Bird Wars

When Matty saw the first dead blackbird under the walnut tree she thought nothing of it. There was talk that birds were being killed by pesticides and this might be the victim of all the beandust and orchard spray used in the valley. She had seen a news program on TV about all the damage to wildlife from the poisons put on weeds and crops, and had just read in the paper about the balsams dying on the tops of the high mountains from acid rain.

The grass and weeds under the walnut tree were lush in the shade and from the recent rains. You wouldn’t think they would grow so thick under the two trees, but the ground was deep in crabgrass and ragweed. Of course this used to be the chicken yard, thirty years ago when she still kept chickens, before she went to work in the new instrument plant, and the soil must still be rich. Every time she took a step her foot seemed to turn on a walnut buried in the grass thatch from last year. She hadn’t had time for years to gather and crack them for cakes and cookies, the way she did when the children were growing up.

The special thing about the old chicken yard was the way the mulberry tree had volunteered and grown right up into the branches of the walnut. Most trees wouldn’t grow in the shade of a black walnut, but the mulberry had thrived there, almost unnoticed, until it reached into the limbs of the walnut and mingled its branches with those of the nut tree. Now they seemed meshed and mutually supporting, walnut leaves among the mulberry leaves crowding to the light.

It was a paradise for squirrels in fall and birds in summer. The trees were filled in the hot months with the songs of birds feasting on the berries. It was thrilling just to hear the chatter and chiming. But as you got close to the trees you realized many of the birds were fighting, threatening and chasing each other away from the ripe harvest. They fought over clusters and twigs, over sections, over hemispheres of the tree, sometimes flying out and circling in a chase like tiny Spitfires and Messerschmitts diving sideways and chattering their threats. You would have thought they had nests in the trees to protect, or that they had chosen sides according to their different colors.

And right beside the base of the mulberry she saw the goldfinch, its chest feathers torn away. Had the quarreling over the fruit got so rough the birds were actually killing each other? Had a cat gotten into the tree? Or a blacksnake? The blacksnake would certainly have eaten the birds, not left them to rot. And then she saw another blackbird in the weeds by the old chickenhouse. Bending closer she adjusted her glasses and saw the blood on its breast. It must have been shot.

At almost the same instant she remembered her sister’s grandson, Willard, had gotten a new rifle for his birthday.

Not wanting to accuse anyone falsely, she talked it over back at the house with Art who said he had heard shots just the day before. Matty felt a coldness in her arms and stomach. Jerry, Willard’s father, had had so much trouble since his wife left him, and with a lawsuit over the property, that she didn’t want to burden him with yet another worry. And Willard’s grandmother, Matty’s sister Alice, was recovering from a stroke in the nursing home, and it would not be fair to involve her in whatever mischief Willard had done. She would have to be careful. She would listen for any more shots and talk to Willard herself.

“You be careful with him,” Art said. “He’s just a boy but he’s bitter after the divorce. And he’s took all them lessons in karate and thinks about nothing but his bow and arrow and now the rifle.”

“He’s still our kin.”

 

Next morning while she rinsed and dried the breakfast dishes they heard the shots coming from the old place. Not loud reports, but more like puffs and hammer blows. Tying her houserobe more securely she rushed outside, and once she reached the field above her garden she heard the shots distinctly, coming from the walnut tree. She hurried across the dew-heavy grass, getting her slippers soaked.

Willard was standing under the mulberry aiming straight up.

“Why on earth are you shooting the birds?” She kept her voice calm.

He whirled around but didn’t point the rifle at her.

“The birds are our friends, Willard. They eat insects and sing for us.”

“I was target practicing,” he said. “Moving targets.”

“There must be something better than birds to practice on. Besides, it’s illegal to shoot songbirds.”

He did not answer her again. And she walked back to the house getting her feet even wetter.

The next day she found two more dead birds on the roadbank below the walnut tree, this time a wheatbird and a mockingbird.

“I’m going to have to call Jerry,” she told Art.

“I’d go ahead and call the law. That boy’s dangerous with all his karate and study on killing.”

“He’s still family.”

 

Matty called Jerry that evening after he got home from work. The first time she dialed there was no answer. And then she saw Jerry’s Camaro pass and knew he had taken Willard and the younger children out to McDonald’s for supper.

“I keep telling him not to kill birds,” Jerry said. “But he’s a big boy and I’m not here to watch him.”

“Well, Art’s awfully worried about his birds. I’m afraid he’ll have a heart attack.”

 

After the call Matty felt as though she had accomplished nothing. She sat out on the porch with Art and watched the mist rising from spring hollows on the mountain, in places where the hollows were otherwise impossible to see. They had sat on the porch on summer evenings ever since the children were little, after the milking was done and the eggs gathered. When Rachel and Johnny were growing up they used to sing, as the mist rose off the creek and out of the folds of the mountain. The air was cool coming up the valley, after the long work day in the beanfields. Just at dark the whippoorwills would start calling from the pines down at the end of the pasture. The whippoorwills had disappeared years ago, killed by crop dust it was said. Because of his heart Art hadn’t put in a crop for several years, but kept a nursery of pines and hemlocks and boxwoods. Every two or three weeks he mowed out the shrubbery with the garden tractor.

The evening still was broken by the buzz of a hornet. They looked around the porch and saw no insects. There was not even a hummingbird around the feeder.

“Where is that thing?” Matty said. “They must have built in the ceiling where I saw that one go in a hole.”

But even as she spoke the sound got louder and broke into a deep roar, and she realized it was coming from a distance. Art adjusted his hearing aid and leaned over the porch railing. Matty recognized the noise was coming from around the hill toward Jerry’s house. And then they both saw the motorcycle emerge from the trees behind the barn and sweep into the field of white pines. Willard was riding it, leaning low over the handlebars. In the late sun the cycle spurted blue smoke that hung in a tattered trail behind him as he raced up and down the rows Art had kept mowed. The noise was harsh as twenty chainsaws, grating the evening air and echoing off the ridge, filling the valley end to end.

“Where you reckon he got that?” Art said.

“His daddy bought it on credit like everything else I would guess.”

“That boy’s a criminal; you mark my word.”

“He’s just a boy, not halfway raised.”

“He better not ran over my pines. That’s all I can say.”

The motorcycle continued its laps across the field. Willard took off from one end and accelerated in a blast of smoke and popping barks until near the other end where he braked and slid sideways on the dew-wet grass, coming to a stop already turned around to head back down the next row. He was threading every middle of the two-acre field, running like a shuttle back and forth as the evening advanced. It was after dark when the engine coughed out.

“I never thought that boy had over half sense,” Art said as they went inside.

“Well he’s our own blood kin.”

 

Next morning Art found only three little pines that seemed to have been hit by the motorcycle, all near the ends of rows where Willard had skidded into his turn. “I expected worse,” he said.

“At ten dollars a tree that’s still thirty dollars,” Matty said. “I’ll just have to call Jerry again.”

That afternoon when Matty called, Jerry said he didn’t think Willard had damaged any trees, but he would tell him to stay out of the nursery. “He’s awfully careful,” he said before hanging up.

They had not finished supper when they heard the buzz again. Art fiddled with his hearing aid as they walked out to the porch. There was no sign of the motorcycle in the nursery field. The noise grew louder, then waned, and revved louder again. They looked from the barn to the garden to the creek road. Suddenly the bike burst out of the pines in the pasture and shot up the hill. As the slope got steeper it slowed, roaring and smoking, and came to a stop just below the brow. The cycle turned over and both it and Willard rolled over a few times. But in seconds he was back on and coasting down to level ground.

Again and again he roared up the hillside. Even from the porch they could see the red scars where the grass had been torn away by the tires.

“It’ll wash away in no time,” Art said.

At that distance through the evening air the machine sounded like a maddened gnat bashing itself on the hill, swooping up and then down. They could see the smoke boil up and the bike start moving, before the sound of the revving motor reached them.

“He’s angry because his mama’s gone and left him,” Matty said. “I hate to think of somebody that unhappy.”

“He’s unbalanced.”

“He may outgrow it.”

“The pasture may not if it comes a big rain. I ’ve a good mind to go over there and put a stop to it.”

“You’ll do no such thing. With all that jujitsu training he’s liable to kill you.”

“I could take my gun.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“That boy will end up in the pen.”

Art turned down his hearing aid and went inside. Matty was worried about the way he walked lately, as though his legs were uncoordinated with his upper body, giving him an odd twist and lurch as he took his steps. Had he had a light stroke? He turned eighty-five in February. She worried she might die before him and then who would take care of him? He had never been able to look after money, and the children had their lives so far away. She thought of him in a nursing home, ignored and lonely on a long hall smelling of urine and rubbing alcohol.

 

The next Monday was check day, the third of the month. They drove to the post office where many other older people also waited in their cars and trucks for the mail truck to arrive with their Social Security checks. They could wait a few hours for delivery to their mailboxes, but then it would be too late to drive up town and cash them at the bank and have lunch at Ralph’s cafeteria in the mall.

“I hear that McCall boy’s been tearing up your field and pasture,” Willis Stamey said quietly from his pickup parked next to them.

“He’s just a boy,” Matty said.

“I hear he’s going into the service, into the Marines,” Willis said.

After they had gotten groceries, they headed for home. Later, Matty stopped by the barn to leave a sack of side-dressing for the garden in the shed. Willard and another boy were standing under the walnut tree as they drove around the curve by the arborvitae. The other boy ran off through the field, but Willard stood his ground, gun in hand.

Matty rattled her car-keys as she walked up the bank toward him. “Willard, what do you think you’re doing? We’ve asked you twice not to kill the birds and here you are again.”

“We wasn’t shooting birds. We was just target practicing. And this is not even a gun; it’s just an air rifle.”

Sure enough, she could tell from the size of the barrel it was not a .22 but a pellet gun. It looked almost like a toy.

“Well we don’t want no trouble. We want to get along.”

Willard followed the other boy through the field, the air rifle on his shoulder. She watched him disappear into the woods, and had started back to the car when she saw the mockingbird under the hawthorn bush. Looking close, she saw there were four or five other birds there, of different colors and sizes, pushed back almost out of sight.

“I’m not going to call the law,” she told Art. I’m not going to call the law on kinfolks.”

“That boy needs a whipping.”

“He needs his daddy to discipline him.”

“I just might do it myself.”

“You’ll do no such thing. You’re too old.” She only called him old in moments of belittlement, when he was being foolish. At eighty-five he should be beyond such assertions.

“I just might,” he said again.

“And get your fool self killed.”

 

Matty did not call Jerry again. She thought about it all day and decided it would do no good. She wondered if there was any truth to Willis’s rumor that Willard was joining the Marines. She hoped to God it was so. It would be a blessing to Art and her to have a little peace in their old age. But he must be too young to join up. Maybe Jerry had signed for him. Or maybe he had lied about his age.

A day later they heard the popping of the motorcycle on the mountain behind the house. There was a trail over the ridge and down by the chicken yard that had at one time led from the field on the north side of Fairfield Mountain. The field had long since grown up in poplars but the trail was still used by hunters and dogs and anyone climbing the ridge. Because the path threaded the slope it had not washed, but drifted full of leaves each fall and then was packed by the intermittent traffic.

Again they had trouble placing the source of the racket. Matty was just finishing the dishes when she saw Art start from his chair on the porch. He looked around the horizon as though scanning the sky for a cropduster or helicopter. Once she got out to the porch she understood the difficulty of locating the noise. The roar and crackle seemed to come from the ground itself and then from the sky, and again from the trees across the valley. They looked down into the shrubbery patch, and over to the pasture hill. It was as though something was on fire but they couldn’t see the flames.

Gradually she realized the motorcycle was on the mountain behind the house. That was why the noise seemed to be in the tops of the trees. The engine was roaring on the straight places, then quieting on the turns and drops in the trail.

“What will that fool think of next?” Art said.

It sounded as though he was coming right down through the trees onto the top of the house. Then the motorcycle flashed out of the trees beside the chickenhouse, and smoked along the garden edge toward the barn.

“Well ain’t this a pretty come off,” Art said.

There was an uproar inside the chickenhouse. The hens, which settled down clucking along the roostpoles as dark approached, were cackling and flogging around as though ten foxes were among them.

“We won’t get no eggs for a week.” Art usually gathered the eggs from the pinestraw nests after supper as the chickens were settling down for the evening. They were used to him coming in, and though they might protest with a cackle when he pushed one aside to get her eggs, they soon quieted. Now they would be upset all night.

But even as they stood listening to the layers in their pandemonium, they heard the motorcycle ascending the ridge again and coming around the slope with its hysterical chatter. Art hurried with his lurching gait toward the chickenhouse, and Matty followed him.

As the awful sound increased, working nearer through the trees, Matty wondered what they could possibly do, just standing there by the chickenhouse. Willard burst out of the trees, and Art stepped into the path. Whether he was trying to flag him down to talk, or strike the helmeted rider, Art himself was not sure; but he reached out toward the figure as it blasted past in a gesture that was like waving. Perhaps surprised by seeing Matty and Art beside the chickenhouse, and thinking the movement a blow, Willard jerked the motorcycle aside and went into a skid on the wet grass. The engine kept revving though the wheels left the ground as he slid sideways and around on his leg, at the edge of the garden. The engine coughed out and there was no movement from the rider.

Matty and Art began walking toward the overturned machine. But before they reached the garden Willard jerked himself up, righted the cycle, and began pushing it across the garden, through the rows of tomatoes, squash and okra.

“We didn’t mean for you to get hurt,” Matty called.

But Willard did not look around or answer. He kept walking the motorcycle through the vegetables, trampling and knocking down row after row.

“Well ain’t this a pretty come off,” Art said again, and twisted the little knob on his hearing aid.

Almost as soon as they reached the house Matty heard the phone. Out of breath she answered it.

“I never thought you’d try to hurt Willard,” Jerry said. “We didn’t . . .”

“I’m taking him to the doctor and if his leg’s broke it will be your fault.”

“Listen Jerry, we didn’t mean . . .”

“As if I didn’t have enough to worry me already.” The phone clicked. As Matty hung up she could still hear the racket in the henhouse, though it was almost dark.

 

Matty did not sleep much that night, or the next. She felt as though she did not understand how things worked anymore. The elements of her life, of family and community, had been twisted and would not return to their patterns. The ties of fellowship and work were gone. Art thought of nothing, and talked of nothing, except Willard and his doings, even while watching television.

“I always said he wasn’t normal.”

“He would be normal if he had been half raised.”

“From the time he was a kid you could tell he was unbalanced.”

“Oh, hush up. He’s as normal as anybody, except he’s angry his mama’s gone.”

On the third evening, as they sat on the porch, they heard the motorcycle again. Matty was relieved that Willard must not have broken his leg. The snore grew louder as it came popping along from the direction of Jerry’s house. Willard turned off into the weeds along the garden and came roaring across the field into their driveway. Instead of going up on the mountain trail he slid to a stop in the gravel and sat there, both feet on the ground, revving the engine. The smoke boiled up around the machine and drifted across the yard smelling of burned oil. He beeped the little horn on the handlebars, and gunned the engine again, looking straight at them.

“I’ll get a baseball bat and run him off the place,” Art said.

“No you won’t; he’d kill you in a minute. His hands are deadly weapons he likes to say.”

“I ain’t afraid of him.”

“You come in the house with me. Let him go on.” Matty practically pushed him back into the livingroom. Art was shaking.

“Nobody is going to come up and insult me in my own yard,” he said.

“Just calm down; there’s nothing you can do. I’ll get your heart pills.” The windows rattled with the roar of the engine as Willard gave it gas and let off, juiced it and let off. He beeped between every third or fourth rev.

“I ’ll get my gun and shoot the devil.”

“He may have his own gun with him; I’ll call the law.” She was afraid to go to the phone, for Art might lunge out into the yard. He was shaking so she dared not leave him, even to get the pills from the kitchen.

After what might have been minutes but seemed like hours the motorcycle backed around and roared down the driveway and out the road.

Art was flushed and shivering as she handed him a glass of water and a pill.

 

The next afternoon they drove to town for groceries. It was Friday and the Community Cash was crowded as Matty pushed her cart into the close aisles. Art always stayed in the car while she bought the groceries. If brought inside he would try to choose the most salty and fattening items, so she made sure he remained in the car. She was deciding whether or not to get a picnic ham when she saw Jerry turn into the aisle at the other end. Matty wanted to back around and get out of the store, but Jerry had probably already seen her. She would not let her own nephew think she was afraid of him. And this might be as good a time as any to have it out with him. Matty placed the ham on the upper rack of the cart and pushed ahead, tightening her stomach muscles to keep panic down. Jerry had apparently not seen her, or at least acted preoccupied with choosing a can of coffee.

“Listen Jerry,” she said. He turned around in surprise and blushed slightly. He was wearing a wide western belt and a T-shirt cut off at the chest showing his weightlifter’s muscles.

“Listen Jerry, I never wanted no trouble in the family.”

“We don’t want any trouble either,” Jerry said, putting the coffee back.

“And we didn’t want for Willard to get hurt.”

“He’s OK, except for some bruises.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Matty felt sweat accumulating under her armpits. “Art has been so worried over this I’m afraid he’ll have another heart attack.”

“He’s joining the Marines; that’s what he came out to tell you all last night. But you wouldn’t talk to him.”

“He just set there in the yard roaring his engine and beeping that little horn.”

“He was too shy to come in.”

“We wish him well in the service.”

“You all come see us,” they both said as they parted and continued shopping.

Matty was weightless as she pushed down the other aisles, stopping and selecting almost unconsciously. She felt easier than she had in weeks, in a year, as she paid the cashier and led the grocery boy to the car. Art got out to help him load the bags in the trunk. When she told Art about her meeting with Jerry he said, “That boy needs the discipline if anybody ever did.”

“It will all turn out; blood is thicker than water.”

They stopped to eat, as they always did on Fridays, at Ralph’s Cafeteria at the mall. For once she let Art pick the steak and onions that he liked, and the strawberry shortcake with whipped cream which he was not supposed to have. They might as well celebrate once in a while. She herself indulged in french fries and chocolate pie, along with the chopped steak. They saw several of their friends in the cafeteria, and everybody seemed to be feeling neighborly.

After she took the groceries to the house Matty drove on down to the barn to leave the rye seed in the shed. They were going to sow a cover on the garden for the winter. It was a fifty-pound bag, and it took both her and Art to lift it out of the trunk and drag it across the weeds into the shed. At one time Art had been able to lift two two-hundred-pound bags of fertilizer and carry them, one under each arm. It was near dark, but as she opened the car door she saw something under the bank under the walnut and mulberry trees. It looked like empty feed sacks or fertilizer bags thrown there. “Who could have left them there?” she said, jangling her keys. She climbed the bank by the hawthorn, watching her footing in the weak light, on the damp grass. She was right over them before she recognized the row of dead birds. There must have been dozens, sixty, seventy, a hundred, lying in the wet evening weeds, redbirds, robins, blackbirds, mockingbirds, sparrows, wrens, bluebirds, joreets, a meadowlark, and a rare indigo bunting. Even in the failing light she could make out the colors, the yellows beside the blacks, the oranges and mottled grays and iridescent blues. The bodies were stacked neatly as kindling wood.