“No, that’s it.” His eyes opened. “‘Who knows?’ That’s what the parrot
was sayin’ when it wasn’t spoutin’ off the curses.”
“Who knows what?” I asked.
“Search me. Just ‘Who knows?’ is all I could get out of it. That, and
what I thought sounded like a name.”
“A name? What was it?”
“Hannaford, I think it was. At least it sounded like it was close to
that.”
Hannah Furd, I thought.
“I could be wrong, though. I only heard the name once. But I’m not wrong
about the cursin’, believe you me!”
“Do you remember somethin’ Miss Green… uh… Miss Katharina Glass said
about the parrot goin’ crazy when that song was played?” I tried to think of
the name of it. “‘Beautiful Dream’?”
“‘Dreamer,’” he corrected me. “Oh, yeah. That’s the song Miss Blue Glass
taught me.”
“Taught you?”
“That’s right. I always wanted to play a musical instrument. I took
lessons from Miss Blue Glass… oh, I guess it was four years ago when she was
teachin’ full-time. She had a lot of older students, and she taught us all
that song. Now that you mention it, I don’t recall that parrot screamin’
around back then like he did that night. Funny, huh?”
“Strange.” It was my turn to correct him.
“Yeah. Well, I’d best get back to work.” He’d seen Mrs. Huckabee emerge
from the rest room, and she was dragon enough to scare a soldier. “Does that
help you any?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’m not sure yet.”
Mr. Osborne stood up. “Hey, how about puttin’ me in that story?”
“What story?”
He looked at me oddly again. “The story you’re writin’ about the blue
parrot.”
“Oh, that story! Yes sir, I sure will!”
“Say somethin’ nice about me,” he requested, and he started toward the
kitchen door again. Some man in a brown uniform was on television, raising a
ruckus.
“Hey, Eugene!” Mr. Moultry hollered. “Get a load of this jackass!”
“Mr. Osborne?” I asked, and he gave me his attention before he looked at
the television set. “Do you think Miss Blue Glass would mind playin’ that song
again, with the parrot in the room? And maybe you could listen to it and see
what it was sayin’?”
“I think that’d be kinda difficult,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Miss Blue Glass took that parrot to Dr. Lezander a couple of weeks ago.
It had a brain fever or somethin’ birds get. That’s what the doc told her.
Anyhow, the parrot kicked the bucket. What is it, Dick?”
“Lookit this guy!” Mr. Moultry said, motioning to the man snarling on the
television screen. “Name’s Lincoln Rockwell! Sonofagun’s the head of the
American Nazi Party, if you can believe that garbage!”
“American Nazis?” I saw the back of Mr. Osborne’s neck redden. “You mean
I helped beat their butts over in Europe, and now they’re right here in the
U.S. of A.?”
“Says they’re gonna take over the country!” Mr. Moultry told him. “Listen
to him go on, it’ll split your ribs!”
“If I could get hold of him, I’d split his ugly head!”
I was on my way out, my mind heavy with thoughts. Then I heard Mr.
Moultry—whom ex-Sheriff Amory had said was a member of the Ku Klux Klan—laugh
and say, “Well, that’s one thing he’s got right! I say ship all the niggers
back to Africa! I sure as blazes wouldn’t want one in my house, like a certain
somebody invites that Lightfoot nigger right into their front door!”
I had caught this remark, and I knew who it was aimed at. I stopped and
looked at him. Mr. Moultry was grinning and talking to Mr. Osborne, the man on
the television screen going on about “racial purity,” but Mr. Moultry was
watching me from the corner of his eye. “Yeah, my house is my castle! I sure
as blazes wouldn’t stink my castle up by askin’ a nigger to come in and make
hisself at home! Would you, Eugene?”
“Lincoln Rockwell, huh?” Mr. Osborne said. “That’s a hell of a name for a
Nazi.”
“Seems like some people would know better than to be friends with
niggers, don’t it, Eugene?” Mr. Moultry plowed on, baiting me.
At last what was being said got through to Mr. Osborne. He regarded Dick
Moultry as one might look at rancid cheese. “A man named Ernie Graverson saved
my life in Europe, Dick. He was blacker’n the ace of spades.”
“Oh… listen… I didn’t mean no…” Mr. Moultry’s grin was pathetic. “Well,”
he said as he struggled for his dignity, “there’s always one or two gonna have
the brains of a white man instead of a gorilla.”
“I think,” Mr. Osborne said, clamping that U.S. ARMY hand on Mr.
Moultry’s shoulder and putting some muscle into his grip, “you’d better shut
your mouth, Dick.”
Mr. Moultry didn’t make another peep.
I left the Bright Star, and the brown-uniformed man who was being
interviewed on television. I pedaled Rocket home, the cake pans in Rocket’s
basket. But all the way I was puzzling over the blue parrot—the recently
deceased blue parrot, that is—who spoke German.
When I got home, Dad was sleeping in his chair. The Alabama game on the
radio had ended before I went to the Woolworth’s, and now the radio was tuned
to a country music station. I delivered the cake pans to Mom and then watched
my father sleep. He was curled up, his arms gripped across his chest. Trying
to hold himself together, I thought. He made a soft husking noise, his mouth
on the verge of a snore. Something passed through his mind that made him
flinch. His eyes came open, red-rimmed, and he seemed to stare right at me for
a couple of seconds before his eyes closed again.
I didn’t like the way his face looked in sleep. It looked sad and
starved, though our food was plentiful. It looked defeated. There was honor in
being a dishwasher, of course. I’m not saying there’s not, because every labor
has its share of honor and necessity. But I couldn’t help thinking that he
must be on despair’s front porch, to have to walk into the Bright Star Cafe
and apply to be a dishwasher when assistant foreman of the dairy’s loading
dock had been so very close. His face suddenly twisted in the grip of a
daymare, his mouth letting loose a quiet groan. Even in sleep, he couldn’t
escape for long.
I walked into my room, shut the door, and I opened one of the seven
mystic drawers. I brought out the White Owl cigar box, lifted its lid, and
looked at the feather under my desk lamp.
Yes, I decided, my heartbeat quickening. Yes.
It could be a parrot’s feather.
But it was emerald green. Miss Blue Glass’s German-cursing parrot had
been turquoise, not a speck of any other color on it except for the yellow of
its beak.
Too bad Miss Green Glass hadn’t been the one with the parrot, I thought.
That way it would’ve been emerald green for—
—sure, I thought. And suddenly I felt as if I’d just leaped off a red
rock cliff.
Something Miss Blue Glass had said when Miss Green Glass refused to feed
the parrot a cracker for fear of losing her fingers.
Three words.
I.
Fed.
Yours.
Your what? Parrot?
Had both Glass sisters, who lived their lives in a strange agreement of
mimicry and competition, each owned a parrot? Had there been a second
parrot—this one emerald green and missing a feather—somewhere else in that
house, as silent as the first was raucous?
A phone call would tell me.
I gripped the feather in my palm. My heart was pounding as I left my
room, headed for the telephone. I didn’t know the number, of course; I’d have
to look it up in the slim directory.
Before I could get to the Glass number, the phone rang.
I said, “I’ll get it!” and picked it up.
I would remember for the rest of my life the voice that spoke.
“Cory, this is Mrs. Callan. Let me speak to your mother, please.”
The voice was tight and scared. Instantly I knew something was terribly
wrong. “Mom!” I shouted. “Mom, it’s Mrs. Callan!”
“Don’t wake your father!” Mom scolded when she came to the phone, but a
grunt and rustle told me it was too late. “Hello, Diane. How are—” She
stopped. I saw her smile break. “What?” she whispered. “Oh… my Jesus…”
“What is it? What is it?” I asked. Dad came in, bleary-eyed.
“Yes, we will,” Mom was saying. “Of course. Yes. As soon as we can. Oh,
Diane, I’m so sorry!” When she returned the receiver to its cradle, her eyes
were full of tears and her face bleached with shock. She looked at Dad, and
then at me. “Davy Ray’s been shot,” she said. My hand opened, and the green
feather drifted away.
Within five minutes we were in the pickup truck, headed to the hospital
in Union Town. I sat between my folks, my mind fogged with what Mom had told
me. Davy Ray and his father had gone hunting today. Davy Ray had been excited
about being with his dad, out in the winter-touched woods on the trail of
deer. They had been coming down a hill, Mrs. Callan had said. Just an ordinary
hill. But Davy Ray had stepped into a gopher hole hidden under dead leaves and
fallen forward, and as he’d fallen his rifle had gotten caught up beneath him,
aimed at his lungs and heart. The rifle had gone off on the impact of body and
earth. Mr. Callan, not a man in the best physical shape, had picked up his son
in his arms and run a mile through the woods with him back to their truck.
Davy Ray had gone into emergency surgery, Mom said. The damage was very
bad.
The hospital was a building of red stone and glass. I thought it looked
small to be such an important place. We went in through the emergency
entrance, where a nurse with silver hair told us where to go. In a waiting
room with stark white walls, we found Davy Ray’s parents. Mr. Callan was
wearing camouflage-print hunting clothes with blood all over the front, a
sight that knocked the breath out of me. He had daubed olive green greasepaint
on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. It was smeared, and looked
like the most horrible bruise. I guess he was in too much shock to even wash
his face; what was soap and water compared to flesh and blood? He still had
forest dirt crusted under his fingernails. He was frozen in the instant of
disaster. Mrs. Callan and Mom hugged each other, and Mrs. Callan began to cry.
Dad stood with Mr. Callan at a window. Davy Ray’s little brother Andy wasn’t
there, probably dropped off at a relative’s or neighbor’s house. He was much
too young to understand what a knife was doing inside Davy Ray.
I sat down and tried to find something to read. My eyes couldn’t focus on
the magazine pages. “So fast,” I heard Mr. Callan say. “It happened so fast.”
Mom sat with Mrs. Callan and they held hands. A bell bonged somewhere in the
hospital’s halls, and a voice over a loudspeaker called for Dr. Scofield. A
man in a blue sweater looked into the waiting room, and everybody gave him
their rapt attention but he said, “Any of you folks the Russells?” He went
away, searching for some other suffering family.
The minister from the Union Town Presbyterian Church, where the Callans
belonged, entered and asked us all to link hands and pray. I held one of Mr.
Callan’s hands; it was damp with nervous moisture. I knew the power of prayer,
but I was through being selfish. I wanted Davy Ray to be all right, of course,
and that’s what I prayed for with all my heart, but I would never dream of
wishing Rebel’s death-in-life on a force of nature like Davy Ray.
Johnny Wilson and his mother and father showed up. Johnny’s father, a
stoic like his son, spoke quietly to Mr. Callan but showed no emotion. Mrs.
Wilson and my mom sat on either side of Mrs. Callan, who couldn’t do much but
stare at the floor and say, “He’s a good boy, he’s such a good boy,” over and
over again, as if preparing herself to argue with God for Davy Ray’s life.
Johnny and I didn’t know what to say to each other. This was the worst
thing either of us had ever been through. Ben and his parents came in a few
minutes after the Wilsons, and then some of Davy Ray’s relatives. The
Presbyterian minister took Mr. and Mrs. Callan away with him, for more
intimate prayer, I presumed, and Ben, Johnny, and I stood out in the hallway
talking about what had happened. “He’s gonna be okay,” Ben said. “My dad says
this is a real good hospital.”
“My dad says Davy Ray was lucky it didn’t kill him right off,” Johnny
said. “He says he knew a boy who shot himself in the stomach, and he didn’t
last but a couple of hours.”
I checked my Timex. Davy Ray had been in the operating room for four
hours. “He’ll make it,” I told the others. “He’s strong. He’ll make it.”
Another hour crept slowly past. Night had fallen, and with it a cold
mist. Mr. Callan had washed the greasepaint from his face, scrubbed the dirt
from beneath his fingernails, and accepted the loan of a green hospital shirt.
“That’s my last huntin’ trip,” he said to my father. “I swear to Jesus it is.
When Davy Ray gets out of this, we’re strippin’ the gun rack clear to the
wood.” He put his hand to his face and choked back a sob. Dad put his arm
around Mr. Callan’s shoulder. “Know what he said to me today, Tom? Wasn’t ten
minutes before it happened. He said, ‘If we see it, we won’t shoot at it, will
we? We’re just out huntin’ deer, aren’t we? We won’t shoot it if we see it.’
You know what he was talkin’ about?”
Dad shook his head.
“The thing that ran away from the carnival. Now, what do you think got
that in his mind?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said.
It hurt me to hear these things.
A doctor with short-cropped gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses came in.
Instantly the Callans were on their feet. “May I speak with both of you
outside, please?” he asked. Mom gripped Dad’s hand. I knew, as well, that this
was not good news.
When they returned, Mr. Callan told everyone Davy Ray was out of the
operating room. Davy Ray’s condition was guarded, and the night would tell the
tale. He thanked everyone for coming and showing their support, and he said we
all ought to go home and get some sleep.
Ben and his parents stayed until ten, and then they left. The Wilsons
went home a half-hour later. Gradually, the relatives thinned out. The
