I found my voice before my mother and
father returned. I'd placed the peach pit in his hand and Da
had looked at me in such a way that I knew he understood my
meaning.
"Mr.
Fouquet's Windhill came to the loft at three
twenty-six," I said. "Moonbeam and Jenny have come
home. And all the other birds but seven. Dickens never came home.
There was a storm out over Ohio. I reckon he's been lost in
it."
Da made a slight
movement as though shaking his head. He frowned a bit.
Dickens had been
captured by the storm but was not yet altogether lost. A
full-blown gale had blown him farther and farther south. He'd
been buffeted about like an autumn leaf, expending prodigious
amounts of energy just to stay aloft, pushed off to the rim of
the storm, whirled about over the valley of the Cumberland River
in Kentucky and on across the border into Tennessee.
He managed to
break loose and, exhausted, fluttered wet and torn, to the
shelter to the marshlands around Falling Water, more than three
hundred and fifty miles off course and seven hundred on a
straight air-line to home.
He huddled among
the reeds listening to the strange sounds of the water birds
protesting the weather. Two or three ducks quarreled among
themselves and swam in placid circles.
Da looked at me
with some question in his eyes and murmured something I tried to
understand and thought I did.
"No, Da, I
don't think Dickens failed me. I know that he didn't.
Still he's lost."
My grandfather
spoke again, a harsh sound not only because the words were still
unintelligible but because there was a determination in his voice
to make me hold on to hope.
"We
won't give up on Dickens, " I thought he said.
"But if the
storm's thrown him far away, how can we expect him to see his
way to home? You said pigeons came home because of a sharp eye
and a clever memory.
He gripped my
hand to stop my words.
He grinned.
"I would would no could...I could wrong. Could be
wrong."
The words came
out all in a sentence. He breathed hard as though he'd run a
long race but grinned fit to bust. He'd heard himself speak
sensibly. But when he tried again it came out all gibberish and I
told him not to try anymore.
Mr. Fonquet
arrived then, poking his bead around the hospital door like a
turtle peering from his shell.
"You old
fool," he said to my grandfather.
He nodded to me
and drew up a chair beside the bed. He put a gift-wrapped box on
the side table.
"Candy," he said.
Da waved his
right hand.
"No,
thanks," Fouquet said. "Bad for the teeth." He
smiled, showing his own, most of them intact. One of the ways in
which he claimed small victories over his old friend.
"The times
have been calculated," he went on. "Windhill's the
winner at eight hundred sixteen point sixty-five yards per
minute. I'm sorry about Dickens."
He looked at
me.
"Don't
give up hope."
I said that I
wouldn't. Then I noticed that he'd reached over and taken
my grandfatlier's hand for a moment, given it a squeeze. The
message was as much for Da as for me. Da must have squeezed back,
for Fouquet smiled, pleased at Da's will to fight.
It recalled a
day to me when I'd come home from school with a bloody nose
and bruises alongside my jaw. I mean to say I went to Da's
house because I could expect my mother to make something of a
fuss over the damage done to me and the fact that I'd risen
to the challenge of a fist-fight against her constant
warnings.
Da was neutral
as he bathed my face with cold water.
"What
started it?" he asked.
I shrugged my
shoulders.
"Don't
want to say?"
"Can't
remember," I said.
"Something
pretty small then."
"I
guess."
"Don't
know?"
"Don't
know."
"Foolish,
was it?"
"I
couldn't back down," I said. "You wouldn't have
wanted me to run away, would you?"
"Why
not?"
"It'd
be cowardly," I said in a soldierly way.
"Ah. So you
took to punching at this other fellow and he at you because your
friends would think you afraid if you didn't."
I nodded
hesitantly, feeling a little lesson on its way and just annoyed
enough not to want to hear it. I wasn't always eager to drink
in my grandfather's wisdom.
"Couldn't talk it out?" he went on.
"Didn't
try."
"Ah."
"I know I
acted foolish," I said before he could say it for me.
"Not
necessarily," he said, surprising me. "Probably, but
not necessarily."
"Is that
all?" I finally asked when he didn't say any more.
He grinned.
"Waiting for some advice from Grandpa's Almanac?"
he teased.
He'd put me
in the temper to hear what he had to say.
"All right,
then, here it is. Never fight over anything small."
My heart sank a
bit. In his mild way it sounded like he was scolding me.
"Unless," he added, "you're ready to go to the
wall for it."
"The
wall?"
"To the end
of your strength."
"I kept
swinging until I couldn't lift my arms," I said, wanting
to make him proud of me about that at least.
"In the
name of your honor?"
"Yes."
"And did
you exercise compassion?"
Well, Roger
hadn't hollered "Quitsl" so I hadn't the chance
to display any real forbearance. On the other hand, nobody won
the flght, so I guess we showed compassion enough.
"How can
you know if something's small? Who can you ask ?" I
wanted to know.
He shook his
head. "That's for you and you alone to say."
Now Da was in a
fight, but it certainly wasn't for anything small. It was for
his life and, perhaps even more importantly, for his dignity.
Fouquet and Da
bantered back and forth.
Strange way to
put it since Da's friend did all the talking and Da merely
murmured now and then.
Finally Da's
old friend left. I thought the visit long but I suppose it was
really very short, just a token to let my grandfather know that
all the men and women he knew in the pigeon club were concerned
about him. That pleased Da, I know. He held great store by the
respect people gave to him because, by his way of thinking, it
was the best of what a man earned with his life.
My mother and
father took me home right after Mr. Fouquet left. Da was growing
visibly tired. He tried to smile as Mother kissed him on the
corner of his mouth. He gripped my hand and looked into my
father's eyes as though making certain he wouldn't forget
the lines of his son's face before morning. Or was there some
other question there? Was he asking how they intended disposing
of his sick old body? He had no power over his destiny anymore
and had to look to his son to sustain him in this trial.
I didn't
sleep well, imagining that Da was back at his own house standing
by the loft waiting, without me, for Dickens to come home.
I heard my
mother's light voice from time to time through the night
answering my father who spoke in long stretches about how to
handle the new responsibilities created by Da's illness. His
voice was deep and rumbled like a distant storm.
Thinking back on
it now, I know that the worst part of it all for Da must have
been that dependency he had thrust upon him. I mean to say,
he'd had a son and watched him grow, shared the years with
him and felt that his was the guiding hand as much as such things
are possible, and then, all of a sudden, like a bolt of
lightning, a thunderclap, his wasn't the power. He'd been
supplanted as the head of the family by a man he could not help
but remember as a boy coming to him with some hurt or with some
triumph. He was suddenly the helpless creature, the child, and
that boy was now the man, making decisions that bore sharply upon
his life. In that way the flesh of his flesh had become the
enemy, just as I clearly see that the father is, in some ways,
the enemy of the boy, thwarting him and shrinking the borders of
his dreams and aspirations.
In gripping my
hand my grandfather had made a pact with me across the years,
saying to me that we were both weak and must depend on one
another to protect one another against the kind, benevolent
judgments of those who would be our caretakers.
