Nightingale's Nest

by Nikki Loftin

  “Well, duh,” she said, punching me lightly in the ribs with her small fist. “It’s the friendliest tree in the whole yard over there, for one thing. And for another—it’s got my nest in it.” I pushed back so I could see her face. She rolled her eyes at me, and for a second she looked so much like Raelynn when I’d been teasing her—full of frustration with me, but good humor, too—that tears pricked my eyes.

  “Your nest?” I said, wanting to change the subject. “What’s the big deal about that? You could build another one.”

  “No, I couldn’t!” She jumped up. “That nest has all my treasures in it!”

  I laughed. “Treasures? What kind of treasures does a kid your age have?” I teased her, pulling on a piece of grass stuck to her arm. “You hiding diamonds up there? Rubies and gold bricks?”

  “Don’t be mean,” she said, her voice as frosty as my mom’s when I’d let fly a cuss word right outside the church. “They’re not those kinds of treasures. They’re the real kind.”

  “Oh, the real kind?” I got up, following her as she marched off in a huff toward her yard.

  “Yes,” she said. “The kind you can’t just . . . buy in a store.”

  “Oh,” I said. I had wondered what she had up there, besides sticks and baling wire. “Well, don’t let anyone else know you got treasures up there. They might steal ’em.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Nobody else is allowed to see them anyway.” She paused. “But you could, if you wanted to.”

  “Me? Climb that falling-down tree?” I laughed. “Heck, no! Not even if you had real diamonds and gold in there.”

  “Little John, you’re being silly. That tree is perfectly good. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  I just shook my head. We’d reached the fence, and I could hear Dad’s truck roaring back up the road. I had to get back to work.

  Then Verlie Cutlin’s voice sailed out across the lawn. “Suzie? Get back in here, girl. You got dishes.” I could hear the theme song for a game show drifting out the door underneath her voice. Seemed like Gayle had work to do, too.

  “You gonna be okay?” I asked.

  Gayle just shook her head. “I don’t think I’m going to be okay anymore,” she said in a broken whisper. “I don’t know what I’d do, if I didn’t have my tree.” She grabbed hold of my legs, clinging like a clump of stickyweed. For a minute, I wasn’t certain if she was talking about the sycamore—or me. But then she said, “Promise me. Promise me you won’t let your dad cut down my tree.”

  I took a breath, then peeled her arms off me. Dad was calling for me now, too, and I had to get. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Promise,” she demanded.

  I took a last look at the Cutlins’ house. There was no way they would have the kind of money it took to hire my dad. They’d probably chop it down themselves, or try, anyway—if they got their lazy butts off the sofa long enough to locate an axe. There was no harm in promising this one thing, to get that sad look out of Gayle’s eyes.

  “I promise,” I said.

  I’d never imagined I would look forward to working with Dad. But with Gayle around, it didn’t even feel like work. Sure, I hauled limbs, burned brush, even learned to trim and seal dead limbs—a job I figured out I hated the first time I did it, since the stink of the sealant gave me a terrible headache. But the chain sawing was awesome—even if Gayle called me a meanie under her breath when I did it.

  I couldn’t believe it when Dad handed me the saw and told me to use it on a couple of scrubby wild persimmons that had grown up in a brushy spot. He showed me how to turn it on and explained how the safety shutoff worked. I paid close attention; I didn’t want to cut my arm off or anything. But he said his saw was a good one, and that sort of thing didn’t happen when you were using it right.

  “Go on,” he encouraged. “Just don’t tell your mom I let you, okay? She’d have a fit.”

  “A huge one,” I agreed.

  We both laughed, and I was amazed to hear my own voice sound low and rich like his for a few seconds. The chain saw set my teeth to buzzing, and my arms shook with the weight and movement of it. But I did my job, and Dad clapped me on the back when I was done.

  It felt good, really good. Like I was finally doing my bit to help out, help Mom and the family. The only bad part was how the whole thing made me wish like fire that Ernest was there. I could imagine how big his eyes would get, seeing me starting up the chain saw, watching me going crazy on the branches Dad pointed out. Ernest probably would have begged me to let him have a turn, like it was some video game come to life.

  Gayle was the only one around, though—when I wasn’t cutting trees, that is. And she made me look forward to the days at the Emperor’s, even in the blistering heat. It was like I was still a kid, and we were playing all day long. Each morning, she would run over from next door as soon as she heard Dad’s truck, and meet me in the garden to find the one or two snails that were there.

  Both of us would pretend we didn’t see Mr. King staring at us—at her—through the windows.

  After the snails were gone, we’d run back across the property to help Dad. At first, he didn’t want a little girl around. But when he figured out she wasn’t getting underfoot, that changed. And when he heard her singing, something else changed: He started smiling.

  Once, he even tried to sing along. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Look at her,” Dad said to me one afternoon, watching Gayle run around with her arms out like an airplane, faster and faster. Her caseworker had been out the day before, so her hair was brushed and her face was clean and shining. A flock of small birds—black-capped chickadees and sparrows, mostly—was flying right over her head, twittering almost loud enough to cover the sound of her voice. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s like a ray of sunshine,” he said. “Like a—like a little bird.”

  “Sure is,” I agreed, watching the sparrows swoop lower and lower as she waved at them, like they wanted nothing more than to settle on her, make her into some sort of living tree, with arms for branches and feathers for leaves.

  “Her parents?”

  “She said they flew away.”

  “Ah,” Dad said. “Poor thing.” Then he shot a look toward the Cutlins’ house. I knew what he was thinking. “Poor thing,” he muttered again.

  I guess he felt pretty sorry for her, since he started letting me take more and more time off to play with her. The Emperor had enough acreage to really roam, and the next day we did.

  “Hey, Tree!” she yelled, skipping ahead, across ground studded with dead pecans and even a few scraggly prickly pears. “What’s this one?” She let out a piercing stream of notes.

  “A red-wing blackbird?” I guessed.

  “Yep!” she yelled.

  “What about this one?” I pursed my lips and let out a long, sweet whistle. It was a golden-cheeked warbler, my best birdcall.

  Or it was supposed to be. Gayle almost fell down laughing at me. “What was that? A toad? A cricket being stepped on?”

  “A warbler,” I answered. “Never heard one?”

  “Ha!” She shot over to me and blew a gorgeous birdcall—that sounded exactly like a warbler.

  “Show-off,” I muttered and pulled on her ponytail, not hard. I set my face into a fake scowl. “You hurt my feelings.”

  “I was just teasing. You’re not bad, for a person,” Gayle said matter-of-factly, slipping her hand into mine as we shuffled through dead leaves. “It’s just that you don’t make any sense when you try to speak bird.”

  “Make sense?” I asked, feeling the corners of my mouth twitch. “What are you going on about?”

  “Well, you do say bird words. But you get ’em all jumbled up. The birds probably can’t figure out what you’re trying to tell ’em at al
l, Tree.”

  I was about to remind her not to call me that when she stopped stock-still and yanked hard on my hand. “Come on, Tree! I think something’s hurt, over by the fence! The birds are getting all worked up about it. Can’t you hear?”

  I could hear birds calling, far off, where the back corners of the property joined up. “Something’s hurt? Well, you know what that means,” I answered, jogging to catch up.

  “What?”

  I glanced back toward the work site to make sure we were far enough away. We were. “It means we gotta call an ambulance!” I put my hands around my mouth and started wailing. Gayle squealed and ran over to me, grabbing my hand. “We’ll never make it in time on foot,” I said. “Hop on!”

  She climbed up me, hand over hand, just like she had her tree, and perched on my shoulders. “That way!” She pointed, and I followed. Weaving around up there was way too fun, and she changed the direction of her finger every second or so, to make me veer off running at a new angle. I wouldn’t let her fall, of course. She was feather-light, and I had a good grip on her legs. But she screamed and laughed like she was being tickled to death up there.

  My cheeks hurt from grinning, and my sides ached from laughter. For the first time in forever, I was having fun.

  Finally, we got to the fence. There was something there, near the bottom of the wire. A rabbit?

  “A fawn,” she breathed, climbing down. “It’s caught!”

  It was caught, one of its legs tangled in a loose piece of baling wire that had been half-hidden in the weeds. I looked around, wondering how long it had been stuck. There was no momma doe nearby, as far as I could tell.

  I was sure the fawn would startle and hurt itself even more, but Gayle was singing a soft, low melody. Within seconds, the fawn’s eyelids were drooping . . . and so were mine. I blinked, shaking myself, and stepped lightly across the tufts of grass and weeds to help.

  Gayle never stopped singing, just nodded at me to untangle the tiny thing’s legs. I worked quickly, swearing under my breath at the bloodied cuts the wires had made on its delicate limbs. Some of them were deep, and they were covered in ants and small bugs. It had been here a while, suffering. “We’re not going to be able to save this one,” I muttered, hoping Gayle would understand. “It’s been here a long time.”

  Gayle reached over and took my hand, settling it back on the wires. Fine, I thought. I’ll keep going. It wasn’t like I would hurt it any more. I worked fast, trying to ignore the dozens of finches that had been attracted by Gayle’s singing and that watched me, curiously, from their perches on the wires near my shoulders.

  They were sort of creeping me out, staring at me like that.

  Finally, I had the wire untangled. I straightened up, wondering how the fawn had—apparently—slept through the whole thing. “That was some lullaby,” I started to say, but Gayle shushed me. She laced her hands right over the torn-up places on the leg. Her song changed, to that same sort of tune she’d done when she’d gotten worried over my cut hand.

  But her face was what I was paying attention to. Her features transformed, somehow. Seconds before, she had been a little girl humming a tune over a hurt fawn. Now?

  She looked fierce, like a mother mockingbird dive-bombing a snake near her nest. Like she would do anything she could to help this little baby out.

  I knew that feeling.

  I must have been watching her face when it happened. She stopped singing, the notes dying off into the morning heat. I cleared my throat, and quicker than a wink, that fawn was up and—on its feet? How was it even standing?

  I cried out, “Wait!”—dumb, like the fawn could understand me. All it did was make that little thing run faster away from us.

  Gayle laughed. “It worked!”

  “What?” I said, amazed that the critter had enough energy to run after being stuck in a fence for who knows how long. And with those cuts . . . “I could have sworn it was really hurt.”

  “Well, sure, Little John,” Gayle said, taking my hand and swinging herself back up on my shoulders like a tiny monkey. “It was hurt before.”

  “Did you . . .” I paused, feeling her weight shift on my shoulders like the warm breeze was moving her. “Did you fix it?”

  “Giddyap!” was all she answered, and giggled.

  I laughed, too. Maybe she had healed the fawn, maybe not. All I knew for sure was that holding her on my shoulders like that made me feel a hundred feet tall. Like I was a giant and she was a fairy in some magical world that only the two of us knew about.

  Like I was strong enough for anything. Like she really could fix hurts with a song.

  Even if it wasn’t true, I wanted to believe it for a while. The idea of it felt like a sunbeam had found its way into my usual dark thoughts and was splashing light all over the walls of my memories.

  The next day at lunch, Dad shared his chips with Gayle. “Here, kid,” he said, leaning across the bed of the pickup to where she was perched on one side. “You need to put some meat on those bones.” His shirtsleeve pulled up when he handed her the chips, and Gayle got a look at some of the cuts on his arm, marks from the thorny vines we’d been clearing that day. I had a few, too, on my forearms where the gloves didn’t cover. They stung, but they weren’t a big deal. But Gayle thought Dad’s were.

  “You’re hurt!” she cried, and grabbed Dad’s arm.

  “Oh, I’m fine, honey,” he said. “This ain’t nothing.”

  “Want me to make it better?” she asked, her eyes as still and serious as I’d ever seen.

  Dad didn’t answer for a second. I looked over. He was staring at the ham sandwich on his lap. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down, though, like he was swallowing over and over. Then I understood.

  Raelynn had asked that, every time Dad had come home from work with even a tiny scratch or cut. She’d insisted on kissing every cut better.

  “I’d . . . I’d better go see to that redbud tree now,” Dad said, instead of answering. He got up and walked behind the truck, disappearing to check on some imaginary problem. I was pretty sure Mr. King didn’t have any redbud trees.

  “Did I hurt his feelings?” Gayle asked me. “What did I say?”

  “Nothing,” I said, moving to sit on the lowered tailgate of the truck where Dad had been. “It’s just you reminded him of Raelynn. She used to do that. Kiss it and make it better.”

  “I wasn’t going to kiss it,” Gayle said after a few seconds. “I was going to sing it better.”

  “Same thing, sort of,” I said, rubbing at the place where I’d cut my hand on the Cutlins’ screen door. The night before, away from Gayle, I had pretty much convinced myself I’d made it all up—my arm, the fawn. But maybe she could heal after all. Her song had made Dad happy, hadn’t it? Or close to it. And he hadn’t smiled in ten months.

  After a few moments, I heard Dad walking back.

  But it wasn’t Dad. It was Mr. King. Then, in a rush of sound—the swish of bare feet on grass—I knew Gayle had run off. What was it about Mr. King that made her so shy?

  “Hello, sir,” I said, hopping down off the truck. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” he said. “It’s been a week.”

  “Not quite,” I said, then remembered myself, “sir. Tomorrow’s a week.”

  “Have you asked her to sing for me yet?”

  “Well,” I said.

  His brows drew down, and I had the feeling he was about to say something I would regret.

  “But I’m going to today,” I rushed out. “And she likes me, and my dad. She’ll get used to the idea. Then we can do it—”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and his voice was like bark peeling off a birch tree.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, but he was already walking away.

  The next morning, I was nervous. I didn’t know why. I think because I had told Gayle t
o meet me in the garden, and I had a feeling it was going to be harder to convince her to sing for Mr. King than I’d hoped. Maybe it was because Mrs. Cutlin had phoned the house the night before, asking how much it would cost to get her sycamore taken out. Why I would worry about that, though, I didn’t know. It wasn’t going to happen. Dad had quoted her his price—a good price, at that—and she had laughed at him, then offered an amount so stupidly low, he laughed right back.

  Maybe I was nervous because Dad had told me we had a lot of work to do that day, so I couldn’t play with Gayle. But I told him I had to at least meet her, and check on the snails.

  But when I got to the garden, she wasn’t there. The only trace of Mr. King was the twitching of a curtain. The only other sign of life was the buzz of Dad’s chain saw, the pitch rising up and down as he cut.

  Then a crow flew high overhead, cawing. It sounded excited, like it had found something to eat. Or something to take back to its nest. For some reason, the noise made me jumpy.

  I was just about to leave when Gayle came running up. “Good morning,” she yelled. “Look what I made you!” She motioned for me to lean down, and put at least a half dozen flower necklaces over my head.

  “Wow, Gayle,” I said. “That’s a lot of flowers. What did you do, raid Mr. King’s garden in the night?”

  “No. The birds brought me ’em,” she answered. I didn’t even want to know what that meant, so I went on.

  “Listen, Gayle, I gotta go help my dad today. So why don’t you hold on to these necklaces for me—”

  I started to take them off, but she stopped me. “Oh no! I’ve got enough for your dad, too!” She held up another big wreath that she’d strung with petals and silver sage leaves. It was beautiful, like the engravings of leaves and flowers on the margins of one of my bird books. “Where is he?” She tilted her head in one direction, then the other, listening as the chain saw roared back to life in the distance. “Oh. Cutting more of those poor trees. I wish he’d stop.” She set the wreath back down. “We’d better get the snails quick today, Little John. Your dad’s flowers might not last.”