by Janet Jagger

Hannah kept vigil at the nursing home, watching her Dad's suffering sleep. Her most vivid memory of him, and of death, kept returning to her in those strange hours. She'd stayed beside her father as much as she could, but she hadn't been there for his dying. No one had. Her mother didn't want to see his body after death, and the rest of the family followed her wishes. But it didn't feel right to Hannah. Was there a moment of passage that she should have witnessed, could have eased? She still didn't know.

She did know that he'd died in the early morning, just as it was getting light. Strangers had moved him and changed him, and soon he was ashes and smoke. Now her mother wanted her to share a recollection of Dad at the memorial service. Hannah would have to capture something warm and comforting, certainly not the incident which had been haunting her. It grieved her that he had died alone. But she held that quietly inside, along with the memory she wouldn't share.

Forty years earlier, when Hannah was nine, the Allens and their extended family were summering as usual on Martha's Vineyard. With room to roam, siblings and cousins ran like the wild rabbits over the dunes. They lived barefoot and usually in bathing suits, tanned. "Brown as a berry" her mother always said, though Hannah couldn't think of any berry that was brown. The family beach houses were simple wooden cottages on the bluff, each with its unique musty smell. Splintery boardwalks strung the cottages together, and Hannah stood on these boards, alone, as she watched her father.

He was coming up from Grammy's garage, awkwardly holding a pigeon cage to his chest. Dad liked pigeons. They were the only pets he allowed his family to have, despite their pleadings.

"With six kids," he'd declare, "we don't need any more animals."

As a boy, he'd raised pigeons. There was a framed photograph of him as a twelve year old, grinning, in pants with suspenders and a woolen cap, holding a pigeon under each arm. These "Muff Tumblers," prized for their plumage and acrobatic flight, had won awards for him. When her two older brothers wanted to do the Animal Husbandry merit badge, Dad helped build their pigeon coop and bought the first pairs. The boys fed and banded their birds, even hosed the cage down to cool it when the sun got too hot and threatened the hatchlings. Each year Dad struggled to fit the pigeon cage into the U-Haul trailer that came across on the ferry with the family station wagon. But now Hannah's brothers were teenagers with summer jobs. Steve even had that giggly girlfriend, Penny, and they had no time or interest left for the pigeons. For a while, Dad took care of the remaining flock, in the summer coop attached to Gram's garage, until he announced he'd had enough and was letting them go. They'd all watched from the back porch as Dad opened the wire door and a dozen birds soared up out of the hot coop, south over the knoll, gone.
The problem was that five of them were homing pigeons. They kept coming home. When they roosted on the roof, Dad dismantled the coop and strung up tin pie plates to clatter them away. The garage doors were long gone, so the birds moved in, roosting on the cross beams. Grammy complained about the pigeon droppings on her shiny car, so the kids were instructed to take turns shooing them away. That was mostly futile, lasting only until the night Grammy left her car window down, and two birds ended up in the Pontiac.

"Dan," Gram told Hannah's father, "you've got to do something about those darned birds."

Then their neighbors down the beach, the MacDowells, called to say that the pigeons were clustered on their chimney. At the dinner table, Steve suggested poisoning the flock. Her other brother, Billy, said that Dad could borrow Uncle Dick's shotgun and shoot them. Hannah cast a stricken look around the table, then welled up with tears.

"Oh, for the love of Pete," Dad shouted in exasperation, "no one is going to shoot or poison anything. And you, quit crying." He glared at Hannah.

That night he hammered up a small cage where the old coop had been, and left it open to gather the birds. It was the next day that Hannah, up from the beach in a wet bathing suit, overheard her parents. Her mother was hanging clothes on the line.

"I think I have to," Dad said.

"Oh Dan," she sighed, "I suppose so, but I don't want to know about it. For
goodness sake, just get it over with."

Quietly, Hannah nestled down beside the deck, warm and hidden next to the outdoor
shower, peering through the goldenrod to watch her handsome Dad. She had always been a little afraid of him. For a few minutes he just sat on a stool outside the cellar door. This was strange, because she couldn't remember ever seeing him just sit, without doing something, even if it were just smoking his pipe. Resting there, Hannah heard the surf breaking and hissing at high tide, felt its muffled thumping. The air smelled of salt, and Sea & Ski. Finally, her Dad stood up and went into the cellar. He emerged with something in his arms, a small log sticking out, and headed down back. Hannah left the warmth of the foundation, and came to stand, shivering, on the boardwalk. It was from there that she watched her father lug the small cage up from the garage. The wind whipped fine strands of sun bleached hair across her eyes.
He came up to the place where they had the garbage pit. Just a dug hole covered by a trap door where the families dumped their wet garbage, it was in the sandy center between the cottages and garage, a slight hollow. Gently, Hannah picked her way among the beach plum bushes and sharp spikes of beach grass. She came up behind her Dad just as he set down the cage. The birds burbled and cooed as always. Dad dropped the log and pressed it into the sand.

"Daddy," Hannah said timidly, and her father swung around to face her. She saw a hatchet in his hand. "Are you really going to kill them?"

"What are you doing here?" He looked upset. "Get back up to the house."

"Daddy, I want to stay with them. With you." Her thin legs trembled slightly. She never stood up to her father.

"Whatever for? You don't want to see this."

"I'm not afraid."

In fact she was afraid, and full of grief, but wanted to see it when they died. She had never seen anything die, and certainly nothing by her father's hand, except a few cold and slippery fish who eventually just stopped flapping in the white bucket. This was different. She wanted to know what it was like. She wanted to be part of a tragedy, and to feel that much sadness, though she thought those reasons must be shameful. She also wanted to be brave beside her Dad. He'd be impressed with her courage, might welcome her company doing this hard thing. Instead, he looked at her as if she were a stranger. She tried again to explain, hiding the shameful parts and grasping for reasons he'd understand.

"I don't want them to be so lonely when they die." Then, she whispered, "I'll pray for them."

After a long, questioning look, her Dad said gruffly, "Suit yourself."

He crouched and opened the garbage pit. Reaching in the cage for the first bird, it wheezed a small coo when grasped. She saw her father lay it on the log, using one hand to hold it down and stretch its head back. Its neck feathers flared in a dove gray ruff. She looked aside, so all she could see was motion at the edge of her vision. She heard the hatchet hit the log, and glimpsed two parts being dropped into the pit. This was awful, much worse than she'd imagined. Regret and panic welled up, and she urgently started the praying she'd used as an excuse. With eyes pressed closed, Hannah silently recited the only prayer she knew about death.

"And if I die before I wake . . ."

There were sounds of two more thuds, then the soft dropping down into the hole.

"I pray thee Lord my soul to take."

More thumps. She wanted to imagine the birds fluttering up to heaven. She tried to will them up. With blurry eyes she looked up, hoping they'd be flying. But the sky was empty blue, and another bird was limp. Then lightly tossed. Downy.
Bearing down on the prayer again, she heard Dad say, "That's it." He kicked the garbage cover closed. Picking up the cage and hatchet, he said "Hannah, you grab the log." So this was to be her punishment. Looking down at the bloody bark, she reached out slowly and dug it up at each end. She held it away from her body with straight arms, looking away from the stain, stumbling, trying to catch up with her father.

When they approached the cellar, Mom and Billy were there, unfurling a rug to shake out the sand. Mother and son stopped in mid-billow to stare at them.

"Dan!" Her mother sounded shocked. "You didn't have Hannah help, did you?"

Dad didn't defend her. Instead he just shot back, "She wouldn't leave. I tried shooing her away, but she said she wanted to see it."

"Good grief, Hannah, honey, that's so morbid."

Hannah felt weak as she dropped the glistening log onto the woodpile. Her mother's words seemed to echo. Good . . . Grief. . . Morbid.

Billy just jeered. "That's so gross, you freak!"

Really crying now, Hannah ran up to her room, stifling hot under the eaves. She dropped onto the bed, wanting to be swallowed up by the sandy tufts of chenille. Dust motes exploded in a sunbeam that sliced the room. No one came looking for her.

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Janet Jagger is a writer who specializes in short fiction and personal essays. She is a member of the Providence Athenaeum Writers Group, and she worked for many years as an arts administrator at the Rhode Island School of Design. She co-wrote and edited Most Admirable: The Rhode Island State House, published in 2002. She lives in Providence with her husband and two sons.l.

Copyright © 2003 Janet Jagger. All rights reserved.

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