Backwater (13 page)

I wondered if I was making Jo tired. She looked awake, but it’s hard to tell with hermits.

“We’re all made different ways,” she said. “We’ve got to appreciate that about each other.”

The yellow bird was chirping away on Jo’s finger, pecking the seeds in her hand. Jo took a small bowl of water and put it in the cage. The bird jumped in, shaking water everywhere.

“This child loves his bath.”

“He does.”

Jo put shallow bowls in six other cages and those birds had a time, splashing and tweeting.

The wind picked up outside, blowing strong. The roof started creaking. The birds stopped playing. Some went to the corners of their cages. We covered the cages with strips of wool blankets for extra insulation and Jo said good night to each one, like a mother tucking in her children at night.

We walked outside, locked the padlock on the door.

Suddenly, I remembered my mother tucking me in at night. I saw her face as clear as anything—her dark brown eyes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her patches of freckles, her wide nose. The picture filled my mind for a few sweet seconds, then vanished. I tried to get it back, but I couldn’t. I stood there, holding the gift of the memory.

*    *    *

We had the bean soup from last night and I baked one of the greatest corn breads in all of American history on the wood stove in a cast iron skillet like an official pioneer woman, and watched it puff up to golden perfection. We had it slathered with honey and salted butter that Jo kept on ice in the supply shed.

The fire was crackling good and strong; I was wearing two pairs of long underwear underneath my insulated sub zero pajamas and triple fleece-lined mountain slippers.

There were a few chickadees in the house; I put birdseed in my hand, held it out, didn’t swallow, but none of them wanted to come to me. I didn’t see what the big deal was about Jo’s hand being so much more preferable than mine. I sniffed my palm, tried sniffing under my armpits. Nothing objectionable. The birds were sitting on Jo’s head and on her shoulder, peeping occasionally, but not so you’d mind.

I watched the five candles flick light across the long wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases at the far end of the cabin. It was interesting how shadows change a room. The chickadees had moved to the fireplace mantel and sat in a row; the candle illuminated their shadows up on the log wall like they were eagles.

It was eight o’clock and there was no television.

I smiled remembering when I’d been sick at home with the flu last fall, too sick to read, propped up on the soft camel couch in the family room, clicking the remote control from channel to channel like some brainless amoeba. I couldn’t believe the useless information I had gotten in that one, long afternoon.

A woman in a pink exercise suit said that doing stomach crunches controlled her anger.

A man in spandex pants said that he’d lost seventy-five pounds by eating peanut butter.

A newscaster in a trench coat reported that in a recent study 48% of Americans chose shopping as their favorite hobby.

A politician in a lumberjack shirt accused of tax evasion denied it to different reporters using the same phrase: “I have not, nor have I ever been involved, to my knowledge, in with-holding payment of any kind from the United States government.”

I snuggled up in a wool blanket and watched the chickadees watching me. I wondered about the life of a bird, the choices it had to make. Should it eat this worm or this mosquito? Build a nest in a tree or a potted begonia hanger? I wondered if birds
were ever misunderstood by their families. I wondered if all this wilderness had made me go over the edge.

It had been ninety-seven minutes since anyone spoke. I looked at Jo who looked back and smiled and said nothing. I wondered if I’d done something wrong.

In my house, people filled in the silences. True, it was usually with words that didn’t matter, but at least people were talking to each other.

I closed my eyes and listened to the quiet.

The fire sputtered.

The wind moved gently through the trees.

I’d been complaining for years about needing peace, and now here I was, engulfed by it.

I felt my heart racing, my forehead pounding. Too much quiet could be irritating. It gave you too much time to think.

I thought about Dad and the law-school brochures he’d stick on my bed so I wouldn’t miss them.

I thought of the times he’d confront me like a law professor bent on tearing a first-year law student to shreds.

“Tell me, Ivy, what is this incessant passion of yours for history?”

I’d try reason. “I just think that it’s so interesting that history gives us the ability to look at other people’s lives and see the decisions they made and how those decisions affected whole societies. We can learn so much from that, Dad, about how to live our lives now.”

“And how should you be living your life now?”

“Well …” Some things defied words.

“What are these great insights you’ve been given, Ivy? State them.”

Shaking voice. “I’ve learned, Dad, that every time you think humanity has reached a low level, it can go lower, but on the positive side—”

Dad’s great voice shook the rafters. “I’m not interested in assumptions.
How low has humanity sunk?
”

My throat would close up. “I don’t want to do it now, Dad.”

“You spend most of your life with your face stuck in a history book. I’d like to know just what you’re getting from the experience.”

“I don’t want to play anymore, Dad.”

“
Play?
” he roared. “
This is how you learn to think!
”

I’d run from the room, eyes stinging, fists clenched, heart beating with fury at not being able to defend those things that meant so much to me.

Your father’s a good man
.

“Should we be talking?” Jo asked. “I’m so used to not doing it that I forget about words sometimes.”

“It’s okay,” I lied. “I like the quiet.”

“It took me awhile to get used to the silence,” Jo offered. “When I first came up here I felt like screaming. It was quite a change from life in town.” She waited, rocked. “I hope I didn’t make you feel uncomfortable about what I said about your dad.”

“Oh no,” I said, hating myself. I wished I was direct like Egan.

I walked to the carved statue of Tib.

“Tib misses you,” I said.

“I miss her, too.” Jo got up. “When I moved up here, I wasn’t sure how to explain this life to people, so I stopped writing. It wasn’t the best way. I’d wanted to live in the mountains all my life …”

“I think she would have understood.”

“Maybe.” Jo was standing at the carving now. “The greatest gift Tib gave me was showing me how to really listen to someone. She said when a quiet person has been put in a family of big talkers you don’t have much choice except to listen hard to what others have to say.”

I’d never thought of it that way.

“Quiet people can learn from others just by listening. But it isn’t listening passively when someone is talking to you. Listening can be very active once you get the hang of it. Look at the person’s face, hear their voice, see their eyes and their body language, put your biases aside and the things you want to say next and just let them talk.”

“I’m pretty used to being cut off,” I said.

“I know that feeling well. Words are such powerful things. We can rip somebody apart with them, we can change the course of our lives by speaking them, we can write words down that can forever hurt another person. We can use them to tell stories and lies. We can misquote them and change what other people said to make ourselves look good. But living up here for as long as I have, I’ve learned that I don’t need many words. I think it’s why I like carving better. No words, just images trying to get the essence of something across.”

We stood in the silence for the longest time. It was a healing silence. I closed my eyes and let it flow over me like gentle waves on an empty beach.

My breathing was quiet, I felt the rhythm of my body relax deep. Tension spilled out of my pores like a faucet had been turned on.

It was good not to need words.

I was lugging icy water from the lake just as dawn broke out across the horizon, glowing bigger and brighter until the sky turned to morning. I felt a ripple of history wash through me.

I walked out on the rickety pier. I couldn’t see across to the other side of the frozen lake. I felt close to the only person alive in the whole world. I thought about my ancestors charting the canals of history, standing on the shore of rivers and oceans, wondering what lay on the other side. Being Breedloves, they probably had no clue where they were, directionally speaking. I certainly didn’t. Maybe this was why so many became lawyers, not explorers.

I wonder when my family really began, but no one can ever know that. Breedloves could go back to the Norsemen, or the Jutes and the Angles, or back to some mysterious band sloshing out life in a foggy bog.

But I was linked to their beginnings like an acorn is linked to a tree. They worked out their own laws, philosophies, and family systems; they were influenced by the culture of the day, like me.

The difficult chickadee with the cut-off tail was watching me from a pine tree.

I adjusted the wooden yoke around my neck. I still was lame at using it.

“What are you looking at?”

The bird responded with its trembling chirp.

I lunged toward the cabin, trying to stand up straight, sloshing frigid water. I might as well try to bathe in the lake for all the water I actually got back to the cabin. The bird followed me, chirping.

“If you poop on me again, I’m going to get mad.”

The bird lighted on a branch and cocked its head.

“Don’t look so innocent.”

The yoke was slipping off my shoulder. I bent down, laid it on the ground, dug my hands in my pocket and found some seed.

“You want it?”

The bird studied me, making a judgement, not flying off.

I took off my glove (a sacrifice—it was cold), layered the seed in my hand, held my arm out so slowly, opened my palm. “Come on.”

Nothing.

I stood there, whistled.

The bird sat on the branch.

“I’m going to keep standing here until you get the idea.”

The chickadee pecked at the branch.

“I know Josephine. We hang out.”

My hand was cold, but I was determined not to move or swallow. An icy breeze lifted the hair on the back of my neck.

“Take a chance, bird. You could do worse. There could be lawyers here.”

The bird considered this, hopped on a lower branch.

“Tweet,” I said softly.

A ruffling of feathers, then gently, slowly, the bird flew toward me, making a strange, choppy circle around my head. I braced myself, waiting for it to dump on me, but it didn’t happen.

It landed gently on my hand!

I felt it’s little feet curl around my little finger, sensed the beating of it’s teeny heart.

I did everything to not swallow.

It pecked through the seed, picked one, and flew off.

I had to catch my breath.

“There’s more where that came from,” I said quietly, even though I wanted to shout it. “I mean, we could do this again. Just name the time.”

*    *    *

I was in the cabin, stirring the pot of bean soup over the wood stove. I was standing by the window in the kitchen when I heard the rat-a-tat-tat on the glass. It was my chickadee, standing in the empty bird-feed box, looking depressed.

I opened the window. “You need more in your life than just begging for food.”

He chirped with feeling.

I got some birdseed, held it out in my hand. The bird hopped lightly on my thumb and had lunch.

“If you want to be useful, you can fly over to G. Preston Roblick’s house, see what’s up with the school history I wrote and report back.”

He kept eating.

“Is this all I am to you, a meal ticket?”

He jumped off my hand, up to my shoulder, and, of course, in my great moment of wild bird mastery, Jo wasn’t here.

“I want you to remember what you did because when Jo comes back we’re going to show off.”

Just then the window rattled fiercely. My bird flew back outside. A frigid blast swept through the room. I shut the window as the wind picked up and snow began falling gently at first, then hard.

Jo came in the door covered in snow. “We’re going to get a good one.”

I thought of Jack and Mountain Mama. “Would a person be all right in this if they had to be outside?”

“If they’ve got a tent, they’ll be fine. That guide of yours has seen much worse, believe me. We’ll just hunker down for a bit. It snows like this all the time up here.”

I looked out the window at the thick flakes tumbling down.

The soup wasn’t ready yet. I walked to the bookcase and saw the picture of my Grandmother Ivy. It was the same photo Dad kept on his desk. She, Jo and I looked alike. I remembered one of the rules of being a family historian: Always treat a person like they’re going to open up to you.

So I gave it a shot.

“How old were you when your mother died?” I asked.

Jo stirred in her chair. “Ten.”

“I was six when my mom died.”

“I remember,” she said quietly.

“Do you remember your mother’s funeral?”

“Some parts.”

“I don’t remember anything,” I said. “I had this dream right after she died that I was on a mountain and birds were flying over me and I was standing in the tall grass that was waving in the breeze.”

“You remember that?”

“I dreamt it.”

“No you didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes got far away. “The day after the funeral I came by and we drove to a nature preserve. We climbed a hill that you kept saying was a mountain. The birds were flying overhead; you were so excited to see them circling. You said they were flying for your mother and you wanted to build something on the mountain for her to see from heaven. We gathered some stones, you got some tall grass, and we made a memorial for her. I had some seed in my pocket; you sprinkled it on the ground and the birds swooped down from everywhere in honor of your mom.”