knock it right out.”
“T.B. or not T.B. That is congestion, Carson,” he said, laughing through yellow teeth. Carson guessed he might be fifty-five or sixty.
Carson smiled. “You’re pretty sharp today.”
“Finest collection of video theater this side of hell. Watched Lawrence Olivier last night until 3:00 or 4:00.” The manager consulted his clipboard. “No new Pharmaceuticals in a couple months, and I haven’t seen antibiotics in over a year. I could have my assistant keep an eye open for you, but he hasn’t come in for a week. Lookin’ sickly his last day, you know?” The manager rubbed his fingers on his chest. “Could be that I’ve lost him. Have you tried a tablespoon of honey in a shot glass of bourbon? Works for me every time.”
A car pulled into the huge, empty parking lot behind Carson’s truck, but whoever was inside didn’t get out. Carson nodded in the car’s direction. Evidently they wanted to wait for Carson to finish his business.
He handed the manager the list. “Can you also give me cornmeal and sugar? A mix of canned vegetables would be nice too.”
“That I’ve got.” The manager hopped on a forklift. “Tomorrow may creep in a petty pace, but I shouldn’t be a minute.”
When he returned with the goods he said, “The quality of mercy is not strained here. I’m not doing anything this afternoon. I’ll dig some for you. Few months back I heard a pharmacy in an Albertson’s burned down. Looters overlooked it. Might be something there. I’ve got your address.” He waved the requisition list. “I could bring it by your house.”
Carson loaded boxes of canned soup and vegetables into the truck. “What about the warehouse?”
The manager shrugged. “Guess we’re on an honor system now. Only a dozen or so customers a day. Maybe a couple hundred total. I’ll bet there aren’t 50,000 people alive in the whole country. I’ll leave the doors open.” For a moment the manager stared into the distance, as if he’d lost his thought. Behind them, the waiting car rumbled. “You know how they say that if you put a jellybean in a jar every time you make love the first year that you’re married, and you take one out every time you make love after that, that the jar will never be empty? This warehouse is a little like that.”
When Carson started the truck, the manager leaned into the window, resting his arms on the car door. This close, Carson could see how greasy the man’s hair was, and it smelled like old lard.
The manager’s smile was gone. “How long have you known me?” he said, looking Carson straight in the eye. His voice was suddenly so serious.
Carson tried not to shrink away. He thought back. “I don’t know. Sixteen months?”
The manager grimaced. “That makes you my oldest friend. There isn’t anyone alive that I’ve known longer.”
For a second, Carson was afraid the man would begin crying. Instead, he straightened, his hands still on the door.
Tentatively, Carson said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever asked what your name was.”
“Nope, nope, no need,” the manager barked, smiling again. “A rose by any other moniker, as they say. I’ll see what I can find you in the coughing line. Don’t know about antibiotics. Come back tomorrow.”
It wasn’t until Carson had driven blocks away toward the river, as he watched the boarded-up stores slide by, as he moved down the empty streets, past the mute houses that he realized, other than Tillie, the manager was his oldest friend too.
Sitting on his camp chair, Carson had a panoramic river view. On the horizon to the west, the mountains rose steeply, only a remnant of last winter’s snow clinging to the tops of the tallest peaks. Fifty yards away at the bottom of a short bluff, the river itself, at its lowest level of the season, rolled sluggishly. Long gravel tongues protruded into the water where little long-legged birds searched for insects between the rocks. A bald eagle swept low over the water going south. Carson marked it in his notebook.
Across the river stood clumps of elm and willows. He didn’t need his binoculars to see the branches were heavy with roosting starlings. Counting individuals was impossible. He’d have to estimate. He wondered what the distribution manager would make of the birds. After all, they had something in common. If it weren’t for Shakespeare, the starlings wouldn’t be here at all. In the early 1890’s, a club of New York Anglophiles thought it would be comforting if all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays lived in America. They tried nightingales and chaffinches and various thrushes, but none succeeded like the 100 European starlings they released in Central Park. By the last count there were over two hundred million of them. He’d read an article in one of his bird books that called them “avian cockroaches.”
He set up his camera on a tripod and scanned the trees with the telephoto. Not only were there starlings, but also red winged blackbirds, an aggressive, native species. They could hold their own against invaders.
Carson clicked a few shots. He could edit the photos out of the camera’s memory later if he needed the space. A group of starlings lifted from some of the trees. Maybe something disturbed them? He looked for a deer or raccoon on the ground below, but couldn’t see anything. The birds swirled upwards before sweeping down river. He thought about invaders, like infection, spreading across the country. Carp were invaders. So were zebra mussels that hitchhiked in ships’ ballast water and became a scourge, attaching themselves to the inside of pipes used to draw water into power plants.
It wasn’t just animals either. Crabgrass, dandelions, kudzu, knotweed, tamarisk, leafy spurge, and norway maple, pushing native species to extinction.
Infection. Extinction. And extinct meant you’d never come back. No hope.
Empty houses. Empty shopping malls. Empty theaters. Contrail-free skies. Static on the radio. Traffic-free highways. The creak of wind-pushed swing sets in dusty playgrounds. He pictured Tillie’s video, the endless runners pouring across the bridge.
Carson shook his head. He’d never get the count done if he daydreamed. Last year he spotted 131 species in the fall count. Maybe this year he’d find more. Maybe he’d see something rare, like a yellow-billed loon or a fulvous whistling duck.
Methodically, he moved his focus from tree to tree. Mostly starlings, their beaks resting on their breasts. Five hundred in one tree. A thousand in the next. He held the binoculars in his left hand while writing the numbers with his right. Later he’d fill out a complete report for the Colorado Field Ornithologists. A stack of reports sat on his desk at home, undeliverable.
He couldn’t hear the birds from here, but their chirping calls would be overwhelming if he could walk beneath them.
A feathered blur whipped through his field of vision. Carson looked over the top of his binoculars. Two birds skimmed the treetops, heading upriver. He stood, breath coming quick. Narrow wings. Right size. He found them in the binoculars. Were they the same kind of bird he’d seen yesterday? What luck! But they flew too fast and they were going away. He’d never be able to identify them from this distance. If only they’d circle back. Then, unbelievably, they turned, crossing the river, coming toward him. The binoculars thumped against his chest when he dropped them, as he picked up the camera, tripod and all. He found the birds, focused, and snapped a picture. They kept coming. He snapped again, both birds in view. Closer even still until just one bird filled the frame. Snap. Then they whipped past, only twenty feet overhead. And fast! Faster than any bird he’d seen except a peregrine falcon on a dive.
His hands trembled. Definitely a bird new to him. A new species to add to his life list. And the bird he’d seen yesterday couldn’t be a single, misplaced wanderer, not if there were two of them here. Maybe a flock had been blown into the area. He knew Colorado birds, and these weren’t native.
He stayed another hour, counting starlings and recording the other river birds that crossed his path, but his heart wasn’t in it. In his camera waited the image of the new bird, but he’d have to transfer it to the computer where he could study it.
Tillie was in bed. Beside her, on the nightstand, were packets of seeds. She hadn’t moved them since he’d brought them to her in the spring. The television was on. There were, of course, no broadcasts, so gray snow filled the screen, and the set softly hissed. Carson turned it off, darkening the room. Sunlight leaked around the closed curtains, but after the brightness outside, he could barely see. In the silence, Tillie’s breathing rasped. He tiptoed around her bed to put his hand to her forehead. Distinctly warm. She didn’t move when he touched her.
“Tillie?” he said.
She mumbled but didn’t open her eyes.
