He stopped at the tiny landing near the top of the staircase. There was a mullioned stained glass window in the wall, just as the stairs turned left for their final three steps. He opened it and gazed down, past the dark square beams, to the large living room below. The size of the room seemed even bigger from up here. The room looked OK. He had worked through his hangover to pick up all the remnants of the party, and now the place was almost normal. He had had to move a chair leg over a cigarette burn in the rug, but they wouldn’t figure that out until he was long gone, back in school.
He congratulated himself. He was feeling pretty good, finally, with the headache retreating to behind his eyes. Time to have one beer, and then hit the road before the parents showed up from the airport. Pulling the windows towards him he wished someone would clean the thick layer of dust off those rafters. He stopped. Was that a bird?
At first he thought it could have been some kind of a trash – a bundled up black garbage bag? – that someone had thrown up there the night before. But then it moved. It was clearly a bundle of feathers, a bundle of bird, seemingly sleeping on the rafter. Tom didn’t know much about birds but this was a big one. Much bigger than a crow. And very black and shiny.
He knew he had get it out of there. He was supposed to have just checked on the house while they were traveling: not left any windows open; or patio doors; or had a party for fifty of his friends, of course. So how would a very large bird have gotten in?
And would it shit all over the furniture if he just left it there and drove away? That’ed be the ticket, alright. They would kill him for that.
How was he going to do this? There were brooms on the back porch but to get to it he had to pass through the wide front hall which was open to the living room. Would he wake up the bird? Had the damn thing been sleeping up there the whole time he had been cleaning up after the party? Or had it hid somewhere else in the house and moved while he showered. The wrought iron railing feel cool and secure as he tiptoed down the eighteen stairs to the main level. Did the bird feel cool and secure on the rafter? You would have to hear it to think to look up for it. It could stay up there for a long time before it was noticed.
But he heard no sound as he tiptoed to the back porch. Was the bird still asleep?
Then he remembered the pool skimmer. The handle was too long for him to get it in the back door, so he disconnected the net attachment and took the thing inside in parts. Then he reassembled it in the dining room, on the floor, slowly and quietly. He would lift it and walk down the two steps to the front hall, then two steps to the living room, and then swing the skimmer up and net the bird. Tom figured he could do it in five to ten seconds. He stood by the skimmer on the floor of the dim dining room and practiced in his mind. Then again.
But wait. Maybe he could get the bird to go outside.
Plan B. Tom took tiptoed around to the den, then down to the patio, and tried to open the double glass doors into the living room. They were still unlocked. He went back and got the skimmer, and quietly moved it to the patio, and slowly, oh so slowly, he pulled one door, then the other door, open to the bricked outdoor room. He looked up. He could see the bird’s eyes, watching him. It looked even bigger now that it was awake. He eased the pole into position, over the end table and lamp, around the old Steinway square piano, and raised it up with the net now just above the bird’s level. The bird was sitting quietly, watching this.
Showtime! Tom jumped forward, and brought the net down on the bird. There was a huge thud sound as the pool skimmer pole hit the rafter. Dust exploded into the air and then spread out as it flooded down into the room. But the net was empty. There was no bird. Oh wait, it had moved sideways six feet.
They stared at each other, blue bloodshot eyes and golden sparkling ones, for a full minute. Then Tom, began to move slowly under the rafter, to try again. As he lifted his pole the bird suddenly launched from its perch, spread wings that seemed to be six feet across, flew over Tom, down the living room, circled over the piano and the crystal lamp sitting on top of it, and sailed back over Tom, away from the doors to the outside, over the two steps up to the front hall, ducked left at the coat closet, and disappeared up the stairwell. He had not only not gone outside, he gone farther into the house.
This might be tricky, Tom thought. Did birds like this claw at people’s faces, he wondered?
Gathering his courage, Tom stood at the bottom of the stairwell and looked up. Then he went up a few steps. No bird. Not on the wrought iron railing; not on the chandelier.
What would a large bird-of-prey be attracted to? Maybe something in the refrigerator.
But now, aha!, there was a sound coming from the den. A little sound, like a soft scrabbling. Tom tiptoed down the hallway and peaked around the corner. There were two built-in bookcases on either side of a large picture window overlooking the pool. The shelves had stacks of books jumbled on top of them, and one of those stacks was moving a little. In the shadowed corner of the completely paneled room, it appeared as if there was a huge old dictionary shifting in and out of shape.
The room was too low to use the skimmer, so he got the broom. Pulling the door behind him so the bird could not get back out into the hall and stairwell, he looked into the bird’s eyes. Back off, bird, he thought. I have enough problems without you. Time for us to go our different ways.
The bird, seeing Tom with his broom, rose up from its crouched position, gathering its largeness. It’s head almost touched the ceiling above the bookcase, as first a book, then another, fell off and hit the floor. Tom walked to the right around the round coffee table in the middle of the room and looking into the birds fierce eyes, feeling brave in spite of his fear. He shoved the broom forward. But the bird was already hopping – hopping! – over him to land on the circular coffee table behind him. As he turned the bird hopped again, this time to the leather couch. This was a very weird bird. Since when do birds hop around rooms?
It moved from the couch to the red leather chair, and then to the stool beside the antique spinning wheel, with Tom right behind. Tom had grabbed the afghan and was planning to throw it over the bird to capture it.
Then the bird stopped. It was standing on the floor in front of a section of paneled wall, just looking at Tom. This is one dumb bird, said Tom, as he lifted the afghan to throw it. Just then the bird rose up, flew across the room, and then flew back to the same section of wall and hit it head on. It fell the floor, with a muffled thump, a little bit of blood coming out of its beak.
Tom stood and waited to see if the bird would move in a minute. As he stood there he saw the crack in the paneling. It took him a minute to realized that it was a door that had been unlatched by the impact. The bird still lay there motionless. Tom lay the afghan down beside it, and carefully rolled the heavy body over onto it. As he did this the bird whimpered, and then the paneled door swung open. As the bird began to stir on the floor beside him, Tom could see that there were stairs leading down into the darkness from the open low paneled door. He had grown up in this house, and had never known about this door. Who did know?
Just then, far away in the bowels of the old house, he heard the garage door opener activate. The parents were home.
He pushed the paneled door closed. Closed it was completely hidden. You would never suspect it was there.
He reached down to pick up the bird, but it wasn’t there. He looked over at the bookcase, but it wasn’t there, either. Then all around the room. No bird anywhere.
Tom picked up the afghan, and ran into the kitchen and quickly shoved the skimmer out the through the back door. He ran to the living room to shut the doors to the patio.
When his father walked out the back door Tom was standing on the patio, holding a hose, watering a potted planter. A dutiful son.
There were a few sparrows in the hedge, a hummingbird hovering over the quince, a woodpecker on the neighbor’s fence, and a murder of crows in the treetops down the street. But there was no sign of a very large, very black, bird.
