A Bird Will Soar: Chapters 21–44

She just keeps telling him things that she kept hidden before. Dark things. Murky things.

It is a common misconception that birds abandon their babies because of scent. Really only turkey vultures could pick up the scent of a human.

The fledgling is starting to move a lot more.

Many of the workers in the trucks wear ball caps with FDREMODELING, REBUILDING, RENOVATIONS in the same flashy letters that are on Frank’s truck.

“It’s the perfect name. He’s a flying type and valiant Pokémon. That means brave, right Mom?”

Axel’s stomach churns, and the eaglet starts to cry.

The birds in outdoor cages jostle, and Lark calls them all by name as they pass.

He’s mesmerized by the eaglet making little hops across the mulch-filled cage.

“Learning to fly takes grit,” Dr. Martin says. “Curiosity, too.”

Fathers make their own milk—
crop milk—
inside their bodies after
babies are born so they can
care for their young
no matter
Mother Nature’s plans.

His hair is matted down from sweat and work on the house.

Titter
ta-ha
ti-whoop.

Ms. Dale doesn’t care to hear Axel’s reasons for not writing the report based on this technicality.

What he needs is more time to work on essays. What he needs is to type instead of print because writing by hand is very difficult for him. These accommodations are in place just for essays like this, the typing and the more time.

But the rubric for the assignment asks for dialogue.

He said that the house was finished enough for Byrd and Axel to move back in. “Just cosmetic things,” he said. Whatever that meant.

“I want to give a toast, too.”
“I yield the floor to you,” George says to Byrd.

“There’s still some finishing touches to make, and we’ll leave the windows open so the paint smell dissipates.”

The bottom, thick, rough trunk, like an elephant’s leg pulled to the right of the driveway, the top, green and lush, rolled to the left. How had Axel not seen this clue before? A tree like this that someone had to move in order for someone to get down the driveway.

The chase begins, squirrel and dog and boy. Under and through. Until an entrance opens, like a cave, but really just mangled trees and roots in a massive pile.

Only, it isn’t his song, his cry, his instinct, that brings Ray back to them. It is perseverance. Axel, Dr. Martin, and George turn over branches and search under the debris until a paw brings them all to their knees.

“Leave the darn kid alone. For Pete’s sake, haven’t you all just ever wanted to be left alone?” She accentuates this with a stomp of her rollator on the front porch.

“I’m ready,” Lark says, then promptly climbs into the back seat of her truck, not waiting for any other plans or explanations.

AERIE: raptor home constructed in high places, returned to again and again; see also nest

Axel tells Ray about everything else. About the foresters bringing more rigs out to clear more trees, the enormous flatbeds that rolled across the field empty and returned with logs piled higher than the barn’s roof.