The Adventures of White Robin

by lee king

  “Then it is likely the Great Spirit saved the squab for a purpose and is calling on us for a favor!” Dark Raven pronounced. “I seek His blessings for my journey. Are you tending the squab?”

  “He’s being tended by Lola Robin,” Levi said. “Granny Gray found him, put him in Lola’s nest, and named him White Robin to protect him from danger.”

  Dark Raven laughed. “Because they believe nothing messes with a robin. Poor Lola; maybe after this trial is over the Great Spirit will bless her with a brood of her own design.” He went silent for a long moment, then said, “Like the squab, it would be a miracle if his momma escaped the storm alive.”

  “Still,” Levi said.“It is our duty to The Great Spirit and our good standing to try and find her. The storm rode the upper winds over the big woods down to the river valley, the way you do when you travel great distances. I only ask that you put the word out so a white pigeon named Savanna can know that her son, White Robin, is alive and well.”

  Levi dug deep into the thick fold of craw feathers under his chin and produced the feather that he had taken from White Robin. “This is from the squab.”

  “Caw, caw, caw! Victor, front and center!” Dark Raven summoned his top crow up to the bridge beam. “Give the proof to Victor,” he told Levi. “He is our finest tracker. If Savanna is out there, then Victor will hear about it, and see that she gets the proof. If that is all, Levi, then bid me good luck. I have a long journey ahead, and much planning to do.”

  Levi flew off the bridge and sailed through the gauntlet of hundreds of corvine crows who were heckling him from the trees along the river for being banded like a barnyard goose.

  “Caw, caw, caw! I am first cousin of Dark Raven and his brother Tar Raven,” he shouted. “Caw, caw, caw! I am Levi Raven, mighty leader of our home kingdom, birthplace of the mighty Raven brothers!”

  The heckling stopped.

  No gang of crows could resist a dare from an outsider, so Levi circled back and made another pass by the corvine caravan to see if any of the lowly crows dared to team up and challenge his authority. Not one crow even made eye contact.

  Levi flew under the old bridge, just above the river, tipped his wing, and touched the surface of the Water Spirit in a good luck and farewell salute to Dark Raven, and his second-in- command, Victor the tracker, who were observing his bold, yet ludicrous gauntlet run from up there on the iron beam. Levi veered north where the twin Osage creeks emptied into the Illinois River and headed for home.

  Chapter 11

  White Robin was taking a nap in Lola’s nest when it happened. The three baby jaybirds in the mulberry tree were hungry and getting cranky. They were fledglings who had already outgrown their nest and like the starlings, should have been long gone by now. The two brothers were much bigger than their sister Jayleen. The brothers were fighting over whose turn it was to eat first. “It’s my turn! You went first last time!” they screamed at each other. They hogged most of the food from Jayleen and crowded her out of the nest. She even had to sleep standing on the rim of the nest and leaning over on them.

  The jaybird on guard duty yelled, “Knock it off or I’ll jerk a feather from your rumps!”

  They calmed down for a little while, and then they started arguing again. Soon they were jabbing, clawing, and hitting each other. The jaybird on guard duty jumped over to the nest and began batting them with his wings. “I said knock it off!”

  During the ruckus the guard’s wing accidentally backslapped Jayleen. She nearly got knocked from the nest, she teetered on the edge, flapping her wings frantically, trying to get her balance.

  The guard and the brothers were too caught up in the rumble and didn’t notice Jayleen clinging to the edge of the nest.

  “Help me, I’m falling!”

  They all stopped and jerked their heads around just in time to see Jayleen falling from the mulberry tree. They screamed, “Jayleen!”

  Jayleen fluttered around and landed on the woodpile fairly softly, as fledglings with full-grown feathers usually do.

  The guard bird screamed out the alarm: “Eee, yak, yak, yak! Bird down, bird down, bird down!”

  White Robin sprang to attention and stood on the edge of Lola’s nest. Almost instantly a few mockingbirds, a colony of sparrows, the two house wrens, a pair of redbirds, and the thrashers appeared.

  A mangy stray cat, aptly named Six-toes, had been napping on the rabbit trail next to the chain link fence. He was a dim- witted outcast but even so, he didn’t need to understand bird talk to know what that alarm meant. He scrambled to his feet and began slinking down the rabbit trail toward Jayleen.

  “Cheep, cheep! Help me Momma! Help me!”

  Granny Gray Squirrel and Lola heard the alarm and struck out down the middle of the side street for the woodpile.

  The red-tailed ladyhawk was out hunting and heard the alarm. The temptation was driving her crazy. She circled around so high in the sky that her white underside resembled a snowflake slowly spiraling toward the woodpile.

  Levi was just returning from his trip to see Dark Raven, and he heard the alarm. To his dark side it was a predator call—it meant easy pickings for the first one who could get to it—and to his law-abiding side it was almost as unnerving as a screaming rabbit in a steel trap. He searched the sky above the tall sycamore tree and instantly spotted the ladyhawk. He flew straight on toward the wood pile, where the guard bird was still screaming, “Eee, yak! Bird down, bird down.” If the ladyhawk should swoop down and try to steal Jayleen—since she was a fierce raptor armed with a razor-sharp beak and talons that could slash and kill in a heartbeat—then Levi’s only chance at preventing it without being killed himself would be to ram her, and then, hope springs eternal, get well away from her before her temper kicked in.

  “Go down into the wood pile, hurry!” the thrashers screamed.

  “No, Jayleen!” White Robin screamed. “Don’t go into the woodpile! The blue ghost is in there! Jump to the fence!”

  “No! Don’t jump to the fence,” the mockingbirds yelled. “Six-toes is coming down the rabbit trail. Jump over to the mulberry tree, hurry!”

  Ole Blue slithered out of his rat hole and threaded his long lanky body through the logs till he was just one stack below Jayleen. Blue knew that “bird down” predator call, very well, and was banking on his good fortune to reward him with a tasty little jaybird to top his day. He licked his lips and waited for Jayleen to fall through the spaces between the logs.

  By now, the sparrows had caught up with the ladyhawk and surrounded her. They were trying to distract her by biting at her wing and tail feathers. Some purple martins had joined in the chase and were squawking threats at her from a safe distance to the rear. The ladyhawk ignored them and kept her focus on Jayleen.

  Four mockingbirds teamed up and went after Six-toes. Two pecked on his rear, and when he turned to swat at them the other two pecked him on his head. They were all over him like a swarm of mad hornets. He took off running back the way he came, screaming, “Oww! Leave me alone! Oww!”

  The tiny house wrens plunged into the woodpile and set in jabbing Ole Blue up and down his lanky hide. Since he was threaded through the logs like the grapevine on the fence; he was helpless to turn around and fight them off. And he couldn’t possibly concentrate on snatching little Jayleen with all that aggravation going on down there around his broken butt bone.

  White Robin was clinging to the edge of Lola’s nest and leaning way forward with his wings outstretched. “Jump to the mulberry tree, Jayleen! Hurry, before the ladyhawk gets here.”

  Levi pulled his wings in close like a falcon does and zoomed toward Jayleen.

  The ladyhawk soared by her nest in the tall sycamore tree and heard the hungry cry for food coming from her babies. It was more than the high-stressed young ladyhawk could bear. She veered hard right and did a rollover to shake the sparrows off her flanks, and then re-fixed her sights on Jayleen. She pulled her wings in close and went into a dive attack.

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sp; “Hurry, Jayleen! The ladyhawk is coming!”

  Jayleen was paralyzed with fear; so many voices at once, screaming so many different things to do.

  It was now very apparent to White Robin why Granny Gray had hustled him off the ground and into Lola’s nest so urgently. And everything Levi had said about the ladyhawk was true. White Robin could not fathom the rising tension that welled up inside of him. All at once his temper hit fever pitch, and he exploded like a thunder clap that rattles the core of giant trees. He yelled a rare pigeon battle cry and jumped from Lola’s nest planning to knock Jayleen off the woodpile and over to the safety of the fence.

  Levi caught up with the ladyhawk right as she leveled out to come at Jayleen head on. She was going to snatch Jayleen and shoot straight up, all in one lightning-swift motion.

  Levi’s speed and flying skills were no contest for the ladyhawk’s. He was trailing as close as he could ever get to her; just three blinks away from snatching little Jayleen. He stretched his neck out and grabbed her rump feathers with his beak.

  At that very moment, White Robin slammed into Jayleen and knocked her over to the chain link fence. The ladyhawk turned furious. She did a rollover, swiped at Levi in midair, and slashed him with her claws. A puff of feathers came off of Levi, and he balled up as if he had been shot. He bounced off the woodpile and tumbled halfway across the lawn. Rick and Drew were standing on the cabin porch, watching the whole time. Rick screamed, “Levi!” and rushed over to him.

  Rick bent over Levi to see how badly he was hurt. Levi’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t moving. He had an awful gash on his chest, was bleeding something terrible, and his wing was broken from hitting the woodpile. He tried to speak, to tell Rick his last request: Remove the band from my leg. I don’t want it on me when I go before the Great Spirit to be judged. I want Him to see me, just as He made me…

  Rick stood there shaking his head in disbelief. “Don’t die on me, Levi. Please don’t die.”

  “Come on, Rick,” Drew yelled. “Bring Levi to my truck and let’s get him to the vet!”

  Rick took his shirt off, wrapped it around Levi, cradled him in his arms, and rushed over to the truck. “You’re the only family I’ve got, Levi. Please don’t die on me!”

  Granny Gray and Lola Robin arrived in time to see little Jayleen wrap her wings around White Robin’s neck. “You saved my life. You’re a true leader!”

  “Everyone here is a leader,” Granny Gray Squirrel uttered.“Especially Levi Raven, the mighty leader of our kingdom, who gave his all to serve and protect…us all.”

  She had been watching breathlessly, along with everyone else, when the ladyhawk slashed him, and again when Rick had rushed him to the truck.

  Now the loud flapping sounds of justice, tantamount to a judge’s gavel banging on wood, burst from the giant pine tree in front of the big house. Everyone turned to look. The great horned owls were leaving their tree in broad daylight. All the animals knew what that rare occasion meant.

  The ladyhawk didn’t even look back at her nest. She knew the penalty for what she had done. She screeched so loudly it could be heard for a mile or more, and then she headed straight back to where she belonged—out there in the big woods, where handouts were few and far between and easy pickings were slim to none.

  Chapter 12

  Mid-way across the big woods on the old scenic highway at, a little one-church town called West Fork, Cindy Cinnamon and her scouts were resting at an abandoned building that looked like an old schoolhouse, built back before cars were common. It had a sign out front with big letters on it: LIBRARY.

  Cindy befriended a small flock of pigeons that lived there. She told them of her mission to find Savanna’s baby. They had heard all about the storm. The pigeons said a crow named Victor the tracker, from the Dark Raven cavalcade, had passed through just an hour earlier, looking for a white pigeon named Savanna from the Twin Creeks region. He had news that her baby squab was alive and well, and being tended to by a robin named Lola. Victor said they called him White Robin, to protect him from danger. He had even shown them the feather that Levi had plucked from White Robin’s head.

  “The Twin Creeks region!” Cindy squealed with rapturous joy. “Which way did he go?”

  The West Fork pigeons had not had any information for Victor, so he’d promptly headed out.“He made a beeline across the lake,” they said. “South, to Willow Springs!

  “That must be how we missed him,” Cindy said. “We followed the railroad tracks next to the black road. If we hurry, maybe we can reach him before dark! Come on, scouts! We have to catch up with Victor the tracker!

  Chapter 13

  Jayleen’s momma insisted on getting her back into the mulberry tree jaybird-style—by flying. Now she was surrounded by adult jaybirds, all were prodding to fly. “Fly, Jayleen, fly!” They hectored. Jayleen would run like a chicken with a dog nipping at her rump, and then she’d jump and get a few feet off the ground, then crash down again. The jaybirds steered her to the overgrowth on the fence line and ordered her to hop up a sapling. Jayleen hopped up to the top of a small sassafras sapling and took a short rest.

  The jaybirds chattered for her to keep practicing. She fluttered from sapling to sapling, a few feet at a time, all the way down the fence line, somewhat like Rick’s grandson dogpaddling for the first time in the deep end of his swimming pool—Watch me swim, Momma! By the time Jayleen made it back to the mulberry tree, she would be an independent jaybird, able to fly all the way across the yard without stopping.

  “I’m going to go practice in the apple trees,” White Robin said to Lola.

  “That’ll be fine,” Lola said. “But be sure and stay in the apple grove. I don’t want to have to go looking for you at suppertime.”

  White Robin hopped up on the woodpile to get the attention of the jaybird brothers, who were crowded in the nest, sulking at all the attention Jayleen was getting. He leaped up to the limb their nest was on to make friends with them. Instantly he was surrounded by a half dozen jaybirds with their beaks aimed at him ready to run him through with their sharp beaks. He bailed out of the mulberry tree and fluttered across the side street to the apple orchard in record time. The jaybird brothers thought that was funny. “You’d better cut and run, squab.” they jeered. Even Granny Gray and Lola chuckled under their breath.

  “He sure has learned a lot in a very short time, hasn’t he, Granny?” Lola said proudly.

  “I suppose,” Granny said. “But he still has a long way to go! Who’s that fool over there on the grass with his wings spread out like he’s dying?”

  Lola looked over there on Drew’s lawn, “What in the world?”

  It was a male robin, well groomed with a dark head of feathers and strikingly handsome. He was pretending to be dying to get Lola to come over there.

  “Go see what’s wrong with him!” Granny said. She pushed Lola in that direction.

  Granny Gray had lived a long life and had seen about every trick in the kingdom. Even so, she thought robin courtship habits were the strangest of all. She knew that robin; he was a high-hat robin from Rock Creek, down at the golf course, and his momma had named him Rock Robin to instill prominence in him early on. Granny climbed up on the woodpile and got comfortable. It was going to be a good show.

  Lola meandered across the lawn, pretending to be hunting for earthworms, and acted unaware of the stranger splayed out on the grass in the bright sunshine. She changed her comportment and strolled up and down the lawn with her head perked high, as if she was looking for green tomato-worms in a kitchen garden, each time getting one row closer to the listless robin. Finally, when she was two rows over, Lola could stand the suspense no longer. She peeked over at him sideways.

  “Hey, fella! Hey there! Are you feeling all right?”

  He whispered something.

  Lola cocked her head. “What did you say?”

  “I said, oh, oh, oh!”

  She inched closer. “Are you hurt?”

 
“Closer, come closer,” he answered. He quivered a little; then his eyes rolled back in his head and a clear film closed over them, like it does when birds sleep, or die.

  “Oh no!” Lola clucked. She hurried over to him and put her ear to his back, between his wings, to see if his heart had stopped beating.

  Suddenly the sly joker jumped up, wrapped his wings around Lola real tight, and yelled, “Ah hah! I got you. You’re mine now!”

  Lola shrieked and struggled to break free. She took two steps back, and, in the most vulgar robin language Granny had ever heard Lola use, she bellowed, “You lowdown, sorry, rotten, robin poop of dried yellow matter! I’ll pluck your eyeballs out and use them for maggot bait!”

  Lola attacked him, pecking and batting her wings with amazing fury.

  He tried to fend off her attack, calmly crooning, “Easy now, darling! I only wanted to make your lovely acquaintance, that’s all! I didn’t mean to rile you.”

  He took off, flying just above the ground. Lola chased after him and caught him. They tumbled to the ground, and Lola kept working him over with her claws, pecking him, and beating him with her wings. “Nobody ever, I mean ever, gets away with pulling that crap on me!”

  “Help me, somebody! Help me! She’s killing me!” cried Rock Robin.

  He got away from her and fled for his life. Lola stayed right on his tail. He couldn’t shake her for nothing. He flew under Drew’s boat, around the lawnmower, under the back porch, and through every obstacle he could find. Still Lola stayed right with him. He took off down to the rancher’s barn, where Muumuu was, all across the pasture, and around behind Rick’s trailer. They crossed the side street and raced through the apple orchard past White Robin so fast that he could barely tell which one was Lola. They jutted up and over the hay bales and on down the hill to the golf course, heading toward Rock Creek. Granny Gray was laughing so hard she nearly fell off the woodpile.