Pablo and Birdy Page 4

  Birdy needed motion too. Even if she couldn’t fly, she loved it when Pablo almost-flew her down the beach on his shoulder or sailed her from room to room on his arm. She would lean forward a little, her talons digging in, and she never wanted him to stop.

  The grotesque’s building across the street was also home to a certain kind of swallow, who built nests under the overhang. To the right and left, below the grotesque’s stone ledge, their intricate mud nests could be seen. Every year, Pablo and Birdy watched the baby swallows learn to fly. They were so tiny it was almost impossible to see them, black specks tumbling around in the air, their parents hovering nervously. The babies who survived flew farther and faster every day. Eventually they got to the point where they swooped around the grotesque, sometimes landing on its back, where they perched and rested.

  Maria had consoled Pablo when he was younger and upset about the babies who didn’t make it.

  “It’s part of the cycle of life,” she told him. “And it’s hard to witness, like many things in nature. But there’s a reason for all natural phenomena, whether we understand it or not.”

  Reason or not, it was hard to watch and harder to understand. Some things in life were like that. Like the idea of a baby launched alone into the ocean, with only a bird to keep him company.

  TEN

  PABLO WONDERED SOMETIMES about the huge storm that had swept through Isla just before he arrived. Was the storm the reason he’d been separated from whoever was with him? His hand came up and covered the necklace hidden beneath his T-shirt. For someone had to have been with him. Someone who had knotted the Dios me bendiga necklace around his neck, who had wrapped him in the green blanket and tied him so carefully into the little swimming pool.

  “A few days before you arrived, during the winds of change, there was that giant storm,” Emmanuel had said. “And then came you. And look at you—Birdy, too—afraid of storms to this day.”

  Pablo was afraid of storms. A sky thick with darkening clouds, strong winds, rain that hammered down on the ceiling and woke him up at night: all these things filled him with fear. He would pull his knees to his chest in his hammock and wrap the blankets tight and try to make himself as small and invisible as possible, so the wind and the rain wouldn’t find him. Even if animals had been allowed onboard the marine expedition, he wouldn’t have wanted to go. What if a storm came up?

  Birdy’s fear was different. Her fear had to do with Pablo. When storms rolled in, when there was a threat of a hurricane, when the sky turned dark and ominous, Birdy would not leave Pablo’s side even for a moment. She clung to his shoulder, his arm, the top of his head. She was ready with a swat if anyone else, even Emmanuel, came too close. She never slept at those times. For hours on end, an entire night, days even, she stayed awake and watchful, her eyes on Pablo.

  The tourists were about to show up, and Pablo and Birdy were still on the bench outside Pierre’s, late to help Emmanuel open up the store. Emmanuel counted on them in high season.

  “Yikes, Birdy,” Pablo said now. “We better get going.”

  Seafaring Souvenirs, like all the other shops except for Pierre’s Goodies, opened promptly at ten a.m., just in time for the tourists to start arriving. Lula was chalking in her Tattoo of the Day special on the signboard outside Lula Tattoo.

  Pablo was in a rush. But he stopped short when he saw the Tattoo of the Day, which looked to be a parrot soaring through the sky with wings spread wide, talons gripped around a baby in an inflatable swimming pool.

  “What do you think, Pablo?” Lula said, standing back to admire her work.

  What did Pablo think? He thought it was terrible, that’s what he thought. Not because it was badly drawn—Lula was good at her renderings—but because, because . . .

  “Lula, is that supposed to be me?”

  “Yes! You and Birdy. It’s an artist’s rendering. Which means that—”

  “I know what it means.”

  “Do you like it? I got the idea from—”

  “I know where you got the idea from, Lula.”

  And he did. Every year it was Emmanuel’s tradition to make up a new story to explain how Pablo had ended up in Isla. Last year, on Pablo’s ninth non-birthday, he had come up with the Pablo-as-pirate-baby theory.

  “Here’s what I think,” he had said. “You and Birdy were captives on a pirate ship that foundered on the rocks in a gigantic storm. The pirates forgot all about you because they were too busy running around on deck trying to save their treasure, and Birdy saw her chance.”

  Emmanuel pantomimed unspooling a coil of rope, and then he made a series of invisible knots with quick arm movements.

  “She lifted you up and put you into the little pool, then knotted you in tight with the twine.”

  “What would pirates be doing with a blow-up baby pool?” Pierre had asked.

  “Pierre! Don’t mess up a good story,” Lula said.

  “It’s a reasonable question,” Pierre said.

  “They used it as a . . . a footbath,” Emmanuel said. He was a fast thinker. “Pirates are known to enjoy a warm footbath at the end of a long day of plundering.”

  He had wiggled his toes, as if he himself were enjoying a warm footbath.

  “Then, once the baby—that would be you, Pablo—was safely knotted into the pool, Birdy hauled you and the pool into the sky. And she started to fly.”

  A baby in a pool in the sky? That would be a heavy burden even for a bird of prey, which Birdy wasn’t.

  “I’m not sure that would be possible,” Pablo said.

  “And you would be correct,” Emmanuel said. “Which is how Birdy, you, and the pool all came to rest upon the surface of the waves, where Birdy kept guard over you until you came floating in to shore, where a man—that would be me—found you and brought you home.”

  It was a good story, like most of Emmanuel’s stories. Lula especially loved the pirate baby story, which explained why she was now re-creating part of it in her Tattoo of the Day.

  “So what do you think?” she asked again.

  I hate it, he thought. But he kept that thought, like the others, inside. His fingers reached up and closed over his necklace again. The pendant was solid and warm underneath his T-shirt.

  “I’m giving it a test run,” Lula said. “It’s a possibility for your birthday tattoo.”

  Birdy jumped over to the chalkboard and gave the artist’s rendering a swat.

  “Birdy!” Lula said. “You don’t like it?” She looked from Birdy to Pablo in confusion, the chalk still in her hand. “Is something wrong, Pablo? You’ve been acting kind of weird lately.”

  But he just shook his head. Nothing was wrong. Except that something was, and he didn’t know how to talk about it.

  “It’s not an ink tattoo,” Lula said, still puzzled. “Just henna, gone in a week or so. Not something you’d be stuck with forever.”

  “I can think of a tattoo I’d want to be stuck with forever,” Pablo said.

  “Such as?”

  “A Birdy tattoo.”

  “Oh, well. That’s a different matter. Birdy’s your best friend.”

  Birdy was more than a best friend. Much more. Pablo opened his mouth to say something, but a tourist—you could tell by the fact that he was wearing a Seafaring Parrot sun hat—holding a bakery bag wanted Lula’s attention.

  “Excuse me, miss?” the man said, gesturing with his free hand toward the Tattoo of the Day. “Is that a Seafaring Parrot, by chance?”

  “It’s an artist’s rendering of what a Seafarer might look like,” Lula said, “since no one really knows what a—” but then there was a commotion and she didn’t finish her sentence.

  ELEVEN

  THE LITTLE DOG snuck down the alley to where it opened onto the bright sidewalk. The noise of the street beyond, which had been muffled by the narrowness of the alley and the buildings that rose on either side, was much louder here. Cars puttered by in the wake of a double-decker bus. Passersby meandered along, their ch
atter indistinct.

  Now he was at the very end of the alleyway.

  He hunched against the taller brick building and nosed his head out, the better to see. He slanted his eyes to the right. A woman was standing in front of a board of some kind with a piece of chalk in her hand. She was drawing a picture of a strange bird carrying a strange something through the air.

  The dog slanted his eyes to the left. There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and—

  —ohhhhh—

  —the most delicious smell he had ever smelled came wafting into his poking-out nose. Butter and cinnamon and sugar and everything that was good in the world. He closed his eyes, the better to smell the heavenly smell. Closer and closer and closer it came, until he opened his eyes and saw a hand holding a white waxed paper bag. The hand and the bag were only a few feet away from the dog’s nose. The heavenly smell was coming from the bag. The person holding the bag had stopped to talk with the woman holding the chalk.

  Look at the heavenly bag, just dangling there, right there in front of him. Right at the level of his jaws.

  The dog slunk forward just an inch. Then just another inch.

  Could he?

  Should he?

  Would he?

  TWELVE

  “GOOD HEAVENS!” SHOUTED the tattoo-inquiring tourist in the Seafaring Parrot sun hat. “I’ve been robbed of my elephant ears!”

  “Robbed?” said Lula.

  “Elephant ears?” said Pablo.

  “Didn’t you see? Just now! A thief just snatched my bakery bag!”

  “Thief?” said Lula and Pablo together.

  The robbery had happened so fast that none of them, not even the tourist, was exactly sure what had just taken place.

  “One minute I was standing here talking to you, holding my bag of elephant ears,” the tourist said, “and the next thing I knew, the bag had been ripped from my hand.”

  He turned in a circle, peering up and down the street. “It just disappeared,” he said. “Right out of my hand.”

  He looked sadly at Pablo and Lula and Pierre, who had come out of the bakery at the sound of the commotion.

  “I’ve been hearing about Pierre’s famous elephant ears for years,” he said.

  “They are famous,” agreed Pierre. “Justly so, I might add. I trained in Paris, you know.”

  “Pierre,” said Lula, with a significant look, nodding toward the bakery. “Do you have any elephant ears left?”

  “Mais oui!” said Pierre. “Allow me to supply you, sir, with another bag of elephant ears. On the house,” he added, after another look from Lula. “We do not tolerate thievery in our town.”

  When the tourist had been resupplied with elephant ears and sent on his way, Lula and Pablo and Pierre looked at one another. A thief? In Isla? It was practically unheard of.

  “Well, let’s hope that’s the end of that,” said Lula.

  “Indeed,” said Pierre. “A rash of unsolved crimes would not be good publicity for Isla.”

  Pablo didn’t know what to think. It had all happened in an instant: Lula talking about the tattoo with the man in the sun hat, the white bag dangling from his hand, everything ordinary and unremarkable, and then WHOOSH, there had been a blur and a yell and WHOOSH, the bag was gone and no one knew where it went. Very strange.

  Pablo and Birdy hurried to the store. Emmanuel had already opened up for the day, just in time for the first wave of double-decker bus passengers. Pablo took up his station at the cash register and began ringing up the T-shirts, the souvenir mugs and maps and pens and hats and Pablo’s Painted Parrots. Over the years, Emmanuel too had suggested that Pablo might want to expand his repertoire of Pablo’s Painted Parrots.

  “Tourists love the Seafarer,” he said. “You might—”

  “No,” said Pablo.

  “But a man’s got to make a living, right?”

  “No.”

  The tourists would have to make do with Pablo’s renderings of Sugar Baby, Peaches, and Mr. Chuckles. And Rhody the rooster, of course. Sometimes, if there weren’t too many customers, Pablo set up his painting table and sunshade on the sidewalk and went to work. The repetitive strokes of the tiny brush on the shells were soothing. Tourists occasionally stopped to watch him, but he didn’t mind because they kept their distance. What he did mind was when the Committee stopped by and took turns fluttering up to the level of the table, as if to critique his work.

  “Hmm.” That was Mr. Chuckles’s usual comment, even though Pablo privately thought that his paintings of Mr. Chuckles were extremely flattering. He made Mr. Chuckles look quite noble, in fact. Certainly better than the bird on the Seafaring Parrot banner.

  WELCOME TO ISLA, HOME OF THE LEGENDARY SEAFARING PARROT! read the caption. The strange-looking parrot-ish bird on the banner was really starting to bother Pablo. He wasn’t alone.

  “What is that thing?” Lula had said when the banner was first hung up.

  “I believe it’s what you would call an artist’s rendering,” said Pierre. “The free market at work.”

  “It’s called capitalism,” said Emmanuel.

  “It’s called ugly,” said Pablo.

  And it was. They all agreed. There was something about the eyes on the banner bird. They were too burning. And one wing was raised in a military sort of salute. But the tourists didn’t mind. They were eager for any scrap of information about the mythical bird, which led to lots of questions, none of which could really be answered, because no one had ever seen an actual Seafarer in real life. Question after question, not all of which were about birds.

  “Little boy, can you tell me where the famous elephant-ear bakery is?”

  “Little boy, can you tell me where’s the nearest restroom?”

  “Little boy, is there some place around here that sells”—Band-Aids, soda, parrot T-shirts, coconut candy, sun hats, beach umbrellas—you name it, the tourists wanted it. They tumbled off the double-decker bus and they tumbled in and out of shops and they took up the whole sidewalk.

  Some of the tourists wanted to take photos of Birdy perched on Pablo’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, no photos allowed.”

  “But why not?”

  Because Birdy is not a tourist act, Pablo would think, but he never said anything. He just shook his head politely and went back to his work. Some of them even tried to pet Birdy. Pet her! As if she were a dog or a kitten instead of a bird. Birds weren’t made to be petted, at least by strangers, but the tourists didn’t seem to know that.

  “Oh, can I pet your bird?”

  “I’m sorry, she doesn’t like to be petted.”

  “What kind of bird is she?”

  “She’s a parrot.”

  “Is she a Seafaring Parrot?”

  “Well, no one really knows what a Seafaring Parrot actually looks like.”

  Or if they even exist, Pablo would add, but only in his head. Everyone wanted to believe in the existence of the Seafaring Parrot.

  Of all the people who wanted to believe in the Seafaring Parrot, the one who most wanted to believe was Elmira Toledo. She was a frequent presence on the tiny television that Pierre kept in the bakery next to his dough-mixing counter. He claimed that the television was there to keep track of the weather, but more than once Pablo had come upon Pierre watching cartoons, with the television turned low so that only he could hear it, while he mixed and kneaded dough.

  Next morning Elmira was front and center on the screen.

  “Today we bring you the first of an in-depth series,” she began, looking into the camera over the tops of her purple glasses, “on a subject near and dear to many hearts. Namely, the Seafaring Parrot.”

  Reporters were not uncommon in town. They all hoped to get the scoop on any and all Seafaring Parrot news, but Elmira outshone the others. She had been sniffing out Seafaring Parrot stories ever since the winds of change last blew, at the time of Pablo’s arrival. Out at sea, fishermen had reported a parrotlike bird riding the waves on a piece
of debris.

  Years ago, Elmira had set up something she called the Toledo Tip Line, on which anyone who thought they’d seen a Seafarer could leave a message. She personally followed up with each caller. Most she termed “attention seekers,” whose descriptions of the bird so perfectly matched the encyclopedia speculation of what a Seafaring Parrot looked like that they were immediately discredited.

  Once in a while, though, there was a report that made her pause, narrow her eyes, and take a second or third look.

  There had been several such reports the day before Pablo’s arrival, sightings that were, in the words of Elmira, “more credible than most.” She summarized the sightings every year, and this year was no exception.

  “Oh, here we go again,” said Lula, who harbored an intense dislike of Elmira.

  “It’s that time of year,” said Pierre. “The return of the Toledo.”

  “Summary my foot,” Lula muttered. “That’s just a fancy way of saying ‘I don’t have anything new to report, so I’m just going to roll out the same old thing again.’ ”

  On the television, Elmira, her trademark trench coat blowing in the breeze, was standing on the shore of a beach. It wasn’t their beach, but she didn’t bother to mention that.

  “Nearly ten years ago there were several reports, by fishermen, of a Seafaring Parrot just off the beach of Isla,” she said, gesturing with her non-microphone arm, “reports that were, in my opinion, credible enough to warrant yearly follow-up.”

  The camera panned upward for a panoramic shot of the blue sky, a few wispy clouds and seagulls in sight.

  “Several calls to the Toledo Tip Line all reported the same thing,” Elmira continued, “which was the strange sight of a lone Seafarer riding the waves on a piece of floating debris, which might have been a piece of driftwood, a raft, or, in the words of the last caller, ‘some kind of boogie board.’ ”

  Photos scrolled by on the screen: shots of a piece of driftwood, a whitewater raft complete with paddles, and a beach supplies store with boogie boards in the front window.