The Obsidian Blade (4 page)

“When was that?”

“A few weeks before your mother and I married.” His eyes softened. “That was a remarkable year. It was the same year I founded my church, the year you were born. . . .” A wry smile creased his face. “On the day you were born — that was the day Lorna Gingrass ran into those pigeons.” He shook his head slowly. “I was so young and foolish, I thought it was a sign from God.”

Tucker had heard the pigeon story many times before. It was the most famous event in Hopewell history. Lorna Gingrass, Hopewell’s only hairdresser, had been driving to work when two large birds struck her windshield. Lorna pulled over and ran back to the grassy ditch where they had landed. One bird was clearly dead. The second bird was stunned but alive, its red eyes blinking. She decided to leave it, hoping it would recover on its own.

Later, at the beauty shop, Lorna happened to mention the sad event while cutting Minna Jensen’s hair.

“What kind of birds were they?” Minna asked. She was an avid bird-watcher.

“Sort of gray, with a reddish breast,” said Lorna.

“Like a hawk?” Minna asked, thinking they might be kestrels.

“More like big pigeons,” said Lorna.

Minna could not imagine what sort of birds they could be. Perhaps some unfamiliar breed of domestic pigeon? She asked Lorna to drive her out to look at the mystery birds.

It took some time — one spot on the highway looked much the same as another — but eventually Lorna located the dead bird. Minna carefully lifted it from its resting place. Her heart began to pound.

“I must be dreaming,” she said.

“What is it?” Lorna asked.

“It looks,” Minna said slowly, “like a passenger pigeon.”

Lorna said, “Didn’t they all die out a hundred years ago?”

Minna nodded, then shook her head in disbelief. “You said one of them was still alive?”

They found the second bird a few yards away, its red eyes dull, dry, and unblinking. It had not survived.

Minna’s field identification of the birds was quickly confirmed by an ornithologist: they were passenger pigeons, a male and a female. Once the most numerous bird in North America, passenger pigeons had been thought extinct since 1914. The story was picked up by CNN, and the area around Hopewell was suddenly teeming with camera crews, news vans, and bird-watchers.

Hopewell House, the four-story hotel in downtown Hopewell that had been vacant for several years, was hastily refurbished and reopened. For several months, it remained at full capacity, filled with birders and ornithologists. Red’s Roost, the only bar in town, did a banner business, especially after Red Grauber renamed it the Pigeon Drop Inn and added a specialty martini called the Drunken Pigeon to the menu.

But the excitement faded over the next months when no other passenger pigeons were seen. Lorna Gingrass had apparently killed the last — and only — pair. Hopewell House once again closed its doors, and the passenger pigeon story faded from the national memory.

The Reverend chuckled, a sound Tucker hadn’t heard in weeks.

“I sometimes think those two birds were Hopewell’s last gasp,” he said. “It’s been downhill for this community ever since.”

Tucker didn’t want to talk about pigeons. He wanted to talk about his uncle.

“Do you ever talk to him?” he asked. “Uncle Curtis?”

His father’s smile flattened. “I failed Curtis, son. But some things, like the passenger pigeons, are best left buried in the past.” He picked up the troll and went to work on its eyes.

A
S THE WEATHER TURNED COLD AND
T
UCKER SPENT
more time at home, he began noticing a number of disturbing changes in his mother — little things at first, such as turning light switches on and off several times, and washing clean clothes over and over again, and making strange, repetitive movements — she would sit in her favorite chair and flop her head back and forth, or flap her hands as if she was trying to air-dry them. She carried a book of sudoku puzzles with her everywhere, and seemed content only when filling in grids.

Anything new or unexpected would upset her — loud noises, a surprise visitor, or even a rearrangement of furniture. One day, Tucker pulled the sofa out from the wall to get a book that had fallen behind it and neglected to push the sofa back in place. When his mom came into the room and noticed the sofa out of place, she started flapping her hands, then ran upstairs to her room and rolled herself up in her comforter. She stayed like that until Tucker’s dad got home and coaxed her out of her improvised cocoon.

Such episodes came more and more frequently. She kept the window shades pulled down, claiming that she did not care to be “watched like some bug in a bottle.” She lost weight, and her already light skin grew paler from lack of sunlight. Her once warm and strong voice became hesitant and quavery. Her hair began to change color, emerging brittle and white without bothering to pause at gray. Some days she would sit brushing it, counting the strokes, until it crackled with static electricity and stood out from her head in a pale, orange-tipped nimbus.

Her organ playing deteriorated as well. Her hands would jitter across the keys, producing a cacophony of raucous bleats and howls that caused Mrs. Iverson’s one-year-old to cry. One day she refused to play the instrument at all, claiming that the pipes were sucking her soul out through her fingertips.

The Reverend persuaded Alvina Johanson to make another effort to learn the eccentric ways of the instrument. Soon, Alvina’s approximations of “Abide with Me” and “Amazing Grace” filled the church as Emily Feye sat with Tucker in the front pew with her crackling hair and distant smile, working a sudoku puzzle.

Tucker’s father took her to several doctors. Harmon Anderson, their family doctor in nearby Chalmers, referred her to a neurologist in Minneapolis. The neurologist referred her to a psychiatrist. Their diagnoses ranged from depression to schizophrenia to chronic fatigue syndrome. They prescribed a panoply of drugs, but nothing helped. Finally, in November, Tucker and his father took her to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. After two long days of tests and interviews, Dr. Levitt, awkward and stiffly formal in his suit and tie, invited Tucker and his father into his office.

“Emily is in excellent physical health,” said Dr. Levitt, staring into the computer mounted on his desk. “Other than being profoundly autistic, of course.”

“Autistic?” The Reverend raised his eyebrows. “Emily is not autistic.”

The doctor looked at him, then back at the computer. “You didn’t know she was autistic?”

Tucker said, “Isn’t autism something you’re born with?”

“That is correct,” said the doctor, still staring into his screen.

“She didn’t used to be like this,” Tucker said. “Mom was happy. We used to do stuff, and talk all the time. Now she hardly talks at all. She just stays in the house and does her puzzles.”

“She was perfectly normal,” the Reverend said.

The doctor leaned closer to the screen. “Yes . . . I see you stated that in your admission papers, but people are often blind when it comes to loved ones. Your wife has been thoroughly examined by our specialists. She presents a classic autism-spectrum profile. Her social interaction skills are severely limited, her lack of affect is extreme, her repetitive behaviors and her anxiety when confronted with changes to her environment are a ninety-four-percent indicator for profound autism. . . . It
is
possible that she is suffering from RAD.”

“What’s RAD?” Tucker asked.

“Rapid-onset Autism-like Disorder. Quite rare, although we are seeing more cases in recent years, mostly in people who work in IT and other computer-related fields. Does your wife spend a lot of time online?”

“We don’t even own a computer!” the Reverend said.

“In that case, I would suggest that although her symptoms may have recently become worse, they were always present. I very much doubt that it came upon her suddenly.”

Tucker looked at his father, whose face was slowly turning red.

The doctor was rocking back and forth slightly as he stared into the computer screen. Oblivious, he continued speaking. “You must realize that autism is not a disease in the usual sense. It is not contagious, nor is it something that will go away — with or without treatment. Autism develops in the womb, perhaps even at conception.” The doctor typed something into his computer. He pursed his lips. “She may be suffering from depression as well. We will need more tests. It is not always easy to diagnose psychiatric conditions in autistic patients.”

“She. Is. Not. Autistic!” the Reverend said, his voice rising with each word.

The doctor sat back. “Mr. Feye, please control yourself.”

“Control myself? My wife suddenly goes mad and you’re telling me she was
born
that way?
Autistic?
What kind of doctor are you? You talk about her like she’s a statistic, like she’s not a person.”

“I can assure you, Mr. Feye, I am well aware that Mrs. Feye is a person.”

“How would you know? You’re hardly a person yourself! Look at you, with your fish face and your starchy suit and your computer that you look at more than you look at us. My wife is not numbers on a screen!”

The doctor was turning red, too. “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave,” he said.

“With pleasure.” The Reverend stood up and stalked out of the room.

Tucker stood up slowly. “Is there anything we can do to make her better?” he asked.

“Find her another doctor,” Dr. Levitt said stiffly. “Or better yet, another husband.”

The ride home from Mayo was long and quiet. Tucker’s mother sat in back, staring out the window, bobbing her head, counting mileposts.

“Are we going to see a different doctor?” Tucker asked as they passed milepost fifty-two.

His father, his mouth held in a hard straight line, shook his head.

One mile later, Emily Feye said, “Fifty-three.”

Tucker said, “Maybe it would help to pray for her.”

“Pray all you want,” said the Reverend Feye after a very long pause.

“I will,” said Tucker.

“Autism! The man is an idiot.”

Tucker silently agreed.

“Fifty-four,” said his mother.

“Do you know what I miss about God?” the Reverend asked.

Tucker shook his head.

“I miss having someone to blame things on.”

“Fifty-five,” said Emily Feye.

That night, Tucker prayed for his mother. He prayed for his father, too. The next morning — it was a Saturday — he found his mom in the kitchen cooking pancakes and sausages. She was fully dressed, and her hair was pulled back into a neat bun. The shades were up and sunlight filled the room. She looked at him and smiled in a way that made her look perfectly, happily normal.

“Morning, sleepyhead!” she said.

Tucker didn’t know what to say. Had his prayers worked?

“You look good,” he said, sitting down at the table.

She laughed and patted her hair. “I’ve really let myself go lately. You must have thought I’d gone completely out of my mind.”

“So are you okay now?”

“I feel wonderful!”

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went into church to work on the organ. How I miss playing that crazy machine! I feel like I’ve just woken up from a bad dream. The things that have been going through my head! Of course, I’ve always had quite an imagination. When I was little, I used to believe I was a princess. I lived in a magic castle with servants, who would bring me anything I wanted. Sometimes it seemed so real, I believed it was true.”

“I guess little kids imagine a lot of stuff.”

“I guess they do.” She put a pancake and two sausage links on a plate and placed it before him. “Lately I’ve been remembering the strangest things. When I was a girl — I must have been six or seven — I remember walking home from school one day when two big black men came up the road.”

“You mean like African Americans?”

“No, but they had black hair and black beards and they were wearing black suits. I thought they were Amish, so I wasn’t afraid. One of them said something to me in a language I didn’t understand, then the other one grabbed me and stuck something in my mouth, like a little plastic rod. A second later he yanked it out and they both ran off. I told my father, and the police went looking for the men but never found them. Later, Greta told me I must have imagined the whole thing.” She shook her head, bemused by the memory. “But I don’t know. . . . It was so real. . . .”

She prepared a plate for herself and sat down across from him.

“I’m sorry I’ve been acting so strangely, honey. I really don’t know what came over me.”

“That’s okay,” Tucker said. She’d had good mornings before. As he ate his pancakes, he allowed himself a glimmer of hope. Maybe this time it would last.

It didn’t last.

They ate their breakfast, talking and laughing, just like old times. But after they were done eating, his mom retired to her chair in the living room and began working a sudoku puzzle. Soon she was staring into space and bobbing her head, her features slack, her eyes empty. Tucker looked at the puzzle in her lap. The blanks had been filled in with random numbers and made no sense whatsoever.