Each Little Bird That Sings

by Deborah Wiles

Mama put her arm around me and leaned her head toward mine. “Shall we stop?”

  I shook my head in my hands. I came back to myself. I listened.

  One by one our friends and neighbors stood to talk about Dismay, about how he helped them, how he loved them, how happy he was to see them, how he attended their loved ones, never leaving their sides, always friendly, always respectful, always a happy dog. Their stories comforted me at first, but then they made me miss my dog even more.

  “Dismay was—is—a feel-good dog!” said Mr. Johnson.

  After every memory Peach would say “Amen!” and folks would chuckle. He got very good at it.

  Finally, Preacher Powell said to me, “Comfort?”

  I lifted my face from my hands.

  “Are you ready to say a few words?”

  Tidings whispered to me, “You don’t have to . . .”

  But I wanted to. I fumbled in my pocket for my remarks. There they were. I looked at Peach. His whole face was shining, smiling at me. He was perfect. A perfect Peach. He whispered across Mama to me, “I am here with bells on!” I nodded. I started to stand up, but I couldn’t—I tilted. Tidings grabbed me and helped me sit back down. He and Mama exchanged a look. I looked at Preacher Powell for help.

  “‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’!” said Preacher Powell. “We will sing Edisto Snowberger’s version of this hymn, which you will find as song number seventy-two from Snowberger’s Funeral Home Book of Suggested Songs for Significant Occasions. It was to be sung at the end of our service, but we’ll just move it up to here, because . . . Well, because I say so!” He chuckled louder this time, and more folks laughed with him. He seemed pleased. “Mrs. Powell, would you play?”

  Everyone but me stood to the opening of the hymn. As the singing started and I heard the words, I thought of Dismay, Dismay, Dismay!—bright and beautiful, great and small, wise and wonderful . . . and lost to me. Lost.

  I stared at the tops of my shiny new shoes. I willed myself to stand. And as the singing ended and folks sat down, I stood up. I willed myself to walk to the podium. I pulled my remarks from my pocket and smoothed them out. I lifted my head and stared at our friends who packed the Serenity Suite. I licked my lips and swallowed.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

  And then, from a seat in the back of the room near the doors to the Serenity Suite, Declaration rose.

  Chapter 29

  I must have looked mighty surprised, because all heads turned toward the back of the room, where Declaration stood with her hands held in front of her. She looked straight at me. I didn’t know what to say. I was almost glad to see her.

  “I have a memory to share,” she said.

  I almost said, No one wants to hear your memory, but I wanted to know what it was, so I said, “Go ahead.”

  Declaration smoothed at her hair under her hat. Her voice had a shaky tone to it. She said, “I met Dismay when I was four and my mother . . . died. We came to Snowberger’s. Dismay was bigger than I was. I was scared of him, but Comfort showed me how to pet him and feed him and how to scratch him behind his ears.” She stopped. Her face was red. She took a breath and continued. “I’m not much for dogs. But Dismay introduced me to Comfort, my best friend. And he made me laugh that day when everyone was so sad. He helped me not to miss my mama so much that day.”

  Declaration started to sit but then stood up again and said, “Missing people you love is hard.”

  She sat down for good. Phoebe Tolbert cried into her Snowberger’s handkerchief. Mr. Johnson stood up and began to walk back to Declaration, but next to Declaration sat Grandmother Lucy, who waved a gloved hand toward Mr. Johnson in a She’s-all-right-let-her-be-I’m-right-here-with-her way. Mr. Johnson nodded and stayed where he was.

  So did I. Soon, every eye was on me again.

  I looked at my ten pages of remarks. Declaration had said what I wanted to say. Missing people—and dogs—you love is hard. It hurts your heart. That’s what I wanted to say. Everyone else had said every good thing about Dismay. They already knew what a good dog he was. So I put my remarks aside and tried to reach into my hurting heart for something to say.

  “Fumfort!” said Merry in a too loud whisper.

  I lifted some fingers toward her and she waved. I looked at my family—everyone in that room was family—and I said: “I miss my dog.”

  My throat swelled until it hurt, and tears stung the inside of my nose. I thought of something else, so I said it: “I hope he comes home.”

  “Amen,” said Peach.

  “Amen,” said Homer Hindman and Phoebe Tolbert and then a chorus of folks.

  And then a new thought came to me like a slender stream of hope, filling me with a new understanding. “And,” I said, hoping they would understand, hoping Dismay would understand, too: “I am glad to be alive.”

  “Amen!” said Daddy and Mama together.

  “Alive!” said Merry.

  “Yes!” said everyone.

  And then there was laughing.

  Chapter 30

  The leaves fell from the trees and the snap of fall was in the air. At Snowberger’s the smells of pumpkin pie and corn bread dressing upstairs mingled with the etherlike smells from downstairs, where Daddy worked on Myrtis Rogers, getting her ready for a Saturday funeral. Merry napped and Mama worked in the flower shop, making a Thanksgiving arrangement for our dinner table. Tidings raked around the magnolia trees by the front parking lot—he didn’t like leaves bothering his grass. Peach and Aunt Goldie had arrived from Atlanta, and Aunt Goldie was roasting a turkey in the oven in a paper bag—“My secret recipe!” She taught Peach how to break pecans into bits for the pecan pie, and she finally released me from chopping celery and onions and had me set the table. Then she said Peach and I could go.

  “Wear your watch!” she called to Peach. “Be back by two thirty!”

  The Thanksgiving Day sunshine was warm on our backs as we walked down County Road 2435, past the stubble that was left from the corn that had been harvested from Homer Hindman’s field just the week before. As we stepped off the dirt road and into the oak grove, we looked at each other, but we didn’t say a word. We walked down Purgatory Hill together. A thousand songbirds greeted us as we walked beneath the open canopy of trees in the oak grove. We crossed burbling Snapfinger Creek on the little footbridge that Tidings had built.

  When we reached the rose of Sharon bushes, Peach stopped, ran his fingers across the graceful branches, and then looked to the top of Listening Rock. “I’m ready,” he said.

  I listened to our gritty footfalls as we climbed. Peach puffed and stopped to rest three times (so I stopped with him), but he never complained. I waited for him in silence each time, studying the metamorphic marvel we were walking on.

  At the top Peach broke into a wide grin. “It’s amazing! You can see everything! Just like Uncle Edisto said!” He inched himself on his bottom, like a shy crab, toward the tip-top of the slope, to the highest spot, where he sat, washed in sunlight, surveying the kingdom that was Snowberger’s. He blinked in the breeze that tugged at his slicked-down hair. I sat beside him. Old Johnny Mercer had finished digging Myrtis Rogers’s grave and had set the green tarp over it. It looked like a peaceful grave.

  “There’s Uncle Edisto’s grave,” said Peach, pointing to the Bread of Heaven section of the Snapfinger Cemetery.

  “Aunt Florentine’s, too.” I left it at that.

  I visited Uncle Edisto and Aunt Florentine in the cemetery quite a bit. I enjoyed eating a tuner-fish sandwich and catching them up on the news. I read Aunt Florentine my funeral write-ups. We talked geography.

  “No grave for Dismay,” said Peach.

  “No.”

  “I still wait for him to come home,” said Peach.

  “Me, too.”

  “You never know, Comfort,” said Peach. “You just never ever know what the next good or bad thing win be.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Life just keeps chang
ing, all the time, every minute!”

  “Be quiet, Peach. I can’t think.”

  The breeze fanned my face while I took stock. One: I still woke up in the morning listening for Dismay’s tap-tap-tapping down the hallway, coming to get me up. That hadn’t changed. It wasn’t a good thing. Two: I still wore my Snowberger’s baseball cap and my lime green shorts, and I still sat in my closet, where I did my homework and made my plans. That hadn’t changed. That was a good thing. Three: Life was full of surprises, and not all of them were good. But some were.

  Listening Rock baked in the sun while geese flew overhead, honking. Because the leaves were off the trees, I could hear Snapfinger Creek bubbling over the rocks.

  “I like it up here,” said Peach. “It’s calming.”

  “Yes it is.”

  The sound of gritty footfalls came, and I turned to see Declaration making the last climbing steps up Listening Rock. She was wearing her Sunday school dress and hat and gloves. She was breathing hard, catching her breath. She kept her eyes on me. My heart began a little thump-thump in my chest. Declaration and I hardly talked anymore. Everything had been too complicated between us.

  “Hey,” Declaration said.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  “Did you know Daddy and I were invited for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “I know.” I had told Mama I didn’t have anything to talk to Declaration about. Mama had said I’d figure it out.

  Declaration looked at Peach. “Hey, Peach.”

  Peach raised a hand but said nothing.

  “Well . . .” said Declaration.

  I didn’t help her.

  She fidgeted. “Can I sit down?”

  I shrugged. I wanted her to. I didn’t.

  Declaration stepped gingerly, carefully, toward us—toward the highest point of Listening Rock, where she sat down next to me, which put me in the middle between her and Peach. The three of us sat there for a long time, silent, beneath the ever-changing clouds, surrounded by a dancing breeze. We stared out at Snapfinger Cemetery, and the blacktopped Rural Route 2 that stretched out to bigger roads across all of Mississippi and beyond. We sat under a wide autumn sky, a sky that sheltered us all, even my Dismay. Big, black, shaggy Dismay, with his shiny dog eyes—Is everything all right?—and his wagging dog tail—I’m just so glad to be here!—and his goofy dog grin, so willing to love everybody.

  Peach looked at his watch. “It’s time to go.”

  “How are you, Peach?” said Declaration, looking across me to my cousin.

  “I might be moving,” said Peach, looking back.

  “You might?”

  “Mama and me might move to Snapfinger when school lets out next summer. We would live at Snowberger’s.”

  “Is that so?” said Declaration as the three of us made our way down Listening Rock.

  Now, Peach didn’t know if he was moving or not. He’d been sitting across from me in the kitchen that morning, eating Chocolate Buzz Krispies and listening to Mama and Aunt Goldie talk about possibilities. We had exchanged a look over the zinnias. Snowberger’s was so much emptier than it had ever been. It echoed with the voices of Great-uncle Edisto, Great-great-aunt Florentine, and Dismay. It wasn’t the same place for me, or for Peach, I could tell.

  “Well, good for you, Peach,” said Declaration.

  “Yeah,” said Peach, dodging a scrub pine and picking his way carefully on the rock. We walked in silence to the bottom and soon found ourselves once again on County Road 2435 together.

  “Maybe I can come visit sometime after you move,” said Declaration. “I’m a good marbles player. I’ve got a shooter that’s a butterfly agate.”

  “Really!” exclaimed Peach. He picked up his step. The orange-pebbled road crunched smartly under his hard-soled shoes. “Wow!”

  “When did you learn to play marbles?” I asked Declaration.

  “My grandmother Lucy taught me,” said Declaration. “She collected marbles when she was young, and she has willed her entire collection to me.”

  “They must be ancient,” I said.

  “Possibly Egyptian,” said Declaration.

  She almost smiled at me. I almost smiled back.

  “Marbles!” Peach was almost exploding with enthusiasm. “This is so exciting!” He skipped ahead of us and turned back to face me.

  I almost ran into him. “Stop it, Peach!” I said, feeling pretty explosive myself. “Stop being so . . . Peach-like! Sometimes you irritate the hound out of me!”

  “What possibilities!” he crowed, as if he hadn’t even heard me. “What joy! Maybe we can play today, Declaration!”

  “That would be fine,” said Declaration.

  Good, I thought. Fine. Let Declaration play marbles with Peach. Let them become fast friends! I walked right past them.

  “Commmforrrt! Don’t go! Waaaaaiit!” Peach began a familiar whine.

  I whirled around so I could order him to stop, but he had stopped himself. So I stopped, too. I stared into my cousin’s shining eyes. Then I looked into Declaration’s eyes. And I saw in their faces what had been in Dismay’s eyes in that last moment I’d seen him—grief and fear and hope and love somehow woven together, somehow connected. All the messy glory.

  Peach quivered with his overwrought feelings, trying to pull himself together. I pulled myself together, too. My heart began a what’s-next, what’s-next, what’s-next beat.

  The afternoon was alive with the racket of a thousand different songbirds calling to us from the grove, surrounding us with their chants, their hymns, their lullabies.

  “Comfort,” Peach whispered. “It’s Thanksgiving, and I’ve come to see you!”

  I glanced toward the cemetery, then toward home. I swallowed hard and took a breath. And, as I did, my heart melted around the sweetness and sadness of the world and I responded to my cousin . . . to life.

  “Okay,” I said. “Come see me then.”

  About the Author

  DEBORAH WILES is the award-winning author of Each Little Bird That Sings, a National Book Award finalist; Love, Ruby Lavender, an ALA Notable Children’s Book, a Children’s Book Sense 76 Pick, an NCTE Notable Book for the Language Arts, and a New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing; Freedom Summer, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book; The Aurora County All-Stars, a New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing; and One Wide Sky. She lives in Georgia.

  Learn more at www.deborahwiles.com