BLACKBIRDS
On an August morning in the summer of 1960, a man dressed in black shattered the kitchen window at the Peterson home.
The house was empty. Major Peterson was at the base, writing a report on the importance of preparedness in the peacetime army. Mrs. Peterson was shopping for groceries. Their daughter Tracy was doing volunteer work at the local hospital.
Billy Peterson was the youngest member of the family. He was ten years old. Like the rest of his family, Billy was not at home when the man in black shattered the kitchen window.
Billy was pedaling his bicycle down Old MacMurray Road.
Billy was pedaling very fast.
Billy’s Daisy BB gun was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a small army surplus backpack.
There were only a few things in the backpack.
For one, there was a blackbird’s nest. In the nest were three eggs.
And there were two more things. Two items that, just like the backpack, had once been the official property of the United States Army.
One was a canteen, which Billy had filled with gasoline siphoned from his father’s lawnmower.
The other was a hand grenade.
The man in black had a pet of sorts. A blackbird which perched on his shoulder.
A blackbird with a BB hole in its chest.
But the bird did not seem inordinately bothered by the injury. No doubt it was well-trained. It did not make a single sound. Its head mirrored the movements of its master’s, searching here and there as the man in black explored the empty house.
But in the view of the man in black, the house was not empty.
In his view, he was surrounded by the Peterson family.
In his view, they were all around him.
Mrs. Peterson’s coffee cup stood abandoned on the kitchen counter, bearing a stain of frosted pink lipstick.
But the man in black passed it by.
The scent of Tracy’s girlish perfume drew him to the upstairs bathroom. He touched her uncapped perfume bottle, touched the damp towel Tracy had abandoned on the floor, touched Tracy’s soap, touched the heap of girlish clothes she had tossed in the laundry hamper.
And the man in black left the room.
He followed the track of Major Peterson’s bare feet on plush new carpet until he came to the major’s walk-in closet.
The closet held many uniforms. The man in black ran his fingers over these.
When he was done, he did not leave the closet.
Instead, he bent low and spun the dial on a safe which Major Peterson had bought at Sears.
He spun the dial with a calm sense of surety.
The numbers clicked into place.
The man in black opened the door.
There were many valuable things within the safe.
But the hand grenade was gone.
The mouth of the cave gaped wide.
Billy knew that it was a mouth that could not speak.
Shivering, Billy stared at it. He did not want to look away.
He could not look away. That was what he had done just the other day. He’d been staring at the mouth of the cave, staring into that black mouth that could not utter a single word, when his buddy Gordon Rogers said something stupid.
And, just for a second, Billy looked away.
Just for a second. Just long enough to give Gordon Rogers a poke in the ribs.
And when Billy looked back, a man was standing at the mouth of the cave.
A man dressed all in black.
Billy swallowed hard, remembering.
He wished that Gordon were here.
Maybe, in a way, he was.
No. That wasn’t right. Billy knew that he was all alone now. Gordon was gone—as good as dead, really. And no one stood at the mouth of the cave.
No one stood there dressed all in black.
No one said, “Don’t you know that caves are dangerous?”
No Gordon to answer, “If caves are so dangerous, what’re you doing in one?”
“Guess,” was the single word the man in black whispered, but there was no one to whisper it.
No one but Billy.
He stared at the mouth full of nothing.
“You’re a mining engineer,” he guessed.
But no one shook his head, as the man in black had done. “You’re a spelunker,” Billy said.
And no one laughed.
“If you want me to ask, I’ll ask.” Billy said. “What are you?”
“I am an army.”
“An army?” Billy shook his head. “You’re just one guy!”
“I am an army, all the same.”
“From where, then? You don’t look like a Ruskie.”
“I am not from Russia.”
“Then where are you from?”
The question hung in the air. The mouth of the cave yawned wide, but there was only silence.
The man in black was not here.
So he could not answer, “I am an army… from hell.”
Being an army was an occupation fraught with hazards. Violence was often unavoidable. People lied. And reconnaissance reports were sometimes less than accurate.
For example—there was no hand grenade in Major Peterson’s safe. Which meant that there was no shiny hand-grenade pin to be had.
But the man in black found many other attractive things in the Peterson house. Things that could be of use.
He found Billy’s baseball. The one with pretty red stitches sewn with surgical precision.
He found Tracy’s jump rope. Tracy had abandoned it long ago, of course. But not so long ago as she might
