A Different Blue(7)

them in Australia and New Zealand too.”

“How do you know it's a he?”

“Because the females don't have the glossy black feathers. They aren't as pretty.”

The little yellow eyes peered down at us, fully aware that we were watching. Without warning,

the bird flew away. Jimmy watched him go, tracking him through the binoculars until he was

beyond sight.

“His wings were as black as your hair,” Jimmy commented, turning away from the bird that had

enlivened our morning. “Maybe that's what you are . . . a little blackbird a long way from

home.”

I looked at our camper sitting in the trees. “We're not a long way from home, Jimmy,” I said,

confused. Home was wherever Jimmy was.

“Blackbirds aren't considered bad luck like ravens and crows and other birds that are black.

But they don't give up their secrets easily. They want us to figure them out. We have to earn

their wisdom.”

“How do we earn it?” I wrinkled my nose up at him, baffled.

“We have to learn their story.”

“But he's a bird. How can we learn his story? He can't talk.” I was literal in the way all

kids are literal. I would have really liked it if the blackbird could tell me his story. I would

keep him as a pet, and he could tell me stories all day. I begged for stories from Jimmy.

“First you have to really want to know.” Jimmy looked down at me. “Then you have to watch.

You have to listen. And after a while, you'll get to know him. You'll start to understand him.

And he'll tell you his story.”

I took out a pencil and spun it around my fingers. I wrote, "Once Upon a Time" across the top of

my sheet, just to be a smart ass. I smirked at the line. As if my story was a fairy tale. My

smile faded.

“Once upon a time . . . there was a little blackbird,” I wrote. I stared at the page. “. . .

pushed out of the nest, unwanted.”

Images gathered in my head. Long dark hair. A pinched mouth. That was all I could remember of my

mother. I replaced the pinched mouth with a gently smiling face. A completely different face.

Jimmy's face. That face brought a twinge of pain. I moved my inner eye to his hands. Brown hands

moving the chisel across the heavy beam. Wood shavings piled on the floor at his feet where I

sat, watching them fall. The shavings drifted down around my head, and I closed my eyes and

imagined that they were tiny pixies coming to play with me. These were the things I liked to

remember. The memory of the first time he had held my smaller hand in his and helped me strip

away the heavy bark from an old stump rose in my mind like a welcome friend. He was talking

softly about the image beneath the surface. As I listened to the memory of his voice, I let my

mind trip back across the desert and up into the hills, remembering the gnarled claw of mesquite

I had found the day before. It had been so heavy I'd had to drag it to my truck and hoist it,

one side at time, into the truck bed. My fingers itched to peel back the charred skin and see

what was beneath. I had a feeling about it. A shape was forming in my head. I tapped my feet and

curled my fingers against the paper, daydreaming about what I could create.

The bell rang. The noise level in the room rose as if a switch had been flipped, and I jerked

from my reverie and glared down at my page. My pathetic history waited for embellishment.