by Merrell Palmer

Created on: April 18, 2008

Hearts Unhooked

The cardboard sign nailed to the telephone pole simply read Lost Bird- Reward available, see Leonard Stevens.' The interesting details had been left out. Like the fact that the bird named Oliver was a 20-year-old African Grey Parrot, fluent in female lingo and sang the chorus to No More the Moon Shines on Lorena.'

In comparison, old man Stevens was quiet drab. A fisherman by trade, he preferred the coarseness of nature to genteel chatter, and limited his social interactions to infrequent trips into town for supplies. Although appropriately polite, his vocabulary consisted of little more than a few indistinguishable grunts and the occasional shrug of his rounded shoulders. There were those in the little panhandle city who whispered that the bird embodied the spirited personality of its original owner. Few in Live Oak mentioned Lucille Stevens by name, and never in the presence of Leonard.

There had been talk two years before about a rift between the young woman and her father. Lucille Stevens had not been seen in Suwannee County since.
Rumor had it that she went to Paris in search of herself on the lighted runways. Speculation also placed her on the plains of North Dakota. But smart money lay in the notion that she had fled to New York on the arm of the young man her father disliked. While Lucille's absence caused a momentary stir in the sleepy community, it left a hole in Leonard's heart that could not be filled, not even by a singing bird. Lord knows though Oliver came close.

Oliver had arrived as a gift on Lucille's eighth birthday, exactly a year after her mother died. From then on it had been just the three of them in the ram-shackled house nestled in the marshes of the Suwannee River. Oliver took to the young girl like ivy twines, and dividends on his interest were compounded in return. The bird's chatter and the child's laughter became one.

In those happy days the setting sun usually found the weathered fisherman, pole over his shoulder and bucket in hand, trudging up the worn path from the swamps behind the house to the unscreened wrap-around-porch where Lucille and Oliver waited with a warm plate and a cold beverage. The floors may have been bare and the painted planks chipped and fading, but to Leonard the old cottage held everything he called home.
After Lucille left, the old man and the bird struggled in a life without her. Of course the years had cemented a bond between them, (Leonard felt forever indebted to the feathered friend for

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>