The Hummingbird

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  I stood renewed, ready for the day. Then, hoping to remember how the pieces had been situated before I lifted the tarp, I tried to put everything back just the way I had found it.

  By the time man and dog returned, I had packed a picnic. A blanket lay folded in the trunk of my car, under an umbrella just in case.

  Michael saw me finishing in the kitchen. “What’s up, Deb?”

  “We’re getting away. Time for a day at Cannon Beach.”

  MICHAEL AND I WENT THERE a few times in our dating days, but I had forgotten the scale of the place. Waves crashed against giant rock formations, seagulls circling the crowns. When we stepped out of the car, I was stunned all over again.

  The coast was foggy, clouds clinging to the shoreline trees. A few hardy souls walked the low-­tide edge, but the iffy weather had kept most ­people away. The air was damp, with a sour salty taste. We leashed Shouri and began the trail to the beach. Michael alternated between scanning the cliffs and parked cars for potential attackers, a soldier’s attention and worry, and paying attention to the dog, who wanted to run ahead.

  I yearned to confess what I’d found in the basement, and how it reaffirmed my optimism. But I knew that if I did, it would be annoying at best and undermining at worst. Another opportunity to keep my mouth closed.

  When we reached the sand, Michael unclipped the leash and Shouri went sprinting. She dodged side to side, as if evading some invisible predator, then dashed away up the beach.

  “I hope she comes back,” I said.

  “She’ll never leave us,” Michael answered. As if to prove his point, he picked up a branch as wide as his arm and twice as long. Having turned back to look at us, Shouri halted her escape, pink tongue hanging. Michael jogged to the water’s edge and flung the branch way out. The dog bolted down the beach and dove in after it. The water remained shallow, a long tidal flat under the surface, and she porpoised back with the branch in her teeth.

  So this was what it would be like now. No matter what our moods were, there would be this exuberant presence as well. Packing the picnic had prevented me from checking Michael’s drawings that morning, but I was willing to bet there was no face with mouse ears.

  We ate pork sandwiches and drank lemon tea. I shucked off my shoes and lounged on the blanket. Shouri ran away and back, rested with us a while, then made another circuit. I poured water into Michael’s cupped palms, and she licked it up greedily. Panting, she settled beside us at last.

  “Dessert?” I asked.

  Michael lay beside me, raised on one elbow. “What do you have?”

  I reached into the canvas bag and pulled out a strawberry. Kneeling, I brought it within an inch of his nose. Michael opened his mouth but I drew back. “How does it smell?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Like a strawberry.” And opened his mouth again.

  “I mean, how good does it smell?”

  He gave in, and took a whiff. “Smells great, actually.”

  “You can have it, you know . . .”

  “Uh huh. If I do what?”

  “Take another dose first,” I said. “Enjoy.”

  He did, eyes closed that time as he took a long, deep sniff. “How did I forget about strawberries? We haven’t had them once since I’ve been back.”

  “I brought a whole fresh pint.”

  He lay back on the blanket. Shouri curled up against him, paws working the sand. “OK, what do I have to do?”

  “Tell me another.”

  He stroked the dog’s ears. “Another what?”

  “From the faces.”

  “Damn, Deb. You will not quit.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Killing the dog wasn’t terrible enough?”

  “It was terrible. I won’t argue with that.”

  “Then why?”

  I shifted closer to him. “Because we went shooting and you drew two fewer faces. Because you explained about Gene’s screw, and together we made it better. Because you told me about mouse ears, and—­”

  “Deb, you need to know something.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Some of them will never go away. Never.”

  I nodded. “I know. They’re part of you.”

  He patted Shouri’s head, and her tail thumped the sand. “I mean, I would sure as hell like them to.”

  “So pick one of those. The worst one.”

  He shook his head. “Impossible.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The man with the hat. Or sunglasses guy.”

  “Sunglasses, oh. I will be grossed out by him for the rest of my life.”

  “What about the one with the extra scribble? What happened with him?”

  “God, Deb.” He turned away. “It’s not a scribble.”

  We sat in silence, waves chanting against the beach. A gull cruised over us, wings motionless, before floating away inland. I handed him another strawberry.

  Michael considered it, then pinched off the green crown and popped the fruit into his mouth. I listened to my husband chewing, swallowing. It made my mouth water. But I had eaten plenty at the Professor’s house.

  I dug in the bag for another berry. “That’s the worst one? The scribble?”

  Michael took the fruit without a word. He smelled it deeply, then ate it just like the one before. Shouri sniffed, and he offered her the leaves from both crowns. She horsed them down.

  “It was only by accident that I saw him.” Michael sat up, wiping sand from his leg. “We were transporting a backhoe that afternoon, to fix a water line, and that’s a slow job. So I was on advance, securing the route.”

  He was cross-­legged, elbows holding his knees, his eyes trained out to sea. “The guy was not expecting me. I spotted him with the scope placing an IED where the crew would pass later. I watched his caution, his whole method. It was a triggered device, so he would decide when to blow it. He would time it to kill a lot of us.”

  I put a hand on Michael’s arm, and he did not pull away.

  “I was toting a .308, heavy barreled, a bitch to carry. The range was nothing special, just over five hundred yards. But he was sideways to me, which made him a smaller target, with rubble in the way. Just like they trained me to do, I waited. He kept checking over his shoulder, up and down the street, but never once at the rooftops, where I lay on my belly. After he finished planting the bomb, he started back toward a building. A white building, baking there in the hot Iraq sun.”

  I could picture it: the intensity of the moment, the power of his gun, the desert heat as different from foggy Oregon as possible.

  “No one was in danger anymore because I had seen him. The water line crew would take another route and a squad would disarm the device. But the guy? He was about to get away, free to blow off my buddies’ arms and legs another day.”

  “It was your job to prevent that. It was war. You were saving lives.”

  Michael shrugged my rationalization off like a horse shakes away flies. “It was early, with the sun still low, so he cast a shadow on the building’s white wall.”

  “Was that the scribble?”

  “Let me tell it.”

  Michael squinted into the distance, as if seeing the Iraq street again. “I held fire till he had almost reached the building, hoping he’d look back because it would make him a bigger target. And bingo, he did it, as if I’d written a script. Only it wasn’t to scout his escape route. It was to admire the job he’d done, the cocky fool. That little show of pride turned him full-­body to me, gave me a perfect line.”

  Michael stared down between his knees. “It was a clean hit, just below the collar bone. Like Joel’s OJ jug. Lungs and guts spraying everywhere. They spattered on the building like . . . well, actually, like a giant comma.”

  “So the mess on the wall,” I said. “That was the scribble?”

 
Michael stiffened. “Let me tell it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “First thing afterward I have a routine, reloading and checking my perimeter, because when you’ve been focused on a shot, you pay no attention to the world around you. Then I radioed in the kill and IED location. I was panning the scene through the scope, in case he had accomplices. That was when this person stepped out of the shadow of the building, dumbest move imaginable, and I leaned down to pop him too.”

  Michael rubbed his face with one hand. I offered him another berry. He dangled it by the stem so it looked like a little heart.

  “It was a boy. Maybe eight years old? Nine? He had seen the whole thing, Deb. The IED planting. The spray. The remains on the ground, all of it.”

  “That is truly horrific.”

  “I don’t know if he was the guy’s son, or nephew, or what. Maybe a total stranger who for some random reason happened to be standing there. Whichever, he witnessed everything. And you know, you just know he will never forget. Put that one on me forever. I didn’t only blow away an insurgent bomber. I also planted the seed for the next war in this kid in a way he’ll remember when he’s ninety years old.”

  And then I realized. “The scribble is a person.”

  “Yes, Deb, and the worst kind: a person whose innocence you have obliterated, so the chain of violence continues.” Michael poked the strawberry at the air. “Here comes your next soldier, in your next war, and the next one, and the next one, forever and ever amen.” He tossed the berry to Shouri, the whole thing, and she gobbled it. “The thing I don’t get, though? How does a man do these things, and go on living? How?”

  “You’re doing it right now.”

  “Except that it’s not working. It’s not even close to working.”

  Slowly Michael folded onto his side, inching down in the sand, almost burrowing. I spooned him, wrapped an arm over his shoulder, snaking a leg between his. We pretzeled on the blanket, my chest against his huge back.

  All at once exhaustion poured over me, flowed through every inch of my veins. And I did not resist. I let myself sink into the sand too.

  “I love you, Michael,” I murmured into his shoulder blade.

  He did not answer. I felt with a pang the inadequacy of my words. To a man with Michael’s conscience, mere wifely love would be small comfort.

  Yet he pulled my arm tighter, bringing my hand in against his chest. I could feel how fast his heart was beating. A gust of wind threw sand so we closed our eyes and lay still. I was nearly asleep, that quickly. Passing strangers would have taken us for lovers, but I knew better.

  THE DOG WOKE ME. She was shaking water off, her license and ID medals jingling. But when she kept doing it, I opened my eyes and saw that her sides were heaving. I sat up.

  Michael was not on the beach in either direction. Instantly I knew something was wrong. I stood, scanning the trails along the cliff. It was late in the day, and all the other ­people had gone home. I jogged down the beach. Nothing. I doubled back, running the other way, my heart racing the longer I went without finding him. And then there: His clothes were piled at the foot of the bluffs. I spun and spotted him, way out on the flats, just where the water’s depth made him change from walking to swimming.

  Michael was strong, but not a strong swimmer. And I could see his head, among the giant rocks, bobbing in the waves.

  Before I had realized anything, or wakened all the way, I stood ankle deep in the water, shouting. “Don’t you dare, Michael Birch.”

  His head swiveled toward me like a periscope. I had never seen his face whiter. Chalk. Talc. A ghost.

  “Don’t you dare.” I yelled so hard my voice cracked. “Don’t you do that.”

  Michael leaned his head aside with every stroke of his arms, awkwardly gaining distance. His kick sent up little plumes. It felt as if the whole world stood poised, about to roll down some enormous hill to destruction, and all it would take was the least nudge. But not if I could help it.

  I tugged off my sneakers and started to shuck my jeans, then gave up and waded in fully dressed. The water was cold. Strong too, sucking me outward. Michael had heard me, and he paused, treading water, looking outward, then back toward shore. I ran in the shallows till it was too tiring, then flopped forward and began to swim—­keeping my direction parallel to shore so the riptide would not yank me out too fast.

  My husband kept turning, toward land and then away, trying to decide.

  “Michael,” I yelled. “Don’t you—­” But the water swamped me and I went under. It was hard to swim with wet clothes on. When I sputtered up to daylight again, the surf was rough enough that I could not see Michael. It frightened me. I surrendered, pointing myself straight out to sea, and let the undertow do the work.

  By the time I was sixty yards out, I spotted him again. Michael had begun moving toward me. I breast-­stroked in his direction. When the water was neck-­deep on him, he began striding. I stretched my toes downward, but they did not touch. I finally reached him almost a hundred yards out, at a depth where he could stand but I had to keep treading water.

  His skin was still white, and he was shouting. “All I want to know is if I will be OK someday. Tell me I will be OK.”

  His face wore such anguish, hollowed and raw. I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

  A wave slammed his back. “Then lie to me.”

  He had a point. What would it cost me to give the man hope? Where was my loving lie?

  My jeans were sodden and heavy, fatigue weighing me down too. How much longer could I keep treading water?

  Then a wave broke over me, a huge salty gulp that left me sputtering. Without thinking, I grabbed Michael’s bare shoulders. Of course I was weightless to him, but holding him also meant I could quit working so hard. I held on with both hands. We were face-to-face in the swirling water.

  I moved deliberately, but slowly, so he would know what I was doing before I did it—­though I was not about to be stopped.

  I kissed him.

  It should have been nothing. He was my husband, for God’s sake. We had been together for twelve years.

  Instead, it was everything. I kissed his cheekbones, I kissed his eyebrows, I kissed the hinge of his jaw. And then I held his face in my hands and kissed his lips, his lovely Michael lips that even with all of his body’s stony muscularity he could not keep from being soft.

  The dog had followed me, and a wave walloped her into us. But Michael held me hard, staring as though he was drilling into my core. It felt like one of those moments with a patient when you know that what you say next will be indelible. So you try to find the courage to say the truest, rightest thing, and then you hope.

  “You are going to be OK,” I told Michael, clinging to him. “You will not be the same, but you will be OK. You will even be happy again, someday. When that day comes, I will still be here. Right here.”

  God bless that man: He placed one strong hand between my shoulder blades, pulling my body against him, and he kissed me back.

  The ocean gulped and whirled. And Shouri swam circles around us as though she were in orbit.

  SOMETHING HAPPENED on the way up the beach. Maybe it’s simply that I was freezing, and needed more from Michael than silence. But my mood turned more sour with every step. By the time we reached his clothes, I was livid. This suicide gesture on his part might have scored well on Michael’s originality scale, but he had genuinely scared me and put us both in danger. I watched him start to dress, threading a leg into his underwear, but I was seething and shivering, so I started for the car.

  My soaked clothes slowed me, and Michael caught up at the parking lot. He took my hand, but I shook him off and bustled ahead.

  I’d left my phone behind to be free of it for the day, but as soon as we’d opened the doors I checked my messages, playing them on the speaker. There was just one, from Cheryl. I lis
tened while sitting sideways and wiping sand off my feet.

  “Hi Deborah. I know it’s Sunday and your first day off in forever, but Professor Reed is in active decline. I’m happy to do my shift but thought you’d want to know just in case. The old guy is on his way out.”

  Ouch. And there it was. I sat there with my foot in my hand. Nothing to do but accept.

  Michael flopped soggily into the passenger seat, his color back to normal. If anything, he looked a bit ruddy. A chilly swim will do that to a man. “Sorry, lover,” he said. “Is this professor one of yours?”

  Oh, it was a point of entry, wasn’t it? An overture to show that now, finally, he remembered I had a job, a life, a heart. But the answer that came out of me was salty with spite.

  “Lover?” I said, starting the car. “Isn’t it a little late for that?”

  “DID YOU HAVE ANY DINNER?” Cheryl asked.

  I was sitting at Barclay Reed’s bedside in wet clothes, listening to his breath. It was uneven, deep then shallow then deep. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “When did you last eat?”

  “Lunch. A picnic. But really, I’m all set.”

  “All right then. Call me if you need anything.”

  I waved without taking my eyes from the bed and its skeletal occupant. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  Twenty minutes later Cheryl was back with takeout Chinese. When I protested, she wouldn’t listen. “You need your fuel,” she said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  I put the bag of food aside. “It will be too short for me.”

  IN AUGUST OF 1997, the selectboard of Brookings, Oregon, entertained an unprecedented motion.

  “Whereas in view of his international efforts at peacemaking,” the proposed resolution read, “his courage demonstrated in times of peace as strongly as in war, his generosity, his humility, his disinterest in seeking fame or gain from his actions, his repeated financial support on behalf of children at the county library, and his many gifts and gestures to demonstrate affection for the ­people of this city and region, therefore do the ­people of Brookings, Oregon, hereby declare, decree, and ordain that Ichiro Soga is an honorary citizen, now, from this date forward and for the rest of his life.”