Winter Birds (2 page)

To the nearest tree you say, “Tree, now you better warn me if my Papa comes, so I have plenty of time to hide.”

The wind off the cold river cuts through you and you squeeze your thin coat tight. You gaze at the surface of the river, leaves spinning downstream like music box dolls. Honeysuckle grows thick as a mattress on the riverbank, and you lie on it looking up at the sky.

This is what you came here for, to lie here like this, to watch the clouds for a while and then to count: one two three, shut things away: shut away the house and the flat fields, shut away Mama Papa Amy Kay Allen Duck Grove shut them away! You are an orphan, you live in these woods away from them all, away from the whole world, your family is dead shut them away …

You close your eyes. You have come to the river to dream, a dream whose shadows move against your lids.

YOU DREAM
the River Man again: River Man comes out of the water to your honeysuckle mattress on the bank. He is broad as an oak tree and strong as a bear, tall and brown-skinned with shaggy black hair. He lives in the water or in the forest where you have wandered. He calls you his son. You know no one else in the world, only him. You have no other home, only his home. You see in his eyes every minute how he cares for you.

You live in a dark room, maybe a cave. When you picture the room, the walls are dark like packed earth, lit by torches. The light they give and the shadows they cast make the room seem warm and safe. The furs of large animals hang on the walls. In one corner of the room a fire burns, smoke drifting up a stone chimney. You have seen rooms like this on television, in movies about the jungle man and the boy he raises as his own child. When he is in the room with you, you can always hear the slow steady rhythm of his breathing.

The room has a secret entrance that only you and River Man know about, an underwater tunnel that you both swim through.

Lying here today you can remember a dozen adventures you have had with River Man—paddling a canoe down river with him, past crocodiles sliding off the slick banks, past submerged rocks that raise their heads and turn out to be hippopotamuses—walking with River Man through the ruins of a forgotten city, building after empty building—you alone another time, lost somewhere in the forest or along the river, anxious because River Man doesn't
know where you are. You try to find him, walking endlessly along the shore calling River Man, River Man …

Sometimes you dream of running through the forest, which you imagine to be infinite, you delighting in the motion of your running and in the fact that each step you take is as silent as the last, a mere whisper over the blades of grass.

Sometimes you see animals and stroke their soft hides: gazelle, antelope, small monkeys, baby lions, all calm at the touch of your hands, as if you are magical.

Sometimes you climb into the wide-branched trees, leaping light-footed from one tree to the next, a monkey or a squirrel yourself, running alone in the light and the solid masses of leaves.

Today you dream you sit beside River Man on the riverbank. You have raced him here. He laughed when you beat him like he always does. He says, You're getting faster and faster, his voice warm and deep.

—You could have beat me if you wanted to. I know you could.

—How does your leg feel? He glances at your thigh. You shake your head and answer, It doesn't hurt. None of the cuts came open.

—I shouldn't have let you go so fast, I was afraid—He breaks off a leaf from a low reed and looks away, troubled. You say you feel fine, the leg is healing, and you look down at it yourself. But even though this is your dream that you are making even you aren't prepared for what you see.

You dream the leg is pitted and scabbed. You picture it perfectly. Along one side of the thigh ribbons and threads of clotted blood mesh with pale cut flesh. The cuts have closed now, but you can remember them raw and open, the red running away, free.

The deep tearing.

YOU REMEMBER
how it happened from another dream another day, that you go over again from start to finish now.

Alone in the brilliant noon forest, you part the leaves with your hand.

A clearing ahead, bright gold as a bowl of sunlight, ringed with dense brush, the grass emerald-colored, thick broad blades.

The sky above the clearing broad as a valley of blue, engulfing everything.

You must go into that light from this darkness, this protection.

The cool river lost somewhere miles behind, through thicknesses of leaves and underbrush; River Man there somewhere, far away.

You must no longer travel hidden, you must enter this clearing to learn how this light feels on the skin.

But the thought of standing naked beneath that nakedness has made your throat go dry.

You step into the light, parting the leaves and branches with your hand. Your shadow shrinks beneath you. The sunlight is a new thing to your skin, a tingling
that is fresh and filling—you smile, you run forward through the high grass, your too-quick heartbeat all that shows of your fear.

The clearing is a circle and you stand in the middle, turning around and around.

The sky is a wheel, you are under the hub, the hub is an eye looking down as you look up.

When you hear the new sound behind you, at first you don't turn to it.

Then you hear the sound again and know what it is: the muffled rumble from the wide throat.

When you turn you see it.

Bright lion, loping large-thighed across the grass, almost playful.

You bury your hands in his mane.

The wide mouth yawns.

The vast paw lifts, a playful tap.

You gasp at the tearing, lean away still gripping the mane, you shudder and step away slowly, heart exploding in bursts of heat—the lion eager, pressing toward you, warm red tongue on your hands.

You lead him to the side, steps coming hard for you as he leaps high, suspended in the air above the high grass that brushes your thigh; stained after with the luminous blood streaming down.

You limp but never fall.

Bright lion calms beside you, no longer leaping.

You reach the trees and he watches you climb one of them, the pain like a fire in your side. He sits on his
haunches and lashes his tail, puzzled that you don't want to play any more. You fall into the crooked hollow of a branch too high even for his highest leap.

The smell of your blood drifts out into the air.

Bright lion watches from below.

YOU DREAM
you waken in River Man's cave to the sound of water lapping in the tunnel. Shadows move on the earth walls. From a torch? No, from the fire burning in the stone fireplace.

Your leg hurts the same as it would hurt if you were having a bleed there. When you touch it dried blood breaks off in flakes, leaving a light stain on your fingers. You remember the lion now, and falling asleep in the crook of a tree like a monkey.

—River Man?

Your voice so small the room swallows it.

—River Man, are you here anywhere?

As you waken fully you realize you lie in River Man's bed, not your own. The room looks funny from this angle, everything out of place and yet not out of place. When you try to move your leg it burns, and pain like fire shoots up your side. But you ignore it, leaning over the side of the bed till you can see your own bed, hidden behind a wooden chest in the corner.

He lies there, a big shadow, feet hanging off the edge. You hear his breathing now, barely, so deep it almost makes no sound. You say, River Man, but softer, not meaning
to wake him, only wanting to use his name. But he rises and looks at you.

—Danny? Danny, you're awake?

—How come it's so cold in here?

He crosses the room and says hi, hand on your forehead. He looks tired. He says, You are cold.

—Cover me up with something. He gets a blanket, something heavy, maybe the fur of a big animal, a bear or a lion he killed. He spreads it over you and you sigh at its engulfing heaviness and warmth.

He says, The bleeding finally stopped a little while ago.

—My leg feels big.

—It's swollen some. The cuts are the worst. No tearing, only deep slashes.

—It was a lion, River Man.

—I know.

—He was gold-colored, and his mane was so bright it looked like it was on fire. He came running out of the woods like he wanted to play.

He turns his face toward the fire.—I know that too.

—You saw him?

—I saw him later, yes. He watches you for a long time, and at last touches your shoulder tenderly.—I didn't think the bleeding would ever stop. Do you know how scared I was?

You have no answer to that. He watches you and smiles. Touching your forehead, he says, You're still cold.

—I'll be all right now.

—You need better than that, he says, and rises up tall and dark, a warm shadow, lifting the fur and sliding beside you.

NOW THE
dream goes away. When you open your eyes the river flows past you just as before, and the branches overhead still weave the mazes that slow the falling light. The trestle hangs over the river waiting for a train. You wipe the seat of your pants when you stand, and throw a stick deep into the river, thinking it would be fun to spin like that stick spins, or like those leaves, twirling on top of the water till the river runs into the sea.

The dream has left you with a feeling of heaviness.

You walk down the riverbank, balancing at the edge of the weed fringe, looking down into the water at your own face staring up. “You're ugly,” you tell your reflection, and you drop a stone into yourself. “You got a face like a hoe cake and crooked teeth and big ears.”

You chant names whose sounds you like: Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Eleanor River Potter's Lake Mars Hill Matthew Mark Luke MenthoEucalyptus Song of Solomon Isaiah Jeremiah Hezekiah Daniel Nicholas Crell Bobjay Crell Robert Jay Crell Robert Jay Judas Robert Judas. Crell. Then you declare to your own bare arms, “You're so white you might as well be a ghost.”

Always you watch where you step, checking to make sure there's no glass underfoot, nothing to turn your ankle on, no place to fall. You keep your back to the places
where the underbrush is thin, where you might glimpse the house across the fields. Your family is dead, dead, you are an orphan …

But the pines cannot hold back Papa's voice. When you hear it you stand still. The wind increases, drowning the noise for a moment and bending the pines back and forth, now slow, now faster. The clouds hang low against the pine tops. Far across the field you see Queenie with her nose in the dirt. Beyond her the house shines. You think maybe your Mama stands at one of the windows, looking out the way she likes to. Maybe she has been waiting for you. Maybe she sees you now and is glad you're coming home. Maybe that is even her shadow you see now, turning away from one of the black squares of glass.

Or maybe it is Papa who watches.

For a moment you want to go back to the river. But no. You will take River Man with you, you will dream he walks beside you across the fields, brown and tall and strong, his warm hand on your shoulder.

In those days, Danny, you slept in the same room with your brothers and Amy Kay, in the same bed with Allen, who would never let you lie close to him unless he was cold. The house by the river was always cold, wind pouring in through cracks under the doors, around the windows, down chimneys and out boarded-up fireplaces. The family that farmed these fields once lived in this house, but they sold the land long ago and the new owner doesn't even remember their name.

You moved to this house a little over a month ago, the seventh house you have lived in since you were born. After you move out of this house you will live in seven others with your family, before you are old enough to make your home wherever you choose.

You and Amy Kay named this house right away—you called it the Circle House because the doors opened in a circle and you could walk from room to room forever. Amy Kay and you named all the houses you lived in, though finding the right name wasn't always easy.

The two of you began the game in the Snake House, a green cinder-block cottage with a red shingle roof. Mama liked that house better than any of the places you moved to later because in that house the living room and hall were paneled in polished cherry wood, and because the kitchen had cabinets built into the walls.

The Snake House stood in a thicket of loblolly pine at the edge of a patch of woods where snakes abounded. The house was built on a low foundation, and snakes could crawl into it through holes in the cinder block that Mama plugged as best she could with bits of stone and old rags. Later, when you are older, Mama will tell you stories about the snakes she found in the house. Once, she opened the hall closet to get down a set of sheets and in fact had her hand on the edge of one folded sheet when she saw a black snake coiled on top, darting fire at her with its tongue. The snake vanished as soon as she stepped back from the closet.

After counting her breaths to ten, she searched the closet from top to bottom, lifting every sheet and towel slowly and carefully off the shelves. She found no snake even when the closet was empty, so she searched the rest of the house, spilling clothes out of chests of drawers, pulling couches and chairs away from the walls, even rolling up the worn piece of carpet in her bedroom, thinking the snake might have hidden beneath it. Still she found no snake anywhere.

She went to the bathroom—when she got nervous about something she had to pee every five minutes, she
said. She had sat down on the toilet with her pants around her ankles when she saw the snake beside her in the bathtub, tasting the edge of the drain with its tongue. Mama ran out of the bathroom pulling up her pants and snatched the garden hoe from its place next to the back door. She chopped off the snake's black head while it frantically tried to fit itself down the drain.