Every Living Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

never told anyone else about her, never pointed her outto visitors, for he feared that someone might frighten her or touch her eggs or steal her nest. He had learned that she would not leave her nest to protect herself.
    Sitting with her, day after day, was like waiting for a baby to be born, as it had been for Mr. and Mrs. Willis when they were young and expecting their child. It had been quiet then, too, the waiting. The world had slowed down for them, and the days had been long and full of conversation. And finally their baby boy, Tom, had come.
    Mr. Willis remembered this, sitting with the robin, and it gave him a feeling of great peace. He was sorry he and his wife had had only one child.
    All three of the robin’s eggs hatched sometime on a Thursday morning. Mr. Willis went to check on the nest after fixing his wife’s breakfast, and he discovered the robin missing and three skinny, squawking babies.
    â€œWell!” he said to them. “I’m a daddy!” He stood beside the nest, beaming.
    In the days that followed, the mother robin was away from the nest most of the time, hunting for food. Mr. Willis wished he could make it easier for her—and he tried leaving popcornand bread on the porch—but she was a particular mother and seemed to want only baby food he could not supply.
    So he just sat with her babies, commending them on their fine growing bodies and scolding them for their constantly gaping mouths.
    He sat in his chair and watched the birds and laughed out loud.
    Mrs. Willis stood at the door once, watching her husband and his birds. She was surprised they had actually hatched, and she congratulated him.
    â€œYou have always done well with your planting, dear,” she said. “Your Swedish ivy must have been good for them.”
    Then she went back to bed.
    Mr. Willis had thought the birds would probably fly away from the nest one by one, as children do.
    But one day, they were all gone, the mother and the children, and they did not come back.
    It is probably best, thought Mr. Willis. Best they go all at once, with no long leave-takings and teary good-byes again and again.
    But he did not miss them any the less, just because they had all flown in one morning. Theempty nest stayed in the ivy until the winter, when he was sure they wouldn’t be back.
    He brought his chair and his ivy inside for the season, removing the nest and putting it on top of his dresser.
    Mr. Willis would look after his wife all winter. Then, come spring, he would put the nest, ready-made, in one of his apple trees.
    He was a man who enjoyed planting things.

A Bad Road for Cats
    â€œLouie! Louis! Where are you?”
    The woman called it out again and again as she walked along Route 6. A bad road for cats. She prayed he hadn’t wandered this far. But it had been nearly two weeks, and still Louis hadn’t come home.
    She stopped at a Shell station, striding up to the young man at the register. Her eyes snapped black and fiery as she spit the question at him:
    â€œHave you seen a cat?” The word cat came out hard as a rock.
    The young man straightened up.
    â€œNo, ma’am. No cats around here. Somebody dropped a mutt off a couple nights ago, but a Mack truck got it yesterday about noon. Dog didn’t have a chance.”
    The woman’s eyes pinched his.
    â€œI lost my cat. Orange and white. If you see him, you be more careful of him than that dog. This is a bad road for cats.”
    She marched toward the door.
    â€œI’ll be back,” she said, like a threat, and the young man straightened up again as she went out.
    â€œLouie! Louis! Where are you?”
    She was a very tall woman, and skinny. Her black hair was long and shiny, like an Indian’s. She might have been a Cherokee making her way alongside a river, alert and watchful. Tracking.
    But Route 6 was no river. It was a truckers’ road, lined with gas stations, motels, dairy bars, diners. A nasty road,