American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,97

don’t seem like much help to me right now, and I really, really don’t care to be your errand girl, Mr. Parson.”

“I have already done too much…,” he says. It’s like his stomach is paining him horribly. “I cannot tell one of you what is there. I cannot help you. I cannot”—he grunts a little, as if something in his gut has just turned over—“directly help you to know what you do not know.”

“What’s happening to you? What’s wrong?”

He looks at her pleadingly. “Please… please, stop.”

Mona goes quiet. She definitely does not like how he called her “one of you,” as if she were a foreigner. “What did they do up there, Mr. Parson?” she asks softly. “What happened on that mountain?”

Parson, panting, takes a sip of coffee and turns up his handheld radio. The Sons of the Pioneers are playing now, crooning “Blue Shadows on the Trail.” When he turns back around Mona sees his eyes are brimming with tears, though his expression is not sad or anguished in any way. He wipes the tears away, sits down, and takes another breath.

“I’ve made a gift for you,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he says. He takes out a small stack of note cards. “I have written down some of my favorite words and their definitions.” He holds them out to her, and his hands are trembling. “Please look at them. Later.”

Bewildered, Mona takes them and glances at the top card. It reads:

CAT

(noun)

A small domesticated carnivore, Felis domestica or

F. catus, bred in a number of fun, fuzzy varieties.

“The fuck?” she says.

“Please keep them somewhere safe,” he says. “They are very important to me. Allow no one to see them. And I mean no one.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“All right… I guess I’ll do that.” She puts them in her pocket.

“Thank you.” He sits back, head cocked as he listens to the radio. “Would you like to hear a story?”

“What kind of story?”

“A fairy story. A parable.”

She shrugs.

“It is about many things. It’s about family. About travel. About home. I think you’ll find it very interesting. It’s one I think about a lot, every day.” He stares at her gimlet-eyed, and for the first time Mona thinks she can see genuine terror in that gaze; it is the sort of look given by people about to march to the scaffold, not old men about to relate fairy stories in broken-down motels.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

She shrugs again.

He clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and begins to speak.

Once upon a time, in a place far, far away from here, there was a big, leafy tree with many big, strong branches. The tree reached up very high in the sky. In the morning its leaves touched the bottom of the sun, and at night they touched the bottoms of the stars. And in between the two biggest branches at the very, very top of the tree was a big, happy bird making a nest.

“Oh, how happy I shall be when I have children!” said the bird. She worked on the nest and worked on it, and when she thought it was ready she laid a single egg in its middle. It was a very large egg, and she sat on it, and sat on it, and when it finally hatched…

Out came her first baby bird.

But the mother bird was not happy with this baby bird. For though it was large—very, very large, in fact—it was not pretty, or intelligent, or graceful; it was an ugly, ungainly, cruel thing. This was because the mother bird was unused to making children, and she realized she needed practice. This was but the first sketch before the real work could begin.

“I am sorry,” said the mother bird to the baby bird, “but I cannot keep you.” And one night as the baby bird slept she kicked it out of the nest, and it tumbled down through the branches of the tree, and out of sight.

Such is nature.

But the mother bird had learned a great deal in laying this egg, so she tried again. And this time she laid not one egg, but five of them. And these baby birds were far finer and more beautiful than the first one, and each had its own talent.

The first baby bird to hatch was gifted with perception, and could see things far, far away, even things hidden to most eyes.

The second baby bird possessed great wisdom, and could spot folly and truth where others could not.

The third possessed great hope, and all who came