“I looked it up.”
I had dinner with Harry and Pearl, warned them it might be a week before they saw any results from my installation, maybe longer before it had the desired effect on the Reverend Gull’s students. “It will take work,” I warned Harry.
“I am prepared,” he replied solemnly.
Two Sundays later I went back up to Hanover to see how things were going.
I left at midmorning, had a leisurely drive. The Hudson flowed high in its banks, and the yellow-green of the hills had deepened to a glowing emerald. The air smelled sweet, early flowers and damp earth. By the time I got into town, it was after twelve. I parked up from Hershkowitz’s, sauntered down the block, checked out the tree. Everything looked good to me.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Harry greeted me as I entered the store. “Mr. Smart Person! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming, Pearl would have made breakfast.”
“I’m still full from last time. How’s business?”
“Like the garbage man, my business is picking up. Which, by the way, is not so funny. This plan of yours makes a mess.”
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”
“Don’t talk about breaking eggs! I... oh oh, look at this,” he interrupted himself.
I turned around to face the window, saw what he was seeing: across the street, two shiny, late-model cars had pulled up. From them, dressed in their dapper Sunday best, emerged the Reverend Lester Gull and six other men.
“Harry,” I said, “I think I feel the need to hear the Word.”
“Me too,” said Harry.
We left the store, stood waiting as Gull and his entourage strode toward us. I lit a cigarette and smiled at Gull. He smiled back.
“Mr. Smith, isn’t it? What brings you back to Hanover? Good day, Mr. Hershkowitz.” He turned his smile to Harry.
“I’m like a homing pigeon, reverend,” I said. “You preaching today?”
“No, no. Mr. Vogel is going to share some thoughts with us this beautiful afternoon.” He turned to one of the men beside him, a short sour-faced man in a pale gray suit. “What’s your text today, Al?”
“The Book of Job,” the man replied, squaring his shoulders in a self-important way.
“Job,” I said. “I like that. Some of my favorite verses are from Job.”
“Oh? Which might those be?” Gull asked pleasantly.
“Twelve: seven,” I said. “And 20:5 and 7. Those, reverend, particularly make me think of you.”
Gull’s face clouded. He fixed me with angry eyes; then he nodded curtly and turned his back. With a smoothly reassuring smile he said to the little man, “Whenever you’re ready, Al. I know it’s your first time; don’t be nervous. Just preach as the spirit moves you.”
Gull and his friends, Harry and I, and a few stray shoppers stood in a semicircle around the tree as the little man started his sermon.
“Must be a beginner,” I whispered to Harry, watching Vogel shift uncomfortably, start in a voice too soft, lose his thread. He glanced at Gull, who smiled. That seemed to give him courage. He set his shoulders again and warmed to the full force of his argument, which was that although the purposes of the Almighty are not always apparent, nevertheless faith is required of the faithful — Harry lifted his eyebrows at that — and that support of a preacher like himself is a tangible sign of that faith.
As a pitch I’d heard better, but that wasn’t why I was here. I was waiting for my reward from Heaven, or at least from the sky.
And it came. A few minutes into his talk Vogel, without missing a beat, brushed something from his hair. A minute later, something else. Then he waved his arm to make a point, stopped horrified as a wet white lump landed on his sleeve. He twisted his head to look up into the tree just in time to catch a sunflower seed in the eye, but that was good because it made him jump back fast enough to avoid the next big white splotch headed his way.
Someone in the crowd stifled a laugh. Everyone looked up into the tree. And the tree was full of action.
All the feeders I’d built were full, overflowing with nuts, seeds, crumbled bread. Harry had been assiduous. I’d built the feeders flat, to make it easier for the birds to toss what they didn’t want over the side. They were busy tossing, eating, digesting. In the next higher set of limbs were living: wrens, robins, sparrows, crows, and finches flitted, hopped in and out of birdhouses, landed on nesting platforms. Five pigeons sat cooing on a branch.
“I didn’t know you had pigeons up here,” I said to Harry as Vogel, out of the line of fire, frantically scraped at his sleeve with a handkerchief.
“I got everything,” Harry said proudly. “But I’m telling you, cleaning up under that tree every day is a pain in the neck. Seeds and crumbs and what do you call that stuff, guano?”
“In the Bible,” I said, in a voice meant to carry to where Gull and the others huddled in hasty conference, “they call it dung.”
Gull spun and glared at me. “You did this!” he accused. “You did this to keep us from spreading the word of the Lord!”
“No,” I said, “I did it to keep my friend Harry from going out of business. You said this was the perfect spot. I disagree. I think this spot is for the birds.”
Gull paled with anger. He turned on his heel, stomped off to his car. His flock followed. They all slammed their doors as they screeched away.
“That man is not happy,” Harry said.
“No.”
“What if he comes back? In the middle of the night, and poisons all my birds?”
“Harry, as long as you keep those feeders full, you’ll have a waiting list. If Gull poisoned all these guys at midnight, you’d have new tenants by dawn. He knows that. He won’t be back.”
The crowd that had gathered was dispersing, smiling and glancing into the tree. One man asked Harry if he was open. “I just need some wing nuts,” he said with a grin. “It’s no big deal, but as long as I’m here.”
“I better go inside,” Harry said to me. “The customers might come back, now that there’s nobody yelling at them. But you better come for dinner, or I’m in big trouble with Pearl.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Wait,” Harry said. “Those verses from Job that you told him you like. What do they say?”
“One was for me. ‘But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the birds of the air, and they shall tell thee.’ ”
“How about the ones you said made you think of him?”
“ ‘The triumphing of the wicked is short,’ ” I quoted to Harry, “ ‘and the joy of the hypocrite but for the moment. He shall perish forever like his own dung; they which have seen him shall say, where is he?’ ”
Harry grinned, and I grinned. With a wave he turned back, disappeared into Hershkowitz’s.
I stuck my hands in my pockets, ambled down the block, enjoying the sun and the breeze and the songs of the birds in the smalltown morning.
The Rolling Rock
by Geoffrey Hitchcock
We squelched through the orchard and then took the path along the riverbank. I don’t quite know why we did this, it would have been easier to get to Rina’s by road, but we did, each of us no doubt half expecting to come across Dirk’s body stuck in some willow roots or wedged behind a rock. The four of us, George and Jean, Mary and I, had been sitting in the sun on my stoep enjoying a prelunch sherry and discussing yesterday’s party, and of course last night’s storm, when the phone rang. It was Rina — had we seen Dirk this morning? She had gone home after the party, but Dirk had gone to Hansie’s for a final celebratory drink and she hadn’t seen him since. Had she phoned Hansie? Of course. He was still asleep when she phoned, but Lisa had told her that both the brothers had got very drunk, too drunk to drive, so Hansie had escorted Dirk as far as the bridge and then come home. I told her Dirk was probably sleeping it off in the pack shed on a bed of woodwool behind some bales. I said we would have our dinner and then come over to look for him. Mary had cooked a delicious-smelling dinner, and I wasn’t going to spoil it by worrying about a drunken Dirk.