Case of the Glacier Park Swallow (3 page)

T
he swallow brought Juliet back. As she was climbing into the jeep, it struggled free and returned to the swan. She broke through the trees, saw it there on the swan's back, and was glad because she had so much more to say to Sophie.

They collected wood together for a fire, and when it was raging, and they were settled beside it, Juliet said, “What do you think about these birds?”

Sophie thought for a minute. “I think it's slightly terrifying,” she said. “No, no, nothing can be slightly terrifying, can it? This bird thing is terrifying. Birds falling out of the sky. Birds being drugged. Birds....”

Juliet interrupted her. “What about the goose?” she said.

“I don't know much more,” Sophie said. “Just that it came down near Billings, and it was probably drugged too.”

“That's just it.”

“What is?” Sophie asked.

“I'm not sure, but something ... I'm not sure what....” Something was wrong, but Juliet couldn't quite put her finger on it.

She stood then and walked over to the bank of the river. It was getting dark now, and it was hard to see, but the swan was still there, and the swallow was there too, riding round and round on its back. A hyper swan, Juliet thought. How strange. A hyper swan. A hyper swan? What was it? Something. Something.

She walked back to the fire and warmed her hand. “Maybe you could help me with a question I can't answer,” she said. “Actually, I'm not even sure what the question is, but I think it's this. Let's say that two swans of approximately the same size leave Edmonton, and one has been injected with an amphetamine, and one with a tranquilizer.”

“I have a feeling this is one of those ‘If two trains leave the same station at the same time' questions,” Sophie said.

“In a way it is. O.K. So let's just say that these two swans left from the same place. Wouldn't you think that they would come down in entirely different places? Wouldn't you think that the swan that was tranquilized would come down much sooner than the one that was filled with amphetamines?”

“Of course,” Sophie said, her voice rising with excitement. “You're absolutely right. Unless the dosage was different.”

Juliet thought about that for a minute. “Maybe,” she said. “Or unless somebody else injected the tranquilized bird again, after it had come down the first time. And if so, then there would be more than one person involved.”

“Probably on two sides of the border,” Sophie added.

Juliet turned then, and stared at her, and said, “Yes, yes, of course.

She let it go then, and watched the swallow. “I want to mark the swallow's band,” she said.

“Because he's leaving?”

“Maybe. He can fly now. I don't know, but I'd like to keep track of him, come back in the spring and see if he's here, something like that. There might be lots of swallows with that same band, and I'd like to be able to tell if this one made it through the winter. I know it's silly, but....”

“It's not silly,” Sophie said. “I scratched an X on the swan's band.”

Juliet smiled and went to the water and took the swallow from the swan's back. She opened her knife and scratched a J onto the tiny band and opened her hand. The swallow fluttered and flew back to the swan.

As she walked back to the old woman she thought about the J and how it meant that the bird was hers, in a way, and she wished that she had scratched an X instead. She kept trying to own these creatures, and she'd have to stop, now.

She sat down beside Max and he rested his chin on her thigh. It made her feel better. She was glad that Max didn't need to go anywhere. She remembered that she hadn't fed him and she thought he must be hungry. She wanted to feed him quickly so that he wouldn't need to wander off in search of food, like the elk and the birds. She stroked his fur for what seemed to be a long time, and then she stood and went over to Sophie.

“I have to go,” Juliet said. “I have to feed Max. But I'll come back in the morning. Could you try and remember where you buried the swan?”

“Why?”

“Well, I'd like to do an autopsy.”

“All right,” Sophie said. “I'll try. I promise.”

The swan was gone when Juliet arrived the next morning, and so was the swallow.

“I watched them go,” Sophie said. “And it was wonderful to see. The swan flew off first. It flew very high, and then it came down again, and waited for the swallow, and when the swallow was in the sky, it flew in front of it, as if the swallow was just another swan, as if it was one of the old males at the tip of a triangle of swans, leading the way south. It flew low, lower than it would usually fly so that the swallow could follow, and every so often it turned and looked over it's shoulder to see if the swallow was keeping up. And the little swallow banked and glided through the sky, and they seemed to speak in soft low tones like birds do. One note if there's a predator overhead, and a different note for an enemy on the ground. And then they were gone.”

“I wonder if the swan will leave the swallow in North Carolina?” Juliet asked. “Isn't that where whistling swans usually go?”

“The swallow will return to South America,” Sophie said.

“It's strange how birds keep going back to the same place, over and over, but they do. Think of it. That tiny swallow. Six hundred miles a day, day after day after day, until it's there, at last.”

It made Juliet sad to think of the tiny swallow flying hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles without its family, but the swallow was more than a year old and it had made that journey before. It knew the route. Juliet wasn't sure how it knew the way, but it did, and it was on his way now.

“Do you think it will find his family in South America?” Juliet asked Sophie.

“Yes,” Sophie said, and Juliet felt much better. She closed her eyes and pictured the swallow and the swan soaring south, the swan leading the way, the little swallow trying to keep up, the swan glancing back over his shoulder every so often to check on the swallow.

“I remembered where I buried the other swan,” Sophie said. “It was quite easy, really. You can usually remember things when you have a good reason.”

Sophie found a shovel and led Juliet and Max along the bank of the river to a Douglas fir tree. She pointed to a spot under the tree and said, “It's there,” and then she started to dig. It didn't take her long to uncover the bird.

Juliet knelt down and pulled out her knife, cut open the bird and examined it carefully. She was searching for something, anything that might give a clue as to what was happening to these birds, but everything appeared normal. She knew she was being silly. If someone had injected this swan with a tranquilizer all of its organs would look normal. So what was she looking for?

If someone had injected this bird with a tranquilizer, it wouldn't have made it this far. It wouldn't even have made it a mile. So how did they do it?

Juliet ran her fingers over the swan's body. She felt its heart, its bones, its stomach, its wings.

Something was wrong with breast bone. The first time that she touched it, she thought that it might be broken, but when she fingered it again, she realized that it wasn't the bone at all. It was lower than the bone, and it felt as if something had been implanted into the flesh. She ran her fingers back and forth, over the skin. Then she made an incision and peeled back the feathers and outer layer of skin.

She pulled out the implant and studied it. It was about the size of a stamp, but it had three or four tiny pellets attached to it.

“What is it?” Sophie asked.

“It's an implant,” Juliet said. “And I'd guess that these pellets are some kind of tranquilizer, timed to go off every few miles.”

She held out her hand to Sophie and showed her the implant. “See,” she said. “The pellets are different sizes. Some of them have more coating on them. The ones with the least coating will go off first, and the ones with the most coating will go off much later. It's like timed-release cold capsules.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” Juliet said.

She wrapped a hankerchief around the implant and put it into her pocket, and then she picked up the shovel and buried the bird.

“I'll take the implant to the lab,” she said. “And maybe by then, I'll have figured it out.”

J
uliet drove faster than she should have. She was anxious to get home to Montana and the lab, because now she was curious, really curious.

Beside her, Max seemed calm, until he saw the swallow out in front of the jeep.

Juliet could tell by the way the swallow banked and circled that it wasn't the same bird. And this bird was alone. Her swallow was part of a couple now, wasn't it? Her swallow was with the swan.

Max put his front paws up on the dashboard and watched the swallow until it disappeared above the jeep, and when it was out of sight, he moved into the back and examined the sky until it reappeared.

“That's not our swallow, Max,” Juliet said. “Ours is gone. That one's ...” she hesitated, “late.”

Max pressed his nose against the side window, and then he glanced back over at her. He had that soft, pleading, let-me-out look in his eyes, and so she stopped the jeep and opened the door, and he hopped down and ran around in circles on the hard snow and barked at the sky.

“He's gone,” Juliet said. But the swallow wasn't gone. It flew down low then, and Max barked as if he had known all along that the bird was still there, and when he saw it he followed it into the trees and disappeared.

She heard him bark, then heard only echoes as he moved farther and farther into the trees, and then she heard nothing, nothing at all.

She called him several times, and waited, and when he did not come she called again, and again, and again.

She felt very, very cold. She shivered as she listened to the sudden, total silence. Where was Max? And where was the swallow? Maybe it had been the same swallow. Maybe Max had known that.

She felt deeply sad suddenly, and more alone than she could remember ever feeling in her whole life.

“Max,” she called. “Max, Max.”

When he didn't answer she climbed back into the jeep, closed the door and waited. When he still didn't return, she left the jeep and went out into the woods to find him.

The wind came up then, and the sky darkened as the storm gathered. She couldn't leave Max out there alone in that unfamiliar place.

She ran now, deeper into the woods. “Max, Max,” she called, but he didn't answer, and she felt like crying now, because of the coming storm, but most of all because of Max.

The snow began to fall then, and the world came alive with sounds, as the animals fled for cover. The call of an owl echoed through the woods, and something large, larger even than Max, moved past her. She turned quickly, and jumped back, and froze, as a bison came within ten feet and moved on without noticing her.

She listened, and followed the sound to the edge of the forest. She looked out on a plain and saw the bison lumbering across it, and there was the swallow, and Max.

She didn't want to call him because of the bison, so she waited as the swallow circled lower and lower, and then she moved toward Max slowly. He was watching the swallow and he didn't see her.

The swallow had led them back to Mammoth Hot Springs.

Max raced ahead of her, following the bird, and when she called him he wouldn't come. She lost him for awhile, then heard him bark and saw him again, down below on the boardwalk.

She stood watching, as the snow fell. Max studied the swallow as it flew lower and lower and fell onto the limestone next to the boardwalk. The swallow lay there, unmoving, a tiny shadow in the steam and the falling snow.

Juliet screamed then, because she knew that Max would try and go to the swallow, and if he did he might be scalded by a new hot-water spring that could be percolating under the limestone.

She cried out again. Max looked up at her and moved back, and then Juliet raced down to him and held him by the collar, and they watched the little swallow together.

She saw the tiny band on its leg and knew what was wrong with it, and then she knew what to do. The bird was about six feet from the boardwalk, too far to reach with her hand, but not too far to rescue. She took off her belt and tied it to Max's collar, then wrapped the other end around a post. When he was secure, she went to search for something that would reach the swallow.

While she was looking, she heard Max bark behind her and she saw that he wasn't watching the swallow any more. He was watching something else. He was studying a figure far down the boardwalk. At first she thought the bison had returned to chase this intruder away, but when she tiptoed closer she saw that it was a man. She couldn't see him clearly because it was dusk now, but she could tell that he was short, and that he was wearing a large old grey cap on his head.

The man's back was to her, and she could tell that he was interested in the swallow.

She stepped toward him. The snow crunched under her boot, and he turned and noticed her. She retreated behind a tree, and watched as he slipped what looked like a notebook into his pocket. And then he was gone.

She breathed then, and waited, and when she was sure that he wouldn't return, she found a branch and carried it back to Max. Then she leaned out from the boardwalk and used the branch to slide the swallow toward her. She brought it in carefully and very slowly, because she was afraid that any minute a tiny spring of hot water would erupt under him.

The swallow was still alive.

She held it gently and showed it to Max and then she went to the place where the man had been.

She saw his footprints in the snow and stood in them, and made a mental note that his bootprints were exactly the same size as hers.

She went back to Max, and held the swallow out for him to see, and then she put it in her pocket and took it to Tom's.

She was scared, and she needed a friend. When she realized that he wasn't there she felt sad and suddenly very young. She laid the swallow on a newspaper, removed the implant, and forgot for a moment that she was alone.

It was a different swallow. She had been right about that. But it didn't seem to matter to Max. He slept beside the box and waited.