The Birds of 2020

It’s half past four in the morning in downtown Cleveland. The roads are empty, and no one’s on the sidewalks but me. Even the Marriott’s lobby is dark. A HealthLine bus waits at a light on Euclid, and as I near the corner, it spits out a ghostly plume of exhaust and rumbles to life. I don’t see any passengers through the lit windows. 

I worry I’ll be the first to arrive, but as soon as I turn into Public Square, I see a small circle of people spaced out in the dark. I make out Greg — tall, square shoulders, baseball cap — and Lenora and Marilyn. The others I don’t recognize, but even in the dark I can tell there’s no one under 50. No Franny, then. I try to hide my disappointment from myself. 

She might still come, I think. Then, Fool. 

The circle parts as I approach, and Greg mimes a handshake. Everyone’s wearing masks. 

“Thanks for coming, Jim,” he says. “Figured you’d show.” Greg hands me two packets — paper bags and freezer bags — and peers at me. “Need a net?” 

I shake my head, pulling mine out of my backpack. 

“All right,” he says. “We’ll start in about ten minutes — in groups, like usual. One can work here in the square and hit Key Tower, and one can go to the Convention Center. Brownbag the live ones, and I’ll take them down to the Center. The dead ones can go straight into freezer bags.” 

When I invited Franny to come last year, 2019, I tried my best to manage her expectations. Most of them are dead — or alive but beyond helping — and Franny’s a soft girl. But she smiled and said she was feeling lucky. And damned if the first bird she found wasn’t alive. 

It was a stunned Nashville warbler — perfectly intact, eyes closed — that had hit a window at 200 Public Square. Franny fell to her knees on the pavement and laid the bird in her palm, speaking to it softly and stroking its feathers. Its body fairly hummed in her hand, tiny, anxious movements up and down. Its yellow breast gleamed in the predawn darkness. A male. 

After a while, Franny leaned closer, and her black hair fell across her face like a veil. She held the bird close to her mouth and kept whispering, as if casting a secret spell, and sure enough the bird opened its eyes and stood up. It was like a drunk old man, unsteady and confused. First it stared blankly at the building, as if trying to remember something, but then it slowly turned its head toward Franny. They looked at each other for a good long minute. 

“That’s right, little guy, that’s right,” Franny said, still petting the bird with her index finger. 

I began to shuffle my feet then. My joints ached when I stood still for too long, tough luck for a birder, but I also knew we should bag our find. I wanted to do it before the others came around. Once they caught wind that we had a Nashville, there would be a lot of commotion, and that might ruin the moment for Franny.  

She didn’t care that it was a Nashville. Probably hadn’t even ID’ed it. 

When I finally spoke, she looked up at me. Her hair fell back, so I could see the bruised look on her face. It was a look Katie’d given me a hundred times, even after she’d grown and moved out to Chicago. 

“Do we really have to, Jim? I think this one’s going to be okay on its own.” 

I moved toward her, opening the hungry mouth of the paper bag and speaking about the Center, how they’d monitor the bird for more serious injuries, give him a dose of meds to ease the pain from the collision. But at that very moment, the Nashville opened its wings and flew off in the direction of the lake. Silhouetted against the violet sky, it could have been any songbird, nothing special. 

Franny watched until it disappeared, and I could see tears in her eyes. Embarrassed, I pulled out my pocket notebook — we still should log it — and as I bent my head to write, I saw her hold her hands to her face and breathe in the scent of the bird. I knew the smell from bagging, that strange mix of spruce, ripe cherry, and raw, sweating meat. 

But that was all last year, a lifetime ago. Now it’s 2020. 

It’s 5 a.m., and a few last-minute stragglers have shown up, none of them Franny. Greg splits us into groups, and I’m assigned to the Convention Center, which is fine by me. No need to walk by 200 Public Square and look for stunned Nashvilles. No need to look for something gone missing. 

By the time we meet up at Drury, I’ve got six birds, all of them dead. A fox sparrow, a junco, and four different warblers. One, a female blackpoll, was still alive when I found her. Her yellow chest, a sickly chartreuse under the glare of an orange streetlight, rose and fell in an even rhythm. Thinking of Franny, I tried holding the bird in my palm. But her eyes stayed sealed, and, after a minute, the body stopped moving. I didn’t know the spell, what words to recite. 

Blackpolls have one of the most remarkable migrations. Some breed as far away as Nome, and they fly across Canada, the U.S., and the Atlantic Ocean, all the way down to South America. There are records of blackpolls flying three days straight without stopping. They’re tiny birds that weigh next to nothing — half the weight of a double-A battery or four pennies, tops — and yet they are capable of astonishing physical feats. 

I think about the one in my bag, wonder about her particular journey. She left boreal forestland after eating so many mosquitoes and sawflies that she doubled her size. She flew across Alaska and then the long, lonely expanse of Canada, and by the time she crossed Lake Erie, she was over halfway to her destination. The hardest part was still ahead — the 1,800 miles across the Atlantic, no resting — but she’d never make it that far.  

A trick of light, a cruel illusion, ended her voyage. She saw the reflection of the city — buildings and trees and sky — in an illuminated window and mistook it for the dawn, mistook it for the way forward. I wonder if she recognized herself just before she crashed. I wonder if anyone will miss her. 

* * * 

Back home, I make hard-boiled eggs in the contraption Jean bought after watching a demo on QVC. The Egg-cellent, they call it. Jean fell for everything she saw on that godforsaken channel, and the cupboards are still stuffed to burst with unused kitchen gadgets. She’d tried the omelet tray once and then crammed The Egg-cellent behind the unboxed veggie slicer she’d gotten the month before. When I’d asked her why she didn’t boil eggs in it — thinking it a reasonable question — she’d looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. It only fits four, she’d said. Who boils only four eggs, Jim? For a bachelor like me, it’s handy. I just put in the water and eggs, set the timer, and walk away. 

While the eggs are cooking, I check all the bird boards and pages and threads like I do every day. No sign of Franny. I’ll check again in the afternoon and then once more before bedtime. 

When I got my first pair of binoculars in the ’90s, things were a lot different. No apps, no social media, no messengers. There was barely even email, though I did have AOL dial-up and some friends who would send the occasional note about sightings. Mostly you just took what came your way, and you were grateful for what you saw. Now it’s different. If you know what you want to see and you’re willing to put in the time online and off, you’ll find it eventually.  

I came to birds later in life than most enthusiasts. Katie had been a junior in high school, starting to think about college, and maybe some part of me knew how empty life would be when she left. Good idea to get a hobby, something to fill not so much the time but the quiet. I couldn’t have known that Jean would die just three years after Katie graduated from Bowling Green. Couldn’t have predicted that emptiness, that sort of quiet. 

At first I thought I’d specialize in water birds. I met Greg the first time I drove out to Wendy Park with my binoculars, and he pointed out four different gull species on the lake. I never felt so stupid in my life — I’d always thought all gulls were the same. I remembered summer trips to Kelleys Island when Katie was little. Every year we’d stop at the same country store in Marblehead and buy a loaf of white bread so Katie could feed the seagulls on the ferry. She would lean against the railing and stretch out one small arm, holding as still as she could, until a bird swooped down and took the bread out of her hand. Then she would shriek in fear and delight. Did you see, Daddy? Did you see? They love me! 

Greg gave me some tips about ID’ing the gulls, and after that I was hooked on the water birds. Not just gulls but terns and herons and ducks. Egrets and shovelers and sandpipers. They’d been there my whole life, and I’d barely noticed them. You might say it was astonishing. 

After Jean passed, I started going out every day, straight after work. Now that I’m retired, I go in the morning and at dusk. I used to stay out all day, get lunch at the diner on 117th and flirt with Rhonda on weekdays and Pammy on weekends while they took my order. But the diner’s been closed since May, and it looks permanent. They couldn’t survive the pause, couldn’t “pivot,” as The Plain Dealer has been calling it. 

“No one wants carry-out ham and eggs,” I told Katie on the phone, thinking she’d laugh. But she’d grown exasperated. 

“For heaven’s sake, Daddy, just go somewhere else!” 

Before Jean passed, I even made some trips to log species I couldn’t see nearby. I kept telling myself that once I retired from Union Vending — where I worked filling soda and candy machines for close to 35 years — I’d get really serious about the water birds. But by the time that happened, I’d become more of a generalist. Jean was gone, and the new Lakefront Preserve had opened, and I liked wandering the paths for hours at a time. You don’t see many water birds there — it’s mostly passerines. 

That’s where I met Franny, about a year and a half ago now, during spring migration. At first I thought she was a kid. Black hair in braids and big glasses, skinny legs in shorts with knee-high socks pulled all the way up. She had her sights trained on something up high, and she held so still that I stopped walking, not wanting to scare off what she was looking at. 

Turns out she had a cerulean warbler — and a male, to boot. All the boards would go wild later that day about the bird, which isn’t officially endangered but is heading that direction. Channel 19 would even do a feel-good spot about it. But I didn’t know that at the time, so after a while, I approached. 

She heard me coming and lowered her binoculars enough to size me up, see that I had binoculars, too. Then she rubbed the back of her neck, tilted her head from side to side, and went back to looking.  

“Whatcha got there?” 

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m pretty new to this.” 

I waited a minute to see if she’d tell me where to look, standard etiquette, but she stayed quiet. 

“Where are you looking?” I asked. 

She tried to explain, but it was hopeless. She’d point at a tree across the path and say, “that one, at the top,” but there were dozens of trees. Didn’t even say what kind of tree, just pointed her finger. 

“What’s the bird look like?”  

“It’s blue, but it’s got some black on it.” 

She was spending all this time on a jay? She must really be new. Jays are a dime a dozen. I almost walked off then, but something kept me there. It had to do with the way she pointed her finger, trusted that I’d see what she meant. It reminded me of Katie. 

“I’m Jim,” I said.  

“Fran.” 

“Franny, huh? Now that’s a name you don’t hear much these — ” 

“Wait! Sh! It’s moving around!” 

I caught a flash in the canopy and instinctively lifted my binoculars, and that’s when I saw the cerulean, perched near the top of a silver maple. My jaw just about dropped.  

“Do you see it?” she asked, her voice a hot whisper. “It’s right up there now.” 

“Yeah, I see it. It’s a male cerulean.” 

“A cerulean?” 

“A cerulean warbler. They’re vulnerable — deforestation, among other things. This is quite special, Franny. Your lucky day. Our lucky day.” 

We watched the cerulean for a while, but he fluttered back down into the dense canopy. Greg and some others showed up in record time — I alerted them in our WhatsApp thread — but there was no sign of the bird by then. We all tried to find it together, and we got Franny set up on WhatsApp, but that’s about all I can remember after the cerulean. 

What I do recall is that every time I walked the lakefront paths after that day, I wasn’t just on the lookout for birds. I was searching for Franny. 

* * * 

The last time I saw her was in the dead of winter, about a month before the governor issued the stay-at-home order. 

Birders will go out in all manner of weather — even the lake effect can’t stop diehards like Greg — but you don’t have many accidental meetings. And the boards and apps go quiet, maybe a post here and there about raptors, mostly hawks and snowy owls. We had a Northern saw-whet a few years back that turned up on Christmas Eve and made a splash. I tracked it down on Christmas morning before I called Katie. 

But last February, the threads were dormant until one Monday when Franny sent a message on WhatsApp. 

FranR: Hi Everyone! I miss seeing you all! This is random, but they’re playing Hitchcock’s The Birds at the Cinematheque. Anyone want to go? It could be fun. You know, we can try to ID all the birds. Haha. 

gullguy1954: Count me in! 

MarilynMerlin: Oh jeez. They still play that movie? 

gullguy1954: It’s a classic.  

Gregory_Hannaford: I’m pretty sure most of those birds are fake, so I don’t know about IDing. But it does sound fun. 

216Represent!: When? 

FranR: How about Thursday? There’s a screening at 7:10. 

gullguy1954: That works for me. 

Lenora1965: I’ll miss my bedtime. 🙂 

MarilynMerlin: Me too. Old lady here. 

216Represent!: Pretty sure that wks. xo 

gullguy1954: Shall we meet in the lobby at 7? 

FranR: Perfect. See you there! <3 

I looked back over the thread, wondering if I’d been too eager. Maybe I should have waited for 216Represent! to respond first, or even Greg, but I supposed it was alright. I’d had my eye on 216 — Trevor — since mid-summer. One of those hippy types, or maybe it’s hipster. I was pretty sure he had a thing for Franny, and I didn’t trust him. Two parts arrogance, one part carelessness — a noxious alloy. 

The hours until Thursday evening passed slowly. We had a huge storm that week that kept me indoors. The snow started early Tuesday morning, and by two in the afternoon, we had nine inches. The roads were cleared and salted by midnight, but still I worried Franny would cancel. She didn’t say anything on the thread, and no one else did, either, so I kept my mouth shut, worried I’d jinx the whole thing. 

Driving to the East Side can get tricky, even when there hasn’t been weather, and I hadn’t been to the Cinematheque since they’d moved into their new building and changed parking lots. So I left very early and ended up getting there at 6:25. Too cold to sit in the car, even with the heater blasting, so I picked my way across the parking lot in my dress loafers, looking out for patches of ice and feeling like an ass. 

The new lobby is something else, and I spent some time wandering around and admiring it, but soon enough I was too hot. I took off my overcoat and sat on a bench and waited. At around 6:55, I saw Franny enter. She looked nervous. I watched as her gaze swept across the lobby, but she didn’t notice me. She pulled a crimson wool cap off her head and unwound a matching scarf, stuffing both into her bag. Then she took out her phone and bent over it. 

“Franny!” I called as I crossed the room so I wouldn’t startle her. 

“Oh, hi, Jim.” She took in the overcoat draped across my arm. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long?” 

“Got here a bit early. Wanted to take a look around — I haven’t been here yet.” 

“It’s pretty great, isn’t it?” She looked around the lobby — again I caught a flutter of uneasiness — and then back at me. “You look nice.” 

I felt heat rise into my cheeks, stiff and dry from the car heater. I’d worn pressed trousers and a button-down with a sweater over it. I started to say she looked nice, too, before catching myself. She wore a ratty quilted parka streaked with dirty-gray salt stains, probably from brushing against her car. All at once I recalled an ugly house coat Jean would wear to garden in on chilly days and wondered if it was still hanging on the nail in the garage where she’d kept it. 

Franny’s hair was standing up in places — staticky from her hat — and I resisted the urge to smooth it down. 

“So I think it might just be us and Trevor,” Franny said, looking back down at her phone. “Possibly Greg, but I don’t think so.” 

Franny took off her coat, and I held her bag for her. She was wearing a dress that looked like an oversized sweater, mossy yellow-green, and dark gray leggings. Puffy winter boots that came up to her knees. 

We stood and chatted for a while, and by 7:07 Trevor still hadn’t shown, so I got in line for the tickets. I insisted on paying for both, and then I got M&Ms at the concession. When I’d worked at Union, most of the complaint calls we’d get were about M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces. The plastic packets would get stuck on the ring, wouldn’t drop. The ones in the theater came in a box, or maybe that’s just how they sold them now. 

When the lights went down, I asked Franny in a whisper if she wanted some of the candy. She nodded, so I poured several pieces into her hand, cupping my own below hers in case any spilled. A cold electric shock ran through my wrist and forearm at the touch of her skin, and I was worried she’d notice my reaction. But she leaned back in her chair and turned to the screen, eating the candies one by one during the first scene, the one where Melanie — a stunning if chilly Tippi Hedren — goes to the pet store looking for a Mynah and ends up ordering lovebirds. 

The last time I’d seen the movie was years ago, one Christmas break when Katie was home from Bowling Green. She’d signed up for a course called “Hitchcock and the Mind” and wanted to get a head start on the work. Jean fell asleep halfway through, but she woke up during the fight Katie and I had after. I’d asked how the class would help with her degree in clinical psychology, and she’d immediately grown defensive. Then I’d said some things I probably shouldn’t have. 

“Just forget it, Daddy,” she’d said, jabbing the eject button on the DVD player several times in a row. Confused by her actions, the machine wouldn’t open. 

“Dammit! How old is this thing?” she yelled, and Jean, sleepy-eyed and slow, roused herself. 

“Katie? What’s wrong, honey?” 

But Katie had already tossed the DVD case onto the coffee table and was stalking out of the room. 

“Ask Daddy.” 

The movie was at least ten minutes in when the theater door opened. I craned my neck around and saw Trevor scanning the darkened theater and noticing me and Franny. He came down the row and had us stand so he could take the seat on Franny’s other side. 

Maybe it was my imagination, but she seemed to lean a little closer to me after Trevor arrived. At any rate, I thought I felt an energy between us, so the next time, I didn’t ask if she wanted candy. I just reached for her wrist and smoothed open her palm with my fingers, tilting the box until the candy poured out. Either her hand jerked or I angled things wrong, because I heard a few pieces clatter to the floor. 

The movie was pretty much how I’d remembered it, just more disturbing. I sensed Franny tensing up during the final attack, the scene where the swarm of birds pierces Melanie’s body so relentlessly that by the time she’s rescued, she’s a torn-up mannequin. I sneaked a glance and thought I saw tears in Franny’s wide eyes, so I leaned a little closer, just in case she wanted to take my arm. 

When the movie ended a few minutes later, I excused myself and went to the restroom. Trevor and Franny were standing in the lobby when I came out, and Trevor was talking about the attack scene. He said that Tippi Hedren really did get slashed by a bird during the shoot, had a nervous breakdown on set. 

“It got her right by the eye,” he said. “But I guess that’s what you get for working with Hitch. I mean, she was kinda asking for it.” 

He laughed so that you couldn’t tell if he was serious. His jaw hinged open, loose, and I could see his incisors. It put me in mind of a jackal. 

“I just can’t get over the way she looked like an adult-size doll after,” Franny said, shuddering. “Just like a living doll. And the others had to pull her strings to move her around. So creepy. And her eyes were so — so dead.” 

Franny moved her hands in agitation and then placed them in her coat pockets. Trevor, who had ignored my presence since I’d joined them, now acknowledged me. 

“Fran and I were thinking of going someplace on Coventry. Maybe B-Side.” 

Something about the “Fran and I” hit me funny. 

“Sounds nice. You two have fun.” 

“I mean, we figured you might want to go, too,” Franny said. 

She looked at Trevor, who smiled blandly.  

 “No, you two go on ahead.” 

“Are you sure?” she asked. “We thought one of us could drive everyone over, so you wouldn’t have to worry about finding parking or anything.” 

Either she wanted me to go or she didn’t, but I couldn’t tell. Her face was composed in a language I didn’t speak and was too old to start learning. So I just shook my head. 

“That’s alright.” 

Trevor went to the restroom, and I said goodbye to Franny before he returned. I looked back when I got to the door, but she had turned away from me. I waited in my car until I saw them come out and walk to what I knew was Franny’s old Nissan, and only then did I turn on my lights and shift into gear. 

Even in that moment — before the spring of CDC warnings and shutdowns and hospital crises, before the summer of layoffs and furloughs, before the August spike and the staggering deaths (my god, the deaths) — I knew I wouldn’t see her again any time soon. I knew I’d had my chance and had allowed it to pass. I’d have to wait for the season to change, for migration to begin. 

* * * 

Spring migration came and went. Summer, too. And before long now, autumn will tip toward winter. And still no sign of Franny. 

* * * 

We keep meeting at Public Square until fall migration ends. One morning as I drive downtown, I’m troubled by a dream I had the night before, so troubled that I decide to ask the group if they’ve heard any news of Franny. 

In the dream, I’m back at Union Vending, deep in the industrial park. It’s early morning, and I’m loading my van under a murky blue sky. I push flats of soda and case after case of candy through the back door, but the pile on my dolly doesn’t seem to get any lower. Then I hear a lilting birdsong coming from behind Building C, where I know there’s a landscaped area. A single tree in a steel planter, a single picnic table no one ever uses. I’ve never heard the bird before, so I go to investigate, leaving my van behind. 

I look down as I walk, noticing that my work boots make no sound when they hit the blacktop. I only hear the bird, calling to me. When I round the corner, I see her. Franny. She’s balancing on the edge of the picnic table, reaching one arm toward the sound hidden in the tree, her crimson scarf streaming out behind her on an invisible current of air. She must hear my silent footsteps, because she turns to face me, and that’s when I cry out in horror, waking myself. Franny’s eyes, Franny’s missing eyes, are the shape of burning coals. 

When I bring her up with the group, I do it casually, as if I’d just remembered her. Whatever happened to that girl, I think her name was Franny? They’re full of guesses, but I can tell no one knows for sure. Franny’d gotten sick. Franny’d lost her job like so many others, moved someplace cheaper. Franny’d gone back to her folks, Florida they thought it was. Franny’d just been a tourist, not really interested in birds like we were. 

I regret asking. 

I go downtown for a few more days after that to help with the collection, but then one night a cold front blows in and takes all the migrating birds away with it. They simply vanish, as if the winds pulled a magic trick, combing through every tree and bush, every last branch and vine, until the city is culled, stripped of color. Ruby and saffron, pomegranate and sapphire — gone, all. Swept away in a hectic whirl. 

In the gale’s wake, there’s only black and white and a brown so drab it’s mistaken for gray. These are the hues of the city birds, insolent pigeons and cunning starlings, industrious sparrows and watchful mourning doves. They’d tucked themselves into manmade crevices when they’d sensed a shift in pressure, felt the first gust of wind tossed against the shoreline like a breaker. Now they hunt and feed, squabble and huddle, on statues and sidewalks and back lawns. 

The group meets for one more day, and then we call it quits. The city birds aren’t the ones who need us. They rarely fall for illusions, hardly ever get tricked into crashing. They know the windows for what they are: perilous dreams best edged around or avoided altogether. Survival seldom admits of dreams.  

After migration, we go back to our regular routines. Not the ones from last fall — those are gone — but the more modest ones we’ve newly fashioned.