by Chris White
Adrian takes an Atoms for Peace stamp and sticks it to the back of his iPhone with Scotch tape, just as Michaela comes padding in carrying a plate of pancakes with a strawberry on top.
“Want it, Dad?” she asks, holding it shakily out in front of her.
“Hey! My goodness, thank you,” he says. He takes the heavy plate. She finds her way into his lap.
The first bite goes to her.
“Want the strawberry?” Adrian plucks it up between his fingers. “Going . . . going . . .”
“Come on, Micki! Mom says your pancakes are getting cold!” Zander yells from the kitchen table.
Michaela lets Adrian feed her the strawberry, kisses him sloppily on the cheek, then rustles out again in her robe. “You can come out if you want to.”
“One sec,” he calls after her. “Be right there!”
Yesterday evening, Adrian got a call from Jeff, his best friend, attaché, and partner in the crime of the birds. Jeff told him that Henry Lassiter—inveterate birder and longtime captain at the helm of the American Birding Association (with the second-longest life list)—had died near the cliffs at San Juan Capistrano watching the swallows evacuate the mission on their way to Argentina. This morning, when Adrian called Lassiter’s birdwatching companion, Will Marienthal (the birder with the fourth-longest list), to express his condolences, Marienthal presented him with an unexpected gift: news of a Siberian Accentor (extremely rare) right here on the continent. Just as Marienthal was about to say more—where the bird was, how long it had been there, under what circumstances—he had to take another call. It happened to be Lassiter’s widow, and he said he’d phone or text Adrian straight back with the details.
Since then, some forty minutes ago, Adrian has waited like a sprinter for the sound of the pistol. He finds no Internet buzz about the accentor yet—this is fresh news—so he cleans the tops of the keys on his keyboard with spit and the tail of his undershirt. He shuffles the stacks of stamps and drops two stuck-together waving American flags into his water glass to loosen them. Much of the activity of birding is waiting, after all. Planting your feet and waiting. Listening. Alert.
Adrian has held the third-longest life list for three straight years, which he’s achieved in spite of the fact that he lives in a semiarid desert, a thousand miles from the nearest border, with only 489 bird species native to his state. He’s convinced that if he lived in a state near a border or coastline (as most of the top birders do) like Arizona or California or Texas, where vagrant and accidental species tend to drift over (or if he was retired!), there would be no contest.
For the past dozen years, the top two listers (Shell Eastman and the late Lassiter) have held on like pit bulls. The whole top ten is nearly ironclad. There is some occasional shifting about—say, number five will trade positions with number six. There is the very occasional quitter who, for personal or political reasons, withdraws from the game. Once in a great while, someone will shoot up into the higher ranks from below, having completed a highly exceptional Big Year or committed themselves to lengthy pelagic trips. But at this level of competition, each of the top ten has seen so many species, opportunities for new lifers—birds extraordinary, birds unexpected—are exceedingly rare. The lists sit waiting too, open like the beaks of baby chicks, hungry for another entry.
Adrian trails the newly deceased Lassiter by only three species and, as it happens, Adrian has already added a notable three species this year. Usually, Lassiter would also be adding species. But if Lassiter had been ill, and unfortunately he had, it occurs to Adrian that maybe Lassiter hadn’t added many new life birds this year, and this could be his time to rise to the very top. Adrian wouldn’t wish sickness on anybody. He drank bourbon with Lassiter on Attu, sea-watching at Murder Point. And who knows, maybe Lassiter had added another four species and Adrian will continue to trail him. (Adrian’s pretty sure Lassiter added a Thick-billed Vireo in the spring, at the very least.) If he hadn’t added any, though, Adrian and Lassiter would be tied at this very moment; and if Adrian could add one more species before the deadline at the end of December, he could overtake Lassiter, whose impressive list (which continues to stand after his death) includes a Bachman’s Warbler and, miracle of miracles, an Ivory-billed Woodpecker (the only current list that does). The fact is, there’s no sure way of knowing what Lassiter’s year looked like without begging Marienthal for information. But the course of treatment—the way forward—is the same.
Adrian clicks onto the major bird posting sites to check again for signs of the accentor, but he finds nothing. When he goes to Backyard Birder to check on his articles, nothing requires his immediate attention, but there, just posted, is the same novice birder from the other night.
4601 (11/2/09): At 11:17 a.m. I saw a American Kestrel on some electrical wire while I was loading pipe. They are a really good looking bird. They are the smallest falcon. Blue gray wings and a brownish orange body and tail. It looks like a woman with smeered blue mascara coming down and it has more blue where its ears would be if it had ears which I guess it does somewhere under there. The rest of the face is white. It just sat up there and after a while I had dto stop watching and go back to work.Then it lifted up to look for pray and hovered over the field like a chopper. It got so cold I put on a jacket. The new guys are breaking down getting their hands burned and black. I’ve gotta get something to eat before they clos down.
Tilting back in his chair a moment, Adrian grins, finishing the last dripping bite of his pancakes. American Kestrel. It’s a step up from a cardinal, anyway. Guy’s such a newbie, he doesn’t even have a username, only a number. Adrian wonders how “the new guys” are getting their hands burned and black. He clicks on to the member profile to find a photo—a man, silhouetted black by sunset, sitting on rocks beside a warmly lit body of water—clicks off.
He plucks up the now parted, floating stamps from the slick of his water glass and tosses them into the trash; then he pops a Vicodin into his mouth and drinks.
• • •
Cut through by a lone road like a wavering jet stream across a vast sky, North Cascades National Park consists of over five hundred thousand naked acres swelling up to the bosom of British Columbia. The Siberian Accentor, a vagrant species blown over from Russia, has been there twenty-one hours by the time Adrian, Stella, and Jeff pack their bags and drive the kids to Stella’s German mother, Oma Gertrude. She’d do anything for Zander and Michaela, but she finds Adrian’s passion ludicrous and has never pretended otherwise.
Standing now in front of her condominium off Twenty-Ninth Street, gray hair spiky, housedress down to her calves, she waves him off like a bad joke, saying, “Bon voyage, Birdman.” Zander’s already made his way into the house, but Michaela stands waving alongside Oma, laughing, “See ya later, Birdman!”
Stella hasn’t gone birding with him in years. They had bought tickets to the Philharmonic for the weekend, and Adrian knew she would be understandably disappointed when he wanted to leave town instead, so when he went to deliver the bad news (saying too that the only flight into Seattle-Tacoma was canceled, and the one into Vancouver was such a complex web of flights with inconvenient departure times, it was faster to drive) he found himself tempting her with walks in view of the glaciers and crackling fires outside their cozy tent.
To his surprise, she was moved. She said, “You sure? Maybe I could give it another try . . .”
“Besides”—he took her head in his hands, kissing her—“it’s a Colorado day,” and it was, and it is, and they push off now, barreling forward, everything in HD. The sky is blue as a cornflower, every crag and tree of the Rockies stark to the eye.
All night and into the morning, they take turns driving and sleeping. Adrian drives the longest stints while Stella plays Yahtzee on her phone or naps and Jeff reads Sausage-Making for Idiots, then complains of motion sickness. The car is one of Adrian’s favorite places to be—contained but utterly free. Sometimes when it’s particularly sunny, even when it’s rainin
g or snowing, he simply sits inside, charmed by the sun on his face or the tapping of rain, protected by shatterproof glass, rubber, and steel.
• • •
“That’s why he’s number one,” Jeff insists, his balding head concealed under his Tampa Bay Rays cap. He picks little cotton pills from his fleece vest and flicks them onto the floor of the car, rain now dashing across the road before them as they wind, small, against the backdrop of the forested mountains. They refueled about forty-five minutes back. Forty-five minutes ahead, they’ll hit Coeur d’Alene and its illustrious lake. Beyond that, Spokane.
“I could be number one too, if I listed every bird I thought I heard. I’m not the only one that thinks this, Jeff. His reputation is plummeting.”
“But it’s legal,” Jeff says. “I don’t see what’s wrong with it.”
“I haven’t listed a single bird on call alone,” insists Adrian. “I still can’t believe they changed it and Lutz is going along with it. The ABA just wants higher numbers.”
“I guess,” Jeff says, losing steam.
“ ’Cause you’ve got to see it to believe it, my friend.”
“You’re the expert.”
To lighten the mood, Adrian asks, “So, how’s A Good Sport?”
“Happy to have the flexibility,” Jeff says, and taps meaningfully on the cover of his book.
Jeff works part-time at a sporting goods store, having recently quit his decadelong career in heating and cooling to pursue his dream of writing a how-to book. Adrian’s known Jeff some six or seven years now, and it was the first risky move he’s ever seen him make. They met when Jeff came to Adrian and Stella’s to look into replacing their old furnace. Jeff started asking Adrian about his antique binocular collection, and next thing you know, the two of them were out looking at Horned Grebes at Valmont Reservoir, Jeff saying, “Touchdown!” every time one landed. Stella and Adrian became the proud owners of a larger-than-life furnace with a blower so loud, you sometimes have to raise your voice in conversation when the thing kicks on.
Meanwhile, Jeff pushed off from the shore of conventional, full-time income along with half the population of Boulder. During a conversation Jeff had had with a friend who had worked at Wiley Publishing, the company that puts out the For Dummies series, he was encouraged to believe that he could find something to write about, make some money, and establish himself as a how-to writer, instead of digging around in overgrown backyards and musty basements into his middle age. Apparently, the friend told Jeff that he was a naturally interesting and interested person, that people know about lots of things, and that sometimes the things they could be writing about were obscured to them.
For example, Jeff’s friend said, a man who grew up hunting and skinning his kill might fail to realize that not everyone knew how to do these things, and with a little additional research could write a book called Animal Skinning for Dummies or The Idiot’s Guide to Fur Trapping. Jeff became convinced there must be a number of these veins of knowledge running though his experience that he simply had to mine and exploit.
Now, thumbing distractedly through Composting for Dummies, Jeff says he’s pretty sure everything’s already been covered. In addition to all the big subjects—Divorce for Dummies, PCs for Dummies, Bartending for Dummies—there are very specific titles long since published, like Acne for Dummies, Beagles for Dummies, and Building Chicken Coops for Dummies. There’s even a book called C. S. Lewis & Narnia for Dummies. Though Jeff is someone who’s worked some twenty different jobs over the course of his life (which Adrian didn’t know), perhaps he is an expert on nothing.
“How about Heating and Cooling for Dummies?” Adrian suggests.
Jeff says, “Way too late for that, bud,” and they soon become spellbound by the white lines and the rain.
Adrian slips a Xanax onto his tongue with its benign, almost imperceptible taste, as a billboard advertising a Native American trading post whizzes by. A coyote dancing in a cloudless sky.
His mother’s call swishes about in his head like tea leaves in a cup, with her half-finished sentence. Her voicemail remains a tiny red 1 on his home screen that won’t go away until he checks or deletes it. This morning, in the wee hours, he set his cell phone to silent to be sure she couldn’t surprise him with another call.
“She still asleep?” Jeff asks.
Adrian’s head snaps to look where Stella should be—but finds only an empty expanse of palomino leather and her cell phone gone to black.
• • •
When the Range Rover speeds over the freeway and back toward De Borgia, an hour and fifteen minutes have passed from the time they stopped to get gas. They can just make Stella out, trudging alone on the westbound shoulder of the wide highway, her backpack drenched across her back, holding her hands over her eyes like a visor as she scans both sides of the road. When Adrian honks the horn ever so briefly, she squints in his direction, looking truly amazed, like a woman witnessing some sort of natural disaster. As he speeds by, she spins. He can’t get to her. He wants to, but he can’t. He has to keep going to find a place to turn around. Seven long miles he and Jeff say nary a word, until Adrian finds an exit and squeals away from the stop sign shiny with rain.
He drives within arm’s length of her. Jumps out, slipping on the pavement, supporting himself on the hood of the car to keep from falling. The windshield wipers whip fervently across the glass and rain bounces onto his trousers from the road as he rushes to embrace her, swiping dank hair out of her face. He looks manically into her eyes then steers her by the elbow up and into the passenger’s seat, as though she were a wounded soldier being loaded into a medevac. What has he done?
“Jesus,” he whispers huskily, breathing heavily, throwing himself into the car, and again there is that flat brutal rhythm of the wipers.
“You okay?” he asks, clutching her jacketed forearm.
She just looks at his hand there, panting mildly.
“We are so sorry, Stella,” Jeff says, flushed.
“I just . . . ,” Adrian begins, “I got into this whole thing about how the Ancient Murrelet spends its nights on Vendovi Island and flies over to feed during the day, blah, blah, blah, it doesn’t matter. Then we . . . got into this whole thing about Michael Lutz and Chicken Feed for Dummies and Jeff asked if you were asleep and I just, you know. Fuck.”
Her face pressed against the door, Stella says, “I smell Armor All,” which leaves them speechless.
Adrian edges back onto the road, his jaw tight and high. Jeff shakes his head over and over again.
“Can I just ask,” Adrian finally says, gingerly, “why didn’t you stay at the gas station?”
“I don’t know, Adrian! I went in to pee and I came out and you guys were gone! I kept calling you and you didn’t answer, and I didn’t know what to do. I figured if I started walking, maybe I’d run into you broken down on the highway. I didn’t know you just completely forgot me, for a fucking hour and a half!”
“Fair enough,” adds Jeff.
“Why didn’t you answer your fucking phone?” she howls.
“It was turned off,” Adrian says. That’s his mother’s fault too.
“Why?” she demands.
Because he’s a coward.
“Probably didn’t think to try me, I guess,” Jeff ventures.
“I didn’t have my phone, Jeff. I don’t have your number memorized.”
Jeff places his hand on Stella’s shoulder.
“Even my underwear is soaked.”
Adrian makes amends as best he can. He stops at Coeur d’Alene to get her into dry clothes, buys her blueberry scones and café au lait, sits in the back seat with her while Jeff drives. They put in Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for Oboe, which comforts her, then listen to her Joni Mitchell CD, the one with the symphony when Joni’s had too much Paris jazz and late-night painting and cigarettes. They listen from cover to cover while Stella looks out her window or closes her eyes with her head back, every few minutes whispering, “Ch
rist.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a slam dunk, though,” Adrian finally says, checking the Rare Bird Alert as they pass through Spokane. “The accentor’s been perched near this ‘marker 12’ on and off all day, like he’s waiting for us.”
He turns to smile at Stella, but she’s asleep. Her expression is so mild he almost believes she’s forgiven him.
• • •
North Cascades National Park, Washington. Stella, Jeff, and Adrian wait for the accentor all day from two o’clock on, standing, sitting, and circling the trees around marker 12. That night, they set up camp by a nearby stream, the water fast and cold. They eat and sleep, walk back the next morning, and wait again—the wind now relentless, the sky a sea of clouds.
“He’s still around here somewhere. Let’s find him,” Adrian tells Stella, tugging her to her feet.
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“This is what I do, honey. Just let me show you.”
Adrian begins reloading his pack, so Jeff does the same, peering from under his ball cap. “Where you thinkin’?”
“Up the pass.” Adrian gestures with a stiff hand as if saluting.
“Seriously? Don’t accentors like a nice little meadow or, you know, backyard?” Jeff ventures. “You really think it’d be farther up the mountain?”
“It blew all the way here from Siberia, Jeff,” Adrian instructs. “The wind’s now blowing thirty-five miles per hour due north. We follow the wind.”
Adrian leads Jeff and Stella up Cascade Pass—over cracks and crevices filled with snow, amid western red cedar, Douglas firs, devil’s club with its trippy, oversized leaves, and something Jeff calls bunchberries, turning red from green. They spot a Clark’s Nutcracker, a raven, a female White-tailed Ptarmigan, and a fat, pink-red White-winged Crossbill, but no Siberian Accentor.
