Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  Besides, who needed school for friends? Aggie found real friends in the woods. Birds. Raccoons. Trees. And homeschool took less time.

  In a way, Mama had recovered. At least now she no longer rolled her wild eyes, shouting at people she hardly knew. She worked in the garden again. Mailed out packages wrapped in kraft paper, with Hayes Heirloom Seeds stamped in the corner.

  Her mother did, however, yell when Aggie climbed.

  If only she had waited to visit the crows.

  Her father, his hands hanging, watched Mama stomp up the hill, swiping hip-high orchard grass out of her way. He nodded to Aggie’s hiding place. “Let’s head home, my girl.” He strapped the chainsaw into the basket behind the ATV’s seat. “You practicing everything I taught you out there?”

  “Yes, Dad. I think about it all the time.” At least the parts that interested her. Like tracking animals. And bird calls. And, usually, checking tree branches for soundness.

  “Good. Good. One way or another, we’ll figure out how you can grow those wings of yours without testing God—or your mom. No need to dare either of them to keep you alive.”

  “She doesn’t get it.”

  He leaned against the machine’s fender and crossed his arms. “Actually, I think she does.” He looked past Aggie at Mama’s retreating form. “She just doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Dad. She even worries when I eat grapes.”

  “Being a mother has distracted her.” Her father plucked a leaf from her hair. “Those jars of agates in the kitchen? Ever ask her about them?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Ask her about that cliff in Oregon. And those waves. If she had fallen …” He whistled a descending note, like in a cartoon before someone crashed. “See if she’ll tell you that story.”

  “I don’t know how that’ll help.”

  “Your mom hunted those stones like you hunt nests. Insisted we name you after them.”

  So her mother could scale cliffs to find rocks, but she wouldn’t let Aggie climb trees? Her face grew hot again.

  Dad mounted the four-wheeler and patted the seat behind him, and Aggie clambered on. “Eggs like daisy petals in that nest, Dad. Five of ’em.” She clamped her arms around his sides and laid her cheek against his shirt. He steered up the hill after her angry mother.

  CHAPTER 2 ~ AGGIE

  Rubble

  As the four-wheeler approached the house, Aggie spotted her brother standing by the open door of his truck. Ah. Burnaby to the rescue. Mama’s searchlight would swivel to him when they went inside. She hopped off the slowing vehicle and ran ahead to meet him. Her dad pulled up behind her.

  Burnaby, his eyes dodgy, patted the Ford’s cab. “F-100,” he said. “Delivered 1968. Seventeen years ago. Like me.”

  Her brother brushed a speck off the shiny paint and twisted the lock button on the door. How often had he said that in the two months since he bought the truck? Each time he repeated himself, Aggie caught the excitement his face never showed, and she felt kindness toward him. Now he drove to his job at Uncle Loomis’s dairy. No more bicycle. She smiled and visualized a stork delivering a miniature red pickup and baby Burnaby together in its bundle. If only he liked jokes.

  “Night milking, huh?” Dad pulled a pack of Beemans gum from his pocket and set it on the dashboard. “Chew it when that rowdy second string comes in the parlor. Settle your stomach.” He reached for her brother’s shoulder, but let his hand fall, unwilling, Aggie knew, to elicit Burnaby’s typical flinch at any human touch besides Mama’s. Longing flitted through Dad’s eyes.

  Burnaby nodded. “Double shift. Uncle Loomis is cutting silage. I’ll stay there tonight.” He retrieved his domed lunchbox from the passenger seat and raised it, as if toasting them, before he followed Aggie and Dad into the house.

  The three entered the kitchen as her mother flung a saucepan into the sink. Burnaby stood in the doorway like a supplicant, his lunchbox balanced on his uplifted hands. Aggie shrank toward the wall. Her dad stepped behind Mama, slid his arms around her waist, and pulled her into his chest.

  Aggie’s hands clenched at the compressed line of her mother’s lips. Only when Dad whispered, his mouth right beside Mama’s ear, did her mother relax and lean her head back onto his shoulder. Aggie heard her sigh and say, “I know, I know.”

  Wearily, Mama gestured to Burnaby. He set the lunchbox on the counter and opened it, then flipped the latch rhythmically while Mama brought food from the fridge. She laid one hand atop his until his fingers stilled, then stood two individually bagged peanut butter sandwiches—crusts removed—upright in the left end of the box.

  “Eat. And. Read. From. Left. To. Right.” Burnaby said, tapping the red metal lunchbox in time with each syllable. Aggie mouthed the familiar line with him and poked the wall behind her in sync with his clipped words. Mama pushed a baggie of carrots, cut in precise, half-inch rounds, against the sandwiches.

  Burnaby held three fingers like a bookend against the food until her mother washed and dried an apple, then set it stem-up in the box, to the right of the carrots. With a clean napkin, he dabbed a water drop from the base of the stem as Mama folded three more napkins, held them vertically against the carrots, and chose a small block of wood from five of graduated sizes lined up against the counter backsplash. She nestled it into the box, glanced at vigilant Burnaby, and replaced it with a larger block, one that more tightly filled the void between the napkins and the right end of the box. They all knew that if the food wasn’t just so, her brother would be late for work because he would stand beside Mama with his cheek twitching until she made everything fit.

  Almost done. Aggie watched through half-lidded eyes as Mama poured milk in a Thermos. Burnaby spooned in a level half-teaspoon of Ovaltine, chose a dinner knife from the utensil drawer, and stirred—not nine times, but ten—before he rinsed the knife, tapped it on the edge of the sink, and closed the Thermos. Good enough to …? Yes! Burnaby clamped the Thermos into the lid and clicked the box closed. Aggie picked it up and followed him onto the porch.

  “Mama’s mad again, Burn.”

  “I suspected so.” He stooped to pick a marigold from a clay pot by the stair and handed it to her, his eyes on the flower. “Think yellow.” She passed him the lunchbox, and he touched two fingers to his forehead, saluting his goodbye. Aggie wound the flower’s stem around her finger like a ring.

  At the truck, he settled his food behind the seat and whistled for Pi. The brown dog leaped in ahead of him and stood on the passenger side, her prick ears tilted forward as her thick tail thumped the window. Burnaby traced the dog’s muscled shoulder with his index finger, slung the door closed and shifted into gear.

  Aggie watched the truck lurch down the potholed lane, then peeked sideways at the house. She’d be on her own in there. Without Burnaby and Pi to distract Mama at dinner, she would have to find another way to evade the climbing issue. But what? She swayed from foot to foot, antsy. Already the red-tails by the river were flap-hopping and stretching their wings. If Mama kept her home, the baby hawks would fledge before she said goodbye.

  She wandered out to the treed side of the house, where branches from the previous night’s windstorm littered the ground. A web of twigs crunched underfoot. Tinder. “Keep it dry and your flames will grab every time,” Dad told her whenever they built a fire.

  She scuffed the debris with her foot as an idea took hold, then patted the knife in her jeans. Fuzz sticks. Best kindling ever. She would make some for the fireplace. Mama would like them for sure. Opening her pocketknife, she plopped into the grass and began to whittle. She nudged the blade into a finger-thick twig as if she would skin it, but left thin curls of bark attached. A dozen feathery sticks later, she folded her knife and eyed the pile, pleased.

  Come winter, she would light them in the woodstove for Mama. A fuzz stick’s flame reminded her of a Christmas tree with its lights blazing. She liked that. She wished she didn’t have to wait.

&nb
sp; But why wait? She’d light one right now. Give it a test run. She hurried to the laundry room for matches, returned to her pile, and crumpled a handful of toothpick-thin tinder onto the ground. She built a teepee over the top of it with larger twigs and shoved a fuzz stick inside. Then she sat, straddling the little structure to block the rising breeze, while she lit a curly peel. She shielded the fire with her hands until it bit the tinder and caught. The flame’s gentle wobble calmed her.

  Mama’s afraid I’ll fall. Sure, she slipped on a branch now and then, but she never fell. Even so, Mama said she couldn’t climb anymore, ever. She lingered on the word ever and sighed. She hated feeling this hot anger at her mother. She didn’t know what to do with it and was glad that, for now, it was going away.

  The flicker spread inside the teepee, and the tinder crackled in response. She rationed the fuel to keep the fire small: a stem, a leaf, and another few twigs. As an afterthought, she cleared a little firebreak around the flame—a barren circle, like her dad had taught her: “Make it wide enough that the blaze can’t jump.” The powdery dirt puffed as she exposed it.

  Kneeling, she stared into the flame until a garter snake caught her eye as it slithered from a hole near her fire circle and hurried toward the flowerbed.

  “Too hot for ya?” She jumped to her feet and stepped lightly on the snake, holding it in place, then pinched its tail and lifted. The creature twisted as it dangled, and she nearly dropped it when Mama called her for dinner, her voice shrill. Aggie turned away from the house, lowered the snake headfirst into the pocket of her windbreaker and zipped it inside. She fingered its contours through the fabric before she flicked the campfire’s burning twigs apart with a piece of tree bark and kicked dirt over the flames.

  Mama shouted again. Aggie gathered the pile of fuzz sticks and carried them inside as a peace offering.

  “Won’t work this time, Agate. Enough’s enough.” Mama jerked her head toward the woodbin and sat stiffly beside Aggie’s dad. Spaghetti steamed in the center of the table. “Hurry up. Food’s getting cold.”

  Aggie shuffled toward the fireplace and lowered the sticks onto the kindling pile. She scooted into her seat across the dining room table from Mama and hunched sideways, fidgeting with the zipper on her jacket.

  “Agate Esther.”

  “Hm?”

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  Aggie felt like an egg, splitting open. One of these days, Mama would look in her eyes and see only the shell. Yep, while Mama laid down the law, or while arugula seeds distracted her, or while she drained herself giving Burnaby her last ounce of patience, Aggie would crawl out of her shell and fly away.

  She looked at her dad, who winked and nodded, then dropped her eyes again. The snake needed air. She tugged the windbreaker’s zipper open half an inch. The animal poked its head through the opening and Aggie quickly covered it with her cupped hand. When the snake’s tongue tickled her palm, she bit her cheeks against a smile.

  The phone rang. Mama signaled “wait” with her upheld finger as she rose to answer. Her voice from the kitchen sounded friendly, musical.

  “Dad. Save me. Not Aunt Nora’s.”

  “No drama, Aggie.”

  “Dad. That place is a mess. And Uncle Loomis scares me.”

  “He doesn’t bite. A few days won’t kill you. Your mom’s settling next season’s contracts this week and still has to work out details for the seed catalog. Dave Hoff asked me to don my arborist cap and consult with him on that pine beetle outbreak.”

  “Around here?”

  “No. East of the mountains. I leave for Winthrop tomorrow.”

  “Take me with you? Mama will have me on a leash when you leave.”

  “Honestly, Aggie, I—”

  The phone clattered onto the receiver, and her mother reappeared.

  “Nora’s picking you up first thing in the morning. No shenanigans, hear me? If you don’t behave yourself with her, I can make things much, much worse for you.”

  “Bree.” Dad’s voice was low.

  Mama smacked the table with the flat of her hand. “No, Harris!”

  “Let me go with Dad, Mama. Please.”

  “Phft. And turn you loose in eastern Washington? You’re following in Zach Spinner’s path. Only a matter of time.”

  “The Spinner kid? C’mon Bree. Calm down. Listen to yourself.”

  Aggie’s jaw went slack. Last Fourth of July, Zach Spinner had tossed a handful of wire clothes hangers into an electrical substation, then watched the show as the circuits arced, exploded, and torched a nearby shed. A fireman died, and the town went black for days. Only seventeen, but they tried him as an adult. “He got his fireworks,” Uncle Loomis said. Aunt Nora said Zach would be middle-aged before he got out of the slammer.

  “I hear myself just fine, thank you. Aggie doesn’t listen to a word I say. If she keeps it up, she’ll be in juvie before she’s twelve.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Aggie shoved her plate away as a small, reptilian head and its slinky, shoestring body emerged from her pocket, slipped to the floor, and trailed across her mother’s bare foot.

  Mama’s knee bumped the underside of the table hard as she recoiled from the snake. Her mouth formed an O, and she swung sideways and clenched her knee to her chest. The creature slid into the living room and disappeared under the sofa. Mama watched it hide, then turned slowly to Aggie, her eyes hooded, her breathing fast and shallow. “Get to your room. Now.”

  Aggie streaked upstairs and crouched beside her bedroom door, listening. The rise and fall of her parents’ voices—punctuated by her mother’s stomps and slams—droned on. She couldn’t make out the words. Oh well. She’d heard them all before. The wooden door felt cool against her cheek.

  She wanted her soft mother back—the mom she loved and could talk to. Not the frantic-eyed lady who talked too fast and banged around in the kitchen in the middle of the night. Not the mama who had mostly stayed in bed last spring. And definitely not the mean mother downstairs, who yelled at her and took pills that made her barf.

  Dad had promised that Mama would get better, that her moods would level out with the medicine. He had held Aggie by her shoulders and crouched to eye level. “I know this is hard, Agate, and that you’re sadder than you’ve ever been. But there’s a better song out there. Find it and draw what you hear. Ask the Father to show you. When your mom’s ready, you can share it with her.”

  Aggie pulled her sketchbook from under the bed and opened the cover to her first picture, drawn the previous spring while her pallid, depressed mother lay upstairs. She ran her fingers tenderly over the finch’s rosy crown and breast, remembering.

  “Start with him,” Dad had said, singling out a house finch cracking sunflower seeds at their feeder. He had found Aggie slouched at the kitchen table, worry bowing her spine like a daisy stem, her fingers wilting sprigs. He pushed her untouched sketch book and pencils toward her. “See where he flies.”

  She did. Not too willingly, at first. But after the finch made three trips to the same cedar, Aggie followed. When a dowdy, striped female flitted past her, she found the bird’s launch point: a nest of the tiniest rootlets, tinder, and horsehair, probably from that sorrel mare upriver. A smooth cup of fescues and dusky contour feathers—from some duck, she guessed—curved around three perfect, perfect, perfect eggs, all pale blue with black specks.

  She memorized them before she hurried inside to draw, first the father bird, then the nest and those eggs. A few days later, she turned over a fresh page and drew the mother feeding wobbly hatchlings, still blind and splotched with down.

  There were more, throughout that spring and summer. Shy Swainson’s thrushes deep in the woods. Practical robins in that maple tree. Juncos, hummingbirds, chickadees. Beaks punching through shells. And the hawks … Whenever a clutch fledged, the joy of their launch opened more sky to her, and another piece of her sadness shriveled and blew away.

  She slammed her sketchbook closed. If only h
er anger would blow away, too. Down in the kitchen, Mama ranted on. If she came upstairs and yelled, this time Aggie would climb out the window right in front of her. She would take her drawings and jump into the tree beside the house and leave Mama lecturing into her curtains. She would do that. Yes. Right in front of her.

  Sneaking out would be easier, though. She thought of her red-tails and, if she counted twilight, of June’s nearly eighteen daylight hours. If she left by 4:30 a.m., she could see the little hawks and be back to the house long before her parents rose at 6:00. Yes. She stroked the sketchbook’s cover. Tomorrow.

  She wriggled out of her jeans and tank top, pulled on navy pajama leggings and a long-sleeved, gray T-shirt, then closed the drapes to block the lingering summer sun. She set her alarm clock for 4:15, tucked it behind her pillow, and crawled into bed. Her parents’ voices thrummed below.

  Stay on the ground? She burrowed under her blankets, fuming. Never. How would she keep track of her birds if she didn’t climb? How would she record their hatches? Draw their nests and babies?

  If she quit climbing, how would she shrink the sadness?

  Sometime in the night, she startled awake as Mama snatched her blankets and hurled them from the bed. “Aggie! Hurry!” her mother shouted, raspy, as she hauled Aggie from her mattress onto the carpet. “Fire!”

  Aggie rose to her elbows, coughing. Her movements were jerky, her brain ragged with sleep and fumes. Mama dropped to the floor beside her and tugged her shirt. “This way.”

  Smoke bellied over them as Aggie crawled after her mother, her hammering heart a blood drum in her ears. When they reached the stairs, Mama gripped her hand, and they groped their way to the back entry. Mama fumbled with the lock, threw the door open, and yanked Aggie past the porch and across the yard to the ancient maple at the lawn’s edge.