The Real MacAw (7 page)

“Let’s talk to the macaw,” Timmy said. “He’s funny.”

“Not the macaw,” Michael said. “He’s sleeping.”

“Can’t we wake him up?” Timmy asked.

“Maybe later,” Michael said.

“We need to document the animals in the barn anyway,” Rob said.

They dashed out, followed more slowly by my grandfather.

“Macaws need a lot of sleep?” I could sympathize.

“This one does,” Michael said. “The more he sleeps the better. When he’s awake, he has a vocabulary that would make Lenny Bruce blush.”

“I know,” I said. “I met the macaw last night, remember?”

“I don’t want Timmy picking up any bad habits from the damned bird.” Michael was already working to reform his own vocabulary, not that he’d ever been as bad as the macaw.

“For that matter, we don’t want the boys to hear too much of him,” I said.

“No way the macaw is staying long enough for the boys to be influenced,” Michael said. “Or any of the other animals.”

“I agree,” I said. “No matter what Dad and Grandfather may think.”

But I was relieved to hear that Michael was so adamant, since he was a sucker for stray animals himself. Only a month ago he’d brought home a half-blind elderly rescue llama that brought our herd to four. Of course the llamas stayed out in their pasture, and throwing out feed for four wasn’t that much more work than feeding three, but still.

“So,” I said. “What’s our schedule for the day? Apart from T-Ball at one?”

I flourished my notebook. Michael reached into his pocket, pulled out his small Day-Timer notebook and flipped it open.

“My Friday afternoon class ends at two thirty,” he said. “Do you want me to come back home and pitch in with the childcare, or do the grocery shopping?”

“I’d love to do the grocery shopping,” I said. “And I freely warn you that I feel that way because with all these animals underfoot, things will be crazy around here.”

“My plan is to use the animals to keep Timmy amused, and guilt-trip a few of the Corsicans into giving me a hand with the twins,” Michael said.

I thought of pointing out how difficult it would be, sticking to a plan with the twins on your hands, an ancillary kindergartener underfoot, the barn filled with stolen animals, and a murder investigation underway. But he already knew that.

And for the moment, the Corsicans did seem to have the animal care well in hand. During the interval between breakfast and my departure for Timmy’s ball game, they only interrupted me about four or five times an hour, which meant that I had more than enough time to handle my few chores: feeding, burping, washing, and dressing the twins; gathering up four times as many dishes as usual and putting as many of them as possible into the dishwasher; dumping all the towels and other washable linens soiled by the animals by the washer; rolling up a small piddled-on area rug so I could drop it at the carpet cleaners, chivvying Timmy into his uniform and then loading him, his T-Ball gear, the babies, and all their accoutrements into the Twinmobile, as Michael and I called the used minivan we’d acquired to handle our suddenly expanded family.

On my way to the ballfield I passed more than the usual number of cars heading out toward our house on our relatively peaceful country road. More Corsicans volunteering to help out, I hoped. Or maybe even aspiring pet owners coming to view the selection.

“Meg,” Timmy asked. “Where did all those puppies come from?”

He wasn’t really asking
that
question, was he? I decided to answer him more literally.

“From the animal shelter.”

“But how did they all fit?” he asked. “It’s not that big.”

“They didn’t fit very well,” I said. “So—”

“Is that why the nasty mayor was going to kill them all?”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I could see that his normally cheerful face was frowning thunderously. Mayor Pruitt had lost another future voter.

And I saw no reason not to tell him the truth.

“That’s pretty much the reason,” I said. “Not enough space, and also feeding all those animals costs a lot of money.”

“But they’re safe now with you and Michael, right? You won’t let him have them back.”

I winced.

“Yes,” I said. “They’re safe. The Corsicans will take care of them until they find permanent homes.”

But what would the Corsicans do if the crisis turned into a siege?

Not something I could solve right now. We turned into the parking lot and my worry over the future was pushed aside by the immediate challenge of getting all three small boys safely to the field.

I made sure that Timmy’s uniform was on properly and that he had all his equipment, and released him in the direction of the rest of his team. Then I wheeled the double baby carriage over to a place beside the bleachers and parked myself and my well-stocked, two-ton diaper bag on the metal bench. I nodded to several mothers I knew slightly, but in the few weeks Timmy had been with us, I’d been too busy with the twins to spend much time getting to know the parents of his classmates and teammates. I started to feel guilty about that, and squelched the impulse mercilessly. Feeling guilty about letting down Timmy was Karen’s job. My job was feeling guilty about letting down the twins.

Out on the field, the coach and various parents who’d volunteered or been drafted as assistant coaches were herding the Caerphilly Red Sox toward their bench. Someone had applied generous daubs of eye black to all the players’ cheeks, making them look more than ever like a small but savage tribe about to go on the warpath.

I peered down at my own small savages. Josh was fast asleep. Jamie was awake, and happily watching a small, faceted toy, rather like a miniature disco ball, that hung from the roof of the carriage, twirling and glittering in the slightest breeze. Rob’s contribution. Clearly I should pay more attention to Rob’s notions of how to amuse the twins.

Odds were both boys would want something soon, and probably simultaneously, but for now, I could bask in the pleasantly warm April air and relax.

Or maybe not. Over on the Red Sox bench, Timmy and one of his teammates had begun hitting each other on the helmet with their bats and giggling uproariously. Where was the bench coach? And for that matter, where was the other kid’s mother?

I should do something. But the bench was a good ten feet away from the bleachers. I looked around and spotted someone I knew from the pediatrician’s office.

“Could you keep an eye on my twins for a second?” I asked her.

She nodded, and I strode over to the bench and grabbed the end of the other kid’s bat just as he was about to pound Timmy’s helmet.

“Stop that,” I said.

“We’re wearing helmets,” the other kid said. “It’s not going to hurt anything.”

He pulled at the bat, trying free it.

“Bats against the fence unless you’re actually batting.” I was quoting one of the few T-Ball rules I’d learned so far. I pulled a little harder and gained possession of the bat. “You, too,” I said, holding out my hand to Timmy, who promptly surrendered his blunt instrument. He wasn’t a bad child, just a little easily misled.

I hooked the bats into the chain-link fence behind home plate and returned to my seat by the baby carriage.

“Thanks,” I said to my temporary babysitter.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “You saved me the trouble of walking over there. That was one of my monsters trying to bludgeon your kid.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but fortunately I didn’t have to. She was soon immersed in a conversation with two other mothers about logistics for a birthday party. A birthday party to which Timmy hadn’t been invited. Maybe I should start working to improve his social life.

The Caerphilly Red Sox took the field. Timmy was playing the pitcher’s position. Of course since in T-Ball the kids whacked a stationary ball set atop an overgrown golf tee, “pitcher” was a purely honorary title for an additional infielder. I smiled and waved, in case he was watching. The Clay County Yankees’ coach hauled out the tee, placed a ball on it, and began coaxing the first batter to take his place at the plate.

“Hello, Meg.”

I turned and smiled.

“Hello, Francine,” I said. I tried to make my smile warmer than usual, since I was looking at the one parent on the bleachers who probably felt even more out of it than I did. Francine Mann, wife of our new and unloved county manager, was so shy and self-effacing that she hadn’t had much luck making friends in her six months in Caerphilly. It didn’t help that she had a New England accent so strong it sounded like someone trying to parody one of the Kennedy clan. Many locals had a hard time accepting anyone whose southern accent revealed that they came from a different corner of Dixie. A strong Yankee accent could be the kiss of death with them. And Francine’s husband’s decision on the animal shelter was probably the last nail in the coffin of her social aspirations. I could bet she wasn’t getting a lot of friendly looks from the locals these days.

I’d been on the receiving end of “not from around here” myself when I’d first moved to Caerphilly, even though I’d grown up only an hour’s drive away. I felt a sort of kinship with her. Or was it just pity?

“Nice to see you,” I said. “How have you been?”

“Fine.” She didn’t look fine. Her shoulders were hunched as if she expected a blow from somewhere. Then again, she was tall—almost a match for my five feet ten. Perhaps she merely had an extreme case of the bad posture many tall women adopt in a vain attempt to minimize their size.

“How are the babies?” she asked.

I reported their latest stats and accomplishments, and she oohed and aahed. Thank goodness for the twins, who provided a neutral topic of conversation. I liked Francine well enough. She’d been very kind to me when I was in the hospital, where she held some sort of administrative job. But I had no idea what her interests were and I suspected we had little in common.

Except babies. Clearly they were an interest. Quite possibly an obsession. I’d heard enough town gossip to know that she and her husband had no children of their own, and that the six-year-old she chauffeured to practices and games was her husband’s son by a brief first marriage.

As she cooed over the twins, I found myself suspecting the lack of additional children wasn’t her choice. Her husband’s maybe, or Mother Nature’s, but not hers.

“They’re dahling.” Her accent was, as usual, particularly pronounced on the
ar
and
er
sounds.

I heard some muttering behind me. Did I detect the word “Yankee”? I focused on Francine.

“And you’re so lucky,” she was saying. “Didn’t I hear you’ve found a live-in nanny?”

“No,” I said. “We do have one of my cousins living with us. The house is enormous, and you know how tight the housing market is in Caerphilly. And luckily Rose Noire likes helping with the children.”

Actually, although Rose Noire loved the boys dearly, I suspected her motive for helping out was her fear that, left to our own devices, Michael and I probably wouldn’t feed the boys entirely on wholesome, organic food, much less raise them to be self-aware, environmentally responsible little vegetarians.

“Oh, no,” someone behind me said. “They’re swarming again.”

Swarming? I looked around, expecting to see a cloud of some kind of insect and ready to throw myself between it and the twins. But no one else seemed alarmed, and I realized that the speaker was pointing to the ball field. One of the Clay County Yankees had gotten a decent hit, and several of our Red Sox were competing to see who could reach it first.

In fact, the first, second and third basemen, the left and right shortstops, and the left and center fielders were all running madly in the direction of the ball. I understood what the other mother meant by swarming. The only players not involved were the right fielder, who appeared to be taking a nap; the catcher, who was so weighed down by his protective gear that he could barely walk; and Timmy, who was watching a bug crawl up his arm.

“Play your positions! Play your positions!” the coach was shouting.

“Jason! Get back on first base!” one mother shouted. “Jason, I mean it! Now!”

Other mothers and a few fathers shrieked equally futile instructions. The kids were ignoring them, and had ended up in a small, writhing heap in the general vicinity of where we’d last seen the ball.

The Yankee runner had reached first base and was watching the action, perhaps wondering if she should try for another base. In a real ball game, she’d have been crazy not to. By this time, three of the Red Sox were wrestling for the ball, while the coach and one of the fathers tried to separate them, and the rest of the team stood watching and cheering them on. The Yankee batter could probably have made two or three circuits of the bases by the time one Red Sox player emerged holding the ball.

But in T-Ball, there was either a rule or a longstanding tradition that you only got one base when you hit the ball, so after looking longingly at second, the runner sat down on first base to untie and retie her shoelaces half a dozen times.

“Positions!” the Red Sox coach shouted, giving various players gentle shoves in the right directions. “Positions!”

But it took a while for the game to resume, because one of the players who had not won the fight for the ball ran off the field to be comforted by his mother, and another sat down in the outfield and refused to get up. And when the Red Sox coach finally got all his players upright and back where they belonged, someone finally noticed that there were two Yankee runners on second base. It took several minutes to sort out which one belonged there and which one should have continued on to third when the batter got her hit.

“Coach really needs Sammy,” one of the mothers behind us said when the game finally resumed. “Keeping those kids in line is tough enough without being shorthanded.”

“Well, don’t count on seeing Sammy for a while,” another mother said. “Chief’s got him pretty busy with this murder investigation.”

“He’d be here if this wasn’t the very first day of the investigation,” the first one said.

“I hope you’re right,” said the other. “Because if the chief kept him on overtime until they could check out everyone Parker Blair ever fooled around with, the season would be over before we saw him again.”