Lights Out

by Douglas Clegg

  His words seemed meaningless, until on the third try to find her foot where it should’ve been, she suddenly understood.

  Her screaming might’ve been heard had the night surf not boomed, had the winter not brought with it a tree-bending wind.

  The operation was not completed for six days; it was a blur to Alice, for he kept her drunk and on painkillers.

  When she awoke, clearheaded, she felt nothing but a constant stinging all up and down her spine, as if her skin had been scraped and she’d been rolled in salt.

  There was dried blood on the sheets. Several hypodermic needles lay carelessly beside her. Fish scales, too, spread out in a vermillion and blue desert, piled high, as if every fish in the ocean had been skinned and thrown about. The smell was intolerable: oily and fishy. And the flies! Everywhere, the blue and green flies.

  She tried to sit up, but her back hurt too much. She fought this, but then parts of her body, including her arms, felt paralyzed. She wondered what drugs he’d been administering to her—strangely, she felt euphoric, and fought this feeling.

  She lay back down, closed her eyes, willing this dream to depart.

  She awoke again when he came back into the room.

  “One last thing,” he said, holding the serrated knife up to her neck, “one last thing.”

  The blade had been warmed with the fire on the gas stove. She felt no pain as he took the knife and scored several slits just below her chin. Afterward, she could not even speak or scream, but could only open her mouth and emit a bleating noise.

  He lifted her up into his arms, kissing her nipples as if they were sacred, and carried her out to the beach. “I will take you out to your city, my love, and set you free,” he said as he laid her down in the bottom of a small boat. She could only stare at him. She felt resigned to death, which would be better than the results of the torture he had put her through.

  Out to sea, he rolled her over the edge of the boat.

  At first she wanted to drown, but something within her fought against it. She managed to grasp hold of some rocks out beyond the breakwater. She held on to them for over an hour as the freezing salt water smashed against the back of her head.

  She grasped at the edge of a rock; it cut at her hands, but she held on. If I just hang on for another minute, she thought, just another ten seconds, I’ll be fine. God will rescue me. Or someone will see me. Will see what he’s done to me, this madman. I haven’t lived all my life to come to this. I know something will happen. Something will pull me out of this.

  The waves crashed around her, like glass shattering against her face. Please, God, someone, help me. All she could taste was the stinging salt. Something animal within her was clinging to all that she knew of life now, not her marriage or her family or her career, but this serrated rock and this icy sea.

  From the shore she heard him, even at the distance. His boat already docked. The old man stood there, singing.

  Alice held on to the rock for as long as she could.

  Then she let go.

  The old man stayed on the shore for hours, his voice faltering only when dark arrived. He had a great and lovely baritone, and he sang of all the secrets of the sea. A couple, walking along the beach that evening, held each other more tightly, for his song sparked within them a memory of love and regret, and such beautiful and heartrending longing.

  They watched from a distance as the old man raised his hands up, his songs batting against the wind, against the crash of the surf, against all that life had to offer.

  A Madness of Starlings

  1

  What possessed me to retrieve the little fledgling, I can’t say for sure. I rescued the baby bird from the jaws of the tiger-striped tomcat that had been stalking it. I wanted to show my boys that the smallest of life sometimes needed protection from the predators.

  I brought it into the house, hoping to wait out the cat’s bloodlust. My two boys came out to look at it. I warned them not to touch the bird just then. “The less contact it has with people, the better.”

  After an hour, I took the bird outside again. My kids watched from the living room window.

  It hopped in the tall summer grass that I had not gotten to with the mower. Its mouth opened wide, up to the skies, expecting its mother to come with food.

  I stepped back onto the porch and scanned the area to make sure no cat returned. I hoped that the bird’s mother would return and feed it so that the balance of nature could be restored and I’d have no more responsibility.

  An hour later, the fledgling continued to hop and squawk and open its mouth to heaven. No mother arrived. I had lost my own mother when young, and did not like remembering this when I saw the bird I came to call Fledge. Loss was the bad thing in life. I hated it, and didn’t wish it on a baby bird.

  I took the little guy in, and my wife, Jeanette, and the boys (little William and tall Rufus) helped me build a cage for it as part of our “Saturday Family Project.” At first, Fledge would not eat from my hand — or from a straw. But we picked up some mealworms and crickets from the pet store in town, and soon enough, the little guy hunted them up on the floor of his cage. Devouring fifty worms a day and perhaps ten crickets, Fledge grew fast. Within five days, the little guy had full feathers and the boys and I took him into the rec room from flight training. He flew from Rufus’ fingers to the bookcase.

  I had to put a stepladder up to rescue him from the highest shelf.

  “We have to let him go,” I told the boys. “He’s ready to fly. He’s eaten a lot and knows how to catch crickets and peck for worms on his own.”

  “Isn’t he a pet?” William pleaded. “He’s ours now.”

  Rufus, the elder at nine, added, “He can’t survive out there, Dad. He can’t. He’s too used to us.”

  “It’s only been a week,” I said. “He belongs out there.”

  “I heard birds only live a couple of years out there,” Rufus said. “I bet in his cage, he’d live a long time.”

  “He’s a wild bird, he’s meant to be out there. Besides, when we go to Florida in February, who’s going to take care of him?

  Will you clean the cage for the next twelve years if he lives that long? Every day that cage needs cleaning,” I said.

  Rufus looked very sad, and William’s eyes glistened with the easy tears of a little boy who won’t accept loss. “But Daddy,” he said. “Daddy, I love Fledge.”

  “I know,” I said. “But don’t you want Fledge to be happy?”

  William nodded. “I want him safe.”

  “He’s happy here,” Rufus said. “Now. He won’t be happy when a cat gets him. Or when an eagle gets him.”

  “We don’t have eagles around here.”

  “Or when he gets some disease and nobody takes him to the vet.”

  “I’m going to miss him,” William said. “So long, Fledge.”

  “Look, he’ll be around the yard. He’s a starling. They’re always here. He’ll probably fly around and make a nest under your bedroom window.”

  William’s eyes brightened. A smile crept across his face.

  Noticing that I had turned the corner on William’s emotional rollercoaster and now things were heading upward, I said, “And whenever you see him hurt, you can run out and bring him in and we’ll take him to the bird doctor, if you want.”

  Rufus had begun to scowl. “I saw a dead bird out by the curb. That’s what’s going to happen to him if we let him go.”

  “Roof,” I said. “Roof, look. When you grow up, we’re going to let you go. You’re going to fly away. And as much as I’d like to put you in a cage here so I can always see you, I know that’s going to be wrong.”

  Of course, he didn’t understand this. Rufus felt he’d never leave the house or his parents or the protected world of childhood.

  But I knew he would.

  I knew the bird needed to get out and live just like my kids would one day need to get out and spread their wings. Even when the tomcats of life got them.
<
br />   The shelter of childhood was temporary, at best.

  The boys put up more protests, with Rufus cataloguing the bleak prospects of a bird in our suburban world. I countered his arguments with tales of birds flying over the treetops, or Mother Nature, or how Fledge saw us as giant monsters that were not like his parents or brothers and sisters. “Starlings have to fly twenty miles a day to really enjoy life.”

  Finally, I let the discussion die down. When the boys were out playing with friends, I took Fledge onto my fingers, and leaned out the second floor window of our house.

  The bird flew off.

  Just as it got up into the air, clearing an overgrown azalea bush, another bird came down and began attacking it mid-air. I felt panic, and genuine terror.

  I worried about the little guy, trying his wings out for the first time. Fledge continued flying toward a crabapple tree in the front yard. Fledge turned, almost as if he were looking at me. His mouth opened wide as he squawked like a baby. In that moment, I didn’t see the bird; I saw my boys.

  I had a premonition of a moment of terror in life when I would let go of my sons’ hands and they would go off and the world would do its own version of attack on them. My imagination went haywire as I imagined Rufus in his early twenties in a foreign land, felled by bullets in a war; and William, injecting heroin into his arms, surrounded by lowlife friends in some crack house.

  As I watched Fledge, he fluffed up his feathers and spread his wings wide and flew over the rooftop. I raced to the bathroom window, and saw Fledge flying over other houses, off through the neighborhood.

  Fledge had made it past the attacking bird. Past the trees. We had done it, I thought. We helped Fledge get strong and healthy and become an adult, and he was going to live his life the way he was meant to live it. My brief insanity, those split-second visions of my boys, the dreadful futures I imagined for them — all of it dissipated and I laughed at myself and the way my mind worked.

  Later, I told the boys that Fledge had flown off, and that he was fine. They moped a bit, but the more we talked about Fledge and Fledge’s life, the better my children seemed to understand why Fledge had to go.

  That first night, I went and sat in front of Fledge's empty cage. Beyond the cage, a window looked out on trees. I opened the window and lifted the screen. Part of me felt that Fledge might come back, or if he was hurt, he might show up for food again.

  I kept the window open for three days, and then shut it.

  2

  I missed the bird. We had kept the little guy for five days, but it was enough for me to begin to think about life and nature and to wake up each day hoping Fledge had not died in the night. Out the window, other starlings and robins and mockingbirds flew around, but I kept watch for Fledge. I brought out the old binoculars from the cabinet in the garage, and, early in the morning — before even my wife awoke — I went to the window and looked out. I whistled sometimes when I was in the yard, thinking Fledge might hear my voice.

  Then, at twilight, I spoke to my wife, Jeanette, about the bird.

  “It’s a starling,” she said. “They’re nuisances. I bet the state would’ve paid you to kill it.”

  “Stop that,” I said. “It needed help.”

  “I know. I’m kidding. Really. I’m kidding. But the bird’s fine. Believe me. You protected it. You got the boys to think about nature a little. And now that bird’s off doing what birds do.”

  “I never really noticed starlings before,” I said. “I mean, I knew they were out there.”

  “God, in the fall they just swarm. Freaks me out sometimes. Like the Hitchcock movie.”

  “I was out in the yard this morning,” I said. “I couldn’t stop looking in the trees. And on the roof. I just figured he’d stick around.”

  She gave me a funny look, as if she were trying to figure out if I were joking or not. “Honey? It’s a bird. You really want a bird, we’ll get a cockatiel. But I don’t really want a bird,” she said.

  “I don’t want a bird, either,” I said. Then, I laughed at myself, and she giggled, too. We had some coffee and went out on the patio. We sat in the old deck chairs that were gray from years of neglect. “But it’s funny.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Loss. All of life is about loss.”

  “No, it’s not!” She laughed and told me I had better not get depressed on her. “Life has loss in it,” she said, when she saw that I was a little hurt by her laughter. “But look, we both have great jobs, the kids are great. We’re building to something. We have love. There’s a lot in life besides loss.”

  “Someday, we’ll lose everything. I mean it. I’m not sad about it. I guess I’m wistful.”

  “Wistful is sad.”

  “No it’s not. Someday, the boys will go out into the world. Not everyone survives it. God, maybe I’ll get heart disease. Or some…some accident will happen.”

  “You’re getting morbid,” she said. “I hate this kind of stuff. You shouldn’t say it. It’s too dark.”

  “I’m trying to grasp this thing. I’m nearly forty, and I want to be prepared. I want a good mindset.”

  “That bird,” she said. “It got you thinking like this.”

  “It’s nuts, I guess,” I said.

  “Not nuts, honey. But it’s…it’s useless. We have a good life. Bad things don’t always happen. That bird. That bird is probably off flying around, happy as hell to be out of the cage and back in its natural environment. It’s probably flocking with other starlings, devouring someone’s grass seed or chasing off squirrels from a nest that it’s building with a mate. It’s an adult by now. It’s fine. That’s how life goes.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked, startled as I glanced over at her.

  She held her coffee mug near her lips, watching me. “What?”

  “That sound. Was that Fledge?”

  I heard it again. The bickering squawk of a starling. Somewhere among the trees.

  “No. Wait,” she said. “No.”

  Then, I heard a chirp at the rooftop. I looked up — it was a sparrow.

  “Come here,” Jeanette said.

  I glanced over at her. She had raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, her version of close-up seduction.

  “What for?”

  “Just come here.” She set her mug down on the little table, and scootched back in her chair. “Sit with me.”

  “We’ll break the chair.”

  “Throw caution to the wind.”

  I went over, and she put her arms around me. Kissed me on the forehead. “My big baby who loves birds.”

  Deftly, she slipped her fingers to the buttons of my shirt, and opened them, her hands going to my chest, combing through the patch of hair. I kissed her, and she whispered, “The boys won’t be back from the Nelson’s ‘til nine. Nobody can see us.”

  We made love in that uncomfortable deck chair, in that desperate way that old marrieds do, trying to recapture the wildness of premarital sex. Somewhere in the rapture of it all, I heard the chattering of starlings in the trees, and glanced up.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”

  “I thought…” I didn’t want her to know what I was thinking, so I kissed her on the lips. “Maybe we should do this later.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel funny. What if someone sees us?”

  “Nobody can see us.”

  “I feel like someone can,” I said.

  “So, we give ‘em a show. Greatest show on earth.”

  “Naw,” I said, trying to sound warm and cuddly and friendly, but I drew my underwear and pants back up, and buttoned my shirt. She left hers open, but drew her knees together.

  “Since when do you turn down outdoors sex?” she asked.

  “We’ve never had outdoors sex ‘til now.”

  “I remember a certain hot August night on a lake in a little boat with life preservers as pillows,” she said. “August 18th.”

  “You remember the date?”
/>   “Sure. We were out at the lake. It was when we…”

  She didn’t have to finish the thought. It was the year before we conceived Rufus. It was to be our first child, the one who came from sex in the boat out on the lake at midnight. But she had lost the baby within four months. Eight months later, she was pregnant with Rufus.

  I didn’t like to be reminded of the first child.

  3

  That night, after my wife fell asleep, I went out to the patio for a cigarette. My first in three years. I kept the pack of Gitanes in an old backpack I’d had since college. It hung on a nail in the garage. Inside the pack, besides the French cigarettes I’d learned to smoke on a post-graduate trip to Paris, there was a bottle of Grand Marnier that had never been opened, a T-shirt with various obscenities written on it, and a pair of swimming trunks I had not been able to fit into since my twenties.

  The cigarette tasted great, and I followed the first with a second. I thought of Fledge, up in one of the trees, his little leg hidden under his feathers, with the other leg down, small claws clutching a tree branch.

  4

  The following Saturday, I took the boys for a hike. First, to a drug store to get some candy, and then up to the unincorporated area of town where there was a bike trail by the old railroad tracks. The boys seemed to have fun, running ahead of me, climbing rocks, finding a penny or quarter, balancing on the railroad ties. But I had begun hearing the birds. I heard more and more of them as we got deeper into the woods. Starlings, certainly, but also the caws of crows; the songbirds, too, with their chirps and whistles. I felt like I would hear Fledge’s distinct squawk, but did not, and even while I told the kids to watch out for broken glass on the trail, or not to touch the poison ivy, part of me had blocked even my own children out.

  I had never noticed so many birds before. Most of them were unseen, but their voices seemed loud, even annoying. Bickering in the skies, chattering in treetops, their language must have meant something to them. They must be communicating with each other. Mating. Attacking. Flocking.