Bird After Bird (6 page)

I’d gone out to the lake to sketch and write, but I still felt lonely there, so I’d moved on, no place in mind.

Donna ran a Border collie through agility training in the south pasture of their mini-farm, and the sight of her with the dog hit me so hard I just about dropped the truck into reverse and got the hell out of there. If I wouldn't have backed right into one of Donna's fencerows, I might have done just that. Instead, I braked slowly and waved hello to her as I pulled up to the house.

What am I doing - what am I doing - what am I doing?

"Laurie!" Donna called, skipping over to the fence line so fast she must have known I was a flight risk. "Climb outta that old truck and come hug my neck!"

Tears stung my eyes before I could even open the truck door, and I fought them hard. Donna and Lew were the kind of parents I'd never had. Oh, I had folks of my own, they just weren’t the type to hug your neck.

I floated out of the truck toward the fence, and Donna hopped it, too eager to see me to walk to the gate, from the looks of it. A tear trickled out, despite my best efforts. Donna grabbed me and pulled me in close, cradling me like all mothers can, even when their children are a foot taller. She wasn't my mother, though. She was supposed to have been my mother-in-law, but...

"Oh, Laurie, Laurie," she said softly, rocking back and forth and holding me as if she thought I might disappear and never come back. As if that mattered. As though she realized no one else had held me since Sylvia died.

I'd gotten used to feeling like I didn't matter to anyone, truth be told, and Donna’s gentle tears and soft words were tearing me up like someone was feeding me through a meat grinder.

"I'm so glad you came by, honey. I've been waiting forever. Let me get you some tea."

And with that, I was back in Donna and Lew's lives. They treated me like I never left. Lew sat on the back porch in his old Adirondack, rising with a start when he saw us round the wrap-around porch. "By God, Donna! I was just about to come rescue you from one of those talk-a-lot dog geeks, but look who it be." He reached out to shake my hand and then pulled me into a tight hug, clapping my back twice with a strong fist before letting me go. Lew was no casual hugger. That hug was a big deal. "Where ya been, boy?"

I shook my head. I wanted to speak but I thought if I did all the tears I'd been holding back might rush out at once. Maybe that would be okay with Donna, but I wasn't going to blubber at my ex-future father-in-law. I had to hold it together, for the sake of all mankind.

He knew. God bless him, he knew. He shrugged and held open the screen door to the kitchen. "C'mon in, let's get you a glass of Donna's sweet tea. She's been trying out new recipes from Pinterest and there's one with fresh peaches in the fridge. Mmmm mmm! You're gonna love this!"

And I did. I loved it a lot. We got our tea, complete with sprigs of fresh mint grown out back in Donna's herb garden, and the three of us went outside to talk on the porch. They each took a seat in their Adirondacks, and I stumbled to the porch swing facing them. It was the swing I used to sit on with Sylvia—the place I'd proposed to her, right here in front of her family, the kindest people I'd ever known.

Donna and Lew were the only folks around here other than Billy and the boys who had ever made me feel like I belonged—not that I really fit in with an alt-country band, either. It’s just the point of being wanted. When people want you around, it feels good. I didn’t have much of that growing up. Never quite lived up to my mom’s expectations, but Donna had taken right to me the moment Sylvia brought me home.

“Aren’t you that sweet little boy who showed art at the county fair? I think you won a blue ribbon, didn’t you?” I remember Donna saying that the day we’d met. I couldn’t believe she remembered my art from a fair four years earlier. When you’re a kid you can’t conceive of adults actually knowing who you are. They’re all mostly Charlie Brown
wah-wah
voices, aren’t they?

“Yes, ma’am,” I’d said, and she’d just beamed.

I remember feeling like she’d given me a gift, seeing me that way. I’d been so proud of the ribbon, but my mother was angry that I hadn’t entered the talent contest as a singer. She was angry that I hadn’t let her enroll me in the Dubois County Little Masters pageant, either.

“Mom, I’m twelve years old. Pageants are for girls.”

“But you’d win, Laurie. You’re so handsome.” She’d patted me on the head like I was a little boy.

“I just want to show my art.”

“Art schmart. How many professional artists do you know? Who do you think you are, Norman Rockwell?”

She’d screamed at me and raged at my dad when he tried to stand up for me, so I’d left the house and pushed the blue ribbon from the art show into the bottom of the desk drawer in my room. Forgotten all about it until Donna brought it up when I started dating Sylvia in high school.

“Told you he was talented, Mom,” she’d said, hugging me, right there in front of her mom and dad, as though it was okay to be affectionate.

But Sylvia was gone now.

We sat in silence for a bit, and then Donna smiled and told me all about the dogs, about the litter of pups Boomer's sister Bella had just had, a half dozen canine bundles of joy. She spoke like I’d never left—like I was still a trusted member of the family, privy to all the local gossip from the canine crews.

Mostly, though, she talked about the Border collies she was bringing up.

"Takes the right person to raise a Border collie," she said. Her words were soft and her gaze was on the horizon, but I felt like she was looking right into my soul. Sylvia and I had raised a Border collie together in high school.

She put her tea down and took my glass from me. "Come on out to the barn. "You gotta see these pups."

I thought I would die. I'd have rather swallowed a barrel full of broken glass than go out there and look at an animal that would remind me of Boomer.

But why had I driven up that driveway? What had led me here? Instinct? Wouldn't it be stupid and rude to say no?

Ice cubes rattled hard against Lew’s glass as he downed the last of his tea. "Go on," he said. "You gotta see them things." Then, rising and putting on his familiar John Deere hat, he patted me on the back. "Good seeing ya, kid. I gotta go mow the back 40. You take care, and don’t be a stranger, okay?"

I nodded, managing to croak out "Sure." Donna was half-way to the barn, so I had to jog to catch up.

They’d changed things a bit. The supply closet where Sylvia and I had kept the search and rescue gear for Boomer was remodeled, replaced with shelves of dog treats and coat conditioner, leashes, and all manner of flea & tick ointments. Donna was a dog groomer, in addition to training and breeding.

“Business going well?” I called.

“Mmm hmm,” she replied, gesturing for me to catch up.

When Sylvia and I were sophomores in high school we had decided to train a search and rescue dog. We knew we were young for the responsibility, but after a toddler was lost in the woods and the state police said it would be hours before the nearest search dogs were on the scene, we decided to take it on, anyway.

We were working summer jobs at the local park, running the cash register for the campground general store and making out behind the counter between customers. When the campers came in looking for their lost baby, Sylvia and I took turns helping in the search. As we watched the mother break down into tears on the front porch of the store, Sylvia drug me into the stockroom so angry I wondered for a minute if she thought I had made the lady cry!

“Damn it, Laurie, Mom’s
got
dogs—we
know
dogs.
We
should have a search and rescue dog!”

“You and your mom?” I had trouble imagining Donna hiking through the muddy woods in the wee hours of the morning, good weather or bad.

“No, Laurie. Me and
you
. We should train a dog.”

I guess about 200 people were crisscrossing those woods looking for that baby, but twelve hours later it was a dog that sniffed him out. He wasn't anywhere close to where the people were looking. He was so far on the other side of the park he had almost crossed out of the Hoosier National Forest and into some private hunting grounds owned by the local Shotgun Club.

The look on the father's face when he saw his little boy safe and sound really tore me up. The mother was reduced to a pool of grateful tears, shrieking as she held the boy so close, I wondered if she’d smother him.

I remember how quiet it was in the store after the family and all the police left. So much trouble, then just…nothing. Stillness.

Sylvia and I closed up shop after the extra-long shift and hopped into my truck to go home. That was when it was still a rust-bucket, back when I was saving my camp store money to fix it up. We took turns driving, picking each other up, and that day it was my turn. As we pulled out of the park onto the main road, I remember saying something like "I never want to have kids if they’re going to wander off into the woods."

Sylvia laughed. "Everyone says they never want kids, but everyone changes their minds. I wonder why.” She smiled a wicked grin at me, like she wanted to know more about the “whys” of grown up love and affection. I held her hand. “You'd be stressed out, too, if you lost the one you loved most in the world. I want to help people like that, folks in a tough spot. I can do it—I’ll do it by myself if you don’t want to help.”

Sylvia was Donna and Lew’s only child. She’d been my best friend since the fifth grade and the love of my life since she was the only kid in middle school that didn’t tease me about my then-budding mustache and my various failed attempts at shaving. Between her parents and me, Sylvia always got her way.

When we pulled in front of the barn at her house, I pulled her close and kissed her, saying the words I’d later remember with such agony. "I'll never lose you," I said, "because I'll never let you go."

But I did let her go. I let her go on a search and rescue without me. I’d always been her eyes and when I deployed she said she and Boomer needed to learn to team up without me. And then...

"Laurie, come on, already! Stop daydreaming! Come see these fur babies!" Donna squealed. "You will die, Laurie! You will just
die
!"

Die
. If only I had.

"Coming! How old are the little…Oh. My. God." I fell to my knees in front of the litter of scampering poof balls. The mother was Boomer's sister, and the six little puppies were a passel of tiny Boomer look-alikes. They were impossibly cute. I reminded myself to get a grip before Lew wandered into the barn and stripped me of my man card.

I picked up a puppy and held him to my chest. Suddenly I didn’t care about the man card anymore. "Oh, Donna," I said. “They’re beautiful.”

"Oh, you beautiful baby," I said to the puppy. After that there was no going back. He was mine.

Chapter Ten

Wren

The drive from Dad's house to Chicago isn't quick, but I've done it so many times, I do it on autopilot.

With all the hectic activity of the city and non-stop demands from work, the drive to Birdseye took on a transformative magic over the years. As much as I hated Dad's cancer, the hours away from the beeping phones and the office politics, away from the beat of the street and the incessant emails gave me time to think—to just
be
. As much as I loved the challenges of my career, heading back to the city was getting harder and harder.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good sign.

Canadian geese flew in a V overhead, flying south against my route. I could hear them honking above me, and I hit the horn a couple of times in solidarity. A long sedan—maybe a vintage Thunderbird, from the looks of it—honked back, then gave me half the peace sign. The angry half.

"Shoot, I must have scared him."

For a moment I tried to wave an apology in that mute car-to-car sign language that erupts spontaneously in traffic, but I knew it was futile. License plate “Illinois-TEE BIRD-Land of Lincoln” had already made up his mind about me. He flew the bird at me for a good mile, until I just had to sigh, let off the gas, and allow him to slip away.

The paper crane I'd found at the lake watched all of this from the passenger seat. She'd started out on the dash, but rapidly flown her own way—almost out the window, before I'd realized what I'd done.

I thought about finding a piece of fishing wire and tying her to my rearview mirror once I got home.

Of course, where would a girl find fishing line in Chicago? Surely there were sport shops, or maybe a discount department store would carry it. Or, I could turn around and head back to Dad’s for some…his tackle box was still in the garage.

For a second I thought about the Beer & Bait, and the boy I'd met. Boy? Man. The soldier with the painter’s eyes and the dog whisperer’s voice. His sweet grin gave my heart a jump start from the moment he pulled me out of peril's way.

What, you think walking into a small bathroom where a grown man is double-sicking isn't perilous? Obviously you haven't lived. That's danger, you know?