Boys Life

intruded. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and strained at their roots. The noise felt like jagged glass hammered into your earhole.
    “Skulls and bones! Hannah Furd! Skulls and bones! Cricket in Rinsin!”
    Miss Blue Glass stopped playing. “Katharina! Feed him a cracker!”
    “He’s goin’ crazy in here! He’s beatin’ at his cage!”
    “Skulls and bones! Draggin me packin! Skulls and bones!”
    I didn’t know if those words were what the thing was screaming, but that’s what it sounded like to me. Ben, Davy Ray, Johnny, and I looked at each other as if we’d walked into a nuthouse. “Hannah Furd! Crooaaakk! Cricket in Rinsin!”
    “A cracker!” Miss Blue Glass yelled. “Do you know what a cracker is?”
    “I’ll crack your head in a minute!”
    The screaming and screeching went on. Over this tumult, the door chimes rang again.
    “It’s that song, I’m tellin’ you!” Miss Green Glass hollered. “He goes insane every time you play it!”
    “Crooaaakk! Draggin me packin! Hannah Furd! Hannah Furd!”
    I got up and opened the front door in prelude to running out. A middle-aged man and a little girl eight or nine years old stood on the porch. I recognized the man. Mr. Eugene Osborne was the cook at the Bright Star Cafe. “We’re here for Winifred’s piano less-” he began, before the caterwauling started up again. “Skulls and bones! Crooaaakk! Cricket in Rinsin!”
    “What in the world is that racket?” Mr. Osborne asked, his hand on the little girl’s shoulder. Her blue eyes were wide and puzzled. On Mr. Osborne’s knuckles, I saw, were faded tattooed letters. A U.S. on the thumb, and on the following fingers A, R, M, and Y.
    “That’s my parrot, Mr. Osborne.” Miss Blue Glass came up and shoved me aside. She was mighty strong to be so thin. “He’s havin’ a little trouble lately.”
    Miss Green Glass emerged from the hallway, carrying a bird cage that contained the source of all that noise. It was a fairly large parrot, and it was fluttering at the bars and shaking like a tornado-spun leaf. “Skulls and bones!” it shrieked, showing a black tongue. “ Draggin me packin!”
    “You give him a cracker!” Miss Green Glass put the bird cage down on the piano bench, none too gently. “I’m not gettin’ my fingers snapped off!”
    “I fed yours all the time, and I sure risked my fingers!”
    “I’m not feedin’ that thing!”
    “Hannah Furd! Draggin me packin! Skulls and bones!” The parrot was a bright turquoise blue, not a speck of any other color on him except for the yellow of his beak. He attacked the bars, blue feathers flying.
    “Well, then get him to the bedroom!” Miss Blue Glass said. “Put the night cloth over him and settle him down!”
    “I’m a slave! I’m just a slave in my own home!” Miss Green Glass wailed, but she picked up the bird cage by its handle again and left the living room.
    “Skulls and bones!” the parrot shrieked in parting. “ Cricket in Rinsin!”
    A door closed, and the noise was thankfully muffled.
    “He has a little bitty problem,” Miss Blue Glass said to Mr. Osborne with a nervous smile. “He doesn’t seem to like one of my favorite songs. Please come in, come in! Ben, that finishes your lesson for this evenin’! Remember, now! Thinkin’ cap on! Fingers flow like the waves!”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Then he said under his breath to me, “Let’s get outta here!”
    I started out, following Davy Ray. The parrot had quieted, perhaps calmed by its night cloth. And then I heard Mr. Osborne say, “First time I ever heard a parrot curse in German.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Osborne?” Miss Blue Glass lifted her penciled-on eyebrows.
    I stopped at the door, and turned to listen. Johnny bumped into me.
    “Curse in German,” Mr. Osborne repeated. “Who taught him those words?”
    “Well, I… have no idea what you’re talkin’ about, I’m sure!”
    “I was a cook for the Big Red One in Europe. Got the chance to talk to a lot of prisoners, and believe me I know some foul words in German when I hear ’em. I just heard an earful.”
    “My… parrot said those things?” Her smile flickered off and on. “You’re mistaken, of course!”
    “Let’s go!” Johnny told me. “The carnival’s waitin’!”
    “Wasn’t just cursin’, either,” Mr. Osborne went on. “There were other German words in there, but they were all garbled up.”
    “My parrot is American,” Miss Blue Glass informed him with an upward