WOODPECKERS by: Donald D. Shore

“Listen to those birds,” said Sam. He gazed off, looking through the trees towards the hill where the deer lived. “You forget about that sound when you live in the city.”
“Don’t they have birds in the city, daddy?”
“Sure,” he said, and looked down at his daughter. “But not like here. In the city, all you ever see are pigeons. There are hundreds of birds here. Robins and blue jays, and sparrows and woodpeckers.”
“Woodpeckers?”
“Yep. Woodpeckers.”
“What’s a woodpecker, daddy?”
Sam smiled down at his daughter. For years, he had wanted to bring her here, to this place. A place where they didn’t have to avoid the looks of homeless beggars. Where you didn’t have to worry constantly about the safety of your daughter. Sam didn’t trust anyone around his daughter. She was his little angel.

He knelt down beside her.  “You hear that knocking?”

He watched her tilt her head, listening to the hollow wooden sound coming from the distance.  “Uh-huh.”

“That’s a woodpecker.  They hit their beak against the tree to make the bugs come out.”

“Why do they do that?”

“So they can eat the bugs.”

“Gross,” his daughter cried.  “They don’t eat bugs,” she declared.

“Sure they do,” said Sam.  Teaching his daughter about the world was one of the things he enjoyed most about being a father.  Now, out here in the country, he could teach her about nature and about the things that lived in the woods.  Here, he wouldn’t have to explain about homeless people, and crazy people.  There were hardly any people at all around here.  Their closest neighbor was a mile away, down the little two lane highway that wound through the small town of Prospect, Tennessee.

Her mother had protested, of course.  Her mother loved the city.  Had been born and raised there, herself, and saw no reason to take the child out of there.  But Sam did.  He couldn’t stand the thought of raising his daughter in the smog and constant sirens that billowed throughout city.  This place, this quiet solitude, was where his daughter belonged.  Here, he could raise her right and she would be safe.

They walked further into the woods, where the ground was shaded by the tall oak and pine.  At the rocky stream bed, he stood while his daughter knelt to look closer at the clear water that ran across the shale.   

“Come on, Haley.  It’s time to go back to the house.”

They walked back towards the house.  The sun was out and the air was sticky and hard to breath.  His daughter looked tired and he picked her up and held her close as the house appeared on the hill in the distance.  The house was a hundred years old, and looked it.  When Sam’s mother and father had moved up here, the house was overrun by the forest and inhabited by mice and wasps and other things that take over what man has abandoned.  There was no power or water.  Those things his father had brought in.  It had been hard work.  Hard on his father and his mother.  They were both gone now, but the house was still standing. 

He took his daughter inside and fixed her a lunch of soup and crackers and they sat at the kitchen table and ate in the quiet, lonely solitude of the house. 

“Can we get a dog, daddy?” she asked, looking at her father with dregs of tomato soup smeared under her bottom lip.

“Sure,” he said.  “What kind of dog do you want?”

“A big dog,” she said.  “One big enough to ride.”

He laughed.  “You want a horse.”

“No,” she said.  She shook her head with all the seriousness a child could possess.  “I want a dog.  I can ride around on him in the daytime, and then he can sleep with me at nighttime.”

“Well,” he said.  “We’ll have to look out for one that meets your specifications.”

“I’ll look out for one,” she assured him.

After lunch he took his daughter upstairs and laid her down in the big bed his parents had left behind.  She was exhausted from the heat of the day and their walk and fell asleep before he finished reading her favorite story to her.  When he was sure she was asleep, and would not wake up, he stood and crept out of the room and down the stairs and out onto the porch.  He lit a cigarette, something he would never do in front of his daughter, and relaxed in a rocking chair as he smoked and watched the empty fullness of the woods around the house.  He smoked his cigarette and watched as clouds blew in.  A light rain began to fall and ting against the metal roof of the house.  He watched as beads of water pelted the leaves of the trees.  This was his perfect place.

He heard the scream of his daughter and he put his cigarette out.  He did not rush when he did this, because it was not unusual for Haley to wake up screaming.  He crushed the cherry of his cigarette out against the edge of the old paint can and set it underneath the rocking chair and went inside. 

“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked as he entered the room where his daughter lay crying.

“I want my mommy,” she said through streaming tears and snot.  She spoke through bursts of air as she breathed raggedly, struggling to find breath amidst her panic.

He went to her and sat on the bed next to her and put his arms around her and pulled her close.  “I want mommy,” she said again.  He felt her try to pull away, but he held her tight.  The rain danced against the tin roof. 

“I know you do” he said, rocking her in his arms.  “But mommy’s not here and we have to get used to that.  She’s far away now.  We have each other, honey.  We have to depend on each other.”

“But I want mommy.”  Her voice was soft and week.  Her sobbing steadied.  He knew sleep was coming back to her.  “I want mommy.”

“I know, sweetie,” he said.

He let his daughter fall asleep in his arms and when she did, he laid her down again against the pillow and stepped quietly out of the room.  The rain outside had turned into a storm and echoed throughout the house.  He went back outside onto the porch and looked out across the dark, gray day.  He watched a stream of water pour out of the ancient gutters and form a pool of water next to the porch.  He could hear the creaking of the tall hickory trees in the driveway as they swayed with the wind. 

When they drove into town the next morning the rain had passed.  The trees and cleared pastures were a bright green and the sky was a crystal blue dream where fat clouds rolled out across the heavens like spilled cotton.  His daughter was next to him, drinking a Capri-Sun.  He drove his father’s pick-up truck, and when he glanced down at his little girl, struggling to get the last drop of juice from the collapsed tinfoil container, he felt like his own father must have felt. 

Sam enjoyed driving with his daughter, but he didn’t like taking her to town.  The town was small, and the people there were all strangers to him.  The town was clean and sunny as they drove down the street that cut through the square.  They stopped at the gas station and he took his daughter inside.  He bought them each a root beer and a hot dog for lunch.  The lady working the register was short with glasses and Sam suspected she had a slight case of Down Syndrome. 

“What a pretty little girl,” the lady said, looking over the edge of the counter to see Haley.

“Thank you,” said Sam.  He felt awkward and he told Haley to thank the lady.

“Thank you,” said Haley. 

They left and got back in the truck and Sam handed his daughter her hot dog and root beer. They drove back through Elkton towards Prospect.  Haley watched as they passed a group of cows in a field.  Some laying in the grass and others whisking their tails at insects. 

“I like the cows,” she said, as she chewed a bite of her hotdog. 

“You do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.  I just do.”

Sam smiled and watched the road ahead.  He slowed as he came upon a tractor.  The tractor was driving slow and the farmer seemed relaxed behind the wheel.  He wore a straw hat and his arm was stretched out with his hand gripping the rail of the shade provider.  Sam followed behind him at a distance, waiting for a chance to pass the tractor.  Haley watched the tractor and chewed her hotdog.

A car raced past them, rocking the truck with its inertia.  The car sped past the tractor and then swerved back into its lane.  The car looked like it was going eighty miles an hour.

“God damn,” said Sam, under his breath.  He gripped the steering wheel tight.

“That car was going fast, wasn’t it, daddy?”

“It sure was,” said Sam.  “He thinks he’s a racecar driver, doesn’t he?”

“Maybe he is a racecar driver,” said Haley, a hopeful sound in her voice.

“He’s not,” said Sam.  “He’s just stupid.  Driving like that could get someone killed.”

“Oh,” said Haley, the hope leaving her voice.  She sat quiet in her seat until the tractor finally pulled off to a dirt road.  She watched it drive alone, towards the hills, trailing a cloud of dust behind it.

Sam sped up until they reached Prospect and then he slowed to the twenty-five mile an hour speed limit.  He pulled into the post office parking lot and shut off the truck.

“You wait here, okay?” he said.

“Okay.” 

He went inside the post office. The girl at the counter was young.  He thought she was probably a teenager.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” said Sam.  “I’m checking to see if anything has been delivered here for me.”

“Okay,” said the girl.  “What’s your name”

“Sam Beech.”

“Hold on while I check.”

The girl went into the back.  He could see her rifling around with stacks of mail.  He turned around to look out the window and check on his daughter.  Haley was still sitting in the cab of the truck.  He could see the top of her head, full of her little blond curls, and her eyes.  Bright blue eyes she inherited from her mother.  The older she got the more she looked like her mother.

“Nothing for a Sam Beech,” said the girl from the back of the room.  “But I have a stack of letters for an Haley Beech.”

“That’s my daughter,” said Sam.  “I’ll take those.”

The post office girl looked skeptical.  “Well, I’m not really supposed to give out someone else’s mail,” she said.

“It’s fine,” said Sam.  “She’s too young to have an I.D. Besides, she’s right out there in the truck.”

“Okay,” said the girl.  She smiled then, and came forward with the stack.  There were a handful of letters, all rubber-banded together.  She handed them to Sam and he thanked the post office girl and left.

Sam took the longer way back to the house.  He pulled off of the road and pointed out an old house that looked to be held up only by the ring of trees surrounding it.  The acres around it had been cleared, and far up on a hill, there was a small herd of cattle.

“Your great grandpa used to live there,” he said to Haley. 

The little girl stared out the window at the house, her eyes wide with imagination.  “Can we go in there?”

“You want to go inside there?”

“Uh-huh.”

Sam smiled. “Not today,” he said.  “Maybe another time.”

“Okay.”

Sam started up the truck and drove home.  As they approached the house, Sam saw the dull red taillights of a car winding past the curve of the road and out of site.  He slowed the truck and watched after the car.  He pulled up into the driveway, his eyes lingering down the road as he helped his daughter climb down from the seat, but the car did not return.   Haley followed her father’s eyes. 

“Who was that, daddy?”

“I don’t know, sweetie,” said Sam.  “Let’s go inside and get cleaned up.”

He ushered his little girl towards the house, his eyes still watching the road. 

“Ready for a haircut?” he asked Haley a short while later.  He pulled one of the kitchen chairs away from the table and dug in a drawer until he found a pair of scissors. 

“I don’t want to cut my hair, daddy.  I want to grow it long.  Like Evangaline.”

“Who’s Evangaline?”

Haley looked at her father, her face screwed with frustration.  “She’s my favorite singer, daddy.  And I want to grow my hair long like her.”

“Well,” said Sam, trying to be gentle.  “I bet when Evangaline was a little girl, she had to get her hair cut just like you do.”

“But I don’t want to, daddy.”  She put her little hands on the sides of her head, as if she were protecting the shoulder length curls.

“Come on, now,” Sam said.  “Tell you what.”

“What,” said Haley, pouting. 

“Let me cut your hair, and we’ll have a cook out tonight.  With a big bon fire.  You like bon fires don’t you?”

“What’s a bon fire?”

“Like a campfire.  Only bigger.”

 “Please, daddy?  I don’t want a haircut.  I want to look like Evangaline.”

“Sorry, sweetie,” said Sam.  “Now, come and sit in the chair.”

“I don’t want too.”  Haley’s eyes grew round and watered with tears.

“Now,” said Sam.

 Haley tilted her head down and walked slowly to the chair.  When she was close Sam reached down and picked her up and set her in the chair.  Neither of them spoke as Sam worked the scissors.  Long strands of blond curls fell to the floor like feathers plucked from a bird.  Haley sat motionless and silent.

Later, when the sun was a pink ball falling behind the trees on top of the hill where the deer lived, they went outside to build the fire.  Sam walked amongst the trees to pick up fallen limbs.  His daughter trailed behind him silently, picking up twigs to feed into the fire.  When their hands were full, they carried the wood back towards the house where a circle of ash marked the fire pit.  Sam let the timber fall into the center of the pit and knelt down to arrange it so it would catch and burn well.  Haley stood, brittle twigs still in hand, watching her father with her big round eyes.

“You can drop it here,” said Sam.

Haley let the twigs fall to her feet. 

“Now, pick it up and bring them here,” he said.  His eyes were level with his daughter’s as he knelt beside the pit.  She wouldn’t look at him.  The loss of her hair had been like the loss of a dream, and to a child the loss of a dream was a great thing.  Haley had lost many things in her short years and so dreams had become very important to her.  “Now,” said her father, and Haley brought her eyes up to look at him.  Her lips were a thin line across her face.  She looked like her mother.  He started to rise, and Haley knelt and picked up the sticks she had dropped.  He settled back down as she brought the sticks and let them fall on top of the limbs he had arranged.

Sam reached into his pocket.  He took the letters from the post office out of one pocket and a Zippo lighter his father had given him out of another pocket.  His face was sweating and a bee hovered somewhere, lost in the evening twilight.  Sam ripped the letters in half and tucked the torn pieces of paper underneath the twigs Haley had dropped.  He set the flame of his Zippo to them and watched as the fire breathed to life, consuming the letters and leaving coal black carbon.  He shifted the twigs to receive the flame and when they did he sat back and watched the fire grow.

“See,” he said.  “Isn’t it pretty?”

Haley shrugged her shoulders, but her eyes watched the flames dance.  Sam moved back and took a seat on the ground where he could feel the heat of the fire rise.  He pulled his daughter close and took her in his lap.  The daylight faded into night and the light of the fire replaced it with an orange radiance.  They sat quietly and watched.  The stars stretched out like spilled diamonds above them.

After Sam put his daughter to bed, he went downstairs and took his rifle off the shelf.  He sat down and cleaned and oiled the weapon.  He worked slowly and took his time, as such things should be done.  The house was silent but for the clink of the metal rod scraping against the black steel barrel of the rifle.  When he was done he set the rifle back onto the shelf.  He went outside into the darkness of the moonless night and smoked a cigarette.  He watched over the land as if he were a sentry.  He thought about the car he had seen on the road earlier in the day.  He smoked another cigarette and watched the darkness of the country.

In the morning Haley came down for breakfast.  He heard the sound of her light feet creaking against the ancient boards of the stairs.  She came into the kitchen and he smiled, setting her plate of eggs and toast on the table.  She still wore the disappointed face of the day before.  She sat down in front of her plate and he joined her at the table with his own.

“It’ll grow back,” he said, watching her stir her eggs with her fork.

“I know,” she said.  “I just wish it wasn’t so short.”

“It’s good to cut it short every once in a while,” he told her.  “When it grows back it will be healthy.  I bet that’s what Evangaline did to her hair.”

“Is that what mommy did?”

Sam chewed his eggs.  “I think so,” he said.  “That’s where I learned it from.”

Haley looked at her father skeptically.  He marveled at how hard it can be to fool a child.  They have a great instinct for truth, which is often dulled with age.

When they were done eating, Sam took the plates and rinsed them off in the sink.  When he finished, and Haley was dressed, they went outside.  Sam sat in the rocking chair under the shade of the porch and Haley went off into the yard where the grass was growing tall.  She went amongst the tall weeds where the purple flowers were blooming. 

“Be careful,” he said, watching his daughter.  He liked her better with the short hair.  She looked more like him and less like her mother. 

“Be careful, I said.” 

“I will, daddy,” she called back to him, still without turning around.

He watched as she picked the purple flowers and gathered them together into a bouquet.  The day was hot and he could feel the heat even in the shade.  Bees and insects buzzed around the porch.  There was much to do around the house, but the humidity lay heavy on him, and Sam was content watching his daughter move about the yard, exploring the little things like bugs and flowers and the chattering of the birds and the squirrels. The way only a child would explore these things.  He thought that must be what it was like when man first crawled out of the caves.  Their eyes wide with wonder.

Sam heard the sound of a car coming down the winding road in the front of the house.  He waited for it to pass, but instead there came the soft crunch of gravel as the car turned up his driveway.

“Haley,” Sam called.  “Come up here.”

Her attention had been on the driveway, but when her father called her name she came.  She knew the voice he was using, and it was not one to be ignored.  She stepped onto the porch as the car pulled up the hill.  A long sedan with a California plate on the front bumper.

“Go in the house,” Sam said.

Without a word Haley obeyed and he was glad.  The house door slammed shut behind him and he watched a man climb out of the driver’s seat of the sedan.  He was a fat man in a light blue suit.  He wore a straw fedora and Sam watched the man take a look around the property and wipe the sweat from his face with a white handkerchief.  Sam waited for the man to turn his attention towards him.

“Mr. Beech?” said the man.  He approached the house cautiously and shoved the handkerchief into his coat pocket.  “You are Mr. Beech, aren’t you?  The girl at the post office said you were.”

“Who are you?”

The man smiled.  Sam thought he could be either a car salesman or a lawyer.  They both have a practiced “trust me” face.  The man came a little closer, still keeping his distance from the porch.

“I’m Mr. Peachtree,” said the man, taking another step towards Sam as he spoke.  “I’ve been looking for you, Mr. Beech.”

“That your job, Mr. Peachtree?  Finding people who don’t want to be found?”

“Well, you could say that,” said Mr. Peachtree.  “It comes with the territory, as they say.  But I like to think of myself as a mediator, Mr. Beech.  You understand what I mean?”

“No,” Sam said.  “Why don’t you tell me.”

“Well,” said Mr. Peachtree, taking a step closer to the porch.  “Say there’s two parties vying for the same thing.  Like you and your wife, for instance, Mr. Beech.  It’s my job to find the best solution for both parties.  Now, it can get a little sticky, you know.  When the party that hires me don’t get exactly what they are looking for.  But that’s life, you know.  No one gets out unscathed.”

“Cut to the point,” said Sam.  “And if you step any closer to this porch I’m going to come down there.”

Peachtree smiled and shook his head.  He took his handkerchief back out and wiped his brow again.  “Mr. Beech.  I think you’re looking at this all wrong.  Look.  I found you.  It didn’t take me long.  How long do you think it will take for someone else to find you?  The police for instance.  Now, I can mediate this whole thing, Mr. Beech.  I can make this whole affair disappear and you can live out here in the boonies with your daughter in peace.  That’s what you want, isn’t it?  To live out here where no one will bother you?  If I go back and tell my client I found you, what do you think is going to happen?  I’ll tell you what will happen. One morning you’ll be sitting out here, watching your daughter play, and a car is going to pull up in that driveway.  And it’s not going to be a pleasant visit like the one we’re having right now, Mr. Beech.  No, sir.  It will be the police and they will come and take your daughter back to California and they will take you to jail.”

“And you can stop that from happening.”

Peachtree smiled wide.  “I can, Mr. Beech.”

“How’s that?”

“I can simply drive back to L.A. and tell my client I’m on your trail.  I’ve found you, I could say.  But I can tell my client your trail led to Canada.  Or Mexico.  Or anywhere but here, Mr. Beech.  Anywhere but here.”

“Alright,” said Sam.  “Why don’t you go on back and tell your client that.”

“I can do that, Mr. Beech.  I surely can.  But it’s going to cost you.”

“And how much is that going to cost me?”

“Well, it’s hard to say,” said Peachtree.  He looked around the yard, as if taking stock of the land.  “I’ve looked into your assets, Mr. Beech.  And sadly, you just don’t have much.  But I figure you can afford about ten thousand dollars.  Sound about right to you?”

“And I’m supposed to trust you’ll just go on back to L.A. and I’ll never see you again.”

Again that smile spread across Peachtree’s face.  “It’s not my first rodeo, Mr. Beech.  And I don’t see how you have much choice in the matter, anyway.  I can have the police up here this afternoon.  I can have your daughter sitting in an airplane heading back to California by tonight.  Surely, ten thousand is worth avoiding all that mess.  Like, I said.  Just think of me as a mediator.  I’m trying to help out all parties involved.”

“Whoever pays you the most.”

“That’s a trivial matter, Mr. Beech.  I have the best interest of your little girl in mind.  Don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”

Sam turned around and went to the door and opened it.  He saw Haley rush away from the window.

“Mr. Beech,” Peachtree said, calling to him.

“You wait right there,” Sam replied.  He stepped inside.  “You go upstairs,” he said to Haley.  She gave him a blank stare.  “Now,” he said, his voice hard and cold.  He went to the shelf where his rifle was and took it down.  Peachtree was calling to him from outside.  He went back out to the porch, his rifle raised and ready. Peachtree’s eyes widened, but his face still held that smile.

“Now, Mr. Beech,” Peachtree said with practiced confidence.  “Don’t go making a mistake you’re going to regret.”

“I won’t,” said Sam.  There was a hard click as Sam pulled the hammer back.  The smile started to melt from Peachtree’s face.

“We both know you won’t shoot me, Mr. Beech,” Peachtree said.

Sam squeezed the trigger and flinched at the loud crack of the Winchester, and the hard thrust of the stock against his shoulder.  Peachtree was laying in the yard in front of his sedan with his arm raised, as if he were reaching for the cotton-shaped clouds above.  He emitted a rasping sound as he struggled for breath.  Sam stepped off the porch and stood over the man.  His shadow stretched across Peachtree’s face.  Peachtree’s eyes went from the heavens above to Sam.  His arm reached out and his hand curled like he was trying to grip some invisible rope to pull himself up.  Blood spilled from his mouth onto the folds of his chin and cracks of his thick neck.  A red stain was spreading quickly across the center of his suit.

“Looks like you misjudged me, Mr. Peachtree,” said Sam.  He worked the lever on his rifle and ejected the shell.  He bent down and picked up the spent cartridge and slipped it into his pocket.  His shadow slipped away from Peachtree’s face and the man squinted as the sun burned down upon him.  Peachtree’s arm fell to his side and his huge belly quivered, refusing to submit to the inevitable.  “Happens to all of us at some point,” said Sam.  “We think we know what the world has to offer us.  We think we see what’s coming.  But we never do, Mr. Peachtree.  We never do.”

Sam knelt over Peachtree until the man’s fat belly ceased quivering and the life faded from the man’s eyes.  A glazed accusation frozen in his dead man’s gaze.  Sam stood and walked back into the house.  He sat his rifle back on the shelf and went upstairs to his daughter’s room.  He found her buried in the blankets of her bed.  He sat on the edge of the mattress and put a hand on her shoulder.  She lay still, refusing to turn around and face him.

“It’s alright, sweetie,” he said.  “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Are we going to move again?”

“Why would we move?” he asked.  “I thought you liked it here.” 

Haley didn’t say anything.  He felt her body quiver beneath the blanket and he knew she was crying.

“Don’t you like it here?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. 

“Why do you think we’re going to move?”

“We did last time,” she said.

“That was different, sweetie,” said Sam.  “We’re not moving anywhere this time.  Okay?”

Haley didn’t answer, so he gave her a little shake.  “Okay?” he said again.

“Okay, daddy.”

“I have to go do a few things, okay?  I want you to stay here, in your bed, until I get back.  Will you do that for me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.  When I get back I’ll take you down to the river and we’ll watch for turtles.  Would you like that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.  I’ll be back in a little while.  Be a good girl and wait for me, okay?”

“Okay, daddy.”

Sam stood and went to the bedroom door.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

“I love you, daddy.”

“I love you too, sweetie.”

                                                            The End