The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (29 page)

The August heat also settled over Bermuda, as
Morgan watched the white object take wing on a southerly wind, rising from the top of one of the prehistoric-looking palmetto trees standing guard at the edge of St. Margaret’s Bay. It soared bird-like at first, before a sudden updraft lifted it a hundred feet in the early evening sky, directly over her regular spot on the beach.

The wind went still, and the large rectangle of paper floated toward her, rocked back and forth by friction, coming to rest at her
sand
-
covered feet. The week-old front page of
The Royal Gazette
was filled with color photos, including an image she was very familiar with and had drawn at least a dozen times.

The Bermuda Petrel, or
“P
terodroma cahow
,
”
was Bermuda’s national bird. Known locally as the
cahow
, it was thought to be extinct for three centuries, before its rediscovery in the early twentieth century. The
cahow
was
credited with single-handedly fending off the Spanish conquistadores with its shrill nocturnal cries, which absolutely terrorized the superstitious Spaniards. But the much less skittish and more practical British colonists in the seventeenth century killed them for food and brought rats, dogs, and cats from Europe to destroy their breeding habitat.

The
cahow
was the saddest of birds, in Morgan’s world. Morgan could remember the hurricane, when she was six years old,
that
had wiped out most of the
cahow
s’
nesting burrows. She and her mom spent two days stowed away in a big concrete hotel, where her mother had to keep warning her away from the windows.

During t
he worst storm to hit Bermuda in fifty years, the winds topped a hundred
twenty miles per hour, tearing off roofs and knocking down trees. Morgan was drawn to the thick hotel windows. The worst of the winds came in the afternoon, and she
held
her hands
up to
the huge piece of glass
and pressed
her cheek
against it
, feeling the incredible power just inches away. The little girl couldn’t fathom what it
was
like
to be a
bird caught
in this storm
with nowhere to hide. She had seen fifty
gallon metal drums tumbled and flung like toys
.
T
he gas station overhang across the highway had been lifted up and tossed away like a stray umbrella.

Morgan’s tears smudged the glass as she willed the wind to stop. But hour after hour it pummeled the island, and she just knew the birds were all dying as she, her mom, and all the other evacuees waited inside.

Morgan fell asleep in her mother’s arms and dreamed she had run outside as the eye
of the storm
passed directly over the hotel. She ran from bush to bush and tree to tree, searching for birds to save. She found little clumps of feathers here and there, but as the back side of the eye wall approached, there were no live birds to rescue. Just as she’d feared, all the birds had been blown away. She knew they’d died while she’d been hiding away in the big hotel, dry and safe.

The photo on the front page of the
Gazette
showed a
cahow
soaring low over the ocean, the way Morgan preferred to draw them. The
cahow
s
were
excellent fliers and spent
the first five years of their adult lives over the open ocean, before returning to their original nesting place to breed. They contributed to their own fragile existence by laying
only
a single egg each breeding season.

Born and then set free for five years to circle the ocean, Morgan thought. How big that ocean must seem at first. Whether
you were forced by
natural instinct or the hands of your own human mother, being away from home
—
away from everything you loved and knew
—
was hard and unfair.
Morgan had spent countless evenings watching the sun disappear out across the bay with the cool breeze and darkness enveloping her, feeling small and pointless.
She was just a puny speck on a sandy rock out in the ocean. Maybe her mom was worrying about her, but probably not. Morgan sometimes heard the
cahow
bobbing out in the water. The Spanish explorers had been scared off by its eerie cries in the night, but maybe the birds were just lonely. Morgan knew what it was like to be alone, crying at night on the beach. For her, it was a pretty regular gig.

In the dying light, Morgan scooped up the newspaper and squinted to read the story about the
cahow
s and other birds. Some man was donating money and land for a nature reserve and bird sanctuary, and Morgan tilted the paper toward the last of the orange glow to read the small print.

“Bermuda is an amazing and critical place for bird lovers,
”
Michael Dupont, the man donating th
e money, was quoted as saying.
“There are three hundred and seventy-five species of birds on this tiny nation and seven are globally threatened. And it is an important stopping point for migration between North and South America.
”

Morgan knew this from school and ha
d drawn most all of them.

The story described the new sanctuary, a series of three islands inside the inlet of Castle
Harbor
, where the ground was high enough to protect newly constructed artificial
cahow
burrows from storm surges. There would also be breeding grounds for
longtails
and
terns
, as well as the thirty or so species
that
used
the area as a pit
stop during long migrations.

There would be an official dedication and grand opening of the reserve, with a picnic lunch and bands from two high schools. Governor Vereker would accept Dupont’s generous endowment for future care of the preserve on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II. The ceremony would be held on Saturday, September 15, according to the story, at the Tucker’s Town main dock. The VIPs would then board boats
and
tour the new sanctuaries at a respectful distance.

“I’m delighted this project has gone so smoothly,
”
Dupont said in the article. “With the heart of the hurricane season upon us, it’s been a goal to have all the work complete. For anyone who doesn’t see the point in what we are doing, I urge them to get out into nature and close their eyes
,
to experience and see with their ears. Listen to the songs of the birds. These
songs are the links to our past,
and man’s footprint has caused terrible disruption in migratory paths and fragile breeding grounds. But it is not irre
versible, and it is not too late
if we recognize the work
that
still must be done.
”

Castle
Harbor
was the largest bay, maybe three miles at its widest, at the far end of Bermuda from Morgan’s spot on the beach. Still, it was only a little more than ten miles from their home as the crow flies. Morgan’s mom had taken them to visit some of the old stone fortresses built on tiny islands,
which had provided
protection for the harbor from various marauders. But they rarely went beyond Hamilton anymore, except to meet her mother’s travel agent friend at the airport every
couple of
months. The airport made up the entire northern boundary of Castle
Harbor
.

The newspaper described Dupont as a video game designer from Charleston, South Carolina. He’d become interested in setting aside natural reserves for birds after
visiting
habitats destroyed by hurricanes. He’d spent more than fourteen million dollars purchasing coastal marshlands from South Carolina to Maine. Most of his projects involved nothing more than keeping the land free from high-rise hotels and trophy homes, leaving the land in pristine condition.

There was a head
shot of Michael Dupont, smaller than the one of the soaring
cahow
, and he looked awfully young to be so rich, Morgan thought. His face was long and skinny, too pale
for a
birdwatcher
’s
. Wouldn’t a birdwatcher be outside all the time? His wire glasses made him look smart, and his spiked hair was kind of cool. He also wore a geeky blue shirt, buttoned all the way to the top. Morgan supposed Michael Dupont knew all about being teased in school.

According to the paper, the Bermuda project was of a much grander scale, beyond just setting aside land otherwise doomed to development. “Here, we’re involved with protecting endangered species, as well as overseeing the mid-point on the migratory highway.
”

Morgan reread the last sentence several times, by what was now moonlight. “Migratory highway,
”
Morgan said to herself, looking out at the black water, wondering where Gus
—
the teacher turned pelican
—
would be spending the night. A carpet of stars
had layered the sky
and the moon had risen over her left shoulder. She should have been home an hour ago, but it had been so peaceful
… N
one of the kids had come down to boogie board the flat water today. Time had gotten away from her, slipping by as it always did when she wasn’t walled-up inside her school.

Mr. Dupont could hear the birds talking, but Morgan bet he couldn’t talk back to them. Morgan knew she possessed a special gift, an ability most people found impossible to believe. People like her mom and her teacher, Mrs. Jones. It was perfectly fine to make kids believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but wanting to find your own father made you worse than a bank robber. Some fairy fluttering into your bedroom to buy your old teeth was fine. L
eprechaun
s sleeping under mushrooms and tending pots of gold at the end of rainbows were reasonable. How many of those freaking shamrocks had she been forced to cut out of green construction paper in her life?

“I have to stop crying,
”
Morgan told the dark, empty beach. She creased and folded the newspaper into smaller and smaller squares, then tucked it away in one sneaker before slipping
both shoes
onto her sandy feet. “And I’m not crazy.
”

Standing up, Morgan shook out her towel and resolved to run away from home two weeks from tomorrow. A man as smart and rich as Mr. Dupont would surely see what a valuable asset a girl who could talk to birds would be.

And s
he knew he would help find her father.

Being a lifelong alcoholic had its truly bad points. Each of Warden
Flint
’s attempts to quit drinking
was
greeted with agonizing hallucinations, both visual and tactile. His
delirium tremens
were not of the congenial pink elephant or miniature men variety. Possibly because of his vocation,
Flint
’s excruciating bouts were marred by mutant insect larvae, which invariabl
y
crawled and squirmed toward his mouth, nostrils, and ears. It was the a
cute sense of them “wanting inside
”
that
drove
Flint
back to the bottle.

As a bug exterminator at heart,
Flint
was never free from his nemesis, drunk or sober. The sudden appearance of the crazy Hooduk woman’s kid in his life lifted his nightmares to a new level. He’d been able to deal with the creepy crawlers, but guilt was a surprisingly powerful emotion
Flint
wasn’t used to.

The empty bottle slipped from
Flint
’s fingers, falling over onto the wood floor with a hollow clink then slowly roll
ing
a few feet toward the front door. He heard the sound of glass on wood, followed by a wet sloshing noise, like a fish at the bottom of the bait bucket trying to show it still had life
in it
. Somehow, he was standing behind the front door of the ranger shack, listening to the damp, wriggling sounds getting closer, growing in volume and intensity. The old floorboards hummed, and when he looked down at his feet, he noticed wetness spreading under the threshold, turning the bleached wood dark. The wetness inched toward his work boots.

Flint
reached a shaky hand toward the doorknob, twisting the cold brass, pulling the door toward him. The sky was moving with dark, cloud-like swarms of mosquitoes, and the ground was a pulsating mass of larvae, undulating toward the shack and its wooden steps like a deep, angry ocean.

“March!
”
It was a woman’s voice from behind
Flint
, and he craned his neck to see
that
it belonged to that Hooduk wom
an he’d knocked up years back, t
he mother of the fat little preacher boy.

“March on out of here!
”
the
woman demanded, and
Clayton
Flint
looked back at the pulsating mass of baby mosquitoes
that
seemed ready to
devour
him.

“Please.
”
Flint
was powerless to change the course of this dream, and he knew it. It was what his daddy had called a
“
foregone conclusion,
”
as in, “Son, you busted out my Buick window with this baseball, so the fact that I’m gonna whoop your ass with this here belt is a for
e
gone conclusion.
”

Allison Hooduk stood firm in the middle of the messy ranger shack, arms
crossed like a dour schoolmarm
’s
.
“Get out of here, now!
”

Flint
’s first step onto the front porch was like stepping in a pile of dog turds, as the mass of larvae gave way around his boot. They were now on the cuffs of his pants, squirming upward
—
wanting and needing
—
and
Flint
took another step out into this sea of twisting little creatures. He moved forward to where the top step should have been, the mostly brown larvae moving in waves, maybe four feet deep as far as the eye could see. The buzzing black clouds above him seemed to egg him on, taunting him to become part of them.

“Please, no,
”
Flint
muttered
to the clouds of black mosquitoes
that
shifted and dipped and made
Flint
’s
stomach sick with vertigo.

Flint
heard heavy footsteps from behind, as the Hooduk woman charged across the shack toward him, screaming. “You killed my baby!
”
The impact knocked the breath out of
Flint
, snapping
his head
back,
sending
his body airborn
e
from the top step
in
an awkward belly
flop dive. The warden landed face down in the swarm of mosquito larvae, which immediately filled his mouth and nose, making him cough and gag, as he pawed at his face. They
also
crawled into his ears.

Clayton
Flint
was spitting and sneezing phantom larvae as he woke from his
dream,
face down on the floor next to the ranger shack couch
that
doubled as his bed.

Flint
checked to make sure he had all his clothes on, then searched the immediate area around the couch for last night’s bottle of vodka. Two gulps later, his head felt a little better, a little less full of those frigging mosquito larvae, for sure. His knees popped and his back groaned, as he got to his feet, then headed out the back door to piss off the deck.

Warden
Flint
sent a pale arc of urine out into the marsh. They were out there, he knew, billions of them, growing and squirming, turning over with little flicks of
their
twitching bodies. The rains did that. It filled every goddamn piece of garbage with a watery nest for them to grow and flourish.
Flint
zipped up, tucked
in
his shirt, and prepared for the war ahead of him. He could deal with half-witted, inbred circus folk, dopey bears in skirts running wild, and creepy little
preachers with kooky
mothers, but he would not tolerate insects of any sort disturbing his peaceful existence. His skin crawled at the thought.

As if to taunt him more, a small white butterfly, no bigger than a dime, rose up out of the marsh behind the shack and flitted every which way, designing crazy patterns in front of
the
gray sky. Before these damn rains, not even the most hardened of cockroaches could have survived thirty seconds in those toxic grasses. Hell, any snake eating a cockroach out there would have keeled over and died a jerking, painful death.

One more slug of Stoli
vodka for the road
and Warden
Clayton
Flint
found his keys and headed into battle.