Читать книгу In Hovering Flight - Joyce Hinnefeld - Страница 10

WHEN HE OPENED HIS mouth to speak and she heard the first soft lilt of his Irish accent, she did not know what to do, or where to look; she could hardly contain her joy, the feeling of something bubbling up inside her. And so to keep herself from suddenly singing, or whooping, or hysterically laughing, she grabbed her pencil and began to draw.

That ridiculous, fusty old owl. She knew without thinking that he had brought it as some sort of joke; it bore absolutely no resemblance to a real bird.

So she drew it, realistically enough in outline and obvious detail, the large head with its tufted ears, the ringed eyes, the white bib with the bars below. But she gave it a recognizable, if caricatured, human face.

“Dr. Curtis?” Lou leaned over and asked in a whisper when Addie had nearly finished the bulging eyes below a receding hairline. She nodded, and then Lou wrote, on a page of her own notebook, “I’d rather draw him,” finishing with an arrow toward the front of the room.

Addie smiled and went back to the shadows under her owl’s eyes until Lou pinched her arm and pointed, again, to her own notebook, where she’d added one more word: “Nude.”

Addie rolled her eyes, her standard response to Lou’s excesses. She kept to herself the fact that while mindlessly sketching a moldering stuffed owl with human features, she was, in fact, memorizing the rich contours, the lines and shadows, of Tom Kavanagh’s remarkable face, the thin nose and strong jaw, the large, dark eyes, all shadowed by a head of unruly black hair that showed some streaks of gray. Later, in the privacy of her student studio, she would do her best to reproduce some image of that face from memory. She would work on it each day, she decided, immediately after leaving his lecture.

And she would, just as he’d urged, devote her afternoons and evenings to more outings in the woods, and to keeping a careful field notebook. Not because she cared at all about how she did in his course, but because from the moment she’d heard the wood thrush sing, just as Tom Kavanagh had called her name, she had realized something powerful. What she wanted was not only to draw birds but to understand them, to come as close as she could to feeling what it was like to fly with hollow bones. To sit atop a warm and throbbing egg within a delicate bed that rests in the crook of a branch. To sing not from something like a human throat but from a place deep within the breast.

Tom Kavanagh’s passion for birds did not frighten her. And she found evolutionary theory less threatening than sleep-inducing. But what he had, and what she wanted, was clear to her from that first morning: a passion for birds—for truly hearing, seeing, knowing them—that made everything else in life seem trivial.

Somehow, she felt that if she had his face in front of her all the time she could hold on to that possibility. So she planned to throw herself into the course as wholeheartedly as she knew Cora would. (Lou was a different story; surely Lou would be one of the ones who went in search of another course.) But Addie knew that in the midst of her attention to birds she would also draw him, secretly, from the memory of watching him each day.

12 May 1965

Wednesday

Riegel’s Point, Plumville, Bucks Co., PA (Spit of wooded land between the Delaware Canal and the Delaware River, ½ mi. north of Plumville)

Time: 06:00–06:30—Mouth of Kleine Creek, near intersection of Old Philadelphia Road and the river road; 06:45–08:00—Riegel’s Point

Observers: Addie Sturmer. Alone.

Habitat: Pin oak, maple, and what, at home, we call an osage orange tree (with those odd, baseball-sized, brain-looking pods). Bluebells are blooming, and I saw more of Cora’s beloved windflowers.

Weather: Temp. 65 degrees F

Overcast and still, after a heavy rain. Would this be considered 100% cloud cover? Or did I see a small (1%?) patch of blue for just a moment at the turn in Kleine Creek at Haupt Bridge Road?

Remarks: I’ve taken your advice to cut class and listen, on my own.

SPECIES LIST

At mouth of Kleine Creek:

American Robin 3

Song Sparrow 1

Downy Woodpecker 1

Goldfinch 6

At Riegel’s Point:

Spotted Sandpiper (I think) 2

Number of Species: 5; Number of Individuals: 13; Time: 2 hrs.

Comments: I heard—and recognized—the Robin and the Downy Woodpecker. But the best moments were spent drawing a Sandpiper, pecking at the mud like an irritable old man who’s dropped all his change.

I just can’t keep writing all that Latin. I’m sorry.

12 May—I’m flattered that you’re willing to take me out in the field alone on Saturday; I look forward to this.

And I’m also flattered that you’re interested in seeing my drawings from England. Yes, I’ll bring along some of these. But not the paintings, no. They’re absolutely awful; I don’t think I’ll ever let anyone see those.

If I’m feeling brave maybe I’ll bring along a painting of a goldfinch I’ve been working on. I drew it for hours one day in New York City, in Central Park. Did you know the bird life there is incredible?

Well, that’s silly. Of course you would know that.

As to the great horned owl I drew on the first day of class—no, I don’t think so. That was more of a caricature really, to be honest. Nothing I’d want anyone to see.

And yes, it also has some of Louise’s commentary. But believe me, it’s not critical of you. Hardly.

Please don’t underestimate Louise (we call her Lou). It seems that nearly everyone does, and I suppose it’s her own fault. Honestly, though, she’s observing, and learning, more than you might realize—even though she probably seems to be interested only in luring Mr. “I’m Premed Like My Father” away from Princess “I Hate These Bugs!” (Lou can’t resist a challenge. The minute he takes the bait, she’ll turn her attention to other things and spit him out like cold coffee.)

Anyway, by now you’ve already seen what I mean about her in her field notebook. She’s a beautiful writer, isn’t she? And she’s getting really good at spotting birds—almost as good as Cora and Karl. When I go out on my own—which is better for the drawing, of course—I miss L and C’s good humor.

Even those predusk excursions are getting crowded, though. Karl always wants to come along, of course, which usually means his friend Robert as well. And I understand Mr. Premed is to join them on Friday. I imagine there will be a bottle of brandy too, and a tipsy walk back up Rising Valley or over from Gallows Hill.

But they’ll be watching and listening for birds too; they’re completely hooked. It’s all your doing, you know—you and your poems and that clever ruse of “calling out” the bobolink with your fiddle Monday morning. It’s all “the Survivors” (as we’ve taken to calling the eight of us who’ve yet to miss a morning in the field, and don’t intend to) talk about.

So, yes, it’s all your fault that the trails and fields and creek banks all around Burnham Ridge are crowded with insect spray–wearing, field glasses–wielding “birding loons” (our other name for ourselves) at the best hours for sightings, Monday through Friday.

So as I’ve said, I look forward to listening quietly, with only you, on Saturday morning—when all the Survivors will be sleeping off their birds and brandy.