The wind tickled his whiskers. The last rays of the sun warmed his stomach. He could see fields stretching away and see woods beyond and see the town where he had lived with Charlie. Strange how the houses looked so small. Little bitty things clustered there, yet when you were in one, it seemed as big as the whole world. Well he had no house or cage to shut him in now. He shivered with the enormity of his freedom and hunkered down closer to the radiator. He had been a long time shut inside, and now so much space all at once made him a little uneasy.
And he did feel lost without Charlie Gribble. The kangaroo rat was very gruff and short-tempered and expected a person to stay awake all the time.
Well, Charlie would be back soon. He had promised. He would come with the engine parts Rory wanted, with the balsa wood and paper and glue and all the strange things that would somehow make the plane fly. Rory had said, "I'll take good care of the young lemming, Charlie Gribble. And you'll pick up my supplies at the hobby shop."
"I'll bring the stuff out tomorrow."
"Alone. No friends tagging along."
"Yes, alone."
Crispin smelled the new grass that grew out of the radiator, and the smell had a wildness about it that made him shiver again. He sniffed the smells that came from the dump itself, the scents of rust and burned cloth and old grease. The old grease was the most comforting, because it smelled like the nuts and bolts and machine parts in Charlie's room. He looked at some mallow weeds growing up tall as young trees. He saw the way the berry bushes were loaded with ripening berries. He looked down at Rory there beside the Buick; and when Rory called him, he climbed down to help.
"There, sonny! Get behind that wing and push for all you're worth."
Crispin pushed, and Rory pushed, and the plane began to move slowly down the muddy path.
They had to maneuver to keep her away from the puddles so she wouldn't get stuck, and clear the path of old shoes and mop handles as they went. But eventually they had pushed the plane along through the dump to where the big piano crate stood, cleaned the rubbish out of it, swept the floor, then backed the plane in.
Crispin stood inside the hangar staring up in awe at the big plane. Could Rory really fly it? It looked very ragged and old with the tear in its wing and the hole in its body. The wheels were so caked with mud, the paint so streaked and rusty. The windshield was bleary with cracks and with age. But still, Crispin thought, puzzling, in spite of all that the plane seemed somehow grand, towering there.
"When we have a propeller," Rory said, "she'll make a wind like you never felt, sonny. And she'll fly on that wind, she'll make a kind of magic you can't even imagine. Up there," he said, gesturing toward the sky. "Up there, away from muddy roads and stinking freight trains and dogs and cats and humans. Like you cut a cord that tied you to the earth. Like you're a bloomin' bird up there!"
Crispin looked out at the starlings perched on a refrigerator, and past them to the pale sunset. Pretty soon maybe he would be flying up there, higher than those birds ever had.
As the sun lowered, people in Skrimville began to prepare for the night. Women rushed to bring in their wash; lawn chairs were stowed in garages; children were called indoors; cars were covered or put under shelter. Then, all preparations made, Skrimville pulled its shades, turned on its TVs, and tried to ignore the soft summer evening as the starlings descended like a black cloud to roost on every available surface.
For several weeks after they first came the starlings had roosted each night in the pine grove south of town. Under their weight the branches of the pines had broken. Now the birds had taken to roosting in the town itself, rows and rows of them shouldering each other out of the way along the rooftops and sign boards and electrical and telephone wires, quarreling loudly and dirtying everything beneath them. Skrimville had had to reinforce all the wires and put on two extra crews of street cleaners, and schemes to drive the starlings from the dump had been forgotten as everyone concentrated on trying to drive them out of town. When all schemes had failed, Skrimville had subsided into a state of sullen depression.
CHAPTER 9
it was sunset when Rory paused in his work and stood admiring the hangar. Two cots now stood along the wall, and a worktable, with tools hung up behind it: some broken hacksaw blades, half a scissors, a cracked ruler, a whole needle, razor blades carefully cleaned of rust, some pencils, and two valuable C-clamps he had found. A pile of fairly clean rags lay folded on the table. And towering over table and cots, taking up most of the hangar, the plane shone brightly now that her rust had been scrubbed away.
In front of the hangar the lemming had laid a campfire ready in an old hubcap. Rory searched for matches, then went to light it. The youngster was off somewhere gathering mushrooms, dandelions and berries for supper. Rory had just struck flame to tinder when he felt a terrible wind and the sky went dark. A cloud of birds swept low above him, its passage snuffing the flame and tearing at his whiskers. Then, as suddenly, it was gone, flapping off toward the town. The harsh voices and off-key whistles faded in the distance.
Rory stared after the flock. He had been ignoring the fact of the starlings all day. But you could hardly ignore that screaming flight. "Well, most birds mind their own business," he muttered, knowing very well that starlings never mind their own business.
Crispin, coming around the corner with an armful of mushrooms, dropped his burden and scrambled up the nearest trash heap to watch the flock grow smaller then drop suddenly down over Skrimville. "They used to come over Charlie's house like that, Rory. Sometimes they used to stare in the window at me and hiss, and I never knew what they wanted."
"Why does that fool town put up with them?"
"They've tried to get rid of them, Rory. They've tried all kinds of things, I heard on Charlie's radio. They talked and talked about it. But nothing ever works."
"Well they just haven't thought of the right thing. Come on, sonny, bring those mushrooms and let's get supper started."
As they prepared their supper, Rory told Crispin about last winter, living in the Turbine Field hangar. He had learned a lot in that hangar, watching the mechanics tear down planes and fix them. He told Crispin how the chief mechanic's wife used to send down a plate of fudge occasionally, and Rory would almost die before everyone else left it long enough for him to slip out from behind the stove and snatch a piece or two.
"Almost caught me once. I tripped on a gasket and went tail over teacup right into a can of screws, scattered them from one end of that hangar to the other. Good thing I was right behind the mechanic's heels, because he thought he'd kicked it over himself. I hit for that stove and didn't come out for three days. I never lived in a real house, though, like you, sonny. The closest I ever came to that was when I holed up under the couch in a Samaritan Rescue Mission during a terrible rain. Hoo, boy, those old winos could tell the stories. But I haven't been able to stand the smell of wine since, because one night an old boy shoved his jug under the sofa right next to where I was sleeping. I had to have a taste, of course. Boy, sonny, that was some night.
"But tell me how it was, living in a real house. Tell me how it was at Charlie Gribble's."
"It was grand, Rory. Charlie made these neat little sandwiches for me, anchovies and peanut butter and pickles. And when Mrs. Critch went shopping, Charlie took me out in the yard and let me eat wild mint and petunias and lie in the damp grass." Crispin sighed. "But sometimes, sitting there in my cage under the bed in the middle of the day, all alone, I used to think about being off by myself again in the world, running along under the leaves in the wind, finding adventure. And sometimes, there in the dark, I'd think about the sky and the birds I could see from Charlie's window. That must be something, to be sailing around up there. I always wondered if it didn't make them giddy. Will it make us giddy, Rory, flying around like that? What's it like, up in the sky? Have you ever flown in an airplane before? Will I sit in the back cockpit, or the front one? Where will we go, Rory? Can you see the whole world from up there?"