The Bird Saviors (12 page)

    What are you sorry about? Pick me up. I live west of town. It's not out of your way.

    I don't know.

    What don't you know? You can come get me. I'll walk down Red Creek Road to the highway. It's only two miles. That's a thirty- minute walk. Maybe twenty. I can do it. I walk everywhere I go.

    I'm sorry, Miss Cole. I just don't think it's going to work out.

    You think I'm simple, don't you? Because of my special names for the birds? I'm not. I'm complex. Only I come from a simple family.

    I don't think you're simple. I don't know you. It's just that I think it's probably smart of me to talk to other people first before I decide whom to hire.

    No, you shouldn't. They will cloud your eyes. I'm here and now. And I know birds, Mr. Costello. I'd be perfect for this. You have to hire me. Her voice quavers. You have to, she says again. It's my destiny and it's yours too. I count birds, you know? It was fate I saw your ad. There's no denying that.

    I've got other people to interview, says Ward. Let's say I'll get back to you and we'll see what happens after I talk to the others.

    Listen, says Ruby. Listen to me. You can't turn away from this.

I'll talk to you soon. I promise. Now, I have to get going.

Where are you? she asks.

Ward pauses a moment, then tells her where he's staying.

    I know exactly where that is. My mother works not far from there. I'll come see you later today, all right?

    There's a long silence at the other end of the line.

    Okay, says Ward. If you make it here we'll talk.

    Are you sure?

    Yes, I'm sure. I'll be glad to meet you, okay?

    Okay. I mean, thank you. You won't regret it.

    You want the job?

    Yes, says Ruby. Yes, I do.

    Well, I certainly do need somebody.

    I do too, says Ruby. I mean, I need the work.

    I know what you meant.

    I'll be good at this, she adds. I promise.

Ward meets Ruby in the lobby of the Buffalo Head Inn. Usually field biologists with research grants use college students as interns in the field, most of them coming from a few schools like Cornell, the University of Michigan, or Auburn. Not Ward. He wants a local, someone who knows the landscape, someone who won't ask so many annoying questions, someone he can learn from. Someone who knows the prairies, the foothills, the nesting sites, the canyon walls and creek beds.

    Ruby convinces her mother to take care of Lila at her place in town.

    I need to make money, she says. I have to get started somewhere. Lila's getting easier to handle. She's on formula full time now.

    In the lobby, Ward sits on a cracked leather sofa beneath the buffalo head, looking like a camp counselor at a dude ranch. He's easy to recognize because of the glossy bird book in his lap. He wears wire- rim glasses, a plaid western shirt, and jeans. He shakes her hand and tells her to call him Ward when she says, Mr. Costello.

    On the coffee table he spreads out the bird book. Ruby watches as he moves aside the bronco- silhouette napkin holder, the cactus salt- and- pepper shakers, the Colorful Colorado! place mats. He says the book is a classic published in 1933, complete with illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. She asks who that was.

    A famous illustrator and ornithologist, says Ward. He worked from the real thing, often dead birds, like John James Audubon. I know that seems odd but that's how they did it in those days.

    They painted illustrations of dead birds? How did they find them?

    Usually they shot them.

    So they killed the birds and later tried to save them?

    That's about the gist of it.

    The what?

    The gist of it.

    What does that mean?

    That's the truth. More or less.

    The gist, she says.

The main facts about something, adds Ward.

She smiles. I learned a new word.

    Ward turns the book to the illustrations of Ivory- Billed Woodpeckers.

    They started to realize, back then, that some of these birds would be hunted to their end. Many of the birds Agassiz illustrated no longer exist. In another century they'll become legends. If not sooner. The forests west of here used to be filled with Blue Grouse, and now I've heard you're lucky to see even a pair.

    Ruby turns the large, heavy pages of the book, beautiful color illustrations. Ward shows her the pages he has marked, birds that are listed as either rare or on the brink of extinction. Some of these were common only a few decades ago.

    I saw one of these in the spring, says Ruby, pointing at a light- green warbler. It's not gone. I call it a Hide- About. She looks up at Ward and grins. It's not easy to see, seems to like to hide about on the ground, pecking at leaves, or flitting about in the aspen leaves.

    The Orange- Crowned Warbler. V
ermivora celata.
Used to be one of the most common warblers in the west.

    I've seen it.

    Could you find it for me? If we went on a search?

    Ruby purses her lips, staring down at the illustration. Usually don't see that orange cap on the Hide- Abouts.

    Right, you don't. Only in mating season. Or when it's afraid.

    When it's trying to show off, she says. My father shoots them from our porch.

Warblers?

No. Crows. Ravens, too. He says black birds carry evil spirits.

    Ward keeps his face averted. He's staring at an illustration of a White- Faced Ibis. He says her father isn't the only one.

    It's like they want something to blame. Birds are an easy target.

    That's partly why I want this job.

    What is?

    My father. I have to get loose of him.

    May I ask a rude question?

    I guess.

    How old are you?

    Seventeen.

    So you still live at home?

    Me and my baby girl. Lila. My father helps take care of her. He keeps a roof over my head and food on the table. He says he fought the war for me. Which he reminds me of twenty- four seven.

    Then why do you want to leave?

    He wants to marry me off to a man I don't even know or like and who already has two wives. It's a Saint thing.

    Ward blinks and frowns. Ruby can tell he doesn't understand, but doesn't want to say anything to hurt her feelings or make her seem an oddball. A Saint thing?

    The FLDS. Fundamentalist Latter- Day Saints. We just call them Saints. You're not from around here, you don't know. You're lucky. Everyone else does, and it's embarrassing. Most people think they're scum.

    You must get picked on.

    Ruby shrugs. Some. Dad preaches at an FLDS temple. It's not much of a temple, really. More like a bunch of kooks. But don't tell him that. They're polygamists. Or polygs for short.

    Ward stares at her for a moment, turns his attention back to the bird book. He flips through to a glossy photograph of a Bobolink.

    I've heard of these people, he says. But I don't understand it. Not really.

    Think clan. That's what it's like. They don't work much but the ones that do pay for the freeloaders. They help each other out. Do each other favors. Like, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Only far as I can tell, I'll be the one doing the scratching. Plus this guy he wants me to marry? He owns a pawnshop. Which is pretty low, if you ask me. So I'll be scratching the back of a man who cheats people for a living.

    Ward makes a face. He sounds like a catch.

    Don't I know it. Trouble is, he's got money.

    Business must be good.

    It's boom time for him. He's basically buying me. And Lord God will get a good price.

    Lord God?

    My father. That's what I call him. He acts like he's Lord God, the one true believer.

    I know some Mormons in Texas, says Ward. They seem squeaky clean.

    He doesn't like mainstream Mormons. He says FLDS are the true believers. But sure, he's gold plate to the bone. In his head he's the third in line, direct from the Prophet Joseph to Brigham Young to Lord God. He wanted to take a celestial wife but Mom wouldn't let him. She was so mad she moved out. Plus he lost a leg in the war. Ruby shakes her head. He's a mess, you want the truth.

    I'm sorry to hear that. It must make his life hard.

    Ruby shrugs. At first I felt sorry for him. After a while it gets old. He milks it, you know? This war- veteran hooey. Plus he wants me to do what he says. To obey. And I can't take that.

    In the breakfast- bar area, the coffee maker gurgles. Ward says, Some birds are polygamous. Bobolinks, for instance. Have you ever seen them on the prairie?

    Sometimes. She stirs her tea. They're rare. I call them Yellow Necks. They're pretty.

    They're on my list, says Ward.

    The endangered ones?

    He nods. He sips his coffee, then tells her they haven't been counted reliably for several years. They may be gone, he adds.

    Guess that polygamist angle didn't help them.

    I guess not, he says.

    It sure works for these gold platers. People call them the American Taliban. That's probably about half right, far as I can tell. Kooky but persistent. Fervent. I like that word. That's what they are. Fervent. And they're breeding like rabbits.

    Crowfoot's trailer is perched atop Wild Horse Mesa, as remote as you can get without being an all- out survivalist. There's a crooked gate at the base of the mesa and one narrow, rutted road up. No one can surprise him with an impromptu and unwanted drop- in. The way he likes it.

    Crowfoot is left staring groggy and uncoffeed at the drought- chapped yard with its sad, rusted swing set, a stack of bald truck tires tumbled in the dust, and a barbecue grill made from a sawed- in- half fifty- five- gallon drum. He makes coffee and washes the dishes, rationing the water. He gets what water he has from a two- hundred- gallon plastic tank, shuttled in the back of his pickup. He stands there moody and hungry, listening to the echo of Johnny Cash stuck in his head. A flock of Grackles flies to the juniper near the mesa cliff edge. The crows have all been shot or driven out and the smaller black birds are taking over.

    He moves slowly and quietly. Gata de la Luna isn't one to face if she rises on the wrong side of the bed. At the moment her naked body fills his single- wide trailer like a suitcase bomb. A stripe of morning sunlight illuminates the wrinkles of her Navajo sole. The lines of her footprint seem cryptic and deliberate.

    Crowfoot believes that if he were skilled in that way he could read her future while she sleeps. He isn't so sure he can't. The same bar of light snakes up her leg and makes her left butt cheek glow bold as a Russ Meyer audition. She's a latter- day rustic shepherdess, has her own palm- reading shop, her fingers in every pie.

    She filled him in on Señor Hiram Page and his crooked ways. What she knows could put the man in prison, but she's not one to testify.

    As he notches the tongue of his death' s- head buckle into its tooled leather belt, Gata stirs, rolls over, pushes the darkness of her hair from her face. She stretches and the foot on the coffee table upends a tray of weed and an ashtray. Both thump to the floor in a small, ashy cloud.

    Oops, she says.

    Crowfoot steps over the mess and leans down, kisses her instep. You're forgiven.

    Where's the fire, jackrabbit?

    I tried not to wake you. I was a mouse.

    She grins. I doubt that. If you were, cats be running scared.

    I thought I'd look for that gold plater. Maybe catch them at prayer time. Feeling holy and all.

    I'm warning you.

    I know. I heard you.

    And you're going to go after him anyways.

    Did I tell you how beautiful you are in the morning?

    She throws a pillow at him. Don't change the subject. I'm on to you.

    All I need is that address, he says. You know you're going to tell me, so just quit dancing around the obvious.

    What's in it for me?

    He leans over again, this time kissing higher up her leg. What about a good time?

Later, with Gata de la Luna's
molé
yet lingering on his lips, Crowfoot heads west on Highway 50, toward the zombie subdivisions of Little Pueblo. A developer's dream before the Big Fall. Since then the banks have foreclosed on most of the homes, and anyone with a job and money has cleared out, afraid of zealots and squatters.

    He trolls down side streets where most of the homes sport graffiti tattoos. A few are burned, baring charred walls, garages gaping open like hospital cadavers, their insides full of cardboard boxes, washer- dryer sets, toppled trash bins. Old cars sit jacked up and tireless on cinder blocks. Plastic bags drift across the vacant lots or are impaled in cactus gardens. On a nearby ridge looms an abandoned line of ranch homes halfway built, some with scaffolding still in place, like a shabby Easter Island.