One of the pickups was already on its way up the road, presumably to follow. The guys in it looked at me kind of funny as they drove by, but I ignored them. Down by the pond the cage was being pulled back, six more dogs were being taken out of the trucks, and a man held a squirming gunnysack at arm’s length.
Another coon.
They put him into the cage and I should have left, since I was expected somewhere. But there was something interesting, or I guess fascinating is the word, about the whole business, and I had to see more. I drove a hundred yards up the road and stopped by the edge of the woods.
I got out of the truck.
The brush by the roadside was thick, but after I got into the woods things opened up a little. It was mostly oak, gum, and hickory. I made my way down the slope toward the pond, walking quietly so I could listen. I could tell by the barking when the dogs hit the water. I could tell when the cage stopped, and when it started up again. It was all in the dogs’ voices. Through them, I could almost feel the coon’s terror when the cage stopped and his foolish arrogance when it started moving again.
Halfway down the hill I stopped in a little clearing at the foot of a big hollow beech. All around me were thick bushes, tangles of fallen limbs, and brush. The barking got louder and wilder and I knew the cage was reaching the cable’s end. There was a howl of rage, and I knew the coon was in the woods. I stood perfectly still. Soon I heard a sharp slithering sound and, without a warning, without stirring a leaf, the coon ran out of the bushes and straight at me. I was too startled to move. He ran almost right across my feet—a black and white blur—and was gone up the hill, into the bushes again. For a second I almost felt sorry for the dogs: how could they ever hope to catch such a creature?
Then I heard the dogs again. Pitiless is the word for them. If they had looked all jaws in the water, they sounded all claws and slobber in the woods. Their barking got louder and wilder as they got closer, at least six of them, hot on the coon’s trail. Then I heard a crashing in the brush down the hill. Then I saw the bushes shaking, like a storm coming up low to the ground. Then I heard the rattle of claws on dry leaves, getting closer and closer. Then I saw a yellow blur as the dogs bolted from the bushes and across the clearing straight at me. I stepped back in horror.
That’s when I realized, or I guess remembered is the word, that I had my coon suit on.
GEORGE
GEORGE
The summer before George was born, Katie and I lived in a house on a high hill. The hill sloped up gently on three sides, covered with thick grass kept short by the wind; but in the back, behind the house, it fell off sharply, down a high, rocky cliff, to the sea. The house was right at the top, about thirty yards from the edge of the cliff, and all we could see of the ocean from there was its top edge, where it tilted up against the sky. The cliff was so high and the wind from the sea was so noisy that usually we couldn’t hear the surf, even from the edge of the cliff. I would go there sometimes and peer down; there was no sound except the wind; and the surf moved in and out like great wings, beating against the wind and rock that pinned them down.
On the other side of the house, at the bottom of the hill, there was a highway, and the house was turned inland toward it, away from the wind. Often Katie and I would sit here, on the porch steps, and watch the cars passing and the gulls riding over on the wind. It was nicest in the evening right before dark. Sometimes, just as the sun went down, the wind would quit all of a sudden; the gulls would catch and tremble in the air and wait; Katie and I would almost hold our breaths; and then, finally, the noise of the sea would come in, low, to fill the air.
It was at such a time that the baby first moved—the quickening, they call it. The noise of the surf was just breaking in on the quiet; the wings of the gulls began to stir, ever so slightly; Katie started, caught herself, and then turned to me. She said that the baby had moved—just a quick flutter, like a tiny bird beating against her womb.
Then the summer was gone, and it was too cold for the house on the hill. We moved to a small town about thirty miles inland where I got a job and we settled down to wait. Katie had never made friends easily before, but now she had something in common with all of the ladies in the neighborhood; we were heaped with baby clothes, good wishes, and advice. The minister called on us several times and we joined the church. We were sure that the baby would be a boy; we decided to call him George.
Finally, in December, the time came. I couldn’t stay in Katie’s room at the hospital, so I sat out in the waiting room. It was a nice waiting room, with new leather chairs and lots of ashtrays and a gaily colored picture on the wall of bathers at Donaldson Beach.
In the picture, it was summer again. The surf was gentle, and it must have been warm, for there were children playing in it. Their mothers were gathered in little groups up on the beach, talking and sunbathing. Far off in the distance you could see the cliffs where the high land broke out into the sea, where we had lived during the summer.
Here, though, in the picture, the land sloped down gently, and the beach was broad and even and covered with people.
I studied the picture for hours: everyone was having a great time at the beach. I began to enjoy myself too. The nurse came in every so often and interrupted me, telling me that it would only be another three hours, or two, and that the pains were coming at such and such intervals. I hoped that it wasn’t hurting Katie too much, but the nurse said she was doing very well. The pains, she told me, were sort of like waves—it was only a matter of relaxing and rolling with them. After that, I began to see the pains as waves, each one bigger than the last. Where was Katie, though? I searched the beach, trying to complete this curious image. My son was in the water, struggling to reach the shore—or struggling against it? Or were the waves of pain the child himself, beating against his mother like the sea against the earth, like the mile-long wings of surf against the rock and air. I began to get seasick. The whole room was rocking and swaying. Then suddenly it stopped, and the nurse came in to congratulate me.
I was the father of a boy, she said—George. He was perfectly healthy, and he weighed eleven pounds four ounces. Most of the weight was in his wings. “Yes,” she said, “he has wings! But he’s beautiful!”
Katie was back in her room, exhausted but still awake, when I ran in. “Oh yes!” she said. “He has little white wings, like an angel. When they held him up, he looked like an angel!”
I was surprised at this, and the doctor was too. “I’ve examined the boy,” he said, “and he’s strong and healthy. His arms and legs are perfectly formed—but these wings are very strange. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Fathers aren’t usually allowed in the nursery, but the doctor decided that this was a special case, so he took me with him. There was only one other baby in the nursery, and it was crying. George was very still. He was lying on his stomach, and the first thing I saw were his wings, folded carefully along his back. They weren’t very big, but they were very bright. When we shut the door they trembled.
When the word got around, the whole town was in an uproar. Everybody congratulated Katie and me and had a look at George. Reporters and doctors came from all over, and we were famous for a little while. The doctor wrote a report for a medical journal, and I got two weeks off from work. We all answered a lot of questions, but there wasn’t really very much that anyone could say. There weren’t any explanations or theories, it was just a curious fact; George had wings.
So things quieted down pretty quickly, especially after I took Katie and George home. A baby was born soon afterward in Kansas which could whistle—no tunes or anything; it just whistled instead of crying. This became the big story, and we were quickly forgotten. A few more reporters and doctors came by; I told them I would call when George learned to fly.
As might be expected, we had a few peculiar problems. One was with the down: after George had been home for a few days and had shed whatever coating had protected him in the womb, small bits of down began to come off his wings. We were afraid that he might choke on them at night, so Katie began brushing his wings with her hands after each feeding so that they wouldn’t shed in his crib. It was also difficult to bathe him, because once his wings were wet it took them hours to dry. Soon, however, both these problems were solved as his wings became coated with a kind of oil. We kept them brushed and smoothed, and they became bright and water-repellent. We were also afraid of fire, so I reluctantly pulled one of his feathers and tried to light it. It didn’t burn. His big problem was sleeping. At first we were afraid to lay him on his back for fear that he might injure his wings. He grew tired of sleeping on his stomach, though, and we found that his wings were very tough. He began to prefer sleeping on his back with his wings folded under him like a pillow; I believe he could have slept on a stone floor. Perhaps this was what the wings were for; he never unfolded them, but kept them tight against his back as if they warmed and comforted him.
The doctor told me one afternoon, in the most matter-of-fact way, that he wanted to cut off George’s wings. He thought that in a few months George would be strong enough for the operation. I was shocked; I had never even thought of it. The doctor said, “Of course! We can’t leave them on—the boy would be a freak. We must wait, however, until he is a little older before operating.”
I began to look at my son with a more critical eye. He did look strange, unusual—but what father’s first child doesn’t? As for the wings, he seemed perfectly at home with them. They trembled slightly with pleasure, as toes curl up, when he was at his mother’s breast; but otherwise, they just remained folded at his back, as though for decoration only. I tried to visualize how he would look without his shining wings: with nothing between his arms and his behind except a naked, fatty back.
I was reluctant to tell Katie about the doctor’s proposal. I knew that she would be against it for the same reason that I was—we both liked George just as he was. But on the other hand, his whole future was at stake; we couldn’t get emotional about it. So I decided to talk to the doctor again. “Doctor,” I said, “I like the boy just as he is.”
“Of course,” said the doctor, “but you must think of his future—of the way he will be. Right now he’s just a baby; the wings are small and unobtrusive. But consider: if the wings are functional—as I’m sure they are—they will become much larger in proportion to his body. He will no longer look like a cherub, but like a bird; he will be a freak.
“He won’t be a baby all his life,” the doctor continued. “He will grow up, and what then? He won’t be able to run or jump, dragging those ponderous wings like an albatross. He’ll barely be able to walk. He won’t be able to swim or take part in any sports; he’ll hardly even be able to sit down. I tell you, we must cut off those wings!”