TWO PAPER BIRDS
She sat in the
cab of the truck writing in her notebook or reading a paperback. Just getting
her to come with him on the job today had been an ordeal, almost leading to one
of their arguments. It seemed like she had been angry at him for years, ever
since she was a little girl slamming her door on him. He wasn’t even sure why.
Her mother sent her to spend
the week with him. If it was reconciliation, it didn’t look like that was
happening. Since the divorce, he supposed his daughter’s hatred of him had only
grown. And he wasn’t surprised by her cold regard of him. She would sit in the
apartment in the corner chair with a book. Mostly he took her on the job to get
her out of there, but also he hoped she would be interested in his work, maybe
even lend a hand.
Well, tomorrow she would be
going back to her mother. He wasn’t sure if the trip had done any good. He
could make her come along but she wouldn’t speak. She would be like one of the
cement Buddhas that huddled in the bed of the truck. That was his job. He made
Buddhas.
The sun shone on
this one he had finished pulling into place. Its new home was in a garden
corner. It was still winter but he could imagine the statue with spring
flowers, crocus and daffodils, all around it. It looked good.
He took a deep cool breath
and stared into the Buddha’s face, the eyes he had made with little bits of
colored glass. Each Buddha was a little different. A sad part of him was
transferred into this one. He knew the feeling. He let out his breath in a
hitching, emptying sigh. He was very tired and about to cry. The day to day was
much harder than he ever expected and he had failed in so many ways. If he
hadn’t got back on track by making these cement Buddhas, it seemed like it was
all just a waste. It wasn’t. He took a new breath. There was the smallest
candle in him, but it cast just enough light to remind him. Maybe he’d seen it
in a dream; he had been sent here, reborn in America for this purpose.
He glanced back
at the yellow truck parked under a bare chestnut tree. He could see his
daughter in there, her face tipped to her book.
A long row of
white muddy pine planks made a track over the ground for the sled he had pulled
the Buddha on. Now he had to pull the sled back. When he got to the truck he
stopped it. The hard part was running it up the ramp over the tailgate. He saw
the back of his daughter’s head in the window, her straw colored hair. She was
still reading her book, though the sound just behind her must have been loud.
It would be nice, he
thought, if she had asked him if she could help. She must have known what he
was doing. She had been watching him work for days. That’s okay, he told
himself…It was his business. This was what he did alone.
He followed the path of
planks back to the Buddha and trip by trip picked up the pine rails and stacked
them in the truck. By the time he finished that task he really was tired. He
shut the tailgate, latched it with a clang and held on to the cold metal to
catch his breath. It wasn’t an easy job and he was getting older; he didn’t
know how much longer he could do it. But it was good to see that statue set
solid in the earth. It looked very small across all that distance of winter yard.
He wasn’t quite ready to go,
almost, when the cab door opened and his daughter slid out of the truck. She
had something in her hand, he caught a glimpse of it, a necklace made of little
origami birds. They fluttered around in a long loop as she walked across the
yard, along the freshly pressed marks left by the planks. She went further from
him, all the way to the Buddha.
He listened to the blue jay
cry hopping down the branch above her.
With both her hands, she
hooped the birds over the statue’s shoulders. It was perfect. And as he waved
at her when she turned around, he smiled and looked away, and saw the two paper
birds she had tied to the mirror inside the cab.
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