After the Nuthatch Fell Read online

Spaniard had gotten away. Parker’s stomach was feeling really sore.

  “It happens a lot,” Deacon said, sighing. “But not so much in one night. He usually lets me play the game.”

  “He?” And Parker was cold again. He thought he saw a puff of breath as he said the word.

  “It’s getting chilly in here,” Deacon said, ignoring him and getting up to close the window. It was late spring, just a few weeks before the end of school. There was still a remnant of winter’s chill, but Parker wanted to sleep with the window open. He even harbored a hope that they might spend the night in a tent under the trees behind the house. Apparently that wasn’t going to happen.

  Deacon turned to look at Parker, then put his hands on his hips as though he were getting ready to scold him. He looked to Parker like an adult who never quite grew up. “Can I tell you a secret?” he said.

  Parker nodded. His stomach roiled.

  “I think there’s someone,” and Deacon paused and gestured toward the window, as though he didn’t want to look in that direction. “Out there. Out in the woods.”

  “Why do you think that?” Parker asked, pleased that there was more to this pudding-faced boy than video games.

  “Because I hear him sometimes.”

  “What does he say?”

  “He doesn’t say anything, “Deacon said, wiping his nose with the flat of his palm. “I hear noises sometimes. Shouts. Guns going off.”

  “You hear guns outside your window in the woods?” Parker said. He looked at Deacon with a puzzled expression, then walked to the window.

  “Don’t open it,” Deacon said, gesturing weakly with his free hand.

  Parker threw it open. He was apprehensive, but annoyed at this silliness. The night air was pleasantly cool and stars winked brightly above the trees. He heard a whistling sound, then looked to the edge of the woods where it bumped into the Liles’s family lawn, to a large blackjack oak.

  Deacon called more insistently to shut the window, but Parker ignored him. He didn’t feel ill now – only curious – as though he were on the brink of something. A gust of breeze fluttered his hair like spray from the wave. And then he saw.

  Mr. Gray was down there. He looked oddly out of place on the dark lawn. Parker had never seen him anywhere else but in his own bedroom. He was . . . struggling with someone, his heavy duster billowing as his arms seemed to swing or fight off something.

  Parker now saw the shape of a second man and he was tied to the old oak tree. His pants were torn and he was wearing a light-colored shirt that looked ripped and stained. He struggled against the ropes that were binding him. The whistle that Parker heard earlier was emanating from this bound man. It seemed like he wanted to scream, but all that came out was a wheezy, almost asthmatic screech that blended into high-pitched frog croaks from some faraway pond. Parker shivered now, but not from the cool night air.

  The figures of Mr. Gray and the restrained man seemed quite distinct, but it was only when Parker squinted hard that the outline of a third figure slowly evolved, the way cloud shapes bunch into a recognizable form on a windy summer sky. He was holding out a revolver and firing it into the man tied to the tree. He fired it over and over. Parker could see the recoil each time the weapon discharged.

  Was this Mr. Liles? Who was he shooting? Or was he the man being shot? Parker felt as though he was standing on a precipice, wavering, starting to drop…

  “Parker, ple-eeease,” Deacon was pleading now, falling to the floor.

  Parker looked again outside. He could see that the man firing the gun was shirtless and that he was calmly, but deliberately, reloading the revolver. Parker assumed he would start firing into the hapless man tied to the tree once he finished.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Instead the man looked up into the window. At Parker. The boy could see the man's face as clearly as if he were standing on the lawn in broad daylight. He was heavily tanned with long, dirty black hair and an unkempt beard. The tone of his muscles suggested someone who worked with his hands – and worked hard. And right now he was challenging young Parker French with a cold look of hatred and anger. Parker’s bowels turned watery. He wanted to shut the window, but his hands refused to cooperate. Instead he just stood there, dumbly afraid.

  And then the shooter was in the room. Parker could smell the odor of sweat and the woods about him, and he could see the blue metal of the big revolver. He rounded and pointed it at the video screen saying something about decay and the coming reckoning with a booming voice that was twisted and came out muddled through the television speaker. It was very cold in the room. Parker could see his own breath again.

  There was an angry growl from the man, and Parker could now see he was shoeless and had dirty, twisted feet. He fired the big gun and there was a loud report and smoke and the screen went to snow and the whistling outside died away.

  Then Mr. Gray was there. As usual, Parker could see nothing of his face, but he pulled the bigger man back toward him, grabbing the revolver and apparently whispering something into the dirty man’s ear. He growled again, then whimpered, then shrunk into a dark shape that Parker recognized as the nuthatch he shot down with his BB gun long ago. And then they were all gone. Parker dropped to the floor.

  The video game returned to the screen. A forlorn castaway, head in hands, was sitting on an empty beach. The words on the screen explained that “You have failed as a pirate and have been marooned on a desert island.”

  Deacon picked up the controller and reset the game. “I’ve gotten farther before,” he said. “But I never ended up with this much gold.”

  The mad thumping in Parker's heart relaxed. He looked over at Deacon, once again playing his game as though nothing unusual had happened this night.

  “Did you . . .” and Parker was surprised to discover that his voice choked for a moment. “Did you see that? Did you see what just happened?”

  Deacon made an exaggerated motion of pausing his game and turned to Parker. “I told you to keep the window closed.”

  “The goddamn window had nothing to do with it!” Parker was shouting, and was surprised that he had taken the name of the Lord in vain. Good thing Momma wasn’t here. But his anger at Deacon spurred him on nonetheless. “Did you see the man with the gun? Didn’t you see the man with the gun?”

  “I heard something outside,” Deacon said, resetting the pirate game once again. “But there was nothing out there.”

  Parker snorted a laugh at that one. “Then why did you want me to close the window?”

  “I wanted it to stay out there,” Deacon said as he twisted his controller in an effort to fend off the blade of a rival pirate. “Come on. I need some help here.”

  In the following days, Parker thought some more about the men at the oak tree. In the evening as the glow of reflected sunlight danced on the tips of waving leaves outside his window, he dug at the matter until sleep finally overcame him.

  One day when he knew Deacon wasn’t home, he walked past the Liles home and studied the blackjack oak tree close up. His stomach wanted to expel the meatloaf and carrots lunch he'd eaten at school, but Parker fought it down. The tree on the edge of the sweeping lawn was covered with heavy oak scales, but there was no indication of trauma either on or around the tree. Even the leaves were randomly tossed on the forest floor and on the lawn. No footprints. No ropes. No bullet holes.

  “Hi, Parker.”

  He spun around quickly, tasting the meatloaf one more time, before he realized it was Mrs. Liles. “Hi,” he said. “When I slept over, I thought I heard something out here.”

  Mrs. Liles was a pretty woman, and Parker liked the way she treated him as an adult and not like a child. She touched a finger to her lips in thought. “I’ve seen bobcats out here, but they usually travel by themselves and don’t make a lot of noise. There’s supposed to be a few coyotes, but I haven’t seen them.” She dropped her hand and smiled. “There’s a pack of dogs that comes around from time to time. That’s probab
ly what you heard.”

  He nodded.

  That night, just after dusk, Parker dropped down from his bedroom window. The less Momma knew about all this, the better, he thought. He trotted down the blacktop road in front of his house to the dirt road that led to the Liles home.

  Summer darkness fell abruptly in the Appalachian foothills. He passed only one disinterested automobile as he ran the few miles between the two homes While his easy pace on level roads hardly raised a sweat, Parker could sense his heart beginning to pound again. He knew it would only stop when he ended this matter. He wanted badly to discuss it all with someone who could understand.

  He thought of Momma and the way she could smile through her eyes and how she was amused at every little thing he did. Even when Parker gulped down his after-dinner scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream, Momma would glow.

  But Momma couldn’t be part of this journey. There were too many hard questions, he decided, and there were no easy answers. Parker couldn’t bear the thought of his mother’s gaze turning worried or confused or, worst of all, hard. He simply had to do this by himself.

  A lamp glowed in the Liles’s living room, but there was no one on the porch. Good. Even though the sun had dropped behind faraway hills, there was enough light to see. He swallowed hard and looked for the big blackjack oak.

  The cacophonous clatter from a thousand katydids, cicadas and southern toads suddenly