The Painted Bunting - A Short Story

Bob Divet sat hunched over his computer in his office, a cozy little room set off the kitchen in the old Craftsman bungalow, researching pruning shears when something gaudy caught at his peripheral vision. Nothing but the dull February garden. He rubbed his eyes as a fleeting fear nudged his reverie, and he fought the urge to look up "colorful peripheral hallucination" on one of those check-your-symptoms medical pages that could turn even the healthiest, most sensible person into a hypochondriac.

Stick to the shears, he told himself, you're getting flitty as May.

There has always been a problem with pruning shears. He'd get a new pair, always sure that they'd be perfect this time, shears to last a lifetime, but none ever fulfilled their promise. This time, he'd keep the shears to himself, sure that his disappointment in the past had been a result of his wife's unintentional sabotage. May often attempted to cut branches that far exceeded the recommended diameter. She left them out on the picnic table over night, for days sometimes. She rarely cleaned them and he suspected her of trying to cut metal with his Felco's.

She was out there now, in the kitchen, hissing wildly, yelling, yet whispering at the same time.

May appeared in the doorway, so wild eyed that he sprang from his chair. His heart jumped.

"Robert, come see! Hurry up!" Her little hand pressed at her heart and her yellow-white hair churned like a crazed halo.

"What's wrong?"

The wrong question, of course. May's face lit ten years younger with a wild glow, for a moment so beautiful, it was frightening. She whirled around and dashed off to the window, her paisley shawl flapping like wings.

Maybe she'd seen an angel out there. A dead relative, perhaps, hovering over the bird bath. Nothing would surprise him. How many times had she been on the verge of some announcement, Bob sure that it would border on insanity, like she'd met Saint Therese out by the rose bushes, a glow of idiotic rapture on her face. Something that would change everything, something crazy and unable to prove, May finally diving into the weird pool of magic that always seemed to shimmer just at the edges of things.

She grabbed his hand and dragged him to the spotting scope they kept set up in the sunny kitchen, trained on the bird feeder.

"You watch. He'll come back. You won't believe me if I tell you."

Bob sighed. "Just tell me what you think you saw."

"Why do you have to put it that way? I am not telling you so you'll just have to see for yourself."

Then he saw it. Right there on their bird feeder in Northern Baltimore County, a painted bunting in full unbelievable color. A bird of the south, rarely seen north of the Carolinas; and in winter too! Nothing in the world looked like it. Sparrow sized, its brilliant red breast, the deep blue of its head, the back a vivid green. The sun illuminated it, all the color of the yard condensed into that tiny creature. Bub sucked in a great lungful of air, not realizing that he'd been holding his breath.

"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful in your life?" May whispered.

She had asked him that question a thousand times over the last forty-two years.

"I am speechless."

They spent the rest of the day looking out the back window, rewarded with frequent glimpses of the painted bunting

The next morning, when Bob shuffled into the kitchen for his coffee, May was in the office, leaning toward the computer screen, checking information on the Painted Bunting and looking for other local sightings. When he left for work, he reminded May to keep the feeder filled and to check on the seed supply.

"Wouldn't want to disappoint our guest," he said.

He made time, that day at work, to research the painted bunting. Even Lewis Burby, his office partner who couldn't tell a song sparrow from a wren, who could not care less about birds, was impressed when Bob's screen filled with the wildly colored bird.

Bob checked for local sightings and was startled to see an entry in the Maryland Bird Report. May had recorded their sighting. For a moment, everything went silent. The low drone of the radio hushed in the next room. It worried him, this brash announcement, plastered for all the world to see. It nagged at him throughout the day, though he did not call home. But he hurried to get home early enough, just in case the painted bunting reappeared before dark.

He found May standing at the window in the yellow kitchen with a stranger who she introduced as Olive Standish, president of the Maryland Ornithological Society, a sensible, ordinary women who shook his hand as if he were somehow responsible for the presence of the painted bunting in his back yard.

They stood together, Olive Standish and May, as if in cahoots, and Olive glanced down at May with the pride of a teacher toward her prize pupil. After Olive left, Bob suggested that it might not be the best idea to bring strangers into the house. May actually agreed, but pointed out that Olive provided confirmation of their sighting. Olive had seen the bird alright, and been impressed.

"Well that makes my day," Bob said.

Instead of becoming angry, as she would have thirty years ago, May laughed.

The next day, a warm fifty-five degrees, Bob came home early again and could not find a parking spot on the usually quiet street. Tuesday seemed an odd time for a party. He squeezed into the driveway.

He decided to go in the back way, cast an eye on the bird feeder, make sure it was full. May could so easily forget, drawn into a new passing interest, the painted bunting dropped like a lead balloon.

As he rounded the house, just passed the Crape Myrtle, as beautiful bare as in full summer, he pulled up short. A small dun colored crowd stood on his patio, clumped together like a flock of huge sparrows facing west, bright eyed and expectant. They stood stock still in their L.L. Bean jackets and sensible shoes. Suddenly, they snapped to attention, raised binoculars to their eyes or leaned toward sighting scopes intent on a flash of red in the holly tree. A cardinal, beautiful and ordinary. The crowd sagged as one, at ease.

He shuffled through the little crowd, mumbling "excuse me." They all resembled one another, soft faced and tender hearted, geeky as a gaggle of Jane Hathaways and he imagined they all had faint hints of unidentifiable accents. They probably all ate complicated cereal blends for breakfast, the kind with nuts and flax seed, and whole kernels of things he'd never heard of.

And into the kitchen where May stood at the counter tossing a salad. She dropped the spoon and rushed over, patting his jacket, ready for their usual greeting kiss.

"Who are all those people out there?"

"They are all here to see our painted bunting!" she chirped.

"Do you know who they are?"

"They are birders!"

"What, they just barged into the yard? Strangers?"

"Of course not! The couple, well they were roaming around out front and they asked me if I'd seen the painted bunting and, of course, I said yes and their eyes lit up so! Well, I invited them out to the yard. Then Mrs. Ramsey, I don't know if you remember her, she was Alice's fifth grade teacher, she rang the bell."

"Oh, well, in that case..."

"Robert, what's wrong? Such a wonderful thing, we can't just hog it up ourselves. That would be selfish."

But that wasn't the end of it. Every day, Bob came home at dusk and birders waved at him as they paraded down the driveway. He was glad it rained on Saturday. On Sunday, a week after the first sighting, he decided to go out there and make his presence known. You just never knew. Burglars, come to case the joint, could masquerade as bird watchers.

By the time he got his slow moving self ready, May was out there handing out cups of tea. Next thing, after guzzling all that tea, they'd want to use the bathroom. He pictures them all in there, muddy boots on the old black and white tile, missing the toilet, splashing pee everywhere, strangers' urine on his lovely old tiles.

But she had to, she said. Didn't Bob recognise the ex-Senator who was out there with his teenaged grandson, an avid bird watcher and photographer? Why was this kid hanging around with a bunch of over-the-hill nerds when he could be whooping it up with kids his own age, shooting at monsters on TV with those little plastic thingies.

And the Senator, looking like the kid, but all melted. At least he was a Democrat.

So, Bob dragged himself out to the patio, coffee cup in hand, thinking that May ought to charge for hot drinks, maybe some egg salad sandwiches later. They could get tee shirts made or refrigerator magnets.

The Senator stuck out his hand, old habits dying hard, speaking as they all did out here in a low voice so as not to disturb the painted bunting, so low that Bob strained to hear but only picked up certain words, "lovely, lovely, lovely," and something about Bob's lovely wife. Oh, God, maybe May would have an affair with the old Senator, he thought she was so effing lovely. It was like an out of hand party where deliberately unfashionable people don't want to leave. May was the bell of the ball, that's why she encouraged this. Suddenly, at age sixty-two, May was on top of an off-beat A-list, presiding over this drab, silent party as if the painted bunting belonged to her, as she'd discovered or invented it.

A generalized shushing fell over the group as someone claimed to hear the song of the painted bunting. Bob listened for something beautiful, something that stood out from the general twitter.

"There it is!" A fat man with a tight collar and bad breath mouthed, overstuffed sausage finger raised. Bob wanted to smack the man and shout, "This is my yard!"

He can picture them, too many of them, overflowing the patio, trampling the gardens with big chunky boot prints, oblitterating the hellebores he's kept an eye on, the new little patch of plants he'd picked up at the Philadelphia Flower Show. And they weren't cheap. Just like in the news footage, great mobs of birders with a low voiced narrator, "...birders, come from hundreds of miles away for a glimpse of the painted bunting." It was a hobby for maniacs suggested to them by soft-spoken doctors because it was soothing; it taught them patience and the art of silent observation.

And so it went for days and days. The neighbors gave him dirty looks because his birders hogged up all the parking spots. One day, he came home to find a couple of women, strangers, washing dishes, commenting on the kitchen, how pretty it was, how old fashioned, it reminded one of them of her grandmother's house. They had taken off their ugly boots and left them on the braided rug that May had made by cutting up long strips of rags, long braids of rags hanging all over the kitchen last year. They walked around in their thick, dun colored socks. Maybe they were being polite but he didn't like strangers wandering his kitchen in their socks. The tall one was putting mugs away. It looked like they were rummaging around in the cupboard. They gave him a look like, "who are you?"

Bob prayed for rain. He hated rain, it made him tired and depressed, but when it rained the birders stayed away. Rain sent them to the mall shopping for end-of-season long johns and serious weather gear so they could loiter on his patio in comfort when the weather turned cold again.

And when it rained, May went out. She didn't want to leave when the birders were there, not that she didn't trust them but wanted to make them feel welcome. She could have gone out and left the Senator in charge. He could boss the ladies in their big socks and keep order. He'd been in government, and government was all about order. He'd keep them off the hellebores. But he was only there with the kid, driving the kid around on weekends, the great Senator, chairman of important committees reduced to baby sitting.

Bob had has it, sick of the whole thing, glad that May was out grocery shopping on a Saturday in that crowd. She could have gone during the week, she was a housewife, for God's sake. Maybe that we it, maybe she was bored and the painted bunting had given her a bit of something to do, made her the center of attention. Maybe all that cooking, and cleaning, and baby sitting for grandchildren, and gardening, and sewing, and needlepoint, and visiting decrepit neighbors, running errands, volunteering at the library, and pottery classes weren't enough.

Well, he'd had enough. He dug around in the office closet and found the BB gun he used to chase squirrels away from the bird feeder. The ping of the BB - maybe the damn bird would go away, somebody else's yard, back to Florida where it belonged. He sat backwards on a chair like a cowboy and raised the back window and waited.

Sure enough the little troublemaker showed up during a break in the rain. bob drew up and aimed and - POP- one shot. The painted bunting jerked, it's little wings flung out uselessly and it tumbled down into the dried weeds. Bob waited, eyes glued to to the spot below the feeder, he waited and waited (oh, Lord, what have I done).

He yanked on his yard shoes and ran out back without a jacket, sprinted over to the bird feeder in the quiet yard, all the birds fallen silent in shock and disbelief. They perched high up in the dead branches regarding him with such sudden horror - how could he have done such a thing, all those years he'd fed them, kept the water in the bird bath fresh and clean, even scrubbed it out once in awhile (well actually, May had) and he had gone and killed their little celebrity guest!

He found the painted bunting, its color already fading, a pale shadow of its former self so obviously without life. This little miracle and he had killed it! He felt sick. Bob found a shovel and quickly buried it in his vegetable garden with the fleeting thought that his tomatoes would grow ini streaked with blue and green.

Everything was put away, the BB gun shoved in the corner of the closet. He slumped at the computer as May entered and he rose to help her carry her bags, a new bag of black sunflower seeds.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

"Nothing. Tired maybe."

"Seen the pabu?" she asked, cheerfully using the silly nickname she'd picked up on the bird message board that was the abbreviation in the heading: PABU.

"Not today. Rain, I guess."

People showed up on Sunday, but the lack of sightings cut the crowd fast. They were a fickle lot. The bird message board announced the disappearance of the painted bunting and people made the obvious comments about cats.

He could not shake his guilt and after days and days, still felt sick. Bob was not the kind of person to go around murdering locally rare birds. Even as a wild young boy, he was never the type to kill anything, even starlings. He wished he was still a Catholic so he could go to confession. Maybe he could anyway; maybe t hey wouldn't mind.

May studied her changed husband with concern and solicitous suspicion and when she looked at him, Bob could read her expression as she could read his after forty-two years. "How could you," she was thinking. He could tell.