The Bird Saviors (34 page)

    Hiram turns and heads to the back office, opens the wire- mesh gate door. Behind him he hears the sound of Crowfoot's boots on the tile floor, the jingle of the front door opening. Hiram enters the office cage and closes it, the clang ringing unnaturally loud in the empty pawnshop. He resists the impulse to duck and hide.

    He has some dignity left. It may be tiny. It may be meaningless. But he's not diving beneath the desk like a frightened child. Not after the man just gave him the chance to take the pistol outright.

    In his cage in the now silent shop, the bottle of bourbon is golden and lovely, like a flask that holds an elixir that offers eternal life. He fills a shot glass and gulps as if it's his last drop. When he can't stand the suspense any longer, he peers behind a pillar and through the wire mesh. Crowfoot is gone.

    Hiram Page notices his hands are still shaking. On the counter sits the head of an infamous outlaw or more likely Morris Dinwoody, a world- class nobody, the lipless mouth gaping wide to show its awful teeth.

    By the third jigger of whiskey Page's nerves have calmed. A hot mist fills his mouth as he collects the twenties off the floor and returns them to the cash register. He puts Weenie in the crook of his arm and scratches her floppy dog ears, douses the lights, and steps outside into a chilly November dusk in this dilapidated edge of Mexican town. He heads toward his pickup, fishing the keys from his pocket. As he backs out of the parking lot, he can't help but stare at the spray- painted legend of accusations, a wave of shame washing through him, realizing too many people know his blackest heart, too many to strike back at or wish away.

    No matter: All will pass with time. He has another gulp of whiskey from his silver flask as he fiddles with his radio. He's going home to his wives, one of whom is going to have another baby.

    God will forgive. It's his job.

    Hiram drives past a used- car lot where an enormous inflatable yellow gorilla sits, tethered by guy wires. The wind sings in his windows. He floats and drifts and forgets he's at the wheel. This too shall pass. There's always time. Time to make up for mistakes, to turn over that proverbial new leaf. Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is enough time. Time is but the stream I go a- fishing in.

    By the intersection of Pueblo Boulevard and Thatcher Avenue, he's talking to himself, quoting this and that, forgetful of what he's doing, lost in his labyrinthine mind full of blind back- alley deals and Indians with tomahawks, preachers' daughters and deadbeat cousins.

    The next thing he knows the airbag explodes in his face, the world turns over and over and over. He comes to upside down, the inflated airbag jamming his neck against the head rest. Outside his window all he can see is grass and dirt. The truck's alarm blares. The warm, wet feel of blood on his face. He struggles to move. From above him somewhere a voice calls out, Hey, mister! You all right? Are you all right in there?

    He tries to speak but no sound comes out. I'm okay, he tries to say. I'm okay.

    He hears a soft whimpering, feels the warm, wet touch of Weenie's tongue licking his neck.

    Any minute now, he'll get out of this jam.

    Softly Ward tells her that's not legal. There are laws about the removal of the dead. He'll need a death certificate, a county- approved method of interment. Usually it's a cemetery or cremation.

    He didn't want any of that. He wanted me to bury him there in the yard and I plan to do it, do what he wants.

    Ward shrugs. With the fever across the country, maybe what one family does won't matter.

    The morning sky is pink and hazy. Ward must leap onto the shovel blade with both heels to loosen the baked- dry topsoil. At first he wears a gauze mask to keep the dust out of his mouth, but he can't catch his breath and pulls it off. By the time he gets halfway, three feet down, his back burns and his hands are blistered. He stumbles once and brushes against a cactus, impaling his leg with a cluster of spines. It hurts to stand upright when he has to pitch the dirt out of the grave and onto the mound. The wind keeps blowing it back into the hole. He has to keep at it, can't rest or come back to finish it later.

    Ruby brings him a sandwich for lunch and says she's sorry. I appreciate you doing this, she adds. I don't know what I'd do without you.

    Ward leans close and kisses her ear. We have anything for dinner?

    There's some soup and cornbread.

    That sounds good. I'll be hungry, I know that.

. . .

By the time he has the grave six feet deep, long and wide enough for a man the size of Lord God, it's late. The sky is layered in strata of pink and blue, a deep purple over the Sierra Mojada in the west. Ruby tucks and pins Lord God's body in a sheet. She helps Ward carry it outside. He stands in the grave and does his best to lower it over the edge gently.

    Juliet has arrived and stands bundled in a black dress and wool coat, eyes bloodshot, face grief- stricken. Cool wind sends the prairie dust into Ward's face and Ruby's hair into her eyes. Once he gets the body in the ground and laid out in repose, Ward struggles to climb out. Ruby leans over to give him a hand. He almost pulls her into the grave.

    They stand for a moment. The only sound is the wind in their ears. Ward winces from back pain, and his hands sting and throb. Ruby recites the twenty- third psalm. Juliet struggles to say a few words, how he was a good man who gave too much away, too soon. She stops in mid- sentence, Ruby's arms around her, holding her up. They start for the house and Ruby turns to Ward.

    I have to get back, she says. I put Lila in the crib and she was crying. She's been fussy all day. She knows something's up.

    Go to her, says Ward. I'll finish up here.

    Ruby leads her mother back to the house and asks if Juliet can give Lila a bath and get her ready for bed.

    At the grave, Ward picks up the shovel with his bandaged, aching hands and goes to work. Every bladeful burns. When he's done he has trouble walking to the back door. His back so stiff he can barely stand. The wind in his ears and face makes him stupid. He struggles with the screen door in the wind and stumbles inside, blistered and spent. Ruby warms up a bowl of tortilla soup on the woodstove, with three wedges of buttered cornbread wrapped in foil.

    This will take a few minutes to get nice and hot, says Ruby.

    Lila squeals from the bathtub, and Ruby hustles down the hallway, saying she'll be right back. Juliet is perched on the edge of the tub, one hand in a sock- puppet duck, quacking at Lila, who sits in a shallow pool of soapy water, a pink rubber duck in one hand and a seahorse in the other.

    She wants more Rubbadubbers, says Juliet. I told her we'll have to ask Mommy.

    Oh, I know where they are. Ruby retrieves a walrus and penguin from her toy basket, comes back and tickles Lila's tummy with the penguin before kissing the top of her head. Thanks for watching her, Mom. I'm trying to fix Ward something to eat.

    Go on, she says. She pinches Lila's nose with the sock puppet. We're having fun, aren't we?

    Ruby returns to find Ward asleep with his head down on the kitchen table, breathing deeply. She pats his back until he wakes and sits up.

    Come on, Tiger, she says. You need something in your belly. We have work to do tomorrow, right?

    He smiles and nods. I'm okay, he says. This is just what I need.

    Ward chews his cornbread and says, My hands are blistered. I should have worn gloves.

    I'll put some Neosporin on them, says Ruby. You'll be good as new in no time.

    She washes the dishes and stares out the window. The junipers on the distant hillside look black. Nearby the ghostly white trunks of the aspens shimmer by the woodshed, their knots like Cleopatra eyes. Sunlight glows above the mountain ridgeline. Over the yard it casts a blue sheen. A breeze waves the brown stalks of grass by the water pump.

    From the kitchen window Ruby can just see the mound of loose earth on Lord God's fresh grave. She thinks the words,
It's
over.
The phrase sounds odd. The word
over.
Life without Lord God. How to grasp such a thing?

    She remembers him years ago, full of energy and hope. He was always building something: a birdhouse for swallows, a rock wall. He planted aspens by the woodshed, nursed them with water and a wire fence to keep the deer from eating all the leaves. He was a force of nature, relentless and indomitable. He chain- sawed dead trees and split wood for winter. Every night and morning he'd rise early and make a pot of coffee, have the fire going and the wood box full before anyone else was up. He fixed the leaks in the roof and varnished the hardwood floors.

    Lila runs into the kitchen, wrapped in a yellow towel. She tugs on Ward's left hand, wants him to come with her to the living room to play. He tells her he will, soon as he finishes dinner. He lets her tug his hand absentmindedly, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. To get his attention Lila puts an orange plastic bucket shaped like a pumpkin atop her head, for trick- or- treats. She keeps repeating, I get lollipop? I get lollipop?

    He smiles and says, Only if your mom says it's okay.

    Ruby feels tears swell and she wants them to stop, her heart so full it's cracking. She wipes her eyes with the back of a wrist, her fingers sudsy and pink. Lord God loved Lila and was always there for her. He said the world was hers to inherit. He was right. Whatever happens to her from here on out, Ruby knows she must be strong and fierce for her baby girl, to give her a good life.

    But what does that mean? A good life? It's like some rare bird that we know exists but have never yet glimpsed. Like the Yellow- Breasted Chat— a lovely, musical bird that hides low in thickets, that you can hear and know it's there but rarely see.

    And in this moment, a blue- winged Kestrel kites above the backyard, hunting mice. F
alco sparverius.
It opens its wings wide and glides in a low, looped arc before alighting softly on the wire clothesline, its black face stripes barely visible in the fading light.