Birds Arriving in Dim Light

Three of them line a branch, as bare as a bone, and pairs and ones arrive and soon the old tree flutters again with living leaves, as if it has remembered how to be a tree, as if it has come back. The birds are reddish gray in the light which is dimming down and a mist of fog is coming up the hollow and soon the top of the tree will disappear and faintly rustle and return for the night and longer to its dream. A man like Sam-Dude Medlock— dead for God knows how long now— would have pointed up the tree and said, they’s decoration, Honey, and cast an approving nod and an oath, that even an unwashed heathen like himself could see the Lord was a wonder-maker, and it was the stiff-necked Baptists, Honey, who saw the world as plain. Sam-Dude called me, Honey, and he had riddles and saws to impart— such as, a Stubblefield would tell a lie if the truth was a better story; or one, I’ve repeated for amusement— Never trust a Pemberton, Honey— which I’ve decided must be wise; he always said it gravely, as if he was sorry for the Pembertons, sorry some people can’t be trusted. But the thing Sam-Dude did was play the banjo, though the name he gave for his instrument was banjer; a word like that was decoration to my ears. Sam-Dude would play his banjer and say, let’s take it now around the world, and now let’s go another round, and then he’d sing— they was two old gals layin’ in the sand, each one wishin’ the other was a man— and that was decoration, too. When he had run through all the words he’d go around the world again and then he’d say, let’s get back home, and his fingers would scratch the banjer’s head. I heard Sam-Dude was born a mile or two outside of Soaptown, which was somewhere over that-away, but Soaptown disappeared once soap and everything went store-bought. It’s all a piece of a dream, back then, and Sam-Dude, too; he’s gone around the world, but he comes back in a way and I remember him, and he leaves a riddle in my mind. He was a wonder-maker, too. The birds are waxwings passing through. They come in spring and again in the fall; they arrive in threes and pairs and ones to line the naked branches and call the old tree back from its dream.