by Karen White
The thought had saddened and frightened her and had pulled her to the back porch to wait out the rest of the night. It was then that the idea had come to her that she needed to do something. Something that would breathe life back into her lungs. Something that would be worthy of filling the empty squares on her imaginary quilt.
Caroline touched her toes, the pain from her tight hamstrings unfamiliar and excruciating. It was hard to remember when she’d been in top swimmer’s form, with all of her muscles supple and strong. That had been a very long time ago, and she wasn’t even sure if that would be her goal. Right now all she wanted to do was take a walk around the lake to see if she could do it. If she got short of breath she would sit down, or call out to one of the nearby houses. However she did it, she just needed to do it. And if she hurried, she’d be back in plenty of time for Jewel’s swimming lesson.
She started on the narrow dirt path that circled the lake and bisected the backyards and docks of the houses. Her arms pumped steadily at her sides, but she kept a moderate pace, paying attention to her heart rate. She slowed down if her heart raced too wildly and stopped twice to sit on a dock chair and rest. But her legs tingled and her breath deepened as she gulped in the lake breeze that stirred the water. It felt good to move again.
She was nearly three-quarters of the way around when a movement from a tall stand of grass by the water’s edge caught her attention. Thinking it might be a nesting bird, she cautiously approached, making sure she didn’t make any noise. Peering over the tall grass, she found herself staring down into the frightened red eyes of an injured loon.
She’d seen the loon only from a distance before, outlined against the night sky, and it startled her to realize just how big it was. It jerked its gray-brown-capped head as if to clear its vision and then stared at her again with its red eyes set in a black-and-white face. Only one of its legs was visible, set way back on its body as designed by Mother Nature for superior swimming ability, but it seemed to lie on the ground at an odd angle. It was hurt, and for a moment she felt a prickling of tears in her own eyes. She needed to help it, but had no idea how.
Moving closer, she noticed that one wing appeared to be bent in the wrong direction. It gave her another panicked look and she stopped, doing the only thing she could think of to reassure it: She started singing. Unfortunately the first song that came to mind was a jingle from a fast-food commercial. She wasn’t quite sure who was more startled by the sound—her or the bird.
“If you keep singing like that, you might kill it.”
She hadn’t heard Drew approach. He wore running shorts and a T-shirt, and his face and body were soaked in sweat. Leaning forward, he had his hands on his knees, breathing deeply.
“I’m trying to soothe it. Let me know if you have any better ideas.” She looked back at the loon and felt an embarrassing rush of tears. What was it about this bird that was affecting her so? “He’s really hurt, and he’ll die if I don’t do something.”
Drew’s voice was gentle when he spoke again. “You’re right. We can’t just leave him here.” He looked around the grass and then across the lake to where the distant hum of an engine sounded. “Damned waverunners. That’s probably what happened to our little friend here.” He lifted his shirt, showing off an admirable torso, and wiped his face with the hem. “Why don’t I run back home? I’ve got a box big enough to put him in and some heavy work gloves in case he decides to bite. Once we get him in the box, we can take him to get help. Any idea where the nearest vet is?”
“No—but Rainy’s probably as good as any vet. She’s been patching up pets ever since I’ve known her.”
Drew nodded. “All right. Stay here and I’ll be back as fast as I can.” He took a step and then said, “Just don’t sing to him, okay? He’s suffered enough.”
She looked for something substantial to throw at him but had to settle for grabbing a handful of grass and dirt and throwing it in his direction. “Hurry up,” she said, hiding her smile until she was sure he wasn’t looking.
They found Rainy behind a counter in the store, doing an inventory of hand-knitted sweaters. Drew felt a moment of guilt. He’d said he would do the inventory, but he kept on finding excuses to avoid the store. Maybe it was because Rainy was more than happy to stay where she was until she could finalize the plans for her trip. Or maybe it was because he had no idea what he would do if he found out that he’d made a mistake.
Caroline rushed over to Rainy. “We found a loon. It looks like it might have a damaged leg and a broken wing.”
Drew set the box on the floor, aware that no sound came from the box. He had padded it well with lake grass, but the bird had stopped struggling after it had been put inside. Drew wondered if it was preparing for a fight or had just given up. He was almost afraid to glance inside. If the loon were dead, he didn’t think he could stand the look on Caroline’s face. She had sat in the back of the truck with her arm around the box the whole way to Rainy’s store, and he had to keep stealing looks in the rearview mirror to double-check that this was the same Caroline Collier he knew.
“Let me take a look.” Rainy knelt by the box and carefully opened the top. The bird, with its long flat beak and red eyes, stared up at Rainy, then made a strange cawing sound, as if it had seen something to recognize in Rainy. She ignored the offered gloves Drew held out to her and instead reached inside to gently stroke the back on the short, black-and-white neck. She cooed and spoke gibberish to the loon, seeming to calm it a lot more than Caroline’s singing had.
“What happened to you, sweetie?” Rainy asked as she gingerly stroked the wounded leg, feeling for a broken bone. “Looks like something got you good.” Her hands reached the wing, and the bird reacted by trying to tuck both wings against its side and stand upright on its one good foot.
Caroline reached into the box, settling her hand gently on the back of the loon. “No, no—don’t do that.”
“What’s he trying to do?” Drew asked.
Without looking at anybody in particular, Caroline explained, “When a loon is disturbed, he does this kind of penguin dance to scare away his enemies. It takes a lot of energy, and sometimes, if the danger doesn’t go away, the loon will keep dancing until he dies from exhaustion.”
Drew peered inside the box. “Is that why they call loons crazy?”
Rainy indicated a blanket thrown over a display chest and he went to retrieve it.
“Actually, that’s a myth,” Caroline said. “The Chippewa called him ‘the most handsome of birds,’ and said the loon had magical powers.” She sat back on her heels and watched as Rainy lifted the bird from the box and settled it on her blanket-covered lap. “They also said that—” She cut off her words abruptly, making clear it wasn’t something she wanted to share. Rainy gave her an encouraging look, but Caroline looked away and remained silent.
Rainy sat with the bird on her lap and kept stroking the head, the loon subdued and relaxed under her hands.
Caroline sat nearby, watching the bird closely, and began speaking to no one in particular. “Don’t really know why we have loons on Lake Ophelia—they’re not supposed to be here. They breed and live in Canada and some of the northern states, then migrate down here to the southern coast for the winter. Guess a family made a pit stop here and decided to stay and come back every year.”
Rainy eased her legs out in front of her to better see the bird’s injuries. “Looks like we’ve got a lot of work to do before you fly to the coast for the winter, hmmm?”
The loon nodded as if agreeing, then settled back down.
“I think I’ll stay here today with the loon. Mom wanted me to help her organize something in the quilting room, but I think that can wait,” Caroline said.
“Don’t be silly,” Rainy said. “I’ll be fine. There’s not much I don’t know about fixing broken animals.”
Caroline looked at the bird as if unsure. “I don’t mind staying. . . .”
“I’ll be fine—really. Nothing to worry
about.” She smiled down at the bird nestled into her lap. “See? We’re old friends already.”
Standing, Caroline brushed dust off her knees. “All right then. But if my mother calls, please don’t tell her that I touched the bird. She’ll have the rabies shots ready before I get back.”
Drew frowned as he looked at the uncounted inventory. “Do you want me to stay and finish this? You’ll be busy with the bird.”
“I’ll be fine—really. I’d rather do it myself, anyway—harder to mess up. Plus, I don’t really expect a horde of customers, what with it being the off-season. So you two go on and do whatever it is you need, and when you get back I’ll still be here.”
They said their good-byes, then Caroline reluctantly followed him out to the truck.
They traveled silently for a few miles before she asked if she could turn on the radio.
“You’re not going to sing, are you?”
She couldn’t hold back her smile. “No. Promise.”
They rode the rest of the way listening to a country music station, and he watched from the corner of his eye as her fingers seemed to accompany the music on an invisible piano. She caught him looking at her and followed his gaze as if she had been unaware of her actions, then clasped both hands together in a ball on her lap.
“How do you know so much about loons?” he asked.
She looked down at her hands and clasped them tighter. “My brother, Jude. He loved them, so he checked out every book he could find in the library and learned just about everything about a loon it’s possible to know without actually being one.” She smiled at the memory, and her hands loosened their grip.
“What was that other thing about loons you were going to say back there at Rainy’s? You started, and then you stopped and you left me curious.”
Her hands closed into a tight ball again. “I don’t remember. Something to do with the loon’s call and what it meant to the Indians.”
He was silent for a moment. “I wish I had known him. Shelby talked about him all the time. He must have been a great guy.”
She looked at him, her face relaxed for the first time since he’d met her. It was a pretty face, and definitely one that he would have pursued if he didn’t know better.
“He was. Everybody loved Jude. He was one of those people who got along with everybody, and was good at everything he did.” She looked like she was going to say something else, but stopped and glanced down at her hands again.
“What? Say it.”
Her smile deepened and she ran her hand nervously through her ponytail. “Oh, it’s just that I always thought Shelby and Jude would get married. They were like two halves of the same person. She was two years older, but you never would have guessed it.”
“But then he died.”
She turned toward her window and nodded.
“Seventeen’s pretty young to die.” He didn’t know why he kept prodding her. At first he thought it was because it was such a challenge to get her to open up. But after he saw her smile, it became something else entirely.
He watched as her hand clutched at her heart, gripping the fabric of her shirt without her even seeming to notice it.
“Yeah. Way too young.”
“I remember the year. I was a senior at UNC and Shelby was a sophomore. I think I’d been in love with her since I first saw her in art history class her freshman year. I would have pursued her then, but she made it very clear that there was no room for anybody else but Jude. So we just became very good friends.”
Caroline’s brows drew together. “She certainly didn’t waste any time marrying you after Jude died. It was within a year. I think that’s why I lost contact with her. I don’t think I ever forgave her for that.”
He stared hard out of the windshield. Finally he said, “She never stopped loving him.”
She turned her head to look at him but didn’t say anything.
“I knew it when I married her, too.” He shrugged, trying to slide the heaviness off his shoulders. “She loved me, in a way. But I know she never really got over losing Jude.”
“Didn’t that bother you—knowing you weren’t her first choice?”
He stretched his fingers on the steering wheel, noticing the new calluses and chipped nails. “No. It’s hard to be jealous of a dead man. And I loved her. I always felt that having a little bit of her heart was better than nothing at all.”
Glancing over at her, he saw that her knuckles were white where she clutched at her shirt and she was practicing her breathing exercises again. It was time to back down. He let a lightness he didn’t feel into his voice. “Is that why you don’t like me—because Shelby married me?”
She relaxed against the car seat and dropped her hands to her lap. “No, that’s certainly a reason, but there’re plenty of others.”
He threw back his head and laughed. He could see her trying to hide her answering smile by turning her head toward the window, but he saw the creases in her cheek. “Good one. You know, I suspect there’s a lot more of that in you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to letting some of that out.”
“That’s assuming I tolerate your presence long enough for you to try.”
He laughed again as they headed up the mountain, glad to have finally caught a glimpse of the girl who had once planned a trip around the world using her mother’s credit card.
October 2, 1987
Me and Mama have to check the bird feeder out back every day now and refill it. All those birds from the cold up north are stopping down here on their way to the Georgia coast or Florida. I like to think that it’s the same birds each year, hoping to catch a glimpse of me. It makes it easier to watch them leave, knowing that I’ll see them again.
Lake Ophelia is full of the cries of loons at night. It’s odd to hear so many at one time. Jude says that they’re solitary birds, with usually just a single family at a lake. I don’t think it’s because they don’t like company, though. I think it’s because a single cry is so incredibly beautiful. Sort of like people, really. They sometimes have to be by themselves to be able to work on the thing that makes their world more beautiful. When I see Jude practicing the piano or Caroline quilting, I think of the solitary loon out on the lake on a summer night, crying out to the moon.
We do have a pair of loons that come back every summer and nest. They’re not supposed to be here, because they like the colder lakes up north, but this pair seems to have a fondness for our lake. Jude joked that it’s because he asked them to. I didn’t tell him, but I think he’s right. He can pretty much get anything he wants just by asking.
Last summer, we were fishing at twilight out in the middle of the lake and we saw a loon run across the water in the funny way they have of taking flight. I heard its call straight overhead and I’d never heard it so close before. It made my skin tingle, and my scalp tightened like it does when I get one of my headaches. Jude was watching it, too, and he was frowning and his eyes were sad. He grabbed my hand and I felt a spark that made me feel funny in ways I’d never thought about with him before. We sat holding hands for almost an hour, not talking, just feeling. And then he rowed the boat back to the dock and helped me out. He didn’t have to say that he had felt the same thing I had.
It wasn’t until later that he told me that the Chippewa Indians had considered the cry of the loon to be an omen of death. He smiled when he told me, so I can only hope that he just said it to scare me.
Jewel closed the diary and went back to the room where her mother’s things were kept. She pulled out the quilt and spread it on the bed in the same way Rainy had spread her mother’s quilt out on the craft table. As she had been reading her mother’s diary, a niggling thought had kept bothering her, and she’d come to find out if she’d remembered correctly.
Closely examining each completed square, she tried to remember where she’d spotted what she was looking for. When she exhausted her search, she began at the top again, and worked her way through each square more slowly
this time. She was about to give up and fold it back into the trunk when she had another thought. Picking up the top corner, she looked at the stitching in the border. There, in pale gold thread, was hand-stitched the outline of a bird shaped like a duck but with a long, flat beak and legs that were oddly set way back on its body.
A tingling at the back of her scalp warned her that a headache was on its way. But she sat on the bed with the quilt on her lap for several minutes, hearing a silent voice inside her head telling her that the quilt wasn’t ready to be taken out of the trunk. Her fingers toyed with the stitching of the bird as she sat and thought about what it all meant.
Eventually she got up and folded the quilt back, where it would wait until it was ready to be seen.
CHAPTER 13
CAROLINE WAITED UNTIL SHE HEARD DREW’S TRUCK PULL AWAY before she walked across the yard and knocked on Jewel’s back door. She was surprised to see Jewel already in her swimming suit.
“Hi. I know I’m early, but I wanted to make a quick phone call to my boss in Atlanta before our lesson this morning.”
Jewel opened the door wider. “Sure. You know where the phone is.”
Passing through the rear of the house, Caroline once again noted the incredible furniture in the rooms they passed. She paused at the dining room, empty except for a table and two chairs.
Jewel moved into the room ahead of her. “My dad’s not finished with this room yet. He’s planning on making more chairs and a buffet table to store my mom’s pottery.”
Caroline squatted to look at the large breakfront and ran her hand over the carvings, her fingers outlining the dips and creases of the wood, almost sensing the passion of the man as he created something beautiful from a solid block of wood. She jerked her hand away, as if she could feel the connection between herself and the craftsman.
