Broken Wing

by Budbill, David; Saaf, Donald;

  There, in the balsam fir, a golden-crowned kinglet searches for a mate, a place to build a nest. Flocks of shy, slate-colored juncos scurry, flit across the dooryard lawn, foraging through the husks of seeds, saying again, this year, only Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Red-winged blackbirds and grackles—their heads and necks a springtime opaline; savannah sparrow, fox sparrow, tree sparrow, chipping sparrow, song sparrow, and white-throated sparrow, silent still.

  Brown-headed cowbird, house finch, purple finch, goldfinch, robin. Killdeer in the open fields. Power lines dotted with sparrow hawks, kestrel. And at night, The Man can hear, down below him in the open fields, the woodcock whistle and snout.

  Birch and popple catkins droop. Popple and red maple push out new leaves. The geese return; their long V’s plow the fields of cloud. High and far away, they seem strange, mysterious as the new leaves.

  Below them, the chickadee, like a friendly hand, remains: close, diminutive, minimal, half-forgotten in the yet-still-bare dooryard apple tree.

  And here. The myrtle warbler dressed for spring. Bright white, blue bright, gray and yellow light… who doesn’t warble at all, but cheeps and says, this is sour, acid soil, is spruce and fir, is north, is where I make my nest.

  And in the evening, the veeries warble and sing their liquid descending glissando, dreaming they are falling water, as they have done in this place year after year for a thousand-thousand years.

  Then, one midday as The Man works about his place, he catches out of the corner of his eye just a glimpse of a large bird as it comes down quickly, falling, plummeting down out of the sky. It swoops, tilting on strong wings through the hardwood trees at the edge of the meadow, disappearing into the deep woods. Even that slight glance is enough for The Man to know that the red-tailed hawk—the big hawk with the little voice—who nests high up in the yellow birch that hangs out over the ravine and waterfall just beyond the garden, where the deep woods begin—has come again this year to lay and hatch her eggs and raise her young.

  In this glut of springtime outdoor chores, this rush and return of summer wings, The Man realizes that everything seems so back-to-normal that he’s almost forgotten his concern for Broken Wing. How long has it been since he last saw his rusty blackbird friend? Two weeks? More? Is he dead? Have other rusty blackbirds now returned? Has he rejoined the others of his kind, up in the bog above the house? Is he mating? Where is Broken Wing? What is happening?

  Tree swallows fill the nesting boxes The Man has placed there for the bluebirds. The tree swallows love the bluebird boxes, and The Man loves the tree swallows. He loves to see the mother birds peeking their heads out of the round hole in the box, watching him move to and fro about this orchard and garden. Curious and wary, but not alarmed enough to leave the nest, the tree swallow mothers find this odd two-footed creature who can’t fly an interesting diversion from the boredom of sitting on a clutch of eggs, or so The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains imagines.

  And when the leaves on the apple trees are about the size of the end of his thumb, The Man begins looking intently for the arrival of the summer warblers. Here they come, up from their wintering grounds in Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago!

  Then, one early morning only a little after sunrise, as the man stands at the window looking out at the daily-more-burgeoning springtime, as he thinks about whatever it is he thinks about at times like these, he hears a little thud against a window at the other end of the house, and knows exactly what it means. Quickly, he goes outside, and there, beneath a window, is a beautiful myrtle warbler lying in the grass.

  It saw the reflection of the trees beyond the house in the window, thought that was outdoors, too, and flew full-speed and headlong into the window. Luckily, this one is only stunned, and after the Man holds it in his hands for a while, he brings it inside to let it recover.

  But now, while he has this tiny bird here in his hands, he looks at the bright yellow feathers on the back of its head and on its throat just under its chin; and on the sides of its breast, just in front of its folded wings; and on its rump, just where its tail feathers begin. And where these bright, intensely yellow places are not, the feathers are blue-gray—not gray, not blue, blue-gray—and a little black and white here and there in patches, too. Oh, what a handsome and beautiful bird this myrtle warbler is!

  He holds it in his hands until the little bird opens its black eyes and begins to blink—the first stage in its recovery. But The Man knows it is not ready yet to go back outside, so he waits until he feels its feet begin to paw and scratch at the palm of his hand where he has him cupped, loosely captured. As The Man opens his hands ever so slightly, the bird struggles more, and his eyes are blinking now more, too, as he begins to look around. Time to go back outside. The man places him carefully on an apple branch, where the bird clings tightly but still unsteadily. The Man stays with him for a little while, stroking his feathers back into place, unruffling them from his capture. Still, the bird does not fly; still, he is sick. Getting better, but still sick. The Man still stays with the little bird. Better not leave yet. Better not give a passing hawk or red squirrel a chance for an easy meal. Now the bird is perking up a little more, and now The Man is getting impatient, so he goes inside, but still keeps watch over his little friend. Then, suddenly—it is always suddenly—away the myrtle warbler flies, flies away into the spring day, into the rest of its life.

  It’s a busy day today, because not long after the myrtle warbler flies away, not long after the morning moves toward noon, at the kitchen window, suddenly—it is always suddenly—there is a buzzing, humming, squeaking sound.

  Back again this year, and all the way from Mexico. Right there, just a windowpane away, this fiery little fellow rotating his wings so fast they are almost invisible, hovering there right in front of The Man’s face, squeaking and honking that little beep. The tiny ruby-throated hummingbird, fearless, pugnacious and aggressive, announces his arrival here in this particular place again this year, demanding now that The Man get out his hummingbird feeders, make some nectar, and get ready for another summer. The Man obeys and hangs the little red, round feeders off the sides of the house and from the apple trees.

  “That particular hummingbird who came just a little bit ago to the window,” The Man thinks to himself, as he does every spring, “that particular bird had to have been here last year. He went to Mexico last fall, and has come back to this exact spot again this year. It has to be. If it were not so, how would he know to come to the window and announce his arrival?”

  As The Man turns to go inside, he sees, swooping into an apple tree just to his left, a small flock of striking and beautiful rose-breasted grosbeaks. Now, added to the yellow, white and black evening grosbeaks who have been here all winter, here comes the rose-breasted grosbeak, shining with the throbbing colors of the mating season. The male struts his black back, white breast, and intense red bib-vest. He is a proud and beautiful addition to the dooryard.

  In the evening now, and in the morning, The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains hears the loons fly over, calling their wailing, warbling calls as they move back and forth from pond to pond.

  It is a late May morning, and, although there is much to do outside, it is rainy and cold, so The Man sits down at his desk, takes pen and paper, and begins a letter to his friend.

  Dear Howard,

  Thank you for your last two letters. I haven’t written in a while, so I thought I’d better get to it. More ornithology.

  I saw a woodcock in the back yard about a week ago. I don’t actually think I’ve ever seen a woodcock hunting for worms that close up or for such an extended period of time. I haven’t been that close to one since maybe ten years ago, while I was mowing a roadside by hand with a gasoline-powered brush saw. I accidentally cut off the head of a female woodcock frozen on her nest. I was upset and saddened by what I’d done, but such things happen now and then. I didn’t want to waste her, so I said a prayer for those four dark and light brown and gray
speckled eggs that would never hatch, wrapped their mother’s body up in some paper, put her in my lunch pail, and brought her home. I cooked her and ate her for supper that night. Woodcock eat mostly earthworms, and her flesh was very dark, moist, and tasted faintly like liver. She tasted good. And I was glad to have that beautiful, wild creature inside me.

  As I was saying, I was inside the house about a week ago, looking out the window—I spend a lot of time looking out the window. She didn’t know I was watching. That beak is long! And she jammed it into the ground again and again. I thought the ground was still more frozen than that, but apparently not. She was wonderful to watch, going about her business of getting something to eat. Trot, trot, trot—probe, probe. Trot, trot—probe, probe, probe. Trot, trot, trot, trot—probe. Trot—probe, probe. On she went along the side hill, doing her little wobble.

  I knew I’d seen that behavior before somewhere. Then it dawned on me: sandpipers along the shoreline on the beach at the ocean. The identical, I mean identical, behavior. So I looked up the woodcock in my bird book. The same family: a sandpiper, grown much larger and moved inland to the swamps and marshes.

  Howard, I think I could become a biologist or an ornithologist or an evolutionist if I were younger. I can see the headline: Urban Jazz Musician Turns Orchardist then Ornithologist and Evolutionist. How’s that? Evolution is the miracle God sent to us. To see the connection between those little flocks of sandpipers scurrying along the beach at the ocean, hundreds of miles from here, and this solitary woodcock in my yard here in the mountains, miles from any real water, is a miracle. The killdeer is a shore bird, too, miles from any shore.

  Just as we are connected, Howard, by our race—if there is such a thing as race—even though we live so far apart in such different places, you in the city, I in the mountains, we are yet and forever connected to each other, just as those sandpipers on the beach at the ocean are connected to the woodcock and the kill-deer here in the mountains.

  A few days later, I was out putting up some new birdhouses, and as I was coming up the slope above the lane, between the house and the road, where the side hill is steep and where the oldest apple trees are—the ones I still have to bring back to good health and productivity, up behind the old lilac bush—as I worked my way up through that ancient part of the orchard full of tumble-down apple trees, there, in a tangle of fallen apple trunks and branches, in the middle of a thicket of hard hack and red maple, as I weaved my way through this underbrush, as I put my left foot down on the sere, brown, springtime earth. There! Less than two inches from the outside of my left boot, a female woodcock rose up and flew away weakly a few yards up the hill, landed, and began running up the hill with her right wing outstretched, doing the old “broken wing trick” to lure me away.

  I froze, hoping desperately that I had not actually stepped on her nest, but only near it. I looked down, and after searching for a long, long time, I saw, just a few inches from my left boot, four dark and light, brown and gray speckled eggs lying in a rude tangle of twigs and leaves. I moved carefully away from the nest, after noting equally carefully, or so I thought, its location.

  The next day, I took a pair of binoculars to a place just up the hill from the nest. I knew—I mean, I thought I knew—exactly where the nest was, and in fact, I did know exactly; but nonetheless, even with binoculars, it took me forever to find her and the nest again, nestled as they all were in that flawless camouflage. Then—there she was.

  Only her shiny, black eye gave her away. There she was, still as death, but for her gleaming black eye, alert and wide open and watching. Was she watching me?

  Look at her, look at how beautiful she is. See the gray and many shades of brown patterned across her body. See those three or four dark brown lateral stripes on the top of her head. See her long bill. Four or five inches long! There, the shape of her round, compact body on the nest and her short, stubby tail sticking out the back.

  And you must not, dare not, take your eyes off of her for even a moment, not a second, because, if you do, when you look back again to that exact spot, precisely where you looked before, she will have vanished, she’ll be gone, melted into her surroundings without ever having moved a feather.

  In that moment, it dawned on me that the mother woodcock was in a hurry here, for she is shades of brown and gray, and her eggs are brown and gray, also—meaning, I realized, that she must hatch and fledge her young before the world turns green and she and her eggs and their absolutely perfect camouflage aren’t perfect anymore.

  The next day, I went back again with my binoculars to that place up the hill from the nest, and again, with great difficulty, I found the nest in its brushy tangle, but no mother woodcock—only some shards of eggshell, and only two pieces of two eggs, the other eggs gone completely.

  I’ve got a piece of one of those eggshells here on my desk.

  I know the young can leave the nest just a few hours after hatching, but there was something about the way the eggs were broken, the way some of the eggs were missing entirely, that said to me things were not right.

  A few nights earlier, in the middle of the night, I had switched on the porch light and seen, newly emerged from his winter’s hibernation, a handsome skunk eating spilled sunflower seeds under the dooryard apple tree. Skunks like nothing better for dinner, I know, than a nest full of eggs.

  Does this mother woodcock have the time to find a mate again, to get herself impregnated again? Does she have time to hatch and brood another clutch of eggs before the world turns green? Can she find a safe place for her eggs somewhere far from that skunk? Or must she wait until next spring to try again for babies?

  This turn of events upset me more than it usually does. I know, as I said earlier, such things happen now and then; and besides, that skunk has more right to those eggs, I suppose, than I did to the body of the woodcock that I, albeit accidentally, beheaded all those years ago. But what at least seemed like the skunk’s raid on the nest upset me greatly, nonetheless. I turned away from that place where there had been life in the making, where there had been the promise of new life, and where now, suddenly, just now suddenly, there was no life, and no promise of life, and came into the house.

  Maybe it’s the presence of my little friend here with me this winter, my pal Broken Wing, who I’ve been writing to you about. Maybe it’s his struggle to hang on—he’s doing quite well, by the way!—that has made me more aware than I usually am of how hard it is for some creatures to survive, especially creatures like Broken Wing who have so many strikes against them from the start: stranded in a strange and hostile season, put upon by predators, crippled almost to death. What more can happen to him while he still survives?

  Some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths, and then have everything given to them, the way smoothed and paved for them before they even set out on their way; but there are a lot of the rest of us, most of us (almost all of us!) who don’t. You and I both know plenty about this because of who we are, and what our place in this world has been and is. We both know more than we wish we knew about having strikes against us before we even begin. I see in Broken Wing my own struggle and my own life, our struggle and our lives.

  Your friend,

  Now, each morning, each warm morning before the sun, as The Man wanders between the rows of his newly-planted garden, two ravens, the sun’s black acolytes, come croaking, crying: “Day!” Are they the same two who, last winter, hauled off all that bread?

  Today, they saw him watching. They wheeled: the hiss, hiss, hiss of wings. Gone. They withered into the rising sun and left him standing, growing that day’s dying shadow.

  Emerging now in the garden, these strange potato plants, whose leaves emerge from underground already opened—as if they were some kind of deep-green aquatic plant that has lived at the bottom of this earthy sea, cut loose—rising now to the surface to float for a time in the air and sun.

  And waiting for these new potato leaves to float to the top of this earthy se
a, waiting and crawling about on the loose soil, the potato beetle waits for its life of devouring leaves.

  Mid-June: almost the longest day of the year, and here in this northern place, in this short northern summer, where it is impossible to get too much warmth and light into one’s body or one’s life, The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains rises with the dawn on these delicate summer mornings. As he walks out across the dewy lawn with his cup of tea in his hand, heading toward the garden, he startles, stops, sees… what?

  There, running up and down between the rows of potato plants just beginning to emerge… could it be? Yes… he sees… Broken Wing… and… another rusty blackbird the size of Broken Wing… and… and… two little rusty blackbirds. All of them scurrying intently, walking, running—as rusty blackbirds always prefer to do—up and down the rows of emerging potatoes, picking and eating potato bugs as earnestly and as quickly as they can.

  Broken Wing is alive, and not only does he have a mate, the two of them have young. And here they are now, returning the kindness of The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains by picking his potato bugs for him!

  The Man is so pleased to see them there, so grateful for their help and so touched by what he imagines to be their trust in him, that he, unthinking, advances on the little family as if to pick them up and say hello. Broken Wing and his family, of course, immediately scurry away, letting The Man know in no uncertain terms that this trust is at a distance, and is meant to stay that way.

  The Man is touched and pleased and grateful for his friendship with Broken Wing and his family, however distant it must be; yet The Man is also sad.

  “What is wrong with me? We were meant to go two by two. All around me, now that it is spring, everyone comes in pairs; even Broken Wing has a partner. What is wrong with me? Why am I here in this place alone? Why have I exiled myself here, separated from my people, from my origin, from everyone? What’s wrong with me?”