The Hummingbird's Cage (17 page)

I looked over the kachinas one last time. All those intermediaries between people and their gods. All that blind faith in the unknowable. Faith that something better was waiting, just out of sight. And spirits ready to step in, if asked. To guide and protect. To fend off mortal enemies.

And what of those enemies? Do they have their own spirit champions? And when they die, do they ever get to see what's on the other side of the sky?

“What about someone who does bad things?” I asked finally. “Does he deserve to be happy? Does he deserve heaven?”

“I figure a man can't be all that happy if he does bad things. And it ain't up to me to say what he might deserve. But I figure when he passes on, he's where he oughta be.”

“Some people . . . some people don't believe in Judgment, a reckoning. Any of that.”

Olin shrugged. “I figure it ain't up to them.”

This
is a dream

I wade through wet cement . . . straining to
run
 . . .

A scarlet bird flies in my face, wings flapping like a Fury. My head explodes like shattered glass and I fall and fall until I can't fall anymore

I smell heat rising from red rock . . . I taste grit . . .

This is a dream

My mouth opens to scream, but no sound comes. I scream again and again until my throat is scoured raw. But no sound comes

I know this is a dream

I fight like a demon to
wake up wake up wake up
but can't move . . . only my mouth moves, gaping like a canyon, mute as rock

*   *   *

I bolted upright in the dark, gasping for breath like a drowning woman breaching the surface.

Like a cornered animal, I threw wild eyes around me at every shadow.

There was no cement, no scarlet bird.

I was in my own bed at the farmhouse. My nightgown was drenched with sweat and I couldn't suck in air fast enough.

No cement. No scarlet bird. No explosion inside my head. I groaned and buried my face in my hands.

The nightmare still gripped me like a claw. Every smell, every taste. Every fresh stab of fear. I could even hear it—the screams that wouldn't come. But they were coming now, high-pitched and howling . . .

. . . and down the hall.

I threw off the quilt and ran toward Laurel's room. I burst in to find her kicking and thrashing on her bed, eyes clamped tight, moaning and shrieking. I ran to gather her up, hugging her against me to quiet her, to stop the thrashing.

“It's all right, sweetie,” I crooned over and over. “It's all right.”

It was a long while before she could hear me, before she opened her eyes and looked at me, staring as if she hadn't seen me in forever. She reached out and fingered my hair as if I were some foreign thing.

Then she burst into sobs and flung her arms around my neck. I let her cry it out, holding her close, walking the room
with her as if she were a baby again. Olin and Jessie were watching from the doorway.

“I'll heat up some milk,” Jessie murmured, and headed for the stairs.

Laurel's face was buried in my neck and she was mumbling something over and over that I couldn't make out. I stroked her hair. “What is it, honey? What are you saying?”

She shifted her head until she could speak more clearly.

“He's coming,” she whispered.

“Who's coming, sweetie?”

She buried her face in my neck again, but this time when she spoke I could hear her plain enough:

“Daddy.”

Jim
didn't come that night. Not the next night, either, nor the one after that. It was painfully obvious that my daughter dreaded her own father the way other children fear monsters under the bed. But in her case, she had every right to.

Laurel insisted she didn't remember much about her bad dream, but it was a while before she settled down to sleep. For the rest of that night, though, and for several nights after, she slept with me.

I didn't mention to anyone my own nightmare that had coincided with hers—the last thing I wanted was to compare notes. But I wanted very much to understand what it augured. Was it her own fears manifesting? A premonition?

Or had Olin's kachinas and his stories of life and death and spirits sparked something in her? In me?

Her dream didn't repeat itself, and in no time she seemed to have forgotten it.

I didn't.

*   *   *

Soon enough, for the first time since we came to Morro, there was frost on the ground when I set the horses to pasture. The days were growing short, and Laurel grumbled about waking in the dark. She dressed for school as I packed her lunch, then bundled her in a jacket for the walk to town with Olin.

I was working the café that morning, and when I arrived there was already a stranger sitting quietly at a window table—a tall man with a bottlebrush mustache wearing a green tweed coat; a slouchy tweed cap sat on the table in front of him. There was a canvas knapsack at his feet and a walking stick propped against the wall.

When I greeted him, the man turned and blinked as if he'd just noticed where he was and that someone else was with him. He nodded.

In the kitchen, Simon was tying on his butcher's apron.

“Who's the early bird?” I murmured.

“Showed up just after I did,” he said. “Told him I wasn't quite open, but he said he'd wait.”

“I'll start the coffee.”

“Better make it tea—he's English.”

Earl Grey steeping at his elbow, the man examined the menu. “Let's try something exotic,” he said. “Spanish omelet. When in Rome, eh?”

He handed back the menu, and when I returned with the order Simon came with me.

“I'm just getting my sea legs, as it were,” the man said as he ate. “This . . . traveling takes getting used to. You know, we'd always talked of moving to the American Southwest one day, the wife and I. Running a bed-and-breakfast.”

“Oh, is she with you?” I asked.

“No—back in Surrey. Keyes, by the way.”

“Pardon?”

“My name. Albert Keyes.”

“Joanna. And this is Simon.”

“Delighted.”

Simon took a seat at the counter. “You're far afield, aren't you?”

Keyes nodded. “I'll be returning before long, once I've seen a thing or two. Like your town here—Morro, is it? And your desert.” He gazed wistfully out the window. “And, perhaps, the Northwest.”

Pal rose from his quilt and headed for the window, his ears pricked, his eyes trained like gun barrels on something outside. In the growing light I could just make out a huge black bird perched on a signpost across the road. It seemed to be staring back.

“Look at the size of that crow,” I said.

“Raven,” Keyes replied. “A very old friend, and now my traveling companion. His name is Gruffydd.” He spelled it out. “It's Welsh. After a prince who fell from the White Tower in a failed escape, a very long time ago.”

Simon smiled at my confusion. “I believe he's talking about the Tower of London,” he said.

“That's right,” said Keyes. “I was a yeoman warder there a
number of years, after service as a regimental sergeant major. Began as deputy to the ravenmaster. He retired some years ago, and I took over.”

He nodded toward the black bird.

“That's how we met. Raised him from a fledgling. Named him as well. At one time, all the birds were named for the Queen's regiments. Now they're often named for old gods, or for those who find them. Or rescue them. I named Gruffydd there for the prince that couldn't fly.”

Simon leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “I remember the ravens,” he said thoughtfully. “I was in London a few weeks before shipping out. Took a tour of the Tower. The ravens were
something
. Six of them. Bigger than you'd think. Must be a huge responsibility, taking care of them. What is it they say? If the ravens ever leave the Tower, the empire will fall?”

“That's the legend, anyway,” said Keyes. “But there have been episodes when the ravens have been absent—toward the end of the war, for instance—with no detriment to the monarchy.”

“How do you keep them from flying off?” I asked. “You don't keep them caged, do you?”

“They are, indeed, caged at dusk. I whistled them in for bed, but at dawn they were out again, roaming the grounds. I fed them from my own hand—raw meat from Smithfield Market. Boiled egg every other day. Bird biscuits soaked in blood—a delicacy. The odd roadkill. And they don't fly off because their wings are clipped—or one wing, at least—every few weeks. They can still fly a bit, but no appreciable distance.”

There was affection in his voice, but it still seemed a cruel fate for such wild creatures.

“They are wild,” Keyes said thoughtfully. “But they're
natural mimics, and very intelligent. And they do have their fun. Gruffydd was always my favorite. Every day he tells me, ‘Good morning.' When I fill his water bowl, he says, ‘Cheers.' He used to stake out a particular doorway at the Tower, lying in ambush for tourists. If you wore a hat, he'd try to grab it. And if he made off with it, he'd be off to a restricted area and battle that hat like billy-o.”

Pal plopped his rump down heavily on the tile floor, still training on the bird. He licked his chops and whined. Simon tapped his leg. “Here, boy.” Ever obedient, Pal rose and moved to sit next to him.

“Don't worry about Gruffydd,” Keyes said. “He can manage, should the dog get out.”

I wondered what sort of bond this man and that raven could possibly share. If Keyes whistled, would Gruffydd come? Perch on his shoulder, clutching the nubby tweed? Say “Good morning” and “Cheers” on cue for a boiled egg or beef?

Keyes sighed. “Twenty-five years—he was getting on, you know. After his de-enlistment I brought him back to Surrey. My wife is still there—did I say?—puttering about the garden.”

When he was ready to head out, I rang the man up as he pulled on his cap and gathered his things. I cleared his breakfast dishes and delivered them to the back. By the time I returned, Keyes and Gruffydd were gone.

For the rest of the day, I couldn't get that raven out of my head—picturing him perched on weathered stones in high places, buffeted by winds that would never bear him away.

The
librarian, Jean Toliver, arrived at the farmhouse one morning dressed in the long skirt, velvet blouse and squash blossom necklace I now took to be her uniform. I imagined she'd come to press me to attend her club meetings, but soon found it was to invite me to a poetry reading set for the following week. Amateur poets, most of them local.

Then she asked where I'd like to appear on the program, and somehow by the time she left she'd inked me in for a slot.

I'd never enjoyed reading in public, and had only ever done so twice: at a student event in college, and a small community reading by a pair of unknowns—myself and a coffeehouse barista.

Both times, I'd nearly backed out. But for the first reading, Terri had been there to make sure I made it to the podium. I managed the second only after a shot of vodka from a hip flask the barista had stashed.

This time, I not only lacked the nerve, but the material as well.

That night I sat in the rocking chair in my room and opened the notebook Olin had given me—I'd been using it as a journal, after many failed attempts at poetry. Apparently Yeats no longer had the power of inspiration over me. Or I was no longer a likely vessel.

I came to the notebook that night with fresh purpose and not a little desperation, but with the same result: after a good hour, the page was still empty. There was nothing for it. Words weren't failing me—I was failing them.

I slapped the notebook closed, capped my pen and returned it to the nightstand, the blank page just another white flag of surrender. Tomorrow I would withdraw from the reading. The decision came as a relief.

And a vague sting of disappointment.

Over the years I'd grown keenly aware of risk, and adept at avoiding it. The risk here, it occurred to me, wasn't in standing before a roomful of strangers to read my own work. It wasn't even the struggle to find my own voice.

It was finding out if I had anything worth listening to in the first place.

And the only one who could determine that was me.

I looked down at the notebook in my lap. I opened the cover and leafed through the pages—the journaling I'd been doing nearly every day since I'd received it. The pages already filled with words.

My words.

*   *   *

By the night of the reading, I had two poems in hand. If I wasn't ready, I was at least resolved.

Jessie enlisted a girl from town to sit with Laurel; then Olin washed and waxed the old Ford pickup he stored in the barn and drove Jessie and me to town. He opened the pub's heavy oak door and I hesitated in the doorway until Jessie did just as Terri would have, and urged me inside.

The Parting Glass was a series of small cozy rooms strung together, and it was just as I imagined an old pub should be—coal fires and pipe smoke, beamed ceilings, odd recesses and crooked corners.

“There you are!”

It was Jean near the entrance, checking names off a clipboard. “Your table's in the second room, through the archway,” she said. “Name's on the placard. Simon's already there.”

Then she broke into a broad, dimpled smile. She had tiny round teeth, barely bigger than seed pearls.

“Who else is reading?” I asked.

“Only seven tonight. Don't look so worried—people at these things are ready to like everything they hear. You're”—she consulted the clipboard—“sixth up.”

Through the archway, the second room was much larger than the first. One side was lined with booths, and on the side opposite was a small stage and podium. In between were tables, nearly all of them occupied. Bree and Reuben called out from one of them.

“How wonderful,” said Bree. “You're a poet.”

“That remains to be seen,” I said.

“Jean says you're good.”

How would Jean know any such thing? I hadn't written these poems until a few days ago, and she'd never read them.

Jessie tapped my arm. “Honey, we're off to say hello to Liz and Molly. Meet you at the table.”

The sisters Liz and Molly were there, with Liz's husband, Faro, from the general store and a second man I'd never seen before. He was lively and middle-aged, dressed in a brown suit with a windowpane pattern and wide lapels. He had an infectious laugh—head thrown back, Adam's apple bobbing. From the way Molly was smiling at him, eyes glistening, she was clearly smitten.

So this was George, from Bristol.

Simon was sitting at a corner booth. In front of him was a tall beer, and at his side was a young woman, unreasonably pretty, her blond hair pinned back on either side to fall in a soft wave to her shoulders. She was leaning toward him, her pink lips moving. Then they were both smiling, as if at some shared joke.

“That's your table,” said Bree, watching me.

I hadn't thought much about Simon attending the reading tonight. Still, when Jean had mentioned him, it hadn't been a surprise. Part of me had expected him to be here, as a gesture of support.

I just hadn't expected him to bring a date.

I'd never thought of Simon with a woman. Certainly Jessie and Olin had never mentioned him seeing anyone. Not even casually. Maybe this was someone new in Morro. Newer than me. Or maybe she'd had her eye on him for a while now and was finally making progress.

Had she been up to his cabin yet? Gone for rides in his pickup? Cooked him dinner? Shared pastry under the stars? Had he invited her to the pub because I'd turned him down?

As I approached, I pulled a smile that felt forced, and too big for my face.

“Hey!” I said.

“You're here!” Simon looked pleased, and not a whit embarrassed. He stood. “There's someone I'd like you to meet. Joanna, this is Meg.”

To my dismay, Meg was even prettier up close. “I've heard so much about you,” she said. Her voice was warm, her smile sincere. “I'm glad we could meet.”

I took a seat across from them. “I'm glad, too. But I have to say I never heard—”

“Simon never mentioned me? No surprise. He's off in his own world sometimes.” She shook her head at him affectionately. “You're settling in, are you? At the farm?”

Before I could answer, a big man appeared, shirtsleeves hitched above his elbows.

“This the new one, is it?” His Irish accent was thick, and he was gesturing at me with a toothpick. “You can call me Mahenny. You like Italian food, do you?”

“I . . . adore Italian food,” I said.

“Lovely, then. I'm an old mick, but my wife's from Firenze. She's the cook. I recommend the lasagna.”

He glared, as if daring me to refuse.

“I'll have that, then,” I said.

“Brilliant. I usually only take orders at the bar, but on this particular occasion, I'll make an exception. Understand?”

No, I didn't understand. But I wasn't about to tell him that.

“I appreciate it,” I said.

“Now, for wine you got two choices: red or white.”

I was sure any pub owner—married to an Italian, no less—knew what to serve with lasagna. Mahenny was playing with me.

“Surprise me,” I said.

The glare softened. “That I will, darlin'. Lasagna all 'round, then?”

“Not for me,” said Meg. “I'm off to rejoin my husband.”

Husband?
I smiled with relief.

Meg smiled back with what looked like—understanding? Apology?

“His name's Will,” she said. “You can meet him later.”

Then Meg and Mahenny were gone, leaving me sitting across from Simon in an awkward silence. Simon broke it first, but not on the topic I'd hoped.

“He seems gruff, but he's a sweetheart,” he said. “Not that he can't toss a guy out on his ear if he has to. His wife—she's the sister of Schiavone, the baker.”

“And Mahenny's not from these parts, either.”

“County Armagh.”

I nodded. “Meg seems like a sweetheart, too,” I said lightly, trying to strike the right note of disinterest.

“We've known each other for years. She's the kid sister of an old friend. Back then, she was just a tomboy, trailing me like a puppy. Then one day I turned around and the tomboy was all grown up.”

Mahenny swooped past, setting a wineglass in front of me. Then he was off again. I took a sip and smiled—Chianti. I focused on its rich red color, the better to avoid Simon's eyes.

“A long time ago,” he continued, “Meg and I were sweet on each other, but . . . things didn't work out. She and Will are very happy. Five kids.”

“Five?”
I stared at him in disbelief. “With that figure? That has to be . . . physically impossible.”

He laughed. “You can meet them someday. Meg and Will are heading back to Colorado tomorrow.”

He reached for my poems, and I slapped the pages back on the table.

“Sorry,” I said. “I'd rather you didn't. I can't explain it—”

He didn't seem offended, but amused. “Artistic temperament,” he said. “I can wait.”

Jessie and Olin joined us—Jessie already pink cheeked from the sherry in her hand, Olin nursing a bottle of Rio Grande beer. Lasagna arrived for the four of us; Mahenny was right—his wife was an excellent cook.

Soon, Jean stepped to the podium with her clipboard, tapping the microphone to test the sound, then introduced the first of the poets. One by one, they took the stage, reading from note cards, from paper or from memory.

A tense older executive type in horn-rimmed glasses went first, followed by an academic with white hair and precise diction. I was surprised to see Faro take the stage next. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind him, just as he'd done before he produced Laurel's yellow boots, and let loose with a love poem that had Liz looking cross, then pleased. After him, Jean read three works—compact and clipped works that reminded me of Emily Dickinson. Then a young woman with multiple piercings on her pretty face read fierce free verse about an ill-fated love affair.

Then it was my turn.

Olin was beside me on the bench seat, and stood to let me out. He squeezed my shoulder encouragingly.

As I made my way to the podium, I was suddenly very
grateful for the Chianti—I was sure it was giving me the courage to go through with this and not bolt for the exit. It nearly steadied my hand as I adjusted the microphone. I was grateful for the darkness of the room that blurred the faces all around me, and for the many brands of beer Mahenny stocked to loosen up the audience.

I stared down at my papers and cleared my throat.

“This is for a woman I met in the café,” I said. “Lula told me about a cemetery back home in Mississippi—a black cemetery, mostly forgotten now, being farmed over. It's called ‘Brother Stones.'”

I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. I drew a deep breath and began:

Brother stones rise to the plow,

crack the topsoil

in a catch of breath

audible only to the blue boneset

and the Quaker ladies.

A barren harvest of white stones,

then seed is thrown back:

soybean and cotton.

This gravel road between Dunleith

and Long Switch runs past

an empty space

where the Baptist church

once stood, dug up by its roots

twelve years ago to become

another wide load rumbling

across the Mississippi Delta,

a far piece from empty sockets

in the fractured earth where

uprooted metal markers lay,

one by one.

“There was no cemetery there.”

There was a child, seven,

cradled his head and rolled

to the kitchen floor

of the shotgun shack.

There was the child's brother.

There was a young man, drowned

in the River, his great-grandmother,

dead of the “sugar.”

A hundred others or more

planted in this earth,

a quiet population

under a blowing field of cotton,

a disjunction of bones and teeth

rising like smooth stones

through the earth,

a terminable progress

from this place where they are not,

up toward the cotton in fruit,

toward the topsoil, sunbaked to fissures,

toward the vigorous light,

to break the fresh furrows finally

with a gasp.

I could hear murmuring as I switched papers, smoothing them under the bright podium light, still struggling for control.

“And this is for Keyes, an Englishman who passed through Morro with a raven named Gruffydd. I call this ‘Six Ravens at the Tower of London'”:

They are the darlings of the Yeoman Warders

who named them after regiments

of the Queen, who feed them

eggs and bread and meat,

who clip their wings, jealously pinch back

their bold growth

toward the sky.

They perch regal and wild and wary

on the wrought-iron gate, dwarfed

by the thousand-year stones

of the White Tower.

Here, a captive Welsh prince once leapt,

spread his arms and

did not fly.

If these creatures fly off,

England will fall.

By royal decree, then,

they will never leave.

For four hundred years these stones

have been their keep.

Their black, bottomless eyes

stare at a silence worn smooth