The Bird Saviors (27 page)

Later they pull over at a scenic viewpoint to eat lunch. Ruby leans over and strokes Ward's face. Relax now, bird man. The only time you seem happy is when you're around Lila. That's maybe the only time I've seen you smile. Or maybe sometimes when you look at me.

    I can't help it, he says.

    I don't mind. It makes me feel good.

    Ward is quiet for a while, sitting atop a picnic table, staring down at his boots on the picnic bench. I guess there are things I regret, he says. I don't think I've done much with my life. I wish I had.

    What in the world are you saying? Look at you. You're a scientist. That's important, isn't it?

    It all seems so tedious, actually. If I had to do it over again, I'd try to be better.

    What would you do? You're not dead yet, you know.

    I'd like to sail around the world, he says.

    Oh. Well. I don't know anything about that. Are you a good sailor?

    No. Not really. I've been on a sailboat a few times.

    Maybe that's not the best idea.

    I could learn. Lots of people sail. It can't be that complicated.

    True.

    I used to want to be a great ornithologist. A savior of birds.

    What are you saying? It's, like, you know every bird in the state. Isn't that something?

    Not really. I'm average, is what I am. Sure, I know more than most people. But in my obituary no one's going to write that I was great or anything. When you're just average, they don't say much about you. You have to be extraordinary for anyone to remember you.

    I don't know about that. I remember people who weren't really extraordinary. Isn't pretty good enough?

    Ward shrugs. I guess.

    Then I think you're setting your goals too high. What would make you extraordinary? What would that even mean for a bird expert?

    The Lord God Bird. That's what I'd like to find. It's been sighted, and people believe it still exists, but they don't know for sure.

    Ruby doesn't know what he's talking about. He explains about the Ivory- Billed Woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in North America, not sighted in the wild since the 1930s, believed to be extinct. Some claimed to have seen it in 2005, but it was never conclusively photographed.

    It's magnificent, says Ward. It has a huge beak the color of ivory, white bars on its wings, and is so big it was nicknamed the Lord God Bird because when people saw it in the southern woods, they'd say, Lord God.

    Makes me think of my father, says Ruby. My father as a bird. Now, there's a scary thought.

J a c k  B r o w n  h a s  n e v e r kidnapped a child before and the more he thinks about it, the more his stomach churns. Hiram insists that no harm will come to the little girl. She'll be returned to her mother the very next day. I give you my word, Cousin Jack. Trust me. What you are doing is only self- preservation. As George Bernard Shaw put it, Lack of money is the root of all evil.

    Still Jack can't imagine actually doing the deed. He's not a pervert. He's not a bad person. And somehow he will have to touch this little girl, pick her up, put her in the car, drive away? While her mother and grandfather sleep? Just thinking about it gives him a headache. He tries to block it out of his mind. He eats half a pizza. He watches another episode of
The Deadliest
Catch.
He falls asleep and when he wakes, it's dark out. His hands sweat as soon as he remembers the little girl.

    At midnight he drives across town, queasy as if he's just stepped off a Tilt- O- Whirl carnival ride. His mouth waters with too much saliva. His heart pounds so hard he feels weak. At stoplights his legs tremble as he pushes in the clutch.

    A bright sliver of moon hangs in the eastern sky like a bleached bone shard. It's Halloween night and the streets teem with drunken people in costume, many of them dressed for
El Día
de los Muertos.
Low- rider muscle cars hop up and down at intersections. Teenaged boys catcall at girls in skimpy costumes taking pictures of each other. A crowd of kids smokes weed in a convenience- store parking lot, throwing water balloons at other teens in pickups.

    It feels like Guadalajara on festival night. Jack shakes his head as he passes a series of billboards in Spanish, advertising Coke as
La chispa de la vida
or
Se compra casas feas.

    At an intersection he stares as a college girl in a devil costume miniskirt runs to make the light, splashing beer from the plastic cup she's carrying, looking back at her friends and laughing, a mouth painted vampire red. Jack Brown tells himself he's doing the wrong thing and he's in the wrong place. The wind gusts and lifts the girl's skirt, showing off her bright pink panties. The light turns green and cars behind him honk.

    Jack Brown passes the freight yards and crosses the Arkansas River, heading west through the moribund business district on Thatcher. After he crosses Pueblo Avenue it's like he's fallen off the edge of the known world. No streetlights shine and the prairie yawns into a wide darkness so black it's as if his headlights no longer work. He has handwritten directions from Hiram Page to the Coles' house. At one point he pulls off the road near Lake Pueblo and reads them over again by the cab light.

    After the highway turnoff the road resembles a pale riverbed dividing a horde of stick- figure cactus people, the black shapes of junipers. He rumbles along in second gear until he reaches the Cole mailbox and driveway. A hundred yards off the road looms the dim outline of this woebegone Little House on the Prairie. He does a cramped U- turn, parks the truck with two wheels in the ditch. He leaves the key in the ignition, douses the interior light as soon as he opens the door. When he steps out his boots sound too loud in the rocky dirt and gravel.

    He hears a high- pitched barking and freezes. Did Hiram tell him whether or not this grandpa has a dog? He listens closely, sitting on the pickup's bumper to keep a low profile. The house is dark but for one bathroom window aglow with amber light.

    The buffet and keening of the wind fill his head until he hears the barking again, a high- pitched yip. Coyote. Now it's coming from farther away, faint and muffled by the wind. He lifts the pair of night- vision binoculars and scans the prairie distance. Nothing moves but a white apparition, floating like a ghost, jerking to a halt on a cactus. After a moment Jack realizes it's a plastic grocery bag blown by the wind. He turns back to the house, a green box in the night- vision glow.

    The second window on the right- hand side of the house is the nursery. His instructions are to jimmy open that window and crawl inside. Take the baby girl from her crib, wrap her in blankets, and hightail it out of there. What if she cries? Duct tape, said Hiram. Jack has a roll in his pocket, but he hopes it doesn't come to that. Maybe she won't even wake up? Maybe it will be easy as pie? Then why does it feel as if he's watching a horror flick through the eyes of the killer, everything illuminated in this spooky green light?

    An old adage from Gata de la Luna pushes him on:
No glory
without pain.
He moves quickly through the yard to the side of the house below the girl's window, stops to catch his breath. His tongue is dry now and his heart lurching. He stands pinned against the side of the house with his mouth open, struggling to breathe, his lips chapped.

Lord God awakens in the guts of the windy night. The bed reminds him of nothing less than a freshly dug grave. He blinks and stares into the purpled darkness, listening for Ruby and Lila. The refrigerator hums, the bedside clock ticks. He calls out for Ruby and as his voice dissipates in the empty rooms he feels the roller- coaster sensation of remorse.

    He has driven away his only daughter, the person he loves most fiercely in the world. The last time they spoke he told her that pawnshop fool had not changed a thing. He had received a vision from the Lord and would find another man for her to marry. She sassed him and grabbed Lila, stormed out of the house, and slammed the door. He limped to the front door, only to see her walking down the dirt road, talking on a cell phone. Later she called from Juliet's to say that she and Lila were staying there now, for good.

    He refuses to believe this. She'll come back around. Still he can't shake the feeling that his world is coming apart. Forests burn night and day and strangers come to the door asking for food or money. His daughter now wanders alone in this desert. Her only hope for comfort and protection is a man who counts birds on their way to extinction.

    He sits up in bed and fumbles for his prosthesis, the funk of his body polluting the chill air. He will not prostrate himself before the devil and beg his benediction. He will fight to the end and if it comes to it lie down in the road to save his daughter's life.

    Another stormy night and the air too warm for this time of year. Aspens and junipers rattle and sway, scratching the woodshed walls with a rasp and a hiss. Lord God grimaces as he attaches his leg, willing himself not to curse the God and nation for which he has given too much. With his leg attached, he thumps to the kitchen window. He stares outside as if the wind- strewn leaves will tell his fortune. As if the clouds will open wide and a voice offer guidance when he needs it most.

    A shriek from the direction of the woodshed. Tossed by the wind, the high- pitched sound is little more than a brief bleat. Lord God doubts his ears, doubts he actually heard it. He waits, his breath caught in his throat. A bar of light streaks his cheek, tangle- bearded and furrowed. A gust of wind sends a clatter of leaves against the back door. He hears the sound again: a quick, sharp shriek.

    Loading a handful of shells into his twelve- gauge pump shot gun, his hands shake. Outside, the wind is hot and blustery, tinged with the smell of smoke. Fires burn in the Sierra Mojada to the west, twenty thousand acres, it's said.

    Lord God places his prosthetic shoe carefully on the dark path, the moon a faint glow above. He remembers how he had hoped Ruby would become a good man's celestial wife. To be welcomed into a large family, surrounded and protected, embraced. Now he has come to doubt all of it. The Saints glory in their own inherent goodness and in this glory became swollen with pride. Lord God fears that pride and self- righteousness blind them to the wickedness of their blood.

    Clouds rip across the sky and for a moment the path brightens. He sees a neighbor's cat crouching in the shadows. Again he hears the shriek. This time it's louder, closer. Behind the woodshed and toward the back corner of their lot, where the land opens onto the prairie, near the gulch that cuts the plateau.

    He shines the flashlight beam on an aspen, sees a Barn Owl staring back, its curious, heart- shaped face appearing to glow. The white owl bobs its head but does not fly away. Lord God wonders how many years it's been since he's seen one. What shift in fate does this apparition portend? What omen this eerie night bird? He doesn't know. Trouble. A sea change ahead. He would like to think hope but in his doubtful mood he doesn't trust any instinct toward optimism.

    He crouches, his face jammed against the cold metal of the tank, something jabbing him in the back and sides. A mass of tumbleweeds huddles beside the tank, windblown and prickly. Brittle branches sharp as cactus spines. He peeks above the edge of the propane tank. A man limps across the backyard, carrying a flashlight.

    Jack Brown watches as the beam spotlights the aspens, shining on something in the bare branches. After a moment he realizes it's a white owl. It swoops and glides into the prairie blackness. The man limps away from the house, following it. Must be some kind of nut, following an owl in the middle of the night.

    How does a geezer like that take care of a child? I might be doing her a favor, setting her free, like Hiram said. He's a polygamist nutcase preacher and for all I know he'll marry off the girl when she's ten years old to some doddering lecher.

    The flashlight beam flickers and flashes over the prairie. Jack stands up and moves around to the corner of the house, his knees burning, one leg asleep. Before long the light disappears completely, as if it and the man have vanished off the face of the earth.

    At the back door Jack pauses, listening. He steps inside and closes the door. The wind whistles through the doorjamb. An old coffee pot steams atop the woodstove. An aluminum cane rests against the kitchen table. A half- eaten sandwich on a plate. On the wall a rough wooden plaque with the legend as for me and my house, we shall serve the lord. joshua

24:15.

    Jack tiptoes down the hall to the nursery. The room is dark and musty. He hesitates. He doesn't want to wake the baby girl if he can help it. Hiram said to wrap her in blankets and whisk her away, drive to the drop- off house, and that's that. Jack creeps to the crib and reaches down to lift her out, but he can feel nothing. After a few moments of searching, he crosses the room and turns on the light. The crib is empty.

Lord God watches the white streak of the owl swoop through the flashlight beam and disappear. The faintest sound of human voices reaches him, elusive in the wind, voices mystical and unclear, incomprehensible. He follows the path out his back gate and across the high desert prairie, through the field of yucca and Spanish dagger, until he reaches the blackness of the gulch. A murmur of people in the floor of the gulch, traveling. The clink of provisions and scuffle of passage.