Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

see a bird light on the feeder. I know this bird, for he has come before. I have sought him out in my Book of North American Birds and identified him as the evening grosbeak. This is a male, black wings with white patches, brownish head, yellow belly. My book tells me that the evening grosbeak has become a vagabond over time. Whatever the cause of the first migration, my book states that the evening grosbeak now “wanders widely in winter.” I have known men to do this. One may also wander without leaving home.
    I hear Rachel say something else in the kitchen. Maybe she is on the telephone. I turn the volume up again on the television. MacGyver is in his old Chevrolet station wagon at a stop sign on a dark country road. It strikes me that he and Rachel have the same hairstyle—short around the ears, long in back, with a feathered crest on top. It is a style I have heard called a mullet.
    MacGyver looks across the field and sees what looks like a space-ship. He blinks and shakes his head, then looks again. A glowing figure is walking toward his car. But MacGyver is not afraid. He has had much experience with thugs of all kinds. He gets out of his car and walks toward the figure, who is carrying something that looks like a floor lamp. The next frame shows MacGyver slumped unconscious on the ground.
    ----
    I wake up when Rachel knocks at my door and brings my lunch. She is removing from the tray a bowl of something when the doorbell sounds again. “I’ll be right back,” she says to me, and she leaves the tray on the table. From my recliner I cannot see the back door, but I hear the same voice as before, then laughter. Though I’ve never heard her laugh, I know this laughter isn’t Rachel’s. “So it was just a false alarm,” the voice says, “but I sure appreciate your help. I didn’t know what else to do. Hope I didn’t upset your plans for the day.”
    Rachel says no, her plans weren’t upset, she had planned to be home all morning anyway. Before the woman leaves, she thanks Rachel again.
    “You said her name is Veronica, right?” Rachel asks.
    “It was my mother’s name,” the woman says.
    “It’s a pretty name,” Rachel says. “She’s sweet.”
    I wonder who Veronica is and where she is. Surely if she were a child there in the kitchen with Rachel and the visitor, I would hear her.
    The other woman must have stepped out into the carport by now because I can’t hear her reply. I hear Rachel, though, when she says, “Could you come over for some dessert tonight?”
    In the weeks that I have lived here, only the white electrician and the mailman have come to Patrick and Rachel’s house. An empty lot of weeds stands on one side of their house and an unoccupied house, surrounded by a tall hedge, on the other. I haven’t thought of my nephew as having friends, but I have wondered if Rachel does, perhaps someone at their church or a neighbor down the street, though I have never heard nor seen her talking to another woman until today.
    After my trial visit in the summer, I worried briefly that Rachel might have agreed to take me in part to ease her loneliness. I wondered if she wanted more from me than my money. I liked the fact that she was to be home all day, for I wanted to hear the sounds of living, but I had no desire for the door between my apartment and her kitchen to stand open. I made it clear that I wanted shelter, food, and privacy. I was to have no responsibilities beyond my modest monthly contribution to Patrick’s household expenses. I had long since had my fill of talk. One does not want to spend her final days trying to follow someone’s story or participate in the fruitless discussions most women seem to enjoy, the kind I myself once enjoyed. That time is past.
    But Rachel has left me alone. She has told me no tales, has read me no rhymes, has sung me no songs. Nor have I imposed my words upon her. She is a riddle for which I need no answer. I am content with her silence. Watching her