Broken Wing Read online

  A picture of peace, that is, until The Blue Jay Mob arrived again and scattered all the other birds, in a panic to be away from the marauding mobsters—scattered all, that is, except Grackle. When the other birds fled, Grackle stayed and held his ground, and when the blue gang of toughs dared try to drive Grackle away, Grackle turned on them and made it clear, with an open beak, an outstretched wing and a posture threatening enough to frighten a cat, that he was not about to be driven off by the likes of these insouciant bullies. “Finally!” The Man said to himself. “Finally, somebody tough enough to put the blue jays in their place! Finally, somebody to stand up to them.”

  And The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains thought about what it had been like in this place when he had first arrived, how different he had felt from everyone else in these mountains, being as he was from away, from the city and from such a different way of life. How different and alone—threatened, even, sometimes—and frightened he had felt in this strange world.

  In the early days, when The Man had first arrived here, the other people who lived scattered across this mountain, what few there were, had been standoffish and cool to the newcomer, but they in no way did anything to bother the man who meant to live alone and keep to himself on this mountain. Most of them, in fact, The Man discovered slowly, were actually quite friendly after you got to know them a little. Behind their unsmiling, nonverbal and distanced exteriors, there were some friendly, funny and very talkative people, many of whom loved to play with words, as The Man did also.

  The Man discovered, much to his relief, that most of the people on the mountain were happy to leave him alone and let him live his life the way he wanted—most of the people, but not all. Not the Baps.

  When The Man had first arrived in these parts many years ago, he had no neighbors. It was exactly what The Man was looking for, or so he thought. He had this whole part of the mountain to himself. It seemed like the perfect solitude. The nearest place was an abandoned farm about a mile down the road. Then, a number of years after The Man arrived, The Bap Brothers came to live on the abandoned farm—the Bap Brothers, their dooryard full of dogs and Arnold. There was nothing, of course, The Man could do about it, and they were, after all, a mile away. It was a free country, for some people at least, or so people said, though The Man knew lots of people like himself who were in no way free in this so-called free country. Yet The Bap Brothers, their hateful stares, and their hunting dogs reminded The Man too much of his childhood in the country down south, and then later in the city, also. The Bap Brothers and their ways reminded The Man too much of the place he’d spent his life trying to get away from.

  There came a time, not long after the Baps moved onto the abandoned farm, when the tension between the Bap Brothers and The Man heated to the boiling point, and there was a confrontation between them in which The Man found it necessary to stand his ground and defend himself and his place, and to do so with such determination and fury that the Bap Brothers could clearly see what they were up against. After that incident, the two brothers never came near The Man again. This did not mean, however, that their resentment and dislike for The Man had abated. It only went underground.

  And that left The Man with a deep sense of sadness and regret over how, so often, the circumstances that surround us are beyond our control. He had come here to be free of people who assumed they knew who he was before they knew him. He came here to be free. Yet even here, he had not found all he wanted, and the Bap Brothers seemed to stand for all The Man did not want—and furthermore, and unfortunately, they were The Man’s nearest neighbors. And to make matters even worse, the Baps made no secret of how unhappy they were to have The Man as a neighbor—thus the old, ever-present worry that followed The Man wherever he went had followed him here, too. If only the Baps and Arnold and that dooryard full of dogs didn’t live just down the road!

  The sight of Grackle right now, out there in the dooryard standing his ground and defending his right to be in this new place, reminded The Man of those bad, old days. Those memories began what would become a long process of an ever-deepening bond between The Man and the bird.

  The next morning, here came Grackle again, walking and strutting cockily, and looking about, left and right, as he went; his head held high, full of pride and swagger. Here he came, walking down the hill from the high bog above the house, walking over the withered bracken and the sear grasses of early November, walking down the hill and into the dooryard and toward the feeder. What a handsome and self-assured figure this daring and assertive black bird made! And when the blue jays came near, Grackle opened his beak again, spread his wing, and ran as fast as he could toward the blue jays, squawking as he advanced. His posture was so threatening, so full of menace and intent, that the little black bird reminded The Man of the fierce way geese protect and defend their territory from intruders; and, of course, Grackle also reminded The Man of himself, and how he had to be sometimes, too.

  What a handsome and dominant little bird this lone Grackle was! Such swagger! Such command! Yet there was nothing bullying about Grackle. He never ran other birds off in order to eat himself, but rather simply sidled in among the others, be they siskins, tree sparrows or red polls, and began quietly to eat the sunflowers the other birds spilled down to him.

  All the ground-feeding birds were much smaller than Grackle, and it would have been easy for Grackle to run them off, but he never did. All it seemed he wanted to do was join them. All it seemed he wanted was what they all wanted, also: just something to eat. “Just like me,” The Man said softly to himself. Yet when he had to, as when the blue jay toughs arrived, Grackle was able to drive them away and put them in their place. “Just like me,” The Man said softly to himself.

  Surely, Grackle would be king of the dooryard feeders and apple trees from now on, and a just and fair-minded king, as well. A shiny, iridescent, beautiful, black king. “Yes. That would be good,” The Man said softly as he smiled and nodded to himself. “Yes. Just like me.”

  And a comical king he was, too. When Grackle ate, it was a sight to see. The nuthatches and chickadees picked a seed from the feeder and flitted to a branch, where they held the seed between their tiny feet and with their beaks, banged open the shell, and then picked out the inner meat. The pine and evening grosbeaks rummaged around on the platform feeders, picked up an un-cracked seed, and with an amazing feat of beak dexterity, they rolled the seed around in their seed-cracking bills until the shell fell away, after which they ground down the meat a little in their large and mighty beaks—which is why they are called gros-beaks—and then down the gullet it went. But Grackle, comical King Grackle, gawked and bobbed across the lawn until he found a seed, then tilted his head back, and with exaggerated, odd and laughable jerks of his head and neck, and with his beak wide open as if he were trying to gulp down something much too large, he swallowed the seed, apparently whole, then went on to another seed, where he went through his ridiculous and amusing routine all over again.

  After a few days of waking each morning to find Grackle there again and feeding, The Man began to realize that he’d been watching Grackle unawares every day for a couple of weeks, at least—or so it seemed—since the end of October. That wasn’t right. Grackles left sometime toward the middle of October, along with all the other late-leaving summer birds. Why, then, was this one still here?

  The next day, The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains waited with his binoculars for Grackle’s return. Through his binoculars, he could see clearly what without the binoculars he could only vaguely see. As Grackle moved across the lawn, The Man could see that Grackle’s right wing protruded awkwardly from Grackle’s side, and a number of primary feathers jutted off the wing at an unnatural angle. Through the binoculars, he could see that Grackle’s entire right wing did not fold properly against Grackle’s body. On Grackle’s left side, his good wing folded neatly and smoothly against his body—it disappeared as birds’ wings do when folded and not in flight—but on his right side, his
wing stuck out roughly, the feathers protruding jaggedly away from Grackle’s body.

  There had been some kind of accident or attack, and the reason Grackle was still here with the winter birds was because he had not been able to leave with the rest of his kind. Grackle couldn’t fly.

  He had been left behind. What could have happened? How could Grackle have been wounded in this way? Hawk, bobcat, coyote: all possibilities, The Man thought to himself. Possible, but not very likely; he had a pretty good idea how this had happened.

  What was it like for Grackle to be stranded in this northern place? Did he have any idea what the northern winters were like? Was he afraid? What was it like to be the only one of your kind left in a place, stranded, abandoned, alone among so many others so unlike yourself? How lonely must he feel?

  The Man knew how he had answered these questions for himself, years ago when he had first come to this mountainside. But now, here with this single grackle, it was different from The Man’s arrival. When The Man had come to this place, it was by choice; he had come here because he wanted to, wanted to be away from where he had been. The Man had come here because he loved the mountains and the birds in the mountains, and he loved gardening and growing apples. He loved the wilderness. He wanted to be a farmer, just as his ancestors had been, and his parents, as well. So his arrival here was not by accident, not something fate had visited upon him, as it had this hapless grackle in the dooryard now.

  Not a day went by that The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains didn’t think about, didn’t remember, his old life in the city, didn’t remember the life of the street, of meeting and visiting with friends on the corner, of sitting in restaurants or in the park and laughing with friends. Nor had he forgotten what the night was like in the city, so full of life and noise and music, music, music, so unlike the country down south where he had grown up, or this northern wilderness where he now lived. He hadn’t forgotten any of that old life, the life he had abandoned. And when he remembered it, he felt sad and restless with his present life, and he often longed to return to his old life, his life in the city, return to his own people; yet he never did. He never did. Not even for a visit. Never.

  And all of these memories, these recollections, made bright and clear for The Man how Grackle must feel now, to be the only one of his kind left in a place, stranded, abandoned, among so many others so unlike himself. And these memories of The Man’s old life, his recollections of the way he used to live, created in The Man a deep feeling for the life and plight of this little black bird, who now walked and gawked around the dooryard.

  As the days passed, The Man watched his friend, who he had now named Broken Wing. The Man watched Broken Wing more and more intently, and, as is always the case, the more closely you watch, the more you see, and the more you see, the more you begin to understand, and the more you understand, the deeper and stronger your feelings become for that which you are watching and seeing and coming to understand.

  And his increasing understanding made The Man wonder how he could have been so mistaken about what he had been watching earlier. Clearly, Broken Wing was neither tough nor self-confident, neither cocky nor self-assured. Instead, Broken Wing was desperate, frightened, alone. Broken Wing was in danger of starving to death. The Man got more and more involved in Broken Wing’s crippled life, and what was surely his impending and imminent death.

  He got out his bird books and began studying the habits of the common grackle. As he looked at the pictures and read about the bird, he knew something was wrong. He took the books to the window and looked at the pictures of the grackles in the books, then he looked at Broken Wing. Broken Wing’s tail was too short, his whole body too small to be a grackle; and his feathers, though somewhat shiny, did not have, especially around his head, the purple-blue iridescence grackles have. And Broken Wing’s beak was more curved than a grackle’s beak. Slowly, it became obvious to The Man that Broken Wing was not a grackle.

  The Man began studying other blackbirds. Finally, there it was: a picture and description of Broken Wing.

  Size and shape of a red-winged blackbird or robin, but with a slightly longer tail. Sometimes suggests a short-tailed grackle, but lacks any iridescence to feathers in the fall, when general appearance is rust-brown. Bill is more slender at base and more curved at tip than other blackbirds. Eye is yellowish-whitish and feathers are rusty only in October.

  A rusty blackbird. Broken Wing was a rusty blackbird, which explained why The Man saw Broken Wing descend out of the high bog behind the house each morning.

  The bird book also said:

  Habitat: Wooded swamps and damp woods with pools during migration; boreal bogs in the breeding season.

  Above The Man’s house was a high bog, a quaking bog, full of sphagnum moss and hummocks growing stunted spruce and fir trees; here and there, the rare, insect-eating pitcher plant; and on the edges of the bog, two different kinds of lady’s slippers, the orchid of the north.

  Behavior: a secretive and solitary bird…

  The Man smiled to himself. “Just like me,” he said.

  … the rusty blackbird is most often seen during migration, when small parties may be found walking about on the floor of wet woods, turning over dead leaves in search of insects. They seldom occur in very large flocks, and do not, as a rule, associate with red-winged blackbirds or grackles.

  The Man had never seen a rusty blackbird—this solitary fellow who does not, as a rule, associate with other blackbirds—before in his life; yet here he was now, stranded here in the wrong season, abandoned to his own devices, trapped in the north country, where he and his kind were meant only to live for the spring and summer, raise families, and flee south again before the cold and dark northern winter turned their soft, spongy boreal swamps into frozen and inhospitable places fit only for the snowshoe hare, the ruffed grouse, the moose and deer who lived in such a place year-round.

  The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains marveled at the idea that for all the years he’d lived in this place, rusty blackbirds had been arriving every spring to nest in the high bog just above his house, breed and raise their young, and then leave in the fall, only to return again in the spring, every year, year after year, for more years than he had lived here. For hundreds of years, for thousands of years, rusty blackbird families had been making homes and young in the bog above his house. It made The Man feel shy and humble, as if he were only a visitor here, someone just passing through, here only for a short time and then gone, perhaps himself gone back “home” to the city, back to his own people, whereas the rusty blackbirds really belonged to this place, and had belonged to this place for a thousand years.

  Well, on the other hand, The Man was here, too. He’d nested here, too: cleared land, built a house, pruned the ancient apple trees, made a garden. He was a part of this place, too, even if he was the newest of the newcomers. No need for him to feel too out of place or too shy. No, there was no need for him to apologize for his presence here. Besides, as he chuckled and said to himself, “I’m a kind of rusty blackbird myself, in habitat and habit. The only big difference is, I don’t have feathers or wings—but I’m a secretive and solitary bird, that’s for sure!”

  So, a new neighbor. No, an old neighbor. No matter—neighbors nonetheless.

  The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains thought about the meaning of the word neighbor. Ever since The Man had been a little boy growing up in the country, and then as an adult living in the city, he’d been interested in words. Neighbor: one who dwells nearby. The word came from two other words: nigh, meaning near, not far off, close; and boor or Boer, not from the English language but from the Dutch, meaning a peasant tiller of the soil. Therefore, a tiller of the soil, a farmer who lives nearby: nigh-Boer. Neighbor.

  The Man raised vegetables and apples, and took care of and harvested his woodlot. He was a farmer. Broken Wing lived with his family in the bog above the house, and he and his family spent their days turning over dead leaves and probing around i
n sphagnum moss, looking for insects. They lived near each other, and therefore they most certainly were nigh-Boers, neighbors. What a pleasant thought to think of these rusty blackbirds as his neighbors. And what a different thought from thinking about the Bap Brothers as his neighbors!

  Insects! Suddenly, as if a little explosion had gone off inside his brain, The Man shouted, “Insects! Insects! How could I have been so stupid?” He banged himself on his forehead with an open palm. “Jumping to conclusions again, before you really know,” he said to himself. “I’ve been the victim of people doing that to me my whole life, and here I am now doing it myself!”

  Once again, The Man shook his head incredulously as he realized how wrong he had been about his interpretation of what he had seen. As he had learned earlier, Broken Wing was neither cocky nor self-confident; he was, instead, struggling to survive. Now, The Man realized also that Broken Wing was not being comical when he went through his antics to get those unshelled sunflower seeds past his beak, down his throat and into his crop, where hopefully they could be ground into something he could then digest, and from which he might get some nourishment. He was desperate.

  Broken Wing was a rusty blackbird, an insect-eating bird. His beak was a probing, snapping beak, a slender and curved beak made for finding and catching insects. It was not a short, compact, seed-crushing beak like the grosbeaks and redpolls have, and not even like the slightly more delicate chickadee beak, or even the pointed nuthatch beak, which was adapted to both seeds and insects. Broken Wing’s entire beak, head, throat and body were built to find and catch insects. Insects! His attempts at choking down those sunflower seeds were not some kind of comedy, but the motions of desperation. He was eating those unshelled sunflower seeds because he was starving to death, and there was nothing else for him to eat.

  The Man got his boots out from behind the wood stove and put them on. He threw on a coat, grabbed a light pair of gloves out of the glove box in the mudroom, picked his car keys from the nail on the mudroom wall and headed out the door, across the yard and toward the car. He got in the car, started it, roared down the lane, and turned left onto the road that traversed the high plateau. Down the road he went, down the mountain to the valley below. When he reached the highway, he turned left again and drove east along West Running River Road—back the way you came to get into this story.