House of Wings Read Online Free PDF Page B

me?” His voice had a strange sound. He clutched his rocks tighter again. “You can’t make me go if I don’t want to. Nobody can make me do anything!”
    His grandfather kept looking at Sammy, but his face got softer. He lifted his shoulders a little and then turned away. He said, “Well, if you ain’t going, then come on and help me with this crane.”
    Sammy hesitated. The desire to show his grandfather that he would go was strong, but the walk to Detroit seemed long and lonely. He was tired. The anger began to go out of him, not quickly, as it had his grandfather, but slowly, jerkily, bit by bit.
    His grandfather was moving toward the crane as if he had already forgotten the trouble with Sammy. Sammy said to his back, “I didn’t say I wasn’t going.” His grandfather did not answer and Sammy said, “It would serve you right if I did go. It would serve you right if I got lost and the police came.” He said this in a lower tone of voice, mumbling the words, winding down. “Then you’d have some explaining to do.”
    “Hush up.”
    “Well, you would.” He hesitated, then to add weight to what he had said, he added, “A boy I know got lost that way and they blamed it on the grandfather. They would even have put the grandfather in jail if the boy had wanted them to.” The thought of his grandfather being led away to jail, the thought of saying generously, “Oh, let him go free,” was comforting to Sammy.
    “Hush up.”
    “It’s true.”
    “Hush. It ain’t.”
    “Well, it could be.”
    “If you’re staying, hush.” His grandfather smoothed his long, ragged mustache and turned away.
    Sammy had the feeling that there was nothing he could say now that would get any reaction other than that absent-minded “Hush.” He hesitated, then left the tree and started walking along behind his grandfather, shadow-like. As he walked, he put his fighting rocks back into his pockets.
    The crane began preening his feathers again and then he stopped and lifted his head. There was blood on his breast, and Sammy said, “It looks like he’s bleeding. See, right there.” He pointed with one dirty finger to the line of stained feathers.
    “He flew into something probably. It’s unusual to see a crane around here, so something must have happened, something went wrong.”
    “What do you think?”
    “Well, he could have been on his way north, to Michigan maybe, migrating, and got blown off course. We’ve had some bad storms this spring, one right after another. Then he could have got crippled flying into something and here he is.” He shook his head. “I expect there’s lots of birds that get lost migrating. Thirty sets out and only twenty-eight makes it.”
    The crane twisted his long neck around as they moved closer. Sammy’s grandfather began to rub his hands together anxiously. He said, “I never caught a bird before in my life, not any kind of bird. I’ve had birds living with me the best part of my life, but I never went out and caught one.”
    “How did you get them though?”
    “Did you see that owl in my house?”
    “In your house back there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No, I didn’t see any owl. He was flying in my mom’s room though. She couldn’t get to sleep because he was—”
    “Well, I found that owl in my stove one morning.”
    “In your stove?” Sammy paused. “I never heard of any owl getting in a stove.”
    “Yes, in my stove. The owl got in the stove pipe one night. The pipe was busted on top, and the owl probably fell out of the oak tree and just landed in the pipe and then tumbled on down into my stove. It was just a baby. Anyway, I was sitting there one night and I heard a plop. I didn’t pay much attention to it, because I didn’t hear anything more, just that one plop. It stayed in my mind though and the next morning I opened up my stove and there was the owl. He was covered with ashes, and I tell you he just looked as disgusted as anything. He looked like a mad old woman. Well,