The Man Who Loved Birds Read online

  Smith stalled the small motor and let his boat drift in the middle of the lake. “No respect,” he said. He pulled out a cigarette, tapped it on a gunwale, took it between his lips, and cupped a hand to shield his match from the slight breeze. “I get no respect. Not from the sheriff, not from my wife, not from the kid, not from the lawyers, and God knows not from the judges.”

  “At least you carry a gun,” Father Poppelreiter said. “Imagine enforcing the law without it. I have thought on many occasions that my interests as well as those of the Church would be best served by small arms. And when you reach retirement age they’ll let you ride into the sunset instead of keeping you in the traces til you drop.”

  “Pull up that minnow cage, would you.” The priest retrieved the cage, let the water drain into the lake, and handed it over. The officer pawed among the flipping and flapping minnows. He scooped one out, stuck it on a hook, and tossed his line and the cage into the murky water.

  After a moment the priest retrieved the cage, baited his own line, and threw it into the lake on the opposite side of the boat. “You have to command respect,” Father Poppelreiter said.

  “I do my job, I do it good. You got other suggestions, I’m listening.”

  “That’s your problem,” Father Poppelreiter said. “You think doing a good job is the way to earn respect. You take it from me. Your sheriff is the same as my bishop. You’re not going to get respect from him unless you give him some reason to be afraid of you.”

  “So how do I get them to be afraid of me? I’m just a cop. It’s their job to beat up on me. It’s my job to take it.”

  “How about killing somebody? That will get their attention.” The priest cleared his throat. “That was a joke.”

  They sat staring at the flat green water, with its two red-and-white bobbers.

  “Kind of warm out here,” Father Poppelreiter said.

  “You might wear something other than black. Jesus.”

  The only sound was the quiet lap of water against the boat.

  “I didn’t mean to whip him so bad,” Officer Smith said quietly. “But he wouldn’t obey, he was just sassing me because he could get away with it—he gets those ideas from his mother—he sure as hell didn’t get them from me. Somebody has got to set him straight, right? Toughen him up for the world. Better now than later, right?”

  The old priest sighed deeply and turned his back.

  “I’ll catch him a mess of perch, that’s his favorite,” Smith said. “Nothing better than a pile of those little perch dipped in cornmeal with a little salt and pepper and a egg to make it stick and then fried. He does love his perch.”

  The lake had been dug as a raw red hole in the earth and only junk saplings lined its banks. Though it was still spring, at midday the sun made its heat known. The aluminum seats grew hot.

  Officer Smith’s red-and-white float bobbed. He flipped the butt of his cigarette into the lake and raised his line—a perch flopped at its end, shattering with silver droplets the lake’s green mirror. The officer raised the pole too quickly. He grabbed for the line, but it sailed out of reach and the hooked fish smacked the priest’s cheek. On the second try Smith brought the fish into the boat. He worked the hook from the perch’s mouth, then skewered it on a stringer, dropped it into the minnow bucket’s cage, and lowered the cage into the lake.

  The old priest held his silence, even through the indignity of being slapped by a fish—he was a silent black pillar of longing. Finally Smith relented. “Calls for a little celebration, wouldn’t you say?” he said. The priest held his tongue. From under the middle bench Smith pulled out his cooler and extracted two beaded long-necks and slipped them into cup holders. “Keep ’em low,” he said. “I’ve known a nosy game warden too big for his britches who’d like nothing more than to come across me drinking in the park.” He reached under the bench again and pulled out his flask. “A little whiskey for a chaser?”

  “It would be impolite to refuse.” The priest poured the whiskey into the flask’s screw top, then tossed it down.

  They drank their beers in silence. Neither floater budged. The priest finished his beer first. The officer took his time, but in the end he was as interested as the priest in getting a buzz on and they had a second round.

  The sun was nearing the treetops when they heard the first of many cars. The gravel road that served the lake continued past it to dead-end at a run-down house, lost now amid the greening trees of spring. Every few minutes a car whizzed around the lake, vanished into the trees, then came to an audible halt at the door of the shack. A few minutes later the car reappeared, whizzing back to the highway. The cars arrived exactly on the quarter hour—Smith timed their coming and going. “They say the guy who owns that auto parts lot across from the bank is into it big time,” Smith said. “You never see a customer in there. And the parts—”

  “Not what we’d—”

  “Strange.”

  “You’d think he was building formula racecars. But nobody here—”

  “Weird.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Foreign parts.”

  “Sends his kids to the public school. Parochial school not good enough for them.”

  “Or maybe he’s afraid his kids might talk about what they see at home. Benny Joe—that’s it. Big guy—they call him Little. I’m guessing the auto parts are a cover.”

  A squeal of tires in the distance. A black van streaked by. “You don’t want to turn ’em in,” Smith said. “We’re the only people back here on Mondays. They’d know who did it right away.” He took out the flask and took a swig, keeping his eyes on the old priest, who no longer troubled to hide his interest. “And it’s not just from below,” Smith said. “Now the big guys from Washington are coming in with helicopters and fancy X-ray machines. Like I couldn’t tell them the location of every patch of pot in the county, not that they’ll ask. It’s no problem finding it. The problem is getting a jury to convict a guy who’s their first cousin, or their cousin’s cousin, or their aunt, or their bastard son. Do you know what I get paid? These guys make my monthly salary in a single sale. The temptation, Father. Take Little. He comes to me offering—”

  “Offering what?”

  “Naw, never mind. Johnny Faye’s the ringleader. His trial’s next month. Third time he’s up for growing. The guy is guilty as a Nashville hooker and I’ll bet you a nickel the jury lets him off scot-free.”

  “I’ll double that,” the priest said, reaching for the flask.

  The officer moved it out of his reach. “Scare us up a few bites first. I don’t know that I’ve seen a slower day. Maybe they hadn’t stocked it yet. Maybe we’re too early in the year.”

  The priest looked at his outstretched hand, then turned it palm down and extended it over the water. “‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch,’” he said. He pulled up his line—empty—some turtle or fish had nibbled away the bait. He gave up, laying his pole in the boat.

  “I get a fish, you get a drink,” Smith said.

  At that moment the lake swallowed his floater whole, dragging the line after it. Officer Smith tightened his grip on his pole, barely saving it from following the line. “Jesus!” he cried. “Must be a fucking whale!” Under cover of the excitement the priest took a sip from the flask, then a second, while the officer struggled with the pole, bent almost to breaking. The line moved in a frantic zigzag. “I didn’t know this puddle grew ’em this big,” Smith said. He wrapped the line around one fist and dropped the pole, then began taking the line in hand over hand, past the floater, until he pulled up a slime-covered gray-green creature as long as and thicker than a burly man’s arm. “Holy shit,” Smith said. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Call it a miracle.” The priest surveyed the fish. “Around here people call them mudcats, though where I grew up we called them hellbenders. They’re bottom feeders—they don’t usually move more than a few feet in their very long lives. No good for eating—you can�
�t get the mud out of the meat. You don’t want to let your hand near its mouth—they’ve got a nasty temper and sharp teeth. The question is, how did it get into this lake? My father told me that on wet nights they can crawl across land but I never believed it before now. Either that or it’s been here since before the dinosaurs.”

  “Ugly motherfucker.”

  “Officer Smith. Please.”

  The officer pulled the gun from his holster. Taking the barrel in his fist, he slammed the butt down on the creature’s head. A trickle of blood flowed from its mouth, but the long muscle of a body still struggled and flapped and the fish glared up at them with baleful eyes. “Die, you fucker,” Smith muttered and pounded it until the boat rocked.

  “Why do you have to do that?” the priest asked.

  “It’s our God-given duty to rid the earth of vermin and I’d say this piece of shit qualifies. You said yourself, don’t get your hand near its mouth. Anyway, it’s dead,” and in fact the creature lay unmoving, a thick remnant of a time before time, blood oozing from its mouth. “Might as well save the hook.” Smith took up a pair of pliers and bent to the task. He was prying the hook free when the fish convulsed with a last twitching heave and clamped its bony jaws on the officer’s fingers. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Smith cried. He grabbed up his buck knife and cut the line and tossed the creature into the water, where it turned over and floated, white belly to the sky. He seized the flask and upended it over his bleeding hand, but under cover of the struggle the priest had drained the contents and only a few drops trickled out. The officer threw the flask into the bottom of the boat, pulled out his gun, and fired a round at the fish. The report echoed from the surrounding trees. The fish floated idly, untouched.

  Smith sat to the motor and started it with a savage pull to the cord. “Last time I ask you to bless the waters.”

  “Be careful what you pray for,” the priest said.

  Officer Smith sucked on his wounded hand. “I’d just as soon be shut of the sermon, if you don’t mind.”

  The priest sighed. “Let me give you some advice. It’s too late to do me any good but somebody might learn something from my life even if I haven’t. The world is filled with trouble. You sit where I sit and you hear and see it all the time, and you live long enough and it will come to you. I can’t get away from it, it follows me to the ends of the earth, even to this godforsaken little pond in the middle of nowhere trouble follows. So I say, next time it comes to you to bring more trouble into the world, think about how much there is already. Mercy is by definition a virtue reserved for the powerful, a fact I learned from having no power and so never having the luxury of exercising it. So next time life presents you with an opportunity to exercise your power, think about how maybe you can bring a little less trouble into this weeping world.”

  By the time they reached the bank the trees were a line of jagged black teeth against a sullen gray sky and the air was chill. The officer emptied the minnow bucket into the lake and held up the stringer, with its single flapping perch now glistening, now dull in the slanting sun. “No pleasure in a single perch,” he said. He bent to the water, unclipped the stringer, slid the fish from its tine and released it into the lake, where it floated on its side, bleeding and dazed.

  Chapter 5

  The Smiths lived in a brick shoebox of a house across the highway from Dr. Chatterjee’s office. Two small double windows, their curtains always drawn, framed a white door. Mangy grass struggled to get a purchase in the yard, rocky and uneven from the digging of the foundation. A yellowing boxwood hedge grew under one of the windows. In the center of the yard, a dogwood sapling with two or three blossoms was staked to the ragged dirt. Dr. Chatterjee searched for the doorbell but found only wires, wrapped in black tape, dangling from a hole. She knocked once, then again. Officer Smith’s wife opened the door. Dr. Chatterjee held out her hand. “I have come to inquire after your son. I stopped by his room at the hospital to discover he had been discharged.”

  The door opened to the width of Mrs. Smith’s thin shoulders. “That’s awfully nice of you, ma’am. He’s doing just fine. And you got no need to worry about the bill—”

  “I am not concerned with the bill but I feel his situation is unresolved and as his admitting doctor I am responsible. Perhaps we could sit and talk for a moment?”

  Mrs. Smith’s hand strayed to her hair. “Oh, ma’am, that’s so very sweet of you to trouble yourself but I’m in the middle of spring cleaning and the place aint fit for a pig. You just let me know how much we owe and I’ll see to it that my husband—”

  Dr. Chatterjee took her hand. “Please, dear Mrs. Smith, I am not concerned with the bill. Your husband’s insurance will cover all but the most incidental expenses, and those we can attend to in due time.” She brought forth a package she had concealed at her side. “I had promised you a fresh shirt.”

  Mrs. Smith drew back. “Oh, no, ma’am, we couldn’t, my husband would never accept charity, not after you’ve already done so much, it wouldn’t be right. We should be buying a present for you.”

  The afternoon sun streamed into the front room. Dr. Chatterjee caught a glimpse of quick movement behind Mrs. Smith’s back. She thrust the package into Mrs. Smith’s hand. “It was so very little, a pleasure, you will allow me, please, it may be too big but they assured me you could exchange it.”

  “I thank you very much, better to buy too big, by the time you wash it for the first time he’ll already have outgrown it, I’m much obliged, I’m sure he’ll like it just fine. I’ll be sure to let you see him wearing it.” She was closing the door.

  “Do stop over for a visit any time you would like to discuss the matter further,” Dr. Chatterjee said, but the door was closed.

  As she turned to go the officer drove up in his police cruiser. She lifted her hand in greeting. He did not glance in her direction but continued to the rear of the house. Her grandmother, half a world distant and long dead, spoke at Dr. Chatterjee’s ear. Some day you will have to go to your father-in-law’s house. You must learn to be a good wife or you will be disgraced.

  Crossing the highway to her office Dr. Chatterjee was a roiling mass of emotions dominated by a fierce anger. She bent to the street’s graveled edge and picked up a stone to throw it at . . . whom? The stone fit perfectly in her hand, gray and round and smooth, and gave at least that satisfaction. She stuck it in the pocket of her suit.

  Chapter 6

  The county attorney, Harry Vetch, had a smooth oval face with pink cheeks and eyes that changed color depending on the time of day—in full sun they were palely and innocently blue but in shadow or at night they were some complex shifting color closer to green. In bright light they twinkled—the result of overactive tear ducts—but they gave him an earnest air, the look of someone who needed mothering. His hair was fast disappearing but he could still claim to be blond. He was as tall as he needed to be but slight of build—in high school he had played football mostly to be popular, though on the field he had been doggedly, foolishly fearless.

  He was a churchgoer and a believer—not in the window dressing of doctrine or dogma but in the institution, the great edifice of the Church. As an attorney he understood that the Church was less about principle than about precedent. Precedent translated into continuity, continuity enabled stability, stability enabled civilization, civilization enabled prosperity. “People want strong leaders,” he said to Maria Goretti as she helped her daughter into her pajamas. “People want to be led.”

  “And you want to lead them.”

  “I think that is what I have been called to do.” He swirled the last of his drink before downing it in a gulp. “Does that sound too, I don’t know. Grandiose?”

  “Well, called. How about just saying, ‘I’m ambitious’? That’s OK with me—I like ambitious.”

  “How about dedicated? Dedicated to public service. It’s not easy taking on responsibility. People envy the power and the perks—”

  “—and the money.”
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  He sighed. “I could make a lot more money moving to a big city and going to work for a corporation. You know that.”

  “Where everything would be a lot more expensive and you’d be one of fifty lawyers working in cubicles.”

  “I’m just pointing out the burdens of elective office. Dealing with every crackpot telephone call. Trying to help people bring some order into their messy lives.”

  “I want a story, Mom,” her daughter said. “You always read me a story.”

  Maria Goretti scooped her up. “I always read you a story except for tonight, Baby Doll. You’re old enough to know that always always comes with some exceptions. Mamma needs to spend some time with her guest.” She lifted the little girl onto her shoulder. “Say night-night. You want to give Mister Harry a goodnight kiss?”

  Vetch held out his arms. Baby Doll buried her head in her mother’s shoulder and he laughed. “That’s OK. Next time I come I’ll read you a story, how about that.”

  Baby Doll raised her head and let out a long wail. Maria hastened her down the hall and for the next fifteen minutes he heard her wails and whimpers until Maria Goretti returned, shut the door and flopped on the couch next to him. “Jesus. I don’t know what’s got into that kid, she’s usually so sweet. That jealous phase, they all go through it around her age but that doesn’t make it any easier to put up with. You want a refill?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  He spoke to her over the comforting noises—the suck of the freezer door opening, the slam of its close, the clink of ice against glass. “I like that. You stood firm and that was the right thing to do. Kids want discipline, just like grownups. We think we’re so different from kids when the fact is we’re pretty much the same, only bigger.”