The universe works in threes, and while at home alone one Saturday, I was triangulated into an act of violence. I did not act alone, but some burden of responsibility falls to me. As they say, “It takes three to triangle.”
My wife’s sister and her three daughters had been staying with us for the week. She was going through painful divorce proceedings. She needed our support, and her daughters needed a getaway.
“While the nieces would love to see you get a pedicure,” my wife said after breakfast, “they think you might get bored.” I helped load the five of them into the car and off they went. The smallest niece, Olivia, left behind her palm-sized turtle, named “Puppy,” so I was not entirely alone. I started the dishwasher and opened all the curtains. I laid on top of the bed doing snow angels from the waist down while reading a book from the waist up, as one who is not accustomed to having the house all to themselves does.
I watched the birds lining the wire outside the window. One, two, four, eight, ten. I had never seen so many. The wire sagged into a smile. I was not sure the line could hold so many birds. And what were they all staring at? Something in the yard, I supposed. I traced the line of their stare, but the walls got in my eyes.
I set the book on my chest and began to nod off for a nap, but the birds got to chirping and wouldn’t stop. I heard the sounds of the neighbor children playing in our yard. That must be what was keeping the birds. I considered standing at the window and scowling until the kids returned to their own yard, but the nieces had given me a renewed appreciation for the spirit of youth. I lay there with my eyes open. One of the birds turned her head and looked at me through the window. After we held eye contact for a moment, she rolled forward off the wire. I heard her bird body thump the pavement and flap broken wings against the side of house.
I got up and went into the yard, only to discover that I had left the hose running. Water and potting soil cascaded from the porch planter down the steps onto the walk and into the yard, where the running water had begun to turn our spring garden into a pond. Then I spotted the real emergency.
Puppy the turtle must have gotten out while I wasn’t paying attention. The neighbor kids had gotten a hold of her, flipped her onto her back and placed a heavy rock on her belly. The rock was holding her underwater in the flooding garden. A turtle — as it turns out — can drown a lot faster than they can dry up.
I brought the dead turtle inside, set her body on a washcloth and set the washcloth on the bed. I began searching for words inside of me that might begin to explain death to a four-year-old. Was I so shallow as to pretend this wasn’t my fault?
I heard the girls pull up in the driveway. As they got out of the car and came towards the house, they began to shriek. I had forgotten about the bird, and now they were seeing it. I wondered if the bird had taken a nosedive to call my attention to the turtle. Little good that did, I thought.
As the girls came inside, I swallowed hard. I should be the one, I thought. I should be the one laid out for burial on a ruddy square of fabric. I looked over at Puppy, but the washcloth was empty.
Author’s note:
One day, I was looking out a window at a bird sitting among other birds on a crowded line. At the moment our eyes seemed to meet, the bird fell off the line. What had just happened? I went to the window. The bird was fine — it took to flight before it hit the ground, but I was left with the original question. Strange doings have a way of presenting themselves to me as mystical metaphors worthy of investigation. I turned to fiction to explore the possibilities. What might precipitate a bird trying to communicate with a human? What if the delivery of a message was interrupted by the death of the messenger? What if death was the message? What kind of communication would be worthy of death? Perhaps a sacrificial or salvific one.
This experiment was officially getting dark, heavy and theological — birds of the air, substitutionary atonement, the universe working in threes. When the subject matter gets heavy, I try to lessen the burden of meaning in the handoff to readers by keeping the characters simple (animals, children) and the material short. Similar to fables and parables, I like short stabs of narrative that provoke further thinking.