Beyond the Laughing Sky (7 page)

W
hen Nashville's father picked him up outside the pet shop, Nashville was standing with a police officer, a reporter from the
Goosepimple Tribune
, and several of the town's busiest busybodies.

Nashville's father didn't look very happy at all. His brow was furrowed and creased, the way it always became when he didn't know what to say to his son. They walked quietly up the hill to the house in the pecan tree.

“Nashville,” he said, finally breaking the silence, “I'm not mad.”

“You're not?” asked Nashville.

“No,” said his father. “I don't agree with what you did, but I think, on some level, I can understand why you did it.”

“I was trying to be a good friend,” replied Nashville.

“And that's great,” said his father. “A bit ill conceived in this case, but a tip-top quality in anyone. But . . .”

“But?” asked Nashville.

“But I think,” said his father, “maybe you could spend less time with your bird friends, and more time with your classmates. Invite them over to play. Go to the field and get some grass stains.”

“The other kids don't like me,” Nashville said, nearly whispering. “A boy in my class even plucked one of my feathers.”

His father stopped walking and knelt down in front of Nashville. He put his hands on his son's shoulders.

“They just don't know you like we do,” he said. “They'd like you if they did. All I'm asking,” he continued, “is that you give it a chance. I think you'll be surprised how many friends you'd make if you just try to fit in a little bit. Will you do that? For me?”

“Yes,” said Nashville. “I can do that. And I think I know just what you mean.”

“You'd like
what
?” asked the barber, an ancient old man with the posture of a jumbo shrimp. Nashville sat in the chair at the barbershop. Normally when he went there he simply requested a preen—a few feathers off the top—but this time he had a new request.

“I'd like you to get rid of my feathers,” said Nashville.

The barber looked nervous. “You sure?”

“Yes,” said Nashville, who didn't seem all that sure. “Cut them. Snip them. Buzz them all off. No more feathers. Feathers don't fit in.”

And so, reluctantly, the old man went to work. His scissors clipped and snipped away until the air was full of feathers. The barber's assistant, a young, soundless boy, shuffled around the shop with a broom and dustpan trying to keep up with the storm. Finally, the barber took out his electric razor, and buzzed the last bits of feather from Nashville.

“Ta-da,” said the barber, brushing Nashville's neck and shoulders. “You are feather free, my young friend.”

When he turned the chair around Nashville gasped—he had never seen himself without a crown of feathers on his head, and the sight of his own baldness was alarming. He ran his hands over the smoothness, and it reminded him of the way a baby's head looks. It reminded him of an egg. It reminded him of something he hardly recognized at all.

“How do you like it?” asked the barber.

“Perfect,” said Nashville in a small, cracking voice. “Now I'll fit right in.”

T
hat night in the village of goosepimple it began to rain.

It rained sideways and backward, down, and sometimes it seemed to rain up as well. It rained so long and so hard that after three days the news began reporting there was a chance there would be a flood, the likes of which Goosepimple had not seen in over ten years. It rained and rained while Nashville and Junebug stared out the foggy windows, their board games lying exhausted on the carpet, their markers dried up from all work and all play.

Nashville slipped away a few times, opening his toy chest, where he'd stashed the nearly finished wings. He'd worked night after night sewing on each individual feather, and he'd finished attaching the straps that would fit them to his body. He'd finished them except for one thing—one thing was missing, and he wasn't quite sure what it was.

“When will it
stop
?” Junebug asked, staring out the window.

“I don't know,” said Nashville. “But it will.”

He was right, of course. One day, after a week of storming, the rain stopped falling just as suddenly as it had started.

“See,” said Nashville. “No weather lasts forever.”

And so Nashville and Junebug put on their galoshes and went out into the world. After so many days of rain, it was cool and cleansed and damp under the pecan tree. Fat water drops fell branch-to-branch, leaf-to-leaf, onto the ground. They fell on Nashville and Junebug, who lay on the ground under the tree, too happy to be outside to care about the wet grass, too excited to see and touch everything as only two children can be after a solid week of rain.

“Hey, Nashville?” said Junebug.

“Yeah?” said her brother.

“Mom and Dad told me not to say anything about it, because you're going through something called ‘growing pains.' But I have to tell you . . .” She seemed reluctant to continue in a very un-Junebug-like way. “Well, I preferred you with feathers,”

“Yeah,” said Nashville, laughing, the drops from the tree falling on his bare head. “It's been too rainy out for all this fitting in.”

They stayed there, watching the raindrops fall down to the ground where they disappeared. But not really, of course, they only vanished to the naked eye. The rain had come, and it had gone, but it would still be there around them; under the ground the roots of the pecan tree would have their share, and the pale threads of the grasses, and the feet of moss. A few drops would enter the mole's tunnel, and eventually, some would even find their way down to stones that, after being buried for thousands of years, would finally be able to feel the sky.

N
ashville wore a hat to school, but as soon as the bell rang, Miss Starling asked him to please take it off. He heard murmers and whispers around the room, but it wasn't until recess, sitting in his tree, that someone said anything to him about his featherless head.

“Hey.” It was, to Nashville's surprise and dismay, Finnes Fowl standing below the tree.

The large boy wrapped his large hands around a low branch. After three tries he finally hoisted one leg up as well, then pulled and grunted himself onto the branch. Nashville scooted aside to avoid being pushed out of the tree, or worse.

“So why'd you do it?” asked Finnes. “It looked less stupid before.” He pointed to Nashville's featherless head.

Nashville was shocked. Finnes seemed to be giving him some sort of . . . compliment? Well, almost.

“That's what my sister said, too,” replied Nashville. He could hardly believe he was having an actual conversation with Finnes Fowl. He tried to keep it going. “You really liked the feathers better? I thought you thought they were gross or something.”

In response the boy pointed to his own leg.

“Wanna see something gross?” he asked.

Nashville looked down to see Finnes's leg, covered in vicious, red spots. It reminded Nashville of the pictures in their science book of the supernova, the dots meshed together in the center, then spreading over his whole leg.

“I've had it since I was born,” explained Finnes. “I've never worn short pants before. But then you came to school, looking like you do, and I thought heck, if that pip-squeak can come to school with feathers, maybe I can show my legs. So I asked Ma to take me shopping.”

“And you got yourself some shorts?” asked Nashville.

“Yup,” said Finnes smiling. “I got myself some shorts. You should have seen it. Ma tried to act like it was no big deal, but then when she thought I wasn't looking, I saw her wipe her eyes.”

Finnes swung his legs. He let the bare skin brush against the cool, green leaves on the tree.

“That's good,” said Nashville. “This is a nice time of year for shorts.”

“Right,” laughed Finnes. He rubbed Nashville's head and jumped from the tree with a thud.

“You're all right, little guy.” And with that, Finnes Fowl marched away to his friends, leaving Nashville alone and smiling in his tree.

S
oon, it was time for the students in Miss Starling's class to present the answers to the questions they had placed in the box like buzzing bees.

The girl with a freckle on every spare bit of skin made her way to the front of the room.

“Go on,” prompted Miss Starling. “What was your question?”

The girl turned red, her freckles merging with the rest of her blushing skin.

“My . . . my question was . . .” She stopped. “I don't really think I should read it.”

“Why not?” asked Miss Starling.

“Because,” the girl said quietly, “it's about someone in our class.”

A look of shock swept over Miss Starling's face, but only for the briefest moment. She took a deep breath.

“Go on,” she said.

“It was about Nashville,” explained the girl. “But that was at the beginning of school, and I'd never seen anyone like him. But now I don't wonder my question anymore. So I picked a new question, one about how flowers grow.”

The girl went on to tell the class about water and sunshine and how the plants could grow.

“The earth laughs in flowers,” she said, quoting from her paper.

The next to present was a boy with teeth like loose shutters. He explained about gas and matter and hydrogen and space

“When it is dark enough,” he finished, “you can finally see the stars.”

Miss Starling smiled. “You can take your seat now.”

But the boy kept standing.

“That wasn't my real question,” he said, looking down at his shoes.

“Oh?” asked Miss Starling.

“Mine was actually about Nashville, too.”

“What was it?” asked Nashville. Everyone turned to look at him.

“I wanted to know if you were, like, a
mutant
. Like a superhero, I mean,” the boy quickly continued. The class laughed at this.

“And?” asked Miss Starling.

“I guess he is, kind of,” said the boy. “But not in the usual way.”

The boy sat down. One by one the rest of the class stood and read their questions from the beginning of the school year. Braver now, they looked at Nashville as they read.

What is he?

Why is he?

Was he a mistake?

Almost all the questions, it seemed, had been about Nashville. But his classmate's answers, Nashville realized, were not really about him at all.

“I hate how tall I am,” said a girl taller than the boys. “But it's not that big of a deal.”

“It's like, who cares if you have a stupid stutter, or feathers, or whatever,” said another boy, hardly stuttering at all. “None of that really matters.”

“Actually,” said the prettiest girl in school, as she focused her eyes right on Nashville, “I wish we all had feathers,” she continued. “I think they're beautiful.”

Now it was Nashville's turn to blush.

“Nashville,” said Miss Starling, interrupting his thoughts. “I believe it's your turn.”

Nashville nodded, stood, and slowly made his way to the front of the class. It was the end of the school day, the air warm. But everyone in Miss Starling's room was wide-awake.

Nashville cleared his throat. He did not have a paper to read from, and instead spoke while looking out at the class.

“My question,” he said, “is
why can't I fly
?”

“And?” said Miss Starling. “What is your answer?”

“I don't have one,” answered Nashville.

“Why not?” asked Miss Starling.

“Because,” said Nashville. He stopped then, looked at his class, the one he'd found so scary at the beginning of the year. The ones that now made him brave with their kind words.

“Because,” he said, “I think I
can
.”