Birds of Summer (3 page)

“It’s really too bad you can’t remember Esau,” Oriole said. “He was so crazy about you. He was always saying what a wonderful human being you were going to turn out to be because of being raised in such a free and loving environment.”

“Yeah. I know. Too bad he wasn’t right.”

Oriole, who had been deciding between a carrot or a celery stick, looked up quickly, her smile uncertain—obviously wondering if Summer’s remark was repentant, or simply sarcastic. Actually, it was both. She was ashamed of the way she had treated Oriole the night before, but at the same time she was bitter about a lot of things, among which was the “free and loving” environment in which she had been raised. Free and loving could mean a lot of things, and some of them she could have done without. But her answering smile was only a little grudging, and Oriole’s immediately broadened into happy relief.

“So,” she said, “how was school today? Did the test go all right?” And Summer began to tell her about the test, and a discussion she’d had with Haley, and about watching Nicky trying to impress Kid Christopher. It wasn’t until almost an hour later that she remembered about Sparrow. She’d been imitating Kid approaching a bunch of girls, like a banty rooster dragging his wings through a flock of hens, when she suddenly remembered—and stopped in mid-strut.

“Hey. Where’s Sparrow?” she said.

It took Oriole a while to stop laughing. Whenever Oriole laughed it took her a while to stop. “Why?” she said finally. “Didn’t she come home with you?”

“She was waiting out by the road for some of the Fishers to go by so she could ask them to shut up the dog. She wants to go up there.”

Oriole’s smile was rueful. “I’m afraid she’s wasting her time. I mean, even if she gets to talk to Jerry, he probably won’t let her visit. Galya says he’s on some kind of a bummer lately, and it would be best if none of us go up there for a while.”

Already on her way to get her sweater, Summer looked back, and just as she suspected, Oriole’s smile was only partly concealing something uncomfortable. Hurt, maybe, because Galya, her oldest and best friend, didn’t want her hanging around—or anxiety because so much depended on keeping the Fishers’ good will. A wave of resentment made Summer’s face burn: a sweeping kind of resentment that covered a lot of things but finally focused on Oriole for her cringing smile and for sitting there being pathetic while Sparrow was God-knows-where. She grabbed her sweater, ran out the door and let it bang after her. A moment later it slammed again as Cerbe charged after her.

Just as she had feared, Sparrow was no longer sitting beside the road. Summer called loudly and angrily three or four times and then began to run. She had been running at top speed for several minutes when she rounded a turn and caught up with Sparrow, trudging along beside the road. When she saw Summer, Sparrow’s big eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

“Don’t be mad, Summer,” she said. “I wasn’t going to go all the way. I was just going to go as far as Marina’s tree house. That dog won’t see me if I just go that far.”

Summer had just grabbed Sparrow by the arm and was about to start yelling at her when the roar of a car motor seemed to be all around them. There was barely time to scramble to the side of the road before Jerry Fisher’s green pickup tore around the corner and, a few yards beyond them, skidded to a stop. But the man who got out of the cab was not Jerry.

Tall and narrow, with a sleek, dark face like an old-fashioned ad for hair tonic, the man who climbed out of the pickup and slowly and deliberately sauntered across the road, was a complete stranger. “Well, well,” he said “What have we here?” He was smiling, but the smile, outlined by a thin black moustache, was somehow anything but reassuring. When he was very close, so close she could smell him—sweat and a musty aftershave lotion—he stopped, folded his arms across his chest and stared, still smiling the threatening smile. For a moment no one said or did anything, but then Sparrow made a whimpering noise and immediately a growl began to rumble in Cerbe’s throat. The smile disappeared from the man’s face.

“Hey, Bart!” he yelled. “Come here.”

The second man was enormous, with a huge head of bushy hair and a red, heavy-jawed face. As he got out of the truck, he reached into the back and got out a heavy club-shaped tree branch. Panic surged in Summer’s throat, and grabbing Cerbe’s collar and Sparrow’s arm, she began to back away down the road. Grinning again, the two men just stood there, watching them go. But when they were several yards away, the bushy-haired man suddenly hunched his shoulders, raised his club and rushed at them, making a noise like a roaring lion. Sparrow screamed and fled down the road. Cerbe went crazy, growling fiercely and standing on his hind legs in his eagerness to attack. It was all Summer could do to hang onto his collar and drag him with her as she continued to back away. Then the thin man laughed and sauntered back to the truck. After a moment the big Neanderthal-type followed, swinging his club jauntily. Still hanging on to Cerbe’s collar, Summer ran for home—fuming with outraged anger.

“Oh, they’re probably just some of the Fishers’ friends,” was all Oriole said when Summer told her what had happened. “Or Jude’s. That’s probably it. They’re probably friends of Jude from San Francisco.” Jude was a scrawny burned-out type of indefinite age who’d been hanging around Alvarro Bay off and on for a long time. Once, years before, Galya had rescued him from a ditch somewhere and nursed him back to health on organic vegetables and clean country air. Eventually he’d drifted back to the city and to the hard stuff, but almost every spring he cleaned up his act enough to turn up at the Fishers’ for a summer of work in the vegetable gardens and comparatively clean living.

“But why would they be driving Jerry’s truck?” Summer said. “You know how uptight he is about it. Adam isn’t allowed to drive it unless Jerry’s with him, and Nicky says he isn’t even allowed to look at it.”

Oriole shrugged. “Well, why don’t you just ask Nicky about them? He must know who they are.”

It was Summer’s turn to shrug. Maybe she’d ask Nicky and maybe she wouldn’t. Since he’d started reacting to the simplest “hi” as if it were some kind of sexual provocation, she’d made it a rule not to initiate even the most casual conversation with him. But, on the other hand, she was very curious about the two strangers—curious and uneasy, not to mention angry. It still made her furious when she thought about the way the big hulking one had rushed at them. She hated even to think about what might have happened if she hadn’t been able to hang onto Cerbe’s collar. The incident kept reappearing in her mind all evening, and at last she decided she would ask Nicky—if the opportunity arose.

As it happened, the opportunity did arise, the next afternoon while she was talking to Haley on the front steps of the school. Haley Skinner was, or at least had been, one of Summer’s best friends. All through elementary school Haley and Summer had been very tight, and during that time the Skinners—Haley and her parents and her two older sisters—had been like a second family to Summer. In fact, some people might have said they were her only family, traditionally speaking. Mr. John Skinner, who was a banker, liked people and money; and his wife, Adele, loved antiques and cooking and gossip. For a while, when she was quite young, Summer had considered them an ideal family.

During those years Summer and Haley had started a Buckminster Fuller fan club together, entered joint projects in two science fairs and coauthored the first seventy-two pages of a novel that was going to be the
Peyton Place
of Alvarro Bay City. They also got the best grades in most of their classes, usually Summer first and Haley second, although it could easily have been the other way around if Haley had been willing to work at it. But even then Haley Skinner never worked hard at anything except having fun. But in junior high the Summer-Haley thing had begun to fall apart, and lately they only met now and then to argue—as they were doing on the steps. Haley was trying to get Summer to say she would come to a beach party.

“It’ll be freezing cold,” Summer said.

“Who cares,” Haley said, her eyebrows twitching the way they always did when she talked about sex. “There’ll be plenty of blankets. Kid even offered to bring his car blanket.”

“Great,” Summer said. “Will he wash it first?”

Kid Christopher had the reputation of being a world-class devirginizer, and according to local legend, his car blanket had figured in a great many of his exploits. “The Blanket” was a favorite topic of conversation among his friends and admirers and would-be imitators like Nicky Fisher. Once someone had lifted it and hung it up on the gym door with girls’ names on paper arrows pinned all over it.

“Wash it?” Haley said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

It was just about then that Nicky came out the door, took one look at them and kept on going. Nicky would never have admitted it, but the truth was that Haley, with her quick, sharp-edged wit, had always intimidated him. Still pretending not to have noticed them, he was starting down the stairs when Haley yelled, “Hey, Fisher. Come over here.”

“Hey,” Nicky said, acting surprised. His swagger as he walked over, the way he leaned against the wall and just looked for a moment before he said anything and the way he raised his eyebrows as he said,
“Ciao,”
were all obvious imitations of Kid—only when Kid did them, they worked.

“Well” Haley said, grinning sarcastically. “Chow-chow-chow to you, too, lover boy.”

Nicky laughed too loudly, took his hand down off the wall and couldn’t think of any place to put it. To cover his confusion, Summer found herself saying, “Haley wants to ask if you’re going to the beach party.”

“Oh yeah?” Nicky said. “Sure, I’m going.”

“Way to go, Fisher,” Haley said. “Now see if you can talk this hung-up unit into showing up. She says she can’t make it.” She waved and started down the steps. “I got to go meet someone,” she called. “Go for it, Fisher.”

As soon as Haley was out of sight, Nicky was his old self again. “You going?” he asked enthusiastically, his eyes busy, as usual.

“No,” she said flatly. “Look, Nicky. I want to ask you about something. Yesterday two weird guys in your father’s truck almost ran over Sparrow and me. And then they stopped and got out and acted really strange. One of them had a big club and I thought for a minute that he was going to hit Cerbe with it. Who are they, anyway?”

“Two guys?” Nicky looked startled, stunned almost. “Oh yeah. Yeah, they’re—they’re friends of Jude’s. Yeah. Jude met them in San Francisco.” Even though he never quit trying, Nicky had never been able to fool her, and he wasn’t fooling her at that moment. It was clear that something about her question really bothered him, and he was undoubtedly lying to her.

“How come they were driving your dad’s truck?”

“Oh that. My dad probably sent them for something. They’re working for us—helping out with the vegetables.”

“Oh yeah?” Summer let her surprise show. She remembered hearing Galya say that there actually wasn’t enough work or money to justify hiring Jude, except that he was willing to work for very little because he liked the country and Galya’s cooking. “Are you planting more than usual?”

Nicky stared for a moment before he answered. “Yeah. We’re clearing some fields to make room for some new intensive beds. And we’re building some new greenhouses, too. We’re going to raise a lot more berries this winter.”

It made sense. She’d heard Galya say what a good money crop winter berries were turning out to be. But it did seem odd that she hadn’t mentioned the new greenhouses. Usually the McIntyres heard all about anything that concerned Galya. She’d always spent a lot of time sitting in the trailer drinking tea and telling Oriole about everything from the latest organic pest repellent to the subject of her most recent quarrel with Jerry. But there’d been nothing about a big expansion at the Fishers’. And it was strange that Jerry would suddenly decide to hire two new men when Jude hadn’t really been needed the year before.

There was, of course, the possibility of pot. Everyone knew that farther back from the coast the hills were absolutely riddled with marijuana fields. There were always rumors about violent clashes between growers and thieves, as well as between growers and the police. But Galya had always said that she and Jerry would never consider growing pot—or at least, growing enough to attract any attention. “It’s just plain too dangerous,” Galya said. “It would be just asking for the worst kind of trouble. We’ve got the boys’ future to think about, and Marina’s. No amount of money would make it worthwhile.” She’d sounded as if she meant it, but still, in the light of recent developments, it was something that had to be considered—and worried about.

Summer wondered most of her way home that day what it would mean to the McIntyres if her suspicions about the Fishers’ new enterprise turned out to be true. She hoped it wouldn’t mean much. She couldn’t help feeling relieved that the two families weren’t as tight as they used to be, with Marina away and Galya spending so much less time with Oriole. Whatever happened would be the Fishers’ problem and not the McIntyres’. Which, in a way, was only fair. Problems were about the only things the McIntyres had more than their fair share of.

She had just finished congratulating herself on the McIntyres’ lack of involvement when she and Sparrow reached the clearing and saw that Cerbe was tied up—and that meant only one thing. Oriole wasn’t at home. Summer began to run.

She was gone all right, and there was no note. Summer looked in the usual place, the bulletin board on the back of the door, and then just to make sure, she searched through all the junk on the table. No note. And after Oriole had promised just two days ago to leave one if she had to go out unexpectedly. Summer went through the newspapers and sewing scraps and dirty dishes a second time, pushing things around angrily.

“Where’s Oriole?” Sparrow asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Summer said. “There’s no note. There’s no note anywhere.”

Sparrow opened the refrigerator and peered in. “She probably just went to town with Galya to get some propane. The refrigerator’s hot again, so we must be out.”