Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction Read online

  “Now, where have you gone, eh?” said Lowell gaily. “I know, I know where to find you when everything’s ready. Oho! a banquet fit for kings and queens, no less.”

  Using his fingertip, he made a circle of dabs around the center of a saucer, leaving mounds of peanut butter, mayonnaise, oleomargarine, minced ham, cream cheese, catsup, liver pâté, grape jam, and moistened sugar. Inside this circle he put separate drops of milk, beer, water, and orange juice.

  He lifted up the cushion. “Come and get it, or I’ll throw it on the ground,” he said. “Now—where did you get to? I’ll find you, I’ll find you.” In the corner of the couch, where the cushion had been, lay a quarter and a dime, a paper match, and a cigar band, a band from the sort of cigars Madelaine’s boss smoked.

  “There you are,” said Lowell. Several tiny pairs of feet projected from the pile of debris.

  Lowell picked up the coins, leaving the six little people huddled and trembling. He laid his hand before them, palm up. “Come on, now, climb aboard. I have a surprise for you.”

  They didn’t move, and Lowell was obliged to shoo them into his palm with a pencil point. He lifted them through the air, dumped them on the saucer’s rim like so many caraway seeds.

  “I give you,” he said, “the largest smorgasbord in history.” The dabs were all taller than the dinner guests.

  After several minutes, the little people got courage enough to begin exploring again. Soon, the air around the saucer was filled with piping cries of delight, as delicious bonanza after bonanza was discovered.

  Lowell watched happily through the magnifying glass as faces were lifted to him with lip-smacking, ogling gratitude.

  “Try the beer. Have you tried the beer?” said Lowell. Now, when he spoke, the little people didn’t shriek, but listened attentively, trying to understand.

  Lowell pointed to the amber drop, and all six dutifully sampled it, trying to look appreciative, but failing to hide their distaste.

  “Acquired taste,” said Lowell. “You’ll learn. You’ll—” The sentence died, unfinished. Outside a car had pulled up, and floating up through the summer evening was Madelaine’s voice.

  When Lowell returned from the window, after watching Madelaine kiss her boss, the little people were kneeling and facing him, chanting something that came to him sweet and faint.

  “Hey,” said Lowell, beaming, “what is this, anyway? It was nothing—nothing at all. Really. Look here, I’m just an ordinary guy. I’m common as dirt here on earth. Don’t get the idea I’m—” He laughed at the absurdity of the notion.

  The chant went on, ardent, supplicating, adoring.

  “Look,” said Lowell, hearing Madelaine coming up the stairs, “you’ve got to hide until I get squared away in my mind what to do about you.”

  He looked around quickly, and saw the knife, the spaceship. He laid it by the saucer, and prodded them with the pencil again. “Come on—back in here for a little while.”

  They disappeared into the hole, and Lowell pressed the pearly hatch cover back into place just as Madelaine came in.

  “Hello,” she said cheerfully. She saw the saucer. “Been entertaining?”

  “In a small way,” said Lowell. “Have you?”

  “It looks like you’ve been having mice in.”

  “I get lonely, like anybody else,” said Lowell.

  She reddened. “I’m sorry about the anniversary, Lowell.”

  “Perfectly all right.”

  “I didn’t remember until on the way home, just a few minutes ago, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks.”

  “The important thing is,” said Lowell pleasantly, “did you close the deal?”

  “Yes—yes, I did.” She was restless, and had difficulty smiling when she found the roses on the hall table. “How nice.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Is that a new knife you have?”

  “This? Yes—picked it up on the way home.”

  “Did we need it?”

  “I took a fancy to it. Mind?”

  “No—not at all.” She looked at it uneasily. “You saw us, didn’t you?”

  “Who? What?”

  “You saw me kissing Bud outside just now.”

  “Yes. But I don’t imagine you’re ruined.”

  “He asked me to marry him, Lowell.”

  “Oh? And you said—?”

  “I said I would.”

  “I had no idea it was that simple.”

  “I love him, Lowell. I want to marry him. Do you have to drum on your palm with that knife?”

  “Sorry. Didn’t realize I was.”

  “Well?” she said meekly, after a long silence.

  “I think almost everything that needs to be said has been said.”

  “Lowell, I’m dreadfully sorry—”

  “Sorry for me? Nonsense! Whole new worlds have opened up for me.” He walked over to her slowly, put his arm around her. “But it will take some getting used to, Madelaine. Kiss? Farewell kiss, Madelaine?”

  “Lowell, please—” She turned her head aside, and tried to push him away gently.

  He hugged her harder.

  “Lowell—no. Let’s stop it, Lowell. Lowell, you’re hurting me. Please!” She struck him on the chest and twisted away. “I can’t stand it!” she cried bitterly.

  The spaceship in Lowell’s hand hummed and grew hot. It trembled and shot from his hand, under its own power, straight at Madelaine’s heart.

  Lowell didn’t have to look up the number of the police. Madelaine had taped it to the telephone table. “Seventh precin’t. Sergeant Cahoon speakin’.”

  “Sergeant,” said Lowell, “I want to report an accident—a death.”

  “Homicide?” said Cahoon.

  “I don’t know what you’d call it. It takes some explaining.”

  When the police arrived, Lowell told his story calmly, from the finding of the spaceship to the end.

  “In a way, it was my fault,” he said. “The little people thought I was God.”

  HELLO, RED

  The sun was setting behind the big black drawbridge. The bridge, with its colossal abutments and piers, weighed more than the whole river-mouth village in its shadows. On a revolving stool in a lunchroom at one end of the bridge sat Red Mayo, the new bridge tender. He had just come off duty.

  The air of the lunchroom was cut by a cruel screech from a dry bearing in the revolving stool as Red turned away from his coffee and hamburger, and looked up at the bridge expectantly. He was a heavy young man, twenty-eight, with the flat, mean face of a butcher boy.

  The frail counterman and the three other customers, all men, watched Red with amiable surmise, as though ready to bloom with broad smiles at the first sign of friendliness from him.

  No friendliness was forthcoming. When Red’s eyes met theirs briefly, Red sniffed, and returned his attention to his food. He toyed with his tableware, and the big muscles in his forearms fretted under his tattoos, under intertwined symbols of bloodlust and love—daggers and hearts.

  The counterman, egged on by nods from the other three customers, spoke to Red with great politeness. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but are you Red Mayo?”

  “That’s who I am,” said Red, without looking up.

  A universal sigh and happy murmur went up. “I knew it was… I thought it was …That’s who it is,” said the chorus of three.

  “Don’t you remember me, Red?” said the counterman. “Slim Corby?”

  “Yeah—I remember you,” said Red emptily.

  “Remember me, Red?” said an elderly customer hopefully. “George Mott?”

  “Hi,” said Red.

  “Sorry about your mother and father passing on, Red,” said Mott. “That was years ago, but I never got to see you till now. Good people. Real good people.” Finding Red’s eyes filled with apathy, he hesitated. “You remember me, Red—George Mott?”

  “I remember,” said Red. He nodded to the other two customers. “And that’s Harry Childs an
d that’s Stan West.”

  “He remembers …Sure he remembers …How could Red forget?” said the nervous chorus. They continued to make tentative gestures of welcome.

  “Gee,” said Slim, the counterman, “I figured we’d never see you again. I figured you’d took off for good.”

  “Figured wrong,” said Red. “Happens sometimes.”

  “How long since you been back, Red?” said Slim. “Eight, nine years?”

  “Eight,” said Red.

  “You still in the merchant marines?” said Mott.

  “Bridge tender,” said Red.

  “Whereabouts?” said Slim.

  “This bridge right here,” said Red.

  “Heeeeeeey—you hear that?” said Slim. He started to touch Red familiarly, but thought better of it. “Red’s the new bridge tender!”

  “Home to stay…Got hisself a good job…Ain’t that nice?” said the chorus.

  “When you start?” said Mott.

  “Started,” said Red. “Been up there two days now.”

  All were amazed. “Never heard a word about it… Never thought to look up and see who’s there …Two days, and we never noticed him,” said the chorus.

  “I cross the bridge four times a day,” said Slim. “You should have said hello or something. You know—you get to kind of thinking of the bridge tender as just kind of part of the machinery. You must of seen me and Harry and Stan and Mr. Mott and Eddie Scudder and everybody else crossing the bridge, and you never said a word?”

  “Wasn’t ready to,” said Red. “Somebody else I had to talk to first.”

  “Oh,” said Slim. His face went blank. He looked to the other three for enlightenment, and got three shrugs. Rather than pry, Slim tried to fidget his curiosity into thin air with his fingers.

  “Don’t give me that,” said Red irritably.

  “Give you what, Red?” said Slim.

  “Them innocent looks about who I been talking to,” said Red.

  “I honest to God don’t know, Red,” said Slim. “It’s so long since you been home, it’s kind of hard to figure out who you’d want to see special.”

  “So many people come and gone …So much water under the bridge … All your old friends growed up and settled down,” said the chorus.

  Red grinned unpleasantly, to let them know they weren’t getting away with anything. “A girl,” said Red. “I been talking to a girl.”

  “Oooooooooooh,” said Slim. He chuckled lecherously. “You old dog, you old sea dog. All of a sudden got a hankering for some of the old hometown stuff, eh?” His chuckle died as Red glared at him.

  “Go on, enjoy yourself,” said Red angrily. “Play dumb. You got about five minutes more, till Eddie Scudder gets here.”

  “Eddie, eh?” said Slim, helpless in the midst of the puzzle.

  The chorus had fallen silent, their eyes straight ahead. Red had killed their welcome, and given them only fear and bewilderment in return.

  Red pursed his lips prissily. “Can’t imagine what Red Mayo’d be wanting to see Eddie Scudder about,” he said in a falsetto. He was infuriated by the innocence all around him. “I really forgot what this village was like,” he said. “By God—everybody agrees to tell the same big lie; pretty soon, everybody believes it like it was the gospel truth.” He hit the counter with his fist. “My own folks, even!” he said. “My own flesh and blood—they never even said a word in their letters.”

  Slim, deserted by the chorus, was now terribly alone with the surly redhead. “What lie?” he said shakily.

  “What lie, what lie?” said Red in a parrot’s voice. “Polly wants a crack-er, Polly wants a crack-er! I guess I’ve seen just about everything in my travels, but I only seen one thing to come up to you guys.”

  “What’s that, Red?” said Slim, who was now an automaton.

  “There was this kind of South American snake, see?” said Red. “Liked to steal kids. It’d swipe a kid, and raise it just like it was a snake. Teach it to crawl and everything. And all the other snakes’d treat it just like it was a snake, too.”

  In the silence, the chorus felt obliged to murmur. “Never heard of such a thing…A snake do that?…If that don’t take the cake.”

  “We’ll ask Eddie about it when he gets here,” said Red. “He always was real good at animals and nature.” He hunched over, and stuffed his mouth with hamburger, indicating that the conversation was at an end. “Eddie’s late,” he said with a full mouth. “I hope he got my message.”

  He thought about his messenger, and how he’d sent her. With his jaws working, his eyes down, he was soon reliving his day. In his mind, it was noon again.

  And it seemed to Red at noon that he was steering the village from his steel and glass booth, six feet above the roadway, on a girder at one end of the bridge. Only the clouds and massive counterweights of the bridge were higher than Red was.

  There was a quarter of an inch of play in the lever that controlled the bridge, and it was with this quarter of an inch that Red pretended, God-like, to steer the village. It was natural for him to think of himself and his surroundings as moving, of the water below as standing still. He had been a merchant sailor for nine years—a bridge tender for less than two days.

  Hearing the noon howl of the fire horn, Red stopped his steering, and looked through his spyglass at Eddie Scudder’s oyster shack below. The shack was rickety and helpless-looking on pilings in the river mouth, connected to the salt marsh shore by two springy planks. The river bottom around it was a twinkling white circle of oyster shells.

  Eddie’s eight-year-old daughter, Nancy, came out of the shack, and bounced gently on the planks, her face lifted to the sunshine. And then she stopped bouncing, and became demure.

  Red had taken the job for the opportunity it gave him to watch her. He knew what the demureness was. It was a prelude to a ceremony, the ceremony of Nancy’s combing her bright red hair.

  Red’s fingers played along the spyglass as though it were a clarinet. “Hello, Red,” he whispered.

  Nancy combed and combed and combed that cascade of red hair. Her eyes were closed, and each tug of the comb seemed to fill her with bittersweet ecstasy.

  The combing left her languid. She walked through the salt meadow gravely, and climbed the steep bank to the road that crossed the bridge. Every day at noon, Nancy crossed the bridge to the lunchroom at the other end, to fetch a hot lunch for herself and her father.

  Red smiled down at Nancy as she came.

  Seeing the smile, she touched her hair.

  “It’s still there,” said Red.

  “What is?” said Nancy.

  “Your hair, Red.”

  “I told you yesterday,” she said, “my name isn’t Red. It’s Nancy.”

  “How could anybody call you anything but Red?” said Red.

  “That’s your name,” said Nancy.

  “So I got a right to give it to you, if I want to,” said Red. “I don’t know anybody who’s got a better right.”

  “I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” she said playfully, teasing him with propriety. There was no mistrust in her mind. Their meetings had a fairy-tale quality, with Red no ordinary stranger, but a genial sorcerer in charge of the wonderful bridge—a sorcerer who seemed to know more about the girl than she knew about herself.

  “Didn’t I tell you I grew up in this village, just like you’re doing?” said Red. “Didn’t I tell you I went to high school with your mother and father? Don’t you believe that?”

  “I believe it,” said Nancy. “Only Mother used to say little girls should be introduced to strangers. They shouldn’t just start talking to them.”

  Red kept the needles of sarcasm out of his voice. “Quite an upstanding lady, wasn’t she?” he said. “Yup—she knew how good little boys and girls should act. Yessirreeee—good as gold, Violet was. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

  “Everybody says so,” said Nancy proudly. “Not just Daddy and me.”

  “Daddy, eh?” s
aid Red. He mimicked her. “‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy—Eddie Scudder is my great big Daddy.’” He cocked his head watchfully. “You didn’t tell him I was up here, did you?”

  Nancy blushed at the accusation. “I wouldn’t break my word of honor.”

  Red grinned and wagged his head. “Gee, he’ll really get a big boot out of it when I all of a sudden just kind of drop out of the sky, after all these years.”

  “One of the last things Mother said before she died,” said Nancy, “was that I should never break my word of honor.”

  Red clucked piously. “Real serious girl, your mother,” he said. “Back when we got out of high school, the other girls wanted to play around a little before they settled down. But not Violet. Nosir. I made my first voyage back then—and when I come back a year later, she was all married and settled down with Eddie, and she’d had you. Course, you didn’t have any hair when I saw you that time.”

  “I’ve got to go now, and get my daddy’s lunch,” said Nancy.

  “‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’” said Red. “‘Got to do this for Daddy, got to do that for Daddy.’ Must be nice to have a pretty, smart daughter like you. ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ You ask your daddy about red hair, like I told you?”

  “He said he guessed it usually ran in families,” said Nancy. “Only sometimes it pops up from nowhere, like it did with me.” Her hand went up to her hair.

  “It’s still there,” said Red.

  “What is?” said Nancy.

  “Your hair, Red!” He guffawed. “I swear, if anything was to happen to that hair, you’d just dry up and blow away. Comes from nowhere, does it? That’s what Eddie said?” Red nodded judiciously. “He’d know. I expect Eddie’s done a lot of thinking about red hair in his time. Now, you take my family: if I was ever to have a kid that wasn’t redheaded, that’d start everybody to figuring and wondering. Been a redheaded family since the beginning of time.”

  “That’s very interesting,” said Nancy.

  “Gets more interesting, the more you think about it,” said Red. “You and me and my old man are about the only redheads this village ever had, that I know of. Now that the old man’s gone, that just leaves two of us.”