Birds of Summer

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  After Sparrow had promised and double-promised and seated herself on a stump, Summer started down the path that led to the trailer—“The McIntyre Trailer” as it was called, because Oriole McIntyre and her daughters had lived there for more than seven years, but it actually belonged to the Fishers, as did the land it sat on. Nicky had been born there in the tiny room that Summer shared with Sparrow, and he had always enjoyed telling Summer that she was sleeping in his bedroom. None of the teasing techniques in Nicky’s long and obnoxious repertoire made her angrier, and someday she was going to tell him exactly what he could do with his room and his trailer and every inch of the land it sat on.

  In days of luxurious double-wides set in landscaped parks, the Fisher/McIntyre mobile home was definitely an anachronism. Galya and Jerry had hauled it to its present resting place, in a small clearing surrounded by dense forest, more than fifteen years before when the land still belonged to Galya’s old Russian grandfather. It hadn’t been until several years later, when Galya’s Dyedushka had died leaving her all his property, that she and Jerry had gotten married, built a huge new log house near Dyedushka’s old one, and started their organic farming business. The trailer had been deserted for a while and then loaned or rented to various lame duck projects of Galya’s, before Oriole and company arrived on the scene. Oriole and Summer and Danny it had been then, and the beginnings of Sparrow, although that hadn’t become evident until sometime later.

  Summer had been only seven years old at the time, but she could remember the day they moved in clearly, and how pleased she’d been with the trailer. It must have been pretty decrepit even then, but she’d liked the flickering propane lights and tiny bathroom, and it must have seemed luxurious compared to some of the places they’d been living. She had clear memories of that first day and then nothing much until an afternoon several months later when Sparrow was born. Summer had sat on the steps listening and crying while Galya, who’d had some training as a midwife, helped Oriole give birth. Danny had still been there that day, because Summer remembered his coming out to talk to her on the steps, but he’d disappeared soon afterwards, as all of Oriole’s men seemed to do sooner or later. But by then Galya and Oriole had become very tight, and even more important, Galya’s baby Marina and Sparrow had become even tighter. So the Fishers went on letting Oriole live in the trailer, even when she didn’t pay the rent for months at a time. Oriole was always saying they were going to move, but they never did and probably never would, unless the Fishers threw them out. Or, unless Summer did something about it, which she definitely planned to do just as soon as she possibly could.

  It was on the last turn of the trail, when the trailer suddenly came into view, that the uneasy tension in her stomach knotted into an ache, and something she’d been squeezing back into the far edges of her mind escaped in an overpowering flood. Careless of the rough surface of the path, she began to run at top speed, stumbling and nearly falling, her heart thudding against her ribs. She had reached the steps when Cerbe shot out of the bushes and raced her up the stairs, almost knocking her off her feet. Pushing him violently aside, she threw the door open—and stopped.

  Oriole was standing by the sink peeling carrots. Her wild red hair was combed and tied back with a ribbon, and she was wearing the pleated blue skirt that Summer had bought for her at a church rummage sale—which she hardly ever wore.

  “Hi, baby.” Oriole’s voice, always breathy and tremulous, was no more so than usual.

  Summer closed the door carefully and slowly while she stilled her face and blanked her eyes. Then, as if bringing herself back with difficulty from an absorbing daydream, she turned back to face her mother. “Oh hi,” she said.

  2

  IN THE BEDROOM SUMMER put her books away, sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for the pain in her stomach to fade and for the ridiculous tremors to stop running up and down the backs of her legs. Clenching her fists until her nails pinched her palms and biting her lower lip, she punished her body for its crazy reactions. She had always blamed her body because her mind, at least the conscious and reasonable part of it, knew how stupid it was to get into such a state over nothing. Even years ago, when the sudden senseless attacks of anxiety had been almost a daily thing, she had never been certain just what it was she was afraid might have happened. In those days she had never even tried to figure it out—as if knowing what it might be could somehow make it come true. So she could only run home, shaking and panting like some kind of psycho, until she found Oriole and saw that everything was all right.

  But for the same thing to happen now, when she was almost sixteen years old and able to reason—now when she was able to imagine the worst and know that it wouldn’t be the end of the world—for the same kind of mindless panic to return now was just too frustrating. In the last few weeks she’d almost begun to hope that she’d outgrown it. But it had always been worse when something had gone particularly wrong—like last night.

  At first when Cerbe tried to nuzzle her hands away from her face, she shoved him back angrily; but then, when he whined mournfully, she peeked out from between her fingers.

  Cerbe was a big mutt, probably half german shepherd and half husky. He had been named Cerbe, Cerberus really, after another dog—one Grant had adopted during the summer he’d lived with Oriole. That Cerberus had died when Summer was still a baby, but she’d heard a lot about him from Oriole’s “good-old-days” stories. So, when Cerbe had appeared on the scene, a half-grown pup that someone had dumped beside the road, he’d become Cerberus the second and had grown into a wooly bear of a dog, shaggy, smelly, and at the moment, dramatically woebegone. Cerbe had always been a ham.

  Because his drooping tail and head and sad doggy eyebrows were just too much, she grabbed him roughly and pulled him against her chest, her fingers deep in the thick fur on each side of his broad body. With the top of his shaggy bear-shaped head pushing against her stomach, he nuzzled happily, crooning his love growl, and she growled back. Her face buried in his rough coat, she whispered insults about his looks and intelligence and the doggy funkiness of his smell—loving him fiercely for knowing how she felt about him no matter what she said or did. A few minutes later she went out, steady-handed, to talk to Oriole.

  “Here. Have a carrot?” Oriole said. Not only had she combed her hair and dressed in her straightest clothes, but she was actually wearing shoes. Obviously she was sorry about what happened last night and was trying to make amends. That was Oriole for you—thinking a hair ribbon could solve the McIntyres’ problems. Talk about straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic!

  Summer accepted the vegetable peace offering and sat down at the table. Leaning on her elbows she crunched on the carrot and watched Oriole speculatively, waiting for the next gesture. The kitchen area was cleaner than usual. Most of the dishes were done except for the ones on the window ledge that had been there for so long they’d become semi-permanent, like a part of the decor. The cracked and chipped surface of the Formica sinkboard had been wiped, and it looked as if dinner was already underway. Putting a dish of raw vegetables on the table, Oriole sat down facing Summer.

  “The pay was terrible, anyway,” she said. “When I realized what it would do to our food stamp allowance—”

  “Mother!” She never called Oriole that except when she was really furious at her. “That’s not true, and you know it. We figured it all out, remember? Even with the reduction in the AFDC, we’d have been getting almost two hundred more …” She stopped suddenly and shrugged. The job was over—gone—lost forever, so it didn’t make any difference.

  “Galya stopped by this morning and took me in to see about the food stamps. We’re not going to have to wait to be reinstated. That’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “Great!” She could almost taste the bitterness in her voice. Oriole looked at her sharply.

  “I don’t see why you’re so uptight about food stamps. Esau used to say that we should never be ashamed of having food stamps. Esau said foo
d should be free to everyone, like air and sunshine, and it’s a crime that some people should have more than others just because they have more money. Esau always said, ‘Just smile sweetly right into the faces of people who glare at you in the checkout line because—’”

  “Yeah, I know,” Summer interrupted. “I remember what Esau always said.”

  “Do you really remember him? You were only about four when the Tribe broke up.”

  “No. I don’t remember him. It’s hearing you tell about him that I remember.” Esau had been the leader and guru of a group of people that Oriole had lived with for a while in San Francisco. The Angel Tribe, as they’d called themselves, had inhabited a big old house only a few blocks from the center of Haight-Ashbury, right in the midst of everything that was going on in those days. And Oriole had been right in the center of the Angel Tribe; she still loved to remember and talk about it. Summer had heard over and over again about how the big old house had been painted purple with orange shutters and the windows draped with tie-dyed sheets, and how the people going by used to stop and stare. And how she, Oriole, had been Esau’s special old lady for a while and a real celebrity in the Haight, and even in the whole city, because some reporter on the Berkeley Barb had chosen her to do a picture story on—as the ultimate flower child. “A beautiful barefoot nymph in a cloud of red-gold hair, with a lovely, dark-eyed hippie baby astride her hip.” Summer had heard that particular phrase so many times she could quote it by heart, and she could recognize her own dark eyes and level brows in the baby’s round face. But she really couldn’t remember the Angel Tribe, or even Esau. What she did remember, and probably could never forget as long as she lived, was hearing Oriole tell about all of it over and over again, while she carefully unfolded the yellowing clipping from the Berkeley Barb.

  “It’s really too bad you can’t remember Esau,” Oriole said. “He was so crazy about you. He was always saying what a wonderful human being you were going to turn out to be because of being raised in such a free and loving environment.”

  “Yeah. I know. Too bad he wasn’t right.”

  Oriole, who had been deciding between a carrot or a celery stick, looked up quickly, her smile uncertain—obviously wondering if Summer’s remark was repentant, or simply sarcastic. Actually, it was both. She was ashamed of the way she had treated Oriole the night before, but at the same time she was bitter about a lot of things, among which was the “free and loving” environment in which she had been raised. Free and loving could mean a lot of things, and some of them she could have done without. But her answering smile was only a little grudging, and Oriole’s immediately broadened into happy relief.

  “So,” she said, “how was school today? Did the test go all right?” And Summer began to tell her about the test, and a discussion she’d had with Haley, and about watching Nicky trying to impress Kid Christopher. It wasn’t until almost an hour later that she remembered about Sparrow. She’d been imitating Kid approaching a bunch of girls, like a banty rooster dragging his wings through a flock of hens, when she suddenly remembered—and stopped in mid-strut.

  “Hey. Where’s Sparrow?” she said.

  It took Oriole a while to stop laughing. Whenever Oriole laughed it took her a while to stop. “Why?” she said finally. “Didn’t she come home with you?”

  “She was waiting out by the road for some of the Fishers to go by so she could ask them to shut up the dog. She wants to go up there.”

  Oriole’s smile was rueful. “I’m afraid she’s wasting her time. I mean, even if she gets to talk to Jerry, he probably won’t let her visit. Galya says he’s on some kind of a bummer lately, and it would be best if none of us go up there for a while.”

  Already on her way to get her sweater, Summer looked back, and just as she suspected, Oriole’s smile was only partly concealing something uncomfortable. Hurt, maybe, because Galya, her oldest and best friend, didn’t want her hanging around—or anxiety because so much depended on keeping the Fishers’ good will. A wave of resentment made Summer’s face burn: a sweeping kind of resentment that covered a lot of things but finally focused on Oriole for her cringing smile and for sitting there being pathetic while Sparrow was God-knows-where. She grabbed her sweater, ran out the door and let it bang after her. A moment later it slammed again as Cerbe charged after her.

  Just as she had feared, Sparrow was no longer sitting beside the road. Summer called loudly and angrily three or four times and then began to run. She had been running at top speed for several minutes when she rounded a turn and caught up with Sparrow, trudging along beside the road. When she saw Summer, Sparrow’s big eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

  “Don’t be mad, Summer,” she said. “I wasn’t going to go all the way. I was just going to go as far as Marina’s tree house. That dog won’t see me if I just go that far.”

  Summer had just grabbed Sparrow by the arm and was about to start yelling at her when the roar of a car motor seemed to be all around them. There was barely time to scramble to the side of the road before Jerry Fisher’s green pickup tore around the corner and, a few yards beyond them, skidded to a stop. But the man who got out of the cab was not Jerry.

  Tall and narrow, with a sleek, dark face like an old-fashioned ad for hair tonic, the man who climbed out of the pickup and slowly and deliberately sauntered across the road, was a complete stranger. “Well, well,” he said “What have we here?” He was smiling, but the smile, outlined by a thin black moustache, was somehow anything but reassuring. When he was very close, so close she could smell him—sweat and a musty aftershave lotion—he stopped, folded his arms across his chest and stared, still smiling the threatening smile. For a moment no one said or did anything, but then Sparrow made a whimpering noise and immediately a growl began to rumble in Cerbe’s throat. The smile disappeared from the man’s face.

  “Hey, Bart!” he yelled. “Come here.”

  The second man was enormous, with a huge head of bushy hair and a red, heavy-jawed face. As he got out of the truck, he reached into the back and got out a heavy club-shaped tree branch. Panic surged in Summer’s throat, and grabbing Cerbe’s collar and Sparrow’s arm, she began to back away down the road. Grinning again, the two men just stood there, watching them go. But when they were several yards away, the bushy-haired man suddenly hunched his shoulders, raised his club and rushed at them, making a noise like a roaring lion. Sparrow screamed and fled down the road. Cerbe went crazy, growling fiercely and standing on his hind legs in his eagerness to attack. It was all Summer could do to hang onto his collar and drag him with her as she continued to back away. Then the thin man laughed and sauntered back to the truck. After a moment the big Neanderthal-type followed, swinging his club jauntily. Still hanging on to Cerbe’s collar, Summer ran for home—fuming with outraged anger.

  “Oh, they’re probably just some of the Fishers’ friends,” was all Oriole said when Summer told her what had happened. “Or Jude’s. That’s probably it. They’re probably friends of Jude from San Francisco.” Jude was a scrawny burned-out type of indefinite age who’d been hanging around Alvarro Bay off and on for a long time. Once, years before, Galya had rescued him from a ditch somewhere and nursed him back to health on organic vegetables and clean country air. Eventually he’d drifted back to the city and to the hard stuff, but almost every spring he cleaned up his act enough to turn up at the Fishers’ for a summer of work in the vegetable gardens and comparatively clean living.

  “But why would they be driving Jerry’s truck?” Summer said. “You know how uptight he is about it. Adam isn’t allowed to drive it unless Jerry’s with him, and Nicky says he isn’t even allowed to look at it.”

  Oriole shrugged. “Well, why don’t you just ask Nicky about them? He must know who they are.”

  It was Summer’s turn to shrug. Maybe she’d ask Nicky and maybe she wouldn’t. Since he’d started reacting to the simplest “hi” as if it were some kind of sexual provocation, she’d made it a rule not to initiate even the most casua
l conversation with him. But, on the other hand, she was very curious about the two strangers—curious and uneasy, not to mention angry. It still made her furious when she thought about the way the big hulking one had rushed at them. She hated even to think about what might have happened if she hadn’t been able to hang onto Cerbe’s collar. The incident kept reappearing in her mind all evening, and at last she decided she would ask Nicky—if the opportunity arose.

  As it happened, the opportunity did arise, the next afternoon while she was talking to Haley on the front steps of the school. Haley Skinner was, or at least had been, one of Summer’s best friends. All through elementary school Haley and Summer had been very tight, and during that time the Skinners—Haley and her parents and her two older sisters—had been like a second family to Summer. In fact, some people might have said they were her only family, traditionally speaking. Mr. John Skinner, who was a banker, liked people and money; and his wife, Adele, loved antiques and cooking and gossip. For a while, when she was quite young, Summer had considered them an ideal family.

  During those years Summer and Haley had started a Buckminster Fuller fan club together, entered joint projects in two science fairs and coauthored the first seventy-two pages of a novel that was going to be the Peyton Place of Alvarro Bay City. They also got the best grades in most of their classes, usually Summer first and Haley second, although it could easily have been the other way around if Haley had been willing to work at it. But even then Haley Skinner never worked hard at anything except having fun. But in junior high the Summer-Haley thing had begun to fall apart, and lately they only met now and then to argue—as they were doing on the steps. Haley was trying to get Summer to say she would come to a beach party.

  “It’ll be freezing cold,” Summer said.

  “Who cares,” Haley said, her eyebrows twitching the way they always did when she talked about sex. “There’ll be plenty of blankets. Kid even offered to bring his car blanket.”