Boys Life

the parrot, I thought. That way it would’ve been emerald green for-
    –sure, I thought. And suddenly I felt as if I’d just leaped off a red rock cliff.
    Something Miss Blue Glass had said when Miss Green Glass refused to feed the parrot a cracker for fear of losing her fingers.
    Three words.
    I.
    Fed.
    Yours.
    Your what? Parrot?
    Had both Glass sisters, who lived their lives in a strange agreement of mimicry and competition, each owned a parrot? Had there been a second parrot-this one emerald green and missing a feather-somewhere else in that house, as silent as the first was raucous?
    A phone call would tell me.
    I gripped the feather in my palm. My heart was pounding as I left my room, headed for the telephone. I didn’t know the number, of course; I’d have to look it up in the slim directory.
    Before I could get to the Glass number, the phone rang.
    I said, “I’ll get it!” and picked it up.
    I would remember for the rest of my life the voice that spoke.
    “Cory, this is Mrs. Callan. Let me speak to your mother, please.”
    The voice was tight and scared. Instantly I knew something was terribly wrong. “Mom!” I shouted. “Mom, it’s Mrs. Callan!”
    “Don’t wake your father!” Mom scolded when she came to the phone, but a grunt and rustle told me it was too late. “Hello, Diane. How are-” She stopped. I saw her smile break. “What?” she whispered. “Oh… my Jesus…”
    “What is it? What is it?” I asked. Dad came in, bleary-eyed.
    “Yes, we will,” Mom was saying. “Of course. Yes. As soon as we can. Oh, Diane, I’m so sorry!” When she returned the receiver to its cradle, her eyes were full of tears and her face bleached with shock. She looked at Dad, and then at me. “Davy Ray’s been shot,” she said. My hand opened, and the green feather drifted away.
    Within five minutes we were in the pickup truck, headed to the hospital in Union Town. I sat between my folks, my mind fogged with what Mom had told me. Davy Ray and his father had gone hunting today. Davy Ray had been excited about being with his dad, out in the winter-touched woods on the trail of deer. They had been coming down a hill, Mrs. Callan had said. Just an ordinary hill. But Davy Ray had stepped into a gopher hole hidden under dead leaves and fallen forward, and as he’d fallen his rifle had gotten caught up beneath him, aimed at his lungs and heart. The rifle had gone off on the impact of body and earth. Mr. Callan, not a man in the best physical shape, had picked up his son in his arms and run a mile through the woods with him back to their truck.
    Davy Ray had gone into emergency surgery, Mom said. The damage was very bad.
    The hospital was a building of red stone and glass. I thought it looked small to be such an important place. We went in through the emergency entrance, where a nurse with silver hair told us where to go. In a waiting room with stark white walls, we found Davy Ray’s parents. Mr. Callan was wearing camouflage-print hunting clothes with blood all over the front, a sight that knocked the breath out of me. He had daubed olive green greasepaint on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. It was smeared, and looked like the most horrible bruise. I guess he was in too much shock to even wash his face; what was soap and water compared to flesh and blood? He still had forest dirt crusted under his fingernails. He was frozen in the instant of disaster. Mrs. Callan and Mom hugged each other, and Mrs. Callan began to cry. Dad stood with Mr. Callan at a window. Davy Ray’s little brother Andy wasn’t there, probably dropped off at a relative’s or neighbor’s house. He was much too young to understand what a knife was doing inside Davy Ray.
    I sat down and tried to find something to read. My eyes couldn’t focus on the magazine pages. “So fast,” I heard Mr. Callan say. “It happened so fast.” Mom sat with Mrs. Callan and they held hands. A bell bonged somewhere in the hospital’s halls, and a voice over a loudspeaker called for Dr. Scofield. A man in a blue sweater looked into the waiting room, and everybody gave him their rapt attention but he said, “Any of you folks the Russells?” He went away, searching for some other suffering family.
    The minister from the Union Town Presbyterian Church, where the Callans belonged, entered and asked us all to link hands and pray. I held one of Mr. Callan’s hands; it was damp with nervous moisture. I knew the power of prayer, but I was