CENTRAL PARK, WHERE WALTER’S COUSIN did his hunting, is over a square mile of woods, fields, and ponds, right in the middle of Manhattan. The city boasts plenty of smaller parks, too. Unfortunately, Phoenix didn’t land in any of them.
But his luck wasn’t all bad. Some of the city streets are lined with trees, and Phoenix happened to come down in an old sycamore with countless layers of broad leaves to cushion his fall. And when he finally dropped out of the tree and hit the street, the pavement wasn’t as unforgiving as pavement usually is. This particular block was being repaved. A road crew had just laid down a new layer of hot tar, which was still soft and doughy.
Nevertheless, the impact was jarring, to say the least. The force of Phoenix’s touchdown splayed his legs, so he basically belly flopped. Though it didn’t quite knock him out, he would certainly have lain there in a daze if the tar hadn’t been steaming hot. However, it was. It would have fried him like an egg in a matter of seconds. His whole front side was instantly scalded, so he instinctively flipped onto his back. This was just as bad. When he leaped to his feet, the tar scalded his footpads.
To make matters even worse, the fumes from the hot tar made his eyes burn and tear up, so he could barely see. He could still hear, though. Humans on the sidewalk were yelling things.
“Is that a squirrel?’
“More like a rat, if you ask me.”
“He’s about to be a pancake.”
Of course, Phoenix could no more understand what they were saying than he could see the approaching steamroller. But as the gigantic thing bore down on him, he could hear it, and the sound was terrifying enough to send him bolting in the opposite direction. The pavement that way was just as blistering, so he darted left—and ran smack into a curbstone. Half stunned, he dragged himself off the steaming pavement onto a sidewalk, where he was greeted by a sound even more terrifying. A professional dog walker was coming down the sidewalk with six dogs on leashes, and the sight of Phoenix set all six of them barking at once. Phoenix sprinted away—and knocked into something else, something with a little give. He blinked furiously. His vision cleared just enough for him to make out a fence much like the one at the humans’ watering hole.
As he squeezed between the chain links, he almost passed out from the pain. His whole body felt as if it were on fire. If only he could dive into the pond where Walter had grabbed him! That’s what he needed: water to cool him off. And to drink. His throat was dry as dust. He blinked some more and trembled to see huge monsters looming up ahead, some with gigantic teeth, some taller than pine trees.
“What’s with you?” said a warbly voice.
Phoenix cowered back from the blurry silhouette of a good-size bird. “Are you a red-tailed hawk?” he rasped.
“Do I look like a hawk?” said the bird. “I’m a pigeon, for goodness sake.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m a squirrel.”
“You don’t look like one. Where are you from?”
“A place called New Jersey.”
The pigeon gave a low coo. “Don’t tell me you swam the river!”
“River?” Phoenix cried. “Where is it? Could you show me, please?”
“Want to swim home, do you? The river’s not far. This way.”
Pigeons are worldly, big-city creatures who like to think they’ve seen everything. But this one, whose name was Martha, had never seen a charred creature like this swim the mighty Hudson River. It would be something to tell her grandchildren.
She waddled off across the construction site. That’s where they were. The monsters were actually pile drivers, backhoes, and cranes. Figuring the pigeon was his only hope, Phoenix followed her around a deep hole and then underneath a big pipe lying across two sawhorses. But when they passed through a rip in a fence onto another sidewalk, a bloodcurdling sound stopped him cold. The river seemed to be full of killing machines whooshing by at fur-raising speeds.
“I meant a river of water,” he croaked.
“What else?” said Martha. “It’s over there.”
“You mean we have to cross this Hilliard Boulevard to get to it?”
“Hilliard Boulevard? What are you talking about? This is the West Side Highway.”
Martha rarely gave traffic much thought, since she could fly right over it. But this poor critter was wingless.
“We’ll have to wait for the red,” she said.
While they awaited this mystifying event, they exchanged names. Before long the killing machines all slowed to a halt, and Martha waddled across the highway. Only the thought of reaching water induced Phoenix to follow. Though he still couldn’t see very well, he could hear humans laughing from inside their machines.
After crossing the wide highway they had to stop at another narrower one.
“This is where they jog and bike,” Martha explained.
At the watering hole and in the cornfield Phoenix had gotten the impression that humans were slow, lazy creatures, but here their blurry shapes were hurtling by, some on foot, others on two-wheeled contraptions.
“Where are they all rushing?” he asked.
This was something Martha had never been able to figure out. But she didn’t like sounding at a loss, especially to a bumpkin from New Jersey.
“They’re looking for food,” she said.
When there was a break in the stream of humans, Martha led him across the jogging path. On the far side Phoenix whiffed water.
“Jump in,” Martha said when they reached the waterfront. “That’s Jersey over there.”
Squinting, Phoenix made out a square cove hemmed in by two long structures and, far off on the river’s opposite shore, the hazy silhouette of more buildings. Directly below them, waves were sloshing against a stone wall. The stone wall looked slick, and the drop to the water was longer than from the hole in his tree to the ground. Desperate as he was for water, he simply couldn’t face another free fall after what he’d just been through.
“Is there better access on one of those?” he asked, pointing at one of the long structures.
“Not really,” said Martha.
She explained that this whole neighborhood used to be derelict and almost deserted, including the piers. But in recent years luxury high-rises had been sprouting up all over the place—some of the spears Phoenix had seen from above. They were packed with humans, as were the piers.
“That one was turned into a golf range,” she said, pointing. “There’s a gym up there, and past that, a skating rink.”
None of this meant much to Phoenix, but pain trumps curiosity. “There must be somewhere I can get down to the water,” he said.
Martha pondered a moment. “Well, there is one ratty old pier that hasn’t been gussied up,” she said.
As she took flight, the tips of her wings clacked together. She landed a ways down the waterfront on a railing opposite a park bench where a white-haired human was sitting. This elderly woman was known for distributing broken crackers from a bag. A savvy pigeon was already lurking under the bench, waiting to pounce. Martha was tempted to stay, but when she saw poor, charred Phoenix dragging himself toward her, the prospect of watching him swim the Hudson won out.
“This way,” she said, taking wing again.
Staggering after her, Phoenix wished he’d been electrocuted like Tyrone. He could tell he wasn’t going to last much longer, and having to drag his burned and battered body along was agony. Better just to throw himself in the river, he decided. But as he was about to do so Martha called out, “Right over there.”
She was pointing her beak at the next pier. Phoenix blinked some more, trying to bring it into focus. Pilings that looked like the pines in his woods supported a long, low, dilapidated building that jutted out over the river. The windows were dirty or broken, and there were holes in the sagging roof.
“Ten to one it’ll get torn down or fixed up before long,” Martha told him. “There’s an old, half-submerged dock at the end. I’ll meet you there.”
This news gave Phoenix a second wind, and as Martha flew out toward the end of the pier, he headed for the pier building’s entrance: a huge sliding door that proved easy to slip under. In the shadowy interior, wooden shipping crates were stacked up to the filmy windows on both long sides. A strange chittering emanated from them. In the central open space was a steel drum with a pile of books and newspapers and magazines beside it, but Phoenix never made it that far. There was something so creepy about the rustling and chittering that he turned tail and slipped back under the big door into the daylight.
He checked the far side of the pier. A rough wooden beam ran the length of it. There was quite a drop from the beam to the water, so he hugged the side of the structure as he made his way along. His scorched footpads picked up several splinters, but he finally made it to the end of the pier, where a narrow ramp led down to the dock.
“See?” said Martha, who was perched atop a nearby piling.
The dock really was half-submerged. As soon as he got down to it, Phoenix scrambled over to the sunken side, submerging himself. The icy water was the most intense relief of his life. After a few moments he took a sip. The water was a little salty, but drinkable. While he was quenching his thirst, a wave swept over him. After the initial shock he found that his eyes actually felt better for the washing.
“Ready to go?” Martha asked.
“Go where?” he said.
“New Jersey.”
At this particular spot the Hudson was over a mile across, and from such a low vantage point—Phoenix’s head was just above water—he couldn’t even see to the other side. Squirrels can swim, but they’re far too light to swim long distances.
“I’d drown before I got halfway,” he said dismally.
“You mean you’re not even going to try?”
“Sorry.”
This was deeply disappointing to Martha, but as she flew away her mind quickly turned to broken crackers. Her departure was so abrupt that Phoenix didn’t even have a chance to thank her for bringing him here. The water really did feel glorious. But it was very cold, and eventually he had to creep back onto the dry end of the dock. As soon as the sun warmed him up, his body began to throb again, so he waded back into the water to renumb himself.
As he repeated this procedure, the sun sank closer to New Jersey and turned redder and redder, as if it too had been scalded. With the day about to end, he couldn’t help thinking back on how it began. Getting a packet of smoked almonds from Tyrone’s uncle, then strolling to the pond with Giselle. If only he’d taken his parents’ warnings to heart instead of making himself “easy pickings” for Walter! Then he would still be home watching this very sunset with Giselle rather than suffering torments of pain at the end of a pier on a human-infested island. Every moment he was feeling weaker. He usually had ten snacks a day, minimum—but today he’d had nothing, not even the smoked almonds he’d washed in the pond.
He wondered if there was anything to eat up in that creepy pier. But just as he was getting desperate enough to go look, he heard voices and dashed back to the sunken side of the dock. With only his eyes and ears above water, he watched two creatures descend the ramp. In the dimming daylight he wasn’t quite sure what they were. But when they reached the dock a shudder ran through him. Those ugly worm-tails. They were just like the creature he’d seen rooting through garbage in that container near the humans’ watering hole!
“So beautiful,” said one of the rats.
“Another day dying,” murmured the other.
The two rats crouched side by side watching the sunset, much as Phoenix had just imagined him and Giselle doing. His shuddering turned to shivering. What had he ever done to deserve this fate? Pierced by a talon, dropped from the sky, burnt to a crisp, and now freezing to death. If only the sunset would hurry up and end so the repulsive creatures would leave!
“What are those long, skinny clouds?” asked the first rat, who sounded female.
“They’re from airplanes,” said the other, who was very soft-spoken but sounded male. “They’re called contrails.”
“Oh, look at that big boat! Isn’t it majestic?”
“I think it’s called a ship.”
Ship or boat, its wake created what looked like a tidal wave to Phoenix, and it was coming straight at him. He tried to cling to the rotting wood. But the wave swept him off his end of the dock. As it dragged him under the pier, he managed to grab one of the supports. But when he tried to climb it, he found it wasn’t much like a pine tree after all. It had no bark and was so slick he slipped and splashed back into the water. Though the wake had passed, leaving the water calm, he could see that his only hope was the half-submerged dock, now some distance away. As he thrashed toward it, he could feel the last of his strength ebbing. He spat out some water and cried, “Help!” but the cry was feeble, and as water refilled his mouth, he realized his ordeal was finally over.