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81
He could not think of a more peaceful way to come awake than the way he did every morning. By the sound of the black birds calling to each other and rustling in the thatched roof over head. Those shiny blue-black birds with the long orange beaks making that terrible “Caw!” to the other far away on another thatched roof who returns in a short while with a far away “caw” of his own. And then another beyond that, until the whole oasis come to life.
There is no need even to change ones bed clothes to make the short walk to the bar where the boy has already prepared a pot of coffee. You can smell the coffee from the bed, as you always do. It is another warm day already and the morning breeze is rustling the overhang too of the thatched roof a few more times they sway in the breeze before the sweltering day arrives and you have a difficult time remembering or rather believing how perfect was the morning.
He finds himself standing at the sink and removes the pitcher from beneath the cabinet that has been keeping the water cool on the clay floor. His sand-colored uniform is pressed and hanging beside the sink. The birds are still rustling over head and he fills the sink and then his hands splashing his face to come awake and recall the assignments for the day.
But Sam is not awake yet. He is still in the bed in Leo’s house. It still seem like Leo’s house to Sam so he never could call it anything else. Just like everyone still called the one bar in town “the Rat” when it had changed owners and names a number of times over the years, according to Leo. The new owner didn’t like the name Rat, but everyone else did and kept calling it that maybe even just to spite him.
Sam lay in bed wondering why he dream about a place he never been. Some time over the winter he had moved into Leo’s room. It was just temporary while he finally was able to make some time for permanent repairs to the roof above the room he had stayed since he arrived at the farm. The damage from the rain extend from the roof down to the window of his room. Most of what is left is the interior work.
The dream too seem to belong to some one else. As if it weren’t even him in the dream. He lay there and then roll over. The sun is up but low as it is only February. Leo’s pipe is on the bed table on a dish as it always is. It is bright outside the window for this time of year but over the tree line the sky has the color of snow coming. Wind presses against this side of the house creaking and the black birds are rustling in the thatched roof over head.
Sam hears that the far away birds are not cawing. And that the dreams are confused and one replacing sleep with awake there must be a bird trapped by the roof repairs. So he put on his robe and climb the stairs to Mary’s room. The door that separate the two rooms, Mary’s from the attic, is closed, and he can hear the bird rustling on the other side, flying back and forth and then striking the window.
Sam opens the door a small way quietly and slides himself in as not to let the bird escape into the rest of the house. That would be a lot more trouble. The bird is on the floor on his stomach breathing heavy with his wings stretched out away from his sides flat around him. The bird sees him and watches him blinking his eye on that side as Sam pass as far away as he can to get to the window to open it. Sam makes his way back to the door so he can get the bird between him and the window. See how it goes walking slowly to the bird.
Sam makes it slowly to a few feet of the bird that has not moved at all except to blink the eye on that side. The bird is laying still and scared beside an old trunk. “You must be exhausted,” Sam says to the bird, and reaches slowly to pick him up to carry him to the window, if he’ll let him. But the bird only move closer to the trunk, until Sam reach it with his hand touching the shiny blue-black the bird suddenly snap to life! And make straight to the window and is gone and is all over before Sam knows what has happened. Sam is not certain at first if the bird is out of the house laughs with his arms around his head. Then hears the “Caw!” of the bird outside and then another “caw” as it is far way by now.
The cold air feels good after all the excitement noticing he is a little warm and sits down with his back against the trunk. The bird must have found his way in when the roof was opened up. Maybe trapped in the walls and making his way up or down slowly, a little every day until he make it into the attic. No way of knowing except that he was in and needed to get out. That is as far as Sam could get with it.
Sam lean against the trunk like the bird in a way and laugh to himself that maybe the bird had been in the trunk all along. The poor thing. The bird has left that kind of impression on him. How long does a bird live. Or was there a second bird, a friend, inside the trunk cawing to him and that he could finally hear it. And the first bird could not stand it anymore and come to him to get him out of the trunk.
Sam turned around on to his knees and looked to open the lid. There was an old padlock on it. But it was not really locked as Sam found the shackle only twisted in to place and only twist it the other way to remove it from the latch. The trunk was made of thin metal and painted sand-colored and dull with stenciled lettering on the sides that were either abbreviations or serial numbers or generally too worn out to make any sense of. Sam opened the lid and rest it against the slanted roof of the attic. It was clear by the contents that this was the trunk that belonged to Leo when he was a soldier. Every thing inside was of course kept as neat as Leo kept everything else in his life. There was a sand-colored uniform jacket on the left side stack of clothing folded neatly. On the right were various items such as books and equipment and letters bundled paper cigar boxes and other various traveling items. In the lid was a net pocket with photographs and Sam flipped through those finding photographs of people with their arms around each other, shirtless and smiling. It is difficult to see their faces by the strong sun over head but you can tell they are soldiers. Sam can tell there is a very young Leo in some of them, knows it because of the other photographs in the cellar above the old desk. There can been seen some palm trees and there is a photograph with those trees surrounding a low area and some dark water behind small crude buildings open to the weather with thatched roofs. Other men are standing under them in the shade and a few women. One with a flower in her hair holds a bottle up to the camera man and has a cigarette in her mouth. There are horses and most of the men in the photographs have no shirts on them. Because they are in the desert.
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