A Mockingbird Sings at Night
By Ron Burch
Under a reddening sky, a mockingbird sings at night outside the bedroom window.
One of them had left open the back French door at their rental house; his wife blamed herself. The man had the parrot on his arm. He’d been taking the bird to the bedroom to put him under the cloth. It was the call of the mockingbird that startled him.
The parrot, Poicephalus genus, green and blue, splotches of yellow across the forehead and on the wings, like a soldier’s epaulette, slept in the covered cage, which sits at the foot of the bed, their heavy comforter a landscape of vivid flowers.
The man stands in the dark yard, his breath appearing in the cold air. His wife can see the flashlight’s circle appear and disappear in the towering tree like a light show. The moon is a faded symbol in the sky.
He calls the parrot’s name to the silence. Then again.
She stands in the doorway, a long white shift, her bare feet on the wood, a hand wrapped around the frame as if holding it up.
The porch light flickers like a lightning bug, the dull bulb faint in the back yard. The man, his hand resting on the unsteady fence, shines a failing white flashlight that he’s never had to use before, trying to figure out where the parrot is. The man knows the bird’s flown up into the oak tree in the back yard—he went up and up like a flower seed in the wind—but the man’s since lost him.
He had purchased the parrot over 22 years ago while shopping at a strip mall. After walking by a bird shop that was going out of business, the man stared at the small, fluffy parrot in the store window. The man had never owned a bird before. Never taken care of one. He brought it home that afternoon, surprising his wife.
The bird learned a few words to say. Words important to survival: rice, apple, pet. It said them in a high-pitched voice like an animated cartoon character. Once it said, I love you. The man and his wife could never get the parrot to repeat it.
Often the bird would scream for no reason. It would scream on and off all day sometimes. The man never knew why the bird was screaming; it bothered him more than it did his wife. The man thought maybe it was missing something and calling out for it. She thought it was sick and made him take it to an expensive avian vet. The bird turned out healthy, and the man returned home with it. The parrot screamed less but still occasionally. Online, the wife purchased earplugs for herself. The man read a few books about birds for an answer but never found it. Maybe screaming was just a thing that wild animals did.
In the morning, the man stares at the oak tree, searching for the green and yellow of the bird. Quiet in the house. The parrot only knew one song, three notes the bird had either made up or stolen elsewhere. Sometimes the parrot bit him, drawing blood.
The man figures there’s nothing he can do. That’s life.
Over the next few days, in the shadow of the huge oak, the man often finds himself standing at the glass French doors to the back yard. He’s lost, lethargic in the silence. Hopefully, the parrot will be happier in the tree, if it’s still there, if it’s still alive and not killed by the neighbor’s feral cats, especially the ginger one with the jagged scar across its broad head.
The bird had chosen its only destiny, to escape, that was its true future, and the only future: if given the opportunity, the bird would escape. It was a guarantee, a necessity. But did it fly away out of desire or fear from the mockingbird’s call? The man closes the drapes to the French doors and turns on the television, the volume like a slap.
Several nights later, the man hears the parrot sing from the tree. He waits to see if it’s a dream. He hears the song and shakes his wife’s arm.
They stand underneath the oak in the moonlight. They can’t see the bird hidden in the tree, but they wait to hear the call again, not taking the chance of missing it. His wife asks if it could be the mockingbird, which repeats sounds. The man doesn’t know.
Even though it’s night and he’s afraid of heights, the man slides over a shaky wicker chair and steps on it, extending for the lowest flowering branch, but, at first, misses it in the faint light. As he stretches out again, the chair moves, throwing him off-balance before his wife catches it, supporting him. He places an unsteady hand against the tree and begins climbing to find that song within its darkened branches.
Ron Burch’s fiction has been published in numerous literary journals including South Dakota Review, Fiction International and Mississippi Review, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Bliss Inc., was published by BlazeVOX Books. He lives in Los Angeles.