Chapter 40 #2
“Ellen, do you ride here a lot?”
“Not so much now. I used to ‘cause this is where I lived when I first came here. The Mission was too crowded. And I didn’t know anybody under the bridge, and those people can be crazy anyway. So I came down here and lived by myself in a little tent I made.”
Theo wanted to ask questions: What did you eat? Where did you sleep when it rained? What did you do all day? Obvious questions. Instead he listened, sensing that Ellen would reveal what she felt comfortable with.
“I came to Golden because I met another homeless person in Athens who told me about it. He told me about the coffee shop and the bookshop, and he told me people were nice down here, even at the Mission. So I hitchhiked and walked all the way from Athens to Golden. And I like the name Golden. There’s a Golden in Colorado, but that’s too far to go, and it’s real cold in the wintertime.
“When I got here, I liked it, so I stayed. You never know. William and I thought the people in Charleston would be nice, but look how that turned out. Did you read Saroyan yet?”
Theo assured Ellen he had indeed read selected writings of William Saroyan. Especially the bicycle stories.
She congratulated him and then posed an odd question. “Do you know where night comes from?”
Theo knew the textbook explanation, but instead of answering, he turned the question on Ellen. “You tell me. Where does night come from?”
“Tom came up with it. He says there are five billion trees in the world. Don’t ask me who counted them. I don’t know but probably somebody at National Geographic. Anyway, Tom says that under every single tree, there is some shade, like those trees over there.”
Ellen pointed across the river. “Look at all that shade. And at the end of every day, the shade crawls out from under the five billion trees and gets above the trees, and that’s what makes nighttime.”
She chuckled. “I know that’s not very scientific, but I like the way that little boy thinks. Tom.”
“Ellen, remind me who Tom is.”
“He’s Douglas’s brother. In Dandelion Wine. They ride all over Green Town on their bikes. And they think Leo Huffman invented the bicycle, so they ask him to invent a Happiness Machine too.”
Theo nodded and grunted in acknowledgement. Ellen frowned at him.
“You have read Ray Bradbury, haven’t you? If you haven’t, you need to talk to Tony.”
Theo made a mental note. Read Dandelion Wine.
“Mr. Theo, Tony told me you like to watch birds. Is that true?”
“It is true. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve enjoyed birds. I even keep a list of them. I have seen some beautiful varieties here in Golden. And you?”
“I don’t keep a list, but I like them a lot.
Even though they can be pretty cruel sometimes.
And when Atticus says it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is sing, well, tell that to the bluebird mama who can’t feed her babies because Miz Mockingbird the Hun keeps dive-bombing her. They act worse than people sometimes.”
Theo was impressed once again by Ellen’s literacy and power of observation.
Dive-bombing.
He had never thought of bird flight in that way before, but he had to admit the term was a precise description of what mockingbirds did.
He would add that to his own thesaurus of bird flight: martins dance (“they fly in cursive”), meadowlarks explode (“they rise like geysers”), and starlings sprint (as do those with a guilty conscience, “though no one pursues”).
“Mr. Theo, we are now going to begin our tour.”
Theo’s eyes widened at Ellen’s announcement. He was unaware that a tour was on the schedule.
“I wanted to do something nice for you since you gave me a portrait, but I can’t afford to buy you a present, so I have planned a special bird excursion.”
Theo thanked Ellen. He had no idea what such an excursion might entail.
“You’re welcome. Now, follow me. We’ve got to get closer to the river. I’ll lead the way. It’s not too hard to get there.”
They walked to the lip of the bluff and stepped carefully, just a short drop, over the edge. Their bicycles remained in view as they navigated their way through vines and underbrush — smilax, wild muscadine, blackberry, sensitive briar — in search of a destination known only to one of them.
“There it is.”
Ellen pointed to a piece of pink ribbon on a waist-high stem of lespedeza.
It was just below a vertical bank of sandy clay, a bank covered with low grasses and running vines.
Theo had heard that poisonous snakes thrived in such places and wondered if he might be in the neighborhood of one. Ellen was clearly unconcerned.
She stopped, knelt down, motioned Theo over, pulled a small flashlight out of her pocket, and pointed it at a barely-noticeable depression in the riverbank. “Look.”
Theo did as he was told, hands on knees, just as an angry kingfisher landed on a nearby branch and began to scold them noisily.
“Don’t worry about him, Mr. Theo. Look, right there.”
Theo peered into a three-foot-long burrow that had been dug into the dirt bank. He counted six small birds, a mixture of pink skin, new feathers, and long blackish bills.
“I have never seen a nest like this one before, Ellen. I’ve seen adult birds but never a nest. How did you find it?”
The adult bird continued its noisy protest.
“They nest around here every year. When I lived on the river, I would watch ‘em and try to find their nests. The closer you get, the more the mama and daddy get all agitated, and that’s when you know you’re close.
Sometimes the tunnel is so long you can’t see the babies, but you can hear them peepin’. ”
“Well, I will have to add this to my list. I had never seen the nest of the Megaceryle alcyon before now. Did you know that this bird used to be on the Canadian five-dollar bill? Not any longer though. The poor creature was replaced by an astronaut. A pity.”
They returned to their bikes and took generous gulps of water. It was only nine a.m., but the temperature was rising steadily.
“Mr. Theo, there are several more stops on the tour, but they’re all close by.
And they’re all on the way back to town.
I planned on doing the hard one first. I don’t want you to get sunstroke on me ‘cause if you do you’re pretty much on your own.
I’d have to drag you behind the Noble Invention. Not a pretty sight. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, Ellen. And I have just seen the nest of a belted kingfisher. What a wonderful gift you have given me.”
“I’m glad you like it. I found it just for you. Most people don’t have any interest in things like that. I’m happy to have at least one eccentric friend.”
She chuckled. Irony.
They mounted their bikes and retraced their earlier ride. Theo felt a bit of tightness in his legs but said nothing of it. It was a refreshing pain.
The tour continued. It included nests of a Carolina wren (in an abandoned paint can under a wax myrtle bush), blue grosbeak (in a patch of blackberry vines on the far side of the bike path), and a brown-headed nuthatch (in a hollow fencepost at the corner of an abandoned lot).
Theo had already, long before then, logged each of these in his birding list. Still, he was enthralled to observe the delicate nests up close.
The last nest they observed belonged to red-winged blackbirds. It was built in reeds at the edge of the river. Three chicks and one unhatched gray-speckled egg lay in a cup of dried leaves, mud, and straw.
The adult male showed up in a tantrum as Theo and Ellen leaned close to admire the fragile new arrivals, necks stretched and mouths open in expectation of food.
“I found this one yesterday,” Ellen said. “And I named the babies. One is Theo, one is Rio — that means river in Spanish, and it rhymes with your name — and this little one is named Ibis. Have you ever read ‘The Scarlet Ibis’? Don’t. It’s a short story, but it will ‘buh-rake’ your heart.”
“Ellen, the red-winged blackbird is very special to me.”
His mind returned briefly to the long-ago moment of passing splendor, when the murmuration of starlings and redwings over the River Marne — like fifty thousand feathered treble hooks — ascended, pivoted, and pirouetted until his soul had been pierced with the beauty of their intricate dance.
Someday he might share that memory with Ellen, but, presently, the mother bird had returned and joined the tirade against the unwelcome visitors. Theo and Ellen moved away slowly, got on the bikes, and returned to their starting point.
They dismounted, drank water, shared a peach that Ellen had brought, and walked to the street. Once there, they got back on their bikes and rode to Jason’s shop.
Tony saw them from the Verbivore as they pedaled along Broadway. He hollered something in their direction. Theo waved proudly, and the Penny Loafers applauded.
At the bike shop, Ellen gave Jason an enthused report about their morning excursion.
“I took him all the way to the bluff, and he didn’t even have to stop a single time.”
When Theo tried to pay for the rental, Jason waved it off. “Y’all are good advertising.”