7

The Fledgling

In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, birds surpass all other creatures in their variety of songs and calls.

—G. Gordon’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Pacific Northwest

Frankie sat at the kitchen table willing herself to concentrate. She’d been reading the same sentence repeatedly without retaining its meaning. The begging call of a juvenile crow behind the house kept pulling her mind away from the text in front of her. She couldn’t very well blame the little bird, though. She’d been distracted long before the hungry little corvid had started its racket.

“Ah-eh! Ah-eh! Ah-eh!” the bird called.

The morning had not gone as planned. The plan had been to sit down and dig into her manuscript revision in a direct and organized manner. She’d pulled out all her notebooks, relevant reference articles, notes from her committee, and the master copy of the thesis manuscript itself. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and considered the revision outline she’d sketched back in the spring: 1) Read through committee’s suggestions. 2) Review relevant data sets. 3) Reread studies in support of thesis. 4) Research abstracts of newly published studies focused on spotted owls. 5) Meet with committee for advice on next steps.

She’d ticked most of these items off the list already. However, the last had been impossible for reasons she couldn’t let herself think about just now, but she told herself it wasn’t entirely necessary anyway. Regardless, the best hours of the morning had passed, and she hadn’t written a word. She stared at the blank page of her notebook not knowing where to start.

The young crow renewed its call behind the house. Its nasally complaining was interrupted by urgent contact calls between its parents, who were likely working frantically to satiate the hungry youngster. The juvenile’s call changed to a gargling, and Frankie knew that meant one of the parents was tucking food down its ravenous little throat. The birds fell quiet.

Frankie pushed her notebooks aside and pulled a dog-eared paperback toward her. The well-worn cover of G. Gordon’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Pacific Northwest communicated the miles it had journeyed since Frankie’s seventh birthday. She’d received it from her father at her birthday breakfast at this same kitchen table all those years ago. Frankie had carried it through the woods that summer, and when the family returned to town in the fall, she tucked it in her book bag every morning. During the long school year when she missed the lake, the woods, and the little cottage, the book was a comfort. Over the years, G. Gordon’s Field Guide had made its way to her high school locker and her college dorm room. Out in the field, to the graduate school lab, and now back to the cottage. Though the information within had long been superseded by ornithology and biology textbooks in her studies, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a reminder of where she belonged.

She flipped to the back of the book. The pages marked “Field Notes” were full of cramped, childish handwriting. She’d begun her first official bird journal the very day she’d received the book from her dad. “Cliff swallow, May 26, 1979” was the first entry. She remembered trying so hard to write neatly because the book was special. But by June of that same year, and midway down that page, her careful printing had given way to her typical loopy scrawl and the entries included sketches, doodles, and illegible notes. She’d run out of room quickly. It was then her father had suggested the slats of the bird blind for her recordkeeping.

She flipped to the section on the common crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos. She glanced at the photos, noting the difference between adult birds with their glossy black wings and dark eyes and the juveniles, which were small, duller in plumage, and blue-eyed.

“Corvus brachyrhynchos is a large, chunky, ebony bird whose feathers can appear purplish in strong sunlight. Bill and feet are also black in color and quite dexterous. The tail is fan-shaped when the bird is in flight. Often gregarious and curious, crows prefer diverse habitat: woodlands, farms, fields, lake shores, towns, and dumps. Range: Year-round in the contiguous lower forty-eight, summers across Canada, excluding coastal British Columbia.”

She scanned to the section on brood. Eggs ranged from blue-green to olive green and numbered from three to seven per season. Both mother and father took turns incubating the eggs, a process that lasted eighteen days. Young remained in the nest for four to five weeks and continued to be fed by the parents after they’d fledged. Juvenile crows remained dependent upon their parents in this way for months.

She thought of the young crow behind the house and wondered what was on the menu this fine morning.

“Food sources include grains, fruit, insects, small invertebrates, reptiles, mammals, carrion, refuse, and eggs and young of other birds,” she read.

Crows were dedicated omnivores. The entire corvid family was, including ravens, jays, magpies, and nutcrackers. They were all part of Nature’s janitorial staff, cleaning up roadkill, carrion, and garbage. Frankie appreciated their role in eliminating waste, though some found their scavenging behavior disgusting.

She recalled her fourth-grade teacher reading Poe’s “The Raven” aloud in the sleepy hour after lunch. Frankie had been a little in love with Miss Duncan, who had apple-red cheeks, a blond bob, and the rosebud lips of a fairy-tale princess. Frankie remembered her voice, singsong and hypnotic in the drowse of the afternoon classroom, sunlight slanting through the windows and the sound of the fifth-grade PE class outside. Frankie followed along as Miss Duncan read.

“ ‘Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’ / Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’ ”

Mindy Osterbach raised her hand and announced that crows were a sign of death and bad luck.

Frankie was annoyed at the interruption of the poem, but Miss Duncan nodded.

“Yes, that’s right, Mindy. That’s called symbolism in storytelling, remember? Now, who knows what a group of crows is called?”

She paused for effect, and when nobody raised a hand, she stage-whispered, “A murder!”

Mindy squealed and buried her head in her arms, and the other girls imitated her, all but Frankie. Miss Duncan scolded the girls and the boys jeered.

Frankie raised her hand.

“Yes, Mary Frances?”

A raven, Corvus corax, was not a crow. Crows and ravens were in the same order and family, but a very distinct species of bird, Frankie wanted to say. And if you wanted to get specific, a group of ravens was called “an unkindness.” As for crows, “murder” was only one name for a group of crows. They were also called a muster, a parcel, a congress, a cauldron, or a cabal, according to G. Gordon’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Pacific Northwest.

“Yes, they do eat baby birds, Mindy,” Miss Duncan was saying—shuddering and forgetting she’d called on Frankie.

Frankie put her hand down and regarded her teacher. She wondered if Miss Duncan knew that cute, bright-eyed chipmunks were more likely to eat baby birds than crows were. Or that Tibetans and the Canadian Haida People left the bodies of their dead for birds to eat. She’d read about that in National Geographic. At first it seemed sort of shocking, especially the pictures. But when she thought about it, it didn’t seem weird at all. People were animals and people ate animals. Why shouldn’t animals eat dead people? But Miss Duncan went back to Poe, and Frankie didn’t say any of those things.

She remembered wishing Mindy would like her, though she was so mean on the playground—excluding Frankie from four square and making fun of her clothes, which were often Patrick’s hand-me-downs. Why did she care about being excluded from the birthday party when Mindy was so awful? Patrick had asked when he found her up on the garage roof crying. She couldn’t explain it then or now. She certainly hadn’t gotten better at friendships, she mused.

She’d spent a lot of time with adults as a child, a consequence of her father owning the tavern. The regular customers of the River City Saloon, who called themselves The Irregulars, were some of her first friends. There was Old Joe with his big gray beard, who liked riddles and puns. He came in with Billy, who worked at the library and brought books for Frankie. Nils and Clarence played bluegrass music, and there was Maxine, who dressed like a man and whom everyone called Max, who often brought her fiddle. They’d remained an important part of Frankie’s life as she’d grown older, always insisting on buying her a drink when she came home to visit. They wanted to hear about school and her life in Seattle. As did Hank, of course. She loved Hank best. Hank Hansen, her father’s best friend. She should go see him next time she was in town. The idea cheered her.

The young crow called again from behind the house. Frankie glanced at the old barometer, which pointed halfway between “Fair” and “Change,” and went outside. The trees swayed in the breeze and the sun ducked behind a cloud. She slung her binoculars around her neck, grabbed her sweatshirt from the mudroom, and pulled the door shut behind her. It squeaked as if scolding her for procrastinating. She ignored it and struck off up the hill.

The trail wound up through a large stand of cedar trees and circled around the meadow, a tangle of ferns and late-season Shasta daisies. The leaves of the huckleberry bushes had bloomed red and hung thick with berries. Frankie picked a handful as she passed and popped them in her mouth. She climbed into the bird blind. From there the top of a large cedar tree was just visible at the apex of the hill. Her heart warmed at the sight of the beloved old giant. She glanced at her watch, calculating how long it might take to summit. Quite a while, she knew, depending on how many trees had fallen across the trail. But she had time, didn’t she?

She walked with purpose now, noting the coolness of the air and the sun winking behind the clouds. Just east of the meadow, a pair of small tamaracks lay across the trail. Frankie stopped and lifted them clear. As she continued, the fallen trees grew bigger in size, and she was forced to step and then climb over. She evaluated them as she went, knowing she’d need to bring up the chainsaw to clear the trail. Windfall was a natural part of the annual cycle at the lake. June Lake’s location between the base of Mount Adams and the Wishram River Gorge caused strange thermal pockets that drew the wind in from odd angles. Unpredictable storms boiled through during winter and uprooted trees like Tinkertoys. Frankie had learned to run the chainsaw at the age of twelve and loved the annual task of trail clearing with Jack and Patrick. It was a chore meant for spring, she thought, as she clambered over a big pine, though she knew nobody would have completed the task this year, and she hadn’t been to the lake for two summers.

She dropped down to the other side of the big tree and a gust of cold wind struck her neck. The temperature had dropped considerably. Up along the ridgeline, purple thunderheads had gathered into a substantial mass. She felt the first cold drops of rain then, hitting the backs of her hands and her bare head. She shivered and then she felt something else—the unnerving sense that she was being watched. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she swept her gaze along the woods in front of her. Something moved off to her left.

The June Lake woods were full of wild creatures. In her lifetime, Frankie had seen all manner of large mammals—black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, foxes, and coyotes. Mountain lions were the only creatures she worried much about. The others were keen to avoid contact with people. But the big cats were unpredictable, intelligent hunters, and these woods made the perfect habitat. Twice in years past, Frankie had had this sensation of being watched and seen a mountain lion. Both times, the cats perched high on the limb of a big tree and watched her, unblinking, motionless, perfectly calm. Frankie had made herself appear as large as she could. Then she slowly backed down the hill, keeping her eyes on the animal’s eyes, ready for any movement and not turning her back until the cat was well out of view.

But the shape she saw moving into the trees now was not feline. It was human, and Frankie had the uncanny sense that he knew he’d been seen. She caught a glimpse of the man’s face and noted the rifle over his shoulder. She’d run into people up here before, but very rarely. Occasionally she’d meet a group of Yakama women harvesting camas root. Once they’d stopped to chat and Frankie asked questions about how they preserved the roots. She’d been intrigued by the plant and simultaneously aware of the discomfiting fact that the Beauty Bay Resort had belonged to the Yakama Nation until about one hundred years earlier.

But this was different—someone hunting here out of season.

“Hello!” she called. “Hey there!”

The figure disappeared into the woods, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d heard her and pretended not to.

The rain came down harder now, and thunder rolled overhead. Struck by the cold, Frankie turned and jogged down the hill, careful to keep her weight back so she didn’t slip. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed ahead of her. When she was about halfway down the hill, she heard the report of a shotgun. Once, twice, three times. Her heart raced and hot anger shot through her body. Shooting in her woods.

She moved through dripping trees and wet sword ferns as quickly as she could. As the view opened in front of her, she could see the storm moving south toward the marina and down to Hood River. She spotted the smoke curling out of the chimney as the full force of the cold hit her. Her cotton sweatshirt was soaked through, and her jeans were heavy with water.

Peeling her clothes off in the yard, she ducked into the outdoor shower. The hot water bored needles into her cold flesh. The rain dripped from the eaves in a beaded curtain, and she heard the begging call of the young crow again. As she turned off the water, a cold wind gusted through the clearing. She pulled on her robe and hurried into the house thinking about the man in the woods, the gunshots, and what she should do about it.

The door was ajar, which was strange, because she was sure she’d shut it. She stepped inside and looked around the small room. Her books and notebooks were where she’d left them, but the chairs had been pulled away from the table and lined up in a neat row facing the bookshelf along the wall. Strangest of all, there was a small figure stretched out on the chairs—auburn curls and red sweatshirt. It was the boy from the dock. Frankie thought he was asleep, but as the door squeaked shut, his eyes flicked toward her. He moved his gaze to the low crossbeams of the ceiling.

“Hi there,” she said and paused. “Are you okay?”

Again the child’s eyes darted toward her and away. Frankie set her boots down on the shoe rack and noticed a small pair of tennis shoes placed neatly just inside the back door. They were red, yellow, and green. The toe of one shoe said “Right!” and the other said “Left!” She wondered how he’d gotten separated from his parents. She stepped closer.

“My name is Frankie. Did you get caught in the rain?”

The boy began to hum and put his fingers in his ears. Instinctively Frankie stepped back. She waited in silence, and he quieted. Time ticked by and the cold air chilled her bare shins.

“Okay. Well. I’m just going to change clothes. I’ll be right back.”

The boy didn’t move or respond. Frankie crossed to the guest room and shut the door. She pulled dry clothes out of her pack and dressed hurriedly. She toweled her hair and combed it with her fingers. When she returned to the living room the boy hadn’t moved. She wondered how old he was. Five, maybe? He’d taken his fingers out of his ears and was twisting them together, braiding and unbraiding them. She could feel his small animal energy fluttering about the room like a trapped bird.

“So . . . are you staying down at the big house with your mom and dad?”

No response. Was he deaf? No, not deaf. He seemed to hear her voice. There was a crack of thunder, more distant now as the storm rolled down the lake. The boy jumped and gasped. He was scared of the storm. Of course he was.

Frankie eased toward him.

“It’s okay,” she said. “The storm is going the other way now.”

She waited a few seconds.

“I’m Frankie,” she said again. “I knew your dad when he was little. What’s your name?”

The boy’s lips began to move, and he had something in his hands, which he turned over and over. Frankie eased into his field of vision and gave what she hoped was a friendly wave. He didn’t look at her, but for a moment, his hands paused their frantic movement. Then he blinked and resumed the flicking of the object in his fingers.

Frankie didn’t know many children, but years of observing wild creatures in the woods and the lab had taught her about animal fear. She knew an animal could panic when out of its habitat or in the field during tagging. She’d seen birds go into shock when handled roughly by students. Some even died. Small humans were likely also sensitive, she mused. She pushed her damp hair out of her face and moved over to the woodstove. She stoked the embers and added a log. It snapped and crackled as the fire caught. Glancing back at the boy, she saw that his hands had stilled, and she could hear him humming. Frankie could remember how it felt to be little and afraid. She crossed to the kitchen and pulled Grammy Genevieve’s copper pot down from the wall.

“I think I’ll make some hot chocolate,” she said aloud.

She pulled milk out of the refrigerator, put it on to simmer, then whisked cocoa and sugar with hot water before blending it in. The kitchen filled with the smell of warm chocolate. She pulled a pair of mugs off the shelf and poured the chocolate. The boy’s attention flickered toward her.

“I think I’ll go sit by the fire,” she said, not looking at him. “It’s warmer over there.”

She set the mugs on the coffee table in front of the woodstove and grabbed a pile of books from the kitchen table. From the couch she could see the rain dimpling the lake, which was navy blue under the gray belly of storm clouds. A flash lit up the southwest end of the lake, but there was no audible thunder now. Once the rain let up, she’d walk the boy home.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw he hadn’t moved. She opened G. Gordon’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Pacific Northwest and, remembering how she’d enjoyed being read to, began to read aloud.

“The American crow is listed as a Species of Least Concern by the National Audubon Society. Of the more than two thousand species of birds making their homes in North America, American crows are one of the few that do not migrate and subsist year-round on diverse food sources.”

She wondered about the juvenile crow she’d heard in the woods that morning. It would spend the winter with its parents sustained by the food sources they located in the snowy woods. What ingenious ways had they developed to survive the cold weather? she wondered.

The sofa creaked as the boy slipped up next to her. He kept his gaze low, and his small hands cupped the thing he’d been flipping—a feather. She heard him humming softly and she turned back to the book.

“The American crow’s range covers the contiguous United States, most of Canada, and southern Alaska. Corvus brachyrhynchos has an approximate breeding population of twenty-seven million.”

Frankie pushed the mugs toward the edge of the table. Patrick’s had a bright red fox on it. She’d always liked it slightly more than hers, which was adorned with a smiling green pig. The boy curled his small hands around the fox mug and brought it to his lips.

Frankie kept reading, listening to the water drip off the eaves, the crackle of the fire, the boy humming softly.

“Crows are diurnal in nature but are known to sound alert calls and also ‘mutter’ and ‘babble’ at night,” she read.

The rain had stopped completely now. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was nearly 3 p.m. His parents must be frantic. She’d need to find some way to get him back down the trail without scaring him. Or she could leave him here and walk over to the Magnusens’ alone. Which was better? She heard a noise then, faint at first, but persistent. She braced herself, listening hard for the sound of gunshots. But the sound was coming from below the house, not up in the woods.

The boy put the mug down with a thump, sat up straight, and looked right at Frankie. She was startled by the force of his green eyes and bright smile. He jumped down and ran to the door.

Frankie heard it again. A faint sound growing louder but still muddied by the moaning wind.

The boy threw open the door, grabbed his little shoes, and without a backward glance, he was gone.