The Year the Swallows Came Early (12 page)

I
marched straight to the Swallow after that. If you could've seen me walking, you would've known by the way I swung my arms and smiled that I was feeling just about back to normal. I made my list of supplies in my head as I walked:
three
kinds of chocolate, toothpicks, strawberries; I needed it all.

“Where have you been?” Frankie asked when he saw me. “A few of the swallows have arrived. We've seen them flying overhead.”

“Already?” I asked. Then I noticed a small crowd of people standing on the sidewalk, armed
with cameras and binoculars.

“We think the rest will come today. They should be here anytime now.” His eyes were shining. “Want some binoculars?”

I nodded. “Thanks. How do you know they'll be here today?” I asked as we joined the crowd.

A tall kid with blondish hair wearing an official-looking vest stepped close to us. “I'm a bird tracker,” he told us, grinning. “My sources identified the swallows leaving Goya, Argentina, in mid-February—about a month ago. By the time they get here, they'll have flown seventy-five hundred miles.” He checked his watch. “I expect they'll be here anytime.”

Frankie beamed. “A bird tracker? You wouldn't happen to know their official species name, would you?”

“Petrochelidon pyrrhonota,”
he said slowly. “But we call them cliff swallows. It's a lot easier. Wanna see their picture?” He whisked a small booklet from one of his vest pockets and opened
to a drawing of a swallow.

Our heads bent over the page. “That's them,” Frankie said.

Luis found us after that.

“Hello, Hugh,” he said to the bird tracker. “I was wondering if you'd make it again this year. How's your bird book coming?”

Hugh smiled proudly. “I was just showing it off.”

“How long have you been studying birds?” Frankie asked him.

“Since I was ten,” Hugh told us. “I'm twelve now. I went to a bird-sanctuary camp that summer. Did you know birds have special air sacs that make up twenty percent of their body?”

“Yeah?” said Frankie.

Hugh nodded. “That's what keeps their lungs inflated so they fly easy. I got lots more stuff about them in here.” He held up his booklet. “You guys want one?”

I looked at Frankie. I knew he did.

“Thanks,” Frankie told him.

The four of us stood together, waiting, watching every corner of the sky while Hugh recited more facts. Bird heartbeat rates. Hollow-bone skeletal structures. Airfoil wings.

Of course, Frankie saw the swallows first. “There they are!” he shouted, pointing southeast past the hills.

In the distance, a small dark blur of birds moved toward us, then shifted, a slight turn to the right, like a late-afternoon cloud forming and changing into shapes. They flew over houses, trees, hills, everything; knowing their way home.

The swallows had made the incredible journey north, thousands of miles from south of the equator itself, over the Gulf of Mexico, to the San Juan Capistrano Mission and the area around it. The sound of their chirping fell across us as some of them slowed to perch on the sign above, settling in next to one another like they had preassigned seats in a math class.

And I decided it was the best thing I'd seen in
a long time, with all those birds getting along so well.

“They know where to come, even after being gone so long,” Frankie told me proudly.

“It's in their blood,” Luis added. He was taking pictures right and left.

I crowded closer to let in more people who'd just arrived. They waved flags and pointed upward. A dad next to me lifted his little boy onto his shoulders so he could get a better look, while Hugh whispered words into a small tape recorder. I could see Marisol and Felix across the street, a sketchbook glued to Marisol's right hand, a piece of charcoal in her left. She was flipping back and forth between pages, drawing the whole thing while Felix waved to us.

We tried to be quiet and not disturb the birds, but the excitement was hard to keep hushed. I could even feel my own cheerfulness moving around inside just a little. Like it had been asleep for a while but was now waking.

“Help me pass out these pamphlets,” Luis said
to me, and handed over a small stack of papers. “They tell the story of the swallows, how long they've been coming, where they start off, things like that.” He smiled. “I put some of my best photos in there from last year.”

“See what I mean?” Frankie turned to me, his face looking like he, more than anyone in the world, knew about those birds. “They always come back. Without you having to ask them.”

L
uis had a record sales day.

By the end of the afternoon, he didn't even have any tacos left to sell. He said it was like that every year the day the swallows returned.

I stayed around later than usual to help him and Frankie with the rush. I swept and bagged stuff for customers after Luis rang them up. Frankie worked in the back freezer section, organizing ice and cold drinks for people.

As I was shaking out a white plastic bag from its flatness and stuck-togetherness, I noticed Mr.
Tom waiting in line with a basket full of supplies. I looked away from him quickly. My face grew hot remembering the day he'd jumped off the
Sea Fever
to talk to me on the docks, how it had felt like he'd been able to see right into me.
Please don't talk to me again. Not in front of Luis.

His tanned, wrinkled hands slid the basket slowly onto the counter as he made his way to the checkout. I tried to pay close attention to the stuff inside, like those things were the most important things someone could buy in the whole world.

What was in the basket: a box of worms that were still alive; a can of cream soda; two ham sandwiches without cheese; clear fishing line; AAA batteries; wire cutters; Chap Stick; duct tape; fishhooks in different sizes; a pair of pliers.

“Going back to the island tomorrow, Tom?” Luis asked him.

My eyes quickly darted toward Mr. Tom, as if they had a mind of their own. Like they couldn't help it and he was a magnet and they were iron.

Mr. Tom nodded at the ground.

“I heard you were back for the day. Came to get some supplies?” Luis talked soft and low. He took the bag from me, putting the things inside without holding them over the checkout scanner.

I looked up to Luis to tell him he must've forgotten, but he shook his head just a little, before I could say anything, so no one else would see but me. And I realized he was not going to make Mr. Tom pay.

Mr. Tom walked to the end of the counter. Luis handed him his bag, and Mr. Tom nodded again like he was saying thank you.

He walked to the front door and stopped. His white grocery bag hung from his hand like a pillowcase full of Halloween candy. “Hey,” he said, turning back. “You tell your dad thank you. Tell him I'm all settled.” He smiled the tiniest half smile then, which I'd never seen him do before. Like now he was someone who had things to smile about.

I looked at Luis, confused.
Was he talking to me?

Luis's eyebrows scrunched up. I could tell he had no idea either.

We waited for him to say something else. Instead, he left, with the bells on the door ringing good-bye as it swung shut.

“He must not remember my daddy's…situation,” I told Luis, not mentioning the word jail on purpose. I shrugged. Mama was right, Mr. Tom was crazy.

“No…” Luis's voice trailed off. He put his hand on his chin, thinking, remembering something. “I think he knows about your dad.” He tapped his finger on his jaw, like he was trying to push out what he wanted from his memory. “Well, anyway,” he said finally.

“You don't make him pay for supplies?” I asked Luis.

“He doesn't have any money.”

“But he could get a job,” I told him.

“Not Tom.” He pressed the drawer of the cash register closed, like he did after each sale. Even though he had not technically made a sale.

“So you just give him stuff when he comes through? Whatever he wants?”

“I didn't need those things. Plus, it wasn't much.” Luis reached to the next basket and started ringing up a customer who'd walked up. She was wearing a big straw hat and a T-shirt with a picture of a swallow on it.

“But he won't ever pay you back,” I told Luis. I'd had experience about not getting paid back.

Luis leaned closer to me. Then, in a quiet voice so only I could hear, he said, “People are just who they are.”

And then he smiled at the lady waiting in line and continued ringing her up.

I got another white bag ready. And I waited for him to hand me her things after he scanned them through the checkout.

I
t took me a while to get home that day. Everyone was celebrating, having picnics and gathering together. I saw my teacher sitting on the grass. “Hey, Miss Johnson!” I waved from the sidewalk.

“Hello, Eleanor!” she shouted back. “What a perfect day, don't you agree?”

“Yes, I do,” I told her, because it almost was, between Marisol's surprise and the swallows coming back.

When I reached the roses lining our yard, I heard the phone ringing through the kitchen
window, hurrying me inside.

I grabbed it on the sixth ring. “Hello, Mama,” I said, knowing it would be her checking on me as usual. “I'm sorry I'm late getting home for dinner. I was helping out at the Swallow. Did you eat already?” I looked around the kitchen for one of Mama's dinners. Nothing was on the counter.

“Groovy, it's me.” There was a pause, then, “It's your dad.”

His voice sounded familiar to me, but different. Like something I knew, but didn't. A rush of thoughts came into my head at once.
Why did all of this have to happen? Why didn't you care about me?
But all I could say was, “Oh.”

“I've been calling for hours,” he told me. “I've been trying to reach you. Has your mother told you I've been trying to reach you?”

“They let you use the phone in jail?” I asked.
Didn't they have rules about that?

“Officer Miguel thought that since today was normally visiting hours and all, that it would be okay to call since no one was visiting,”
he said, sounding sad.

“Oh.”

“Groovy, knowing your mother, I'm sure she's explained everything to you by now.”

“She did,” I interrupted. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to listen to him admit the truth.

I waited. Silence. The phone felt hot on my ear. I wrapped the cord around my left fingers so tight, the ends turned bluish and numb.

“And also,” I said, “please don't call me Groovy anymore. I'm going by
Eleanor
these days.” I wanted him to know I didn't care about his nickname for me.

“I see,” he answered, like he could tell I'd made up my mind and that I was real upset about the whole thing.

I waited again. I had nothing else to say. The kitchen faucet dripped loudly into an empty bottle of hair bleach lying in the sink.

“I'm sorry,” he said after a while.

I wanted to tell him that that wasn't enough. That the whole point of the money was for me
to decide how it was used. “I would've used that money to go to cooking school,” I said, suddenly feeling full of energy.

He didn't answer. I could hear him breathing.

“Yeah,” I said again. “That's what I would've done with it.” A sadness rose up in me then that had nothing to do with missing cooking school and more to do with how apart I felt from him, how maybe it had always been that way.

“Well,” I said, “I better go now.”

“By the time you're ready to go to school, I'll have that money back in your account. I won't be in here forever. Haven't you read my letters?”

I remembered the mail Mama had stuffed into her pocket then, and realized it must have been for me. That he must've been trying to explain. It didn't matter, though. I already knew everything after going to the bank. I wrapped the phone cord around my other hand, wondering how long he would be there. Mr. Tom's words came back to me then.
You tell your dad thank you. Tell him I'm all settled.

I heard myself say, “I saw Mr. Tom today, you know, that homeless man. He wanted me to tell you thank you. I guess he doesn't remember you're in jail,” I explained, like obviously none of it made sense.

“Is that so?” His voice sounded calm.

“So you know what he's talking about?”

“It's nothing really. He won a bet, that's all.”

“What kinda bet?”

“I had a client on the island a few months back, sold his mobile home for him. He paid me with a trailer. Said he couldn't afford the commission, that the trailer was worth the commission. But hell, what was I gonna do with a trailer? Tom won it from me in a card game. I guess I could've sold it, but he needed a place to live.”

“
You
lost a card game?” I didn't believe it. He never even lost at go fish.

“Well, no. I actually let him win.”

“Does Mama know about this?”

“Your mother?” he said. “No. Your mother doesn't know a thing. She would've had that place
remodeled and sold in a week. Put that money in the bank.” He sighed. “I probably should've told you both a lot of things. Done things differently. I know that now.”

I could picture him then as he hung up the phone, nodding his head, how he'd bunch his lower lip up into the top one and nod. The same way he did whenever he made a big decision.

Like giving a trailer to Mr. Tom when he could've sold it for money.