The Birdman's Daughter

Her mother had sent her a copy of the article. “He’s getting close to eight thousand birds on his list now.”

“Goodness. I can’t imagine seeing that many different birds.”

“It’s taken a long time.” More to the point, listing birds had taken all his time, to the exclusion of almost everything else.

The doorbell sounded and both women jumped up. “That’s probably the nurse’s aide,” Karen said. “The county is sending one every day to help with bathing and things like that.”

“That’s good. That’ll help you.” Tammy sighed and stood. “I’d better go. Jamie has a Little League game tonight, and April has piano practice. Somewhere in there I’ve got to figure out what to fix for supper.”

“Thanks for the cake. And thanks for stopping by. It was good to see you.”

They hugged, then walked arm-in-arm to the door. “If you need anything, you just holler,” Tammy said. “And when you can get someone else to sit with Mr. Martin for a while, you come out and have dinner with us. Brady and the kids would love to see you.”

“I’ll do that.” Karen let Tammy out and the aide in, then returned to her grocery list. Maybe staying here wasn’t going to be such a hard thing, after all. She did have friends here, and this was a chance for her to get to know her father better, while he was forced to sit still.

It was a second chance for them, and how many people got second chances these days?

CHAPTER 3

Even the little sparrow, which flits about by the

roadside, can laugh at us with his impudent little

chirp, as he flies up out of reach to the topmost

branch of a tree.

—Arabella B. Buckley, The Fairy-Land of Science

Casey had never ridden a Greyhound bus before, but it was pretty much the way he’d imagined: tall-backed, plastic-covered seats filled with people who all looked a little down on their luck. They wore old clothes and carried shopping bags stuffed with packages and groceries and more old clothes. They were brown and black and white, mostly young, but some old. The woman in front of him had three little brown-haired, brown-eyed boys who kept turning around in their seats to look at him. Their mother would scold them in Spanish and they would face forward again, only to look back in a few minutes, unable to keep from staring at the white kid all alone on the bus.

At first he’d only intended to see how much it would cost to get from Denver to Tipton, Texas. But when he saw it was only a hundred and thirty dollars and there was a bus leaving in thirty minutes, he’d decided to buy the ticket and go. Mom had sounded so sad and worried on the phone. She was down there all alone with her sick father and nobody to help her, really. He could cheer her up and help, too.

The main thing about traveling on a bus was that it was boring. He spent a lot of time listening to CDs on his portable player and staring out the window. Not that there was much to see—the bus stayed on the interstate, mainly, cruising past fields and billboards and the occasional junkyard or strip of cheap houses. He made faces at the little boys in front of him, until their mother turned around and said something to him in Spanish. He didn’t understand it, but from her tone it sounded as if she was cussing him out or something.

After that, he slept for a while. When he woke up, it was dark, and the bus was stopped at a station. “Where are we?” he asked the man in the seat behind him.

“Salina, Kansas,” he said. “Dinner break.”

At the mention of dinner, Casey’s stomach rumbled. The driver wasn’t anywhere in sight, so he figured that meant they were stopped for a while. He pulled himself up out of his seat and ambled down the aisle, in search of a diner or McDonald’s or someplace to get something to eat.

The bus station was next to a Taco Bell. Casey bought three burritos and a large Coke and ate at a little table outside. He thought he recognized a couple of other people from his bus, but they didn’t say anything. They all looked tired or worried. He decided people who traveled by bus weren’t doing it because they wanted adventure or a vacation, but because it was the cheapest way to get to where they needed to be.

When he got back on the bus, the seat he’d been sitting in was occupied by a thin guy with a shaved head. He had red-rimmed brown eyes that moved constantly. He looked at Casey, then away, then back again. Casey tried to ignore him, and searched for another seat, but the bus was full.

So he gingerly lowered himself into the seat next to the young man. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting.

The guy didn’t say anything. He just stared. He was skinny—so skinny his bones stuck out at his wrists and elbows and knees, like knobs on a tree limb. His plaid shirt and khaki pants still had creases in them from where they’d been folded in the package, and he wore tennis shoes without laces, the kind skateboarders used to wear five or six years ago.

The bus jerked forward and Casey folded his arms across his chest and slumped in his seat. It was going to be harder to sleep without the window to lean against, but he guessed he could manage it. Sleeping made the time pass faster, and he had the whole rest of the night and another day before they reached Tipton.

“What’s your name?”

His seatmate’s question startled him from a sound sleep. He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. The only light was the faint green glow from the dashboard far ahead, and the headlights of passing cars. He looked at the man next to him. “My name’s Casey. What’s yours?”

“My name’s Denton. Denton Carver.”

“Casey MacBride.” Casey offered his hand and the man took it. His grip was hard, his palm heavily calloused. For someone so skinny, he was really strong.

“Where you goin’?” Denton asked.

“To Tipton, Texas. My mom’s there, looking after my Grandpa, who’s sick.”

“That’s too bad.” Denton didn’t look all that sorry, though.

“Where are you going?” Casey asked.

“Not sure, yet. Thought I’d get off in Houston and look around. I used to know some people there.”

“So you’re just, like, taking a vacation?” Maybe he’d been wrong about the people on the bus.

“You might say that.” Denton grinned, showing yellow teeth. “I just got out of prison.”

Casey went still. He told himself not to freak out or anything. He kept his expression casual. “I guess you’re glad to be out, huh?”

Denton laughed, a loud bark that caused people around them to stir and look back. “I’m glad to be shed of that place, all right,” he said.

Casey wondered what he’d been in prison for, but knew enough not to ask. He settled back in the seat and crossed his arms again. “Good luck in Houston,” he said.

He closed his eyes, figuring Denton would get the message, but apparently once the skinny man had decided to talk, he wasn’t interested in stopping. “I used to have a girlfriend in Houston. Her name was Thomasina. Kind of a weird name for a girl, but she was named after her daddy, Thomas. She was a big, tall girl, and she could hit like a man. She worked at this little store her daddy owned and once these two dudes tried to rob the place. She punched one guy in the nose and hit the other one upside the head with a can of green beans. He tried to run and she just wound up and threw that can at him. Knocked him out cold.”

Casey stopped pretending to sleep, and laughed. “I wish I could have seen that.”

“Thomasina was something.” Denton shook his head. “Maybe I’ll look her up while I’m in Houston.”

“You should do that. I bet she’d be glad to see you.”

Denton was still shaking his head, back and forth, like a swimmer who had water in both ears. “I guess you got somebody coming to meet you at the station when you get to wherever it was in Texas you said you was going,” he said.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. My mom will come get me.” He hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead. He hadn’t told anyone he was going to do this—not his mom, or his dad, either. Maybe at the next stop, he’d look for a phone and call home, just so his dad wouldn’t worry. Then when he got to Tipton, he’d call Grandpa’s house and let Mom know he’d arrived.

“Ain’t nobody coming to meet me.” Denton pressed his forehead against the window and stared out into the darkness. “I done my time and the state turned me loose. They gave me one new suit of clothes and a bus ticket to wherever I wanted to go, and that’s it.”

“That’s tough.” Casey didn’t know what to say. He wondered if he could pretend to go to sleep again.

Denton raised his head and looked at him again. “You got any money, kid?”

The hair rose up on the back of Casey’s neck and his heart pounded. Denton didn’t have a gun in his hand or anything, but the way he said those words, you just knew he’d said them before when he did have a weapon.

“I got a little,” he mumbled. He had a little over thirty dollars in his billfold in his backpack. Enough to buy meals the rest of the trip, he guessed.

“I saw you eating dinner when we stopped back there, so I figured you had money. You ought to give me some money so I can buy some dinner. You ought to help out a fellow traveler.”

Casey wondered if Denton was telling the truth. Would the state turn somebody loose with no money in his pocket? That seemed like a sure way for someone to end up back in jail really quick. Maybe Denton was just trying to scam him.

“When we stop again, I’ll get some food and we can share it,” he said. He fought back a grin, proud of the way he’d handled the issue. But then, he’d always been good at thinking on his feet. It was another talent he knew would come in handy throughout his life.

Denton grunted, apparently satisfied with this answer. He rested his head against the window and closed his eyes and was soon snoring.

Casey slept, too. The rocking motion of the bus and the darkness, punctuated by the whine of passing cars and the low rumble of the bus’s diesel engine, lulled him into a deep slumber. He dreamed he was wandering through the streets of Tipton, searching for his grandfather’s house, unable to find it.

When Karen returned from the grocery store, the aide, an older black woman named Millie Dominic, met her at the door. “Mr. Martin is carrying on something fierce, but I can’t figure out what he wants,” she said.

Karen dropped the bags of groceries on the kitchen table and ran to her father’s bedroom. He was sitting up on the side of the bed, one foot thrust into a scuffed leather slipper, the other bare. When he saw her, he let out a loud cry and jabbed his finger toward the chair. “I asked him if he felt up to going outside for a walk and he roared at me,” Mrs. Dominic said.

“I think he wants to go back to his office.” She looked at her father as she spoke. At her words, he relaxed and nodded.

“What’s he gonna do in there?” Mrs. Dominic asked as she helped Karen transfer Martin to the wheelchair.

“He can work on his computer. He types with his right hand, so he can communicate.” She lifted his left foot onto the footrest and strapped it in place. “I guess that’s less frustrating for him.”

Once at his desk, he waved away Karen’s offer of a drink, but she brought him a Coke anyway, with a straw to make it easier to sip. He was alarmingly thin, and the doctor said she should try to get as many calories into him as possible.

She thanked Mrs. Dominic and sent her on her way, then began putting away groceries. At home right now she’d be answering phones for their business while trying to decide what to cook for supper. If Casey was around, he’d suggest they have pizza. He would have gladly eaten pizza seven days a week.

How were Tom and the boys managing without her? Was paperwork stacking up on her desk at the office, while laundry multiplied at home? We need you here. Tom’s words sounded over and over in her head, like an annoying commercial jingle that refused to leave, no matter how hard she tried to banish it. He’d sounded so…accusing. As if she’d deliberately deserted them in favor of a man who had earlier all but abandoned her.

No matter what Tom might think, she’d never desert her family. They were everything to her. But she couldn’t turn her back on her dad, either. He was still her father, and he needed her. Maybe the only time in his life he’d needed anyone. She might never have a chance like this again.

She decided to make corn chowder, in the hopes that her father could eat some. Though he’d never been a man who paid much attention to what he ate, content to dine on ham sandwiches for four nights in a row without complaint, she thought the diet of protein drinks must be getting awfully monotonous.

After living so long with three boisterous, talkative men, the silence in the house was getting to her. She started to switch on the television, then at the last minute turned and headed for the study. Her father couldn’t form words, but as long as he could type, they could have a conversation. It was past time the two of them talked.

“Hey, Dad,” she said as she entered the room.

When he didn’t look up, she walked over and stood beside him. “What are you doing?”

He glanced up at her, then leaned back slightly so she could get a better view of the monitor screen. He’d been studying a spreadsheet, listing birds by common and scientific names, locations where he had seen them, columns indicating if he had tape-recorded songs for them. Birds he had never seen were indicated in boldface. There weren’t many boldfaced names on the list.

“Mom said you had just seen a Hoffman’s Woodcreeper when you had your stroke,” Karen said.

He moved the mouse back and forth, in jerky motions, until the cursor came to rest on the entry for the Woodcreeper. It was no longer boldfaced, and he had dutifully recorded the time and date of the sighting.

“That’s great, Dad. You’ve done a phenomenal job.”

He shook his head, apparently not happy with her praise. She wasn’t surprised. As long as she could remember, he hadn’t been satisfied. When he was home, he was always planning the next expedition, making list after list of birds he had not yet seen, counting and recounting the birds he had seen, and frowning at whatever number he had reached so far.

In addition to the life list of all the birds he’d ever seen, he also kept a yard list of birds seen at his home, a county list, state list, as well as various regional and country lists. This accumulation of numbers and ordering of names seemed to be almost as important to him as the birds themselves. Maybe more so.

He closed the spreadsheet and opened a new file. Using the index finger of his right hand, he slowly typed in a number: 8000.

Karen nodded. “The number of birds you’ve been trying for.”

He typed again: 7,949.

She studied the number, wondering at its meaning. “The number you’ve reached on your list?”

He nodded, and punched the keyboard again. Another number appeared on the screen: 1.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What’s the one for?”

He grunted, and typed again: Brazil.

“One more bird you haven’t seen in Brazil.” Her eyes met his, and the anger and pain she saw there made her stomach hurt. Her father was so upset over a single species of bird that had escaped him in Brazil. Had he ever cared so much about another person? About her?

She patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to clean up Brazil while you were there. But the doctor says you should be able to regain a lot of function on your left side, and you can learn to talk again. Going back to Brazil and finding that bird can be your motivation.” Never mind staying around to see his grandchildren grow up, or to enjoy his own children in his old age. Some people were inspired by goals like that; for her father, the only thing that mattered were birds.

The next morning, very early, the phone rang, jolting Karen from sleep. She groped blindly for the receiver, her hand closing around it as her other hand reached for the light. “Hello?”

“Have you heard from Casey?” Tom asked, without bothering to say hello.

The urgency in his voice jerked her wide awake. She sat on the side of the bed and clutched the receiver with both hands, heart pounding. “No. Why? What’s going on?”

“He went out walking before supper last night and hasn’t come home.”

Fear, like a freezing wind, stole her breath. She stared at the phone, as if she were staring down the barrel of a gun. “What do you mean, he hasn’t come home?”

“Just what I said. At first I thought he was at a friend’s house, or was staying late at the mall, but I’ve called everyone he knows and driven all over town looking for him and no one knows anything.”

News stories of missing children flashed through her mind, the headlines stark and chilling: Abducted. Missing. Gone.

“Karen, are you still there? Have you heard from Casey?”

Tom’s words jolted her to life again. She forced herself to breathe deeply. Now was no time to fall apart. “No, I haven’t heard anything.” She looked at the clock. 6:00 a.m. Five in Denver. Tom must have been up all night. “Was he upset when he left? Did you have a fight about something?”

“No. We hadn’t talked at all since morning, when I’d agreed to let him apply for the lifeguarding job. He seemed happy about that.”

“What does Matt say?”

“He says Casey seemed fine. I don’t know what to think.”

Tom’s voice was ragged with exhaustion. She imagined him, unshaven, running his fingers through his hair the way he did when he was upset. Of course he had handled this for hours by himself. “Maybe you’d better call the police.”

“I already did. They promised to keep an eye open, though they’re treating it like a runaway situation.”

“Why would Casey run away?” Granted, he didn’t like school, but he’d always been happy at home. Things that would get other kids down didn’t seem to touch him. More than once, she had envied her youngest son his easygoing demeanor. “Maybe he has a friend we don’t know about, and he’s staying with them.”

“Maybe. His backpack is gone, and Matt thinks he took some money with him, but his clothes are still here.”

“He’s probably with a friend.” He had to be. Surely he wouldn’t be one of those kids you read about in the news—children abducted by strangers. She resolutely shoved the thought away.

“If he was going to stay with a friend, he should have called us.”

“He should have. But you know Casey. He doesn’t think about things like that.” When he was little, she could always find him in the house by following a trail of his belongings to the room he occupied. She used to berate him for being so inconsiderate, but he’d look at her with genuine confusion. “I wasn’t doing it to be inconsiderate,” he’d say. “I was just thinking about other things.”

That was Casey, head in the clouds all the time, dreaming big dreams no one else could comprehend. Lost in thought, had he stepped off a curb and been hit by a car? “Did you…did you check hospitals?” she asked, her breath catching on the words. “Maybe he’s been hurt and can’t call.”

“I’ll do that as soon as I get off the phone with you. I’m sorry to worry you, but I was hoping you’d heard from him. He talks to you about things more than he does me.”

And if I was home, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. The unvoiced accusation hung between them.

“Please, let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will.” He sighed. “I’d better go.”

After he hung up, she cradled the receiver to her chest, fighting tears. Casey might be sixteen years old, but he would always be her baby; the sweet, contrary boy, the child she worried about the most.

Tom was right—Casey did confide in her more. If she’d been home, he might have talked to her about whatever was bothering him. And if she’d been there, she could have run interference between him and his father. Though Tom denied it, she was still convinced he’d said something to upset their youngest son. Casey was sensitive, and Tom had a way of saying hurtful things without even meaning to.

Every part of her wanted to get on a plane and fly straight to Denver. Surely she, his mother, would be able to find him when others had failed.

But the sensible part of her knew that wasn’t true. And if she went back to Denver, who would look after her father? She couldn’t count on Del for anything, and her mother was too self-centered and argumentative to last for long. Within half an hour, Mom and Dad would be fighting, and only sheer luck would keep her dad from having another stroke.

They could all use a little luck now. She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer for Casey’s protection. Please let him be all right. Please let us find him soon.

She was still sitting on the side of the bed, eyes closed, when she heard the bell ringing. She’d given it to her father yesterday, so he could summon her without resorting to banging on the furniture. The ringing meant he was awake, and impatient for something. She sighed, stood and reached for her robe. Somehow, she’d get through this day. Whether she did it without snapping someone’s head off or raiding the liquor cabinet remained to be seen.

Casey woke with a start when the bus pulled into the station in Texarkana, Texas. The sign identifying the stop glowed dull red in the hazy gray dawn. Casey squinted at it, rubbing his eyes. He yawned and stretched his arms over his head, then realized the seat beside him was empty. Skinny Denton must have slipped past him and gone into the station to use the men’s room or something.

He retrieved his backpack from the overhead bin and went in search of breakfast. He’d buy enough to share with Denton, and maybe some snacks for later on down the road.

He hit the men’s room first, and washed his face and combed his hair. He stroked a finger over the faint moustache showing over his upper lip, and ran his palm along his jaw, hoping to feel some sign of whiskers there.

He hadn’t packed a toothbrush, so he swished his mouth out with water, then headed for the station cafeteria. He looked for Denton, but didn’t see him. Maybe he was already back on the bus.

In the cafeteria, he filled his tray with two breakfast sandwiches, two muffins and two cartons of milk. At the cash register, he added two cellophane sleeves of peanuts, for later.

“That’ll be $12.67,” the woman at the cash register said.

He reached in the outside pocket of the backpack for his wallet, shoving his hand all around inside when he didn’t feel it right away. “Must have put my wallet inside the pack last night,” he mumbled, and slung the pack off his shoulder to search the main compartment.

A good minute of searching proved fruitless. Feeling sick to his stomach, Casey looked at the woman. “I think somebody stole my wallet.”

She frowned at him, and looked pointedly at the food on his tray. “You gotta pay for this,” she said.

He looked down at the food, too sick and angry to eat it now, anyway. “I’m sorry. I can’t.” He shoved the tray away from him and fled the diner, running all the way back to the bus.

As he’d expected, Denton wasn’t there. He looked around at the other passengers, half hoping to see Denton in another seat. But there was no sign of the con. “Anybody seen the guy who was sitting here? Real skinny dude, plaid shirt?”

A few people looked at him. Even fewer shook their heads, then went back to reading or napping or whatever they’d been doing.

“Bastard stole my wallet!” Casey said, louder now. Denton had probably taken the wallet and slipped out while Casey slept. “Somebody must have seen him.”

No one looked at him now. Casey punched the back of the seat, hard. His hand stung almost as much as his eyes. He blinked back tears of frustration and sagged into his seat as the bus lurched forward. Chin on his chest, he stared out the window. He’d been such an idiot! He should have kept his wallet with him, and kept his mouth shut about having any money. He never should have talked to Denton in the first place.