Canary in the Coal Mine

by Madelyn Rosenberg

  She took a bite of pretzel before Chester could finish it all. “The world seems pretty good, so far.”

  “How’s everyone at home?” Bitty asked as Walter flew off again to add to her exclusive report.

  “Aunt Lou and Uncle Aubrey are good,” Alice said. “But do you remember that little green bird, the one that belonged to Mr. Paulowski?”

  “Schwartzy?”

  “He died the day after you left. And then there’s Jamie.” Alice’s voice carried a current of sadness.

  “He’s not sick, is he?”

  “No, but he and his dad have been fighting. Every night, it seems like.”

  “About the mine.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Jamie says he won’t work there,” Alice said. “Not ever. But Mr. Campbell says there aren’t any other jobs in Coalbank Hollow, and probably never will be. And that it’s good work. ‘Not to mention it’s kept us all fed.’ ”

  “What’s his ma say?”

  “She wants him to stay in school, go to college, even. But Mr. Campbell says they shouldn’t entertain ‘foolish notions.’ ”

  For the first time since his friends had arrived, there was silence. They all wished they could change Clayton Campbell’s mind. They wished they could help Jamie.

  The birds kept talking as the sun set. Bitty told the story of his arrival in Charleston with more detail than ever before. His friends’ beaks opened wide when he spoke in his limited Cat, and wider when he told them he’d seen Cipher, though it had been days since the hawk had shown herself. He told them everything: about his visit to the courthouse, his visit to the inventor and the breaking of the new-and-improved gas detector. He told them about his cold and about his last meeting with Delegate Finch. Alice sounded impressed. Chester didn’t, but something—perhaps the salt in the pretzel—melted at least some of his sarcasm. Clarence drifted off to sleep, snoring softly, his head buried in his neck. Minutes later, they were all asleep, with Bitty sandwiched between his new friend and his two old ones.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, Bitty woke and stretched. Fffft. His right wing brushed against the sleeping Chester, just like in the old days. But unlike the old days, he took a few tentative steps and then zoomed out from under the awning. Soon he was touching nothing but sky. He passed over Grackle Creek and glanced down at his reflection. He looked different than he had the last time he had studied himself: a small, scared bird, black with coal dust. He looked stronger.

  When he returned from his flight, the station was crowded with people. He thought about Jamie’s oatmeal breakfast as he scavenged the remains of an abandoned waffle. He flew with the pieces, one by one, and heaped them beside Chester and Alice.

  “Wake up,” he called. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Chester covered his eyes with his wings, but Alice hopped up and looked around.

  “Where’s Clarence?”

  “He’s got work to do, too,” Bitty said.

  “Ha!” Chester said from beneath his wings. “I thought you said he was a pigeon.”

  “Lay off, Ches,” Bitty said. “We were dead wrong about the pigeons. Besides, he saved my life. Twice.”

  “Uncle Aubrey says—”

  “Uncle Aubrey says a lot of things.”

  “Well, I think Clarence is nice,” Alice piped up.

  “Nice and touchy,” Chester said, yawning. “Is that breakfast?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why didn’t you say so!” Chester rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and began to eat. While he munched, Bitty talked about plan E.

  “For Ergo.” He gave them Eck’s definition.

  “How’s his gas detector better than us? Or anything else that’s already out there.”

  “It’s got a better alarm system, for one thing,” Bitty said. “The inventor called it ‘revolutionary.’ Look, we help the miners, the miners help us. It’s simple logic. All we have to do is talk to the right people.”

  “We don’t know any people,” Alice said. “Except the Campbells.”

  “And that politician I was telling you about.”

  “And I’ve been telling you,” Chester said. “What has the government ever done for us?”

  “But this guy is a bird lover,” Bitty said. “Look, if I can get these guys together, I’m sure something will happen. Something good.”

  “And if I had a longer neck, I’d be a giraffe,” Chester said.

  “We flew here to be with Bitty,” Alice said. “Let’s hear him out.”

  “In other words—”

  “In other words: Shut up.” Bitty’s eyes opened wide. He’d never heard Alice talk like that before. She looked at him. “What do you want us to do?”

  So far Bitty’s plans hadn’t been exactly military operations. But this time he was sure of himself. “We need newspaper,” he said. “We need to find words that humans can understand.”

  Bitty wasn’t quite sure Mr. Finch would understand one of his crude notes, even if he was a bird lover. But Mr. Smith had an imagination.

  Clarence came flying up, winded as usual. “Pete’s gone,” he said.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “He’s not on his bench. He’s not under his tree.”

  “Maybe he’s just in the breadline,” Bitty suggested. “Maybe he went for a walk.”

  “He’s gone,” Clarence said. “I can prove it.”

  They flew to the maple, where they found Pete’s newspaper, neatly folded, resting against the trunk like a present. No doubt about it: the hobo had moved on to find some new stories, just as he’d said. Bitty hoped they’d be good ones. “I guess he won’t mind if we borrow his paper, then.” He wouldn’t dream of cutting up the paper if Pete needed it. But if he didn’t . . .

  “He’d have given it to you himself, if he’d known,” Clarence said.

  “Are you okay?” Bitty knew Pete was the pigeon’s favorite client.

  “I guess.” Clarence wobbled his head in something of a nod. “Well. Back to work.”

  Chester rolled his eyes. But as they turned the wrinkled pages of the newspaper, searching for words that were smooth enough to use, Bitty saw him look up to study the pigeons. Then he looked down again.

  They had nearly every word they needed right in one spot, thanks to Pete. If they could find a scrap of paper to stick them on, they’d be set.

  The downtown had the most potential, and Bitty wanted his friends to see what life was like on the other side of the river. They took off, near the trestle as always. But a gust of wind made them veer over the rushing water. “We should have read the flying report!” Chester hollered, his face wild and bright.

  Bitty, whose mouth was full of newspaper, couldn’t answer.

  They flew past Capitol Drug, the hotel and the bank before they found a receipt outside the hardware store. It was mostly blank and carried an air of legitimacy; it would do. Bitty didn’t know what the afternoon weather called for, and he wasn’t going to take a chance on the rain. Again, using pinesap, he attached his words to the scrap of paper, clipping off ings and adding the occasional s and ly. His new note read as follows:

  The Charleston’s finest was Alice’s idea—she thought if they paid the inventor a compliment, he’d be more likely to come. And it reminded them of their birdseed, back home. They found the word gas in an advertisement for Mister Lister’s Sour Stomach Solver. And Bitty thought the extra please couldn’t hurt.

  They delivered the invitation quickly, carrying the paper through the tunnels and trying not to get it dirtier than it already was. Eck and Bonnie had just started conducting a training session on the third floor, so Bitty couldn’t make introductions, but they looked in on one of the downstairs cats, who was chasing his tail in the bathtub.

  Virgil Smith wasn’t in his room. But Bitty saw three of the new gas detectors lined up beside the bed. With the help of his friends, Bitty placed the invitation on the man’s nightstand, where his own tail feather still rested. He thought, for
a second, about taking it back. But he left it where it was.

  They headed home with a sense of accomplishment.

  Now, if Mr. Smith would just find the note and then find Mr. Finch and then—but that was too many ifs to think about. Bitty had his friends. He was free. And one of his plans was finally going right. Anything was possible.

  They flew back down Virginia Street, trying to guess the number of rooms in each house they passed. As they turned onto Dickinson, they heard the rapid-fire chatter of a squirrel. He seemed to be repeating the same squeaky word over and over. Bitty had learned a number of words in Squirrel from his classmate and from Miss Mona. He recognized this one.

  Hawk.

  He repeated it, loudly, in a language Chester and Alice would understand. Already, they could make out the quiet beating of wings. There was a whoosh of air and a flash of talons.

  One minute, Alice was flying beside him. The next minute, she was gone.

  Chapter 18

  “Alice!”

  They screamed her name with one voice. Bitty didn’t look at Chester, because that would make it real. He hesitated only a second. “Follow them!” he said.

  The hawk was fast and had a head start, but she was flying for two. Her bent wing worked fine on the glides, but her flapping wasn’t steady. The canaries were gaining.

  “Where are they headed?” Chester yelled.

  Bitty didn’t know. And then he did.

  “The river.”

  The hawk didn’t appear to be worried that the canaries were behind her. Perhaps she was hoping they would follow so she could eat the three of them in order: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bitty blamed himself. He’d known Cipher was out there, but he’d gotten comfortable. He hadn’t been vigilant. He hadn’t watched the skies.

  The river loomed ahead of them, deep and wide. The hawk flew straight toward the open water and angled low, until Alice’s tail feathers, then her head, went under. The hawk moved up and down over the current. Bitty watched as Alice gulped air, then water, then air again.

  They had to act fast. Bitty spotted a stick floating downstream. He couldn’t slash it like a pirate sword, but he and Chester might be able to manage it with their beaks. “Grab the other end!” he yelled.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “Just grab it!” Bitty ordered. “There’s no time!”

  Perhaps it was all those years of sleeping in close proximity. Perhaps it was their time together in the mine, communicating with waves and taps. Chester picked up the other end of the stick in his beak. Together, he and Bitty lifted it and flew to face the hawk. Cipher’s hulking body dwarfed the canaries. Bitty felt smaller than he ever had. For a split second, the killer seemed to regard them both, menacing but amused, as if they were the main entertainment and Alice, barely struggling now, was the opening act.

  Bitty and Chester flew toward the hawk at full speed and caught her in the neck with their stick. Their combined force was enough to knock the breath out of her, and for one moment she loosened her grip on Alice. They dropped the stick and grabbed their friend instead, steering her to a rock that jutted out of the current. Water bubbled from her beak as the hawk fell into the rushing river. The current carried her a short distance, but then she was out of the water again. Angry now, she twisted her head to the right, then the left, and regarded the three birds with a calculating eye. “Fee. Fi. Fo. Fum.”

  Then they heard another sound, which to Bitty was chillingly familiar. “Chck. Chck. Watch it.”

  “Now what?” Chester asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Bitty told him.

  The taunt came again. “Chck. Chck. Watch it.” Bitty looked up in time to see V, the leader of the grackles, begin his torpedo attack. The canary flashed back to his first Charleston morning, and the way the water had numbed his feet while fear numbed everything else. Well, let him come, he thought. Let them all come. Bitty wasn’t hiding this time. He might be hawk food or grackle food, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  The other grackles joined V in the downward plunge, and Bitty braced for the attack. He squared his shoulders, and he didn’t close his eyes. Then he saw that the grackles were not aiming for him. They weren’t aiming for Alice or Chester, either. It was the hawk they were threatening.

  They buzzed around Cipher’s head the way they had buzzed around Bitty that day at the creek. They swirled and pecked and taunted until the hawk turned her regal body away from the water, flapped her wings twice and glided toward the shore with V and the Boys swarming behind her.

  Chapter 19

  “I never thought I’d be grateful to the grackles for anything,” Bitty told Clarence when Alice had dried out enough to make it back to the train station. They’d settled her in Bitty’s nest and she’d gone to sleep instantly, bruised but alive.

  “Hawks eat grackles, too,” Clarence pointed out. “Lucky you had a common enemy.”

  “Yeah,” Bitty said. “Lucky.”

  Alice still ached when they awoke the next morning.

  “You stay here,” Bitty said. “Chester and I will go the capitol. We’ll tell you everything that happens.”

  “Don’t forget me,” Clarence said. “Unite! Plan E. I’m a part of this mission, too.”

  “So am I,” Alice said.

  “Alice—”

  “I’m going with you,” she said. “You can’t stop me.”

  They didn’t try.

  They flew slowly, resting often—once halfway across the bridge. Bitty and Chester spent so much time watching the sky, they never saw the water. Clarence, with his spastic flight rhythm, flew just above them or just below them, daring anyone else to get close.

  By the time they reached the site of the new capitol building, Virgil Smith was there, standing by the rock where the two birdwatchers sat, same as last time, overlooking the river. The inventor wore a rumpled shirt and tie but no jacket. He clutched his gas detector in both hands, as if it were a baby instead of a piece of machinery.

  The birds flew close enough to listen.

  “—even afford it?” Mr. Finch was saying. “Tough times, after all.”

  The men descended into silence, and Bitty shook his head. Had they come this far to watch the whole plan dissolve? He didn’t have a plan F. He didn’t want to make one.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Finch said finally. “I’m heading back to my district in the morning. Just how many of those things do you have finished?”

  “About half a dozen, sir. But I can work on a bigger scale if I get a little seed money.”

  “Why don’t you bring them, all of them, and come along? If you can convince the mine in Coalbank to try them out, I’ll figure out a way to pay for them. Heck, Noble here’s a financier,” Mr. Finch said, indicating the man beside him. “Maybe we could talk him into chipping in. That’ll get you your seed money.”

  “Yep,” Noble said.

  “That’s awful kind,” said Virgil Smith. “And I’d be mighty obliged. But why would you do that?”

  Mr. Finch lifted his binoculars like a torch. “I’m a bird lover,” he said. “And my brother was a doctor at a coal camp once. Besides, it isn’t often a politician gets to be a hero. Is it?”

  Mr. Finch rose to his feet and shook the inventor’s hand.

  “Would you mind telling me something?” asked Mr. Finch.

  “No, sir.”

  “How did you even know where to find me this morning? Session’s over.”

  Mr. Smith reached into his pocket and pulled out Bitty’s tail feather. “A little bird told me,” he said.

  The birds didn’t speak as they flew back across the rushing river. They landed near Mrs. Gillespie’s bench so Clarence could make up for his morning off.

  “So we have to go back,” Alice said finally.

  “Of course we do,” Bitty said. “I don’t want to find out about whatever happens from a news report. But I’ll miss this place.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving?�
� Clarence said. “All of you?”

  “Plan E,” Bitty said. “The mission’s only partially accomplished. We have to see it through.”

  “Shortest vacation in history,” Chester said. “It wouldn’t even get a mention in the Coalbank paper.” He made his voice as snooty as possible: “ ‘Coalbank canaries Chester and Alice visited their friend Bitty, who resides at the Charleston train station, for a lousy forty-eight hours.’ “

  Though it was clear he didn’t want to give Chester the satisfaction, Clarence laughed.

  “I wish you could come with us, Clarence,” Bitty said. “Just to visit.”

  “I’m not much of a flier.”

  “Aw, you could make it. All we’ve got to do is catch the train. After that, it’s a smooth ride.”

  “Supposing I did go,” Clarence said. “What would we eat?”

  “For crying out loud,” said Bitty. “We’ll find something. We always do. Just come.”

  “Yeah. Come,” Chester added.

  Clarence looked at Chester. “Are you sure the hawk didn’t dunk you underwater?”

  “I don’t need a hawk to tell me I’ve been a jerk,” Chester said. “Come with us. Bitty needs a bodyguard.”

  “I’m not that much smaller than you,” Bitty said.

  “Well,” said Chester. “Maybe we all need one.”

  “Have you ever seen any pigeons in Coalbank Hollow?” Clarence asked.

  “No. But you’ve got to remember, we didn’t get out much.”

  Finally, Clarence agreed. The next step was to ask his mother for permission.

  “I won’t be gone long,” Clarence said.

  “But you’d have to come back all by yourself,” she said, wobbling her head in what looked like a no. “I don’t want you flying alone.”

  “Bitty flew alone, and he’s a lot smaller than me.”

  “Bitty didn’t have a choice,” she said. “But I wonder . . . Your aunt Zelda’s in Oak Hill. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a visit. What if I went with you partway? You could fly on to Coalbank Hollow and then, after your visit, come back to meet me. I’ve always wanted to ride a train.”