Fly, Cherokee, Fly

by Chris D'Lacey

  ‘It’s a trap,’ I said. ‘You can push the wires inwards but you can’t pull them out.’

  ‘What’s the use of that?’ Garry said, confused.

  ‘Dunno,’ I shrugged. Something else to ask Mr Duckins. That reminded me – feeding. I climbed the steps to the open door.

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Garry.

  I shrugged. ‘Not much. Two compartments with perches and stuff.’

  ‘Smart. Let’s have a see.’

  Before I could stop him he was bounding up the steps and trying to push past me. ‘Back off,’ I said, and shoved him down again. I can wrestle Garry to the ground with ease. It felt a bit cruel, keeping him out like that, but I knew if I let him into the loft he would only stick his foot through the floor or something.

  ‘Come on, Dazza. I found the bird as well.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. And you heard what Mr Duckins said. You’re supposed to be looking for carrots.’

  Garry screwed up his face and peered round the garden. A few odd birds were back on the lawn. ‘That’s mental, that is. No one guards against carrots.’

  ‘Well, just keep a look out for…anything,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get the food. I’ll be out in a minute.’ I stood to attention and gave him a salute.

  ‘Huh,’ he muttered, and turned to stand guard.

  Despite the unglazed windows it was warm inside the loft, a bit like being in my gran’s summer-house. There was a funny sort of sawdusty smell about the place, mixed with a slight whiff of disinfectant. Glancing at the floor I could understand why. It was covered with grit and garden bits and millions of dried-up pigeon droppings. It scrunched underfoot as I moved about.

  I walked down to the biggest compartment first. There were loads of v-shaped perches on the wall and a set of box perches like the pigeon-holes outside the staff room at school. Pigeon-holes. I grinned and nodded to myself. Now I knew why they called them that. There was a little rack of shelves at that end, too. They were loaded up with scrapers and cage fronts and stuff, and what looked like medicines on the highest shelf. I’d never imagined that pigeons could get sick. I wondered what you gave one for a broken wing.

  Turning round, I saw the food bin was at the opposite end of the loft – in a corner, like Mr Duckins had said. To get there, I had to walk down a corridor stacked high on one side with wooden cages. They looked like a wall of rabbit hutches. Each of the cages had two dowelled doors – one was open, one was shut, staggered at each of the separate levels. I was halfway down the corridor when a bird appeared in the top middle box. It was the one I’d seen flying in through the trap. I stopped walking. The brown bird cocked its head a few times. There was a nervous glint in its round copper eye. ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered, ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ I took a half-step forward. The bird made a noise and shuffled sideways, its pink feet clinging to the bottom of the door. I walked on until I drew level with it. Then I took a chance and looked at it squarely. I could see it wasn’t as young as Cherokee. Its big white nose was old and crusty, and the feathers round its beak had seen better times. It stretched its neck and looked at me again. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I told it, and lifted a finger, hoping it would let me stroke its breast. ‘Woo,’ it went, in throaty complaint, then turned and hopped into the back of its cage.

  I hurried to the corn-bin and lifted the lid. Inside was a colourful mixture of grains: maize, peas, beans and seeds. I dug my hand in deep and let them tumble through my fingers. Behind me, I heard a scrabbling sound. The old bird was back at the cage front again. ‘Tea-time,’ I told him with a grin on my face. And scooping up some food in a boiled-sweet tin, I walked down the corridor, rattling it at him.

  The old bird followed me out of the loft. I dropped a few grains and he started to peck.

  ‘Watch out!’ said Garry, from the far side of the lawn. He pointed at the sky. I looked up and felt my knees go wobbly. A huge flock of birds was descending fast. ‘Chuck the food!’ Garry flapped. I didn’t need prompting. I sprayed the whole tin in a sweeping arc and ran across the lawn to join Garry by a flower-bed. The birds rained down like great grey hailstones. Forty or fifty at least. Just like the middle of Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Wow, look at them go,’ said Garry.

  I nodded. They certainly could eat fast. Their beaks were going like little road-diggers. It took them less than thirty seconds to completely clear the lawn.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve given them enough,’ said Garry as the nearest of the birds began to potter towards us. I turned the tin upside down and shook it. The birds dashed forward like an incoming tide.

  Garry leaned over and snatched the tin. ‘I’ll get some more,’ he said, and was gone.

  ‘Gazza, wait!’ I cried, but I couldn’t move to stop him. Mr Duckins wouldn’t thank me if I squashed a prize pigeon. Besides, what harm could Garry do?

  As it happened, for once, no harm at all. He’d been inside the pigeon loft about three seconds when he let out an awful hollering noise. The birds lifted from the lawn in a frantic heap. I looked towards the loft. Garry was pounding down the steps, preceded by a very large ginger cat with a feather flagging off its tail. It bolted down the garden and nearly ran straight into Mr Duckins.

  ‘Git out!’ he roared, and harried it back towards Garry once more. Garry went after it, flailing his arms. The startled cat found a gap in the fence and wiggled through almost flat to the ground. The loose feather spiralled up into the sky. Calm returned to the garden again.

  ‘Carrots!’ said Garry, pointing after the cat. His face was a picture of boyish triumph.

  ‘Aye, well done,’ Mr Duckins panted, wiping a sleeve across his forehead. He felt for the arm of the garden bench and lowered himself with a heavy thump. He was wheezing badly and his face was red.

  ‘Shall I get you a drink of water, Mr Duckins?’

  The old man shook his head a few times. He patted his chest and made a snorting sound. ‘Now then, about this bird.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said eagerly.

  ‘Spigott doesn’t want it.’

  I looked open-mouthed at Garry. ‘Why?’ Garry asked.

  Mr Duckins reached down and picked a feather off the ground. ‘Crocked bird’s no good to anyone, lad. Not even to itself. Chances are she’s never going to fly again. Even if she does, she can’t win races. That’s the way it is with pigeons. Pity, really. Spigott says she was a good hen, once.’

  ‘Won’t you look after her, then, Mr Duckins?’

  Alf Duckins gave me a pained look. ‘You can leave her with me. I’ll do what’s right.’

  I shuffled my feet and looked awkwardly at Garry. ‘Are you going to wring its neck?’ Garry blurted out loud.

  I turned and was set to blast him for a moment. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all. That thought had been in my mind as well. Only I hadn’t had the courage to voice it. Surely Mr Duckins wasn’t going to kill her?

  ‘It’s an invalid,’ he said. ‘You’ve done what you can.’

  ‘You can’t kill her,’ I stammered, finding my voice. ‘Please, Mr Duckins. You can’t do that. What if it was one of your best birds? What if it was that brown one with the white tail-feathers?’

  I pointed a finger at the pigeon loft. Alf gave me a thoughtful, searching look. There was something going on behind his pale grey eyes. Something he wasn’t going to share with me then. ‘Flying men don’t keep pets,’ he said.

  ‘We do,’ said Garry, with a spark of defiance.

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed, backing him up. ‘If Mr Spigott doesn’t want her, we’ll keep her ourselves.’

  ‘But she’s crocked,’ Alf said, throwing his hands up in despair.

  Garry folded his arms. I did the same.

  Mr Duckins sighed and shook his head. He stood up and dusted his pants with his hand. ‘It’s not like keeping a budgie, you know. You can’t put her in a cage and teach her to talk.’

  We both just shrugged. Alf sighed again.

  ‘
All right, go and fetch her. She’s just on the patio. We’d better get her cleaned up before night falls.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Garry, and galloped off towards the house.

  Mr Duckins muttered something underneath his breath. He took off his cap and stared at the gallery of birds on the roof.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said shyly, picking my fingers. ‘I really like her, Mr Duckins. I’ll look after her. I promise.’

  Alf grunted and touched a finger to his nose. ‘I must be barmy. Dunno what Spigott would say if he knew. Strictly by the book, you’re nabbing his bird. But if he wants her put down, I can’t see the harm in it. Keep it to yourself all the same though, lad.’

  I nodded. Garry came pounding up beside us. He raised the lid on Cherokee’s shoe-box. ‘She’s a mess,’ Alf sighed. ‘In more ways than one.’ He lifted her out and preened her feathers. ‘Here y’are,’ he said to me, handing her over, making sure I held her correctly. ‘Let her get used to you. She belongs to you now. She’ll always stay tame if you handle her proper. Right, follow me. First stop, bath.’

  With that Mr Duckins led us back to the loft. He got an old brown bucket and filled it with water from an outside tap, then sprinkled something called Feather Bloom in it. He took Cherokee from me and dipped her in the bucket, ruffling her feathers to bring out the dirt. The water turned green in a matter of seconds. We had to change it twice before she really came clean.

  She looked like a waterlogged sock when we’d finished. ‘Too cold to let her dry out naturally,’ said Alf, noting the lengthening shadows in the garden. He turned and plodded back into the loft. When he emerged a few moments later, he had a towel over one hand and another tin of pigeon food tight in the other. He thrust the food in Garry’s direction. ‘Nice and steady, so they all get something.’ Garry’s face lit up. He was really chuffed. Some reward, I suppose, for rousting Carrots. As Garry walked away sowing seed across the garden, Mr Duckins sniffed and lifted the towel. Underneath the towel was an old hairdrier.

  ‘She’s had this before,’ he said with a grin, playing the warm air across Cherokee’s feathers. I tilted her slightly and she lifted a wing, letting Alf get to the damper feathers on the side of her body. For the first time I saw the bump at her shoulder – the break that had almost condemned her to death. I shuddered and tried not to think about it. She was safe now, that was all that mattered. Safe from the hands of Lenny Spigott.

  But the battle wasn’t quite over yet. When I got home, I still had to persuade Mum and Dad to let me keep Cherokee. I knew exactly what Mum was going to say, ‘Darryl, you don’t know the first thing about keeping pigeons!’ So while Cherokee was coming back to dryness, I asked Alf as many questions as I could.

  There was one thing I almost forgot to ask. I remembered it while we were saying goodbye. ‘Mr Duckins?’ I said. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Another one?’ said Alf. ‘My brain’s about to burst!’

  ‘When you were talking to Lenny Spigott, did he tell you the pigeon’s name?’

  ‘Name?’ said Alf, looking at me strangely. He tapped the side of his foot against the porch. ‘Nobody gives their pigeons names.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Darryl, you don’t know the first thing about keeping pigeons!’

  ‘We do, Mum,’ I said in a begging voice. ‘Mr Duckins told us loads of stuff, didn’t he, Garry?’

  Garry rocked back on a kitchen stool. He smiled at Mum. She eyed him darkly. ‘We know why he’s got a star on his garage. It’s so they recognise home when they’ve been in a race.’

  ‘It’s time you recognised home,’ Mum said. ‘If you stop any longer, you’ll be on a perch in the shed.’

  ‘Does that mean we can keep her then?’ I jumped in, hoping that if I kept on prodding, Mum would just stop resisting and crack.

  ‘No,’ said Mum, through tightly-pursed lips.

  ‘Oh…fff!’ I went, and banged the table with my fist. Mum gave me a look. She walked to the window and lowered the blind.

  ‘Listen, Darryl.’

  ‘Don’t want to,’ I mumbled. This was the first time Dad had spoken. All the while I’d been explaining things to Mum he’d been sitting at the table with a pen between his teeth, tapping away at his laptop computer.

  ‘What you did for the bird was very heroic, but there has to be a limit to how far you can go. Mr Duckins is an expert, so take his advice. Look at the practical side of things. The bird is used to a life of racing. How’s she going to be cooped up on her own in a shed, with no other birds around her? Imagine how she’ll feel looking up at the sky through a long piece of glass and knowing she could never be out there again.’

  ‘You don’t have glass in a pigeon loft,’ said Garry.

  Mum tutted and threw some spoons into a drawer.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Dad continued. ‘In effect, you’d be sending her to prison – putting her away for a life sentence. If she could fly, it wouldn’t be so bad.’

  There was a pause – as if Dad sensed he’d made a mistake. Maybe he had. I leapt in quickly. ‘Mr Duckins told us she might fly again.’

  ‘Darryl, you’re wasting your time,’ said Mum.

  But I was looking at Dad. I could see he was hesitant. It was now or never. I had to convince him. ‘All I want to do is nurse her, Dad. When she starts to fly we’ll let her go.’

  ‘Darryl—’

  ‘At least she’ll be able to feed herself…and make a nest …and…’

  ‘Darryl!’ Dad rapped his knuckles on the table. ‘You can’t let her go. She’s a homing pigeon. Once you give her a roost, you’ve got her for good.’

  ‘Well YOU get rid of her then!’ I shouted.

  ‘Darryl! That’s quite enough of that,’ snapped Mum.

  But it wasn’t for me. I hadn’t even started. I pushed my chair away from the table so the legs made a screeching noise on the floor. ‘You wring her neck and pluck out her feathers and shove her in the oven! See if I care!’

  ‘Darryl,’ Mum stormed, ‘go to your room!’

  ‘I WILL!’ I shouted, almost in tears. ‘And I’m never ever coming out AGAIN!’

  That promise lasted about five minutes. I was lying on my bed with my face in my pillow when I heard the sound of the kitchen door opening.

  ‘Take care, Garry,’ I heard Dad say. His voice sounded very distant and solemn. Take care? I thought. Take care of what? Not my pigeon. I rolled off the bed and crept out on to the landing, just as Mum came out of the kitchen.

  ‘Well,’ sighed Dad, ‘now what do we do?’ He flopped back against the stairway and folded his arms.

  ‘He does as we’ve told him,’ Mum said firmly, plucking at an eyelash in the long hall mirror. ‘He either takes it back to this Duckins chap or he lets the bird take its chances in the wild.’

  Dad hummed thoughtfully and clicked his tongue.

  ‘We can’t keep it, Tim,’ Mum continued. ‘We’re not equipped for housing pigeons. Like you said, it’s a prison sentence – for us, as well as the bird. Besides, you know what he’s like. The novelty will wear off in less than a week.’

  No it won’t, I thought. Why did parents always say that? Why didn’t one of them understand?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I heard Dad mutter. He walked up the hall with his hands in his pockets. ‘I think he’s genuine. I really think he wants it.’

  Yes! I mouthed silently, clenching my fist. My dad. What a hero. Come on, Dad. Come on.

  ‘Oh, now you’re being as soppy as he is,’ said Mum, picking up a brush and stropping her hair. ‘It’s a pigeon, Tim. Not a hamster or a rabbit. It needs special care. Where on earth would you put it?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘Like he said, the shed. I’m sure it won’t mind sharing with a few old cans of paint.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Claire—’

  ‘No.’ Mum turned. ‘For a start we’ve always said, “no pets”. You give him that bird and two minutes later Natalie will be screaming she wants a kitten.
Anyway, there’s an even better reason why he shouldn’t keep it…’ Mum paused. Dad and I both held our breaths. ‘I’m worried about his schoolwork lately.’

  Schoolwork? I hadn’t expected that. What did school have to do with anything? I picked up Natalie’s cuddly rabbit and gave its ear a nervous tug.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Mum said sharply, as if it was me standing there in front of her. ‘You heard Mr Tompkins at the parent-teachers’. His concentration keeps wandering in class. He’s daydreaming, slipping well behind in certain subjects.’

  ‘All kids go through that,’ Dad defended. ‘I was the same when I was his age.’

  Mum shook her hair back and turned her gaze upwards. I just pulled away from the banister in time. ‘I’m telling you. If you let him have that pigeon, you’ll only make things worse.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I disagree,’ said Dad.

  I squeezed the toy rabbit tight to my chest. Please, Dad, please. Make her say yes. I promise I’ll try really hard at school. I’ll always do my homework on time. I promise.

  ‘I think the bird will have the opposite effect. I think the commitment and the responsibility of caring for it will focus his mind, not fog it up. I’m not saying he’ll whizz to the top of the class just because he’s got a pigeon in the shed, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, it is unusual. Who knows, it might be the making of him? It’ll give him something personal to cherish – and it’ll keep him off the streets.’

  There was silence a moment. The whole world seemed to be waiting for Mum. I could almost hear her eyebrows knitting. ‘All right,’ she conceded, ‘on your head be it…’

  Yes! I punched the air in triumph and plonked a kiss on the rabbit’s nose!

  Chapter Six