Robins (F)

"What you doing?”

I look over my shoulder at the neighbor boy standing up close to the chain link fence that separates our backyards. He’s wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I’m in jeans and a heavy sweater. He’s holding a Wiffle bat, I’m cradling a mug of coffee.

“Thinking.” I know what comes next.

“What you thinking about?”

“The robins this morning in the yard. Maybe forty or fifty.”

Tap, tap, tap—the bat applied to the top of the fence. Tap, tap, tap.

“They coming back?”

“I don’t know. Will be pretty cold the rest of the week.”

Tap, tap, tap.

“Hawk,” I say and point out over the field beyond our fence. He shields his eyes.

“Did you see it?”

“I can’t see. Where is it?”

“It’s gone into the trees.”

“Is it coming back?”

“Maybe.”

Now he’s plunking the ground with the end of the bat. I swallow some more coffee. The sunlight is nearly white and the sky a washed out blue this morning.

“Did you count them?”

“The robins? Tried to, but probably didn’t get them all.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Yep. Funny for this time of year.”

“I saw a dead squirrel in the road by school yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”  Now the bat is on the ground and his fingers are entwined in the fence. His head is cocked toward a shoulder.

“When do we have cucumbers?”

“Not until summer. With the tomatoes.”

“Can I cut some flowers?” He always takes them to his mother.

“Nothing blooming right now, Bud.”

“There’s the hawk again.”

He tips his head back and squints.

“Watch. It’s coming this way.” Sure enough the bird flies right over his head. A Cooper’s hawk.

“See it?”

“Yeah.” Tap, tap, tap.

“You like birds.”

“Yep, I like watching them.”

“Where do they go when they die?”

“You mean where do they die?”

He nods.

“They can die on the ground, they can die while they’re in the air.”

“What if they fell on you?”

“Might hurt. Might hurt a lot, I guess.” I think of a pelican or much worse somehow, a buzzard.

“Do they go to heaven?”

“Maybe.”

“I got to get some juice or something.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.” He leaves the bat and disappears around the corner of the house. I scan the sky for the hawk.

Birds in heaven? In truth, I think, my young friend, to that notion I really cannot speak.

Lyman, 2021