said.

  Someone you love. I wanted to ask Matthew if he’d understand if I told him I didn’t know if I’d ever loved Bobby. What would happen if I said I wished I’d never gotten married, never allowed Bobby to talk me into such a quick wedding when he got the notice for his deployment to Vietnam? I’d never sorted out whether I felt sorry for Bobby or if I loved him. Maybe I’d been too young to know what love was.

  “What do you want for dinner?” I walked back to the kitchen and sifted through the bag of groceries, pushing my discomfort underneath boxes of pasta and oatmeal. The heavy rain on the roof fell like an overspill of problems, splattering on the ground and soaking into my already saturated life. “I bought some chicken to grill, but that seems unlikely unless the rain stops. I can make a cacciatore with my tomatoes I canned last summer.”

  “That would be great. What can I do to help?”

  Help? I’d never had a man ask if he could help me in the kitchen, even though I’d been cooking for my father since I was eight years old. I didn’t know what to say. “Why don’t you just sit down and keep me company? It won’t take long to get this in the oven, and then I’ll get some lettuce from the garden for a salad…if the slugs haven’t eaten all of it.”

  “I’ll do that. Just tell me where the garden is.”

  “You’ve already given me a ride all the way up here, you don’t need to …”

  He was standing by the kitchen door with a bowl in his hand. “I’ll have to find it myself if you don’t point me in the right direction.”

  “Okay, okay…on the back of the house. The lettuce is…”

  I know lettuce when I see it. If I’m not back in two days, you’ll be able to say I told you so,” he said, as he flipped the hood of his rain jacket over his head and pushed open the screen door.

  He brought a bowlful of lettuce back, just as he promised, and rinsed it in the sink while I finished getting the dinner into the oven. I set out the plates and silverware and opened a bottle of wine. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table to wait. I had to steer our conversation away from the subject of Bobby.

  “I have a confession to make about the trip to Chicago,” I said, employing my newborn feelings of confidence when it came to walking on thin ice. I could try to free some of my fears about my first airplane trip from the place where I’d knitted them into the dark corners of my chest.

  “What’s your confession?” he asked, but then we heard the sound of a car door slamming shut, and my father walked in the back door. His old denim jacket was soaked, and he looked as if he’d gotten up at dawn and was ready to crawl into bed, even if it was his favorite day of the year.

  “Hey, little girl, didn’t want to watch a parade in the rain? Don’t understand why not. Danny was pretty darn disappointed when you didn’t show up. Whose fancy Mercedes is that out in the driveway?” He stopped at the threshold of the kitchen and looked at Matthew, who stood up when he came in the room. “Well, this here a friend of yours, Diane?”

  “Ah, Dad, how’d you know I was here?” I asked, wiping my dry hands on the dish towel.

  “Thought you might not want to drive back to the city in the rain. Just decided I’d stop by and check. Maybe fill your feeders.” His voice sounded unsure, his words measured, as if he suspected he had walked in on something clandestine.

  “Oh, sorry, this is Matthew. Matthew, my father, Edward Miller.”

  “Good to meet you, sir,” Matthew said.

  They shook hands.

  My father smiled with that reserve that said to me he was glad I had brought a friend around, but maybe this one could use a haircut. “Diane didn’t say nothing about having a friend up to visit. You go to school in Seattle, Matthew?”

  “No, sir, I run the office where Diane works.”

  “Oh, you’re the boss she mentioned. Pretty young to be a boss. What type a business you in, Matt? Diane ain’t never said what she does other than type and file in an office at school.” My father crossed his arms on his chest and settled in for one of his interrogations as if I was still sixteen, going on a first date.

  “I’m the president of the university’s SDS office,” Matthew answered, in a matter of fact voice, but his words rang against the corners of the small room and echoed in my ears like sirens in the middle of the night.

  “Don’t think I ever did hear of that company. What you selling in this SDS business?” my father asked.

  “Well, sir, it’s not a business.”

  My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t think of anything distracting enough to interrupt the conversation and take my father’s attention away from asking Matthew about what he did; or what I did, for that matter. I was waiting for the bomb to drop and had to stop from covering my ears.

  Matthew just continued on as if he were having a normal conversation, not knowing what he was about to say was most likely going to blow up in his face. “The SDS is an organization which supports student demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Our purpose is to bring an end to the war by non-violent protest.”

  My father stood still as a statue. I was sure there were weights in his head balancing back and forth, a mental see saw: on one hand his daughter’s friend seemed like a nice enough guy, on the other hand, he was nothing but one of those rabble-rousing hippies. Yeah, this young guy had what sounded at first like an important job, but he was, well, he was just this side of a criminal. See saw, up and down, down, down.

  “What are you tellin’ me? That my daughter’s been working for a bunch of hell-raising war protestors?” He turned towards me, his face as grey and hard as stone. “Diane, I told you never to show disrespect to no soldiers. As long as I’m alive, I ain’t gonna take that kind of behavior from no daughter of mine.”

  He was going down that path of self-righteousness I’d seen too often lead to anger that was slow to heal. “Daddy, I never would do such a thing. And neither would Matthew. We want to bring the soldiers home alive.” My body ached, splitting at the seams with anxiety and fear. “We don’t want them to die for nothing.”

  “For nothin’? You think I risked my life in the service for nothin’? You got a free country here, little girl, and you better appreciate how you came by that. You don’t get no goddamned freedom by marching in some beatnik protest.” My father’s face darkened to a dangerous shade of livid. He gripped his fists by his side.

  “Mr. Miller, sir, I respect your views, but you have to see that this war is not going to win anyone freedom, especially the United States. It’s my job to help people to understand that.” Matthew said.

  “What are you, some kind of expert? How do you know what a soldier feels? How do you know what sacrifice a man gives to stand up for his country? Why the hell are you sitting pretty in some office when those boys are over there risking their
lives so you can talk this commie propaganda?”

  Matthew was motionless, as if he were standing at attention.

  “Daddy, don’t do this. Let’s sit down and talk about it. I don’t want…”

  “You don’t want what?” he slammed his fist down on the kitchen table, sending the wine glasses on their sides. A blood-red bloom grew across the white tablecloth. “You learning this kinda bullshit in that fancy college? This is what you want instead of moving back here and settling down with a man who can take care of you? What the hell are you doing in that apartment with all those girls? You want to throw away everything I taught you? Then go ahead, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I agree with this anti-war shit. Don’t expect me to approve of any of this, including having this here man sleeping in the bed of your dead husband.”

  He turned and walked out the door, letting it slam behind him. From all the years we’d lived together, I knew there was no use in trying to talk to him when he was angry — so I let him go. He loved me enough to find that gray area of his feelings somewhere down the road. In a while he’d still be ticked off, but he’d never turn his back on me. I didn’t think he would, anyway.

  “My God, Matthew, I’m sorry. I never thought he’d speak like that to you no matter what he thinks.” My knees were still shaking when I sat back down in the kitchen chair.

  “It’s my fault for saying what I said. Are you all right?”

  I nodded, knowing I’d get through it, but I didn’t know if Matthew would be able to get past it.

  “I’ve heard worse than that, and I’m sure it’s not the last time I’ll feel someone’s hatred of what I’m trying to do. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, but we can’t let that stop us. I hope it doesn’t come between us.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

  Any other time I would have melted on the spot, but what my father had said painted a picture in my mind of me as a traitor and an unscrupulous woman. A traitor to my father and to Bobby. Unfaithful to the men who loved me.