Pete needed seeds. Not the cheap, pre-packaged kind from the pet store. Those had shells and bits the birds would toss to the ground, searching for the good stuff. Then Mrs. Schmidt would know he had gone outside. He was the only birdwatcher of 84 Glenwood Road, as far as he could tell. Though he couldn’t know for sure, it was only his first day.
“You get your turn for laundry on Tuesday. The other days are reserved—for the other guests,” Mrs. Schmidt said, smoothing out a crease on the flowered duvet.
Pete was half-listening, as he had half-listened to all his instructions as she showed him the house, and then, his bedroom. He wondered why she chose that word, guests. Passersby may have assumed the converted three-story Victorian was a bed and breakfast, but he knew, just as Mrs. Schmidt knew, that she was the custodian of a privately-run halfway house. The kind families of certain means could afford for their wayward sons. Pete’s half-listening grounded to a halt. Small inky bodies, darting from branch to branch, consumed his attention. Mrs. Schmidt said something about changing the sheets. His head was on the other side of the glass panes. There, an azure top, sooty throat and belly, unmistakable white and black bars running along its wing and tail.
“Blue jays,” he said to himself, though making the mistake of saying it out loud.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s an empty birdfeeder there,” Pete said, pointing to the naked plastic tube hanging on a wire between two pine.
Mrs. Schmidt stood behind him but kept her distance. “You know anyone who has passed on?”
“What?” Pete turned, faster than he meant to. He had made strict rules for himself. He had practiced the steady pose of good manners. He had watched people smile, watched them listen as strangers spewed inane weather commentary. He intended to mimic these actions, reactions. The irises of Mrs. Schmidt’s eyes said it wasn’t going well.
“They—people—say that birds are the souls of loved ones who have passed on.”
Not exactly, he thought.
“I didn’t know that,” he said. Then he smiled, felt the muscles under his eyes contract. His cheeks rose like water balloons.
***
For the next week, Pete stayed by the corner window, watching. If he filled that bird feeder—he didn’t allow himself to think any farther than that. He was also the only guest who wasn’t yet allowed to leave between the hours of ten to four.
Peanuts, sunflower kernels, suet—not the processed junk—that’s what he wanted. The hard, white, fat that surrounds lamb kidneys. Whole, it can be confused with a brain. Pulled apart, the tendrils stretch like other animal muscle, sinews straining to keep their shape. Finely grated and mixed into his seed—along with an overturned garbage can top filled with rainwater—and he’d attract the chickadees, the jays, the starlings.
Bernard, from his former life (God, the things he’d have to say about his current living conditions) liked to remark that when you’re listening to birdsong, you’re hearing the same trills, warbles, and calls from thousands of years ago. Like time travel. Pete didn’t think that way. He liked edging close to their unsubstantial bodies. Their hearts beating so rapidly (three hundred, four hundred, five hundred beats per minute) that their whole bodies quivered. He imagined them in his hands.
Which meant he needed seeds and suet. The only local place that sold mutton, the only place Pete could reach by foot was Edge of the Woods Market. A mostly vegetarian farm-to-market food co-op, said the borrowed phone Ralph hid under his bedroom rug. It hadn’t cost Pete much to borrow it. Ralph wasn’t his type, but a different brand of aftershave wouldn’t hurt.
Edge of the Woods (conjuring different memories for Pete, the ones he pictured while waiting for Ralph to finish, the same ones he pictured when he watched the birds dart from branch to branch) specialized in locally sourced fruit, vegetables, and dairy products, and had a rotating list of farmers specializing in animal husbandry. Pete wondered who came up with that phrase. Husbands weren’t the only ones who could raise a small thing, thrusting its slouching body to the slaughter shed. Pete wondered if they captured the blood, finding another use for the vermillion spilling from interior highways.
Henry Farm-raised cows and lamb, said the internet as Ralph teetered on the edge of his bed, using his sheet to clean himself. Pete was fine, thanks. Henry Farm came to Edge of the Woods every Thursday. Today was Thursday. The same day Mrs. Schmidt took her mother to get her hair done, leaving only Mr. Schmidt at 84 Glenwood Road to watch their guests. Her word, not Pete’s, not even Mr. Schmidt’s. He had different choice words for the other men sharing his roof. You would have thought he would have been more careful. Before Pete slipped out the back door, he slipped a forgotten screwdriver into his jeans, left on the floor in the basement laundry when Mr. Schmidt loosened the dryer vents to clean out their silver coils of lint. When Mr. Schmidt stepped away, Pete grabbed it. He had learned, better to be prepared. The world was a scary place.
Can’t trust anybody these days.
No, Pete corrected himself. Any body. Two words. Shivering in his back pocket, the screwdriver agreed.
***
Pete resisted the urge to walk with his hands buried in his pockets. Less suspicious to sashay your arms with your brisk pace. He found the butcher first parked outside the food market. Stained red apron like his sister’s maxi pad for a uniform.
The butcher gave him advice along with his change.
“You going inside?”
“Yes.”
“Some strange people in there. Be quick if I were you.”
“Yes sir,” Pete smiled.
***
Five minutes into his study of Edge of the Woods Food Co-op and Pete had concluded the assistant manager didn’t have nearly as many responsibilities and privileges as the actual manager, but he was a lot better looking.
The assistant-manager ambled from aisle to aisle, chatting up shoppers and minimum wage-employees restocking the shelves alike. Sharing a smile over unpasteurized goat cheese. Pointing out a bruised pear-like an executioner, the vegetable woman’s head falling to her chest. Pete followed his route, keeping his distance, feigning interest in vegan butter along the way, until the assistant manager stopped in bread. There, a redhead, curls down her back, straightened mangled rows of gluten-free English muffins. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She caught the assistant manager’s eye, then followed him to a hidden nook behind dairy. Pete squatted, pretending to read the label of raw virgin coconut oil. He caught the assistant manager’s hand brush her tank top, cupping her whole loose breast, pinching her nipple. Her eyes fluttered. The assistant manager was practiced, his face didn’t move the entire exchange, only his eyes. They separated, a flush to the girl’s cheek, and she returned to bread. The assistant manager stayed a moment longer, adjusting his belt before heading to dairy.
Too easy, Pete thought. He sighed, pushed himself up from the ground. He found the sunflower kernels in aisle two and the buckwheat in the bulk section.
There, Pete had a clear shot to the manager. He paced a kind of widow’s walk perched above the aisles along the back wall. Clipboard in hand, the manager made furious notes about the state of cabbage, the price of quinoa, the number of people who brought their own bags (or so Pete imagined). Pete studied his tightly fitting buttoned shirt. He watched his hands flit between the clipboard and his delicate glasses framing his face. He had a young face. Yes, Pete thought.
Pete caught his eye. He opened his mouth, wide, let his tongue find the corner of his lip, slowly. The manager’s eyes paused, long enough to count. Pete smiled.
He paid for the peanuts and sunflower kernels. The checkout boy, smelling of patchouli and woolen socks and rain, held his hand out in midair. Floating, waiting for Pete’s cash. The smallest discernable warble to his wrist. The green veins disappearing into his palm. Pete imagined the sinews running through his wrist, the jam-colored arteries, the slender bones.
This, Pete thought.
As he handed over his last fifteen, he brushed the boy’s open palm with his fingertips.
“Are you guys hiring?” he asked.
***
Pete sat through dinner, politely nodding when expected. Asking for his neighbor to pass the mashed potatoes with grace. These things mattered. Mrs. Schmidt, returned with red-tinted roots, stupidly expecting the world to believe this was the color nature intended her hair, noted people’s manners when they made their bed, who folded down the plastic inner bag to the Cheerios box correctly. As though these were signs of one’s readiness for the outside world.
Pete asked about her mother.
Her face shone like a swollen sausage.
Too easy, he thought.
***
That night, he propped the chair up against the door. They didn’t have locks. He would risk it. He slipped on his loose-fitting, drawstring pants. Then he opened the window. Sparrows wouldn’t fly up this high for food. Neither would a cardinal. But woodpeckers and wrens would. Pete spread out peanuts and sunflower kernels along the windowsill. Pulling apart bits of suet from the brown paper, a layer of fat coated his fingers. He slid the screwdriver out from under his mattress.
He waited, watching the trees. Small sable dots darted from branch to branch, exposing their bodies to the air. He turned off the light behind him and sat at the windowsill, his fingertips resting on the wood thick with too many coats of white. His fingers barely brushed the surface, waiting. Ambient light from the always-on backlight covered the yard in a dim glow. Some people kept backlights on as a deterrent for stalkers, robbers, worse. This had the opposite intention. Can’t leave, someone will see you. But Pete didn’t need to leave to get what he wanted.
First, a woodpecker. Quick, the second peanut from the left. Another followed his lead, taking suet in its mouth. Pete’s eyes had adjusted now. He saw the birds earlier now, knew there was a cluster in the small pine. The screwdriver sat next to him. Maybe he wouldn’t need it. One darted, fast. Pete’s fingers trembled. Its umber body darted for the suet, but Pete was faster. His palms wrapped around the terribly small body. He felt its heartbeat in his fingers, then, its whole body shaking. Slender, impossibly fragile, exposed. Like a neck. Like the boy’s wrist. He gripped the body in his hands.
This, he thought. Yes.
by 
Sara is a breast cancer survivor. She currently lives outside Columbus, Ohio with her husband, four young children and two old dogs. She is represented by Rachel Ekstrom Courage of Folio Literary Management.
Latest posts by Sara Herchenroether (see all)
- The Birdwatcher - July 8, 2021
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