Things I Want to Say (20 page)

For a man who’d spent his child hood on the arid plains of west Texas, the jungle was a place of magic. Martin Engel had hardly slept the night before, anxious to be on the trail again, completing his quest. He’d roused his companion on this trip, Allen Welch, from bed at 3:00 a.m. “We’ve got to be there before dawn,” he’d reminded Welch. “We’re going to have good luck today. I can feel it.”

Martin’s intuition was seldom wrong. Some people complained that he’d had more than his share of good luck in his pursuits, but Martin preferred to depend on hard work and experience. Over the years he’d taught himself everything there was to know about his quarry.

Still, there was something mystical about the hunt, a point in every search where he found himself locked in, putting himself on a different plane, trying to
think
like the ones he sought.

Martin was a birder. Not a backyard hobbyist or vacation afficionado. He was an acknowledged champion, a “big lister”
who had seen more different kinds of birds than only a handful of people in the world.

Seven thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight. Today he was trying for seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty. On this trip he planned to clean up Brazil. When he got on the plane to head home to Texas, he would have seen every bird that existed in this country’s jungles and plains. The promise of such an accomplishment made him tremble with excitement.

He and Welch were at the trail head by three-thirty. Welch slugged coffee from a thermos and stumbled over roots in the path, while Martin charged forward, eyes scanning the canopy overhead, bin oculars ready. Even at this early hour, the air was thick and fetid around him, the ground beneath his feet spongy with decay. His ears filled with the whirring of insects. Insects meant birds.

He reviewed his quarry in his mind. The Pale-faced Antbird,
Skutchia borbae,
with its dark rufous head and black eye patch; the Hoff man’s Wood creeper,
Dendrocolaptes hoffmannsi,
with its straight blackish bill and the brown to rufous-chestnut upperparts; and the Brown-chested Barbet,
Capito brunneipectus,
with its distinctive chunky silhouette. They had haunted him for months now, taunting him with the blank lines beside their names on his list, lines where he would record the date, time and location of his sighting of them.

He’d seen the Pale-faced Antbird his first day out this trip. He and Welch had scarcely stepped onto the jungle path when it flashed by them, lured by the sounds of a Pale-faced Antbird call Martin had played on the tape deck strapped to his pack. The other two had been more wary. He’d hunted three days for them, scarcely noticing the sweat drenching his clothes or the hunger pangs in his belly or the cotton in his mouth.

Only two more names and he would have cleaned up Brazil. Only fifty more birds and he would have his eight
thousand, within reach of the record as the most accomplished birder in the world. And he’d done it all on his own, while working and raising a family. No fancy paid guides to point out the birds for him. He’d taught himself to recognize them and tramped out to hunt on his own.

People talked about the ecstasy of drugs or spiritual quests. For him that feeling came when he spotted a new bird to add to his list. The flash of wing, a hint of color, the silhouette of a distinct form against the sky was like a glimpse of the divine. He, Martin Engel, un remarkable middle son in a large family of accomplished athletes and academics, had been singled out for this privilege. With each new sighting, his heart raced, his palms grew clammy and his breath came in gasps. When he was certain of his quarry, he’d been known to shout and pump his fists. A new bird added to his list was the equivalent of a grand slam in the World Series. He’d done what few in the world had ever accomplished. Some times guilt pricked at him—guilt over spending so much time away from his family. But more often than not, he didn’t think about them. When he was out there, hunting, it was all about the birds and the numbers.

He’d awakened this morning with the sense that this would be the day he’d see the other two birds he needed. But as the morning dragged on, his certainty faded. The trees were filled with Variegated Antpittas, Fuscous and Boat-billed Flycatchers and White-throated Hummingbirds—all birds he’d seen before. As if to taunt him, a second Pale-faced Antbird darted across the path in front of them. But no sign of the Wood-creeper or the Barbet.

“We should stop and rest,” Welch said, coming up behind Martin when he stopped to train his binoculars on a bird over head. A Glittering-bellied Emerald, its iridescent blue and green feathers shimmering in a beam of sunlight.

“Just a little farther,” Martin said, letting the binoculars hang loose around his neck again. “We’re close.”

“It’s like a steam room out here.” Welch wiped at his neck with a crumpled bandanna.

“Is it?” Martin hadn’t noticed.

He’d known this feeling before, this sense that the bird he sought was nearby. He only had to look at the right location at the right moment and it would be his.

And that was how it was again. He turned his head slightly, prepared to argue with Welch, and he saw the flash of color in the trees. He froze and brought his bin oculars up to his eye, his spirits soaring as he zeroed in on the distinctive straight black bill. “That’s it!” he shouted, adrenaline surging through him. “I told you it was here.”

But the last words came out muddled, and the next thing he knew, he was sinking to his knees in the thick forest muck, the world whirling around him, until he was staring up at a wavery patch of sky framed by leafy branches. Welch was saying something to him, something he couldn’t hear. All he could think as he slipped into black ness was
Only one more bird to go….

When Karen MacBride first saw her father in the hospital, she was struck by how much this man who had spent his life pursuing birds had come to resemble one. His head, round and covered with wispy gray hair, reminded her of the head of a baby bird. His thin arms beneath the hospital sheet folded up against his body like wings. Years spent outdoors had weathered his face until his nose jutted out like a beak, his eyes sunken in hollows, watching her with the cautious interest of a crow as she approached his bed.

“Hi, Dad.” She offered a smile and lightly touched his arm. “I’ve come home to take care of you for a while.” After sixteen years away from Texas, she’d flown from her home in Denver this morning to help with her father for a few weeks.

That she’d agreed to do so surprised her. Martin Engel was not a man who either offered or inspired devotion from his family. He had been the remote authority figure of Karen’s child hood, the distracted voice on the other end of the line during in frequent phone calls during her adult years, the
polite, pre occupied host during scattered visits home. For as long as she could remember, conversations with her father had had a disjointed quality, as if all the time he was talking to her, he was thinking of the call of the Egyptian Goose, or a reputed sighting of a rare Hutton’s Shearwater.

Which, of course, he was. So what kind of communication could she expect from him now that he couldn’t talk at all? Maybe she’d agreed to return to Texas in order to find out.

He nodded to show he understood her now, and made a guttural noise in his throat, like the complaining of a jay.

“The doctors say there’s a chance he will talk again.” Karen’s mother, Sara, spoke from her post at the end of the bed. “A speech therapist will come once a week to work with him, and the occupational therapist twice a week. Plus there’s an aide every weekday to help with bathing and things like that.”

Karen swallowed hard, resisting the urge to turn and run, all the way back to Colorado. A voice in her head whispered,
It’s not too late to get out of this, you know.

She ignored the voice and nodded, smile still firmly fixed in place. “The case worker gave me the schedule. And Del said he got the house in order.”

“He built a ramp for the wheelchair and put hand rails in the shower and things.” Sara folded her arms over her stomach, still looking grim. “Thank God you agreed to come down and stay with him. Three days with him here has been enough to wear me out.”

“Mom!” Karen nodded to her dad.

“I know he can hear me.” Sara swatted at her former husband’s leg. “I’m sure it hasn’t been any more pleasant for him than it has been for me.” Sara and Martin Engel had divorced some twenty years before, but they still lived in the same town and maintained a polite, if distant, relationship.

A large male nurse’s aide filled the doorway of the room.
“Mr. Engel, I’m here to help you get dressed so you can go home.”

“Karen and I will go get a cup of coffee.” Sara took her daughter by the arm and pulled her down the hallway.

“You looked white as a ghost back there,” Sara said as they headed toward the cafeteria. “You aren’t going to get all weak and weepy on me, are you?”

Karen took a deep breath and shook her head. “No.” It had been a shock, seeing Dad like that. But she was okay now. She could do this.

“Good. Because he’s not worth shedding any tears over.”

Karen said nothing. She knew for a fact her mother had cried buckets of tears over Martin at one time. “What happened, exactly?” she said. “I understand he’s had a stroke, but how?”

“He was in Brazil, hunting the Pale-faced Antbird, the Hoffman’s Wood creeper and the Brown-chested Barbet.” Sara rattled off the names of the exotic birds without hesitation. Living with a man devoted to birding required learning to speak the language in order to have much communication from him at all. She glanced over the top of her bifocals at her daughter. “If he found those three, he’d have ‘cleaned up’ Brazil, so of course he was adamant it be done as soon as possible.”

“He only needed three birds to have seen every bird in Brazil?” Karen marveled at this. “How many is that?”

“Seven thousand, nine hundred and something?” Sara shook her head. “I’m not sure. It changes all the time anyway. But I do know he’s getting close to eight thousand. When he passed seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty, he became positively fanatical about topping eight thousand before he got too old to travel.”

Ever since Karen could remember, her father’s life—and thus the life of his family—had revolved around adding birds
to the list. By the time she was six, Karen could name over a hundred different types of birds. She rattled off genus species names the way other children talked about favorite cartoon characters. Instead of commercial jingles, birdcalls stuck in her head, and played over and over again. To this day, when she heard an Olive-sided Fly catcher, she could remember the spring morning when she’d first identified it on her own, and been lavished with praise by her too-often-distracted father.

“He’d just spotted the Wood creeper when he keeled over right there in the jungle.” Sara continued her story. “Allen Welch was with him, and he’s the one who called me. He apologized, but said he had no idea who else to contact.”

Karen shook her head, amazed. “How did you ever get him home?”

“The insurance paid for an air ambulance. All those years with Mobil Oil were worth something after all.” Martin had spent his entire career as a petroleum engineer with Mobil Oil Company. He always told people he kept the job for the benefits. They assumed he meant health insurance and a pension, but his family knew the chief benefit for him was the opportunity to travel all over the world, adding birds to his list.

They reached the cafeteria. “I’ll get the coffee, you sit,” Sara said, and headed for the coffee machine.

Karen sank into a molded plastic chair and checked her watch. Eleven in the morning here in Texas. Only ten in Colorado. Tom and Matt would be at a job site by now and Casey was in math class—she hoped.

“Here you go.” Her mother set a card board cup in front of her and settled into the chair across the table. “How are Tom and the boys?”

“They’re fine. This is always a busy time of year for us, of course, but Matt’s been a terrific help, and we’ve hired some new workers.” Tom and Karen owned Blue Spruce Land
scaping. This past year, their oldest son, Matt, had begun working for them full-time. “Did I tell you Matt’s signed up for classes at Red Rocks Community College this fall? He wants to study landscaping.”

“And he’ll be great at it, I’m sure.” She sipped her coffee. “What about Casey? What’s he up to these days?”

Karen’s stomach tightened as she thought of her youngest son. “Oh, you know Casey. Charming and sweet and completely unmotivated.” She made a face. “He’s failing two classes this semester. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get him out of high school.”

“He takes after his uncle Del.” Sara’s smile was fond, but her words made Karen shudder.

“The world doesn’t need two Dels,” she said. Her younger brother was a handsome, glib, womanizing con man. When he wasn’t sponging off her parents, he was making a play for some woman—usually one young enough to be his daughter. “Are he and Sheila still together?” Sheila was Del’s third wife, the one who’d put up with him the longest.

“No, they’ve split up.” Sara shrugged. “No surprise there. She never let the boy have any peace. Talk about a shrew.”

“I’d be a shrew, too, if my husband couldn’t keep his pants zipped or his bank account from being overdrawn.”

“Now, your brother has a good heart. People—especially women—al ways take advantage of him.”

No, Del had a black heart, and he was an expert at taking advantage of others. But Karen knew it was no use arguing with her mother. “If Del’s so good, maybe
he
should be the one looking after Dad,” she said.

Her mother frowned at her. “You know your father and Del don’t get along. Besides, for all his good qualities, Del isn’t the most responsible man in the world.”

Any other time, Karen might have laughed. Saying her
brother wasn’t responsible was like saying the Rocky Mountains were steep.

She checked her watch again. Eleven-twenty. At home she’d be making the last calls on her morning’s to-do list.

Here, there was no to-do list, just this sense of too much to handle. Too many hours where she didn’t know what lay ahead. Too many things she had no control over. “Do you think he’s ready yet?” she asked.

Her mother stood. “He probably is. I’ll help you get him in the car. Del said he’d meet you at the house to help get him inside, but after that, you’re on your own.”

“Right.” After all, she was Karen, the oldest daughter. The dependable one.

The one with
sucker
written right across her forehead.

Of course Del was nowhere in sight when Karen pulled her father’s Jeep Cherokee up to the new wheelchair ramp in front of his house. She got out of the car and took a few steps toward the mobile home parked just across the fence, but Del’s truck wasn’t under the carport and there was no sign that anyone was home.

Anger gnawing a hole in her gut, she went around to the back of the Jeep and took out the wheelchair her mother had rented from the hospital pharmacy. After five minutes of struggling in the already oppressive May heat, she figured out how to set it up, and wheeled it around to the passenger side of the vehicle.

“Okay, Dad, you’re going to have to help me with this,” she said, watching his eyes to make sure he understood.

He nodded and grunted again, and made a move toward the chair.

“Wait, let me unbuckle your seat belt. Okay, put your hand on my shoulder. Wait, I’m not read y…well, all right. Here. Wait—”

Martin half fell and was half dragged into the chair. Sweat
trickled down Karen’s back and pooled at the base of her spine. She studied the wheelchair ramp her brother had built out of plywood. As usual, he’d done a half-ass job. The thing was built like a skate board ramp, much too steep.

In the end, she had to drag the chair up the ramp backward, grappling for purchase on the slick plywood surface, cursing her brother under her breath the whole way. At the top, she sagged against the front door and dug in her purse for the key. A bird sang from the top of the pine tree beside the house.

She felt a tug on her shirt and looked over to find her father staring intently at the tree. “Northern Cardinal,” she identified the bird.

He nodded, satisfied, apparently, that she hadn’t forgotten everything he’d taught her.

Inside, the air-conditioning hit them with a welcome blast of cold. Karen pushed the wheelchair through the living room, past the nubby plaid sofa that had sat in the same spot against the wall for the past thirty years, and the big-screen TV that was a much newer addition. She started to turn toward her father’s bedroom, but he tugged at her again, and indicated he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

“Do you want to go to your study?” she asked, dismayed.

He nodded.

“Maybe you should rest first. Or the two of us could visit some. I could make lunch….”

He shook his head, and made a stabbing motion with his right hand toward the study.

She reluctantly turned the chair toward the back bedroom that none of them had been allowed to enter without permission when she was a child.

The room was paneled in dark wood, most of the floor space taken up by a scarred wooden desk topped by a sleek black computer tower and flat-screen monitor. Karen shoved
the leather desk chair aside and wheeled her father’s chair into the kneehole. Before he’d come to a halt, he’d reached out with his right hand and hit the button to turn the computer on.

She backed away, taking the opportunity to study the room. Except for the newer computer, things hadn’t changed much since her last visit, almost a year ago. A yellowing map filled one wall, colored pins marking the countries where her father had traveled and listed birds. Behind the desk, floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with her father’s collection of birding reference books, check lists and the note books in which he recorded the sightings made on each expedition.

The wall to the left of the desk was almost completely filled with a large picture window that afforded a view of the pond at the back of his property. From his seat at the desk, Martin could look up and see the Cattle Egrets, Black-necked Stilts, Least Terns and other birds that came to drink.

On the wall opposite the desk he had framed his awards. Pride of place was given to a citation from the
Guinness Book of World Records,
in 1998, when they recognized him as the first person to see at least one species of each of the world’s one hundred and fifty-nine bird families in a single year. Around it were ranged lesser honors from the various birding societies to which he belonged.

She looked at her father again. He was bent over the computer, his right hand gripping the mouse like an eagle’s talon wrapped around a stone. “I’ll fix us some lunch, okay?”

He said nothing, gaze riveted to the screen.

While Karen was making a sandwich in the kitchen, the back door opened to admit her brother. “Hey, sis,” he said, wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

She gave in to the hug for two seconds, welcoming her brother’s strength, and the idea that she could lean on him if she needed to. But of course, that was merely an illusion.
She shrugged out of his grasp and continued slathering mayonnaise on a slice of bread. “You were supposed to be here to help get Dad in the house.”

“I didn’t know you were going to show up so soon. Iran out to get a few groceries.” He pulled a six-pack of beer from the bag and broke off a can.

“You thought beer was appropriate for a man who just got out of the hospital?”

“I know I sure as hell would want one.” He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Make me one of them sandwiches, will you?”

“Make your own.” She dropped the knife in the mayonnaise jar, picked up the glass of nutritional supplement that was her father’s meal and went to the study.