The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (49 page)

“Would she hurt the young rabbit?” said the younger girl.

“She might. A little.”

“This one was hurt a lot,” said the eyewitness. She spoke with authority.

“Maybe it was a cat,” he said, rallying. “You say it was about the same size.”

The children didn’t reply. It seemed to him that they did not trust him. His mama-rabbit theory was too good to be true. They believed in the weasel.

“A weasel would’ve killed it,” he said.

“But if he saw
me
?”

“
Did
he see you?”

“Of course.”

“Did you see
him
?”

“Of course!” cried the child, impatient with the question. She didn’t appear to realize that she was cornered, that having seen the attacker she should be able to describe it. But she was under no obligation to be logical. He decided to wait a few years.

Out in the yard he scrutinized the ground around the playhouse for blood and fur, and saw none. He stepped to the edge of the lilies. Each year the lilies were thicker and less fruitful of flowers, and a gardener would have thinned them out. A gardener, though, would have spoiled this yard—for the fairies who, the children told him, played there. He didn’t enter the lilies because he didn’t want to encounter what he might.

Passing through the kitchen, he noticed that the children were cutting up a catalogue, both pasting. Apparently the older one could no longer get the younger one to do all the scissor work. “How’s the bird?”

“We don’t know.”

He stopped and got them in focus. “Why don’t you know?”

“We haven’t looked at it.”

“Haven’t looked at it! Why haven’t you?”

“We’ve been doing this.”

“This is why.”

It was a mystery to him how, after crooning over the helpless creature, after entangling him in its fate, they could be this way. This was not the first time, either. “Well, get out there and look at it!”

On the way out to look at it himself, he met them coming back. “He’s all right,” the older one said grumpily.

“Looks the same, huh?” He didn’t catch what they said in reply, which wasn’t much anyway. He found the bird where he’d last seen it, beside the back porch. He had expected it to be dying by now. Its ribs showed clearly when it breathed, which was alarming, but he remembered that this had worried him when he first saw the bird. It did seem to be about the same.

He passed through the kitchen and, seeing the children all settled down again, he said, “Find a better place for it. It’ll soon be in the sun.”

A few moments later, he was intervening. They had the whole yard and yet they were arguing over two patches of shade, neither of which would be good for more than a few minutes. He carried the dishpan out into the yard, and was annoyed that they weren’t following him, for he wanted them to see what he was doing and why. He put the dishpan down where the sun wouldn’t appear again until morning. He picked it up again. He carried it across the yard to the foot of the white oak. On the ground, directly below the nest, there was and would be sun until evening, but near the trunk there would be shade until morning.

The bird was breathing heavily, as before, but it was in no distress—unless this was distress. He thought not. If the bird had a full coat of feathers, its breathing wouldn’t be so noticeable.

He was pleasantly surprised to see a mature dove high above him. The dove wasn’t near the nest, wasn’t watching him—was just looking unconcerned in another part of the tree—but it was in the right tree. He tried to attract its attention, making what he considered a gentle bird noise. It flew away, greatly disappointing him.

He knelt and lifted the tin of water to the bird’s mouth. This he did with no expectation that it would drink, but it did, it definitely did. The bird kept its bill in the water, waggling it once or twice, spilling some, and raised its head slightly—not as a chicken would. He tried a little bread, unsuccessfully. He tried the water again, and again the bird drank. The bread was refused again and also the water when it was offered the third time. This confirmed him in his belief that the bird had been drinking before. This also proved that the bird was able to make decisions. After two drinks, the bird had said, in effect, no more. It hadn’t eaten for some time, but it was evidently still sound in mind and body. It might need only a mother’s care to live.

He went into the house. In the next two hours, he came to the window frequently. For a while he tried to believe that there might be maternal action at the foot of the oak while he wasn’t watching. He knew better, though. All he could believe was that the mother might be staying away because she regarded the dishpan as a trap—assuming, of course, that she had spotted the baby, and assuming also that she gave a damn, which he doubted.

Before dinner he went out and removed the birdhouse and then the bird from the dishpan, gently tipping it into the grass, not touching it. The nest the children had twined together slid with it, but the bird ended up more off than on the nest. There was plenty of good, growing grass under the dove, however. If, as the children claimed, the bird could move a little and if the mother did locate it, perhaps between them—he credited the baby with some intelligence—they might have enough sense to hide out in the lilies of the valley only a few feet away. There would be days ahead of feeding and growth before the little bird could fly, probably too many days to pass on the ground in the open. Once the mother assumed her responsibility, however, everything would become easier—that is, possible.
He
might even build a nest nearby. (One year there had been a dove’s nest in a chokecherry tree, only ten feet off the ground.) Within a few yards of the oak there were aged lilac bushes, almost trees, which would be suitable for a nest. At present, though, with the mother delinquent, the situation was impossible.

He looked up into the trees for her, in vain, and then down at the orphan. It had moved. It had taken up its former position precisely in the center of the little raft of grass the children had made for it, and this was painful to see, this little display of order in a thing so small, so dumb, so sure.

It would not drink. He set the water closer, and the bread, just in case, and carried away the dishpan and the birdhouse. He saw the bowel movement in the bottom of the dishpan as a good omen, but was puzzled by the presence of a tiny dead bug of the beetle family. It could mean that the mother had been in attendance, or it could mean that the bug had simply dropped dead from the spraying, a late casualty.

After dinner, standing on the back porch, he heard a disturbance far out in the yard. Blue jays, and up to no good, he thought, and walked toward the noise. When he reached the farthest corner of the yard, the noise ceased, and began again. He looked into the trees across the alley. Then he saw two catbirds in the honeysuckle bushes only six feet away and realized that he had mistaken their rusty cries for those of blue jays at some distance. The catbirds hopped, scolding, from branch to branch. They moved to the next bush, but not because of him, he thought. It was then that he saw the cat in the lilies. He stamped his foot. The cat, a black-and-white one marked like a Holstein cow, plowed through the lilies and out into the alley where the going was good, and was gone. The catbirds followed, flying low, belling the cat with their cries. In the distance he heard blue jays, themselves marauders, join in, doing their bit to make the cat’s position known. High overhead he saw two dopey doves doing absolutely nothing about the cat, heard their little dithering noise, and was disgusted with them. It’s a wonder you’re not extinct, he thought, gazing up at them. They chose that moment to show him the secret of their success.

He walked the far boundaries of the yard, stopping to gaze back at the old frame house, which was best seen at a distance. He had many pictures of it in his mind, for it changed with the seasons, gradually, and all during the day. The old house always looked good to him: in spring when the locust, plum, lilacs, honeysuckle, caragana, and mock orange bloomed around it; in summer, as it was now, almost buried in green; in autumn when the yard was rolling with nuts, crashing with leaves, and the mountain-ash berries turned red; and in winter when, under snow and icicles, with its tall mullioned windows sparkling, it reminded him of an old-fashioned Christmas card. For a hundred years it had been painted barn or Venetian red, with forest-green trim. In winter there were times when the old house, because of the light, seemed to be bleeding; the red then was profound and alive. Perhaps it knew something, after all, he thought. In January the yellow bulldozers would come for it and the trees. One of the old oaks, one that had appeared to be in excellent health, had recently thrown down half of itself in the night. “Herbal suicide,” his wife had said.

Reaching the other far corner of the yard, he stood considering the thick black-walnut tree, which he had once, at about this time of year, thought of girdling with a tin shield to keep off the squirrels. But this would have taken a lot of tin, and equipment he didn’t own to trim a neighboring maple and possibly an elm, and so he had decided to share the nuts with the squirrels. This year they could have them all. Few of the birds would be there when it happened, but the squirrels—there were at least a dozen in residence—were in for a terrible shock.

He moved toward the house, on the street side of the yard, on the lookout for beer cans and bottles that the college students from their parked cars tossed into the bushes. He knew, from several years of picking up after them, their favorite brand.

He came within twenty yards of the white oak, and stopped. He didn’t want to venture too near in case the mother was engaged in feeding the baby, or was just about to make up her mind to do so. In order to see, however, he would have to be a little closer. He moved toward the white oak in an indirect line, and stopped again. The nest was empty. His first thought was that the bird, sensing the approach of darkness, had wisely retreated into the shelter of the lilies of the valley nearby, and then he remembered the recent disturbance on the other side of the yard. The cat had last been seen at what had appeared a safe distance then. He was looking now for feathers, blood, bones. But he saw no such signs of the bird. Again he considered the possibility that it was hiding in the lilies of the valley. When he recalled the bird sitting in the very center of the nest, it did not seem likely that it would leave, ever—unless persuaded by the mother to do so. But he had no faith in the mother, and instead of searching the lilies, he stood where he was and studied the ground around him in a widening circle. The cat could’ve carried it off, of course, or—again—the bird could be safe among the lilies.

He hurried to the fallen oak. Seeing the little bird at such a distance from the nest, and not seeing it as he’d expected he would, but entire, he had been deceived. The bird was not moving. It was on its back, not mangled but dead. He noted the slate-black feet. Its head was to one side on the grass. The one eye he could see was closed, and the blood all around it, enamel-bright, gave the impression, surprising to him, that it had poured out like paint. He wouldn’t have thought such a little thing would even have blood.

He went for the shovel with which he’d turned up no worms for the bird earlier that day. He came back to the bird by a different route, having passed on the other side of a big tree, and saw the little ring of grass that had been the bird’s nest. It now looked like a wreath to him.

He dug a grave within a few feet of the bird. The ground was mossy there. He simply lifted up a piece of it, tucked in the bird, and dropped the sod down like a cover. He pounded it once with the back side of the shovel, thinking the bird would rest easier there than in most ground.

When he looked up from his work, he saw that he had company: Mr and Mrs Hahn, neighbors. He told them what had happened, and could see that Mr Hahn considered him soft. He remembered that Mr Hahn, who had an interest such as newspapers seemed to think everybody ought to have in atomic explosions, didn’t care to discuss the fallout.

The Hahns walked with him through the yard. They had heard there were no mosquitoes there now.

“Apparently it works,” he said.

“The city should spray,” said Mrs Hahn.

“At least the swamps,” said Mr Hahn, who was more conservative.

He said nothing. They were perfectly familiar with his theory: that it was wet enough in the lily beds, in the weeds along the river, for mosquitoes to breed. When he argued that there just weren’t enough swamps to breed that many mosquitoes, people smiled, and tried to refute his theory—confirmed it—by talking about how little water it took, a birdbath, a tin can somewhere. “In my opinion, they breed right here, in this yard and yours.”

“Anyway, they’re not here now,” said Mrs Hahn.

He received this not as a compliment but as a polite denial of his theory. They were passing under the mulberry tree. In the bloody atmosphere prevailing in his mind that evening, he naturally thought of the purple grackle that had hung itself from a high branch with a string in the previous summer. “I’m sick of it all.”

“Sick of
what
?” said Mrs Hahn.

The Hahns regarded him as a head case, he knew, and probably wouldn’t be surprised if he said that he was sick of them. He had stopped trying to adjust his few convictions and prejudices to company. He just let them fly. Life was too short. “Insects, birds, and animals of all kinds,” he said. “Nature.”

Mr Hahn smiled. “There’d be too many of those doves if things like that didn’t happen.”

“I suppose.”

Mr Hahn said: “Look how the fish live.”

He looked at the man with interest. This was the most remarkable thing Mr Hahn had ever said in his presence. But, of course, Mr Hahn didn’t appreciate the implications. Mr Hahn didn’t see himself in the picture at all.

“That includes children,” he said, pursuing his original line. It was the children who were responsible for bringing the failures of nature to his attention.

Mrs Hahn, who seemed to feel she was on familiar ground, gaily laughed. “Everybody who has them complains about them.”