“That’s too loose.” He hung up and so did I. More wings beat a tattoo
through the dark air, and feathers rattled leaves as another bird
settled with the growing flock in the upper branches of the laurel.
None of them had yet raised a voice. The cry of the nighthawk, as it
jinks through the air, snapping insects in its sharp beak, is a
distinctive peent-peent-peent. The nightingale sings in lengthy
performances, weaving harsh and sweet piping notes into enchanting
phrases. Even an owl, mostly taciturn lest it alarm the rodents on which
it feeds, hoots now and then to please itself or to assert its continued
citizenship in the community of owls.
The quiet of these birds was eerie and disturbing, not because I
believed they were gathering to peck me to pieces in an homage to the
Hitchcock film, but because this sounded too much like the brief but
deep stillness that often settles upon the natural world in the wake of
sudden violence. When a coyote catches a rabbit and snaps its spine or
when a fox bites into a mouse and shakes it to death, the dying cry of
the prey, even if nearly inaudible, brings a hush to the immediate area.
Though Mother Nature is beautiful, generous, and comforting, she is also
bloodthirsty. The never-ending holocaust over which she presides is one
aspect of her that isn’t photographed for wall calendars or dwelt upon
at loving length in Sierra Club publications. Every field in her domain
is a killing field, so in the immediate wake of violence, her
multitudinous children often fall silent, either because they have an
instinctive reverence for the natural law under which they existor
because they’re reminded of the old girl’s murderous personality and
hope to avoid becoming the next object of her attention.
Consequently, the mute birds worried me. I wondered if their silence was
in witness to slaughter and if the shed blood had been that of a small
boy and a dog.
Not a peep.
I left the night shade of the Indian laurel and sought a less disturbing
place, from which to make another telephone call.
Except for the birds, I continued to feel that I was unobserved, yet I
was suddenly uneasy about remaining in the open.
The feathered sentinels didn’t leave their perches to pursue me.
They didn’t even rustle the leaves around them.
I was being truthful when I said that I didn’t believe they were going
to pull a Hitchcock, but I had not ruled out the possibility altogether.
After all, in Wyvernin all of Moonlight Bay, in fact even a creature as
unintimidating as a nightingale can be more than it seems and more
dangerous than a tiger. The end of the world as we know it may lie in
the breast of a chimney swift or in the blood of the tiniest mouse.
As I continued along the street, the light of the awakened moon was so
bright that I cast a faint shadow, which walked neither ahead of nor
behind me, but remained close by my side, as though to remind me that my
four-legged brother, who usually occupied that spot, was missing.
Half the cottages and bungalows in Dead Town have only stoops.
This was one of the other half, a bungalow enhanced by a set of brick
steps leading up to a front porch.
A spider had built a web between the pilasters flanking the top of the
steps. I couldn’t see this construction in the dark, but it must not
have been the home of a giant mutant species, because the silk-thread
spokes and spirals were so fragile they dissolved around me without
resistance. Some of those fine-spun filaments clung to my face, but I
wiped them away with one hand as I crossed the porch, no more concerned
about the destruction that I had wrought than Godzilla is concerned
about the demolished skyscrapers he leaves in his wake.
Although events of recent weeks had given me a new and profound respect
for many of the animals with which we share this world, I’d never be
able to embrace pantheism. Pantheists regard all forms of life, even