died? Did Dr. Lezander come get it?”
“No. It was sick, wouldn’t touch a grain of seed, and Katharina took it
to Dr. Lezander’s office. It died the next night.”
“Brain fever,” I said.
“That’s right, brain fever. Why are you askin’ all these strange
questions, Cory? And I still don’t understand why you have that feather.”
“I… can’t tell you yet. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
She leaned forward, smelling a secret. “What is it, Cory? I swear I won’t
breathe it to a soul!”
“I can’t say. Honest.” I returned the feather to my pocket, and Miss Blue
Glass’s face slowly dropped again. “I’d better be goin’. I hated to bother
you, but it was important.” I glanced at the piano as I went to the door, and
a thought struck me like the arrowhead of Chief Five Thunders lodging right
between my eyes. I remembered the Lady saying she’d dreamed of hearing piano
music, and seeing hands holding piano wire and a “crackerknocker.” I recalled
the piano in the room where all the ceramic birds were, at Dr. Lezander’s
house. “Did you ever teach Dr. Lezander to play the piano?” I asked.
“Dr. Lezander? No, but his wife took lessons.”
His wife. Big, horse-faced Veronica. “Was this real recently?”
“No, it was four or five years ago, when I was teachin’ full-time. Before
Katharina had me knockin’ at the poor-house door,” she said icily. “Mrs.
Lezander won several gold stars, as I recall.”
“Gold stars?”
“I give gold stars for excellence. Mrs. Lezander could’ve been a
professional pianist in my opinion. She has the hands for it. And she loved my
song.” Her face brightened.
“What song?”
Miss Blue Glass got up and situated herself at the piano. She began to
play the song she’d been playing that night her parrot had started squawking
in German. “‘Beautiful Dreamer,’” she said, and she closed her eyes as the
melody filled the room. “It’s all I have left now, isn’t it? My beautiful,
beautiful dreams.”
I listened to the music. What had made the blue parrot go so crazy that
night?
I remembered the voice of Miss Green Glass: It’s that song, I’m tellin’
you! He goes insane every time you play it!
And Miss Blue Glass, answering: I used to play it for him all the time
and he loved it!
A small glimmer began to cut through the darkness. It was like a single
shard of sunlight, as seen from the bottom of murky water. I couldn’t make out
anything by it yet, but I knew it was there.
“Miss Glass?” I said. A little louder, because she’d increased the volume
and was starting to hammer the keys as if she were playing with Ben’s fingers:
“Miss Glass?”
She stopped on a bitter note. Tears had streamed down all the way to her
chin. “What is it?”
“That song right there. Did it make your parrot act strange?”
“No! That was a vile lie of Katharina’s, because she hated my favorite
song herself!” But the way she said it, I knew it wasn’t true.
“You’ve just started givin’ piano lessons again, haven’t you? Have you
played that song very much since… oh… the green parrot died?”
She thought about it. “I don’t know. I guess… I played it at church
rehearsal some, to warm up. But because I wasn’t givin’ lessons, I didn’t play
the piano much at home. Not that I didn’t want to, but Katharina”—she couldn’t
help but sneer the name—“said my playin’ hurt her sensitive ears, that vicious
man-stealer!”
The light was still there. Something was taking shape, but it was still a
long way off.
“It was Katharina this and Katharina that!” Miss Blue Glass suddenly
slammed her hands down on the keyboard with such force the entire piano shook.
“I was always bendin’ over backward to appease almighty Katharina! And I
loathe and despise green!” She stood up, a skinny, seething thing. “I’m gonna
take everythin’ green in this house and burn it, and if that means parts of
the house, the very walls, well, I’ll burn those, too! If I never see green
again, I’ll smile in my grave!”
She was working up to a frenzy of destruction. That was a sight I didn’t
care to witness. I had my hand on the doorknob. “Thank you, Miss Glass.”
“Yes, I’m still Miss Glass!” she shouted, but she was crying again. “The
one and only Miss Glass! And I’m proud of it, do you hear me? I’m proud of
it!” She plucked the pale green farewell letter from the sofa and, her teeth
clenched, she began to rip it to shreds. I got out while the getting was good.
As the door closed behind me, I heard the curio cabinet go over. I’d been
right; it did make a terrible crash.
As I pedaled home, I was trying to put everything together in my head.
Snippets of the quilt, the Lady had said. The pieces were there, but how did
they fit?
The murder of a man no one knew.
The green feather of a dead parrot, there at the scene of the crime.
A song that caused a second parrot to curse blue blazes in German.
Dr. Lezander, the night owl who hated milk.
Who knows?
Hannaford?
If the green parrot had died at Dr. Lezander’s office, how had one of its
feathers gotten to the lake?
What was the link between the two parrots, the dead man, and Dr.
Lezander?
When I got home, I went straight to the telephone. I called the Glass
house again, my fears of tragedy pushed down out of sheer necessity. At first
I thought Miss Blue Glass wasn’t going to answer, because the phone rang eight
times. Then, on the ninth ring: “Yes?”
“Miss Glass, it’s me again. Cory Mackenson. I’ve got one more question
for you.”
“I don’t want to talk about Benedictine Arnold anymore.”
“Who? Oh, not your sister. Your parrot. Besides this last time, when it
died at Dr. Lezander’s, was it ever sick before?”
“Yes. They were both sick on the same day. Katharina and I took them both
to Dr. Lezander’s office. But that next night her damn bird died.” She made a
noise of exasperation. “Cory, what is this all about?”
The light was a little brighter. “Thanks again, Miss Glass,” I said, and
I hung up. Mom asked me from the kitchen why I was calling Miss Glass, and I
said I was going to write a story about a music teacher. “That’s nice,” Mom
said. I had discovered that being a writer gave you a lot of license to fiddle
with the truth, but I’d better not get into the habit of it.
In my room, I put on my thinking cap. It took a while, but I did some
sewing with those snippets of the quilt.
And I came to this conclusion: both parrots had been at Dr. Lezander’s
the night in March the unknown man had been murdered. The green parrot had
died that night, and the blue one had come away cursing in German when
“Beautiful Dreamer” was played on the piano. Mrs. Lezander played the piano.
Mrs. Lezander knew “Beautiful Dreamer.”
Was it possible, then, that when Miss Blue Glass had played that song,
her parrot remembered something that was said—or cursed and shouted in the
German language—while Mrs. Lezander had been playing it? And why would Mrs.
Lezander be playing a piano while somebody was shouting and curs—
Yes, I thought. Yes.
I saw the light.
Mrs. Lezander had been playing the piano—that song, “Beautiful
Dreamer”—to cover up the shouts and cursing. Only both parrots had been in
that room, in the bird cages there. But it seemed unlikely that anybody would
be hollering and cursing right over her shoulder, didn’t it?
I remembered Dr. Lezander’s voice, rising up through the air vent from
his basement office. Calling Dad and me to come down. He had known we would
hear him clearly through the vent, which was why he hadn’t come upstairs. Had
he feared, on that night in March, that the noise of shouting might be heard
outside the house, and that was why Mrs. Lezander had been playing the first
song that came to mind as the two parrots listened and remembered?
Had Dr. Lezander beaten that unknown man with a crackerknocker in the
basement, and strangled him as the parrots listened? Maybe it had taken almost
all night, the noises of violence making both parrots thrash against their
cages? Then when the deed was done Dr. Lezander and his big horsey wife had
carted the naked body out to that unknown man’s car, parked in the barn? And
either one of them had driven to Saxon’s Lake, while the other had followed in
their own car? But they hadn’t realized that a green feather had whirled out
of a bird cage and wound up in the folds of a coat or the depths of a pocket?
And since both the Lezanders were allergic to milk, they weren’t on the
dairy’s delivery list and they didn’t know what time Dad would be on Route
Ten?
Who knows?
Hannaford?
Maybe it had been like that. Maybe.
Or maybe not.
It sure would’ve made a good Hardy Boys mystery. But all I had was a
feather from a dead parrot and a halfway-sewn quilt that seemed a little
ragged at the seams. The German cursing, for instance. Dr. Lezander was Dutch,
not German. And who was the unknown man? What possible link could a man with
the tattoo of a winged skull on his shoulder have with Zephyr’s veterinarian?
Ragged, ragged seams.
Still… there was the green feather, “Beautiful Dreamer,” and Who Knows?
Knows what? That, it seemed to me, was the key to this dark engine.
I told my parents none of this. When I was ready, I would; I wasn’t, so I
didn’t. But I was convinced now more than ever that a stranger lived among us.
4
Mr. Moultry’s Castle
TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, THE TELEPHONE RANG AND MOM answered it. Dad was
stock-clerking at Big Paul’s Pantry. Mom said, “Hello?” and found herself
talking to Mr. Charles Damaronde. Mr. Damaronde was calling to invite our
family to a reception for the Lady at the Bruton Recreation Center, where the
civil rights museum had been completed and was set to open on December 26. The
reception was on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and it was going to be a
casual occasion. Mom asked me if I wanted to go, and I said yes. She didn’t
have to ask Dad, knowing he wouldn’t go, and anyway he had to work on
Christmas Eve because big boxes of canned eggnog and pressed turkey slices
were backing up on the loading dock.
Dad didn’t try to stop us from going. He didn’t say a word when Mom told
him. He just nodded, his eyes somewhere distant. The big boulder at Saxon’s
Lake, I guessed. So on Christmas Eve morning Mom drove Dad to work in the
pickup truck, and when time to get ready for the reception rolled around, Mom
suggested that I wear a white shirt and a tie even though Mr. Damaronde had
said to come casual. She put on a nice dress, and we set off for Bruton.
One of the interesting things about living in south Alabama is that,
though there might be a cold snap in October and maybe even a snow flurry or
two in November, Christmas is usually warm. Not summertime warm, of course,
but a return to Indian summer. This year was no exception. The sweater I had
on was aptly named; I was sweating in it by the time we got to the recreation
center, a red brick building next to the basketball court on Buckhart Street.
A sign with a red arrow pointed to the Bruton Hall of Civil Rights, which was
a white-painted wooden structure a little larger than a house trailer, added
on to the recreation center. A red ribbon encircled the entire white building.
Although the museum’s grand opening wasn’t for two more days, there were a lot
of cars and quite a bit of activity. People—most of them black, but a few
white—were going into the recreation center, and we followed them. Inside, in
a big room decorated with pine-cone Christmas wreaths and a huge Christmas
tree with red and green bows on the branches, people were lining up to sign a
guest book, of which Mrs. Velvadine was in charge. Then the line continued to
a punch bowl full of lime-colored liquid, and on to other tables that held a
holiday bounty: various chips and dips, little sandwiches, sausage balls, two
golden turkeys awaiting the knife, and two weighty hams. The last three tables
were true groaning boards; atop them was a staggering selection of cakes,
puddings, and pies. Dad’s eyes would’ve shot out of his head if he could’ve
but seen all this feast. The mood was happy and festive, people laughing and
talking while a couple of fiddlers sawed their strings on a small stage. And
it might have been a casual occasion, but people were dressed to the elevens.
The Sunday suits and dresses abounded, the white gloves and flowered hats
thrived. I think a peacock might’ve felt nude in all this rainbow splendor.
People were proud of Bruton and proud of themselves, and that was clear to
all.
Nila Castile came up and hugged my mother. She pressed paper plates into
our hands and guided us through the crowd. The turkeys were about to be
carved, she said, and if we didn’t hurry, all that fine meat would be sucked
right off the bones. She pointed out old Mr. Thornberry, who was wearing a
baggy brown suit and buck-dancing to the fiddlers’ tune. Beside him, Gavin
grinned and matched him step for step. Mr. Lightfoot, elegant as Cary Grant in
a black suit with velvet lapels, held a paper plate piled high with ham
layered on cake layered on pie layered on sandwiches, and he moved through the
throng with slow-motion grace. Then our plates were loaded down with food, our
punch cups brimmed with lime fizz. Charles Damaronde and his wife appeared,
and thanked Mom for coming. She said she wouldn’t have missed it for the
world. Children scampered around and grandparents chased futilely after them.
Mr. Dennis sidled up to me and asked me in mock seriousness if I didn’t know
who had spread that glue down for poor Mrs. Harper to get stuck in like a fly
in molasses. I said I had an idea, but I couldn’t say for sure. He asked me if
my idea went around picking her nose to beat the band, and I said it might.
Somebody began playing an accordion. Somebody else whipped out a
harmonica, and the fiddlers had competition. An elderly woman in a dress the
color of fresh orchids started buck-dancing with Mr. Thornberry, and I
imagined that at that moment he was very glad he had chosen life. A man with
