The Orange Bird

AN ATLANTIC “FIRST”

A Story

by LOIS DONER

WE HAD been on the island for seven days, my brother El, who was eleven and the oldest, and we three girls, my sister Margret, Susan, who lived on the farm at the end of the valley, and I. When we woke in the morning we could smell the grapevines that pressed against the walls of the log cabin. The faint wind, full of the smell of water and sand, blew through the open door and brushed the leaves against the house like scratching fingers.

It was during the time when the grass was burned in the pastures and the grasshoppers were fat and slow that we stayed on the island with my brother El to help him and keep him company while he tended the sheep. In the pastures of the valley there had been no grass for the sheep and they had stood half dead under the hills, their thin shorn sides panting in and out because of the heat. That is why Father took them to the island, where there were few grasshoppers and the grass was still thick and green under the trees and there was clover in the clearing. Often in the past we had climbed the hills above our farm and looked down toward the east where the island sat in the middle of the Missouri River, and we wondered who might live there secretly and what was hidden under the trees, but we had never thought we might go there.

El seemed marvelously old, and he was strong, and we had no idea of fear — except the fear of strange night noises of branches creaking and the voice of leaves. But this we hid inside ourselves and lay close together on our mattress bed, whispering of the procreation of sheep and inventing conversation for the animal world. Every other day Father would appear, tie his boat to a tree, and walk down the path to our cabin. He paid us greater attention than was usual while we were at home, and would rough about with El and slap him on the back. Then he would warn us of the river, poison ivy, and eating too many grapes. He gave us a white flag to put up at the edge of the island if we should need him.

We woke up early on the seventh day when the sun was just touching the tops of the trees, and the sheep were still quiet in the corral. Susan and Margret and I slept on a mattress under the window and El slept beside the door on blankets. When I woke up I saw that Susan was propped on her elbows looking at Margret, who slept with her mouth wide open and her white hair matted over her eyes.

Susan looked at me and giggled. Her eyes were sticky in the morning but bright. “Look at old Margret,” she said, staring straight into her face. It seemed unfair to look at Margret when she couldn’t look back. The point of thought that made my sister someone else stuck my mind, and my head hurt with it. “Let’s get up,”I said noisily.

Outside were the cool, damp calls of the mourning doves. We went to the corral and washed our hands and faces in the water from the windmill. The sheep began moving restlessly and baaing softly. On the island the trees were taller than those at home and we could scarcely see the sky unless we went to the river.

When we came back to the house, El was making the fire in the cookstove. Margret rummaged about in a box of food and brought out a package of tea, and Susan and I took turns making pancakes. El finished first, and pushed his apple-crate chair from the table. He went out to let the sheep into the woods and to take a bath in the cold water of the tank.

Susan wanted to take his clothes and hide them, but Margret frowned and said no.

“You old Jane!” Susan said, then laughed, and Margret went about clearing up the dishes with a firm and set mouth. Margret was only eight, but had a stern way about getting things done. When she was through she sat down and made herself a cup of tea and sat over it, breathing the heat of it in her face and scowling at all our attempts to make her laugh.

We left her at last and went out. Susan said, “Let’s play bachelor.” We sat down opposite each other, crossed our legs, and began talking something like this: “You remember, Ezra, the time Old Herman left the homestead,” punctuated by spitting into the space between us. The language of our bachelors we picked up from the hired men or from Susan’s inspired imagination. We were always dead serious about the game.

Susan was freckled, with a little hump in her nose, small bright blue eyes, and very red hair. She was my age, ten, but knew much more about the world than I did, and liked very much to make fun. I felt, infinitely inferior to her socially and was always pleased with her attention and confidence. While my sister and I were reserved about expressing ourselves, Susan burst into words of delight or horror which charmed everyone she met. When outdoors, she always wore a large straw hat pushed far over her forehead because she “sunburned easy.” Margret and I would laugh at this, but she only returned equally bright laughter as she patted the top of the hat farther over her forehead and squinted out at us with her small eyes.

By now there was a pattern established in our days. With pleasure and dignity we tried to imitate the grown-up world we knew, but filled our imitation with the mumbo-jumbo of childhood, and sometimes a real new power, which shattered all plans and broke wildly from our throats, bore us screaming and gasping into a sunlit, objectless world. We sat for hours in the trees or on the tops of grapevines, speaking of things we had scarcely dared whisper in the presence of an already established home. Susan would tell us about her relatives who lived in town and plucked their eyebrows and painted their fingernails, and the bachelors who lived across the river in “bachelor shanties” and talked to themselves. Sometimes she giggled so that we thought perhaps she was spoofing but we never openly disbelieved her. Margret would sit quietly on a grapevine with a worldly look of “of course” on her face. She didn’t speak much but it was always quite necessary to have her around for the atmosphere she gave the meeting. At the end of each tale she would nod seriously and purse her lips in grim approval.

Now, as I think of the time, it comes back to me with the clearness of a fairy story. It is hard to believe that we should have been allowed to go to the island alone— mere children — although I knew then I was not a child, and that my brother El was surely a man, if not so much so as my father. But that is not important. It is only that it was so.

I can imagine the words our parents brought upon themselves from the neighbors, a clannish agrarian lot who kept their sons and daughters in their front yards until they married, and then did not let them go far. And later, when we came back — three of us — the whispering never ceased, and with the years it drove us all away.

Although the importance of being allowed was impressed upon us, after we were once on the island, we accepted this naturally. It seems to me now that the flowers in the woods were larger and whiter than any I have ever seen since, and that the nights were a thousand times blacker, and the days were longer than any common nowadays ones.

The day we came to the island I saw a bird, bright orange and long-winged, and I could not forget him. When I pointed him out to the others he turned and swept through the trees so they heard only the faint swish of the leaves and said it was the wind. As I think of it, he was more the color of fire, but I could not describe that to them very well either. So I kept him to me and sometimes before I fell asleep at night I could see him, clear and fine and graceful, turn and fly away like an arrow, sharp and clean into the dark hole of the night. If I should follow, the bushes would trip me, the wind would sound soft and hollow in my head, but I would know where he was as surely as if a thread were strung from me to him. I would cover myself with silence trying to hear the call that only I could feel was there.

2

MARGRET came out of the house after a while and we all sat and talked about the “old days” and spat, and then we got up and walked through the clearing and called to El, who was sitting on a stump whittling. He came toward us and the sheep scattered before him.

“We’re going to walk around the island,” Susan called.

“It’s a long way.”

“Well, we’ll be back and make your dinner.”

“Doesn’t matter,” El said, as he came toward us, looking at Susan with his big soft eyes so that I felt embarrassed, and Margret said loudly, “Come on.”

“What are you whittling?” said Susan, looking out under her big brim.

“Nothing,” said El, grinning and holding his hands behind him.

“Let’s see,” said Susan. “Let’s see.”

“Come on,” said Margret, turning her back.

“Naw,” said El. “It’s nothing.” He kept on grinning bigger and bigger though.

“Come on, let’s see,” said Susan, bending her neck. “Josephine, help me.” She grasped El’s arm and pulled it out. Rather reluctantly I tugged at his other arm.

“All right,” he said angrily to me.

Then something dropped to the ground and Susan picked it up quickly and ran a little way and held it up in front of her. It was the figure of a girl, very rough and uncarved below the shoulders, but on the top were the finest little features, a small crooked nose, and tiny eyes, and the smoothest rounded shoulders. Down the uncarved wood was whittled in big crude letters the name SUSAN. We could hear Susan’s little squeal as she saw it. Then she walked back toward us and handed the figure to El. He was blushing and took the object from her quickly; then he started to grin again, bigger and broader, and I followed Margret with great embarrassment, he looked so open and exposed.

“It’s good,” I heard Susan say.

Then El said something and Susan came running after us crying, “Wait, wait for me!” and giggling from being left behind.

The sand was dry and hot along the bank, and it sloped out gently here, almost like a beach. We took off our shoes and left them beside a tree which we marked by piling branches beside it. The sun was hot but a wind came from the river and blew against our faces.

“We should have brought our lunch,” Susan said.

“Look across there,” said Margret.

“A buffalo,” said Susan.

“I think it’s a cow,” I said.

“There are lots of buffalo across the river,” said Susan. “One winter my father was riding horseback over there and three of them chased him over the hills and across the ice on the river clear up to Zerzach’s windmill. He had to leap from the horse to the windmill and stayed there all day with the three buffalo waiting for him to come down. Somebody saw him from the road and shot the buffalo, and we had buffalo meat all winter. But he was frozen. We kept him in bed for a week. Mother and I used to sit up all night to keep snow on his hands. That was when it was really cold. The buffalo meat was good too, but not so good as bear.” Then she giggled and cleared her throat, and Margret whacked viciously at the bushes that stuck out of the bank.

Susan patted the top of her head and knotted up her nose.

We pulled grapes from the vines and ate them, not one by one, but by taking big bites into the clumps, and they were bright purple and sweet, and the juice ran sticky down our faces and between our fingers.

As we neared the west end of the island we sat down where the willows were just beginning to grow out of the sand. We sat there a long time talking, and I can remember the sharp smell of the willows that pushed through the soft new dirt of the island, and the great hum of the locusts behind us. The top of the river was ruffed by the wind, and along the shore we watched the bugs and grasshoppers, caught in the terrible rush of the river, ride past, some struggling, some resigned to their soggy doom. Sometimes we would rescue one with a twig and bring it stumbling to the sand. Once Susan brought out a grasshopper and laid him fat and sick in the sun, where he stretched his weak, spindle legs and took one hop before Margret threw him back into the water saying softly, “We don’t want any grasshoppers on our island.”

Susan wrinkled her face and said, “Poor little old grasshopper"; then she made up a song about the grasshopper who fell in the river and was taken out by an Injun giver.

Margret grinned at her and said she was an old toad. The cool wind from the river blew against us and we were all in remarkably fine spirits. Later we took off our dresses and went to the river and tested it with our feet, but the current was swift and dark, so we only trickled our toes in the edge, and counted the skin-colored lines of sandbar that broke the water.

3

As WE were buttoning our dresses, we saw far up the river a white speck moving toward us. As it grew larger we could see how very fast it was coming, faster than the current, and straight.

“Well, bless my breeches,” said Susan, spitting, “if it ain’t old Uncle Herman.”

Margret giggled and pointed her right leg out the way Susan did.

“I told him to stay home, Ezra. I says to him, ‘Herman —'" Susan went on, jabbering faster, her eyes gleaming like pin points in the sun.

We watched the white speck. It was swaying back and forth now as it veered toward us, and we could see that it was a raft with a white sail. There was a man on it, and his body was tanned and shone like copper in the sun.

“Ain’t Uncle Herman after all,” Susan said, swatting me heartily on the back. “Now who the dadratted could that be?”

“Somebody flew the coop,” I said stupidly, trying to get into the spirit of the thing.

Margret stared now, open-eyed and excited. “ He’s coming here! He’s coming here!” she shouted.

“Lay low, fellers,” Susan said. “Gotta lay low fer a while.” And she shoved us onto the sand.

The man yanked hard at the sail and the little raft came angrily to the shore. Then its white sail fell and it drifted. The man jumped out and dragged it after him, then pushed it hard against the sand and tied a rope from it to_a tree. We could see his face now. It was shining and handsome, more handsome than any face I had ever seen. He was not so young as my brothers nor so old as my father, but he was not like the hired men either. His teeth were white, and he seemed to have hundreds of them lined up evenly and strong behind his lips.

As he shoved the raft to the sand he opened his mouth and squinted his eyes, then stood up straight and stretched in the sun. The wind blew against the folded white sail softly now. We all peered at him down the shore from us, and then slowly all together stood up and walked toward him. Pushing his shoulders back and moving his arms out, he sighed and looked about him, then saw us coming toward him, and dropped his arms, and opened his eyes wide. “Hello,” he said.

We stopped a few feet away and answered.

“You live here?” He looked down at us.

“Not all the time,” I said breathlessly.

“It’s our island though,” Margret said.

“Oh, is it?” He laughed.

“Where are you going?” Susan asked, pulling excitedly at the brim of her hat with both hands.

He sat down on the sand and stretched out his legs and looked at us, up and down. Then he smacked his knee with his big hand, and laughed and looked at us again.

I walked up to the little raft with the trembling staff for a sail, and it seemed very small and playlike instead of something for men.

“Is it a boat?” I asked.

“Sort of a boat.”

“Where are you going?” Susan said again, peering down at him with bright eyes.

“Down the river a ways.”

“Have you come far?”

“Not so far.”

“Is the boat safe?”

“Safer than the dirt under me,” he said, grinning. Then he stretched out on his back so his head was in the shade and covered his eyes. We stood above him and looked down.

“Are you going to stay?” Margret whispered.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Are you going to sleep?” said Susan.

He didn’t answer, but we saw his mouth stretch in a smile and we all sat down where we stood, and waited. After what seemed a very long time, he sat up bolt straight. “By George!” he said, laughing. “By George!”

We pushed back a little, still staring at him.

“What’s your name?” he said to Susan, whose head was bending toward him.

“Susan Raffen,” she said. “We saw you coming like a bullet.” She tugged at her straw hat and I could see she was thinking up something. Her eyes were cracking, and she looked quickly at Margret and me. “This is Josephine and Margret,” she said. “They’re Callops and I’m not.”

He laughed very hard again, and his eyes cut brightly at you clear and open, as if you were someone a little wonderful. No one had ever looked at me exactly that way.

“Stay for dinner,” I said.

“Dinner!” he cried. “I’ll bet you live on roots and berries and serve them up on grape leaves.”

Margret shook her head. “No, we don’t,” she said.

He laughed again and we all smiled back at him happily.

Susan moved up the closest to him, shoving along the sand. She began talking very fast and soon he was holding her on his lap listening and talking to her. We sat by and watched silently. Sometimes Susan would say something to us and we’d answer softly. But mostly we just stared.

I watched his mouth move as he talked and laughed, fascinated by the stretch and straightness of it. His eyes were crinkled in the corners, and they were terribly blue like a crayon river. All the time the little raft wobbled where it hung over the sand with the current running under it. The smell of the willows was sharp to my nose, and my heart beat fast with a nameless excitement. I watched the man from the raft, and I remember thinking things fast in my head to tell him, things that would make him laugh out loud, or smack his knee, or raise his dark eyebrows on his forehead. I even let go my best secret in a burst of shrill excitement — “I saw an orange bird” — and turned away shamed after I’d said it. It came right in the middle of his talking to Susan and he looked at me with mock wonder and went right on talking. I didn’t say any more after that and felt a little dull inside and stared only at the boat, until he roughed my hair and said, “Bird Girl,” smiling.

4

SUSAN went on and on, laughing and looking at the raft and tugging at the corners of her hat.

It came suddenly: “How many people will the boat hold?”

“About twenty — twenty little people,” he said.

“It would carry two, though,” Susan said. “Easy, two.”

I knew right away what she was up to. “You’d better not,” I said.

The man from the raft knew too, and he looked out at the river. “You want to go with me, Susan Raffen,” he said, “down the river on my raft. What might happen if the wind should blow us over, if I could not land, and we would go on and on and never stop, or a storm would come up and blow us to Alaska —Oh, no, Susan, think of all the things that might happen,”

“Doesn’t happen to you,” she said.

“Alaska isn’t on the Missouri River,” Margret said.

“He’s just pretending,”I whispered to her.

“I live down there,” Susan said. “It’s only five miles by river, or less, I think. You can let me off there, and I’ll come back tomorrow with Mr. Callop. Please, it’s such a little way. And there’s no storm anywhere in the sky.”

She pleaded the way she did with all older people who had power in their hands and would lose it to her.

Margret looked at me. “She shouldn’t go,” she said. “She can’t swim well.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “She doesn’t have to swim.” Then the wind seemed to blow louder against the water and lap it against the shore.

The man stood up and looked up the river where he had come, then his eyes scanned the horizon over the river bluffs and the sky above. He walked toward the raft and pushed it with his foot.

Susan ran up to him. “I’m going with you. I’m not afraid. I want to go. Only a little way. I’ll sit so still you’ll think I’m not there.” She pointed down the river. “Just around the curve,” she said, waving her finger.

He went about pushing the raft out, and Susan stood just behind him looking at the sail with longing eyes.

“Do you have to go so soon?” I said loudly.

“It’s a long way I’ve got to go before dark,” he called. He was holding the raft by the rope now, and it bobbed up and down on the water.

Susan turned to us. “So long, fellers,” she said. “I’1l see you tomorrow.” She looked down the river and I knew how she felt, excited and prickly, because I did and I saw her eyes turning to mine. Then she spat in bachelor style behind her, and stepped up beside him. We watched them, as if from a long distance, and knew Susan was talking fast, looking at him and making her eyes the funny wistful way she did with older people. We could hear her laugh. Then very gently he helped her to the raft.

He showed her how to sit cross-legged beside the staff of the sail. She looked back at us. “I’ll be back with your father tomorrow.”

Very slowly he stepped on the raft, and it dipped with his weight. He stood straight, winding the rope around his arm. Already the raft was drifting slowly along the bank. Then as the sail opened, they swept fast away, and turned and waved to us, Susan clasping the staff of the sail tightly with one hand, and calling out some happy, crazy words.

I’ll never forget how he looked. He stood so precariously, his legs balancing the craft, waving to us, and laughing. “Good-bye, Margret, Bird Girl.” Then he leaned over quickly and adjusted the sail. As they came to the main current of the river, he sat down, then turned and made a great arc with his arm, and we saw Susan peering around him, squinting at us, tugging at her hat brim with one hand and waving with the other. Then they blew away as fast as the raft had come, until they were only a small white spot down the wide, wide river, and disappeared around the curve.

We watched, then turned back and did not walk the rest of the way around the island.

“She left her shoes,” Margret said.

“She did,” I said, picking them up. “How will she walk up from the river without them? She’s not very good at going barefoot.”

“She would,” said Margret.

The rest of the day wasn’t the same without Susan, but we waited anxiously and talked about what she would tell us when she came back. I think we worried all day about her shoes. El wouldn’t believe us at first, and behaved very strangely, almost worse than anger, when he became convinced. I remember he went to bed early that night and made us be quiet before the sheep were still. But it wasn’t until Father came down the path alone the next day that I admitted anything to myself. Then suddenly I was frightened almost to nausea, and I could not talk to him, but let Margret explain, while I sat still and stupefied in the corner. I could see before my eyes the bright little flick of raft as they swept away but I could not reconcile it to the fear inside me.

I can remember the eyes of the families, frightened, wide, the mad rushes, the phone calls, the car motors, and how, after two weeks, they dragged the river. There were rumors of a tall man with a little girl in a straw hat seen in St. Joe, of an empty raft that floated onto a sandbar where a fisherman kept his lines, and it was said that a prisoner escaped from the county jail in Willeston on the day before Susan went down the river with the man on the raft. And someone who had read a book of psychology said that Susan had probably drowned while swimming in the river and we children had made up the story of the raft man and now we believed it.

Margret and I missed Susan a great deal, and for a long time, but very soon all the terror was gone. “It’s so silly,” Margret said, “making all this fuss.” And that was how it seemed. Although we didn’t talk about him much at home, Margret and I often remembered the raft man to ourselves and how blue his eyes were, and how carefully he had helped Susan to the raft.

And over and again the sight of them would come back to me like the sight of the fabulous orange bird, until in the dreams they became mingled and it was very hard to distinguish one dream from the other.