The Bird Saviors Read online

  Lord God calls out, You miss the bus, don't plan on getting a ride from me.

  Ruby stands at the window, watching a lone Grief Bird on the railing. It stares back, like a shape- shifter waiting for her next move.

  Lord God stomps his peg leg on the front porch. Ruby grabs her book bag and marches past him. She keeps moving down the front walk. Red Creek Road is a two- mile stretch of potholed dirt from their front yard to Highway 96. When she passes the junipers near the mailbox, she catches sight of the yellow school bus pulling away. She has to turn and head back.

  It came early, she mumbles as she passes him.

  You're late again, says Lord God. You'll be late for your own funeral.

  Ruby stops and stares at the sky. Snow clouds bulge over the mountains. The wind whips dust into her eyes, makes her squint. She does not want to give Lord God the satisfaction of acknowledging his words and warnings.

  I'll take you to meet Mr. Page on the way to school. He is just the thing you need.

  She goes through the front door, back inside the house. Lila sits in her plastic play swing and smiles like a cartoon baby when she approaches. Ruby leans in to kiss her cheeks and forehead, trembling. Lila grabs a curling lock of Ruby's hair and holds on tight, as if she's holding the reins of a roan pony. A clear dribble of drool shines her lips.

  Ruby disentangles her hair from Lila's fist, whispering, Mommy has to go now. I'm going to miss you and think of you every minute I'm away until I can come back and take you away too. Mommy loves you so much and she won't do anything to hurt you. For now Grandpa will take care of you.

  Ruby's eyes well with tears as she kisses her baby's lips, soft and wet with drool. She tells her she's sorry. She swears she'll be back to get her as soon as she can. A day or two at the most. She covers her face with her hands and tries to stop her sobbing. She hears Lord God on the porch, opening the door, telling her to hurry.

  He tells her he doesn't have all day. We have to get Lila dressed and in the car seat too, he shouts.

  Lila puts her hands over her eyes and then pulls them away dramatically. She wants to play. Ruby's voice breaks when she says, Peekaboo! Lila covers her eyes again and Ruby starts to cry as she leaves the room. When Lila takes her hands away, the room is empty. Mama, she calls. Mama!

  Ruby rushes through the smoky kitchen and out the back door. Lord God follows her but is several steps behind, his prosthesis slowing him. Did you hear me? he calls. You need to dress your girl. I'm not a taxi. You want a taxi you get a job and pay for one.

  She runs past the woodshed, Grief Birds rising and cawing, her backpack slapping her shoulders. At the fence she tosses her backpack over, grabs a crooked post, clambers over the sun- bleached rails. She turns her body sideways to straddle the rough- hewn cross- ties. A rusty nail catches her jeans until she wriggles free.

  For a moment she takes one last glance at the house— a faded white box set against the redness of the sky beyond, a smoky plume rising from the stovepipe. Lord God on the back steps, bearded and angry as a statue of Brigham Young, perplexed and one heartbeat from judging her to have lost her ever- loving foolish female mind.

  The high desert beyond the woodshed is brown grass sloping upward, toward the mountains. To the east dry gulches big as small canyons cut the bleached landscape.

  Lord God shouts again. Ruby hurries on, the wind ripping her father's voice into the past. The field of rabbit bush and sage jiggles before her eyes. She cuts a zigzag path through cactus, cold air stinging her face.

  The wind fills her ears with a loud buffeting roar. She stops to catch her breath. Behind her Lord God still follows, struggling against the gusts, losing her. She takes off again, her legs feeling thick and clumsy. To the west roils a dust cloud like a billow of sandblast. The early- morning sun reflects against it, against the clouds of prairie dust boiled loose by downdraft in the foothills of the mountains. The clouds churn, swirling tongues of dust spreading across the plains and heading toward Ruby alone in the murk.

  S o u t h o f P u e b l o a red- tailed hawk perches on a telephone pole. It has not eaten in two days. Below it a prairie dog scuttles into its burrow. Trucks thunder by on Interstate 25, drafting gusty diesel wind, ruffling the parched brown grass. Another prairie dog strays from its burrow until the hawk swoops low with talons outstretched. The prairie dog darts below. The hawk banks, curls toward the highway, and is flapping its wings to regain height when a passing truck clips it with a shiny side mirror. Caught by the wind, the hawk's body tumbles into the right lane of traffic.

  Passing vehicles run over it twice before a Subaru slows and pulls onto the shoulder. The driver sets his emergency brake and turns on his flashers, watching the stream of traffic. He pulls on leather gloves as he rummages on his floorboard for a paper sack. He unfolds it, watching a tractor- trailer rig in the distance.

  Ward Costello gets out of the car and stands in the shudder of tailwind gusts off the diesel rigs, hurries across the right lane. A truck blasts its horn. He eases the hawk's broken body into the paper sack, taking care not to crush the cinnamon- colored tail feathers. The truck honks again. At the last minute Ward trots to the shoulder and gives the trucker a wave, cradling the paper sack like a swaddled baby.

  He opens the bag wide enough to give the hawk a preliminary inspection. The tips of its primaries are ragged, indicating stress from pollution or inadequate diet. One of its talons is broken off to a stump. He smooths the mottled feathers, waits for a break in the traffic, and stares at the dead hawk's red tail feathers sticking out of the paper bag. It looks like something being smuggled.

  A northwest wind blasts a thin scrim of dust over his windshield. Ward turns on the wipers and merges into traffic. On either side of the freeway, tall white wind turbines straddle the interstate like an invasion of alien propeller giants. Their enor mous blades rotate slowly. A herd of antelope grazes in the stretched- out morning shadows of the turbine towers.

  He heads into the outskirts of Pueblo, a no- man' s- land of abandoned strip malls with jagged- teeth windows, ratty vacant lots, and dusty Mexican restaurants. The blackened husk of a burned XXX adult bookstore. A dark brown sky spreads in the west.

  His cell phone rings and rings. He fishes it out of the console, sees the caller ID display, and cringes: his sister- in- law. After the rings stop the beeps begin, telling him he has voice mail, telling him to be connected, demanding that he pay attention, for God's sake. Telling him no matter how much he wants to be alone he can't be. He listens to the message, the only way to stop the idiotic beeping.

  Nisha's voice is all about broken promises, suicide- hotline desperation. The electric bill is over four hundred dollars, she says. If he doesn't pay, they're going to turn off the power. It's his house, so he has to pay it, doesn't he? Legally? Isn't he financially liable? This is a country of laws, isn't it? True, she happens to be living there now but she has no job and no money. What does he expect? It's his house she's sitting, right?

  Please help me please. Why did you leave me? You touched me and that's okay. I wanted you to. But you left and you don't talk to me now? Are you ashamed of me? Of us?

  Ward listens as her voice fades in and out on the spotty connection. Nisha's voice resembles her sister's. Like voice mail from the dead. This isn't her only similarity: The last night Ward stayed in his home he slept with Nisha. Even her body, her spicy smell, was like Sita's, like sleeping with a twin. Only needier. She wanted to marry him. She wanted him to bless her with child. She said her time was running out.

  The next morning he walked out of the house, leaving her naked in his bed, her sleeping body sprawled atop the white sheets, her mocha skin and darkly painted eyes, arms wrapped around a pillow and black hair tumbled and thick. He will pay the power bill. If it comes to it, and it will, he will deed the house to her and assume both the financial and moral debt.

  On voice mail she begs him to come back. Come home soon, she pleads. Don't forget me now. You can't forget me, can you? I
know you can't.

  O n t h e o t h e r s i d e of town George Armstrong Crowfoot tries to avoid the severed head. He has bad dreams and a thing like that, once seen, skyjacks your nightmares like a special guest star. Like a relative with a shot liver who won't go home and won't quit asking where you hid the whiskey. George has never seen a severed head except in movies, and he figures special effects are good enough.

  Mosca won't shut up about it. The infamous head. Said to be that of outlaw Black Jack Ketchum, hanged in Clayton, New Mexico, in 1901. When the trapdoor opened and Ketchum's body dropped twelve feet to the noose bite, his head popped clean off, shocking the crowd of morbid onlookers. Now Jimmy Rodriguez, aka Mosca (the Fly), says he won it in a poker game.

  Right, says George. I believe that.

  What? You think I'm lying? You calling me a liar?

  What I find hard to believe is you winning a poker game.

  You never seen me play, says Mosca. I got a poker face. I got luck.

  George Armstrong Crowfoot does not believe that either. Mosca works with him on patrol for the Department of Nuisance Animal Control, and George knows anyone who stoops that low likely isn't a lucky bastard. Not to mention that Mosca is skinny and tattooed, like an overgrown Chihuahua. Crowfoot frowns and sniffs. Oh, Jesus. What's that smell?

  Mosca sniffs the bowling- ball case. Oh, Black Jack's got an aroma, yes, he does. Mosca worries open the zipper. Behold the mighty, he says.

  The skin is leathery, shrunken. Stiff as dried masking tape. A rictus pulled back to evince a death- scream grimace, reveal a set of long yellowed teeth. A black mustache all wiry and tangled above the grimacing maw.

  George frowns at the head and says, Black Jack Ketchum was hanged in 1901. This individual looks to be only a few years departed, you ask me. Wouldn't Ketchum be not much more than a skull by now?

  It's Black Jack's head, says Mosca. I shit you not.

  Whatever you say, hombre. But before you get your panties in a wad, maybe you ought to take this to the Antiques Roadshow people. One of those queens will set you straight.

  I don't need any queen to tell me what's what.

  Antiques Roadshow, repeats Crowfoot. They talk about provenance and whatnot.

  What's provenance?

  Proof of where it came from.

  I don't need proof. I got a head.

  Right.

  He's well preserved is what he is. Like my grandmother. We had to dig her up for an inquest thing. To prove if my grandpa poisoned her or not. For the insurance, you know.

  And did he?

  Probably, but they couldn't prove it. Grandma looked pretty good, considering. Like she'd been dead only a month or two.

  I don't know about your dear departed. But I tell you it doesn't take a genius to figure that ain't Ketchum.

  Is too.

  You been had.

  Mosca considers the withered human head in his lap. The wispy black hair, ears like dried apple slices. A flake of yellow epidermis peels away from the edge of a sunken, gaping eye socket. Mosca picks at it, trying to neaten the skull. It's like trying to scrape the label off a mayonnaise jar. All he manages to do is to loosen a bigger hunk. He licks his finger and dabs at it.

  Damn, he says. I didn't mean to do that.

  George shakes his head and backs out of the driveway. You can probably hock it.

  You think?

  George shrugs. Hock shops value the odd. It might fit right in. I mean, it's a head all right. Even if I doubt it's Black Jack's.

  Mosca stares at the grimacing, leathery mug. People will pay good money for the head of Black Jack Ketchum. Man I won it from said it was worth a grand at least.

  Crowfoot shrugs. You might get something for it. I don't know about a grand. Maybe a hundred bucks.

  Shit. I get more than that. He's a famous outlaw.

  Ketchum was. This dude, he probably robbed a liquor store and forgot to grab a top- shelf bottle of tequila, the dumbshit. Crowfoot grins. That's if you ask me.

  Mosca says, Fuck it. He stuffs the head back into the bowling- ball bag, crams it between his feet on the floorboard. I'm going to make some money off this head if it's the last thing I do.

  That's just peachy, says Crowfoot. They drive taciturn and moody through the streets of Pueblo to the Department of Nuisance Animal Control office, where they check in and get their assignment for the day. Crows and cowbirds near a feedlot. Exterminate with all due diligence. The boss man Silas tells them to get started pronto.

  Halfway across town Mosca says, You hear about the fatso kidnappings?

  Crowfoot holds the steering wheel with one finger, his hand in his lap, staring at the landscape of pawnshops, strip clubs, and palm readers that clatters by the pickup's window like lemons and cherries on a slot machine. After a moment of silence he says, You want the truth? I bet Black Jack Ketchum's head is buried along with his name.

  They're kidnapping fat people and liposuctioning them skinny to sell the oil on the black market. That's what I heard.

  The sky looks darker the farther west they travel.

  What do you mean, "they"? asks Crowfoot.

  You know, says Mosca. The lipo gangs. The ones who sell it

  on the black market to the illegals and migrants living in the boxcars down at the freight yards.

  Crowfoot squints at the storm clouds massed before them. Looks like we're about to be in the shit, Señor Fly.

  Jesus Christ. I don't need another day off, says Mosca. I need some work is what I need. By hook or crook.

  George is thinking he needs a better pair of boots. And a better job. He used to think this grunt work was a step up from hauling trash since part of the job was shooting things. Years ago maybe George would have enjoyed the pure sport of it— the aiming, the hitting of the target— but now when he's called out to exterminate another murder of crows sighted near town, he feels the spider- on- your- neck creep of guilt. And today's detail is just pathetic, sent to the west side of town to track and kill a flock of cowbirds massing on feedlot scraps. A job like this would make Crazy Horse turn over in his grave.

  Interested in a little extra cash? asks Mosca. I got something going on the side. Bet I could get you on, easy.

  You're full of bets today, aren't you?

  Mosca grins. I'm a betting fool, that's for sure. I tell you about this, you promise not to breathe a word? It's somewhat wide of the law, if you catch my drift.

  Do I look like a snitch?

  Mosca explains that he's part of a crew of cattle providers. With the price of beef higher than ever, a man can make good money liberating a few head of cattle at night, taking them to a slaughterhouse out of state. Black- market beef.

  You have to know your way around a steer, says Mosca. I'm guessing you probably do. Plus it helps to have some muscle. It's all quick and fast and these dudes I work with, they don't fuck around.

  You're cattle rustling?

  You could call it that. I like to think of it as a Robin Hood kind of deal. Taking from the rich and selling to the poor.

  That's supposed to be giving to the poor.

  We can't be that old- fashioned, can we?

  I don't like the sound of it.

  I didn't either at first. But once you get used to money, it makes you feel like the king of Denver.

  They near the western edge of town. The wind picks up and grit blasts the windshield. Crowfoot flips on the wipers. The rubber blades squeak and shudder on the cold glass, clearing two arches. Mosca says they're screwed. No way in hell they're going to do any bird killing in this duster. They watch as the dust storm rears up in front of them. It comes on like a cloud of bricks.

  Crowfoot and Mosca sit in the cab and wait it out. The sand sifts across the windshield in a hypnotizing swift drizzle. It's as if time is moving faster than it should. Mosca says sometimes it seems that the end is near and this is nothing but hourglass sand running out.

  They watch as the dust storm swallows a billboard advertising
topless dancers in the Wiggle Room.

  After a half hour the storm slackens. The wind dies and the dust sifts down on the back side of the wind gusts. Traffic begins to crawl. Mosca and Crowfoot drive on, straining to see the taillights of the vehicles ahead.

  Crowfoot asks for more dope about this cattle- rustling gig.

  . . .

  R u b y h u r r i e s a c r o s s the prairie, the roiling bulge of the dust storm looming like the debris cloud of a demolished building. She coughs and squints, the grit in her eyes and mouth. A gulch opens before her. She stumbles at the edge and into the shadows she falls.

  She trips and slides down the steep ravine walls. Cactus rakes her face, neck, and arms. She hits the bottom of the gulch hard, landing in a jumble of stones and grass. When she comes to a stop, she winces and rocks in pain. Her left arm burns and aches. She clutches it to her side. She feels for wounds, finds a swelling on her head. Her hand is wet. She holds it before her eyes. She can see nothing but a finger and palm shadow in the brick- red haze.