Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  My library? Hers now, too, though socks fit a rooster better than Meredith fit into any library—or into my structured world of academics and sports—which suited me fine. Meredith Prescott was a curriculum unto herself, and from the minute our school counselor asked me to give her a campus tour, I was a happy enrollee.

  Mer wouldn’t like my detour one bit. She’d made plans for us this summer. Parties with friends she wanted me to meet from Lamar High, from which she’d been unfairly expelled. “Big plans,” she said. “You will be SUR-PRISED, library girl.” I had been counting the days.

  Not to be. Instead, by the time we passed Everett, an hour north of the airport, I was suffocating, and we weren’t even halfway to Gram’s. “I need a rest stop, Dad.” Once he stopped the car, I would run. With only five bucks in my wallet, who knew where I’d go, but at least I’d be deciding.

  “Coming right up,” he said. But he missed several exits leading to strip malls and shopping centers, places where a girl could disappear fast. A half hour later, he pulled in at a country store outside Conway and pointed at the door. “Left at the doughnuts. First door past the Mountain Dew.”

  “Very funny.” I glared at him and beelined to the restroom at the back of the store, where I locked myself in a nasty stall to consider my options. They were few at the moment. After what happened to Meredith with that creep who picked her up on the gulf road, Daddy knew I would never hitchhike.

  I could, however, take a bus.

  At the end of the hallway leading to the restrooms, I found a pay phone. I paged through the directory, sneaked a glance over my shoulder for Daddy, dropped my dime in the slot and whispered to the dog-bus lady. For seventy-five dollars, she said, Greyhound would get me from Washington back to Houston. By the time Daddy learned I had scrammed, he’d be climbing an oil rig off the coast of Brazil. Unless he wanted to call in reinforcements, he’d have no choice but to let me stay with Meredith until he got home.

  One problem: I still needed seventy bucks. Daddy was a cosigner on my savings account, so that was out. Meredith was usually flat broke, so she’d be no help. If I asked Gram or Daddy for money outright, they’d smell a plot. I didn’t need money at Gram’s. Even if I did, they would expect me to work for it.

  Okay, then. I would earn it somewhere. And once I accumulated the funds, I’d find that bus and split.

  On the way out of the restroom, I leaned in close to the mirror. My normally clear skin was blotchy from crying and streaked with black mascara. Too gross. I made a mental note to buy waterproof next time and held a paper towel under the spigot. I poised it under one eye, then changed my mind. This was perfect. War paint. And the mascara matched my hair. I tossed the towel in the trash, finger-combed my ponytail, and rewound my scrunchie.

  When I stepped outside, Daddy was pacing in front of the store. “You get lost in there?”

  “What do you care?”

  He reached for my car door, but I aimed my best stink eye at him and yanked it open myself.

  I rolled the window down, shut my eyes, and stuck my head outside so the wind blasted my face and I wouldn’t have to talk to him while he drove. If those bugs hadn’t kept hitting me, I’d have stayed there the rest of the way to Gram’s. I itched to get out of that car, away from Daddy.

  An hour later, almost to the Canadian border, we left the freeway and turned toward the mountains. At a stop sign on Borealis Road, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Couldn’t stand him. I jumped out of the car and slammed the door. Daddy rolled down the window.

  “C’mon, Celia. It’s only two more miles. Get in.”

  “Leave my stuff at Gram’s and you can be on your merry way.” I jogged along the quiet road as the car crawled next to me.

  His head tipped sideways so he could see me through the window. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re dumping me twenty-four hundred miles from home. We’ll see how long your little Celia stays at her grandmother’s.”

  “Celia, don’t.”

  I sprinted away from him, up the hill, where grass rolled from either side of Crabtree Road like a lumpy green blanket, pasture for all those little dairies that dotted the valley. Along with plenty of berry farms, they propped up the one stoplight town of Axling, seven miles southeast. I’d loved this land for as long as I could remember, but now the rusty barbed wire quilting the fields may as well have been razor wire topping chain link, with me gripping the mesh.

  Angry as I was, the beauty still found me. I slowed to a jog and took in the swath of rugged peaks, the North Cascades, hemming the valley’s far edge before they marched on into Canada. Their white caps already showed shadowy streaks from early snowmelt. Enormous trees lined the fields and hills between me and those mountains and beckoned me like mothers who care—nothing like mine.

  Daddy followed alongside for a hundred yards, but when I snubbed him, he closed the window and drove past me. At Grandma Mender’s open gate, I turned down the long, treed lane where I practiced hundred-meter sprints whenever I visited. Our rented Chevy sat at a weird angle in front of Gram’s sprawling farmhouse. She stood on the porch, no doubt watching for me, her elbows cupped in her hands, her gray braid draped over one thin shoulder. Daddy’s stocky frame filled the doorway behind her.

  I ignored them both as I approached. I crossed the lawn, hopped the rail fence and whistled for Gram’s setters, out digging for voles by the woodshed. Zip and Clover ran to me, their tails whipping, their russet fur sleek in the sunshine. I rubbed their ears and tried to hold myself together as I walked past the house, out of Gram and Daddy’s view. To calm my brain, I counted my strides, ninety of them, which landed me at the field’s distant boundary. At ninety-one, I folded into the warm grass. The dogs licked my face then sprawled beside me, bellies up in the late afternoon sun.

  How long would Daddy stay in there? An hour? Two? With that early flight to catch, he wouldn’t spend the night. Would he come find me? Part of me wanted him to. Wanted him to come sit by me and wrap his arms around me. Tell me again that he was sorry and that he loved me and would return for me as fast as he could. And I’d hug him back, tell him I’d be fine. That I was disappointed, but that I understood. And that I loved being with Gram—and I loved him.

  But the other part of me, the sizzling mad part, wanted him to hurt. Sizzle was winning at the moment, hands down.

  He walked to the fence half an hour later and ran his eyes over the meadow where I lay hidden in the thick, waist-high grass. He had no idea where to look. “Celia?” He’d never locate me. I massaged the dogs’ ears to keep them quiet. Clutched their collars. “Celia?” I held my breath. “Ceel-ya?” His voice echoed off the trees by the river this time. He paced the fence at the lawn’s edge, held fingers to his mouth and whistled. Shaded his eyes, inspecting the field. Cocked his head and listened. Eventually, he dug his hands in his pockets, coughed roughly, and returned to the house.

  I waited, but he stayed inside. What did he expect? That I would crawl to the door? No way I’d give him that satisfaction. I would hide until he left. I’d outlast him. I would sleep in the barn if necessary.

  It seemed like a worthwhile plan until I heard his car start. Then ice rolled up my arms and legs. I did outlast him. My daddy was leaving me.

  I buried my face in Zip’s scruff. By the time my sobs squeezed out every salty drop, Clover was trotting to the house—and the vengeful side of me had won. No doubt in my mind; I’d be gone before Daddy returned. There were other ways to hitch a ride.

  CHAPTER 4 ~ AGGIE

  Flight

  Aggie didn’t dare use the road as an escape route. Those people pawing through the rubble would see her there, catch her, and take her to jail. Instead, she tore down the hill trail toward their pond, gritting her teeth against the pain in her burned feet. Her hands shook as she untied the yellow dinghy her dad had inflated the week before, on her tenth birthday.

  She dragged the raft over the nearby river’s grassy dike before she buckled, sobbing. Then she
remembered the deputies, sprang like a startled cat, and aimed the boat into the water, where sunlit fog and smoke gilded the air above the surface. She entered the craft nimbly and, with a bare foot shoving hard into the bank, pushed off. The Hawley River, still high with snowmelt, urged the boat downstream. Water wrinkled against its sides and tugged it along.

  The boat veered into the main current, and she shivered at the exposure, open to water and sky and trapped in her yellow boat. As her panic rose, she stood to jump overboard, but when the dinghy wobbled, she fell onto her bottom and stared dully into the swirling drink. Salmon, she thought. If only she were a salmon, she would smell the water and know where to go. Sniff out a place to hide. Somewhere safe.

  Was there anywhere safe? She huddled in the morning chill as the little boat’s oars dangled from the oarlocks. At last she curled up on the rubber deck, and when the day warmed her, slept.

  Midmorning, heat and thirst woke her to an unfamiliar landscape. From her drift down the middle of the river, she saw a wide pasture peppered with dairy cows, all ambling toward a long, squat barn at the field’s far border. A man with a pair of cattle dogs eased them forward. Surreal. Calm. Detached from her, as if they were in a snapshot, or on TV.

  But Aggie’s mind jigged. She ducked beneath the gunwale and hunched into the boat’s inflated side. That man with the cows. Was he coming for her, too? She peeked. He was still herding animals—and walking below dike level. So he couldn’t see her, right?

  Wrong. Everyone could see her. Everyone! She flattened her trembling body onto the craft’s floor and waited.

  Minutes passed. Where was he now? No one called or appeared at the top of the dike, so she lifted her head, her eyes darting. The man and his cows were behind her, mere slivers entering the barn. Still, she imagined him spotting her, pursuing her, sounding an alarm. He would. She knew it.

  The boat swung, forcing her attention to the water. The current swirled her toward a partially submerged tree, where protruding branches pointed jagged, knife-like tips at her raft. Her fingertips tingled with another infusion of fear. “Dad!” She screamed over the water and the vacant fields beyond the dike, emptying her lungs until her tongue felt huge and dry in her open mouth.

  Facts flitted by: Brian Hatch. High schooler. Swim team. Drowned by a water-logged tree in the river. Then her dad’s voice, banging in her ears. “His thrashing entangled him more. That’s why you can’t panic, Aggie. Think instead. Choose.”

  She glared at the woody tentacles, jerked an oar loose, and pushed against a limb with the blade. Her dinghy swerved, then floated toward a sprawling pancake of roots inches beneath the water’s surface. On her knees now, she hoisted the oar, rammed its tip into the twisty mass, and heaved her weight against it.

  As if deciding, the boat paused before it responded to Aggie’s pressure and shifted direction—toward the open current. Free. Sweaty, with her hands locked tight around the oar, she watched the threat shrink behind her.

  Row. She had to row, but the swirling water disoriented her. On the pond she rowed often, but the oar now seemed foreign and she fumbled with it.

  Think, Aggie. She willed her fingers to drop the oarlock into place and grasped the oars’ handles. She dipped both blades under the surface and pulled.

  Ahead of her, its talons leading, a black and white blur splashed and sank into the river—until even its outstretched wingtips submerged. Then the skinny raptor erupted from the water, a trout glinting silver in its claws. Aggie took a deep breath and tracked the bird as it regripped the fish midair, then flapped to a messy nest in a cottonwood beside the dike. Osprey. Recognition momentarily calmed her before her thoughts again rushed away, this time in a swirl of flames and diving birds.

  She rolled her shoulders, trying to relax, then forced herself to study the shoreline. Downstream from where the osprey landed, dense trees, their needles and leaves knit together above thick undergrowth, lined the bank. “Impervious and cold,” her uncle Loomis called these heavy Washington forests. Aggie didn’t think so. The forest was the friendliest of places, if you knew your way around. The kindest place. She extended her arms toward the waiting branches. She would land there and go to them.

  But first, water. Releasing the oars to trail from their locks, she stretched over the dinghy’s pillowy bow, balanced on her belly and sniffed the silty river’s hybrid scent of rot and growth. When she slurped a mouthful, its taste wormed in her throat. Beavers swim here, Dad, I know, I know. At least this water came from the middle of the river. Fast flow was safer, wasn’t it? And what was the name of that sickness where beavers swam? She lay dazed over the side of the boat, wishing she had paid attention, refusing to drink more.

  If only she could touch those trees.

  Determined now, she sat up and steered for shore, pulling hard at the oars. When the boat scuffed gravel, she straddled the gunwale and stepped into ankle-deep water, then thrust the raft under a scrubby, overhanging willow. The dinghy bobbed—leaf-shrouded but ready for her, should she need it again. She tugged the line around a branch and crawled like a salamander onto the dike, where she flopped onto her belly in the tall grass. Algae clung to her chin.

  She lay there breathing, breathing, trying to calm. Slow, she told herself, but she panted and gasped. Dad’s whispers came to her, soothing her panic: Full lungs. Slow. The sun moved higher as she refused the night’s horrors and searched for different thoughts. Better ones. Kitten, Egg. Nest. Anything to crowd out the fire.

  After a long time, she took one deep, unhurried breath. And another. The pulse in her neck quieted.

  New glimpses of Mama came to her. Mama peaceful, reading under the aspens in the hammock on a warm day before she got sick. Aggie closed her eyes and concentrated. The memory stuck, briefly. She pictured herself creeping beneath her mom and brushing the ends of her mother’s coppery hair as it trailed through the hammock’s loose weave. Sun glinted heat off the curls.

  “My hair doesn’t shine like yours, Mama.”

  Her mother had laid the book across her lap and rolled onto her side, evaluating Aggie through the webbing. “Your hair has soft light, baby. Like mist. Or moonbeams.” Mama’s gaze caressed her. “And those agate eyes of yours? Warm light. So lovely.”

  Aggie wanted to believe her. She believed the misty part, but the light and beauty? She didn’t buy it. That night washing dishes she pulled a metal spatula out of the suds and analyzed her own elfin reflection in its surface, confirming what the bathroom mirror told her. Ashy blond and pale as paper, she could not have looked more different from her radiant mother. She was dull, invisible.

  She had recalled her dad laughing when she melted into a wild cherry tree. “You can hide right in front of me, Aggie. When you climb those trees, I can’t tell you from the branches and leaves.”

  Branches and leaves? A startled mallard rose squawking from the river and intruded on the memories. If resembling foliage kept her hidden, then she liked her appearance just fine. Her gray top and navy bottoms would blend in, too—and mud already mottled her pink, bare feet. She parted the grass for a clearer view of the woods. She would crawl there, she decided. Disappear into the undergrowth, climb and get her bearings. The trees would hold her while she figured out what to do next.

  CHAPTER 5 ~ CELIA

  Hawk

  The field grass had cooled and the mountains turned pink when Clover led Gram to me, two hours after Daddy drove away. My grandmother knelt down beside me, but I kept staring at the cumulus clouds overhead, velvet pillows gone all gold and violet. Zip, dozing in the crook of my arm, rose to greet her, and both dogs bounded off.

  “Hungry, honey? For dinner? Talk?” She ran a wrinkled hand along my shin.

  “No thank you, Ma’am.” I withdrew my leg. Things had changed between Gram and me. She had colluded with my daddy.

  “Fair enough. I could use your help, though.” She sounded tentative. “Jake Brim just called. He’s bringing over a Cooper’s hawk he found snared in his
garden’s deer fence. Tore a talon.”

  That shifted my gears. Regardless of my grandmother’s betrayal, we had work to do.

  During my last visit, Gram left a magazine on my nightstand, opened to a glossy photo of her with a recovering barred owl and the feature headline, “Acclaimed Biologist Considers the Birds.” The piece began with the story about her grandfather nicknaming her Mender after she revived a snowy owl, then recounted how Marta Burke, a researcher by trade, retired at sixty to rehabilitate birds, and had done so for the past six years. Midway through the article, Gram described a kestrel we had worked on and called me her “kindred spirit” and “a passionate, tireless assistant.”

  A bit of a stretch, since I only visited three or four times a year, but I liked reading it. Felt like a little feng shui for my clashing insides. Passionate? Tireless? When it came to birds, yes. I was a lot like my gram.

  But skilled? Intuitive? Hardly a lick like her. I wondered what my double-great-grandad would have called me. Nothing to do with mending. My solo attempts at healing failed miserably. I tended that finch for an hour after it hit the window. It died anyway. A duck with a fishhook through its beak escaped me and flew away, trailing twenty yards of nylon line. And my parents’ marriage? I tried. Oh, I tried. I doubted I could save anything.

  Gram had pondered the clouds for five minutes before I answered from my nest in the grass. “Is he bleeding like that barn owl did last year? The one the Webster kid shot with that pellet gun?”

  “Enough to put him at risk, from Jake’s description.” When I stood without taking her extended hands, she clasped them in front of her. “Will you kennel the dogs? I’ll get your gloves.”

  Minutes later, a rangy, wire-haired farmer in a sweat-stained cap lowered a wobbling box into Gram’s hands. Bird feet scraped the cardboard inside.