Nightingale's Nest

by Nikki Loftin

  My fingers tingled for a moment. I cracked my eyes open when I heard the flutter of wings. A dozen or so grackles had taken up position on the fence, heads cocked, listening intently. They didn’t make a single sound—something I’d never realized grackles were capable of, the noisy things. And then, when the song changed, turned into a light melody and ended, the last few notes spiraling like pollen on a breeze, the grackles all nodded and flew away together.

  “That was the strangest thing,” I said. “I’ve never seen—”

  “Is it better now?” I heard. I thought she was asking if I felt better, and I nodded. But she made an impatient tsk and reached for my arm again. “Little John, you didn’t even check.”

  I realized then she was examining the bloody scrape marks on my hand. What was she looking for? “It’s okay,” I said. “It’ll be better in a week.”

  “No,” she said, and a smile beamed out. “It’s better now.” And she lifted up my hand.

  The scratch marks were almost gone.

  “All better?” She had asked it twice, but I hadn’t been able to answer.

  Not even able to think, really. I just stared at my hand, wiping the few remaining dried flecks of blood off the skin. The pale scratches underneath looked old—days old. I couldn’t believe it.

  I didn’t believe it. It had to be my imagination. I couldn’t have scratched it very bad in the first place, right?

  But I knew it had been bleeding. My jeans had rusty streaks on them where I’d wiped the cut.

  I held my hand up to my mouth and licked it, to be sure. The faint taste of iron and salt drifted across my tongue.

  “Gayle?” I asked at last, looking down at her. She wouldn’t look at me now, though.

  “Was it okay, Little John?” she asked, her voice a whisper as soft as the breeze that rustled the Johnson grass. “Did I heal it good?”

  “Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat. “Yeah, it’s fine.” So . . . she thought she’d healed it, too? If we both thought that, could it be our imaginations?

  Or was it real?

  My head buzzed, and I wondered if I was going to hyperventilate. Maybe I’d been out in the heat too long. That would explain it. I decided to play along, though. “I’m fine. Thanks, Gayle,” I said after a few more seconds. I sat down, the seat of my pants crushing a few dandelions. She hunkered down next to me, her arms resting lightly on her knees. Timid, almost, like a wren that might hop away at my slightest movement. I reached one hand out and ruffled her hair again. “It’s okay,” I said. “So, how did you learn to sing so good?”

  “The healing song?” she asked. I nodded, and tried to keep my heart from thumping out of my chest. She really did think she’d done something.

  Maybe she had. I ignored the pulsing of the blood through my hand.

  “You won’t tell?” she said. “My mom and dad said I wasn’t ever to tell, except the trees, of course.” She said it so matter-of-factly, I couldn’t help but nod.

  “Of course.” I swallowed, hard. “So . . . you can heal stuff. By singing?”

  She nodded, then shook her head. “Well, some. I’m not really good at it. My mom was, though. She could sing just about anything and make it all better. I can only do small things.”

  “Like a cut?”

  She nodded and showed her even teeth in a proud smile. “Yep.”

  “Cool,” I said at last. Then we both got quiet. I could hear the whine of my dad’s chain saw across the fence. How long had I been over here? No more than ten minutes, probably. He wouldn’t miss me yet. Behind me, from the Cutlins’ house, I heard a raised voice. “Where’s that girl?”

  Dad might not miss me, but Mrs. Cutlin was already missing Gayle. When Gayle heard the woman’s voice, though, she clambered up the tree before I could even grab her leg—and I tried, missing, and re-scraping my hand on the rough bark. I swore, softly so Mrs. Cutlin wouldn’t hear, and called up to Gayle just as softly. “Get down here!” I hadn’t even had a chance to ask if she would come across the fence and sing for Mr. King. The thought of the five hundred dollars, and all the things I could buy with that much money, made me feel itchy. I didn’t have time to play pretend games with a little girl. I spoke louder. “You got to get down,” I demanded. “Now!”

  “No,” a sulky voice called back to me. “She’s mean. And you sound mean now, too. I’m staying in my nest.”

  I sighed. I wished Ernest were here. He had a way of getting Isabelle to do what he wanted without letting on that he was leading her. He’d know exactly what to say, what to do, to get Gayle down. Then I remembered a time when Ernest had been trying to get his sister to walk faster to school. It was her first week of kindergarten, and she’d decided she was sick and tired of the whole mess after only four days. She’d started walking slower and slower, until Ernest told Isabelle he was going to walk with Raelynn instead. Isabelle had practically run to keep up with us after that.

  Maybe something like that would work. “Fine,” I said, walking a few steps away, but slowly, looking over my shoulder as I went. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come over next door and help me in Mr. King’s gardens. It’s a paying job, and I was gonna ask Mrs. Cutlin if you could help me. But since you don’t want to, I’ll just ask Jeb.”

  Of course, there was no way I was going to ask Jeb Cutlin to do anything—other than jump off a cliff or hold still so I could beat him with my fists—but she didn’t know that.

  Thinking about it, I realized it was sort of dishonest, trying to get Gayle to do what I wanted by acting like I didn’t care what she did. It felt bad, like I was tricking her. Lying, in a way.

  It was all for a good cause, I told myself. Sure, I might get some money out of it. But Gayle would get to be away from the Cutlins. That was just as important, right?

  But five hundred dollars was an awful lot of important, too.

  My stomach flip-flopped. I hated feeling guilty—my stomach was the first part of me to start squirming. The sensation reminded me of the time I got food poisoning from the school cafeteria’s sloppy joes and threw up for three days straight.

  I was about to turn around, confess, when I heard “Wait!” behind me. It had worked.

  I walked a little faster. There was a sound of twigs and bark scattering on the leaf mulch beneath the tree. I tried not to think of how high she’d been, or how fast she was coming down. As long as I didn’t look back, I could keep calm enough. “Wait up, Tr— Little John!” she yelled.

  A second later, I felt a hot hand slip into mine. I curled my fingers around hers and walked up to the Cutlins’ front door. This time, I knocked on the wood of the screen door, avoiding the rusted wire. The door opened in a flash, and I had a feeling Mrs. Cutlin had been about to come out looking for Gayle—she had a hard, set expression on her face, the kind my mom used to get when it was time for spring cleaning. Not happy, but determined. Gayle hid behind me as we spoke.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Cutlin,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have a favor to ask.”

  The wrinkles on the sides of Mrs. Cutlin’s mouth got deeper and deeper as I explained that Mr. King wanted me to do some gardening.

  “What can a kid your age do?” she started, then stopped as I straightened up and she saw how tall I was. She shook her head, like I’d disappointed her by having a growth spurt. “Well, I don’t see why you want Suzie.”

  “The petunia beds need some work,” I lied. Mr. King’s regular gardener was off for a couple of weeks, sure, but he’d left everything in pristine condition. But Mrs. Cutlin didn’t need to know that. “There’s a huge infestation of snails, and some weeding. I’m supposed to help my dad with the trees,” I explained, and flexed my arm slightly so she could see the muscles there, see I wasn’t just hanging around. “I’m needed on the big jobs. But Mr. King wants the garden done, too. So I wondered if Ga—I mean, if Suzie could hel
p out. I’d pay her,” I went on, when it looked like Mrs. Cutlin was about to start shaking her head no. “It’s not much, just a couple of dollars a day, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “The social worker’s not coming until four,” she said—to herself, I thought. Not thirty seconds later, we were standing outside the shut door, Mrs. Cutlin’s admonition to “bring that money home, girl, and give it to me” still ringing in the warm morning air.

  “You did it,” Gayle whispered. “You escaped me.”

  “Sure thing. Let’s go, jailbird,” I teased, hearing the chain saw cut out for the first time in a while. “I really do have to help my dad.”

  And get Gayle into Mr. King’s recording studio, I thought, the idea churning up my stomach like those rotten sloppy joes. Good thing I’d only had toast for breakfast.

  Maybe I was just hungry, I decided. “Let’s get a snack on the way.” We ran, laughing at everything and nothing, around the front of Mr. King’s house.

  Of course, when we got to the truck, my dad was waiting. And the look on his face made Mrs. Cutlin seem positively cheerful.

  “Where have you been, boy?” Dad’s hand twitched on the door handle. I could tell he wanted to smack me, but then his gaze fell on Gayle. His eyes got big and he blinked twice, like he was trying to clear them. I thought I knew why: The last time I’d been running around holding hands with a little girl, it had been my sister. Gayle didn’t look anything like Raelynn had, except for being about the same height. But they both had that same way of running, fast and carefree, like their feet were about to leave the ground. “Who’s this?”

  I took advantage of Dad’s distraction to glance toward the house. Was Mr. King in there, watching? Did he think I’d brought Gayle over to sing for him?

  “This is the Cutlins’ new foster kid,” I explained. “I thought she could help with the gardening.”

  “No,” he said, and turned away.

  “Dad, please.”

  He swung around, and his lips were tight. “I said no. Now get the Mickey Mouse garden work done and then get your tail out there. I got eighty more acres of pecans and only one of me. I need a hand.”

  “It’ll get done quicker if she helps,” I argued, wondering if I’d pushed it too far.

  He answered in a soft growl. “We need every dime from this job. Send her home.” I wished I could make Gayle go somewhere else to play for a few minutes. Just far enough that I could get Dad alone and tell him about the Cutlins and those marks on Gayle’s arms. All my suspicions. But I didn’t have to say anything. Mr. King took care of that.

  The front door opened, and the Emperor stepped out, still dressed in his fancy clothes. “Oh, hello! Good job, Little John. You brought Gayle back with you! Wonderful.”

  I wanted to tell him that she hadn’t come over to sing, not yet anyway, but Dad was looking at me strangely. “He asked you to get her?”

  “Well, sort of,” I said. I would have said more, but my tongue felt thick in my mouth. Besides, Gayle was clinging so tightly to my leg that I was starting to lose circulation in my foot. It was peculiar; the closer Mr. King got, the higher Gayle tried to climb up my leg that I leaned down. “What’s wrong, Gayle? It’s only Mr. King.” She didn’t answer, just tucked her face into my jeans leg and shook her head.

  By the time Mr. King reached us, her whole body was trembling.

  I guess he must have noticed, because he didn’t try to talk to her. He did turn to my dad, though. “Oh, John, I need to ask about what you’re planning to do with the wood from those pecans. There’s a company owned by an acquaintance of mine that makes amazing furniture out of burled pecan. Can you spare a minute, look at his website? I’m not certain those trees would be big enough.”

  Even though he was asking a question, the tone of his voice made it clear he expected Dad to stop work and go inside the house to talk about furniture. I stepped back, dragging Gayle through the dirt—it was entirely possible Dad would explode at Mr. King and tell him exactly where to stuff his burled pecan website.

  But he didn’t. Dad just nodded, mouth tight shut, and followed Mr. King up to the porch. He didn’t say a word to me or Gayle, almost like he’d forgotten we were there.

  “Gayle?” I whispered when they had gone. “What’s the deal? Get off my leg, you silly goose.”

  She let go a little, and laughed once. “I’m not a goose. I’m a nightingale.”

  “You’re a nutball,” I said, and ruffled her hair. “Why does Mr. King freak you out?” She wouldn’t answer, just drew circles in the mulch with her toe.

  “Is it because he smells like mothballs and pee?”

  She couldn’t hide her laugh. “No.”

  “Why, then?”

  “When he talks to me, it sounds like . . .” she started, then let go of my leg and picked at a pebble by her foot.

  “What?” I said, and leaned down, tipping her chin up so I could see her eyes. “What does it sound like when he talks to you?”

  “Like a crow,” she said at last. “It sounds like a crow feels.”

  I took a breath, wondering what in the world she meant—crows were loud, right? But she hadn’t said it sounded like a crow sounds. “How does a crow feel?” I wanted to ask. How would anyone even know that? But Gayle had spotted a butterfly, and she was chasing the fluttering scrap of orange toward the back of the house.

  Good, I thought. That’s where the snails were, anyway. If there were any. I’d ask her about the crow thing later.

  I just hoped it didn’t mean she wouldn’t sing for him. Crow or not, five hundred dollars could buy a lot of birdseed.

  Turns out there were snails in the garden. So many that Gayle and I spent the rest of the day picking them off the soft leaves of Mr. King’s flowers and flicking them toward the robins and jays that waited in the bushes, twittering and chirping so loud I almost didn’t hear Dad when it was time to go.

  “You gotta scoot,” I said to Gayle, starting back toward the house. “Oh, wait. Money.” Mrs. Cutlin would expect Gayle to have some money. I ran to the truck, with a yelled “Just a minute!” to Dad, who was settling up with Mr. King for the week. The glove compartment usually had a few dollars in it.

  This time, though, it only had a few quarters and some other loose change. I scooped it all up and ran back to Gayle. It would have to do. “Here,” I said. “Give this to Mrs. Cutlin. I’ll bring some bills on Monday.”

  “Monday,” Gayle repeated, holding the coins tightly, like they might vanish if they hit the ground. “Not till Monday?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I live on the other side of town.”

  “Gayle?” A soft voice came from behind her. I startled. It was Mr. King—he’d moved so quietly, neither of us had heard him. “Do you have time to sing for me today?”

  Gayle made a choking sound. “Sing?”

  “Yes, sing insi—” Mr. King said, and shot a look at me. I tried to tell him to shut up with my eyes, and he must have gotten it, because he stopped mid-word, and frowned. Then he looked back at Gayle. “Don’t worry about it. My mistake.” He reached a hand toward her, though, like he was going to pet her, or grab her, or something.

  She was gone before he could finish the movement.

  Together we watched her scamper across the grass and practically fly over the fence, scurrying up the tree and into her nest. I sighed; I’d seen most of the coins go flying, and I knew Mrs. Cutlin wouldn’t be happy.

  “Let’s go, Little John,” I heard Dad say, as the truck engine started up. Mr. King had a hand on my arm, though, and I looked down into his angry brown eyes.

  “What’s your game?” he said.

  “No game, sir,” I answered slowly, wondering what I should say. I decided on the truth. “I didn’t have time to even ask her today. She’s a little—scatterbrained. And she won’t say anything around the Cutlins.
I was just about to ask her when you came out. Give me some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Just a week,” I said. I could probably convince Mrs. Cutlin that Gayle was needed for a week’s worth of gardening. “I’ll bring her over to work in your garden. Get her used to it.” He looked doubtful, so I smiled. “You said it yourself. She’s a scared little thing. Look at her now, hiding in a nest. She’s like a bird. You got to move slow.”

  Finally, he nodded. “All right,” he muttered. “A week. By next Friday, though.” My relief must have showed on my face, because he squeezed my arm, a little harder than was friendly. “Listen,” he said, “I’m dead serious about paying you to get that little girl to sing for me. But don’t try to trick me. You’ll regret it.”

  “No, sir,” I promised, hearing my dad rev the truck engine. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  He let go, and I ran for the truck, feeling his eyes on me the whole time, wondering again what Gayle had meant about his voice feeling like a crow’s. I didn’t get that—his voice sounded normal to me. But his eyes? They reminded me of a crow, for sure.

  Weren’t crows always pecking dead things in the road? Right then, I could feel his gaze stabbing into my back like a sharp beak, threatening worse if I didn’t do what he asked.

  That night, I tried to talk to Mom about Gayle. I shouldn’t have bothered; it was one of her bad nights. When I got home, she was sitting in Raelynn’s room, going through her chest of drawers. The cat was in there with her, but it ran out when I came in. It had really been Raelynn’s pet, not mine. It still slept in her room most nights.