Free Gentlehands by M. E. Kerr Page A

white wings were spread but seemed unmoving, and they soared and dipped and glided in the wind, beautiful! ”
    “And then?” Skye said.
    “And then the next day I came up the hill, after being in the city for many hours, and I smelled something very familiar that I didn’t want to believe was the odor, the stench of something burnt-out. But it was. Her house had burned, and she hadn’t been able to escape.”
    “Oh no,” Skye said.
    “I stayed there for a long while. A month? Two? Maybe more, living in a part of the house that had survived, continuing to feed our birds. I never saw the large white ones again.”
    I was thankful Skye was with me when my grandfather told that story, because I was never good at listening to anything like that. I was never able to think of anything to say. I just kept drinking the wine and letting them talk, half hearingwhat they were saying after a while. My grandfather was telling her about some famous psychiatrist named Carl Jung who believed there was an intelligence beyond individual intellect, what our American Indians called “deep-knowing.” My grandfather said he believed it was how animals and birds perceived life, and he talked again of the great white birds, and the woman’s death, and the relation of the two things.
    I remember Skye trying to wake me up and get me on my feet. I remember my protesting that I couldn’t go home; I’d had too much of the wine. I couldn’t face my father drunk, on top of everything else, and it was nearly midnight, he’d be just coming off his shift.
    Very vaguely, I remember her leaving and assuring my grandfather she could drive perfectly well by herself, she often did. Then almost as though it was part of a dream, I heard my grandfather speaking on the telephone to my mother, calling her Ingeborg, telling her that I’d come for a visit, and something had disagreed with me so I’d better stay the night.
    “Just something he ate,” I heard him say. “He’ll be fine tomorrow.”
    I felt him cover me, and put a pillow under my head.

10
    MY GRANDFATHER WOKE ME AT QUARTER TO SIX THE next morning. I was due at Sweet Mouth in an hour and forty-five minutes. I’d slept in my clothes, including my new cashmere sweater. My grandfather lent me one of his shirts, and I took a shower while he made us bacon and eggs and squeezed fresh oranges. He was talking on the telephone to someone named Verner when I came out of the bathroom. I heard him say his grandson was visiting him. He really sounded pleased.
    We had breakfast and watched the sun come up, sitting on his screened-in patio, overlooking the ocean. He was playing an opera called Louise .
    “It’s worth getting up early to see such a beautiful sight,” he said as he watched the sunrise. He was wearing white silk pajamas and a black silk robe.
    I began gulping down the orange juice.
    “Thirsty from last night’s wine?” he said.
    Not only that, I had a headache, but I pretended that wasn’t it at all and said, “I just never have fresh orange juice. My mother buys Minute Maid.”
    “Why don’t you squeeze the oranges yourself? It tastes better, doesn’t it?”
    “I don’t think we even own an orange-juice squeezer,” I complained.
    “You can buy one for under a dollar,” he said.
    “Maybe I will.”
    He poured me another glass from the pitcher on the table and we ate in silence for a while, watching the sun ease up into the blue beginnings of an early-morning sky.
    “Beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Beauty can pierce you like a pain.”
    I was more interested in something else that was liable to pierce me, like my father’s fist.
    “Was my mother mad?”
    “I think she was shocked to know that you were here.”
    I groaned and chewed my bacon.
    “Why didn’t you tell her about coming here the last time?”
    “I just didn’t.”
    “Were you afraid to tell her, Buddy?”
    “I’ve been in the doghouse since I met Skye. This wouldn’t help.”
    “I see.” He poured