Chapter 1
What made me think about little Ringo was the lady with the bird. I was sorting bottles when she came by. The reason we have to sort them is because some people just can’t follow directions. On one gray plastic bin it says in plain old easy to understand English “colored glass only” and on the other it says “clear glass only.” Yet there always seems to be all these green wine bottles in the clear glass only bin and a bunch of clear bottles in the colored glass bin. I used to try to straighten people out and get them to put things where they should go but it got to be too aggravating so now I just accept things like they are. I guess it took me a while to learn that it’s easier to straighten out bottles than people.
The lady with the bird knew how to read signs. She didn’t make extra work for me. She was putting recycle stuff here and there and she said something about a bird. I thought she said “cockatiel” and I said, “Oh I used to have one of them. I sure did like it but I had to get rid of if because it was always wrecking things.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I know just what you’re talking about,” the lady said.
“It chewed up the curtains and the decorations on my ex-wife’s clothes,” I said.
“You should see what our bird did to our kitchen,” the lady said. From the way she talked you could tell she wasn’t from around here. She was probably a summer resident.
“It was only about this big,” I showed her with my hands how big Ringo was, “but it sure could tear hell out of things.”
“Only that big?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of bird was it?”
“A cockatiel.”
“Oh, I’m talking about a cockatoo.”
She pointed towards her minivan. In the back seat there was this big white bird in a cage.
“Holy maloney! You got him right there with you! He’s beautiful.”
“Do you know anyone who might want to buy him? I’m trying to find a new owner. My husband’s allergic to him.”
“I sure don’t know anyone who’d be interested. He’s a big fellow. How much does a bird like that cost?”
“To the right person I’ll sell him for three hundred dollars. I just want to be sure he has an owner who’ll take good care of him.”
“I sure can understand how you feel that way,” I said. “That’s just how I felt when I had to give away my bird.”
The lady finished unloading her car and drove off.
I started calling the little guy Ringo without much thinking about it. I wasn’t expecting we’d be keeping him. I can remember the day he appeared almost like it was yesterday. The sun was breaking through the clouds and it looked like it wasn’t gonna rain like the radio said it would so just after Kelly went off to work I got the idea to go clamming. The tide calendar stuck on the refrigerator said it was just about low tide so my timing couldn’t’ve been better. I got the clam rake out from the garage under the house and dropped it in the back of my truck and then drove out to the clam flats on Indian Neck and raked up about half a bucketful of quahogs. I can cook up a pretty mean chowder and that’s what I was planning to do. I make it with fresh potatoes and onions right out of my garden and it just doesn’t come any better. During the summer, when Kelly mostly ate at the restaurant where she waitressed, I made my own dinners.
When I got home I set the clams and buckets of salt water out on the deck and set to work washing the clams—salt water’s best for getting out the sand, you know—and then prying them open and cutting out the meat for my chowder. I probably had my boombox out there with the radio playing the kind of sixties music I like—The Beatles, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead. So I was sitting there scraping out one clam after another when, zwoom, this colorful little bird flies down out of the trees onto the railing of the deck no more’n a few feet away. I just froze and watched to see what he’d do. It stood bobbing its head about like it just wanted to check out the scene. Wasn’t a bit scared and looked like it thought it owned the place. It had a crest and mainly creamy-white colors, with a yellow head and big red spots sort of where cheeks would be. Of course it took only a minute to guess that it must’a been somebody’s pet bird that escaped.
I set the knife and clam in the bucket real gentle. “Now ain’t you pretty. Where’d you come from?”
I was thinking I’d slowly get up and walk towards it and see if it was tame enough so’s it would climb on my finger.
Just as I was kind of easing myself up from my chair the little guy flies across and lands on my shoulder. You could see it had its eye on the clams.
“Well, now. You’re friendly too. I betch’you’re hungry. You just stay right where you’re at and I’ll give you some of these to eat.”
I picked up the bowl with the clam-meat and as slow and careful as I could I got up and worked my way across the deck and inside the screen door to the kitchen. Then I reached up my finger and the little fella climbed right on it.
Later that night I dozed on the couch for a while and then got up and began tinkering with a lamp somebody gave us free at a yard sale. All it needed was rewiring. I wanted to be awake when Kelly got home. The little bird was perched on the play structure I rigged up with a bunch of boards and branches and wire. He had his head tucked under his wing, sleeping away. It was a hot night and June bugs and moths was buzzing at the screens and the cicadas and crickets was doing their thing. It must’a been almost midnight when I saw the headlights from Kelly’s car flashing on the trees.
When she came in and let the screen door slam Ringo snapped his head out from his wing and let out a squawk that’d wake the dead.
Kelly gave a start and then for a minute she just stared at it.
Like she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Don’t tell me you bought a bird, Henry.”
“He flew down onto the porch all by hisself.”
“You mean out of nowhere?”
“Out of the woods. I was scraping out clams and I guess he musta been pretty hungry.”
She had on her waitress outfit—a white blouse and a blue skirt. The blouse was half unbuttoned down the front and damp at the armpits. Usually when she got home late after a night of waiting tables she’d look pretty beat. Curly strings of brown hair straggled down her forehead and her face looked sweaty.
“But it’s not a local bird?” she said.
“That’s for damn sure. Local birds ain’t so colorful and they won’t hop on your finger.”
She stuck a package in the fridge and went upstairs to the bedroom. When she came back down to the kitchen I was finishing up with the lamp. She must’a freshened up with a washcloth. She’d changed into one of her silky bathrobes like she almost always did when she got home from waitressing. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “My feet are killing me. God, I’m glad the summer’s coming to an end.”
She was kinda droopy-eyed. She sat at the table and looked at the bird. By now he was wide awake and standing there all perked-up.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Try to find the owner I guess.”
“It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.
In warm weather Kelly’d just let the bathrobe hang open. So she was pretty much naked.
“If you hold out your finger it’ll climb right up on it.”
“That’s okay. I think I’ll just look at it.”
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