Still Life With Bread Crumbs: A Novel by Anna Quindlen Read Free Book Online Page B

hard.
    “It’s illegal to shoot a bald eagle, and even if it wasn’t I’m the last guy you’d find doing it. This isn’t a gun. It’s a tracking device. It reads the chips in the bands the State Wildlife Service puts on the big birds. That bird you just saw is the male of a pair that have a nest about a half mile that way. The scientists like to keep track of his habits. I work for them on weekends.”
    Rebecca breathed in, then finally said, “I’m sorry. I’ve interfered with your work.”
    Jim Bates shrugged. The line of his mouth had relaxed. “He’ll be back. He always is.”
    “The same bird in the same location?”
    He nodded. “They mate for life,” he said. “Unlike people.”
    “Can you show me where the nest is?”
    “I’d rather not, to be honest. I try not to disturb them at home. I don’t really need to do that. I usually log each of them when they’re out looking for food for their babies. He’s out now, she’s home. He’ll bring something back, she’ll go out.” He looked down at her. She was on the tall side, but he was taller and bigger, a block of a man. She wondered if his pink skin faded with the winter light. She began to try to apologize when he held up a hand and put the other on her shoulder, turning herslightly and pointing up. The eagle was flying above them, a limp squirrel hanging from his talons. His profile was an etching, the white head, the golden beak, the pale eye.
    “Oh, look at you,” Rebecca said.
    “Never gets old,” he said.
    She fumbled for her camera but it was too late. He shook his head. “I’ve tried it,” he said, “but, you know, you take the picture and you look at it and it’s just not the same. It kind of loses something in the translation.”
    “I suppose it depends on the picture,” Rebecca said.
    “No offense,” he said. “Sarah says you take good pictures.” He stuck out his hand again. It was wrapped in a grubby bandage. “You could use some fiberglass insulation in that crawl space before winter comes,” he added. The calculator in Rebecca’s mind began its desperate clicking again: 5800, 1000, 1400, 1900, 1000. The owner of the cottage had not replied when she had asked him to pay for the raccoon removal and the roof repair. “It won’t be much,” he said as though he could hear the sound in the silent forest. “Mainly materials.”
    “I have a photograph of the raccoon you might be interested in.”
    “A dead animal in a picture, now that’s a different thing. I’ll trade you. Deal?”
    “Deal,” she said.
    “Back to work,” he said, hoisting himself onto the lowest branch of the maple tree, and she stood and watched him climb, disappearing by inches.

SHE KNEW IT
    During the month of August:
    Sarah put up the poster of
Still Life with Bread Crumbs
in Tea for Two. (Like everyone else in town, that’s what Rebecca called it. She ignored Kevin’s parentheses. If there was a Kevin. Rebecca had yet to meet him.) Rebecca had signed two copies of the poster and Sarah had had them framed. One was going to Sarah’s mother for her birthday, and the other had been hung on the long wall of the shop, opposite the door. “I need more art in here,” Sarah said.
    “This is really good,” Jim Bates said when he saw the photograph of the raccoon’s paws, shot so close that it was difficult to tell what they were. He put two layers of insulation in the attic. A spark of sunlight from below struck the side of the ladder laid across the top of his truck. It was something that happened often, the odd ray of light from below.
    “Where’s your flag?” Jim Bates said. Rebecca went to the back door where the white flag was leaning. “It fell off during that thunderstorm,” she said. He put it back up so that it fluttered wildly in a gust off the mountain. Rebecca wondered if it was an advertising vehicle, like those signs along the road that said THIS SUNROOM COURTESY OF BRIGHT DAY ADDITIONS.
    The shards of lights from below