Help for the Haunted(65)

[page]Chapter 15

Birds



People scattered along the winding path in the woods, hands frozen in the air. Heekin instructed me to whisper while we passed, to walk softly so as not to disturb them. When we reached an open space by a pile of twisted branches, he came to a stop. As he knelt to unzip his duffel, I looked down at the wiry gray strands weeding up among his black hair. His thin fingers were wide and flat at the tips, as though somebody had taken a mallet to them. I watched as he pulled out a small plastic baggie and handed it to me.

“What exactly do I do with this?”

“Same as the others are doing. Pour some in your hands, then hold them out.”

I did as he said, dumping seeds into my cupped palms. He poured a little in his hands too, before tucking the baggie back in his duffel. “Remember,” he said, looking at me with his rubbery face and narrow eyes. “You’ve got to keep absolutely still and silent.”

He lifted his arms and so did I. Even though I was wearing a sweater and coat I had pulled from my closet the night before last, when he had first called, a chill worked its way down my back. “And my mother did this too?”

“Yes. Just like I told you.”

“When did you two come here?”

“A number of times. The first was after the interview she granted me while I was writing the book. I had the idea to bring her here when she spoke about the heartbreak she felt after the loss of her father and the smaller tragedy of those birds, which always haunted her. I’m guessing she shared those details of her life with you?”

Embarrassed as I was to admit it, I told him she had not. “I read that part of your book, though, so I know.”

“That part?” Heekin said. “I would have assumed you’d read the whole thing.”

I told him I’d held off on the final section out of respect for them. “They didn’t want Rose and me to read any of it. They weren’t happy with what you had to say.”

Something changed in Heekin’s eyes then, a kind of clouding over. He let out a breath and said, “I feel bad about that and always will. It’s the reason I wrote your mother asking if she’d see me.”

“And did she?”

He looked at his hands, the mounds of seeds in each open palm. “No.”

We stopped talking after that. Down the path, I could see others standing, arms in the air. I raised mine higher.

Finches. Blackhead Grosbeaks. Those were the birds that would land in our hands if we were patient, Heekin had told me. I glanced over at him in his maroon Members Only jacket, zipped up tight. He had nicked his neck—shaving, I assumed—and a dab of dried blood held a torn tissue in place, making me think of Dereck’s gloves. Those flecks on the material, that unexpected story of how he’d come to ruin his fingers, my visit with Father Coffey—all of it had lingered in my mind during the long wait on Saturday. Since a deadline at the paper kept Heekin from meeting sooner, I’d spent the day before at home with Rose. The two of us had not spoken since the incident with the money, so the only sound in our house had been the chiming clock at the top of each hour as time slipped away, bringing me closer to the moment I’d have to face Rummel and Louise. This morning I told Rose I was going to the library—a reckless lie, considering the place was closed, but I knew she’d never check—then I met Heekin at the end of Butter Lane. Now he had driven us to the Bombay Hook Nature Preserve across the state line in Delaware, and with only twenty-two hours remaining, I was beginning to think he’d be no help after all.

“Can I ask how you found that letter?” Heekin said. His speech, I noticed, just as I had on that initial call, was nothing like the long-winded sentences he wrote and nothing like the stuttering, rambling man my father once complained about.

“It was in my sister’s room. I was looking for one from my uncle, actually. I wrote him weeks ago, but never heard back.”

“So it was nowhere special then? My letter, I mean.”

It seemed like such an odd question, I couldn’t help but feel a flutter of annoyance. “Sorry, but no. Somehow it ended up under Rose’s bed, which was why I thought it had been meant for her.”

He sighed. “Well, we should stop talking or they won’t come. The quiet and stillness attract them, same as the globules your father used to claim appeared to him.”

A breeze moved past, shaking the last stubborn leaves that clung to the bare branches. A chill moved through me again that had less to do with the cold, I suspected, and more to do with the sense of betrayal I felt toward my parents. When no birds came after some time, I broke the silence. “Obviously, you didn’t believe him.”

“Your father? No. Not in the end. Did you?”

I thought of the light in the basement that had yet to go out, of those pictures he showed during his lectures, of the story he told about his fateful first meeting with my mother. “I did and I didn’t. It was hard not to, though, when you listened to him talk.”

“I know that feeling. The first time I went to see them, your father did most of the talking up onstage. He had the gift of gab. But your mother, she had a greater gift.”

We were quiet again, waiting. Not far away, a small bird with black and white feathers perched in a cedar tree but showed no signs of coming closer.

“Where did you write your uncle?” Heekin asked, ignoring his own instructions to keep quiet and sending that tiny creature away.