Bird After Bird Read online

  “Are you happy, Janice?" I don't know where the question came from, and I already knew the answer, but as the waiter arrived with our grilled chocolate paninis, it just slipped out.

  "You know I am, girl. Why do you ask? You going to offer me my old job back?"

  "In a heartbeat, if I thought you'd take it." I had no idea how much money Janice was making since she'd left our firm, but I was sure the move to corporate work was going to bring a pretty penny. There’s no way my firm would match the offer, and it seemed that ship had sailed, anyway. "I do miss working with you. Hey, tell you what—you find an opportunity for me in New York—just by accident or whatever—let me know. You never know. I might be ready to step up to corporate, myself."

  "And leave Troy behind? Or would he come with you?"

  I laughed again. "Oh, please. You know we’re not serious."

  Janice cocked her head to the side. "I thought you really liked him."

  "Well, you know, Janice...I do.” Why had I just said that? I didn’t realize just how much I disliked Troy until I lied to my friend. “I mean, of course I do. I wouldn't keep seeing him if he weren't likeable on at least a base level...right?"

  "Who are you trying to convince? Methinks the lady doth protest too much," she said quietly, looking up at me while she swirled the liquid in her half empty martini glass.

  “Maybe, Janice.” I felt the levity we were enjoying go flying right out the window. Quick, to the chocolate! I had a big bite of my Panini, and just about orgasmed. “Oh my god, these things are SO good. You are not going to find these in New York!”

  "Alright. Wren?"

  "Yes?" I was wiping the chocolate from my mouth and enjoying my martini buzz. Coffee arrived right on schedule.

  "Are you happy?"

  "Yeah-no." I'd meant to say "Yeah, sorta," but changed mid-stream to "no." The result sounded like "You know."

  "No, I don't know."

  Janice was quiet for a moment, dipping the last of her panini in the cherry sauce that was served on the side. She had a bite, washed it down with a drink of steaming hot coffee, and then wiped her mouth with her linen napkin.

  "I'm sorry, Birdy. I know you never want to talk about this stuff, but I worry about you. Your dad just died, honey. It's only been a year. You're not supposed to feel happy yet. You know what I mean?"

  I nodded, looking down at my lap. I wasn't going to cry. I’d done enough of that over the weekend. I'd grown up in the lap of grief, losing Mom so young. Losing Dad sucked, but I'd always seen it coming.

  "I do know what you mean. I promised Dad I’d keep moving, just like we did after Mom died," I said, having another drink of my coffee. I could feel the buzz of liquor wearing off. "Found out this weekend he left me something, and if I needed a reminder, it’s a good one.”

  “I just worry about you. If I lost my dad…”

  “I’d be there for you. Just like you are for me.”

  She smiled. “I know you would. Same old Birdy," she said.

  "Good!" I put my coffee mug down and leaned in toward my friend. "The thing is, Janice, I want to be happy like you are. You've got Harold and he adores you. He may not have been what you were looking for, but that man has made your life complete, anyone can see it. You've been together now for—what?—three years? You glow. You're more beautiful today than the day you married. That’s happiness. That’s what I want."

  Janice didn't blush easily, but she was on the verge. "No, you're right, Birdy. Harold and I have it all. We've got the love, we make good money, we’ve got our health, we don't have any deadbeats dragging us down on either side. His kids from his first marriage are respectful and his first wife is dead. We can do anything we want, give our time and energy to any project we choose. Every day I wake up and ask myself how I got to be so blessed.”

  She had a sip of coffee before continuing. “The thing is, without Harold's love—his true love—I wouldn't feel this way. I might want a marriage, a career, children—whatever, but without the love of a good partner, I don't think I'd feel this blessed. I might have the very same things, but not feel the love—you feel me?"

  "I feel ya, girl. You’re birds of the same feather.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know about that. He’s kind of a penguin and I’m more of a…”

  “An angel?”

  She laughed. “You know better. I was going to say ‘hawk.’ But we choose to flock together, that much is true.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wren

  Falls of the Ohio

  If it was good enough for Lewis & Clark, it’s good enough for us, Princess MuffinStuff. Welcome to stop one.

  We stopped at the bakery before sunrise and fueled up on chocolate chip goodness, counter-balanced by the unnatural concoction of whatever gets added to factory-bottled chocolate milk. I had to detox myself with a cup of black coffee, but you’re young—you’ll burn off the poison in no time.

  The area chapter of the Audubon Society has nothing but good things to say about this place. Let’s see how we do.

  The page was stiff from the glue Dad used to attach maps and brochures from the park. He was so thorough, he’d even included pressed specimens of wildflowers. A single feather from a horned lark had lost some of its integrity, but was otherwise recognizable tucked into the spine.

  In the bottom right corner of the spread was a photo he’d captioned, “An auspicious start for the Two Birditos. Rare barn swallow.”

  There was a list of birds we’d spotted, a few with question marks when he wasn’t certain. That’s the thing about birding. Sometimes you don’t really know what you’re seeing until long after it’s gone. Only when you’re hunkered in front of your field guide looking at page after page of photographs that may or may not accurately reflect the variances among every sub-species, can you sometimes rule out what you thought you saw in favor of a more common bird. In the beginning, that can be a little defeating, but in the long run, real birders come to realize their skills are sharpened by the exercise, and at some point you realize you’re not in it for a prize. There are awards nationally for Most Birds Spotted, but if you’re watching birds for a prize, I’ve always thought you’re kind of missing the point.

  IDing had gotten easier with the rise of the internet, but it still wasn’t as simple you might think. Fights broke out among bird nerds online all the time over sightings of rare birds—even over whether or not you should post photos of them. The argument was that poachers or miscreants would use your information to find the beauties. Personally I didn’t know much about the wild bird poaching trade, but I resolved myself today to keep my photos from this Big Year to myself; or at least to share them exclusively with my birding pals.

  No, this trip was just for me. I’d bought a paper journal just for the purpose. It had a silhouette of a sparrow on the cover, and was decorated with the names of different birds. The pages were blank, lined and trimmed with a sweet birdie icon. I wasn’t sure what I would write in it, other than lists of birds spotted, but I didn’t rule anything out.

  I’d parked at the Falls Interpretive Center and flipped through Dad’s layout while I ate my muffin, washing it down with whole milk. Didn’t have the heart to do the chocolate milk now. The Ohio was up, meaning the famous fossil beds in the falls were off-limits today, but that was okay with me. I’d be sticking to the woods, mostly, anyway. I left Dad’s book in the car and took just the essentials.

  I took the path through the woods, excited as the memories returned. Wildflowers climbed up tree trunks. It was early spring and flowers that wouldn’t bloom for another month up in Chicago were already attracting hummingbirds here.

  I met a few hikers and fishermen on the path. We exchanged smiles and waves, and then I was out of trail. A floodwall rose to my right, and the river swelled to my left. Gravel and boulders formed a sort of rough path through the forest floor, so I left the park trail and climbed over driftwood, slowly making my way among the trees to a large flat rock the s
ize of a farm tractor.

  I sat on the stone, letting the warmth of the sun stored in it heat me to the bone. I watched the river, snapped a few photos, and jotted the names of birds I saw. The music of the songbirds and the rushing water pacified me. I might have napped if I’d brought something cushy to lie on.

  In the journal I added:

  Bring blanket

  Have Dad’s book digitized

  I’d brought a garbage bag, and when I was ready to leave, I pulled it from my pocket. I knew I couldn’t clean up the whole of the banks of the Ohio River, but I’d never been birding when I didn’t regret taking some trash away with me for proper disposal.

  Two beer cans and an old shoe later, I came across the origami bird. A barn swallow watched me from a branch, and I snapped his photo. As I stuck my phone back in my pocket, I reached for what I thought was another piece of trash—and realized what it was.

  “Now, how do you like that?” I asked the swallow. He chirped and flew away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Laurie

  I painted the outside of the letter, folding it first into a bird shape, then washing it gently with brown and gold watercolor pigments. Carefully, with India ink, I drew the heavily lined eyes of a wren.

  The puppy tugged at my shoelaces with his teeth. “What should I call you? Silly Ass Dog? What’re those initials? ‘SAD’? Forget that.”

  The puppy flipped over onto his back and showed me his belly. Reaching down to scratch it, I couldn’t help but grin.

  “Ain’t nobody got time for ‘SAD.’ I’m going to call you…Happy. Hap for short. You okay with that, Hap?”

  He rolled onto his belly, panting. He looked like I’d just offered him a steak and a romp in the woods.

  “Hap, it is.” I returned to the letter, now transformed into painted origami.

  “Almost a shame to set this one free,” I said to Hap, but he didn’t answer. He was scratching at the door, so I took that as my cue. “Walkie time!” I said, grabbing the leash.

  I’d taken him earlier in the week for a long drive, all the way to the Falls of the Ohio to let him sniff around. The park had a great set-up for training, because if he ran too far, he was blocked by a floodwall on one side and a river on the other. The river was up, too, so he had even less room to run, but lots for his nose to explore. If we were going to succeed in search & rescue, I needed to be able to trust him off-leash most of the time.

  The property I was buying from my folks extended to forty+ acres surrounding the cabin, but I still didn’t trust Hap off-leash here. It’d been different at the lake, where the tennis ball had appeal, and my pocket full of jerky treats sweetened the pot. Here at home there were too many rabbits, squirrels, and other small furry critters. And if there’s one thing you need to start training a search and rescue dog on early, it’s to not dash off after every rabbit it encounters.

  The woods smelled full of life. A sweet breeze carried the scent of wild honeysuckle, and I could hear a chorus of titmice tweeting “Peter, Peter, Peter!” from the treetops.

  “Titmouse! What did you say? Titmouse?” The memory came unbidden and unwelcome, but inevitable. My mother hated any language that was even borderline crude out of the mouths of her children, despite dispensing it herself on the regular. “Don’t you dare take that painting to school! I can’t have you showing off a—well, that bird! Our family has a reputation to uphold, Laurence Byrd, and don’t you forget it!”

  I don’t know why she was so uptight about appearances. Honestly, everyone in town knew how she was. Maybe she never had a hair out of place, but that didn’t make her a nice person, did it? I don’t know who she thought she was fooling. The older I got, the less I suspected she cared about fooling anyone at all.

  I won the seventh grade art show with a nice, safe watercolor Northern Cardinal pair on a holly branch—how stereotypical can you get? They were always outside my window, though. Very accessible models.

  Eventually, Mom bullied Dad into buying a McMansion in Crane View Estates, and moved away from our rustic family home—the home where my father was raised, built board after board by his own father, then added onto as needed as their family grew.

  Dad lost his two brothers young—one to scarlet fever, and the other to Vietnam. Grandma and Grandpa sold Dad the house for a song before they retired to Florida, and they’d never redecorated either boys’ room. I’d begged Mom to let me have my Uncle Laurence’s room when I was little, with its dated train car mural and his name scratched in the baseboard.

  “I don’t like it—it seems like asking for trouble,” she’d told my dad. “Your brother by the same name died in that room!”

  “Make up your mind,” he’d said. “Are you going to be a Christian or are you going to be superstitious? Because you can’t have both, and if you’ve given up being holy, holy, holy, I’d just as soon sleep in on Sunday mornings.”

  Dad didn’t often stand up to Mom, but that argument sure sealed the deal. As I got older, eventually I agreed with Mom about repainting the room, but it was years before I convinced her to let me paint a mural on the walls, myself.

  Outside my window a copse of ash trees thrived, as well as a few poplars and pines. A winding trail led back through the acreage where maples and oaks older than time held sway. You could just see the small pond through the trees, and on a crisp fall day it reflected all the colors of the woods. It took all summer to paint the trunks, but by the time school began before seventh grade, I’d managed it. As the leaves changed from green to gold, red, orange, and brown, I painted the colors into the forest mural, so that when I stood across the room and looked out, it was like the woods had come alive inside my bedroom. As I spotted birds and small animals, I added them to the mural, too. By the end of the school year, my bedroom wall teemed with forest life.

  “Absolutely beautiful,” Mom had said, and for a moment I felt the glow of her admiration. “We should let your sister sleep in this room!”

  I tried to hide my disappointment. I’d learned long ago never to let my mom see negative emotions, because she had a way of smacking “those looks” right off my face.

  Fortunately my dad went to bat for me that night, too.

  “Jo’s still scribbling on walls, for Pete’s sake!” Dad had said over dinner. “And it’s not like she’s three years old, Helen. She’s in the third grade! Enough’s enough. Let the boy enjoy the fruits of his labor for once.”

  Mom didn’t like it, and Jo still snuck into my room and tried to “decorate” the mural when she got the chance, but it was a small victory.

  When my folks and younger sister upgraded to the McMansion, I was deployed. My older sister had already moved out and found a place of her own, otherwise she might have taken the cabin.

  The Byrd family cabin was long since paid off, and Dad refused to sell it. “Laurie, you and Sylvia will be needing a place of your own soon, I’m sure,” he’d said on my first official leave. “I’ll just rent the place to vacationers until you get back.” With one of the biggest fishing lakes in the state less than three miles away, Dad made plenty for a few summers.

  So, maybe my mom and dad played favorites—Mom got Jo, Dad got me and Louisa. It wasn’t the happiest family to grow up in, no question, but it got me this house, and I loved it. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  Didn’t get cable TV, and the trees were so tall, the antenna could barely pick up stations from Evansville, a little more than an hour away. I spent my downtime watching birds and making art, anyway, so it all worked out. Never hurts to listen to the radio, you know?

  At least until our song came on, which was what was happened this morning. I switched off the country music station and logged on to the internet. “At least we get DSL out here,” I said to Hap. He raised his head from his puppy nap and blinked, then groaned and went back to sleep. “Wore you out, huh?”

  We’d spotted what I thought was a juvenile Snowy Owl on our hike, but I wanted to be sure. I had it in
mind that snowies don’t fly this far south, so I searched until I found a bird geek board.

  Sure, enough, there was an “incursion” of Snowy Owls from the Arctic, and they were being spotted as far south as Tennessee.

  As I was searching through the threads, a username caught my eye.

  RedWren

  Wren was a redhead. Could it be her? What were the odds?

  No. No way. Too random. What would a pretty girl like her be doing out tromping around in the mud watching birds through binoculars? Surely she had better things to do.

  “Life’s too short for egrets,” she had said. “This lake will be full of them in a couple of months,” she had said.

  I clicked the username link and it opened onto a page touting something called Crane Days, about an hour away from here. A pretty girl stood arm-in-arm with some other folks. Sponsored by Parker & Bash, Chicago something something.

  It was her. I knew it.

  “Time for another training trip, Hap.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wren

  I shut the door of my office and flipped open Dad’s bird book. The cranes I’d found were wedged inside the page from Goose Pond.

  4 Bald Eagles

  14 American White Pelicans

  2 very rare Whooping Cranes

  Countless Sandhill Cranes, coots, mallards, and loons

  4 Redtail Hawks

  1 very cute Wren (Rileyius Birdzilliumptious)

  He’d pasted a snapshot of me, binoculars to my face, standing in front of the marsh. I remember how chilled we were that day, how happy I’d been to leave the marsh and get pizza. I was spoiled on Chicago deep dish now, of course, but that old pizza kitchen in Linton was the only restaurant there that had sit-down service. After a long day in the field, it tasted like heaven, and all the waitresses were angels of mercy.