The Man Who Loved Birds (30 page)

And so they worked together while Rosalee quartered tomatoes and dropped them into large kettles on each of the stovetop
burners. “I used to wait for a cool day to make juice,” she said, “but don’t seem like we get cool days in the summer anymore.”

While sharpening pencils the doctor explained to Matthew Mark that yes, she had learned about Jesus in the convent school but that at home her father had taught her about Lord Krishna, who was a bit like Jesus in that they were both the subjects of a lot of good stories. Matthew Mark asked for a story and the doctor said there are many but the most famous involved a great battle and Matthew Mark interrupted her to say, “Tell that one!”

And so while Matthew Mark drew his poster the doctor told of Lord Krishna and Arjuna at the great battlefield of Kurukşetra. Arjuna had engaged Lord Krishna to drive his chariot but when the day of battle dawned Arjuna’s courage failed him. Looking across the field he saw his opponents arrayed in their splendid armor and he knew that he should fan his hatred for them so that he could kill as many as possible, but all he could think about was how they were men just like him, some of them his cousins and friends and all of them men who just wanted to be happy in the same way that he wanted to be happy and how could he summon any pleasure for the task that awaited?

Matthew Mark held up his pencils. “Do music notes have to be black? I wore the black down and I don’t like using it anyway.”

Meena crouched at the boy’s side. “Music notes?”

Matthew Mark turned the drawing so she could see. It showed a field of red tulips from which a road branched into three paths. The leftmost path led to a cloud that contained a cross and a miter hat and a scarlet heart pierced with seven swords. “That’s the religious life,” Matthew Mark said. The middle path led to a cloud that held two interlocking rings and a paper labeled “
CONTRACT
” and a baby bassinet labeled “Junior.” “Married, I assume,” the doctor said and Matthew Mark nodded. The rightmost cloud was blank. “I can’t think of anything that stands for being single,” Matthew Mark said, “so I thought maybe I could draw some music notes. But when I hear music notes they sound like all kinds of colors but in the music book
at school they’re always black. So should I draw them in black like they are in the book, or in colors like they are in my head?”

“Musical notes must be black,” the doctor said. “But what do musical notes have to do with being single?”

“Single people get to be happy all the time,” Matthew Mark said. “They don’t yell at each other like my—anyway, they don’t yell at each other and they don’t look mad all the time like Father Poppelreiter. So I thought I’d draw a bunch of dancing notes on their cloud.”

“I see,” the doctor said. “Perhaps you should make them different colors after all.”

And so he selected a rainbow of pencils while she told how Lord Krishna spoke to Arjuna about how each of us has his duty in life—how some have the duty to lead and others the duty to serve, some have the duty to be shoemakers and others the duty to be kings but each profession is just as important as the other in the great scheme of things, which is too vast for people to understand. And so Arjuna’s duty that day was to be a soldier and as part of his duty as a soldier he had to kill other men. And even though it was not a pleasant part of his duty, his job was to perform it as well as he could because when each of us performed his duty as well as he could he helped keep the universe in harmony. “Like your three roads,” Meena said. “Each person has a road to follow and his job is to follow the road as well as he can, and Lord Krishna is equally happy with all three roads, so long as we contribute to the harmony of the universe.”

Rosalee handed her an apron. “Now’s where I need some help. Matthew Mark, you climb up on that chair and get ready with the tomato mill. I’ll pull the jars out of the hot water. Meena, you get the messy job—you bring the tomatoes to Matthew Mark and let him run them through the mill. Then you carry the juice—it’ll be boiling hot now, you be careful—over to the sink and I’ll ladle it into the jars.”

They worked until the half-gallon jars were filled with bright red juice and the compost bucket a steaming pile of pulp. Then
Rosalee took some watermelon sticks from the freezer and they went outside.

They sat in aluminum lawn chairs, listening to the
pink
and
pock
of the juice jars sealing. Matthew Mark sat at the picnic table putting finishing touches on his poster. Next to their chairs was a crude structure of wooden slats and sheets of translucent plastic. “My greenhouse,” Rosalee said. “Winter comes, it can be awful gray around here. I like to see something bloom.”

“How lovely! May I look?”

“Oh, there’s not much to look at now. I raise things that bloom in winter. Orchids and cactus. The cactus I scatter around the yard in the summertime, the orchids are just a bunch of green sticks right now. I like ’em because they look ordinary and no-count and then right when you need it most, out comes this beautiful flower.”

“I had an orchid once, my favorite flower, that bloomed in
basanto
, our season for weddings,” Meena said. She told how as a teenage girl, sent by her grandparents to bring in the family cow from its foraging, she found a bright yellow orchid in a damp hollow of a banyan tree. A stream of water trickled from a spring in a rock wall and followed a limb down to a mossy hollow in the trunk, where the orchid had rooted itself and lived on air and water and filtered light. “I visited it all the time after my parents sent me to my grandparents’ village. On the day I was married, I cut one of the stalks and wove the blossoms into my hair.”

A moment of silence. “I never knew you was married.”

“A complicated and difficult story,” Meena said. “I should never have mentioned it. If I could be so bold. Please—if you would—I would be so grateful if you would keep that knowledge to yourself.”

“Well, of course, honey, you know you can count on me but little pitchers have big ears,” Rosalee said, staring at Matthew Mark. He did not look up. “Matthew Mark.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You heard the doctor.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And what do you say.”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart?”

“And hope to die.”

“All right, then. I don’t guess you ever worked this hard in Bengal,” Rosalee said. “Nothing hotter than canning tomatoes in August. Though if you was a country girl I expect you had work of your own. For all I seen of the world you might have been canning tomatoes.”

“Mrs. Smith—Rosalee. Might I ask your opinion on a private matter?”

“Why sure, honey, however I can help.” A pause. “Matthew Mark, you take your poster inside and finish it up. We’ll be along directly.”

A small protest overruled, and then the women were alone. “I appreciate your sensitivity,” Meena said, “though I am only curious, of course.” She described Johnny Faye’s pointing out the birds and Harry Vetch’s vehement warning. She could hear her effort to keep her voice colorless and uninflected. “And so when people say Mr. Faye is a
character
, what do they mean?”

Rosalee twisted her wedding band. “Could mean a lot of things. Partly it’s a compliment. Says you give people something to talk about. You could say he was a community asset, though I caint imagine my husband seeing it that way. It’s not like he breaks the law—I mean he does, but he and his kind never lived by no law that come from anywheres but inside. Let’s just say you won’t ever have to worry about getting paid on time and probably a little extra. He’s too ornery to pay attention to the ins and outs of the law. I wouldn’t go trying to civilize him. He’s too honest to be civilized.”

Meena sucked on her watermelon stick. “What would you do, if you were given a choice between love and security?”

“I already told you. I’d listen to the little voice.”

“But what if there’s too much noise to hear the little voice?”

“Then I’d get myself to some quiet place, I guess. That’s one thing church is good for. But you know better than me you’re choosing between something that is and something that aint. There aint no such thing as security, not that I been able to see, anyway. I went chasing and I know. That’s just a dream somebody come up with to get us to buy whatever they happen to be selling.”

“I might as well tell you. Harry Vetch has asked me for a second date.”

“I aint surprised. Harry Vetch can be a pain but he aint dumb, and you’re the best thing that’s happened to this little town in a long time.”

“What would you say? Our first date was not especially successful.”

Rosalee shrugged. “That can happen on a first date. Aint no harm in a date. Keep your legs crossed and make sure he pays your way, he can afford it. And don’t be too eager. He’s got a reputation for notching the gun, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, but with Harry I don’t feel the need to worry about keeping these legs crossed,” she said, pointing to her legs. “Instead I have to keep
these
crossed,” and she pointed to her lips. “That is considerably more difficult. I have been told before that I can be too—direct. That is what I like about Johnny—Mr. Faye. I can say anything with him, or nothing. Either way we have a lovely time.”

Rosalee gave her a peculiar look. “How many times have you seen Johnny Faye?”

“Oh, a few. We encounter each other at the monastery—at the statues. He comes to watch birds and I come—I enjoy the peace and quiet.”

“Peace and quiet’s not the first thing I think of when I think of Johnny Faye. What is it about that man? Seems like everybody—every
thing
that moves has the hots for Johnny Faye. Something about that mix of rounder and saint, I guess. And the little
boy, we all want to take care of the little boy. Sometimes I think it’s women’s fault that men are so messed up. We don’t want ’em to grow up, we want to keep ’em kids forever. Our kids.” Rosalee bent to tug a handful of crabgrass from the orchid planter. “I’d keep a tight rein on that if I was you.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“You live with a police officer, you hear lots of things you best keep to yourself.”

“The same is true of a doctor.”

“Let me just say that I’ve heard talk—my husband and Little—Benny Joe—one of Johnny Faye’s crew—guy that owns the auto parts store. Not the first person I’d want to get tangled up with. Talk.”

“A doctor cannot concern herself with talk.”

“You’re right there, but this kind of talk—money talk—I don’t know. I aint heard this kind of talk before. Drug talk. It’s new to me. Anyways, you be careful.” Rosalee knocked the dirt from the weeds and tossed them on the compost pile. “Your Arjuna always does his duty.”

“Yes, the stories teach us to do our duty. When I was a child I thought that meant only one thing—to live as others would have me live, and so I always did what I was told.
A thing aint happened until it’s been told
, according to Mr. Johnny Faye.

“And so I will tell you the unhappy story of my marriage. My grandparents married me to a rich man three times my age. How fortunate I was, a penniless young girl with only her wits for her dowry, to find such a husband! Or so I was told and so I told myself, but when I could not give him a son he took a second wife. She was pregnant within the year and my disgrace was complete. But in my disgrace I discovered a different duty—a duty to myself and to others, to people outside my clan and my village. That is when I left for medical school, for America. Perhaps you are discovering the same. Perhaps that is why I have been brought into your life.”

“I wouldn’t know much about that. I caint afford to think about that kind of thing.” Rosalee stood. “I got to get inside now to see if that boy finished his drawing. Let me bring you a jar of juice—it ought to be cool enough to carry by now.” She returned carrying a jar wrapped in a towel. “It’s still a little warm, but this way you can carry it.”

Meena crossed the road and sat outside for a long while with the jar of juice, still warm, wrapped in a towel and resting in her lap. If she were possessed of Matthew Mark’s imagination, she could deceive herself into thinking she cradled a child.

Flavian stood at the lip of the bluff above the oxbow bend, hands on his hips. These days the cedar thicket all but parted in welcome—he’d make his mourning dove’s call and stroll right through. This particular Sunday he clutched in his right hand the Department of Justice press release. Below him Johnny Faye was clipping away the lower leaves of his plants. Flavian rattled the paper. “You listen to what they’re saying about you.”

In the creek bed Johnny Faye gathered a cluster of clipped stems in one hand and heaved them to one side. Flavian thought again of Palm Sunday—oh, for those days of innocence, before he’d met the Voice, before he’d brought the envelope of money back to the monastery, before he’d been born—but Johnny Faye’s gesture drew his eyes to the stack of discarded stems and leaves. “Why on earth are you doing that?”

“Doing what.”

“Cutting them down. After all the work we—you put into growing them.”

“I aint cutting ’em
down
. I’m cutting ’em
back
.”

“In August? I don’t know a thing about raising plants but even I know you don’t prune plants in August.”

“I told you I know what I’m doing.” But then Johnny Faye straightened from his task. His voice took on a patient tone, as if he were talking to a child. “You trim off the bottom leaves because
they aint gotten enough light to be worth much of anything to anybody except maybe a compost pile. Then you cut off all the buds except those at the end because a plant aint like a human being. Well, it is and it aint. It is because no matter what anybody tells you, they got a sense of the world. They seek out what they need to grow and prosper, and they will do amazing things to get what they need. Especially this particular plant, which as plants go is somewhere well nigh a genius. But you cut your skin, at least up to a point it’ll heal over. You nick a plant and it just dies. We got our power scattered throughout, different kinds of power in our heads and hands and feet. You cut off a guy’s hand, the guy works at it hard enough and all that power shifts over to his other hand, I seen it happen to a guy who lost a hand in Nam, you’d see what he could do with the hand he had left and you’d hardly even notice he only had one. Not so with a plant. They send all their power to their tips. Once you know that you can shape them so that all the power goes where you want it to go. I want the power to go to a few buds at the end of each branch, I don’t want it wasted by getting spread out over a lot of leaves and stems and puny little piss-ant bottom-feeding buds. So I cut off the lower leaves—they’re just sucking the power away from the ones higher up—and I cut off all the buds except the ones at the tips of the branches. Don’t you worry yourself, I don’t waste so much as a twig. I’ll dry this early cut and bake it in cookies. Then the buds left on the plant—I’ll leave them on a few more days so the sun can finish ’em out and fill ’em with its power. That way all the power of this place”—he waved in a big arc at the sun overhead, the creek bed, the bluff on which Flavian stood, the great mottled three-armed sycamore—“gets into the buds I leave behind. And when the winter comes, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.” He grinned.