Fly Like a Bird

by Jana Zinser

  King ran toward the huge animal, barking and growling. “Get him, King,” Nick said.

  The kids looked at each other with their mouths open and eyes wide. Ivy laughed and clapped her hands. “He did it! He really did it. Luther stole the buffalo.”

  “Man, are we in trouble,” said Jesse. “I want nothing to do with this creepy thing, and I mean Luther.” He stayed back to help Raven, who was wobbling across the gravel parking lot in her tight jeans and high heels. The others rushed down to where the Stilton’s stuffed buffalo mascot majestically guarded the wood for the bonfire. Nick tipped his head back, howling “oh, no” like Reuben’s dog Buckshot. King joined him, howling at the beast.

  Ivy stared at the buffalo in awe. “Luther must’ve snatched the thing right from under their noses.”

  “That’s really weird. Why would he want to steal this thing for us?” Jesse asked.

  “Because he’s a thief,” Raven said with a shrug, flipping back her dark hair.

  “He’s not weird, and he’s not a thief. He likes the challenge. It’s kind of like a game to him,” said Ivy.

  “Well, he’s gross if you ask me. Real creepy.” Raven scrunched up her face.

  Maggie rubbed the matted fur of the huge buffalo, patting the solid mass of the beast. “How did Luther lift this thing? Even Max couldn’t pick this up by himself.”

  “Don’t ask. All bow to the great and powerful Luther,” Nick said as he danced around the buffalo, pretending to shoot arrows into its side. King ran beside him and both of them barked.

  Jesse examined the mangy brown buffalo. “It’s so ugly.”

  Ivy touched the wooly fur of the rival school’s mascot. “Yeah, if it were alive, it would probably have fleas.”

  “It’s disgusting,” said Raven as she backed away and stood beside Jesse. “I’m not touching that prehistoric thing.”

  To keep it hidden from the others, Ivy and Maggie draped the buffalo with a green plastic tarp from the back of the camper. Nick tied the tarp to the ground with rope and rocks. He smiled. “I love this town.”

  Later that night at the pep rally, Nick, as co-captain of the football team, ceremoniously lit the bonfire with a torch. A few hundred students gathered around the leaping flames. Ivy stood between the green-tarped object and the fire, warming herself from the chill of the brisk October night.

  Nick gave a short pep talk while excitedly pounding a football between his hands. “We are the masters of the football field. We will destroy the Stilton Buffaloes! They will no longer roam the earth. The Buffaloes will be our captives.” Nick pointed the football in his hand at Ivy, who dramatically pulled off the tarp to reveal the massive beast of the prairie, placidly staring back at the Coffey students. The crowd screamed and cheered as sparks from the fire danced in the air.

  Jesse and Raven sat on the outskirts of the crowd, watching as the bonfire roared hot on that cold, fall night. The students took turns riding on top of the Stilton mascot. The sky remained clear, but the stars seemed dim compared to the bright light of the fire.

  In the nearby gravel parking lot, Ivy noticed a dark figure lurking among the shadows of the cars. She left the bonfire’s heat and walked over to see who it was. It was Luther.

  “Hey, Luth. I thought that was you. Why don’t you come on over?”

  Luther shook his head. His hair jutted out in all directions as if it couldn’t decide which way to go. He backed up a step. “No, that’s okay.”

  “Luther, I can’t believe you took that buffalo.”

  “Who said I did it?”

  “Nobody else has the skills.”

  Luther kicked the gravel but smiled. “It’s been a long time since people have really appreciated my talents. I haven’t even had a real challenge since I took baby Jesus during the Christmas pageant.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.” She pointed to the Stilton buffalo. “How’d you move that thing? It must weigh a ton.”

  Luther pinched his lips together. Then he smiled, his crooked teeth peering out of his mouth. “I never tell my secrets. That’s why I’m still alive. But check out the old buffalo at tomorrow’s game.”

  Ivy smiled. She liked Luther. “I will.” She paused. “Luther, have you always lived in Coffey?”

  “Mostly.” Luther scratched his stomach under his brown bomber jacket. “I moved here when I was just a little kid. Never knew my mother. I was a baby when she took off. My old man died when I was in high school, and I’ve been on my own since then.”

  “Do you ever think about getting out of here?”

  “Nah. I’d never leave now. This is my home.”

  Ivy glanced over at the raging flames of the bonfire. “I’m not going to live in Coffey all my life. I’m leaving as soon as I graduate.”

  Luther looked at his feet and then shrugged. “I figure Coffey’s as good as any other place. They know me here. A person can only take so much uncertainty.”

  Ivy put her hands in the back pockets of her bell-bottom jeans. “Poison mushrooms killed your father, right?”

  Luther nodded and rubbed his unshaven chin. The whisker stubble sounded scratchy like a tree branch rubbing against a fence.

  Ivy sighed. “I’m sorry.” A comfortable silence settled between them. Ivy tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears. “Not having parents stinks, doesn’t it?”

  Luther sniffed. “Only if you had good ones. You got a good grandma. Sometimes things work out for the best.”

  “Luther, you aren’t scared of anything, are you?”

  “You’re not so scared if you got nothing to lose.”

  Ivy cleared her throat. “Remember when you told me that my mother used to go over to the Thrasher farm?”

  Luther nodded and shuffled his feet, moving the gravel around.

  “Did you see her out at his place on the night she died?”

  Luther looked away. “Don’t remember. That was a long time ago.”

  Several seconds passed before Luther released a deep breath. “You know, there’s two ways dead people can talk to you. Through their gravestones and through their death records at the courthouse.” He smiled. “Well, three, if you count the ghosts at Reuben’s place. But I’ll tell you something I’ve learned from fixing things all my life. What’s not there is as important as what’s there.”

  Sometimes Luther didn’t make any sense, but she nodded as if she understood.

  “Hey, you did good with the buffalo. They’ll be talking about that for years.” Then she left the buffalo outlaw alone to watch the celebration of his larceny from his shadowy hiding spot among the parked cars.

  Around midnight when the fire died down, the kids covered the buffalo with the green tarp, put the coals out, and went home.

  The next day, Ivy arrived at the football field a few minutes before the game started. Edna Jean Whittaker took Ivy’s ticket at the back entrance to the stadium. The librarian held the ticket about an inch away from her tiny bat eyes before waving Ivy in.

  Ivy looked over at the vacant lot next to the field. The buffalo was gone. It no longer stood bravely by the burned remnants of the bonfire. Ivy looked around. Then she saw it. The stuffed buffalo, dressed in a pink-flannel nightgown, grazed on the fifty-yard line of the football field. The huge flannel nightgown seemed oddly familiar.

  Nick, Jesse, and the rest of the football team, dressed and ready to play, milled around the sidelines, waiting for the game to start. Next to them, a group of men, including Uncle Tommy and Reuben, huddled together, trying to decide what to do with the uninvited buffalo. Some kids played Frisbee on the sidelines.

  Ivy walked over to Jesse and Nick. She pointed to the buffalo dressed in a nightie, standing in the middle of the field. “What happened? Change of wardrobe?”

  Nick exaggeratedly sighed. His shoulders heaved up and down like Luther did at the Blue Moon, and he imitated Luther’s voice. “There’s so few challenges anymore.”

  Ivy laughed. Nick always made her laugh, but his misc
hief also made her nervous. Uncle Tommy and Reuben overheard Nick and looked over at him. Buckshot, Reuben’s dog, sniffed the ground. Uncle Tommy shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Good Lord. You boys did it, didn’t you?”

  Reuben rested his hands on the waist of his overalls. “It must weigh a ton of bricks.”

  “Believe me, we didn’t have anything to do with it.” Jesse held up his hands. “I swear.”

  A smile spread across Nick’s face. “He’s right. We didn’t do it.”

  Uncle Tommy shook his head. “Bull. Where’d you get that huge nightgown? I didn’t even know they made them that big.”

  Reuben turned and stared at the buffalo’s gigantic sleeping attire. He tugged at his huge ears and his cheeks blushed.

  Ivy reached down and petted Buckshot. The dog sniffed the air and watched the referees struggling to get the buffalo off the field. Buckshot barked and ran onto the field, growling at the unfamiliar animal. Reuben darted after him but nothing could distract Buckshot’s attention until a Frisbee zoomed across the field. Buckshot howled “oh, no” and took off after the flying disk.

  Edna Jean Whittaker left her ticket-taking post to get a better look at what was causing such a commotion. She didn’t see the white lines and stumbled onto the field. Reuben’s dog shot between Edna Jean’s legs and knocked her over. She landed with her legs straight up in the air, showing her precious pretties. The crowd gasped.

  The dog scrambled across the field, chasing the Frisbee at full speed, with Reuben running behind him. The growing Coffey crowd cheered at the spectacle. The referees tried to drag the giant buffalo off the field, but the heavy animal refused to budge. Luther stood at the top of the bleachers and surveyed the commotion he had created.

  Ivy left the boys and climbed the stairs to join Luther. “Looks like they’re having a hard time getting that thing off the field.”

  They watched in silence as the officials wrestled with the huge stuffed buffalo.

  “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Ivy laughed. “Luther, how come you like to take things?”

  Luther rubbed his neck and adjusted the grease-streaked ball cap on his head. “Just for kicks. I don’t really plan it. I guess I’ve just got a talent for it.”

  Ivy pointed to the buffalo dressed in nightclothes. “That’s Patty’s nightgown, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Patty gave it to me when I went back to fix the furnace at Reuben’s yesterday. I needed something that would fit the buffalo. It was her idea.”

  Ivy laughed. Underneath Patty’s sadness, humor still lurked.

  Luther pulled up his jeans but they slid back low on his hips. He put his hands in his pockets and pointed across the football field with his bristly chin. “Look.” His lips parted in a smile that revealed crooked teeth, black from chewing tobacco.

  The Stilton football squad had arrived and the angry, red-faced captain sprinted across the field. He ripped the pink nightgown off the mascot’s back and the defenseless buffalo stood naked.

  The horn section of Coffey’s high school band started playing the stripper song. The Coffey crowd cheered and whistled and the people in the stadium stomped their feet. They pounded the bleachers until it sounded like a herd of buffaloes stampeding across the Iowa prairie.

  Chapter 20

  DEADMAN’S WOODS

  The first snow fell on Halloween. When night descended, the spooky dark clouds veiled the full moon like black lace on a lantern. Only a soft glow illuminated the snowy earth.

  Ivy and her friends, dressed in costumes, piled into Nick’s misfit camper and King joined them for their Halloween romp. Nick kissed his fingers and touched the dashboard, then pounded the truck’s huge steering wheel. “Ride the Monstrosity-atrocity, if you dare. Let’s tame this wily beast.”

  Raven, dressed like a nurse, pinned a nurse’s cap to her long dark hair. A toy stethoscope hung around the revealing neckline of her very short uniform. Ivy looked like Raggedy Ann with red yarn hair and a white pinafore. Maggie dressed like Merlin the Wizard. She converted last year’s witch’s hat into a magician’s cap and pinned white moons and stars on Ruth Jackson’s black barber smock. Maggie touched Ivy’s yarn hair with her magic wand, which was an old ruler covered with silver glitter. “Hey, rag head.”

  “Don’t mess with my wig-hat, man. Leon Wilson would be jealous,” Ivy said.

  “Don’t let Miss Shirley hear you say that,” Maggie said.

  Nick and Jesse had dressed as ghosts with tattered white sheets and white paint covering any skin that showed.

  As they drove down the streets of Coffey, Nick and Jesse sat in the front cab. Nick pushed in his Merle Haggard eight-track tape. “Now we can officially cruise.”

  “If We Make It Through December” blared out of the speakers.

  They stopped at Judy’s Beauty Shop for the hot cocoa and cinnamon rolls that Judy was giving out just before she closed for the day, then piled back into the Monstrosity.

  “Let’s have some fun,” Nick said as he took a sharp corner, and everyone fell off the benches, spilling together in the back of the camper. Maggie grabbed the edge of the bench and pulled herself up. Nick jerked the steering wheel, hollering like a rodeo cowboy.

  “Yee-haw!” The camper tilted, and the tires screeched on the path cleared by the snowplow. “I’m going to make this wily beast squeal.”

  Jesse put his hands over Nick’s eyes. Nick pushed Jesse away with one hand on the steering wheel. The camper lumbered over a bump, jarring the riders. “What was that? Did we just run over somebody, or what?” Ivy asked.

  “Probably crazy Rosie on her way home from town with her stupid dogs,” said Jesse.

  Holding her head, Ivy crawled onto the bench and looked out the smudged back window to see the camper careening erratically over Edna Jean Whittaker’s wide expanse of lawn. “Hey, slow down, Nick.”

  “If Edna Jean sees us, she’ll call the sheriff,” said Maggie.

  “She can barely see. What’s she going to tell him?” Nick said.

  “That a UFO flew across her front yard, just like she always says. But this time, she’ll be right,” said Maggie.

  “It’s Halloween. What does she expect?” Nick said.

  Edna Jean’s front door swung open. The librarian squinted into the dark night like a frightened rodent. The camper reeled across the yard in front of her.

  Nick let go of the steering wheel and pounded the dash. “Look, there’s Edna Jean!”

  Edna Jean’s white miniature poodle, Tiny Fifi, yapped as the camper zigzagged past the door. Her high-pitched bark had the same pitch as Edna Jean’s voice—high and shrill.

  King barked and jumped up on the bench to see what was making such a hideous yapping. Maggie braced her hands on the roof and bench. “She probably thinks we’re dog-nappers.”

  “Hey, man, look, she’s not wearing her wig,” said Nick.

  Fuzzy clumps of matted hair stuck out all over Edna Jean’s head. Ivy had heard that in her anger and grief over losing her barber boyfriend, Edna Jean had taken the barber’s clippers, the only thing he had left behind, and shaved her head. Her defiant lovesick revenge had backfired. Her hair never grew back and she was forced to wear wigs for the rest of her life.

  The Monstrosity swerved in the icy snow and Nick barely missed Edna Jean’s azalea bushes. The front tire hit her picket fence, obscured by the falling snow. The short fence collapsed like an evenly-placed row of dominoes.

  As the camper lurched, Ivy spoke to Jesse through the open window to the cab. “Jesse, you’ve got to get me out of Coffey fast, or I’ll start to think this place is normal.”

  Jesse held Ivy’s hand through the window as the camper bounced over the curb and wobbled back onto the road. “This town could never be normal. I’ve got it all planned. We’re getting out of here this summer. We’ll go to Europe and leave this jerk town.”

  Ivy looked at Jesse’s handsome face, arrogant with confidence. Jesse planned everyt
hing. He never took risks or left anything to chance, and she knew that Jesse would never be satisfied in Coffey. “Yeah, I hate this place,” she said.

  “I love this place,” Nick said as he banged on the steering wheel. “Let’s go check out the cemetery and see what our fellow spooks are doing.”

  They drove by Luther Matthew’s place and Rosie’s old shack. Just past the Thrasher farm, they turned onto the overgrown dirt road to Deadman’s Woods. Nick pulled into the Weeping Willow Cemetery about a quarter mile north of Reuben’s farm and got out. Maggie told King to stay in the truck.

  The boys turned on their flashlights and crept through the shadowy graves. The wind picked up, and the cemetery’s old gate squeaked and groaned in the dark. Maggie shuddered at every sound. “The woods are creepy at night. You could lose your mind out here.”

  “No wonder that old Rosie lady is so crazy,” said Raven.

  Ivy had never felt scared at the cemetery because her father’s gravestone was there, lying right next to Grandpa Sam. In a strange way, it comforted her to know she could be that close to her father. She walked over the second hill to her father’s grave and brushed the snow off his marker. She had read the words so many times, she had it memorized.

  Robert Taylor, Born September 2, 1933. Died December 14, 1959. A loving son, brother, and father.

  She remembered what Luther had said about dead people talking to her through their gravestones. What could her father’s gravestone tell her? She wished she knew where her mother was buried but she’d never even met her other grandparents, so she couldn’t ask them.

  Jesse yelled to Ivy and she walked back down the hill to join her friends. Nick flapped his white sheet and turned to his fellow ghost. “Okay, Mr. Heebie-Jeebies, are you ready for Operation Spook?”

  “I still think it’s a bad idea. We’d better not get caught,” Jesse said. “I don’t want to get thrown off the football team for trespassing.”

  Nick waved his sheet in the breeze. It billowed and snapped in the cold wind. “We aren’t trespassing. We’re going over to Reuben’s to commune with our fellow ghosts.”