Nightflower Candor

Marilu swung a weighted rope at the branch and missed. She tried again and again until the line sailed over the branch and she could hoist up a blue birdhouse. Securing it and testing its sturdiness three times, she was satisfied, and moved on to another part of the golf course.

            Her little wagon full of colorful birdhouses rattled behind her. She pulled the weight and searched for another perfect tree.

            She hung a yellow birdhouse and a red one. Purple and green and orange. Soon only the unpainted birdhouse remained in the wagon, alone, rattling away. This one deserved the tallest branch on the seventh hole, par four, and she would never stop looking until she found it. Seven birdhouses altogether but this one was the most precious, most deserving.

            When she did find it, it felt less important than she had imagined. The world didn’t seem to care in the same way she did. She just wanted to share the burden but everyone else looked away or at their phones. She smiled widely but also cried an unbound and silent cry.

            “Your father won’t be happy,” a groundskeeper said.

            “He never is,” she replied and carried on about her business.

            She entered the clubhouse’s storage room and soon emerged with her wagon now full of birdfeeders. She headed out again toward the seventh hole. Her smile was still there but not as wide. You would have to look closely to find it.

            A cart of seasoned golfers slowed down beside her but she ignored them. The men waited for her to acknowledge their presence but quickly learned she was as stubborn as her father, the owner of this prestigious course. A retired golfer.

            “Your father won’t be happy,” they all said in unison like machines.

            “He never is,” she replied, never looking over, and wheeled her wagon onto the cherished seventh hole. The golfers cursed and drove on. Her smile was gone.

            Marilu swung weighted lines over more branches and hung birdfeeders much the same as she did with the birdhouses but more skilled. She was improving.

            She could see curious birds investigating some of the houses. Loaded feeders would only bring more and soon a paradise would spring from the very ground beneath her shoes. A beauty to make even the coldest of hearts warm. Maybe even bring back the dead, but intentions were only ever a starting point. She would discover the truth but that takes time.

            She wheeled the wagon back to the clubhouse. More hard gazes by passing golfers. More comments about her father’s glaring lack of happiness. More and more groundskeepers singing the same old tune. This tired declaration.

            “Your father won’t be happy!” the whole world said.

            “He never is,” she said and disappeared back into the storage room. Contraptions of all kinds were jammed into the corners of each shadow. Giants of invention and the means to bend nature. She loaded a series of stemmed bowls in the wagon upside down and filled a bucket of water with a nearby hose. Carrying the bucket in one hand and pulling the wagon in the other, she was off to the seventh hole where a third avian feature would be installed.

            Birds flew overhead in wild patterns and chirped with great soul. The closer she got to the seventh hole, the louder the harmony of songbirds. She stopped twice to relax her arms and fell witness to the steady invasion of birds into a paradise. The seventh hole was a dream and the disruption of golf was simply a bonus.

            The feeders caused mini frenzies of appetite that seemed like chaos at first but could later be seen as cooperation and love. Small birds knocked seeds onto the ground for the larger ones and they all took turns digesting. Golfers drove their carts near the feeders to briefly scare birds away but only to return moments later and in greater number.

            The seventh hole was for birds now.

            “My father won’t be happy!” she yelled and laughed. She placed the bird baths all about and filled them with water from the bucket. Birds drank and splashed but something else held her attention. The unpainted birdhouse was oddly void of all life despite the mania. A maintenance cart pulled up underneath it and cut the rope with a small hatchet. Down smashed the birdhouse. Unpainted and now broken.

            Marilu abandoned the wagon and marched to the groundskeeper with an ancient fury reborn and surging from such a young girl. She wanted to yell and shout but her feelings of sadness for the death of a birdhouse smothered her anger in the fairway.

            “Why?” she said, was all she could say.

            “Your father—”

            “He said to destroy them?”

            “Worse.”

            “Do you know why there are seven birdhouses?”

            “No.”

            “Our grandmother bought one for each of us.”

            “Oh.”

            “Do you know why this one is unpainted?”

            “We all miss her very much.”

            “Did you know my father is responsible?”

            “I heard—”

            “He’s responsible for everything, don’t you see?”

            “Miss?”

            “Birds were her favorite. She was so excited to paint it…”

            Commotion on the fairway. A crowd gathered heavy under a thick silence. Marilu stepped toward the spectacle and the groundskeeper was happy to escape her wrath and fled in his cart. She nudged through people to arrive at the center of the moment, the reason for the crowd.

            A golf ball. A dead bird.

            A sadness fell upon the earth like a storm. No one was spared. The eyes of the dead were still open and staring into an old, familiar blackness. Marilu cradled the bird in her arms and searched for meaning while the crowd dispersed. She struggled with reason so she searched for her father instead.

            Golfers played through.