A Redbird Christmas (3 page)

The Store

R
OY GRIMMITT, WHO
ran the grocery store in Lost River, was a big friendly guy and everybody liked him. He was also one of the few people who had actually been born and raised in the area, except for the Creoles across the river, whose families had been there since the 1700s. Roy had inherited the store from his uncle, who had run it for fifty years. The tin Coca-Cola sign across the front of the brick building advertised it simply as
GRIMMITT
’
S GROCERY,
but it was much more than that. It was a landmark. If the store had not been on the corner, most people would have driven right by, never knowing there was a river or an entire community of people living there. For the sixty or seventy residents, it was the place where they did their shopping and kept up on all the news, good and bad. It was an especially favorite stopping-off spot for the many fishermen in the area, the place where they bought their tackle and live bait and swapped lies about how many fish they had caught—all except Claude Underwood, the best fisherman there, who never said how many he had caught or where he had caught them. There were two gas pumps outside the store; inside was rather plain, with wooden floors and a meat counter in the back. The only concession to decoration was the large array of mounted fish, game birds, and deer heads that lined the walls and a stuffed red fox on top of the shelf in the back. One of the Creoles, Julian LaPonde, the only taxidermist in the area, had once been a good friend and poker pal of Roy’s uncle. Most of the produce was local. Roy bought his meat from area hunters and always had plenty of fresh shrimp, crab, and oysters from the Gulf and fish from the river. He got his milk, poultry, eggs, fruits, and vegetables from nearby farms. Because his was the only store around, he stocked much more than just food and gas; he sold everything from work gloves, rakes, shovels, and pickaxes to rubber boots. Kids loved the store because of its great selection of candy, potato chips, and ice cream, and the deep box of ice-cold drinks he kept by the front door filled with every kind you could want: Orange Crush, root beer, Grapettes, Dr Pepper, and RC Cola. Name it, he had it. But Roy also had something that no other store in the world could offer.

It had been just a few weeks after Christmas about five years ago, when Roy heard the popping of guns out in back of the store. A pair of kids that lived back up in the woods had gotten high-powered pump-action BB guns that year and were busy shooting everything in sight. Roy was a hunter and a fisherman, but those damn mean little redneck boys would shoot anything and leave it to die. He hated that, and he walked out the back door and yelled at them, “Hey, you boys, knock it off!” They immediately scattered back into the woods, but they had just shot something, and whatever it was it was still alive and on the ground flopping around. Roy walked over and picked it up. It was a baby bird.

“Damn those little bastards.” It was a scruffy tiny gray-and-brown thing, so young he could not tell what it was. Probably a sparrow or a mockingbird or a wren of some kind. He had picked up many dead or hurt birds that these boys had shot but this was the youngest by far. It probably had not even learned to fly. He knew he couldn’t save it, but he took the little bird back inside the store anyway, wrapped it up in an old sock, and put it in a box in a warm dark place in his office so some hawk or owl or other predator could not get it. At least he could save the baby bird from that and let the thing die in peace. Other than that, there was nothing more he could do for it.

Most of the kids that lived around there were pretty nice and Roy had a good relationship with all of them, but these two new boys were surly. Nobody knew who they were or where they had come from. Somebody said their family lived in an old run-down trailer way back up in the woods. He had never seen the parents, but he had seen the boys throwing rocks at a dog and he had no use for them after that, even less now. Anybody that would deliberately shoot a baby bird ought to have their heads knocked together. If he could get his hands on them, he would do it himself.

The next morning when he opened the store he had almost forgotten about the baby bird when he heard something chirping away in the sock. He walked over and touched it and up it popped with his mouth wide open, still very much alive and hungry for breakfast.

Surprised, Roy said, “Well, I’ll be damned, you little son of a gun.”

Now he didn’t know what to do. This was the first hurt bird he had ever picked up that had survived the night, but this little thing was definitely alive and carrying on like something crazy. He went to the phone and called his veterinarian friend who lived in Lillian, a small town ten miles away.

“Hey, Bob, I’ve got this baby bird over here, I think it’s been shot.”

His friend was not surprised. “Those kids with the BB guns again?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of bird?”

“I don’t know.” Roy looked over at the bird. “He’s kind of ugly . . . looks like some kind of mud hen. He’s gray and brown, I think. Could be some kind of sparrow or mockingbird or—oh, I don’t know what the thing is, but it looks like it’s hungry. Should I feed it?”

“Sure, if you want to.”

“What should I give it?”

“Give it the same thing its mother would, worms, bugs, a little raw meat.” He laughed. “After all, Roy, you’re its mother now.”

“Oh, great, that’s just what I need.”

“And Roy . . .”

“What?”

“Seriously, it probably won’t live, but you might want to check and see if you can get those BBs out. If you don’t, it will die for sure.”

Roy went over, picked up the bird, and examined it and was surprised at how strong it was as it squawked and struggled to get free. He held out the wings and could see four BBs lodged right under its right wing close to the breast. He got a pair of tweezers. After having to dig around for a moment, he carefully lifted the BBs out one by one as the bird squawked and squirmed in discomfort. “Sorry, fella, I know that hurts, but I’ve got to do it, pal.” He cleaned the spot with alcohol and put him back in the sock. Then he went over to the live bait section of the store and pulled out a large English red worm and a few grubs and took a razor blade and chopped up a nice breakfast for the bird, who proceeded to gobble the entire thing down and scream for more.

Roy continued to keep the bird in his office. He did not want anyone to know that he was hand feeding a baby bird three times a day and twice at night. He did not want to take the ribbing he would get from his friends. After all, he was a strapping six-foot-two man, and taking care of a baby bird might have seemed sissylike to them. As the days went by Roy tried not to become too attached. He knew how fragile they were and how hard it was to keep them alive. Every morning he half expected to find it dead, but each morning when he opened the door and heard the bird chirping away, he was secretly as pleased as punch and proud of the little bird for hanging on. He never saw anything want to live so bad in all his life, but he still didn’t tell anyone. He planned to keep feeding it, and if it survived he would release it when it got old enough to fly.

Several weeks went by. The bird grew stronger and stronger and pretty soon was hopping all around the room, trying to flap his wings, but he could not seem to get off the ground. Roy noticed that each time he tried he kept falling over to the right. As this continued to happen, Roy began to worry about him. One day he put him in a shoe box and drove him over to his friend Bob’s office.

The vet looked the bird over and said, “That wing is just too badly damaged, Roy. He’s never going to be able to fly like he should, and he’ll certainly never survive in the wild. We probably should just go ahead and put him to sleep.”

Roy felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.

“Do you think so?” he asked, trying to hide his disappointment.

“Yes, I do. You shouldn’t keep a wild bird like this inside. It would be cruel, really.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I was just hoping he would make it.”

“I can do it for you right now if you want me to.”

“No, it’s my bird. I’ll do it.”

“All right, that’s up to you. I’ll give you a bottle of chloroform. Just put it on some cotton and hold it over the beak; he won’t feel anything. He’ll just go to sleep.”

Roy put the bird back in the shoe box and drove home, and every time he heard the bird jumping around in the box, trying to get out, he knew his friend was right. It would be cruel to keep a thing meant to be free closed up inside. That night he gave the bird as much food as he would eat, and around nine o’clock he sat down and took out the chloroform and a ball of cotton. He sat there, staring at the bird hopping around the room, jumping on everything in sight and pecking at the papers on his desk. He picked him up and examined him more closely under the light. It was then he noticed that some of his feathers were just beginning to turn from brown to red. Upon closer inspection he began to see the beginnings of a small crest forming on the back of his head and a black mask starting to form around his eyes. Then it hit him. This was a redbird! What a shame, this little guy was not going to get the chance to grow up and become the beautiful bird he was meant to be. Damn! All of a sudden Roy felt like going back in the woods and finding those two boys and cracking their heads together right then and there. Finally, after sitting and staring at the bird for a few more hours, Roy stood up and threw the bottle in the trash can. “Oh, the hell with it, buddy. See you in the morning.” He turned the lights out and went home to bed. He could no more have put that bird to sleep than fly to the moon.

After that night Roy started keeping the bird in the front of the store with him. Eventually word got out that a baby redbird was living at the grocery store, and everybody who came in got a big kick out of it. At first the bird sat on the counter beside Roy and hopped all over the cash register, but as the weeks went by he was able to fly in short spurts, many times missing his mark, but he was getting stronger and more active every day, so much so that just in case Roy put a sign on the front door:

DON’T LET THE BIRD OUT!

At night when Roy locked up and went home he left the bird in the store so he could have the whole place to himself to roam as freely as he pleased, and roam he did. One morning Roy came in and found he had pecked his way through the top of a Cracker Jack box and was hopping around with a large Cracker Jack stuck on his beak. Roy removed it and laughed. The crazy bird must like Cracker Jacks! From then on he called the bird Jack. But as Roy found out later, Jack also liked Ritz crackers, potato chips, peanut butter, and vanilla wafers, and he especially liked chocolate-covered Buddy Bars. The little bird’s appetite for sweets was relentless and not exclusive. He once pecked his way inside a large bag of marshmallows, and by the time Roy found him the next morning he was completely covered with powdered sugar. Eventually, everybody got used to buying things that had been pecked at by Jack first.

Everyone who went in the store got a big kick out of Jack except one person. Frances’s younger sister, Mildred, made it clear that she did not like the bird and constantly complained to Frances. “I just know he walks all over everything,” she said. “There’s little peck holes in everything I pick up. He’s just a pest. The last time I was up there he landed in my hair and messed up my hairdo and I had to go home and redo the whole thing.”

Frances, who liked the bird, said, “Oh, Mildred, he never does that to me. I think he does it just to aggravate you because he knows you don’t like him.”

“Well, I don’t care what you say, I don’t think a place where you sell food is a sanitary place to have a bird, and I told Roy; I said, “It’s a good thing we don’t have health inspectors around here, or that bird would be against the law.”

“Then why do you keep going up there if all you are going to do is fuss about that bird night and day?”

“Where else am I going to shop? It’s not like we are living in the middle of twenty-five supermarkets. I don’t have a choice; I’m stuck. I’m telling you that bird is a nuisance. You can’t go up there without having it jump on you. He’s a menace to society and that’s all there is to it, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Frances said, “Well, I don’t either. Just make out a list of what you want and I’ll go and get your groceries for you so I don’t have to listen to you complain.”

Mildred looked at her, highly incensed. “And just how am I supposed to know what I want until I get there? That’s why it’s called shopping, Frances!” And with that she marched out the door.

Although Jack was a real handful and, without a doubt, could be a pest at times, he had grown from the tiny ugly mud hen he started out as in life into a beautiful scarlet-red and black-masked bird. With his lipstick-colored beak and shiny little reddish-brown eyes, he looked exactly like a redbird should, but for some reason when Jack looked right at you, he seemed to have a silly smile on his face. One day Roy told Claude Underwood, “I swear that crazy bird has a sense of humor. Every morning I come in and he’s done something else just to make me laugh. I came in yesterday, and the fool was hanging upside down swinging back and forth in the fishnet.”