Tried

Jan Burke Tried

© 2014

Little birds

1871

TYLER HAWTHORNE WALKED THROUGH THE BUFFALO cemetery in the hours past midnight, his large black dog at his side. Recent reports of grave robbers made the Forest Lawn superintendent glad of his help. When he’d approached the superintendent to offer his aid, the man had believed he was meeting Dr. Tyler Hawthorne III, who was the spit and image of his father, and how the dog bred true as well!

Tyler’s first visit to Buffalo had been in the summer of 1834, as part of a group of doctors who came to the city to volunteer their services during a cholera outbreak. It was a good thing that the superintendent wasn’t around then, for seeing a man who also appeared to be identical to his own “grandfather” might be too much.

The fact that Tyler, who looked twenty-four now, had been born before the end of the previous century, and his dog untold centuries before then, would be held to be impossible by that gentleman.

Tyler was a Messenger, able to take the hand of a person at death’s door and hear thoughts they could not speak. He would then convey these last messages to the person’s loved ones, or to whomever they wished him to give the information. Each also told him where he would next be needed. And so he had returned to Buffalo. He did not age, recovered rapidly from any injury, and other than brief bouts of fever associated with his work, suffered no illness.

The autumn night was mild, a lovely night to stroll through the Forest Lawn Cemetery. This was one of the relatively new “rural cemeteries” in the United States. Although established within large cities, they provided park-like settings for burials. They were a change from the usual practice of burying the dead on one’s own family land, or in a lot next to a church, or a potter’s field. Those traditional burying grounds were thought of as places to be avoided and often became neglected.

The first cemetery created as a pastoral ideal was Père-Lachaise, established near Paris in 1804, when Tyler was still fully mortal, although he had not visited it until after Waterloo, when he had changed. Tyler had taken Shade there in 1820.

Shade, a cemetery dog, had a special concern for the resting places of the dead and the care of graves. He needed to roam among burial grounds on a regular basis. Tyler and the dog had been together more than half a century now, and while Tyler didn’t fully understand all the complexities of Shade’s needs and powers, he could tell that this new form of cemetery met with the dog’s approval.

Père-Lachaise had been immediately popular-and imitated. This new form of cemetery had started appearing in the United States in the early 1830s. Buffalo had started this one about twenty years ago, the result of need. In 1849, another cholera epidemic had cost 877 lives here in the city, and although all the dead were interred, it placed a strain on the city’s resources for burial grounds. Two years later, a visionary citizen, attorney Charles E. Clarke, had bought eighty acres of farmland from Erastus Granger and designated it as a cemetery.

Clarke soon bought more land for Forest Lawn and began to make the improvements that created this beautiful park for the dead, a place where the living could come to remember and reflect-or enjoy it as place to ride or stroll, as many did. Unlike the previous practice of only arranging for a burial place at the time of death, lots were purchased in advance. The distinguished gentlemen of the all-volunteer Forest Lawn Cemetery Association ensured that funds collected were used solely for the care and protection of the grounds and enriched no individual.

At this hour, although two other attendants roamed another part of the cemetery, Tyler and Shade were alone in this section of the hilly grounds. Suddenly Shade stiffened. His ears pitched forward and his hackles rose. He gave a low, soft growl.

Tyler came to a halt. Shade protected him, but the dog seldom growled at living beings.

In the next moment, the air was filled with what he at first took to be bats, then saw were small birds, of a type Tyler had never seen so far inland. “Mother Carey’s chickens,” he said, using the sailors’ name for them. Storm petrels. “What are they doing here?”

The birds fluttered above him, then a half dozen dropped to the ground before Shade in a small cluster. The scent of the sea rose strongly all about him, as if someone had transported him to the deck of a ship.

Shade stared hard at them as they cheeped frantically, then the dog relaxed into a sitting position.

The other petrels flew away. No sooner had they gone than the six before him were transformed into the ghostly figures of men.

They were forlorn creatures, gray-faced and looking exactly as what they must be, drowned men. Their uniforms proclaimed two as officers, the other four as sailors, all but one of the British navy.

Shade’s demeanor told him that these ghosts-unlike some others-would be no threat to him.

“May I be of help to you?” Tyler asked.

“Captain Hawthorne?” the senior officer asked.

“I believe the rank belongs more rightly to you,” Tyler said. “I was a captain in the British army many years ago, but I sold out after Waterloo.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said, “I understand. If I may introduce myself to you, I am Captain Redding, formerly of the Royal Navy. Lost at sea in about your-your original time, sir.”

They exchanged bows.

“You are a Messenger?” Captain Redding asked.

“Yes.”

“We are all men who drowned at sea. Many of those in the flock you called ‘Mother Carey’s chickens’ are indeed just that. We come from many nations, taken by that sea witch Mother Carey, yet death has made us all birds of a feather. Little birds tell other little birds news of those such as yourself, and speak of Shade as well.”

The dog gave a slight wag of his tail in acknowledgment.

The captain went on. “The midshipman we bring to you is an American. Hails from here in Buffalo. We approach you on his behalf.” He turned to the man. “Step forward, Midshipman Bailey, and tell the captain your story, for we’ve not much time left.”

“Aye, sir.” The midshipman gave Tyler a small bow. “Thank you, sir. If you would be so kind to visit my sister, who lies dying not far from here. In the asylum, sir. The good one. We’ve all of us in her family done her a grave injustice.” He looked down at his feet. “Many injustices.”

“When were you lost at sea?” Tyler asked gently.

“Eight years ago, sir, in ’63. In the War Between the States. Would have done more for my country if Zeb Nador hadn’t pushed me overboard in a storm.”

“Do you ask me to seek justice for you?”

“Not necessary for me, Nador’s in the county jail here and will face trial for murdering someone else. He’ll hang as well for that one as for what he did to me.”

Tyler was about to try to say something to comfort him, unsure what that might be, when one of the other men whispered, “Hurry!”

Midshipman Bailey nodded, then said, “Will you go to her, sir? Her name is Susannah. She needs you tonight. And if you’d tell her Andrew sent you to her, and that she was always the best of his sisters, and that he sees things clearer now, and hopes to one day rest at her side-”

“Hurry!” the captain ordered.

“Well, sir, I’d take it as a great kindness.”

“I would be honored to do so, Midshipman Bailey.”

“Thank you!” he said, and had no sooner whispered these words than all six men again transformed into small birds and rose from the ground. They circled in the air above him, where they were joined again by the larger flock. He had thought they would begin their long journey back to the sea, but they surprised him by surrounding him and the dog.

Quite clearly, he heard hundreds of voices whisper to him at once, “Storm’s coming!”