- - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
- - - - - - - -
Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
Suite B
Lacey, WA 98503-4903
 |
|
| PAST MACRO-FICTION | MORE FICTION |
We started along the dirt road together, but pretty soon Cara and Grayson moved ahead, or Dad and I fell back. Our steps stirred up the red dust. It rose in fine clouds and descended to cling to my face, my neck, the hair on my arms. Heat shimmered in the air like shock waves. I thought of my Sea Breeze back at the tent. I thought of the equator and figured I would never go there, a place you carried umbrellas for sun instead of rain, where the light could blind you brighter than this. Even here, even Big Bend seemed too much, not quite real, like one of those Saturday morning cartoons where the coyote runs around in circles and ends up at the bottom of a cliff. There were the same colors and shapes: red rocks, blue sky, saguaro cactuses looming like people. But the foothills of the Chisos Mountains looked cool. There, in the shade, in the thickets of quiet pine, lived the Colima Warbler. It was a small gray bird with a reddish crown, nothing too thrilling except for the fact that you couldn’t find it anywhere in this country but here. You can see plenty in the bigger mountains to the south, but we looked for it here, in Big Bend Park, because Dad was a lister and he played by the rules. No Mexico, no Central America-- species didn't count unless they're seen north of the border. When I was ten my family spent two sweaty days down in Brownsville. We were looking for the Roadside Hawk, a bird whose name made me suggest I wait for it in the air-conditioned car. When my mom found it, it was not by the road at all but rather perched happily in a tree on the other side of the Rio Grande. We couldn't do anything. Grayson threw rocks, hoping somehow to scare it toward us, but it just blinked its eyes a couple of times and settled more solidly on its branch. We waited for three hours until finally it flew away into Mexico. To Dad, it was like he never even saw it.
He had seen the Colima. He and my mother took a trip here years ago, before Grayson and I were born, and they found it in the hills after a full day's hike. It was one of the stories Mom told me last spring, in the evenings after Dad left. We sat on the screened porch that he had built, me in a wicker chair, Mom sunk into the sofa. She always held a glass of wine, and her voice was swollen, like she couldn't choke back the wash of words.
There had been a pool at the side of the trail, she said, a natural spring, set off by trees and cool in the shade. They stopped there; it was late afternoon, later than they'd expected because Dad paused so often to look at birds. Nobody else was around. "It was a miracle, Sarah, that silver water, so silent in the middle of the desert. As if we were the only animals left in the universe. We were alone, and so in love then that even if people had been there it wouldn't have made any difference. Your father would still have reached for me." For a moment she was quiet, then she nodded her head like she'd decided something. She reached for the wine bottle. "Your father had a way," she said.
I didn't ask a way with what. The darkness was thin and warm, and in the distance I could hear the ocean. Across the causeway, taillights of cars going toward the city blinked and receded. Finally I said, "What about the bird?"
"What?" She held her glass. It took a few seconds for her to focus. "Oh, the warbler. We saw it on the way down."
* * *
Personally, I didn't care about seeing the Colima, on this trip or any other, and Grayson was too young to know the difference. Cara, though, seemed excited by the prospect. She seemed excited by any prospect. Sometimes I thought that was why Dad left Mom-- new things to show her were getting harder to find. "The Jailer thinks she's seen everything," he'd say. "The Jailer won't leave her place by the cell." Cara was less discriminating. With Cara, he could relive the places he'd been before, and he was already an authority when they got there.
That morning, though, Dad walked with me. He went slowly, stopping every few minutes to scan the bush through his binoculars. I traced squiggly symbols in the dust with my sandal. I crossed my hands on top of my head, elbows like vees to cast a shadow, and I let out my breath so he might notice. I knew there weren't any birds. Not here, not at twelve o'clock under a huge hot sky. Maybe a vulture or two hanging out in the updrafts, but definitely no little warblers. "Dad, we're not even in the hills yet," I said.
He lowered his glasses to look at me. "You never know what you're going to see," he said. He started walking. Cara and Grayson were way ahead by this time, and as Dad and I moved I watched them through the shifting layers of air.
