Pablo and Birdy Page 5

  “She’s tenacious,” said Pierre. “I’ll give her that.”

  “She’s a pit bull,” said Lula.

  The yearly summary was tiresome enough, but what was more tiresome was Elmira herself, in the flesh, showing up with her camera crew year after year right around Pablo’s non-birthday. That was a dreaded event.

  “There were even rumors that an actual specimen might have landed on the shores of Isla,” Elmira said. “But despite multiple credible sightings, the legend remains just that: a legend. Mystery wrapped in riddle, bound up in longing. And now, speaking of mystery, let me turn things over to our weatherman, Darren Mandible, who has exciting news.”

  Darren Mandible had strong feelings about the weather, especially when it came to southernmost regions like Isla. He was fixated on wind, especially the winds of change. If there was a remote possibility that the winds of Isla would shift to straight onshore or offshore, Darren Mandible went into high gear. He usually wore a white suit and kept his gray hair in a long, skinny ponytail, and when things got exciting, he had a habit of dipping and bending and spinning around his television weather map. Pablo was pretty sure that it wasn’t the weather Pierre liked to keep track of so much as Darren Mandible and his dramatic delivery.

  “This is Darren Mandible with a special weather report for our southernmost region. Oh my, viewers, what do we have here now?” Darren dipped onto one knee to point at Isla on the map. “A tropical storm coalescing within striking range of our favorite parrot town?” Here he swooped up, his long ponytail flapping. “Could this possibly be a harbinger of the winds . . . of . . . change?”

  Lula and Pierre and Pablo and Emmanuel were all silent. The winds of change hadn’t been seen in Isla for nearly ten years.

  “Isla residents, keep your eyes peeled,” Darren ended. “Because we all know what the winds of change portend, do we not?”

  They did. Pierre clicked the television off.

  No one said anything for a minute. The winds of change portended only two things. One was the possibility of a Seafaring Parrot landing in their town. The other was the possibility of a Seafaring Parrot leaving their town. Both possibilities filled Pablo with wonder, along with relief that Birdy wasn’t a Seafarer. But the old fisherman’s saying ran through Pablo’s mind, and he was pretty sure it was running through everyone else’s mind too. The winds of change mean fortune lost or fortune gained.

  THIRTEEN

  “HAS THE PASTRY thief been found?” said Emmanuel.

  Pablo shook his head. It had been two days, but the robbery of the elephant ears remained an unsolved case. The bike cops had ridden up and down all the neighboring streets, asking questions and searching for an abandoned bakery bag. But no one had seen anything, and there were so many bakery bags crumpled up in the trash cans that the bike cops gave up trying to find evidence. There hadn’t been a recurrence of the crime, though, so maybe the thief was long gone.

  Pablo could hear the first of the buses grumbling its way toward their block. He bent over the display of Pablo’s Painted Parrots, rearranging them. Yesterday someone had bought a Rhody shell and asked what the special characteristics of a Chicken Parrot were, and whether the Chicken Parrot bore any resemblance to a Seafaring Parrot. Pablo didn’t feel like going through that again, so he was putting all the Rhody shells in the back, where they would be less visible.

  Emmanuel sorted through the ones and fives and tens and twenties in the cash drawer. He printed WE NEED ONES! THANKS! on a piece of scrap paper and taped it to the register. Then he put both hands on the counter and studied them, as if there were something on his mind, and looked up at Pablo.

  “Listen, Pablo. I’ve been thinking about something.”

  Oh no,thought Pablo. Here it comes. What did he want to do for his birthday? Double digits. Et cetera.

  “You’re coming up on double digits now,” said Emmanuel, and Pablo braced himself. “And there’s something I want to talk to you about”—but then there was a disturbance in the ranks of the Committee. Mr. Chuckles was trying to horn in on a piece of coconut given to Peaches by a tourist. This wasn’t going over well with Peaches.

  “Hey! Watch what you’re saying!”

  “HAHAHAHAHA!”

  “Shoo,” said Emmanuel. “All of you. Go look for trouble somewhere else.” They reluctantly groused their way out the door, and off down the sidewalk they went. Emmanuel took a breath and looked down at his hands again, but Pablo dreaded a birthday question, so he interrupted with the first thing that came into his head.

  “What do you think of Lula’s chalkboard?”

  Lula had come up with a whole new idea that she referred to as a public art project. This consisted of an enormous chalkboard set up outside Lula Tattoo, empty but for one large chalked question—

  If you could bring back

  any voice in the world,

  which one would YOU bring back?

  —along with an assortment of colored chalk, so passersby could write in their answers. The tourists had taken to the public art project right away. From Pablo’s spot at the cash register, or outside at his painting table by the T-shirt racks, he could watch as they stopped at the big chalkboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and thought for a minute before writing down a name. Most of them were alike.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Harriet Tubman

  Jesus Christ

  Amelia Earhart

  Abraham Lincoln

  Martin Luther King Jr.

  The Prophet Muhammad

  Susan B. Anthony

  Sacagawea

  All these were famous people, important people. Pablo supposed that it would be interesting to hear their voices, what they had sounded like, what they had to say. Maybe listen to some of the famous speeches or quotes.

  “The one-question chalkboard?” Emmanuel said. “It’s popular. I’ll give it that.”

  He looked at Pablo and cleared his throat, as if he had something important to say. But Pablo kept his eyes on the painted shells and his hands busy organizing them.

  “But what about you, Emmanuel? If you could bring back any voice, which one would you bring back?”

  “Well. That would take some thought, I guess. There’s a lot to choose from.”

  A wave of tourists came flooding into the store just then—the double-decker bus’s first load of the day—and Emmanuel turned to greet them. Phew. Pablo had managed to avert another birthday question, at least for a while. But Lula’s chalkboard had made him think. If he, Pablo, could pick just one person’s voice to bring back, he wouldn’t choose anyone famous. He wouldn’t choose anyone from the depths of history. He wouldn’t even choose anyone whose name he knew.

  “You know who I would write down on that board?” Pablo whispered into Birdy’s ear while Emmanuel was busy greeting the customers.

  She pushed her beak into his neck, which meant Tell me.

  “It’s a secret. You can’t tell anyone.”

  Which was a crazy thing to say to a bird who had never told anyone anything, but it was part of his routine. She pushed harder. Tell me.

  “My mother,” he whispered. “Even though I don’t know my mother’s name. Even though I don’t know if I even had a mother.”

  This time she pushed so hard that it almost hurt. As if she was trying to tell him that everyone had a mother. Everyone. Even babies who floated in all by themselves on the tide, with only a bird to watch over them.

  FOURTEEN

  THE DOG EDGED along the backs of the buildings until he was again close to the end of the alley. The light grew steadily brighter as he approached the sidewalk and the street beyond. The shadows of humans preceded the humans themselves, and so did the sound of their voices.

  “Can we get some ice cream?”

  “Can I have a T-shirt?”

  “I need to go pee!”

  “Wait wait, I left my camera back at the restaurant!”

  “Did you see that bird? Is that a parrot?”

&nbs
p; “Mom! Dad! Is that a Seafaring Parrot?”

  On and on they went, the voices, the shadows, the people themselves. They all walked right past the narrow opening to the alley, as if they didn’t see it. The dog huddled as close as possible to the last building. It was made of brick and it felt cool against his matted fur. Another shadow was coming, a strange-looking one. The little dog hadn’t seen one quite like it before. It looked to be a human shadow, maybe a child because it was short, but there was something unusual about one of the shadow’s arms—it stuck up and out in a weird way. Kind of like his own once-broken tail.

  Curious, the dog sidled forward, forward, forward—

  —Oh! He backed up just in time, because the curious shadow turned out to be a bird and a boy. The bird was perched on the boy’s arm, and they walked right past the opening to the alley. The boy didn’t see the dog, huddled and small against the cool brick.

  But the bird was another matter entirely. She turned, and her eyes found the young dog’s eyes. He pressed himself as skinny as he could against the brick, but there was no hiding from that bird.

  She looked right at him and his head filled up with noise.

  Staticky noise: voices, laughter, shrieks.

  Wind and rain and groans of something not human, something that sounded like wood being torn apart.

  All this the young dog heard in the span of a few seconds, as the bird on the boy’s arm passed him by. He had never experienced anything like it. All that noise, unfamiliar and unsettling.

  The growling in his stomach, though, that was familiar. A moment later the dog slunk forward until he was just inches from the bright light of the sidewalk and the street beyond. So many, many food smells. And among them the same smell from the other day, of butter and sugar and cinnamon. Oh, that smell. The strange bird was forgotten in an instant in favor of food. Food. Food. The little dog drooled long ropes of saliva. His stomach rumbled and moaned.

  Should he?

  Could he?

  Would he?

  FIFTEEN

  NEXT DAY WAS SUNDAY, and the Committee lagged behind Mr. Chuckles, who was in top form, with all the churchgoers to critique. He even attempted to pass judgment on Pablo and Birdy, who were on their way back from the beach with a basketful of new shells for Pablo to paint. Mr. Chuckles leaned out of the box elder tree by the church, looked them up and down, and opened his beak in a HAHAHAHAHA-like manner. But Birdy raised her wing in warning, and Mr. Chuckles must have thought better of whatever he was about to say, because he turned back to the churchgoers.

  “Hmm.”

  “Nice threads!”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm.”

  It was a morning heavy on hmms. No one had gotten a Mr. Chuckles HAHAHAHAHA, at least not yet anyway, but Pablo had the distinct feeling that the judge needed to be stopped before things got out of hand.

  “Come on, Mr. Chuckles,” he said. “Come on, Committee. The Sunday show is over. Back to work now.”

  “Simmer down, simmer down,” squawked Peaches, as if she were agreeing. Or maybe disagreeing. It wasn’t always easy to tell.

  Back to work they went, Birdy clinging to Pablo’s arm, swaying back and forth as they walked. Rhody was distracted by an ear of corn by a garbage can. He would peck at it, look up to see the Committee far ahead, hurry to catch up with them, then remember the ear of corn and head back to it. It was slow going.

  They were nearly at Pierre’s, all of them, when Mr. Chuckles stopped at the entrance to the alley halfway down the block. He stood there as if he were looking for something.

  “Come on, Mr. Chuckles,” said Pablo, “don’t stop now. We’ve come so far.”

  But Mr. Chuckles was fixated on whatever was in the alleyway. He extended his head and took a cautious hop forward, and then—

  —a wild-eyed dog darted out of the alleyway, leaped right over Mr. Chuckles, and headed straight toward the rest of them. He increased his speed as he got closer, a lopsided brush of a tail pluming out behind him, and then skidded to a halt in front of Pierre’s Goodies before charging straight on in, straight behind the counter, and then—before Pierre could even get to his feet—straight out again he came, his mouth full of elephant ears. Pablo managed to count two, no, three, no, four, wait, FIVE, elephant ears in the dog’s jaws before he veered right, hurdled over Peaches, who was too shocked to squawk, and then zoomed away down the sidewalk.

  Pierre was outside now.

  “Halt, thief!” he yelled. “Bring back those pastries! GET THAT DOG!”

  The dog was almost at the end of the block now, bits of elephant ear flying behind him, and Pierre took off after him.

  “I never saw that man run so fast,” said Lula, who had come sprinting out of her store mid-tattoo, cone of henna clutched in her hand, a half-tattooed tourist trailing behind her.

  Pablo didn’t think he’d ever seen Pierre run at all. Birdy leaped to Pablo’s shoulder and dug her talons in deep. All four of them stared as Pierre rounded the corner at the end of the block, still shouting after the dog, with Peaches joining in.

  “Halt, thief! Halt, I say!”

  “Simmer down now! Simmer down!”

  The ruckus attracted a small crowd, including the double-decker bus, which ground to a halt next to the bakery. Tourists in sun hats peered from the open windows. Birdy, Pablo, Lula, and the Committee watched as Pierre came trudging back around the corner, his chef hat in his hand. No dog in sight.

  “Well,” said Lula, “at least we know who the pastry thief is.”

  “Who,” said Pierre, panting with exertion. “We know who, but not where. The thief has disappeared.”

  He plopped his chef hat onto his head.

  “Pierre will find that thief,” he said. “And Pierre will make him pay!”

  “Where in the world did that dog come from?” said Lula.

  “Out of there, I think,” said Pablo, and he pointed to the alleyway. “He jumped right over Mr. Chuckles and Peaches.”

  Mr. Chuckles appeared stunned by what had happened, but not for long. He gathered his wits about him and opened his beak.

  “HAHAHAHAHA! NICE THREADS! HMM! HAHAHAHAHA! NICE THREADS! HMM! HAHAHAHAHA! HMM! HMM! HMM!”

  There was a manic gleam in his eye, as if all the words he knew were jumbling up in his head after the fright. It took a head butt from Peaches to make him stop. They were all a little stunned at the speed of the robbery. Dogs were common in Isla, but they were usually well-fed, well-loved lazy dogs on leashes. This was a stealth dog. A dog that looked as if it were starving. A dog that was no doubt somewhere nearby right now, even if none of them knew where, wolfing down Pierre’s elephant ears. Poor little guy, thought Pablo.

  “Maybe he belongs to one of the tourists,” said Lula.

  “Maybe he got lost off a fishing boat,” said the flower lady.

  “Maybe he escaped from prison,” said Pierre. “That would explain a few things.”

  SIXTEEN

  THE DOG GALLOPED along so fast, down the sidewalk and around the block, that he almost missed the alley entrance. At the last minute he caught sight of its dark opening and flung himself into it. Halfway down the alley, just outside the back door to the Parrot Café, he slowed and then stopped. His sides were heaving and he still had a mouthful of half-chewed elephant ear. He swallowed it down, licked his chops, then bent and licked the top of his right paw, where some of the sugary crumbs were caught.

  Now that was a meal.

  His belly, for the first time in weeks, wasn’t hurting from hunger. Oh, he was still hungry. Make no mistake about that. But the immediate ache, the pains of starvation that had stabbed through him the last few days, were at bay.

  He could still see the surprise in the eyes of the first bird, the one he’d leaped over on his way out of the alley, and the shock in the eyes of the second bird, the one he’d leaped over on his way down the sidewalk.

  There had been a chicken, too, somewhere in the mix. Chickens were tasty. He knew
this from a chicken bone he had once found in an overturned garbage can. Not as tasty as elephant ears, but not bad. Not bad at all.

  The strange bird had been there too, perched on the boy’s arm, the bird who had looked straight at him when he was hiding in the alley. The bird whose outside was silent and whose inside was full of voices and shrieks and laughter and whispers and songs and screams. The silent bird was so full of noise. So, much, noise.

  The dog lay down in the dust and concrete, against the cool brick wall of the building that housed the café. He could smell the kitchen from here. Through the closed steel door, the smells of cooking came wafting. Oh, those glorious smells.

  Tortilla soup.

  Chicken mole.

  Quesadillas.

  Voices came faintly through the locked door too, voices of the chef and the sous-chef and the line cooks and the bussers and servers and dishwasher. Talking, laughing, teasing one another. The voices sounded as if they belonged to busy, happy people. People who liked one another. People who worked together, cooked together, ate together, belonged together. More smells now.

  Flan.

  Guacamole.

  And more quesadillas, cheese quesadillas with onion and cilantro and cheese, glorious cheese melting over the crisped edges of corn tortillas, glorious corn tortillas with queso fresco and pico de gallo. Oh, those cheese quesadillas.

  The elephant ears were already a distant memory. How the dog wanted one of those quesadillas. Or two. Three, maybe. Possibly six or seven.

  SEVENTEEN

  IN THE EARLY mornings, as they sat in the bakery with their coffee and pastries, Emmanuel and Lula and Pierre had long argued over whose theories about Pablo and Birdy’s arrival were more likely to be correct.

  “Here’s my theory,” said Pierre, balancing an elephant ear on the tip of his index finger. It was the day after the robbery. “There is the map of the world, the one that we all know. Picture it in your minds.” He sketched the outline of the continents in the air with his non-elephant-ear hand. “There is North America, South America. There is Europe—see, right here is France, la belle France—there is the African continent, there is the Asian continent. There is Australia, there is the South Pole, there is the North Pole, there are all the little islands in all the large seas. This is the map of the world as we know it.”