Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  She hoped there were fewer mosquitoes up there, too. Her den had protected her from swarms of biting bugs, but since she’d left the cave, insects had turned her skin into a mass of welts. She climbed the tree to map her best route upward and bounced on the foundation limbs that would hold her bed. No mosquitoes. Better yet, along the trail to Uncle Loomis’s farm, there was no sign of Cabot.

  But the dog-killer was out there, somewhere. She would have to work fast.

  First, she gathered branches the diameter of walking sticks, each about five feet long. The sun was high by the time she collected twenty-eight of them from a wide swath of forest floor and laid them side-by-side across the foundation limbs so that messy lateral twigs camouflaged the platform’s underside. Lying across the lumpy surface, she took stock of the roof-like greenery above her. This would work.

  It was late afternoon when she finished lashing the floor base to the limbs with her sisal baling twine and some cattail reeds. After that, she stripped tender new growth from nearby trees, spread it over the platform and, with a satisfied sigh, admired her handiwork. A modified browse bed, her dad would call it. After more than a dozen trips up the tree, she ate her last biscuit and fell asleep on the cushy bedding.

  She awoke in waning daylight, disappointed to find mosquitoes already clouding around her and landing on her exposed skin. It was colder this high up, too. The sun had set, but its afterglow would last until she made some changes. She swiped her hands through the veil of insects and hurried down the tree with her sweatshirt.

  At the river, she dug her fingers into clay at the water’s edge and smeared it over her face and ears, her neck, feet, and the backs of her hands—everywhere her tattered clothing didn’t cover. With handfuls of moss from tree trunks and the forest floor, she stuffed her pajama legs. Next, she pulled on the oversized sweatshirt, padded the torso and sleeves with the soft insulation, and tucked the bulky shirt into her bottoms. She smiled as she visualized herself: a puffy, mud-caked tree sloth, a new species for her dad’s taxonomy chart.

  As twilight advanced, she dragged one more floppy branch of fir needles up the tree. The green blanket covered her body, and she burrowed beneath it—away from the humming mosquitoes. Warmer, and with fewer bugs finding her, she ate cattail stalks gathered that morning when she uprooted the reeds that held her bed together.

  Long after dark, she was still awake, her thoughts swirling. When the moon crowned the treetops, a sound below drew her attention to a flashlight beam as it bobbed along the trail from the dairy. Had someone seen her working here? Come to capture her? An owl launched from a nearby tree and flew between Aggie and the moving light. Did the silent bird sense danger, too?

  At the clearing, a man stepped into shadowy view. He trained the light on the root cellar latch, disappeared inside with something long and narrow, then hurried back to the trail. Even in the gloom, Aggie harbored little doubt; Cabot had hidden something else. Something bigger this time.

  CHAPTER 34 ~ CELIA

  Funeral

  Gram cut the grave’s outline in the lawn with her half-moon edger as Burnaby pushed the wheelbarrow to the side yard and lowered Pi’s casket to the ground. He returned to the barn for a shovel and flat-edged spade, ran his thumb along the spade’s sharp edge, and carved, loosening sod squares inside the sliced perimeter. I stacked the squares, clearing the level patch of earth. Then Gram and I waited as Burn picked up the shovel and dug fast, his breathing labored, his cheeks wet with tears.

  When the depth satisfied him, he eased his arms under Pi and lifted her rigid body from the coffin onto the grass, where she lay curled as if in sleep. I pictured him out there in the barn, bending the little dog before the heat left her, shaping her for the casket that now sat empty beside her. Empty, that is, until he plunged the blade into the dirt pile and shoveled earth inside, across the floor of that wooden box.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Gram caught my eye and shook her head. So when he laid Pi back inside and packed dirt along her belly and spine and inside her ears and mouth, when he heaped more soil on top of her and compressed it, I kept my lips sealed.

  Good thing I did. As Burn prepared his dog for burial, I realized that after enough time passed, he would extract Pi from her grave, wash her bones, and wire every one of them. It struck me then that all his resurrections weren’t merely some quirky hobby. For Burnaby, they were acts of love. He couldn’t make those dry bones come alive like in that Ezekiel story of Gram’s, but at least they weren’t being abandoned to holes in the ground. Burn knew those animals down to their very bones—and remembered them in watercolor.

  My eyes welled. When Pi stood in front of him in all her bony splendor, how would he paint her? What colors would bring her back to life on his page?

  Burn shoveled until the casket brimmed with dirt, then nailed down the slatted lid, slid the box into the cavity, and stood between Gram and me. She rested her hand on his back. He didn’t pull away.

  “You, Father, who knows when a sparrow falls, heal and welcome this little dog.” She said more, but misery plugged my ears. Earth pelted the coffin as we filled the hole, after which Burnaby turned from us and swayed back and forth for the longest time. I patted the mound smooth and sat near it until he put the tools in the wheelbarrow and steered it off toward the barn.

  “Time to educate Loomis,” Gram said.

  “I’m coming.” She saluted me and strode straight down the driveway, her arms swinging. I brushed my hands on my cutoffs and skipped to catch up. We turned north toward the dairy.

  “Every story has two sides, Mender.” Loomis stood by his tractor, a load of silage heaped in the wagon behind it. He pulled off his cap and ran his forearm across his brow, then exhaled wearily. The blue Camaro sat in the barn’s shade. “A tragedy for Burnaby and Pi, I know. I hurt for the boy. But Cabot told me she attacked him without provocation. He felt terrible about hurting the dog, but what else could he do? A man’s got to defend himself.”

  “So you take his word for it? You’ve known Burnaby since he was born. Has he ever lied to you about anything? He doesn’t know how. You know this.” My tiny grandmother was taking on Ape-Man.

  “No, but neither has Cabot. In the eight months he’s worked here, I’ve come to count on him. I trust the man. On the other hand, Burnaby can be, uh, you know. He means well, but he doesn’t always interpret situations like you or I would.”

  “You’re making an enormous mistake, Loomis. There’s another side to Cabot.”

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Burke, unless you have proof, I’d prefer that you not malign my herdsman. I’m surprised that you, of all people, would condemn someone without weighing all the angles.”

  Across the barnyard, Cabot stuck his head out of the office and smiled at me. He raised his index finger in that “hold on a minute” gesture and ducked back inside the room. I pretended not to see him and tugged Gram’s shirt. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  “We’ve been friends a long time, Loomis. You know I wouldn’t say this lightly. For whatever reason, Pi was a casualty of Cabot’s vendetta against Burnaby. I don’t imagine you want something even worse to happen. I suggest you pay attention to your help’s whereabouts.” Gram folded her hands at her waist, like a teacher standing before an errant student.

  Loomis tipped his cap. “Burnaby can take some time off. He needs it after … well … everything. His parents. Aggie. Now this. Too much. This is all too much.” He wagged his head slowly. “And I agree. Best he stay at your place until his parents can come home. I just hope they both do.”

  He climbed on his tractor, his movements ponderous. His voice rose above the engine. “Goodbye, Mrs. Burke.”

  I ran ahead of Gram and was at the road before Cabot reappeared in the office doorway.

  “Later,” he called.

  I lifted my hand in acknowledgement. I’ll be ready for you. I looped toward my grandmother and ran in place until she caught up. “That was like talking to a rock,” I said.<
br />
  “Yes. An immovable one.” She huffed once, then took a giant step into a race walker’s pace, her hips, arms, and braid all swinging again. I jogged to keep up. Behind us, Loomis’s tractor revved and rolled toward the silo.

  When we got home, Gram headed to the study, closed the glass-paned door and sat in the chair beside the bookcase. Sometimes she whispered into the sky or ceiling when she prayed, but today her eyes were clamped shut, her lips tight.

  The day’s events left me jittery. I shucked off my shoes at the door and made a beeline for the phone. With less than an hour before Cabot arrived, I needed reinforcements. From the minute we left that dairy, I knew I needed my dad.

  I hesitated as I held the receiver. What if he was lashed to an oil rig with waves crashing up the sides? Or hunkered down with a team of scientists in one of those endless meetings about viscosity or layered extractions? Or asleep? Or, what if his letter and call the previous week were his last attempts to contact me?

  What if I was too late?

  With my free hand, I plucked a gingersnap from a plate on the counter and crammed the entire cookie in my mouth. Ginger. Good for the stomach, right? Mine was making funny noises. Understandably so. In the last twenty-four hours I had hunted a phantom child, buried a murdered dog, and talked to a neighbor being duped by a criminal I nearly ran away with. Now I was reaching out to my estranged father. Drama, drama.

  I dialed the number Gram had written on the pad under the phone.

  “Burke here.”

  “Daddy?” I whispered to him.

  “My girl. I have missed you.”

  His voice had love in it. All my spitefulness, and what did he do? Hugged me through those phone wires as if I were all sweetness and light. I sniffled into the receiver.

  “You okay, Celia?”

  “Better, now.” I snatched a paper towel and dabbed my nose. “Daddy, I’m sorry.”

  “Sh. Sh. Sh. I know. You just needed a little time.”

  “How’s it going down there?”

  “Like clockwork. A best-case scenario. I should be able to wrap it up by the end of August and be on the plane to pick you up by September third. You’ll be late for the start of school, but we can work with that, right? Can you hold out ’til then?”

  He was coming back for me. In little more than a month. My dad. After all those weeks apart. My leg stopped jiggling. Daddy would come for me. Cabot would fade to a distant memory.

  I spilled my guts to him then, catching him up on Mender’s birds, strawberries, the kits, Burnaby’s artwork. Mother’s call. The fire. How I’d found Aggie but nobody believed me and how I’d tell him more about that later, but how I couldn’t wait to tell her that her dad would come home.

  I started crying again. “Like you will, Daddy.”

  He waited for my sobs to subside. “Anything else?” It dawned on me that even though I hadn’t been talking to him, Gram had. Every week.

  “Gram told you about Cabot and me.”

  “She did.”

  “Probably not good, huh?”

  “She has some concerns. Any you’re aware of ?”

  Well, yeah. “I did something really stupid.”

  The line went quiet. “You still there, Daddy?”

  “I’m listening, sweetheart.”

  “I was mad at you and Gram, so I invited him to our cabin. Then I changed my mind. After that, he changed. He’s been pushing me to … well, you know. Acting like he owns me. And he’s bad, Daddy. He killed Pi.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I need to end it, but I’m scared that he won’t leave me alone. That I won’t be strong enough to stand up to him. What if he … what if I’m not?”

  The line crackled.

  “Daddy?”

  “Celia. I think you’ve forgotten the truest thing.”

  My brain raced. Daddy loved quizzing me. Got a real charge out of how I remembered everything I studied. Took great delight in my accurate answers. So for me to forget something, especially a truest something, left me stranded where the buses don’t run.

  “Dang. So tell me.”

  “I’ve told you a million times. Not recently enough, obviously. Think about it.”

  “I dunno, Dad. What?”

  “I love you to the thousandth power. I’m with—”

  I started laughing. “You’re with me to my farthest stars. You’re holding me through every hour. You’ll bring me Canada, and Mars.” Man oh man, that stupid song. He sang it when I was little.

  “Remember it, Celia. Nobody’s stronger than a girl who’s loved like that.”

  Warmth washed over me. I felt whole. Beloved.

  “You can do this, sweetheart. I’m right there with you.”

  The phone’s handset was still warm in its cradle when I heard tapping on the screen door. Cabot stood watching me through the mesh with his piercing eyes, while the afternoon westerly blew around him and into the house. When I turned his way, he stepped over the threshold, through the living room and toward my perch on the barstool.

  “Who you talking to?”

  “My dad.” I smiled, but not at Cabot. I still heard Daddy’s voice.

  “Yeah? Why’d that jerk call again?” He pulled a stool next to mine and grabbed a cookie.

  Did I lead him to believe that about my father? My wonderful daddy?

  “I called him.” I felt sturdy.

  Cabot pushed his stool back from the counter and wheeled it sideways to face me. “You what? You turning unpredictable on me?” He flicked my ponytail, twirled the end around his finger.

  “Mm-hm. Sure am.” I pulled my hair away. He didn’t notice that I’d been crying, though I must have resembled the bruised peach beside the sink. Or perhaps he didn’t care.

  “Cabot, this … we … aren’t good together. I don’t want you coming here again.”

  He sat still, as if he were waiting for my words to swing from his earlobes, crawl down his auditory canals and coil into his cochleae for a soda before they registered. I kissed this guy? Oh, barf.

  He laughed derisively. “Yeah, right, Celia. You’ve been watching for me all day. You even came to the farm. You know I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  How did a girl call it quits when a guy wouldn’t? For as much talking as Cabot did, he sure didn’t listen worth a lick.

  “I mean it. We’re done.” No point explaining. He wouldn’t hear me, anyway.

  His arm circled my waist, but I squirmed away and scooted to the door. I held the screen open. “Please leave.”

  He tilted his head and backed over the threshold. His face was open, curious. “That must’ve been some talk with your dad. I get that. Cool down a bit. I’ll come back later.”

  “No, Cabot. Don’t come back ever.”

  He plugged his ears with his thumbs and laced his fingers behind his head. His elbows projected like giant ears. “You don’t mean that, Celia. I’ll pretend you didn’t say it. Get some sleep tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eight. Bring your hiking boots.”

  “We’re not going anywhere!” The hurtled door struck his shoe, slammed inches from his face.

  Gram hurried from her study at the commotion, then tracked my glare out the window. Cabot loped across the lawn and waved, a synthetic grin smattered across those cheeks I once found so irresistible. She scowled back at him. Attagirl, Mender. Both she and Daddy were backing me up.

  Daddy, however, was still thousands of miles away, and Gram was no match for Cabot’s manipulation. Her talk with Loomis had proven that.

  The next morning, I was turning duck eggs in the laundry room incubator when Cabot’s car thrummed down the driveway. Gram, poised over the waffle iron, unplugged the appliance and sank her spoon back into the bowl of batter. She slid a stack of cooled waffles into a plastic zip bag and lifted it toward me. “Snacks for you and Burn,” she said, and put the bag in the freezer. Then she walked to the front window and peeked between slats in the blind
s.

  “Go upstairs, Celia. I’ll talk to him.”

  I closed the incubator lid and hurried to the landing at the top of the stairway. I crouched out of sight and pressed my ear between the balusters.

  “Hey, Mrs. Burke.”

  He could charm a pie into cooking itself.

  “Celia ready yet?”

  “She told you to stay away, remember?”

  “Aw, she didn’t mean it. She here? Can I talk to her?”

  “I insist you—”

  “She know you’re keeping me from seeing her?”

  He must have tried to push past her.

  “Unh-unh. Not another step.”

  “Celia? Celia!” His voice wound up the stairs.

  I shrank against the wall.

  “… see you here again, I’ll call the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff ? Ha!” Heels thunked on the porch’s floorboards. “Lotta good that’ll do you. Tom’s a friend of mine.”

  Aggie’s search party. That stodgy sheriff with the dog. Of course Cabot knew him. They worked Search and Rescue together. The man wouldn’t believe Cabot over Gram, would he? I chewed a hangnail.

  “Friend or no friend, you’re trespassing. I’ll press charges if you don’t leave my property immediately.” Gram’s voice rang like struck iron. She sounded eight feet tall.

  “Crazy old woman. I’ll see her again. You can’t stop me.”

  Gram gasped, and the door whumped closed.

  I rushed downstairs, afraid of what I’d find.

  CHAPTER 35 ~ AGGIE

  Surprise

  After the flashlight man left the cellar, Aggie lay awake long enough for the gibbous moon to move and shine onto her platform. Half-light from a half-moon, but still so bright. She thought of her mother turning out her bedside lamp. “You’ll sleep better, my Agate.”