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Authors: Howard Norman

BOOK: The Bird Artist
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Adele and Rhea sat down. The Moravians said “Amen” in unison.
“Was that a prayer?” Romeo said. “I'm not suggesting that it wasn't, Adele.”
“It was a personal reminiscence,” Adele said, “to offset the sort offered by Reverend Sillet, who was embarrassed to have Helen in his church.”
“Well, thank you, then.”
Apparently what Adele had said had wholly sufficed, because nobody else offered a second testimonial. Looking around at silent faces like an auctioneer, Romeo sat down, and an afternoon of steady eating, drinking, and talk followed.
It was threatening rain now, though not foggy at all. Yet at about four o'clock the foghorn sounded a single, long blast. There were perhaps a hundred people still gathered, and while nothing could entirely sober the drunkest, the foghorn did silence everyone for a moment.
Soon Botho August appeared at the top of the grassy
incline in clear view of the tables. He held a whiskey bottle and had obviously been drinking. I stood and looked at my mother. She covered her face with her hands.
Botho dropped to his knees. He had on a suit but no socks or shoes. He tucked his head to his chest, clutched his knees, and tumbled to within feet of the Moravians' table. None of the Moravians moved from their chairs. Botho got slowly to his feet, grabbed a breast of quail from Jarvis Bellecamp's plate. “Ever drawn one of these, Fabian?” he said. He stuffed some quail meat into his mouth, then spit part of it out.
“Before I did those somersaults,” he said, slowly shaking his head back and forth, “I planned on holding a grudge for nobody inviting me here to this testimonial.”
“The whole village was naturally invited,” Romeo said. “There wasn't a thought to print up a special invitation for you.”
“Well, no matter,” Botho said. He picked up a bottle of wine, cocked his head back, held his mouth open in an exaggerated O, and dribbled in the remaining few drops. “I feel a lot better now, anyway. It may be of interest to the truth”—he steadied himself, hands flat on the table—“to the
truth
, to inform you, my dear neighbors, that Helen Twombly came to me with her intentions.”
My mother set out toward our house. Rocking on his heels, Botho squinted and watched her leave. He turned back and spoke more or less at Romeo.
“We had a little chat, Helen and me, early on the day she died,” Botho said. “In that regard, count me as an accomplice
to her drowning, but at her own request. Keeping the lighthouse beam off, as I did that night.”
Botho then fell over onto the Moravians' table. More precisely, his head shattered Jarvis Bellecamp's plate.
Jarvis got up and said, “We've felt welcome, anyway.” He nodded to his families and began walking toward the wagons. In only a few moments, the Moravians' wagons made a dust-up down the road, south.
I was one of the last to leave. Well after the dishes, spare food, and bottles were cleared, after the other tables were taken in, Botho remained sprawled across the Moravians' table.
Helen was buried next to Emile. A light rain had begun. By dark, Spivey's was packed to the last table. I think Lemuel even brought a few chairs down from his own dining room. Margaret had saved me a place at a corner table. I got a cup of coffee right away. I drank it, then suddenly needed some air. “I'll be right back,” I said to Margaret. “You go ahead, order anything for me.”
I walked back to the Moravians' table. I sat next to Botho. He groaned, yet did not fully wake. I could hear rain right on Botho's back, on the table, and out on the sea.
By the time I got back to Spivey's, my clothes were soaked through. Margaret had finished her meal. “Where'd you go in such a hurry?” she said.
“To look at Botho August close up.”
“Not a pretty sight, I imagine.” She took out a little flask and poured whiskey into her empty water glass.
“He's ruined a perfectly good suit.”
T
he
M
urder
I
t was a chill morning in mid-September. I had not slept all night. In fact, from just after supper I drank coffee without letting up, a binge unlike any I could remember. At dawn I made my way to Margaret's house. I knew that Enoch was away to the north. I pounded on her door until its rough wood chafed my knuckles to bleeding.
“I hear you!” she said. “Hold on! A girl's got to wear clothes to the door!” The door opened. Margaret had on her nightshirt. “No surprise it's you, Fabian.”
“Please row out with me to Mint Cove. I need you to figure out for me what's on my mind.”
“Why there in particular?”
“Past the lobster boats nobody's around.”
“Just us school kids sharing nasty secrets, eh?”
“Just us, yes.”
She left the door open. I saw her slip on a raincoat and galoshes, then take a revolver from the desk drawer.
Once outside, she shifted the revolver from one pocket to the other, slowly, so that I would see it. Looking at me, she shrugged. “Scoters have stayed late this year, I'm sure you've noticed,” she said. “And I've got nothing for supper.”
The wind was up, but we could hear the cries of gulls in the air. As we made our way down to the wharf, we locked arms and stumbled a bit because of the fog. Near the wharf, we heard dories knocking against the pilings.
“Let's use that one,” Margaret said, pointing to a dory. It was secured to a bollard on the embankment. A spare oar was under a tarpaulin puddled with rain. Leak water pooled at the bottom. The rail was chalked with gull droppings, ground in by gulls walking it. We climbed in and faced each other.
“I think I'm coming down with something,” she said. Her nightshirt was hiked up. Her raincoat was open. Her face was flushed, sweaty. Spools of her hair lay tamped against her forehead. “You don't look at the peak of health, either.”
“I drank thirty cups of coffee last night.”
Margaret rowed. Mint Cove was about half a mile to the north. The name itself was wishful; even on a day as brisk and clear as that one broke, the wind going seaward, the cove reeked of rotting kelp. Halfway to the cove, Margaret let the boat drift. “Such a lovely courting date you've asked me on, Fabian. And so early in the morning. I guess you
just couldn't wait to see me, eh?” She ran a finger along the rail, chalking it up. “A little behind each ear,” she said, daubing it on as though it were perfume.
“Wash that off.”
“I'll do no such thing.”
The outline of land was forming, scrag spruce, cliffs; puffins, guillemots, razorbills every which way, like confetti against the dark rock face. There were a few lobster boats out, and Margaret rowed far clear of them, then secured the oars. She placed the revolver on her lap.
“Over there,” she whispered.
She pointed to where a gather of common scoters rested on the swell. She took out a handkerchief full of bullets from her pocket, loaded, spun the cartridge, then laid the revolver back on her lap. She stared at me, rubbing her thumb with her other thumb.
“You've painted pictures of scoter ducks,” she said, “and now we're out to kill some. But that hero of yours, Audubon, he did the same.”
“It's true, he didn't always paint from life.”
She suddenly pointed the revolver at my face, then swung it around, aimed it at the distant lighthouse, and said, “Bang! Bang!”
Lowering the revolver, she turned and saw that I was shaken.
“Fabian, for God's sake. Here your father's off to Anticosti, hoping to earn enough money for your stupid goddamn arranged wedding, to that fourth cousin they foisted on you. Meanwhile, your very own mother is shacked up
with Botho August. Up there playing gramophone records. Cozy, the two of them. And she hasn't been at your breakfast table since Orkney left.”
“Those are facts I swallowed a ways back.”
“And they've torn you up inside. You can borrow this gun any time you like.”
Her arm fully stretched, she popped a scoter straight on. She rowed to it as the others flurried off, then settled all at once ten or so yards away. She lifted the dead one on the flat of an oar, then dropped it into a wooden bucket.
“What say we name this first little dead bird Mr. Botho August?” she said.
“Let's not name it anything. Margaret, maybe I could stay with you tonight, even though it's one night early.”
“Afraid not. I prefer keeping it to Tuesdays and Thursdays like always. It keeps life familiar.” She held out the revolver. “Care for a shot?”
“No, I'll watch.”
“Just as I thought.”
As easily as if they were mechanical ducks floating in a carnival moat, Margaret picked off five scoters in quick order. She reloaded. The bucket was now crammed full. She emptied the birds into a burlap sack. She buttoned her raincoat to the top and shivered.
“I'm coming down with something for sure,” she said.
“Maybe I should row back.”
“No! If it's a fever, I want to work to make it worse as soon as possible. The sooner it gets here, the sooner it'll leave, is my opinion. Maybe I'll swallow some of that powder
from Gillette's pharmaceuticals later on, that makes me piss off-color. Fever or no, I'll expect you tomorrow night. I'll go on sleeping with the village idiot. Mostly for pity's sake.”
She yawned. Wiping the revolver with the hem of her nightshirt, she waved it in front of my face. “As for this, let me know your decision, if you can make one.”
She rubbed her arms. “I feel something aching up in me now,” she said. “I want to be at home. Get a fire going and dry off my clothes from this fog. Maybe clean the ducks. A hot bath next, and some sleep. And I don't—
don't
—want you to come with me.”
As she rowed even harder than usual, I said, “Margaret, I love you.”
She let loose a wild laugh. “You love me, but how's that work? You're getting wed in a hotel in Halifax. You told me that to my face, remember? Now, be sure and write me a postcard, delivered by my father, telling me the exact room number you and your bride honeymoon in. So that in the future I can bed down some lummox in the same room. Long, long after I've forgotten you, Fabian, but not the room number. I'm good at numbers, you know, being a bookkeeper. Plus which, I've always wanted to visit Halifax.”
Margaret was getting dressed. She liked to dress in front of me. It was the evening of September 28, 1911. We were going to the annual dance, held in LaCotte's barn. As she slipped on her red dress with a black lace collar and lace at
the hem and cuffs, she looked at me and said, “Cat got your tongue?”
“No. I'm just thinking of something Helen Twombly told me.”
“And what's that?”
“That you liked her superstitions, and even heeded one or two.”
“They might well have been superstitions. But Helen all but ran her life by them.”
“I know this. She told you that if you want to cause somebody ill fortune, you take dust from your shoe, then throw it over your shoulder in the direction of that person. Helen said you listened closely to that. Then you bent right down, fingered up dust from your shoe, and tossed it, and a fleck of something flew right back at you. You got a mote in your eye. And you were shaken by it.”
“Old coot could talk a blue streak, couldn't she.”
“Who'd you intend the curse for?”
“That's my woman's secret.”
“For how long?”
“Till I die.” She twirled around. “Do you like my dress?”
“Your hair's done up nicely, too.”
“Fabian, do you know who made this dress? Sewed it by hand?”
“No.”
“Alaric Vas.”
“That's not true.”
“It took her three full weeks to make this dress, right up there in the lighthouse. My father paid her handsomely for
it. It was his gift to me, for no reason at all. Not a birthday. Nothing.”
“I like the dress. Let's leave it at that. I was talking about Helen, anyway.”
“To dream of a wedding is a sign of a funeral. That's another one she told me.”
“When you heard it, did you dream of a wedding the same night?”
Margaret moved to the far wall and leaned against it.
“I worried that I would,” she said. “So I stayed up all night. That's how you get around certain dreams. You don't sleep.”
“You're one of a kind. I won't meet someone like you again.”
“Better or worse, that's true.”
She locked her arm in mine and we walked to LaCotte's barn.
There were no decorations other than lanterns. Moths fluttered around them; moths seemed to live a second life after summer for a while in barns. An elevated plank bandstand had been constructed, as it was each year. Francis Beckett sat at the piano. The pulley ropes and dolly used to haul the piano to the barn were set off to one side. Elmer Wyatt stood rosining his fiddle, plucking the strings, bringing it close to his ear in a kind of private communion, tuning, fitting it to his chin. Oliver Parmelee stood next to the piano, an accordion strapped around his neck. When Maurice March, the second accordionist, who had come in from Renews, arrived, the musicians huddled around the piano,
going over the evening's selections. Beckett had written them out on a piece of paper.
When Margaret and I got there, it was about 7:30. “This herringbone jacket of my father's itches around the neck,” I said. There was a half-moon, and a sharp breeze off the sea. Inside the barn you still needed a sweater or jacket. Couples were milling about the dirt dance floor.
“I read a romance in Mrs. Bath's library once,” Margaret said. “The heroine was going to a dance alone. I read quite a few romances when I was a girl. I noticed that heroines liked to be alone, or at least knew how, but that life didn't
leave
them alone. Anyway, in this one romance, she was going to the dance alone. She wasn't downhearted about it at all. Because she had a silk dress on. She liked how it felt against her skin. She thought that wearing a silk dress, you didn't need a dance partner. It was already like dancing with someone, silk pressed against you, the two of you moving through the air.”
“How'd that book turn out?”
“I forgot the rest.”
Near eight o'clock, Botho August and my mother sauntered right past us and stood in the center. To my knowledge, it was the first time they had stepped out together in public.
“My, my, look at them,” Margaret said. “Love birds and everything.”
“Looks like it.”
“Well, maybe dancing will put you in a better mood.”
“I won't dance.”
“Suit yourself, Fabian. Fine. But I'm here with Alaric's son, who's promised to his cousin. Alaric's here with Botho August. Truth is truth, and all eyes are open. Besides, this is a local dance, not Judgement Day.”
The band struck up “Amazing Grace,” though done in waltz time. Twenty or so couples got to dancing. Next came a jig, “Mother Carey's Chickens.” During it a lot of children hopped about, but as soon as the jig ended, they heard a slow number, “Jesus Shall Preside,” featuring Wyatt's melancholy solo, and they retreated to the hay bales and under the bandstand. This piece droned along and the band seemed to fall in and out of tune. It was halfhearted. Maurice March's accordion playing stalled, slurred, cranked up again as he tried to catch the rhythm. He looked embarrassed.
Margaret got annoyed. She walked up to Francis Beckett and said loudly, “My request is, leave religion out of the rest of this night.”
She pulled me onto the dance floor. “Don't look so blinking sour,” she said.
“I owe it to my father not to dance on the same floor as them.”
When a lively reel started, couples moved around us, yet I remained fixed in place, staring at my mother and Botho. They took it as a slow dance. Arms entwined, eyes closed, they were barely moving.
“This barn's clearly no place for a mother's son,” Margaret said, giving my chest a slight push. I went over and stood by the door.
Margaret then cut in on Dara Olden, who was dancing
with Reverend Sillet. Dara looked insulted, huffed, then walked briskly over to join Catherine Jobb and Mekeel Dollard by the water glasses and pitcher.
Margaret pressed herself to Sillet's chest. She took the lead, and Sillet more or less stumbled about, trying to keep back an arm's length, finding it impossible to do so. Margaret wrapped her arms tightly around him. Sillet was sweating. Lifting the hem of her dress to his face, she gently tamped his forehead, then rubbed the bottom of her dress roughly over his entire face.

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