Beyond the Laughing Sky (6 page)

B
elow the tree stood a group of boys from Nashville's class.

“Who are you talking to up there?” asked Finnes Fowl, a freckle-faced boy.

Nashville did not reply, only began climbing down the branches, more deftly and quickly than the other students had ever seen anyone exit a tree.

“Was that your flock?” asked Finnes, the others laughing along.

Nashville reached the ground and stood with his back to the tree.

“Well actually,” he said, “not all groups of birds are called flocks. It's a common mistake.”

The boys raised their eyebrows in unison at the unexpected reply.

“A flock, a gaggle,” continued Nashville. “Those are the words for birds that most folks know. But some are surprising, and pretty perfect. A bouquet of pheasants for example.” He paused to think. “Oh yes, a caldron of raptors! That one's swell. A charm of hummingbirds. An exaltation of larks. A parliament of owls.” He said each name reverently like a spell. “A murder of crows.”

“You're weird,” said Finnes loudly when Nashville had finished. The students all looked at one another and laughed nervously. All except one large boy, whose name Nashville did not know.

“Really,” asked the large boy with his forehead creased in thought. “Are they really called a
murder
of crows?”

“Yes,” said Nashville. “I have a book you could borrow.”

The large boy was about to reply when Finnes interrupted and pushed him aside.

“So, do you actually think your parents were birds?”

“I don't think it,” replied Nashville. “I know it. I have the egg I hatched from at my house. It's cornflower blue with mahogany spots that look like continents.”

“Yuck,” said a boy in the back of the group.

“Gross,” said another.

“You know what I think?” continued Finnes. “I think you're a liar. I think you're a little lying weirdo and you didn't hatch from no egg, and your parents weren't no dumb birds. These probably aren't even real.”

And before Nashville knew what was happening, Finnes pushed him against the tree, pinned his chest, and plucked a feather from his head.

“Ouch,” whispered Nashville, rubbing his scalp.

“Whoa,” said Finnes backing away, dropping the feather like it was on fire. “You really do have feathers.”

The recess bell rang and, after one last look, the other students ran toward the entrance to the school. Nashville hung back for a moment. He considered climbing back up the tree and hiding all day. But finally he sighed, picked up his lost feather from the ground, and made his way back to class.

T
he first thought Nashville had as he left school that day was a daydream about finding a tree on the playground tall enough to let him hide behind the clouds and avoid the boys at school.

The second thought he had was that it would be better to never go back to school at all.

And the third thought he had was just one word, so lovely he dare not even speak it. Instead, he wrote it on a small slip of paper.

The word was
Wings.

He stared at it for a while.
Wings.
He imagined the
W
looked like two bird wings itself, and the rest of the word was in flight, singing along behind it. Finally, not knowing what else to do, he folded the paper, went to the library, and handed it to the librarian.

“Hmm,” said the old librarian, pushing up her thick glasses. “Wings.” She walked slowly, slowly through the stacks, picking books off the shelves and handing them to Nashville.

“Wings,” she repeated. “Wings, wings.”

Nashville stayed there all morning reading his way down the stack of books. He learned that bird wings evolved in two ways, that preflight birds were hopping a lot, up into the air to catch and grab things, or away from predators. They were also leaping from tree to tree. Eventually, after many, many, many years of all this hopping and leaping, birds were able to fly. But that was just the scientific answer.

The librarian had also given Nashville other books. Prettier books. Books full of poems and feathers.

Nashville only knew he liked the poems. He understood the poems. He loved the sound when he read
Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul.
And
I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable; I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Poetically speaking, Nashville realized, wings started with a
desire.
The pre-wing birds wanted things; they wanted the tops of trees, or the cloudless skies, or the stars. Who could really be sure?

So Nashville figured he was already on his way, since he certainly had the desire to fly, and hope, and somewhere in him a very barbaric yawp. So now all he needed were the actual materials and tools. Using Magnolia's wing for inspiration, Nashville made a trip to the Goosepimple Curiosity Shop on his way home from the library.

“To help you find what you need,” said the wart-nosed proprietor, “I need to know what you're building.”

“Oh, you know,” said Nashville, not wanting to divulge his plan, “a device. A doohickey. A doodad.”

“Eh?” said the owner.

“An apparatus, a gadget, a gizmo. A thingamajig. A whatchamacallit.”

“Ah,” said the owner finally. “An
invention
.”

Like the librarian, the curiosity shop proprietor walked down the aisles of his shop, poking and pulling items off dusty shelves. Nashville followed at a safe distance as the owner handed him various items: an umbrella, a ship sail, shoelaces, and a hat rack made from bamboo. He handed him a teapot, and one captain's wheel. Nashville teetered to the register with the items.

“Perfect,” he said. “Just what I was looking for.”

“S
o,” asked Nashville's father at dinner, “tell us what's been happening at school?”

Nashville was glad when Junebug began prattling about every detail of her day—about the girl with the koala backpack, the pudding fight at lunch, and the freshly painted hopscotch lines on the playground. This gave Nashville time to think of something to say, since he definitely couldn't tell them about the boys on the playground. It was just the kind of thing his mother—or even worse, Junebug—would show up at his school, and make a big stink about.

“And what about you, Nashville?” asked his mother. “Anything fun happening in your class?”

“Well,” said Nashville, thinking, “I've been working on this assignment we got.”

“Maybe you didn't hear her ask if anything
fun
was happening,” said Junebug, crinkling her nose.

“Our teacher,” continued Nashville, “Miss Starling, had us each think of a question. And so everyone sat, tapping their feet and pencils, thinking of questions, getting ready to put them into a box. Once they were inside everyone wondered what they said, buzzing there like a box full of bees.”

“So what was the assignment?” asked Nashville's father.

“Our assignment,” explained Nashville, “is to answer our own question.”

“How interesting,” said his mother. “And what was your question?”

“My question,” said Nashville, “is a secret.” He paused. “Well, a secret until I figure out the answer.”

“Oh . . .” said his mother. “And? Do you think you'll be able to answer it?” she asked softly.

“Maybe,” replied Nashville. “Yes. I think maybe I'll be able to answer it soon.”

After dinner, Nashville hurried upstairs to begin work on his wings.

First, he took out his suitcase of feathers. A whole suitcase! Yes, Junebug had proven to be quite the hunter, and Nashville had exchanged nearly his entire piggy bank for the haul of feathers she'd brought him.

Next, he started working on the coat hangers, reshaping the wires until they looked like the skeleton of a bird's wings. He held them against a large, flat piece of leather, and traced the outline. He cut the pieces of leather and some scraps of an old ship's sail into pieces, each fitting into the skeleton, making them resemble bat wings. But they weren't supposed to be bat wings, they were to be bird wings, and for that he'd have to figure out the feathers, and this would be the hardest part.

Feathers, Nashville knew, were more complicated than most folks realized.

“I wonder . . .” Nashville said to the feathers as he emptied the suitcase. “I wonder if you were sad when you fell to the ground. I wonder if you ever thought you'd have a chance to fly again.”

T
he next day was saturday, so Nashville rode his bicycle down the hill to what he referred to as his part-time job. This was putting it a bit loftily, since old Mrs. Craw, the tiny but fierce owner of the pet shop, didn't exactly pay him. She did, however, allow him to play with the animals and birds, which she claimed he had “a real way with” due to his “unique” looks. Nashville liked the job and figured it was one place he blended in just fine.

That afternoon, like most afternoons, Mrs. Craw left Nashville to watch the shop while she went and played canasta.

“You're in charge,” she told him as she left. “I have some imperative vocational commerce in town.” Mrs. Craw was fond of words that were twice her size.

Nashville liked being alone in the shop. He liked the smell of cedar, and the sound the mice made when they sipped their water bottle. He liked the softness of puppy ears, and the
NO FISHING
sign in the fish tank. He especially liked the birds—the exotic, bright birds, bopping like jesters in a royal court.

Nashville looked at the birds in their cages, thinking about how odd it must feel to be able to fly, but not allowed. They looked back up at him and seemed to speak with their eyes. The caged birds seemed to all be asking the same exact question.

And their question brought up an idea, an answer, in Nashville.

“It's a bit crazy,” he said. “But maybe. Just maybe . . .”

“I think we're ready,” announced Nashville two hours later, holding the ends of the strings. “Here goes nothing.”

And with that, he flung open the doors to the pet shop. Attached to strings and held by tight knots, the birds flew and spread out. They were like dogs on leashes, except in the sky.

“It's working!” Nashville shouted, dancing below. He looked very much like a salesman holding a colorful bunch of enchanted balloons.

He turned, made sure to be responsible and lock the door to the shop behind him, then let the birds lead the way.

And what joy the birds must have felt, the wind once again running through their feathers. For a moment the strings disappeared, and they were free.

“Now, now,” said Nashville. “Be respectful. No tangling, we're not trying to make a maypole here.”

One bluebird closed its eyes and imagined dipping down the meadow, past the nest where he had been hatched, the shells now crushed to powder, over the churchyard, straight up, until like rain into a puddle, the bluebird merged with bluest sky.

Nashville took a turn onto the main street of Goosepimple. As he walked, the townsfolk began to take notice and emerge, one by one, from their perfect houses.

“Why I never,” a man said as he stood with a hose watering his garden.

“I want one,” a little girl said, looking up at her mother.

“Meow,” cried a cat, looking hungrily at the birds.

Soon, the entire street was lined with onlookers, and the murmurs and questions danced from freshly cut lawn to freshly cut lawn. Heads started popping out of upstairs windows, and it wasn't long before a reporter for the
Goosepimple Tribune
showed up with his camera.

“Is this some kind of promotional stunt?” he asked, his flashbulbs popping.

“Oh no,” said Nashville. “I just feel one should take a stroll on such a fine day, don't you? Even if one happens to be a bird.”

He continued past the candy shop and the five-and- dime, where children pressed their faces against the glass. He finally reached the town square, where, storming across the grass, was the squat figure of Mrs. Craw.

“Nashville! What on earth are you doing?”

“I just thought,” he said quickly, “that it's such a nice day with such a warm breeze, perhaps the birds would like to go for a stroll. . . .”

“Have you lost your mind?” Mrs. Craw shouted, trying to untangle the strings. Her face was so red and round, it, too, looked like a balloon ready to pop.

“You . . . you . . .” she was so busy figuring out what to yell, she barely noticed that the birds were dragging her heels off the ground. Yes, for a moment it seemed the wee woman could float away like the basket beneath a hot-air balloon, never to be seen again.

“Nashville!” she shouted as the birds dragged her toward the shop. “Nashville you are absolutely, irrefutably, indubitably
FIRED!
”