by Sally J. Pla
“Stop giggling or I’ll have to leave the bird poop where it is. And believe me, you don’t want that.” She frowns, concentrating, reaching up with her big arm. As she pulls bird poop out of my hair, her arm jiggles an inch from my nose. This makes me want to laugh even more. I think I am going to have a laughter meltdown.
I am lost in Wall Drug and held captive by an arm-jiggling lady and my head is covered with parrot poop. I shake, that’s how hard I’m laughing to myself.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
“I’m not sure!” I squeak.
“Okay. That should just about do it.” She takes one last wet wipe from the box and cleans off her thick pink fingers. “Sorry about that. I don’t know why that leg leash keeps coming undone. It’s never usually an issue—Doodie never leaves his perch. He must have really liked you.” She smiles. “He must have sensed something about you. Doodie’s a very good judge of character.”
I don’t look at her. I look around at Doodie and company. “Are these birds all rescues?”
“Yes. We’re a traveling exhibit, of sorts. To raise awareness, maybe get some folks interested in adopting. Parrots live a very, very long time, and sometimes they get abandoned, or their owners’ circumstances change, they move or can’t keep ’em, or pass away. Doodie’s owner was a sweet old lady, but she passed on, and the daughter travels for work and couldn’t take care of him.”
“What happened to his eye?”
“No one knows. Poor sweetums. But it doesn’t seem to bother him none.”
This lady is talking to me like we are old friends. Like we actually know each other.
“Can I hold him the way you did?” I ask her, putting my elbow up.
“Of course!” the lady says, cracking a big smile. “Walk right up to him with your arm out. Just like that. You’re a natural. Just tell him: ‘Step up!’”
I do, and his scaly orange-brown claws clasp tightly around my forearm. I gasp. It’s a weird feeling. I could think of it as a really bad feeling, but I try not to. I stay focused on Doodie, not my arm. He tilts his one, shiny, blue-black eye at me, and it’s like he really sees me. Like he’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t quite read his visual cue. He has a bright yellow forehead, and his feathers lock together so seamlessly they look like velvet. He starts to gently pull at the neck of my T-shirt with his big yellow beak.
“See that?” the lady exclaims. “He’s showing you love, by grooming your feathers, preening, only you don’t have any feathers, so he’s—oops, sorry—he’s tearing the heck out of your collar—sorry about that.”
She laughs, and I am laughing again, too. It’s funny. When people touch me, it makes my skin crawl. But this parrot? Just like with Tiberius, I don’t seem to mind it as much. Still, I move so I’m lined up right by the stand, and let Doodie hop back onto his wooden dowel.
That was fun.
“I have to say, young man, you are a bird natural! Do you want to meet a few more new friends?” the lady asks. She is nice. I like her.
We go from perch to perch. She introduces me, and a few of the other birds “step up” on my arm. The gray parrot can sing “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” There are a few cockatiels, and another macaw that she says is over forty years old and can swear in Spanish, French, and English. “He’s got a strange accent when he speaks English,” she says. And that reminds me of Ludmila.
I am starting to worry about the others. I say thank you to the frizzy-red-haired lady.
“Anytime, sweetie,” she says. “Say good-bye to our new friend, Doodie!”
And Doodie says, “Anytime, sweetie!”
I am smiling. I feel braver, and still full of excitement from the parrots. I am smiling as I head past the Wall Drug gift shop, the Wall Drug bookshop, the Wall Drug apothecary, and the Wall Drug jewelry emporium.
But my smile slowly fades as I still can’t find Davis, the twins, or Ludmila.
Finally, I push open the swinging screen door and look around the parking lot. There they all are, already waiting by Old Bessie!
“Finally!” shouts Ludmila. Her arms are folded; her eyebrows scrunched. Visual cue: mad.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, finally is right!” says Davis, sounding just like Gram.
“Ruff!” says Tiberius, jumping in the air for joy. I run to him, and he sniffs me madly up and down. He must smell the birds.
The twins are silent, kicking their toes in the dirt and gravel. Davis says they are disappointed. They had been really looking forward to the ice water, but it turned out to be just a regular water dispenser, like at the dentist. All those road signs for a little cone-shaped paper cup of water that disintegrated in their hands.
“Stupid water,” says Jake.
“Yeah,” says Joel. “They could’ve built a magical fountain for the price of their stupid road signs.”
Davis and Ludmila think this is really funny for some reason. They are still laughing quietly to themselves as we drive away.
25
Birds can and do experience behavioral illnesses, typically due to problems when they are deprived of the flock. They have been known to screech, to confine themselves to small spaces, to turn in circles for hours. They have been known to obsessively pluck their own feathers out. A very sorry state of affairs for a bird indeed.
—Tiberius Shaw, PhD
We hit the eastern part of South Dakota, and we all decide we can’t stand another night in the camper.
Hallelujah!
We are treating ourselves to a motel. It’s right next door to the biggest Walmart I’ve ever seen. We went to stock up on toilet paper, snacks, and stuff. All the workers were old, and I started noticing their skin. Pinkish whitish beige, and hairy, with moles and pimples and growths and bumps and freckles and stuff. Davis and the twins and I, we have smooth light brown skin, and straight brown hair like our mom. Davis’s skin is especially smooth. It’s weird to say, because she’s my sister, but I guess it’s true that she is kind of pretty.
Despite our splurge on a motel room, I sleep badly. This trip has been hard. My hands are raw and chapped from all the washing. I am tired of bad nights’ sleep. I am tired, even—and I do not say this lightly—of always eating chicken nuggets. I am tired of the unending highway noise and the vibration of the camper rattling, of the bad moldy sweaty smell of the blue mattresses, of everything changing all the time. I just want to get there already. Get to Dad and Gram. See Dad get better with the expert doctor Gram likes. Show him how much progress I’ve made on his Someday Birds List. Have him get better, and then: GO HOME.
The twins are jumping on the motel bed and watching an old Superman movie. Ludmila turns it off. “I want you to pay attention, okay? I have a question for you all.” She lays a paper road map out on the bed.
“Okay, so you all can see. Geography lesson. We are here”—she points with a chipped, black-polished nail—“in Sioux Falls. And here”—she points with a chipped, silver-polished nail—“is where your dad and Gram are, this hospital, outside of Washington, DC. You see?” The space on the map between her silver-and-black fingernails is about eight inches, a blue line curving down from I-90 East, to I-76 around Ohio moving through Pennsylvania, to I-95 South. “It’s about 1,200 miles. That’s about twenty hours of driving. And we have a few days to do it. So, where do you want to stop along the way?”
The twins go back to jumping, but more softly now. I fish out Tiberius Shaw’s green journal, and flip the pages.
“Oh no,” Davis groans.
“Yes—I knew it. We’re going to pass right through the bald eagle breeding grounds around the Mississippi River,” I tell them. “And Dad likes bald eagles. It’s on the list. So we have to stop there, for starters.”
Ludmila sighs, and Davis falls back flat on the other double bed.
“The only good thing about this whole dumb trip is that it gives us a chance to look for Dad’s Someday Birds. We have to find Dad’s birds.”
Ludmila pats me on the sh
oulder and I try not to flinch. “Okay, Charlie. First stop, Charlie’s bald eagle hunt. Then where?”
“We-ell,” says Davis, “you know Josh? That boy I met from the Little Bighorn? He said I could come visit him in Chicago anytime. Let’s stop in Chicago!”
The twins bat their eyelashes and fan their faces with their hands and croon in a fake Southern accent, “Oh Joshie! Joshie, give us a little kissie!”
“Yes, I think we should stop in Chicago,” says Ludmila, ignoring them. “My friend Mariana works at the Field Museum. Where they have lots of cool things. Stuffed birds for Charlie. Dinosaurs. Mummies.”
Joel and Jake are jumping full force on the bed again, shouting “MUMMIES!”
“Then where?” asks Davis.
“Then where?” ask the twins.
“Well . . . ,” I say. “Then there’s the most important place of all.” I find the page in Shaw’s green journal where he talks about his home.
My secret home sits amid a stand of pine on a mound overlooking the silver fingers of Sanctuary Marsh. You will find me there, surrounded by birds of all flocks, miraculous birds that soar and wing and explain to me the workings of the world in ways I crave to express, to share, someday, with a like-minded friend. . . .
I say, “There is a special bird sanctuary in Virginia. It’s really close to Dad’s hospital. We need to go. I need to try to find Tiberius Shaw there.”
Joel flops back on the bed and groans. “Charlie and his birds. Why is it always his way or the highway?”
Everyone is looking at each other, but not at me.
“You mean that guy that did the little bird statues, back at the old hospital gift shop?” Davis asks. “You want to visit him in person? Just go knock on his door?”
Joel and Jake laugh.
I take a deep breath and try to explain. “Davis. He’s the biggest bird-behavior expert there is. And think about it. First I found his bird statues in the gift shop. Then I basically stumbled across his very own private journal. And now his actual home turns out to be right near where we are going.”
“It’s destiny!” Jake yells, flapping his arms as he jumps on the bed, and Tiberius, the dog, starts barking madly.
“Well, Charlie,” says Ludmila, scooping up the dog to shush him. “We certainly can try to visit the sanctuary.” I see her and Davis exchange a look. “But no promises about visiting anybody’s private house. That’s taking things a little far, don’t you think?”
I don’t answer. I just nod. That’s enough for me, for now.
We load back into the camper, and we head east on I-90 into a foggy summer rain. The sky looks like cement, and the air smells like rain sizzling on hot pavement. South Dakota is green and straight, so different from the beige desert of Las Vegas, the purple mountains of Wyoming, or the grassy plains of Montana.
I am in the front so I don’t get carsick, as usual. Ludmila flicks on the wipers and pumps the pssssht, pssssht. As the windshield clears, I think about her brother, making up that funny word for windshield-wiper fluid. What would it be like, to be plunged into a whole new world and have to learn a strange language? To not know how to say stuff?
Then, I think: that’s kind of like Dad. He is in a whole new world where he doesn’t know how to say stuff.
I shake that thought away.
“Ludmila,” I ask, “what happened next? Back in Sarajevo, when you were a kid?”
She brushes the electric-blue bangs of her wig out of her eyes. “What do you mean?”
Swish, swish go the wipers. Swish, swish.
“I think you should tell us more of the story.”
Behind me, sitting at the little camper table, Davis takes her earphones out of her ears. The twins are back in the bunks, curled up with Tiberius, playing some handheld game.
Ludmila taps her fingers on the wheel, thinking. “Where did I leave off?”
“With your mother about to have a baby, pretty much.”
“You really want this? It is not a pretty story.”
“You know all about us,” says Davis. “And we don’t know anything about you.”
Ludmila looks straight out at the rain for a really long time, then she starts speaking.
26
“So, things were getting worse,” Ludmila tells us. “Me and Amar and very pregnant mother. Hungry. Worried. Living in no-longer-sunny apartment, with shelling all the time, boom boom. No father, no grandfather, both gone. Amar is the only man. He tries to act all big and important, like he can take care of us. He always did.”
Ludmila’s eyes are bleary, but she shakes her head so hard, her blue wig gets a little out of place.
“My mother tried to tell us stories and invent funny games for us to play. But underneath it all, we were very afraid. The days, all too often, were filled with whistles and explosions and broken glass. The lights would flicker and go out. The heat stopped working, and we would put on two, three, four sweaters, one on top of the other, to stay warm. I could hear people crying and wailing in the streets. Even though my mother had covered the windows with paper and pushed all the furniture up against them, so we couldn’t look out, I could still hear things. Very bad things.
“‘Don’t worry,’ she would whisper to us. “‘We will find a way to leave Sarajevo soon.’
“‘And how are we gonna do that? And when? Before the baby, or after?’ Amar would ask. Amar was always very direct, practical, and to the point. ‘Look at you, Mama,’ Amar said. ‘You can barely climb up and down the stairs to the cellar. How are you going to get us out of here?’ She had no answer to that one. No answer at all.
“Anyhow. The more scary noises there were outside in the street, the more time we spent down in the cellar of the apartment house, huddled with our neighbors. There was Mrs. Zelinka, who unraveled her sweater to knit us each a cap and scarf to help stay warm. And Mr. Szabo, who told us wild and crazy fairy tales.
“We would hide down in that cellar with the neighbors for hours when we heard the shelling, all the cries and booms and crashes and whistles. Over the months we all watched my mother’s belly grow.
“Mrs. Zelinka, Mr. Szabo, and the other grown-ups knew the baby coming would not be an easy or a good time for Mama. They did not believe her when she said she was going to find us a way out. They watched her belly with worry and with fear.”
Ludmila stops her story just as we reach a bridge going over a river. She says, “Enough of this. We are free and happy in this country, today. So let’s look around. It’s not every day you cross the mighty Mississippi.”
It’s just a normal river—gray and choppy, this rainy day, and not extra wide.
“I thought the Mississippi was huge,” Davis says from her seat behind us. “With riverboats and Mark Twain and all that.”
“Yeah,” says Joel, who’s just made his way out to the camper table, too. “I thought this river was famous.”
“It is famous,” I tell him. “It’s famous for bald eagles. And we need to find one for Dad’s bird list. So look sharp, people.”
Davis and Joel groan, but I pay no attention. “We’ve only found two off the list, the great horned owl and the trumpeter swan. That’s a pathetic track record, and we’re more than halfway across the country.”
Davis and the twins are grumpy, but Ludmila smiles at me. As usual, I cannot tell at all what she is thinking. But maybe some bald-eagle-spotting will help her forget about Sarajevo for a while.
We drive across the bridge—across the mighty Mississippi—with our eyes peeled.
Nope. No eagles. At least, not yet.
27
On the other side, it’s Wisconsin—which pretty much looks just like Minnesota.
“I went to college here,” says Ludmila. “UW–Madison.”
“Do all the students there have pink hair like you?” asks Joel.
“No. Some have purple. Some red,” says Ludmila, giving him a funny dead-eye stare. “I studied physical therapy. Prosthetics, artificial limbs. I wanted
to work for the Red Cross, help people recover after wars. But I dropped out.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” says Davis. “Why?”
Ludmila shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I got too sad,” she says.
“You know,” she adds, a minute later, changing the subject, “sometimes people call this area ‘Minnesconsin,’ little towns and lakes, fishing and ice fishing in winter. And dairy farms, of course. But there’s a spot around here that’s kind of unique. It’s called the Dells. That’s where we’re stopping tonight. Tomorrow, we’re doing something in the morning for Charlie, and in the afternoon we’re doing something for Joel and Jake.”
“What? What are we doing?” Joel asks, jumping up and down in his seat, and causing Tiberius to bark.
Ludmila says what she always does. “Wait and find out.”
28
The early years of a bald eagle’s life is spent in free and glorious exploration, winging its way across vast swaths of greater North America. Indeed, it is my belief that “free and glorious exploration” should be key components of all young creatures’ lives, avian and human alike.
—Tiberius Shaw, PhD
Early the next morning, we are all sitting in something called a Wisconsin Duck. It’s this weird vehicle that’s open on the sides and painted army green. The point is, it can go on land, and then drive right into the water and float. That’s what we’re about to do.
Ludmila says the main reason people used to come to the Wisconsin Dells was because of the Wisconsin River, which flows through a gorge near here, past some narrow cliffs. It was a good fishing and camping spot, so it got famous. The town grew and got really touristy. Nowadays, she says, most people don’t come for the river. They come for cotton candy, the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum, saltwater taffy, and especially for the waterparks, where you can get soaking wet, indoor and out, summer and winter, in every possible way.
