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Bittersweet

I remember when the birds changed. We had a bittersweet vine growing in the backyard, and even though it's an invasive weed, I liked the look of the star-shaped purple flowers, and the birds were drawn to the little red berries. I would put Henry in a sweater and set up him in a chair on the porch. I'd give him iced tea in a plastic tumbler and let him watch the birds. He would stare at them the same way he stared at television, or at the walls, or at me.

I've never been a birder, so I called all the small ones sparrows and the bigger ones jays, though there could have been thrushes and swallows and yellow-headed bellow bloats for all I know. Getting the species right is probably important to the birds.

I noticed that the species intermixed. They'd peck at the bittersweet berries without the squawking and squabbling I always associated with birds. They were at least as orderly as people at a salad bar. And then they'd gather in a circle on the grass. One by one, birds would enter the circle and spend a few moments twittering, then rejoin the circle to be replaced by another speaker. Every now and then, one of the birds would perch on the little table beside Henry's chair. The bird would cock its head and look at him with its impenetrable black eyes, and then return to the others and sing and trill. Henry didn't notice, but I'm sure they were talking about him.

After a few weeks, they started speaking in human voices. First, just imitation, things like the hide-and-seek countdown from the kids next door. Then things that made less sense. "Wire to branch, seed to worm, fly and sing the mating. Only thought goes farther than wing."

Bird poetry, I guess.

Soon, I started to overhear them making plans to defend the backyard from cats. They worked together to top the cement block wall with shards of bottle glass.

I had Tai Chi on Mondays. On Tuesdays, breakfast with a few of the old librarians, retired like me. On Wednesdays, I'd sit out with Henry on the porch. Wednesdays were my least favorite day of the week, which is something I tell nobody else.

One morning I reached for Henry's iced tea glass -- he never touched it -- and a sparrow landed on the arm of my chair.

"It's the bittersweet berries that made us this way," it said. "Feed him some."

"I already thought of that," I snapped back. "But he's not a bird. Solanum dulcamara is poisonous to humans."

The bird remained a moment, hopping from foot to foot in the ways birds do. "Oh," it said, ruffling its feathers. Then it returned to its fellows, and Henry fluttered his fingers as though they were wings.