Эд Макбейн - Last Summer

“You are going to fly,” he said.

“Yes, missie,” David said.

“Up there, ” Sandy said, and pointed. The gull actually followed her finger; it almost seemed he understood. But when she threw him into the air again, he merely braked and came back down to earth.

We all walked over to him. He looked up at us.

“He’s a goddamn stupid idiot,” Sandy said.

We stood around him in a circle. I think he was a little frightened. Then — I don’t know who it was — one of us suddenly realized we were being watched, and we all turned together to look at the dune behind us. A girl with dark hair was silently standing there. From a distance, she seemed to be about eighteen years old. She was wearing a bottle-green, one-piece bathing suit. She had full breasts and a chunky figure. Her head was tilted to one side as she squinted into the sun. One hand was on her hip, the other rested on the opposite thigh.

“What are you doing to that bird?” she called.

“None of your business,” Sandy called back.

The girl gave a brief nod, and then started down the dune, her heels digging in as she slid toward the beach. She walked toward us purposefully, without any sense of urgency, a steady short-legged stride, her head bent, nodding all the while, as though she had decided to take some sort of action and was now priming herself to perform it. She stopped about three feet from where we were standing, put both hands on her hips, looked up at us, and said, “You’d better leave that bird alone.”

“He happens to be my bird,” Sandy said.

“That doesn’t give you the license to treat him cruelly,” the girl said.

Sandy looked at me, and I looked at David, and then the three of us looked at the girl. She was still facing the sun, her eyes squinted, her nose wrinkled, her mouth lopsided, her entire face screwed up in defense against its glare. She was very white, almost as white as the Pine Street lawyer. She had bands on her upper teeth, and they glinted in the sunshine now as she curled her lip in what I suppose she thought was a fierce manner. Up close, she looked about sixteen or so. She had freckles across her nose and on her cheeks. They seemed strangely out of place on a girl with such dark hair.

“Well?” she said.

“Go lose yourself,” David said.

“Not until you take that collar off the bird,” the girl said. She folded her arms across her chest. We all looked at each other again. Sandy sighed. I put one finger in my ear. David started nodding his head, short little nods.

“Are you going to leave that bird alone,” the girl said, “or do I have to report this to the police?”

“You go report it to the police,” I said.

“Yeah, you go do that.”

“You go suck your mother’s tit,” Sandy said, and the girl’s eyes opened wide for just an instant. Blinded by the sun’s sudden assault, she turned her head aside and then backed a few paces away from us.

“Go on,” Sandy said, “get out of here.”

“It’s a free country,” the girl answered.

“This is a private beach,” Sandy said.

“It is not. None of this beach is private, it’s all dedicated to the public.”

“Go to hell,” Sandy said. To us, she said, “Let’s get back to the bird.”

“Over my dead body,’” the girl said.

Sandy gave her a penetrating look, and she backed off another few paces. The contrast between the two of them was really startling. This was almost the end of July, and Sandy was deeply tanned by then, her hair much blonder than it had been at the beginning of the summer, her blue eyes more vivid, a tiny dazzling tent-like wedge of white showing where her upper lip curled away from her teeth. There was about her a look of lean suppleness, a fluid, long-legged nonchalance in the way she stood or moved. The other girl, standing behind Sandy and perhaps six feet away from her, looked like a distorted funhouse mirror image, reflecting back in negative. Where Sandy was blond, the other girl was dark. Where Sandy’s hair was long and loose, hers was cut close to her head, settling about her ears and the back of her neck like a cast-iron kettle. Her eyes, visible now that she was standing with her back to the sun and had opened them wide, were a deep brown, almost as dark as her hair. She gave the impression of being many years older than Sandy, of being in fact almost middle-aged, with large maiden-aunt breasts, and a clipped no-nonsense voice. I think we all felt a little strange around her. Not because she objected to what we were trying to teach the bird, but only because she seemed like a goddamn grownup.

She stood in spread-legged chunkiness now, her arms folded across her chest, as Sandy picked up the bird again and flung him into the air. She watched as the bird opened his wings, braked, and came down to the sand again. She made no comment until Sandy had tried the same thing unsuccessfully three times in a row. Then she said, “What is it you’re trying to do?”

Sandy didn’t answer.

“What’s she trying to do?” she asked David.

“Train him,” David said briefly.

“To do what?”

“To fly.”

“Doesn’t he know how to fly?”

“Of course he knows how to fly,” Sandy snapped.

“It’s just that he’s forgotten how to fly,” I said.

“A bird cannot forget how to fly,” the girl said. “It’s instinctive.”

“What are you, an ornithologist?” David said.

“No, but I have a canary.”

“This bird has been walking for a long time, you see,” I said.

“That makes no difference.”

“He also happens to be a very dumb bird,” I said.

“He’s very bright, ” Sandy said.

“Yes, he’s very bright,” I said, “but he’s forgotten how to fly.”

“Perhaps he prefers walking,” the girl said.

“Who asked you?” Sandy said.

“I’m merely offering an opinion.”

“We don’t need opinions,” Sandy said.

“Yeah, why don’t you get lost?” David said.

“Big shot,” the girl said, and pulled a face.

“No one prefers walking to flying,” I said.

“How’d he learn to walk, anyway?”

“We taught him.”

“Perhaps you’ve crushed his spirit,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps he’s lost all emotional kinship.”

“What?”

“With gulls. Perhaps he doesn’t know he’s a bird anymore.”

“That’s idiotic,” Sandy said.

“Look at him squatting in the sand there,” the girl said. “He probably thinks he’s a crab.”

“He knows exactly what he is,” Sandy said. “He’s a bird.” She turned away from the girl in dismissal. Walking to the gull, she crouched beside him again and said, “You’re a bird.”

“Yes, missie,” David piped.

“And birds fly.”

“Yes, missie.”

“And you are going to fly.”

“Yes, missie.”

“Now fly! ” she shouted, and threw him into the air.

He flew.

He soared up into the sky almost exultantly. The nylon line began to play out, uncoiling as the bird went higher and higher and finally wrenching up tight against the piece of driftwood.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we yank him down,” Sandy said.

“Don’t you dare!” the girl shouted. “You’ll break his neck.”

“We’ll play him in gently,” Sandy said, “like a kite,” and she began easing the bird down, pulling in the line hand over hand, forcing him lower and lower until at last he spread his wings wide and flapped them in the now familiar braking motion, and dropped again to the sand.

“Good bird,” Sandy said, and patted him on the head. “Give him some garbage, somebody.”