House of Wings (10 page)

“Yeah,” his grandfather said without looking around, “they got longer legs than ducks.”

Sammy got the fishing pole free and hurried to catch up with the geese and his grandfather. “They don’t even waddle much.”

His grandfather said, “My grandmother—she came to this country when she was a girl—she told me once that she used to have to walk the geese to market. That was her job. And she said they used to make the geese walk through sticky tar first and then walk through sand because that would coat their feet and protect them like shoes. I don’t reckon people do that any more. They just drive the geese to market in trucks.”

“Still, they’re nice walkers. They
could
walk to market if they had to.”

“Sometimes I’ll be walking two miles toward Gatsburg where some apple trees are and I’ll hear a rustling and the geese will come filing out of the weeds. Or up at the Hunter place where I get nuts—I’ll look up and they’ll be strolling down the road. It surprises you where those geese go.”

They got to the creek, and the geese slipped down the bank and noiselessly moved into the water. At once they began turning upside down, reaching into the grass that grew on the bottom of the creek. When they lifted their heads they clacked their bills, sifting what they had found.

Sammy’s grandfather set the crane down in the water, and Sammy stood on the bank, holding the fishing pole in one hand. The crane remained motionless. He was a pitiful sight. Sammy’s grandfather had bound up his crippled wing the night before. It was now held in place with strips of old brown cloth, and his feathers were rumpled and wind-blown. He looked, Sammy thought, like a package that had been poorly wrapped and had come loose in the mail.

The crane continued to stand in the water. The current moved so slowly that the water seemed to be still, but the grass was bent in the bottom of the creek and the geese were beginning to drift a little downstream.

Suddenly the crane took two steps forward in the water, picking his way stiffly on his long thin legs. It was the first time he had walked since his capture, and Sammy held his breath.

The geese were a flurry of activity. They had found something under the water and they were diving, digging with their bills, splashing. But it was the crane, just taking a few steps in the water, that held Sammy’s attention.

The crane hesitated. He cocked his head to one side. Then he put his bill into the water and drank. He lifted his head and swallowed. He took another stiff step and drank again.

“Yonder’s a frog,” his grandfather said. “See it, over there by the other bank, floating on the water? Get over there and catch it.”

Sammy started wading across the creek. The grass curled around his feet, and in the middle of the stream the water began to get deep. “Hey, my clothes are going to get wet.”

“They’ll dry.”

“How deep is this water anyway?”

“Swim if you want to.”

“No, I’ll just keep wading,” Sammy said. He had never learned to swim. He could manage to stay on top of the water by slapping his arms and pumping his feet so hard the water was almost whipped into the air. But he could only keep this up for about a minute, and then he got so tired he sank. When anyone asked him if he could swim he gave them a disgusted look and said, “Naturally.” Now he added, “I don’t want to swim because I’m afraid I’ll frighten the frog away.”

“Well, just wade over quietly then.”

In the center of the stream the water was up to Sammy’s waist. He felt a fish dart in front of his feet and he said, “There’s something down there.”

“Keep your eye on the frog.”

“I am, but there’s something down there.” He kept trudging through the water. Green dragonflies darted around him. He could see the frog floating on the water by a rock, its front feet touching the edge of the rock. Sammy came forward slowly, silently. Then he reached down in one swoop, grabbed the frog, and lifted him in the air. “Got him!” he cried.

“Now give it to the crane.”

Slowly Sammy waded back across the stream to where the crane was standing in the water. He hesitated. “How do I do this?”

“Hold it up to his bill. Wiggle it by one foot. Let him know what you’ve got.”

Sammy dangled the frog in front of the crane. “I don’t think he wants it.”

“He don’t know about it yet,” his grandfather said.
“Make
him want it.”

Sammy dipped the frog down into the water and held it up again, touching the crane’s beak. He waited. He said again, “I don’t think he wants it.”

“Don’t give up.”

“Does it look like I’m giving up?” Sammy said. He looked back at the crane. He said, “I’ll stand here all day if I have to.”

W
HEN SAMMY WAS A
little boy, there were times when the world slowed down, times when the world moved so slowly Sammy wanted to fall to his knees and press his ear to the earth like it was a giant watch and see if it was still ticking. Then there were times when the world moved so fast he felt he could be spun off into space. Now, as he dangled the frog in front of the crane, the world seemed to have stopped.

He did not look at his grandfather, but he knew that the world had stopped for him too. His grandfather was balanced halfway down the bank, one foot set awkwardly in front of the other.

Sammy dipped the frog into the water again and held it up dripping wet. The crane did not notice. Sammy put it down into the water and splashed it about.

Then suddenly the crane jerked his head forward. He peered down into the water. Sammy swished the frog back and forth. The crane hesitated, his head cocked to the side. He moved his head closer to the water. Then he dipped his long beak down into the water and took the frog from Sammy’s fingers.

With a click the world started up again. “He took it!” Sammy cried.

The crane threshed the frog around in the water with his beak. Then he tossed the frog back into his bill and swallowed.

“He ate it whole,” Sammy said.

Sammy’s grandfather stumbled down the bank and caught himself just at the edge of the water by grabbing a small tree. He lowered himself to the bank and sat. His old boots with the sides cut out were dug into the sand. He smoothed his mustache with his fingers, his eyes on the crane. Sammy waded over and sat down beside him.

The crane moved farther out into the stream. He dropped into the water and immersed himself. Only his head and neck were above the water, and then he rose and shook himself. He went in the water again. He paddled for a moment, swimming like the geese. Then he moved to the opposite shore and began dipping his bill into the bank.

“He’s after something,” Sammy’s grandfather said.

Feeling with his beak, the crane probed the bank and began working a root out of the damp soil. “There’ll be insects around the bottom of them roots,” Sammy’s grandfather said. “I reckon that’s what he’s after.”

The crane probed and dug, worked out the root, ate the grubs that came with it, and then ate the root itself. He dug several inches, exposed another root, and ate it. Then he began drilling with his beak into the muddy creek bottom.

“He’s going to make it,” Sammy said. It was the first time he had said this and really believed it. He looked at his grandfather for confirmation.

He waited while his grandfather took off his hat, scratched his head, and put the hat back on. “He’ll make it,” his grandfather said.

Sammy let all the air go out of his body, and when the new air came in, he felt very good. He said, “I’ll try to find him another frog.” He got up and began wading up the creek. “You catch some fish for him and I’ll be in charge of the frogs.”

As Sammy walked through the water, he suddenly thought about his parents. They were probably in Detroit now. He looked back at the crane, who was pulling roots out of the bank again. Then he looked at his grandfather. The shade from the trees made a lacy pattern on his dusty clothes.

Sammy waded out in the deeper water and stood for a minute. He looked down at his wet clothes, and he suddenly had a pleasant thought. He thought that when he went to Detroit to join his parents, all his clothes would still be in the suitcase, folded and clean, just the way they were now. He would wear this same outfit all summer and clean it in the creek. It would be a nice surprise for his mother.

He glanced down the creek to where the geese were resting in the green shadows of a low tree. He looked back at his grandfather, who was doing something to his fishing pole. He said, “You want to see me swim, Papa?”

His grandfather set his fishing pole down and looked at him. “Go ahead, boy.”

Sammy stood in the water. He kept looking at his grandfather. He blinked and shaded his eyes with one hand so he could see his grandfather a little clearer.

Suddenly Sammy wanted his grandfather to know him the way he knew his birds. He wanted his grandfather to be able to pick him out of a thousand boys the way he could pick out the blackbird, the owl, the wild ducks. He wanted his grandfather to include him in his losses one day. He wanted his grandfather to say, “The blackbird’s gone out into the world. The owl’s gone. The crane flew off one day. The wild ducks are gone.” Then he wanted his grandfather to add in the same sad voice, “Sammy’s gone too.”

Sammy kept looking at his grandfather in a funny way. He didn’t know how it was possible to hate a person in the middle of one morning, and then to find in the middle of the next morning that you loved this same person.

His grandfather said, “Go ahead, boy, I’m looking.

Sammy cleared his throat. He said, “My name’s Sammy.”

His grandfather nodded. “Sammy,” he said. “Go ahead, Sammy, let’s see you swim.”

Sammy remained without moving for a moment. He was intense. He breathed deeply. He stretched out his arms. He took another deep breath. Then he pushed himself off, and in a blaze of water he began to slap his arms, to struggle with his feet.

Startled by the confusion in the water, the geese rose and moved back in the shadows. The crane made a quick movement with his free wing. He lifted his head, took two steps, and hesitated.

Sammy came up and wiped the water out of his eyes. “How was that?”

“Fine,” his grandfather said kindly. “That was fine, Sammy.”

“I can’t do it very well now, but I’ll get better. Right now I’m going to find another frog.” He moved back to the bank. He felt good and clean at last. He smoothed his red hair down on his head. “I’ll get better. Don’t you worry about that.”

Up ahead he saw a frog on the bank. He cried, “I see one!” Then he waded quickly and quietly through the water to catch it.

Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including
The Summer of the Swans
(1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for
The Night Swimmers
(1980) and an Edgar Award for
Wanted . . . Mud Blossom
(1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.

Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.

After high school, Byars began studying mathematics at Furman University, but she soon switched to English and transferred to Queens College in Charlotte, where she began writing. She also met Edward Ford Byars, an engineering graduate student from Clemson University, whom she would marry after she graduated in 1950.

Between 1951 and 1956 Byars had three daughters—Laurie, Betsy, and Nan. While raising her family, Byars began submitting stories to magazines, including the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Look
. Her success in publishing warm, funny stories in national magazines led her to consider writing a book. Her son, Guy, was born in 1959, the same year she finished her first manuscript. After several rejections,
Clementine
(1962), a children’s story about a dragon made out of a sock, was published.

Following
Clementine
, Byars released a string of popular children’s and young adult titles including
The Summer of the Swans
, which earned her the Newbery Medal. She continued to build on her early success through the following decades with award-winning titles such as
The Eighteenth Emergency
(1973),
The Night Swimmers
, the popular Bingo Brown series, and the Blossom Family series. Many of Byars’s stories describe children and young adults with quirky families who are trying to find their own way in the world. Others address problems young people have with school, bullies, romance, or the loss of close family members. Byars has also collaborated with daughters Betsy and Laurie on children’s titles such as
My Dog, My Hero
(2000).

Aside from writing, Byars continues to live adventurously. Her husband, Ed, has been a pilot since his student days, and Byars obtained her own pilot’s license in 1983. The couple lives on an airstrip in Seneca, South Carolina. Their home is built over a hangar and the two pilots can taxi out and take off almost from their front yard.