After we’d extricated ourselves, I picked up the Springfield and we started to walk again, talking the whole way about everything and nothing. We sang as many verses as we could remember of “My Darling Clementine” and made up several more. We discussed how much ginger was required to make a good ginger beer and argued about whether a diamond-shaped kite or a box kite was better for flying in the fierce wind at Mount Zion Cemetery. We made plans to start a moth collection, find a bear’s den (I promised not to shoot), track down some honeycomb, and climb up to Flat Rock, where we’d spend the night watching for comets.
Then Agatha turned at a split-rail fence, and I realized she was heading toward the McCabes’. Or, to be more accurate, toward Billy McCabe.
Had she wanted to see Billy this entire time? I’d wanted to be with her, and here she was thinking about Billy?
Billy McCabe had corrupted my sister’s character. It began the moment he and Agatha became best friends at that town picnic on the bluff. Billy was fifteen, Agatha was fourteen, and I was nine. The two of them went off to explore a cavern with “an echo like a cathedral.” (Some words a person remembers with exactitude.) I followed, keeping up until Billy ruffled my hair with his pawlike hand. “Why don’t you play with Ebenezer? He’s your age,” he said.
I rolled my eyes at Agatha, sure she’d agree that Billy McCabe’s pea-brained presence was no longer required. We, the sisters, would go off on our own. We’d leave the dimwit behind.
Instead, Agatha shrugged. “You don’t like caves, Georgie. Stay here. You’ll have more fun.”
Oh yes, that stung!
Agatha and Billy had been friends ever since. From then on, everybody in Placid assumed that Billy and Agatha would tie the knot.
This blue-sky February day was only two months after the New Year’s ball. Ever since that ball, the situation had felt tentative. I’d been watching Agatha closely, sure all it took for disaster to strike was Agatha showing weakness where Billy was concerned.
If spending your blue-sky day on someone wasn’t a consent, then I didn’t know what it was. Meet Mrs. Billy McCabe! Billy would take Agatha off to some barely settled, territory-like place in Minnesota and I’d never see her again. Apparently, this was all fine by Agatha.
I stopped right there. “I’m not going that way,” I said.
“What?” said Agatha.
“You’re asking me to spend time with babies so you can be with Billy.”
“Georgie, you like those boys fine.”
“The McCabe boys think the most ignorant things are funny. All they’ll want to do is shoot this rifle.”
“That’s what you want to do.”
“Not like that, I don’t.” I kept walking down the road.
Agatha stood at the turnoff watching me. “Where are you going?”
I turned around to face her and said loudly: “To be by myself. I don’t fancy the McCabes like you do: Billy, Billy, Billy.”
Her face screwed tight when I sang out his name like that. “Suit yourself. Be back here in an hour,” she said.
I walked on without saying anything. Our first free day, all that bright blue sky and melting snow, and Agatha wasted it. She’d do worse too: she’d ruin everything. She’d leave our family. She’d leave me. In an hour I expected to see Agatha and Billy perched on the McCabe fence, holding hands, ready to share their “announcement.”
Let her. I do not need her, I thought.
* * *
I more or less clomped down the road, losing all sense of blue sky. When I reached a field, I turned into it and headed toward the woods on the other side.
I was three-quarters across when I saw something rooting around on a patch of snowless ground underneath some black oaks. It stopped me short. I looked twice to be sure. But that rosy chest was unmistakable, and those birds are not exactly small—wild pigeons.
February 28 was mighty early. People talked about pigeons sending scouts, but I’d never believed them. Scouting suggested intelligence, which everybody knew pigeons lacked. But there they were: about twenty-five of them feeding on acorns at the field’s edge. They called to one another, each note higher than the last: kee-kee-kee-kee.
Back came my blue-sky day. It had alighted on earth in the slate-blue feathers of the male pigeons’ backs. The rose color on the males’ chests eased into the blue by turning green and gold. Long black tail feathers trailed behind.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I put the rifle in my left hand and rooted around in my coat pocket for a cartridge. Then I opened the trapdoor, slid the cartridge in, and closed it back up.
Most people shoot pigeons with a shotgun—No. 8 pellets. A single cartridge of pigeon shot is filled with hundreds of tiny balls. These pellets spray outward, so a single shot can garner several birds. But I wasn’t after a pigeon pie; I wanted sport, to show skill at shooting. Grandfather Bolte and I were keeping track of what I shot with the ammunition I used, and to shoot a bird with a single bullet is difficult—even a bird as large as the big male in front of me. I estimated that bird at a full seventeen inches head to tail. He’ll do fine, I thought.
The movement had captured the big male’s attention. He twisted his head this way and that, eyeing me. Several other birds flicked their heads side to side, and began to take a few tentative steps. I heard a low twee repeated among them. The wing feathers on one lifted a little. I think of wild pigeons as being bold, but I could see this group would bolt if I did anything sudden.
This is the moment where inexperienced hunters panic. They sense anxiety in their prey and jerk their rifle to get their shot. But I never panic. I let stillness seep through me while I line up my target.
Given my preoccupation with Agatha and Billy, achieving stillness that day was no small feat. But I did it. I leveled the rifle and concentrated on that big male. That bird and I existed in a tension, like a wire was pulled tight between us. I could hear him thinking: What? What? What? The big male twitched his head to look at me from one more angle. Then that male took a step toward me, his rosy red breast dead center. I squeezed the trigger.
Bang! The rifle butt jammed against my shoulder. A bird screeched. Wings clapped. A trail of smoke hung in the air.
I let the barrel drop. As I waited for the air to clear, I shook out the cartridge and loaded another one into the rifle. Maybe the birds hadn’t flown too far.
When the smoke cleared, the big male lay on the ground right where I expected him. The rest? Gone.
I walked over, picked the big male up, and ran my hands over his feathers. I flushed with pleasure imagining what Grandfather Bolte would say. I removed the unused cartridge from the rifle, pocketed it, and remembered Agatha and Billy.
Agatha was sitting on that split-rail fence alone.
“Where’s Billy?” I called out.
“I nearly went looking for you, but I didn’t know which way to go,” she said.
She hopped off the fence, came to me, and began to fuss. “You are covered in mud. Your shoes are barely recognizable,” she said. Agatha pushed me in a circle and tugged on my skirt. “Ma is going to have words with you!” Then she clutched my hand and held it up. “For heaven’s sake, hold that bird out from your coat. The blood, Georgie!”
I saw that the wool of my coat was soaking up the bird’s blood, red blossoming on the dark gray.
“What were you thinking? This is going to take a week of cleaning.” Then she looked at the bird. “What a beautiful pigeon!”
“February is early too. Where is Billy?” I said.
But Agatha wasn’t listening. She was pulling me toward a puddle. “We need to clean that coat before you go home,” she said.
So we splashed water all over me and my clothing, trying to remove the grime. My skin came clean, but any cloth with pigeon blood on it was a lost cause. Agatha kept fretting over the stains.
Finally, I shoved Agatha off me. “Did you tell Billy you’d marry him or not? I asked you about Billy twice,” I said.
T
hat stopped her. Agatha stood up, shook off her wet hands, and put her mittens on one at a time. “You are so ungrateful. Here I am helping you and you act like this. Shame on you.”
“Did he ask you? What happened?” I said.
“What business is that of yours?” she said.
“If you leave, it’s my business,” I said.
She huffed, then flicked up her hands. “No. I’m not marrying him. I told him no. Feel better?”
“He asked you today?”
“No, I gave my answer today. Now stop meddling. You get so doggedly determined. Sometimes I’m not surprised that things end up dead around you.”
A mean-spirited remark was what I called that. I took off at a good clip.
Agatha ran in front of me and put out her arms to halt my progress. I stopped when I saw the tears on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Georgie. We’ve got the store, right? There’s always that.”
“You and me?” I said quickly.
“You and me,” she repeated. I did notice she stated it with little excitement. But the fact she said it at all made me happy.
The male pigeon made Grandfather Bolte happy.
I was in trouble, though. I do not recommend icy puddle water for cleaning up on blue-sky February days. When we got home, Ma took one look at me, grabbed the pigeon from my right hand, and told me to get out of those clothes. She wrapped me in two wool blankets and set me in a chair by the kitchen fire. Even with the heat of the fire, my teeth chattered.
Still, a blue tinge never stopped anyone from being in trouble. Ma turned my coat over in her hands. “How could you be so careless?” she said. I saw Agatha smirk.
Grandfather Bolte saved me by walking into the room and seeing that bird. He held it like I’d brought back a brick of gold.
“I swear,” he said. He ran his hands over the long tail feathers and started asking me questions: Where had I shot this pigeon? How many did I see? He wanted to hear every last detail. He listened closely.
Then he gave me a wide smile. “One shot?”
I nodded.
He put his hand on my head. “Figures it was you that got this bird.”
Ma glanced between the two of us. “You spoil that child,” she said to Grandfather Bolte.
Grandfather Bolte smiled at me again, and began to pace. He grabbed a packing slip, turned it over, and scribbled. Then he threw down the pencil and continued his pacing.
He paused briefly in front of me. “Anybody see you bring this bird here?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He clapped his hands. “Good … good.”
The next thing I knew, Grandfather Bolte had his coat on.
“Where are you going?” said Ma.
“Cooper for barrels,” said Grandfather Bolte.
“Can’t that wait until after dinner?”
“Let me be, Dora,” he said. He jammed on his hat, and slammed the door behind him.
Ma looked startled. Agatha and I glanced at each other, smiles creeping onto our faces. We always thought it was funny when Ma became Grandfather Bolte’s little girl. Ma spotted our grins, and pointed a finger at me. “Don’t think I’m done with you.”
First, Ma made me pluck that pigeon. Second, I was to clean my coat. (I would wear it until worn, no matter the stain.) Third, I was given two weeks of extra chores.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one in trouble. Grandfather Bolte ordered so many barrels that it caused consternation. At one point, I heard Ma say “gamble” and “risking everything” before I was found too close to the door and sent back to work.
But that wasn’t the last of Grandfather Bolte’s spending. I found that packing receipt he’d been scribbling on. It was a list of things pigeoners bought. It was a costly list too, like he knew those birds would nest in our woods. Ma was right on that score: buying all that was gambling, and worse than card gambling. A person may become skilled at predicting cards, but not at foretelling nestings. There is no sure way to anticipate a pigeon’s preferences in terms of place. Soon as you do, they’ll nest two hundred miles away. Any pigeoner worth his salt will tell you the same.
Of course, when it all worked out, and Grandfather Bolte made all that money, he was hailed as a business genius. No one called him a gambler. Not one.
Lean-tos are the most paltry of shelters. I do not recommend them. Still, I have to admit that the first night of my journey—despite Billy, despite the memories of pigeons and Agatha—I slept.
I awoke, however, to a spider diving, arms wide, for my chin. The spider stopped short and hung—its knot of eyes staring. I blinked and it pivoted, pulling itself back up into the twigs of the lean-to. If that wasn’t unpleasant enough, I turned over and rolled face-first into the spider’s previous knitting. As I frantically wiped at my cheek, something popped several times in succession under my elbow, followed by a disagreeable wetness. I jerked upright into a seated position, and put my head into more spiderweb. When I was finally able to check my sleeve, I saw two caterpillars (or what was two caterpillars) soaking into the plaid.
There’s a reason I appreciate civilization.
Worse, it stunk. I had smelled the air the night before, but it wasn’t until the morning that the smell of rotting pigeon threatened asphyxiation. Better get used to it, I thought. Today the road I’d follow—Miller Road—would pass straight through what was left of the pigeon nesting. If these were the foresmellings, I expected nothing less than fully ripe putrescence by, say, ten o’clock.
Then I heard the sizzle of bacon in a pan. I’d brought bacon. Billy! I twisted around and saw Billy’s neatly folded bedroll. I reached for the nearest saddlebag, and found none of my food. Then I remembered my food was in another saddlebag. Billy had helped himself!
And why not? He apparently did whatever he pleased.
Billy was a situation in need of resolution.
I ran through my morning ablutions: wiped the sleep out of my eyes, rebraided my hair, and pressed my clothing flat with my hands. I found the cinch sack with my five Bechtler dollars. It would never do to suspend my gold dollars that way. So I sat down, pulled off the split skirt, and stitched those gold coins into the waistband. Finished, I patted it. Fine.
Now, Billy McCabe. I dug through the saddlebag again, and pulled out The Prairie Traveler. I opened it to the table of contents, expecting something like “Getting Rid of Unwelcome Guests.” What did I find? Not a word! I had to make do with skimming any topic remotely associated with unwelcome situations: storms, stampedes, rattlesnake bites, grizzly bears, and the ways of the “western Indians.” (Captain Marcy’s description of those western tribes did nothing less than scare me half to death.) In general, this “handbook” contained not one hint about solving relational difficulties. Reading it, you’d think that once you’d chosen your company of men, everything would go on all buttercups and roses until the day—alas!—you parted. Captain Marcy was most unhelpful.
I’d have to put my foot down and tell Billy—in no uncertain terms—to pack up and go home.
Would that work? I doubted it. But if it didn’t, I’d leave him in the night. I was not traveling with Billy McCabe.
A thought jolted me: Ma and Grandfather Bolte would find my note soon. They’d send out the troops, especially after losing Agatha. Move! I thought.
I crawled out of the lean-to and stood up.
I was not expecting what I saw: the world was feathered.
Feathers were everywhere. Tiny barely there feathers floated in the air, while larger feathers carpeted the ground. The barely there feathers caught on bark, limbs, and leaves; others clumped together and rolled in dirty balls. Several were tangled in my braids. I examined one and saw that the feather was pale blue, the same color as the morning light. Under my feet, flight feathers—brown, gray, and black—covered the ground.
It came to me where we were: we had slept in a deserted pigeoner camp. The flight feathers on the ground were clipped (the ends of wings, ha
lf a set of tail feathers). I saw a stained makeshift table with hay all around. And I located the feathers, piled as high as me at one end of the clearing. The wind had pushed the heavier flight feathers aside, leaving the under-feathers free to snag the air. From where I stood, it looked as though the pile smoked tiny pale blue feathers.
I wondered why no one had collected those feathers for feather beds, quilts, and pillows. Pigeons are hunted for meat first and foremost. But usually the feathers are utilized.
What if these feathers had been utilized? What if every person who worked at this camp had taken what he could use or sell?
This had to be the camp of one of the wild-game dealers. Those people traveled the rails to find wild game to sell to big-city markets, then hired local people to do the work. Only an operation of that size could produce this kind of surplus.
How many pigeons had they killed? A lot.
Yes, there had been a lot of pigeoners in Placid, I remembered.
You’ll recall my sister spinning underneath the pigeons: Remember how Agatha beckoned me to come? Remember how I was overwhelmed by fear and did not step off that porch? That was the second visit of pigeons, in March. They left after that second visit too, and no one knew if they’d be back.
After the second visit, Placid was filled with waiting and watching. The pigeons had yet to choose a place to nest, and we desperately wanted them to do so in our woods. We followed news of pigeons in the newspapers, asked the stationmaster repeatedly what he’d heard. Some rubbed their lucky rabbit foot. Others offered up plea-filled prayers. If those pigeons came back, we’d all be rich. A nesting meant weeks and weeks of barrels of pigeons to sell, and the accompanying influx of pigeoners. We in Placid would be ready to supply anything those pigeon hunters might need or want. And after the eggs hatched? There would be the babies, the acorn-fattened squabs—a delicacy for discerning big-city palates, and a moneymaker for our Placid, Wisconsin, pockets.
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