The Bird Saviors (21 page)

    You saw this Indian?

    Jack Brown nods and laughs. Scary- looking sumbitch he is.

    He and I aren't finished, says Hiram. I can't let a man like that make a fool of me and get away with it.

    They gave me the ring and far as I'm concerned, end of story. Here it is.

    Hiram Page stands for a moment in thought. A dachshund waddles down the aisle of the pawnshop, approaches Jack Brown, and sniffs at his boots.

    Hey, pooch, says Brown.

    Hiram Page smiles at the dog and walks around the counter, takes a bone- shaped dog treat from a glass jar, then offers it. Weenie here is a favorite of mine.

    I love a good dog, says Jack. He watches your back, right?

    Hiram scratches Weenie's ears for a moment, then says, Would you mind if I get my gem loupe to make a more professional assessment of its commercial quality?

    Your what?

    Loupe. A magnifying glass.

    You go right ahead.

    Hiram Page stands up, takes the ring and the jewelry box, and heads to his office. Jack Brown shifts his feet and sighs, star ing at the oddities and curios on the shelf behind the counter: A pair of velvet handcuffs. A porcelain cookie jar made in the likeness of a grinning red- faced cartoon Indian with a tall feather headdress. He wonders what Becca's friend Cochise would think of that little number. He can hear Hiram Page laughing and joking with a Mexican woman in the back office. He seems in no hurry. It's like a goddamn bank in here, is what it is. They make you wait just to mess with your head. Bank or car dealership. Same difference.

    After a moment Hiram returns and holds the diamond up to the light, peering at it through the loupe. Well well well, he says. That's a nice stone you have there. I might be able to make you an offer.

    That's what I want to hear, says Jack.

    Let me ask this first: Did you tell me you were planning on buying a new truck?

    I hope so. Of course I'm owed some money here already, right?

    That you are. Page steps away to open his cash register and returns with a white envelope. Now, you can take this, or we can talk about that truck you need.

    Jack Brown opens the envelope, counts out two thousand dollars in hundred- dollar bills. Well, that's a start. But what do you mean, we can talk about a truck?

    Hiram holds the diamond ring delicately and peers through the loupe. The color is a bit milkier than what we'd like, he says. Not the best- case scenario, mind you. And there are a couple of rough spots and tiny fractures, almost like spiderwebs. But they don't ruin the gem. You say this was your grandmother's ring?

    It's been in our family for three generations. I hate to sell it but money is hard to come by these days. I got laid off from my contracting job and my Jeep's always broke down, one thing or another. So I guess I have no choice.

    Hiram sets the ring and loupe down on the counter and purses his lips. Well, I'm not sure that's the end of the story. Maybe you do have a choice. You've done me favors now and that counts for something. Come with me, he says, and passes from behind the counter to the front door.

    They step out into the parking lot and Hiram points to a Ford pickup. How would you like to be driving that?

    Jack Brown looks at him askance. You're shittin' me? That truck looks new.

    It's not two years old yet. But I might be persuaded to give you a deal on it. You won't even have to let that heirloom ring leave your family.

    Hiram Page explains that he'll take the two thousand dollars in the envelope as down payment, the ring as collateral and sell Jack Brown the truck, doing the financing himself, so Jack'll owe him a monthly payment and if he doesn't make it, he'll lose the ring.

    But as long as you keep making those payments, the ring stays in your family, says Page.

    Jack Brown walks around the truck and peers into the tinted windows. What is this, eight- cylinder? Four- wheel drive?

    Sure is. You know your way around a vehicle, don't you?

    You bet I do. Jack squats low and checks out the underside. Skid plate, tow hitch, the works. He stands up and peeks in the passenger- side window. Looks like it has a nice sound system too.

    The best, says Hiram. It'll blow your ears out if that's what you want.

    Jack Brown squats again and looks at the knobby tires. What's the blue book on this baby?

    It's worth twenty- eight thousand. But I'll cut you a deal. I got it from a dealer and didn't have to pay full cost. I think I could let it go for eighteen K.

    Eighteen thousand dollars?

    With five thousand dollars' collateral on the ring.

    So I'll owe you eleven?

    No, thirteen. Or just north of that. I've already figured in a discount for deeds done. But I think we can get those monthlies down to be pretty reasonable.

    Jack Brown smiles. That sounds like a mighty sweet deal to me. He sticks out his hand and shakes Hiram's. When can we do it?

    I'll get the papers drawn up this week.

    I knew it was going to work out between us. That man is one smart SOB, I said that to myself, soon as I met you.

    I'm not so smart, just His vessel. Or as was once said, Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

    Well, shit. You know the Bible by heart?

    Not the whole thing. Hiram winks and takes Jack's shoulder to steer him toward the cab for a closer look. Only the good parts.

    He doesn't mention that the truck has been burning oil for months now, that it's a chop- shop special with dubious parts and patronage. The boy is a fool and the surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.

R u b y  f i n d s  h e r s e l f listening to the liquid melody of a Western Meadowlark. She realizes that in her mind she no longer calls it a Yellowbib but by its common name, Meadowlark. The genus and species even crop into her brain and sit on their own barbed- wire fence, singing like their namesake,
Sturnella neglecta.
It bothers her at first that her habits are changing, that she's becoming Ward's shadow. He never ordered her to call birds by their accepted names, but after a time his way just made horse sense.

    Still she doesn't like the idea of being under Ward's thumb, under anyone's thumb. She's changing. Is she giving up a piece of her personality? Of her specialness? The reason for this preference of Meadowlark over Yellowbib is simple: She's now witnessed a Common Yellowthroat in cattails near the Arkansas River, and Yellowbib is too close to Yellowthroat.

    Now she's begun to see her special names as just another quirk of a backwoods mentality. Even backward. Hick names, she thinks. And she doesn't want to be hick. She may have been born a hick, but she wants to live as something entirely different. Ward insists she should finish high school and go to college, maybe become a biologist.

    She thinks he's right. The tightened focus of another world, one beyond Lord God. A higher level, she hopes. She used to lump similar birds together and not worry about their variations, but now she feels rather foolish not to have recognized the differ ence between the White- Breasted Nuthatch, her Tuxedo Bird, the Red- Breasted Nuthatch, smaller, with a cinnamon belly and an eye stripe, and the Pygmy Nuthatch, smaller yet, with a gray cap. She finds herself swollen with learning, watching the Mourning Doves fly across the afternoon blue sky and alight on the telephone line, and wonders if the White Pelicans have arrived at the mountain lakes yet.

    Lord God told her the day before, Don't get cocky. Remember that pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins. You're setting yourself up for a fall.

    What? she asked. By learning something? By being useful to the world?

    Useful? Counting birds? Lord God shook his head. It's foolishness is what it is.

    It's science. It's knowledge.

    Those scientists don't know nothing. It's all a bunch of hooey.

    Ruby went silent.

    After a moment he said, The world's going to take you down a notch, you can bet on that. Soon as you think you're something, you'll regret it.

    But I am something. So are you. So are we all.

    Lord God stared at her as if at a halfwit child. The late- afternoon light caught the deep lines in his face, the tangled gray wires of his heavy beard. He looked like the ancient mariner himself and said, What you don't know would fill the Grand Canyon.

    Thanks, Papa. I love being told how stupid I am.

    Not stupid, no. But too young to know. Someday you'll realize what's important.

I know what's important. Lila, you, Mama.

    But there's so much you don't remember. It breaks my heart. All those years and all those moments. Remember your little ceramic bunny, Bonnie the Bunny, the one we found in the forest? You would wake up after a nap and immediately give her an Eskimo kiss. You would rub your nose against hers and it was the cutest thing in the world.

    I don't remember that, said Ruby.

    Juliet and I were happy then. Look at me now, cursed and broken. Lord God shook his head. But what's done is done.

    I remember there was a stack of concrete pipes at the pipe factory down the road, said Ruby. You would take me there after closing hours to crawl through them.

    You loved those silly pipes. I never really wanted to go because it was trespassing, but there was an easy way down the back alley where we used to live. I met the security guard and he said he didn't care. Besides, I had to. If I didn't take you, you'd cry and scream.

    I liked the tunnels. It was like another world inside those pipes. They weren't pipes. They were portals to another world.

    That's what you called it. The Tunnels. I took you there every Sunday after church. It was the only way I could get you to get dressed up for church. You'd ask, Can we go to the Tunnels afterward? And I'd say, Yes, of course we can.

    I don't remember Mom ever being with us.

    She didn't go. She didn't like to stoop over inside those tunnels. And she wouldn't have let you crawl around inside them in the first place because of bugs.

She's got this thing about spiders, doesn't she?

Half your childhood she thought you'd die of a spider bite.

    Lord God reached out to touch Ruby's hand. She stared down at his outsized, scratchy hand, the knuckles so wide they seemed swollen, the nails dark with oil grit from working.

    He believes in an absurd God who visits him frequently and gives him visions colored by anger, jealousy, and paranoia. If she can steer him toward the way out, will he listen? She doesn't think so. But he's a good man and her father, and he's in need.

    She couldn't turn away. All she could do was stare at his hand and squeeze it.

    She raised her face to the kitchen window and wiped her eyes. Outside, the warm autumn wind swept furiously across the prairie, tousling the branches of the aspens by the woodshed. From one branch hung the bird feeder full of black oil seed. Black- headed Grosbeaks and White- Breasted Nuthatches bucked the wind to light on the metal cylinder of the bird feeder and peck seeds through its cage.

    Lord God stood and shuffled away. He seemed to be moving slower than ever. His hand grazed the top of Ruby's head. I'll go check on Lila, he said. Maybe you should grab something to eat. You've been working too hard.

    She remembers green frogs she caught in the brackish pools, frogs that slipped through her fingers when she tried to catch them. Once she had sat quiet and still by the creek, watching late- afternoon shadows rise up the cliff walls of the gulch canyon, as if the dark were a river rising, as if it were being flooded with inky blueness. And then a shadow seemed to come to life in the branches of the cottonwood across the creek from her, a sudden unfolding of wings and a silent, graceful swoop toward the rock pool of the creek near her, the inky wings crossing into the silver reflection of the pool as, with a quick jab and thrust of talons, the owl snared a fat frog sitting in the reeds, pinning it to mud.

    Ruby loosed a yelp and the owl swiveled its head to look at her, blinked both its feline eyes twice as if wondering what creature this was sitting so still and silent, then dipped its head to bite the frog. Ruby marveled at its feathers, intricately layered with leaf browns and mouse grays, a splash of white at its throat. It ruffled its feathers and flapped its wings as it repositioned its hold on the squirming frog, then leaped into the air and flew soundlessly away to a perch in the cliffs.

    It all seemed to take place in the split second of a special moment. When Ruby stood and stretched and wiped the sand from the bottom of her shorts, the sunlight had passed below the mountains. All the gulch bathed in a royal blue wash of twilight. She could see up to the prairie, to the pale yellow world above. She didn't want to leave. Still she had to. She knew she would be in trouble with her mother and father if she came home in darkness. She crept home slowly, trying to stretch out the moment she was alone in the wild, just another animal at dusk. By the time she reached the crooked fence that marked her yard, her father stood at the back door, shouting her name.