Free A Bird On Water Street by Elizabeth O. Dulemba Page A

with a lot less celebration than normal. The town put up twinkle lights, but with the miners still on strike, everybody was hurtin’. The storefronts didn’t have anything new in the windows and holiday spirits were low.
    “I know,” I replied, although I ached for that BMX dirt bike that would have been mine if things were different. I tried my best not to be bitter about it, but our minister, Father Huckabay, would have had a field day if he could peek inside my head. I knew I was luckier than most and tried to count my blessings. Really, I did.
    We passed Crazy Coote on the way out of town. He looked right at me like he could read my mind. I shrank into my seat, feeling guilty for wantin’ anything at all.
    As we followed the Tohachee River northeast over the mountains, the scenery changed from our paper-bag landscape to something very different. Pastures came into view full of wooly cows nibbling on weeds and brown grass. Most of the trees had dropped their leaves, and skeletal trees stretched their branches up to the pale gray sky. Even without their leaves, they were beautiful, like living sculptures.
    “What do you suppose trees do all winter?” I asked Mom. “Do they sleep?”
    “Not really. They concentrate all their growing underground when it’s too cold above.”
    They looked to be hibernating. But not all the trees were bare. Small evergreens grew along the pasture fences. “What kind of trees are those green ones there?”
    “Those are spruce trees,” she said. “The birds eat the seeds, land on the fences, and well, they poop. It’s fertilizer and a seed in one. So, that’s where the trees grow.”
    “Then they’re bird-crap trees?” I said and quickly covered my mouth.
    “Jack!” She glared at me but then turned away. I could see her grin in the window’s reflection.
    “We gonna have a Christmas tree this year at least?” I begged.
    “No, Jack, that’s wasted money,” she said with the frown again. “I’m sorry, but I need you to be mature about this for me, okay? Just this year, please?”
    Being poor sucked. Still, I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about bird-crap trees. If we could just get birds to fly over Coppertown, maybe they’d help make trees. I’d take bird-crap trees over no trees at all.
    O
    Dad showed up a week before Christmas with a tree tied to the roof of his car anyway. Puffed up like a rooster, with an axe in his hand, he planted it on the ground next to him with a proud “Ta-da!”
    He looked like Paul Bunyan in his denim and plaid flannel top. Mom snickered, “Oh, Ray, what have you done?”
    It was a bird-crap tree. My dad brought home a bird-crap tree for Christmas. Well, don’t that just beat all .
    We set it up inside anyhow and tried to decorate it, but the branches were too floppy to hold any ornaments. So, we threw tinsel over it and called it done.
    As we stood staring at it, Mom covered her mouth and tried not to laugh. It was contagious. I squeezed my lips tight to keep from busting up.
    Finally Dad said, “Well ain’t that the saddest lookin’ Christmas tree yu’uns ever seen?”
    That was all it took. We laughed until tears ran down our faces.
    I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d heard my parents make that sound.
    O
    I couldn’t imagine not giving my family something for Christmas, but I didn’t have any money since Mom cut my allowance. I looked around my bedroom hoping for an idea. And there it was in the bottom drawer of my desk.
    I pulled out my old sketch pad and some colored pencils. I hadn’t used them since I was a kid, but I didn’t have anything else. So I drew a landscape of Coppertown for Dad. I used up half my yellow and orange trying to get the land to look just right. For Mom, I drew a bird. It had to be a sparrow, like in the tune she always sang. I looked it up in a book I’d checked out from the school library and was surprised at the picture. The bird was small, brown, and gray, nothing special to look