The Hummingbird's Cage (15 page)

“I turned nine in June.”

I swallowed hard. “Nine in June.”

The boy nodded. “I write my own stories, too.”

“Best grades in his class,” Simon said. “Davey, can you go water Pegasus?”

The boy bolted off, eager to please Simon. And no doubt just as eager to escape the crazy woman with the Medusa stare. When he was gone, I turned to Simon: “Tell me about his family.”

He hesitated. “They have a little place on the other side of the Mountain.”

“I remember,” I snapped. “From the barbecue—ranch folk, respectable people. And he's their only child?”

“They have a couple more. Older boys.”

“But he's . . . their
natural
child?”

Simon didn't answer, but watched Davey refill the water bucket, Pegasus at his side. Olin joined them and was running his hand over the horse's bowing back, then down each reedy leg.

When Simon spoke again, I could see what a careful, neutral mask his face had become.

“Davey was a foundling,” he said. “They took him in as a baby. His natural parents—they've never been part of his life.”

“They
found
him? On their doorstep?”

“I'm not sure what you want to know, Joanna.”

I wasn't sure, either. How do you say, without sounding like a lunatic, that a boy you just met looks like a child version of your husband, but with your eyes? Like he could be your natural-born son?

A son that, in point of fact, had never actually been born.

I'd been about ten weeks along when Jim gave me that punch to the stomach. The fetus had barely been an inch long—it hadn't even registered a heartbeat. But I knew from pregnancy books that all its organs were in place. That it had ears and eyelids and a nose . . . a tiny body cabled with muscles and nerves. That it was distinct down to its fingerprints and hair follicles.

I'd never had an ultrasound and could never have asked the doctor, but I knew—in my heart I knew—he'd been a boy.

And for years I'd been imagining him: his features, his temperament. I'd been dreaming him up out of whole cloth, like Laurel with her rain boots. A boy who wouldn't inherit the malice of his father, but a finer, sweeter spirit.

And every year he grew older—a presence that only I felt. Only I missed.

If I'd carried him to term, he would have turned nine this past June.

And the name I'd chosen for him all those years ago—but never told a soul—was David.

Back
from Simon's cabin I withdrew again, hunkering down until it was almost like the bad old days under Jim's boot. I couldn't buck the feeling I'd stumbled onto something I shouldn't have—a glimpse of the baby I couldn't save . . . the boy he might have become if I had. I couldn't stop picturing his face—every line, every curve, every inch of it. I was floundering in grief and guilt.

Olin had said Morro could be a Place of Truth for me, but that nugget of wisdom should have come with a warning label. Truth wasn't just something that could set you free—it could kick you in the gut ten times over. In its way, truth could be as brutal a bastard as Jim ever could.

I kept to my room, just like the early days when we'd first arrived. Jessie brought me meals on a tray again and didn't ask
what was wrong or where it hurt. At night, Laurel climbed up on my bed and slipped under the covers.

This was new territory. With Jim, it was constant survival mode—every morning armoring up for one more round. I could never have surrendered like this around him, or he would've eaten me alive.

But here . . . here, I could shut down. I could lie in bed—neither asleep nor awake—and just
drift
. Aimless and mindless as a dandelion seed. And know with utter surety that if I only let go, let go for good and all, I could rise and rise . . . a sweet, numbing
nothingness
sluicing over me, through me, warm and solacing . . . until I dissipated at last, like the cloud that day in the vegetable garden.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

It was Olin's voice.

Olin's words in my ear, so close he might have been drifting on the wind beside me. I could smell the tang of cured tobacco . . .

My eyes flew open, and instead of a blank, open sky above me there was only the bedroom ceiling. I concentrated until the light fixture slid into focus.

Courage?
Forget it—wouldn't know it if I tripped over it.

And what's courage, anyway, but delusion? You pick yourself up only to get beat down all over again. That doesn't make you brave—that makes you a punching bag. I stayed ten years with a sadist because I was too witless to see him for what he was. And when I did, I was too big a coward to get the hell out.

And yet . . .

I focused again on the ceiling. On its vast, vacant depths.

And yet . . . I did get out, didn't I?

. . . a kind of salvation.

I
did
get out. And brought Laurel with me.
We broke free of him. Whatever else, we were in a good place now, with good people. And after all this time, he still hadn't found us. Hadn't managed to make his own way here, for all his threats to never let us go.
Ever
. That was something, wasn't it?

Whatever else Morro might be, at least it was getting that job done. Even a rabbit hole can keep a wolf at bay.

I pulled myself up and leaned back against the headboard. My body felt leaden and sluggish, as if it had been weightless for a while and needed to acclimate.

There was a food tray on the nightstand. The tea was still hot.

Later,
I grew restless in the wee hours and got up. Laurel had slipped into my room again and lay fast asleep on the far side of the bed. I slid into my robe and headed down the hallway to the stairs, then down to the living room. Jessie hadn't drawn the front curtains—they were still wide-open to the darkened café and the empty road. The room felt exposed. I hadn't sat vigil on the porch in a while.

I unlatched the front door and stepped out. The narrow valley was hushed except for the pulsing chirp of crickets. I headed to the railing on the far side of the porch where I could see the Mountain clearly. And, no surprise, that tenacious light. Anywhere else, that light might be nothing more than a cell tower. Here, it was more likely a burning bush.

It was a riddle, but there were others—the stars here were strange, too.
Strangers
. For weeks now I'd been trying to trace
the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. The Lion, the Hunter, the Big Dog, the Hare . . . any of them. But they just
weren't there
. My constellations were gone. The stars here kept to their own patterns, their own boundaries, and I didn't know their names. Old ship captains used to orient themselves by the stars. Celestial navigation, they called it. If they tried that here, where would these stars lead them?

A cold wind gusted through, and I pulled my robe close and headed back inside, latching the door and drawing the front curtains. Then I turned.

Across the living room, a light emanated from the kitchen.

And there in the open doorway was the dark shape of a man.

Years of reflex kicked in and I yelped and stumbled back, hitting the wall with a painful thud.

“Whoa, Joanna, it's me.”

Olin's voice.

I gasped, clutching my throat. “You scared the life out of me!”

Then he was beside me, taking my arm, steering me toward the kitchen. “I just made some cocoa,” he said. “Come sit.”

On the table, a teapot was steaming on a serving tray. He fetched a mug from the cupboard and filled it, then settled across the table. Jessie's half-moon reading glasses were perched on his nose and there was a magazine in front of him—a
Farmer's Almanac
. He gave me a rueful smile. “Better?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It's just . . . I guess I still startle easily.”

“What're you doin' up this time of night?”

“Couldn't sleep. Guess I had my fill lately. I'm sorry.”

“Sorry?” he said. “What for?”

“Leaving Laurel to you and Jessie. And the horses—all the work.”

“Don't you worry—some days I'm not fit company, neither.”

He took off the glasses and laid them on the
Almanac
. I examined the cover more closely—even upside down it was easy to make out the year.

“Olin,” I said. “That magazine is from 1938.”

“A good year,” he said, wiping cocoa from his mustache. “Got more of 'em in my den. We visit now and again.”

If he sounded absurd, who was I to judge? I hid scraps of paper in a tea tin under a floorboard.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Olin.

“They aren't worth that.”

“Seems to me you saw somethin' from the porch just now. Ain't a coyote, was it?”

“No,” I said. “Not an animal.”

I might have left it at that, but I was picking up the faint scent of tobacco again, just as in my room earlier when I was ready to give up and scatter to the four winds, until it latched onto me like gravity . . . like a rescue . . .

Olin's hair was lifting in white tufts all around his scalp, as if he'd just come from bed without bothering to comb it into place, and for one wild second, backlit by the lamp behind him, it seemed to glow.

“Olin,” I ventured. “That light on the Mountain—what is it?”

“Well, now, that's been there so long, I don't think about it no more. It just is.”

“But who put it there?”

He shrugged. “Always been there, far as I know.”

“Nobody ever checked it out?”

“Sure did.”

“And what was it?”

“I never asked. They never said.”

I shook my head in frustration and looked down at my mug. I could feel Olin's eyes on me for a long moment before he braced his arms on the table and leaned in.

“Laurel's got a night-light,” he said finally.

“Yes . . .”

“Makes her feel safe.”

“I guess.”

“So if she wakes in the dark, scared maybe, she knows it's just a light, but she feels better. Watched over.”

“Olin,” I said slowly, “you're telling me the Mountain has a night-light?”

“It pleases me to think of it on the same principle.”

I frowned down at the
Almanac
again—at the cracked and curling corners, the yellow cover filled with gourds, twining vines and sheaves of wheat, sketches of spring, summer, autumn and winter frozen in time. It read,
146th year.
Price: 15 cents.

I picked up Jessie's reading glasses and turned them over in my hands. “You two have the same prescription? I guess you really are a perfect match.”

“Me and her was meant for each other.”

The phrase was cliché, but he made it sound like truth.

“Soul mates?” I asked. “What an awful thought.”

“How you figure?”

“I don't mean you and Jessie—you're happy. But when you're not—when you're with someone who makes your life hell—the idea of being bound for eternity . . . God, I'd go insane.”

“And I wouldn't blame you—but that ain't it. The one you're meant to be with ain't always the one you end up with.”

“What . . . ?”

“I figure if soul mates find each other right off,” he continued, “that's best. But if they don't, they can still make a good life—with somebody else or on their own. But sooner or later, if you're meant to be, you find each other.”

“Olin, you're a romantic. And how do they manage that?”

He snapped his fingers. “I forgot. The ol' woman'll skin me.”

He stood and headed for the butcher-block table by the stove. When he returned, he handed me a small parcel in brown wrapping.

“Simon heard you was under the weather,” he said. “Left this for you.”

I pulled off the wrapping, and inside was a book of poetry—selected works of Yeats. It was the same volume I'd had in college, only mine had fallen apart over the years. This one was pristine, the spine still stiff.

I opened to the cover pages, and there Simon had written in surprisingly fine penmanship:
Joanna, for inspiration.

Inspiration? To do what?

As if in answer, Olin turned to pull open a drawer and fish something out. When he returned, he set a blank notepad and a pen in front of me.

The
next afternoon I stood at my bedroom mirror and for the first time in ages was pleased with what I saw. I wore a light cotton cardigan of buttercream yellow with short sleeves and shell buttons, and a tan pencil skirt. I pulled on flat pumps for the short hike into town for Bree's dinner.

I ran my hands down my arms, feeling the firm cords of muscle under the skin. Even after lying in bed for days, they felt strong. I leaned toward the mirror and stared hard. The old scar along my eyebrow—the one Jim sliced open with his pinkie ring with a sharp backhand—was fading. In fact, I could barely make it out now.

I ran a brush through my hair and noticed my little finger—the one Jim had broken when I dropped a dish—was limbering up, starting to bend. That bone had never been set, and the finger had healed crooked and stiff. Now here it was,
straight as a pencil. I flexed my fingers. Even the twinge in the knuckle was gone.

What was it Olin had said?
Get straight and strong inside
. And apparently outside, too.

Jessie called up the stairs. “Joanna! Best set out now!”

I smoothed the skirt over my hips and gave myself a last once-over. Jim would never have approved of these clothes—not the cardigan that flattered me, not the skirt sized to fit, not the sleek pumps with their pointed toes.

But Jim wasn't here.

I undid the top button of my sweater and headed downstairs.

*   *   *

The Periwinkle House had a tiny landing at the top of the side stairwell, with a lavender door under a striped awning.

I'd never met Bree's fiancé and knew nothing about him other than his name and that he worked on a ranch. So I expected a polite and reserved young man sunburnt to beef jerky. But when the door opened, it was a young Navajo standing there, flashing white teeth in a handsome, round, inquisitive face. He wore cowboy boots, black jeans and a silver-tipped bolo with his dress shirt.

“Joanna, right?” he said. “Reuben. Let me help you with that.”

He reached for the cheesecake I'd brought as Bree called from inside. “Sweetheart, don't leave her standing there.”

Reuben stepped aside, and I could see Bree at a little gas stove in a pink sundress and thick oven mitts.

“Look at you!” she said. “You should wear yellow more often. Reuben, honey, put that in the fridge.”

“Sure there's room?” I asked.

The refrigerator was sized to fit the tiny apartment, which was a half story with sloped ceilings. The main room was an open kitchen and living room with a white couch and chair spaced around a Navajo rug. Off the kitchen was a small round table that was laid, I noticed warily, with four place settings.

Bree hadn't mentioned another guest.

“Can I help with anything?” I asked.

“Just grab a wineglass,” said Bree. “Sweetheart, can you pour? Tell me what you think of the Riesling, Jo. It's from Virginia. And the fish”—she lifted the lid off a narrow steamer pot—“the fish is domestic, too. The boys caught them.”

“The boys?” I asked.

She pulled off the oven mitts. “Reuben and Simon. He should be here any minute.”

And that explained the fourth place setting.

“How about some music?” Bree said.

There was a small stereo on a console behind the couch. Reuben switched it on and turned the knob, catching station after station. When he hit soft jazz, Bree smiled.

There was a knock at the door and Reuben answered it. It was Simon, and he didn't look the least surprised to see me. He stepped in, kissed Bree on the cheek and handed her a small paper bag. She opened it and began to set cucumbers and tomatoes on the counter. Simon wasn't wearing jeans this time, but a dark sports coat and slacks.

“Evening, Joanna,” he said as Reuben handed him a glass of wine.

“Why don't you two have a seat?” said Bree. “Dinner won't be a minute.”

Simon pulled out a chair for me and waited.

I found myself unsure how to act with him. This wasn't a Saturday supper at the farmhouse, so what was it? A double date? A setup? I felt blindsided.

This was also the first time I'd seen him since the trail ride to his cabin. Since Davey.

Altogether, it left me feeling vaguely bruised and resentful.

“How's Laurel?” he asked as I took the chair he offered. “Does she like her new school?”

I nodded.

“She making friends?” he asked.

“She's my little helper,” Bree called from the kitchen.

“I want to thank you for the book,” I told him a little stiffly.

“Not at all,” he said. “Maybe it can help you find your voice again.”

Before I could answer, Bree was standing over us with a platter.

“All set?” she asked. “I hope y'all have an appetite.”

She and Reuben brought more food dishes, nearly overwhelming the little table. Reuben uncorked a second bottle of wine.

“My father says you're getting to be quite the rider, Jo,” he said. “He's not an easy man to impress.”

“Your father?” I asked blankly. As far as I knew, I'd never met the man.

“Morgan Begay—he brought the horses.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “But I haven't seen him since.”

“He must get updates from Olin. They're tight.”

“Reuben's been teaching me, too,” said Bree. “I have more room for improvement than you, Jo.”

“You didn't ride back home?” I asked. “Virginia, right?”

“Hampton Roads. Very old family. My parents are both at NASA Langley. I, on the other hand, always wanted to teach.”

“But not in Virginia . . .”

“Oh, I did, for a while. After I graduated William and Mary, I taught for a bit in Norfolk. Third grade. But one night . . .” She frowned as if trying to pull up a faded memory. “One night, that all changed.”

She sounded oddly wistful.

“What happened?” I asked.

Bree concentrated harder. “I was out with friends at a concert at the Coliseum. Little Phish. I was heading home right after, and there was a trucker talking on the cell with his boy, saying good night. The phone slipped. He went to catch it and jerked the wheel just enough to cross the center line. Hit me head-on.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “I'm so sorry. Were you hurt bad?”

“About as banged up as you can be. I'm fine now, of course. The poor trucker, though—I doubt he's gotten over it.”

“I don't know if I could be so forgiving,” I said.

“I bet you would,” she said. “Anyway, I needed a change. That's how I ended up in Morro—just felt drawn to the place. And after I met Reuben, I knew why.”

Drawn to the place?
I wondered if she had the same reaction to the Mountain as I did.

Bree took Reuben's hand and squeezed it, and Reuben gazed back at her with every ounce of heart and soul right there in his eyes. I felt a pang of envy—no man had ever looked at me that way.

“How'd you two meet?” I asked.

“She stabbed me,” said Reuben.

Bree groaned. “I
didn't
. It was a little dart and never touched a lick of skin. It hit your
boot
!”

Simon noticed my confusion. “The pub down the road has dartboards,” he explained. “And, well, some people have better aim than others.”

Reuben pointed to the toe of one worn cowboy boot. “I still have the hole.”

“I'll buy you another pair,” said Bree.

“I like these just fine,” he said, pulling her hand to his lips to kiss her fingertips. “Even if they do leak when it rains.”

That was when my old habit kicked in, and I began to watch them over my wineglass for telltale cracks in those happy, shiny surfaces. For a note too sour, a look too sharp . . .

But I could detect nothing wrong. Nothing rang false or out of place between them—not a single, solitary fraudulent thing.

And I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself.

“Joanna,” said Simon, “you and Reuben have something in common. You both studied in Albuquerque, right?”

“Another Lobo, eh?” Reuben asked.

“It was years ago,” I said. “Only three semesters.”

“Double features at Don Pancho's . . .” he said with a smile. “Ice cream at the Purple Hippo . . .”

I smiled back. I knew those places well. “Cinnamon buns at the Frontier—that's where I packed on my freshman ten,” I said. “The Living Batch Bookstore . . .”

Memories that had been long dormant came rushing back in an instant—familiar, yet foreign, too. As if they were from somebody else's life. It didn't seem possible it had once been mine.

“I had no idea those places were still around,” I said. “But they must be—you couldn't have graduated that long ago.”

“I didn't graduate, either. A couple years, I was back home. I missed my family. I missed—” He shrugged. “I missed my father. And by then I was drinking. My uncle in Shiprock took me to help with the ranch. Herding ponies on motorcycles, whipping in and out of arroyos . . .” His eyes began to shine. “That was a good year. But even that wasn't enough. We'd go to Wheeler to drink our paychecks—no alcohol sales on the rez. I started to hate the idea of going back to the ranch. And one day, I didn't.”

I understood. Wheeler used to be notorious for weekend bar traffic—thousands pouring in from reservations or rural towns. A core group of alcoholics never left. At night, cops would round them up and haul them to the drunk tank at the edge of town to sleep it off. Come morning, they'd be sober enough to straggle to the nearby soup kitchen run by Catholic nuns. After that, they hit the streets again—panhandling, petty theft, pawning their blood—to score more alcohol.

When the weather was good, the system worked—even when officers couldn't find everyone who'd passed out in the bed of a pickup or collapsed in a dark doorway.

But in winter the temperatures could drop to freezing at night, and it wasn't that unusual to find someone dead of hypothermia by sunup. The city kept a running tally. Jim called them popsicles.

Reuben leaned close. “You know Mother Teresa?”

“Of course,” I said.

“She came to the mission once. One morning we were sitting there with our cheese sandwiches and heard a ruckus. I looked up and there was this shrunken little woman in white
robes, face like a walnut and the saddest eyes. My first sober thought that day was, ‘Holy shit, it's Mother Teresa.' She was walking through, nuns at her heels. Photographers, TV cameras. An hour out of the drunk tank, this is the last person you expect to see, right?”

I knew about that day—Mother Teresa had come to town several years before Jim brought me to Wheeler. It was her Sisters of Charity that ran the soup kitchen. People still talked about that visit.

But that happened—what, fifteen years ago? Twenty? If Reuben had seen her in town, he would've had to be around Laurel's age at the time . . .

“So she's passing my bench,” Reuben continued, “and I stagger to my feet. Then I drop to my knees, holding my arms up like I'm a referee and somebody just nailed a field goal. And I'm not even Catholic. She totters over and for a second or two lays her hand on mine. Then she goes on her way.”

He shook his head slowly. “It was one of those moments, you know?”

I nodded. “Life-changing.”

“Hell, no! I went out, pawned some stolen hubcaps, bought myself a bottle—business as usual. Things didn't change till that winter. I was in an alley one cold night, massively stoned, thinking how strange it was that I couldn't feel my arms or legs anymore. And that if I wasn't careful, I could lose everything.
That
was my wake-up call.”

Bree was giving him a small, consoling smile.

*   *   *

After dessert, Bree suggested a walk to Schiavone's bakery
down the block to cap off the evening with genuine Italian coffee. It was mid-September by my best guess and the air had chilled considerably. It felt like the first bite of autumn, and I chafed my arms against the cold.

Simon peeled off his sport coat and, before I could object, draped it over my shoulders. It was warm and smelled of cedar wood.

“But now you're in shirtsleeves,” I protested.

“I'm fine. We mountain men defy the cold.”

“I thought mountain men defied the cold by wearing animal pelts, not by shucking their clothes.”

He chuckled and fell in beside me on the sidewalk.

Bree and Reuben were a few paces ahead, arms linked. Bree was leaning into Reuben, whispering in his ear. Now and then she glanced back at us, her expression conspiratorial.

Lampposts were lit all along the main street and strings of lights were wound around tree trunks and branches. Most stores had already closed for the day, but others remained open: a fifties-style malt shop, its counter packed with young people; a steakhouse and saloon, the kind with swinging doors and frisky piano music inside. The Wild Rose had a candle burning in each window, and the pub looked like it had been transported stone by stone from an Irish village. I imagined it was there that Bree had punctured Reuben's boot with the dart.

Schiavone's had a half dozen café tables on a patio, and most were taken. Bree and I found an empty one while Reuben and Simon went inside for the coffees.

The lights were still on at the town hall across the street, and Bree explained it doubled as a community center for plays and concerts; some evenings they hung a screen for a movie projector.

At the next table sat three older men with intense, angular features, wearing worn cloth coats and drinking from espresso cups. They were deep in conversation in a language I couldn't begin to place.

“This is like nothing I've ever seen in Wheeler,” I murmured.

“I've been to Wheeler, so I know what you mean,” said Bree. “Me, I prefer farther afield. Reuben and I just trekked through Scotland. Next summer, we're hitting the Amalfi Coast.” She laughed. “My Reuben may come from a desert people, but he loves the sea.”