Invisible (47 page)

“What?” the father said as Peter put the bird down and reached for another.

The eyes of this one were almost swollen shut. Peter couldn’t imagine how he’d been able to fly at all. The female showed less swelling about her face, but when Peter checked the inside of one eyelid, he saw bright red. These birds had suffered. He ran a gloved finger along the female’s wing. The speckled brown-and-cream feathers were dull, as if they’d lost hope.

“It’s either a viral infection or exposure to an environmental contaminant,” Peter said. “I’ll have to run some tests.”

“That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” the son said.

True, but he hadn’t thought it would be necessary. Naturally, he’d hoped for the opposite. Peter unscrewed a test tube. He peeled the paper back from a sterile swab.

“We can’t eat them if they’re poisoned,” the father said. “Can we?”

“I’m telling you, Dad—”

“You think everything’s global warming.” The father leaned back and put his hand on the gunwale. “You find anything the other times you been out?”

He was talking to Peter.

“No.” Peter dropped the swab into the test tube and twisted on the lid. No one had, not that he knew of. But it was still early days yet. Duck season was just gearing up.

“Poison.” Turning, the father spat into the water. “We should’ve left them where we found them.”

“Mind showing me where that was?” Peter said.

Father and son exchanged a glance.

Duck hunters were a unique breed, willing to endure freezing temperatures, sleet, snow, and bitter wind, and secretive as hell about their prime hunting spots. These two were worried he was going to steal their spot, though there was no threat of that. He didn’t hunt. Not anymore.

“I need to take water samples.” Peter made his voice mild and nonthreatening, the sound of the professor, not the hunter.

The son scowled at the horizon. The rising sun was beginning to thin the fog and cast a general yellow glow over the marsh. The father busied himself in the boat.

“We don’t find the cause, the whole season could be like this.” Peter indicated the ducks lying on the pier.

A quick glance from the father.

“You try that ointment I recommended?” Peter said. “For Gus?” He hoped he’d remembered the Lab’s name.

The son said, “Yeah. His rash is getting better.”

Peter nodded. “He should be able to get in the water in another week.”

Father and son looked at each other. The father rubbed his chin and then shrugged. “Come on, then. It’s a piss-poor spot, anyway.”

They motored through the reedy water. Peter sat in the middle, the father at the stern, steering. The son knelt in the prow. Once they were out on open water, the father revved the engine and they bounced across the polished silver surface.

Cold wind buffeted Peter’s hair. Spray whipped across his face. The shoreline opened up on both sides, lined by sycamores and red maples blooming gold and crimson and reflected between sky and water. Spangles of sunlight below, bright sky and a wisp of cloud above. Flapping geese lifted themselves from hiding,
sounding mournful echoing honks. It was nice to be out here. Uncomplicated.

The son shouted something to his father, stretched out his arm and pointed. The father yelled something unintelligible back.

Peter turned his head and saw a distant dark shape. Another boat trolling these same hunting grounds. The father made a wide loop, watching the other boat as it chopped past, then opened up and headed north.

After a while the engine shifted into a lower gear, and their boat, turning, cut through the waves, rolling in its own wake. The engine slowed even further, thrummed. Around another curve, and there was the duck blind. Wooden poles rose from the water, their tops shrouded with branches, to form an unlikely tree house in the middle of the lake. The two men had taken care constructing it, weaving the branches in a dense mesh, leaving a space high enough to allow them to slide their boat inside.

They slowly circled the structure.

“See?” the son said. “Nothing.”

Peter unstoppered a tube and leaned over the side to dip it into the icy water.

“How’s it look?” the father said.

“I won’t know anything until I get back to the lab.” But the tea-colored water appeared clean enough. No scum or creeping algae that would indicate bacterial overgrowth, no white froth or oily bubbles that would suggest a chemical spill. Peter pressed the stopper on top, looked around. It was a peaceful, beautiful morning. Despite it, he felt a growing unease. “Where were the ducks when you found them?”

The son turned around in his seat. “Over there.” He pointed to where the shoreline bulged out into the water.

“Waited for two hours,” the father said. “And then those four showed.”

“Let’s take a look,” Peter said.

“It’s all the same lake,” the father said.

“There could be something over there, though, that’s not over here.”

“Like a dead animal?”

Peter shook his head. “Teal don’t feed on carrion, but maybe it’s a localized contamination, someone dumping something where they shouldn’t.” That’d be a welcome sight—a big old rusted barrel sticking out of the water and disrupting the delicate harmony between bird and environment. Even a discarded paint can would do.

The father brought the boat around and sliced through the marshy water.

“Fish look okay,” the son said, staring down into the water. “There’d be floaters otherwise, right?”

“Some things can affect one species and do nothing to another,” Peter answered. “There are plenty of diseases that are fatal to birds that pass right through fish. And vice versa.”

“Where again?” the father said.

“Around there,” the son said. “Careful. Water’s getting shallow.”

The engine dropped to a slow chug. Another tight turn. The engine stuttered, then stopped. All three men stared at the sight before them.

On the clear water, surrounded by golden reeds, bobbed a legion of blue-winged teal, hundreds of them, mottled brown and cream, every one of them silent and turned the wrong way up.

BY CARLA BUCKLEY

The Things That Keep Us Here

Invisible

CARLA BUCKLEY
was born in Washington, D.C. She has worked in a variety of industries, including stints as an assistant press secretary for a U.S. senator, an analyst with the Smithsonian Institution, and a technical writer for a defense contractor. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, an environmental scientist, and three children. She is the author of
Invisible
and
The Things That Keep Us Here
, which was nominated for a Thriller Award as a best first novel and the Ohioana Book Award for fiction. She is currently at work on her next novel.

Visit the author’s website at
www.CarlaBuckley.com
.