Stargazing

by

Jillian Grant Shoichet

THE OSTRICH DIED ON A COLD, CLEAR EVENING in late November.

It died in the barn, sometime before dinner. My youngest nephew made the important announcement from the doorway of the kitchen, with all the solemnity of a small town crier.

“Dead!”

He flapped a wet woollen mitten off his left hand. It slid across the linoleum, coming to a defeated stop at my sister’s feet as she set the tuna casserole down on the counter.

The boy tugged at the other mitt with his teeth: “Dead as a doornail.”

“Who’s dead?” asked my middle nephew from the couch, with only mild interest.

Death was no stranger to the Miller-Hansson farm. During the heat dome last spring, most of the hay crop failed. Half the calves were born sickly and didn’t make it through the summer. In mid-September, my father and Steve’s father – both residents at Sunset Lodge, the long-term care home down the road towards Valleyview – died of a respiratory illness within days of each other. The arrival of death at the Miller-Hansson door had ceased to shock. Certainly, it wasn’t worth losing a game of League. Nicholas didn’t even look up from the screen.

“The bird,” said my brother-in-law from the mudroom. “That goddamn bird is dead.”

My youngest nephew began kicking off his manure-caked boots. I moved my beer out of range.

“Dead drunk,” said the boy.

“Nope, not drunk.” Deftly, Steve scooped the child up and pulled off his hat. Curls exploded up and out. “Just dead.”

“How’d it die?” I asked.

I could practically hear my sister roll her eyes.

“I have a professional interest!”

She snorted. I definitely heard that.

“Who knows?” Steve set the boy upright on stockinged feet and tucked the boots behind the mudroom door. He draped Liam’s parka on the rack above the wood stove. Then he reached for the beer I held out to him.

He took a sip, shrugged. “Maybe the cold?”

“Daft!” said my mother from across the table, chewing thoughtfully on her tea. “That was a daft bird.”

Steve pointed at her with his beer. “Or maybe that. Takes one to know one, eh, Lorraine?”

He grinned. My mother cackled.

“Cal will be heartbroken.” My sister wiped a strand of hair from her forehead. In that moment, backlit by the fluorescent light, she was the mythical Every Mother: the Gaia of the Miller-Hansson household.

I felt a damp hand on my forearm and looked down. Liam’s expression was serious. “That daft bird was looking at the stars when it died.”

I studied him, just as seriously. “Death by stargazing? Interesting.”

SOME SAY A SMALL TOWN doesn’t offer many opportunities for young people. That may be true. But a young person doesn’t need many opportunities – just one right opportunity.

When I came home after completing a degree in basic biology, I expected to help out on the farm for the summer and then take off. Study turtles. Whales. Work in a lab in Calgary to pay for grad school. But a few weeks after Liz got married, Dad had a stroke and suddenly we were trying to figure out what to do with a hundred milk cows, five horses and four hundred forty-three acres of land.

It was not the one right opportunity I’d envisioned for myself.

Then Liz and Steve – stuffy Steve with his fancy suit and his corporate finance job – took everyone by surprise and came home. My mother and I were at the kitchen table when we heard the crunch of tires on gravel.

Within two months, Steve had traded in his Lexus for a combine harvester, his suit for a pair of Levi’s and his Oxfords for a pair of boots that even I wouldn’t wear, and I grew up on the back of a horse.

That was nearly two decades ago. Since then, he’s become less make-believe cowboy and more real-life farmer. His hair and skin are sun-bleached, his face scored with more lines of laughter than sorrow. He still does the farm’s taxes, but under that wind-weathered exterior it’s hard to find the corporate accountant who married my sister.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t miss stuffy Steve – I don’t think Liz does, either. And Liz and Steve coming home left me free to grab my one right opportunity when it came along.

I was paying property taxes at city hall when Bill Snopes, the local councillor, walked through reception.

“Kyle,” he said. “I thought you were leaving for the city.”

I shrugged. “Steve doesn’t always know the front end of a horse. So maybe I’ll wait ‘til spring.”

Bill tapped his left palm with the file folder in his right. “Your dad?”

“Still the same.”

“Helluva thing.”

We were quiet for a few moments, thinking our own thoughts. Stacey, the hall’s secretary-slash-receptionist, snapped her gum to the tinny beat of 98.7 FM, the radio station out of Valleyview.

“You majored in biology?”

I looked up.

“Large mammals?”

Nothing wrong with Bill’s memory.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was thinking I’d do grad school, but lately I wondered about being a vet. Might talk to Doc Hennessey.” Doc Hennessey had been out to the farm more times than I could remember.

“I’ve a better idea,” said Bill. “We just got part-time funding for a position, and you might fit the bill. You can stick around, help out Steve and Liz and your mom. If it suits you, maybe we can find full-time money. It’s not a bad gig. You get your own office and set your own hours most of the time.” He glanced over at Stacey. “Best part is, you don’t have to listen to anyone chewing gum or playing crap pop music. ‘Cuz they’ll be dead.”

Stacey’s mouth fell open.

That’s how I became Sunset House’s first coroner. Later that week, I moved my dad’s desk chair into the empty room at the back of the hall.

Who hires a twenty-three-year-old biology major to be a coroner? A small town without other options, that’s who. At the time, I was the youngest coroner in the region by at least thirty years. Now, at forty-two, I have the dubious distinction of being the most experienced coroner in northern Alberta.

I’m not a pathologist. I don’t do the autopsies or interpret the toxicology results. But I’m usually the first to the scene after the emergency responders, and I’m usually the one who makes initial contact with the family. The RCMP aren’t well liked in the north. Too often, unexpected visits from the RCMP go sideways, fast. Better to have a coroner who looks like the son of the farmer down the road knock on your door in the night. Better to have a farmer’s son at your kitchen table as you digest the news that your child or your partner or your parent won’t be coming home.

I’m the one who connects you with the grief counsellor, the headstone mason. I go with you to identify the body. I share the autopsy report and the investigation’s findings in the long, empty weeks that follow. I’m the one who brings you a tuna casserole or a loaf of sourdough from my sister, whose immediate reaction at the news of sudden, unexpected death is to throw herself into the task of nourishing the living.

But mostly I tell the story of those who can’t tell their own story anymore.

My first body was the week after I was hired. Usually when the newspaper says the coroner is investigating, there isn’t much to investigate. In this case, I got a call sometime after eleven o’clock, before the first snowfall of the season but after the first frost, to a dark stretch of road thirty minutes east of Sunset House.

First thing to know about northern Alberta: They’re all dark stretches of road.

A single-vehicle accident: the truck was on its roof. Enough space for first responders to reach in through the window and confirm the death of the lone occupant before they were called to another emergency. By the time I arrived, the upended truck was ringed with flares. I could see the glow from two kilometres away – like a campfire, but less animated, less cheerful. I pulled up in the battered Miller-Hansson Ford, and a lone RCMP constable nodded at me from inside his vehicle on the other side of the road. How’d he know I was official and not some looky-loo? No idea. But he didn’t bother to leave the warmth of his cruiser.

I parked and zipped up my jacket, got out of the truck. No one had told me what to expect. When I got to the driver’s side window, I flicked on my flashlight.

No mystery why the first responders were quick to call it. The driver’s side door was so buckled that the man’s head hung outside the window, six inches above the surface of the road, neck oddly twisted against the seatbelt. His still-open eyes gazed blankly at the stars. I wondered if they’d been the last thing he saw.

Blood pooled slowly on the gravel.

I’ve seen blood; I grew up on a farm. But even I had to take a steadying breath. I stepped a few feet away, switched off the flashlight and sat down. In the darkness, punctuated only by starlight and the glow of the flares, my heart slowed to its normal rhythm.

Gradually, I became aware of the other night sounds of a northern Alberta fall. The susurration of air through the dry grasses along the side of the road. The tick of a night insect. The faint, far-off scream of a rodent, victim of a fox or an owl or some other night hunter. And, as midnight came and went, the unmistakable sound of frost falling, its crystalline fingers caressing the exposed underbelly of the truck, the waterproof fabric of my jacket.

And something else: From the body trapped by the seatbelt rose a vibration that hovered in the nearly still night. I didn’t notice the cold. I didn’t notice the police cruiser start up its engine and pull away. I didn’t notice when the dawn greyed the landscape and the silently flashing lights of the ambulance leading the convoy of recovery vehicles heralded the end of my vigil. I was aware only of the story that hummed and quivered in the air above the dead man’s body.

“IT WAS BEAUTIFUL,” Steve recalled later, after Liz and my mom and the kids had gone to bed and the two of us sat in front of the fire. “In this weird, surreal, who-the-hell-has-an-ostrich kind of way.” When he and Liam opened the barn door, snow crystals had settled on the bird’s feathers, glinting briefly in the moonlight and then melting in the warm air that pulsed with the sweet and sour breath of cows.

“That goddamn beautiful daft bird. Lizzie’s right. Cal’s gonna be upset.”

The ostrich had been a gift to my eldest nephew, Calvin.

At an interprovincial youth leadership jamboree organized by his 4H Club a few summers ago, Calvin met the daughter of an ostrich farmer from eastern British Columbia. One thing led to another, and the girl sent Calvin a yearling ostrich hen for his sixteenth birthday.

It arrived on the back of a truck, travelling with a flock bound for a farm in western Saskatchewan. It came with detailed instructions for its care. Ostriches are herd animals. They need attention and companionship. Calvin would have to step up if he wanted to be a responsible ostrich owner.

Calvin was entranced – although whether by the ostrich or the girl it was hard to say.

At the time, I flipped through the accompanying literature.

I looked at my brother-in-law, who was watching Calvin and the ostrich with an unreadable expression. Dust from the ostrich truck hung in the air above the driveway.

“Hey, Steve,” I said. “Did you know that an ostrich can live seventy-five years?”

Steve lifted his hat and wiped his forehead. “I did not,” he said.

My mother christened the ostrich That Daft Bird – D.B. for short. When Liam started talking a few weeks later, the first recognizable syllables out of his mouth were “dee-bee.” From then on, That Daft Bird was Deebie.

That summer, Calvin spent every waking minute with Deebie. He talked to her as he shovelled out the barn. If he stacked hay in the loft, Deebie watched from below. When he curried the horses, Deebie mirrored the motion of his arm with her neck. One warm evening at the end of the summer, Steve and I were standing on the front porch, beers in hand, as Calvin came around the side of the barn on the Appaloosa, Deebie strutting elegantly alongside. The three of them wandered off to the west, silhouetted against the setting sun.

“It’s like the credits for a goddamn Western,” said Steve.

When Calvin and Nicholas began school in the fall, Deebie watched the school bus leave in the morning and waited at the gate for Calvin’s return in the afternoon. When the days grew cold, Steve coaxed her into the barn. But there, Deebie was inconsolable – agitated, violent. Her kick was like the kick of a full-grown horse. Steve finally cut a window in the side of the barn so Deebie could watch for the bus from the warmth of her stall.

Calvin began doing his homework in the barn so he could keep Deebie company on the long winter nights. Steve built a desk in Deebie’s stall. He duct-taped an extension cord along the barn floor from the nearest outlet so Calvin could use his laptop.

In the barn, Calvin studied for his final exams. He filled out his university applications. He prepared for the MCATs and wrote his scholarship essays with That Daft Bird by his side. We suspected, but didn’t know for sure, that Deebie was there when Elena of BC-ostrich-farm fame broke up with Cal – by text, which seems callous to me but which I am assured by Nicholas is the way these things are usually done now.

Steve was nonplussed. “They were still dating? We’ve had That Daft Bird for nearly a year!”

My sister hit him with the oven mitt. “Go talk to him,” she said.

“I’m not going to talk to him,” said Steve. “I’m not going to compete with That Daft Bird. If he wants to talk to me, he’ll come talk to me.”

“That daft bird,” my mother shook her head from where she sat at the table.

“Right?” said Steve, with a grin in her direction.

Now, as Steve and I sat in front of the fire, I mulled over Deebie’s unexpected death.

I set my empty bottle on the kitchen table. “Let’s go see her.”

“Now? It’s past nine-thirty.”

“A coroner’s always on call. What else were you planning to do?”

Steve dragged both hands over the beginnings of a coarse grey beard. “I don’t know. Go to bed so I can be up at 4:30 for a 5 o’clock milking? Figure out what to do with a dead ostrich? So sure, what the hell?”

That’s how we came to be in the barn at 10 o’clock on a cold, clear evening in late November, hunkered over the body of an ostrich. Out Deebie’s window, the undulating glow of the northern lights devoured the stars.

“What’s wrong with her neck?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at it. It’s bent all the way back. Almost to her spine.”

Steve shrugged. “Liam says she’s looking at the stars. Calvin told him whenever Deebie wanted to look at the stars, he’d take her for a walk. Liam was tickled at the idea of an ostrich that liked to watch the stars.”

“Is that normal?”

“How would I know? I’m a dairy farmer.”

“Is that ostrich care pamphlet still kicking around?”

“The one that came with her? It might be in Calvin’s room. I can look tomorrow.” He pushed himself up on his knees, which cracked loudly. “Sorry, Kyle. I gotta go to bed.”

I nodded and waved him away, listened to his boots on the crusted snow that lined the drive. Then I turned back to Deebie with her oddly arched neck. Sorrow seemed to rise from her cooling body.

I CALLED THE NEXT DAY, late in the afternoon.

“Are we expecting you for dinner?” Liz always began the conversation the same way.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll be there.”

But this time there was something hollow in the familiar exchange.

“Are you crying?”

Liz hiccupped on the other end of the line. “Steve doesn’t think we should tell him. He thinks we should wait until after exams, until he’s home for Christmas. Tell him then.”

I was silent. I couldn’t say I disagreed. Finally, I said, “What do you think?”

Now she was the silent one. Then, as if the words were ripped out of her, “I don’t know! He’s not good, Kyle. When he and Steve talk, it’s . . . it’s all crap. How the Flames are doing, which bar he went to on the weekend. But when I talk to him, something feels wrong. It’s like he’s closed. Lights off. I don’t want to tell him when I can’t be there to gauge his reaction. But I don’t want to look him in the eye and see his grief and disappointment and feel like we let him down. He trusted us, Kyle.”

“It’s an ostrich, Liz. A farm animal. Farm animals die. She’s one of – what? Twenty, thirty animals to die since January?”

Why did I protest? Maybe out of loyalty to Steve or the farm or some weather-beaten notion of Miller-Hansson honour. Maybe I didn’t want to believe that Liz was the only one of us with the guts to admit the truth. But the feeling I had last night in the barn – the nagging sense that we’d dropped the ball, that we’d all let Calvin and Deebie down – had only grown over the course of the day.

The fact was, I’d done a whack of research on stargazing. I’d even called Doc Hennessey, though she didn’t have much experience with large, flightless birds. But then I’d googled ostrich farms in Canada and called the only one listed for eastern BC. I’m pretty sure I spoke for forty minutes with Elena’s father, though I didn’t tell him I knew who he was.

I instinctively liked Viktor Dobrov, whose good-natured bellow was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. But by the end of the conversation, I was heartsick. I set the receiver down and gazed vacantly around the office. The story of the death of That Daft Bird was clear.

Now, on the line with my sister, the silence lengthened. I took a deep breath. “Look. I have a few things to tell you. It might have a bearing on how you decide to tell Cal.”

Liz sniffed.

“And you’re right. I think we let them down.”

THAT NIGHT, leftover lasagna in the fridge, the boys in bed, my mother chewing her tea across from us, I laid out the fruits of my labour on the dining room table. Half a dozen articles on animal husbandry and veterinary care of large game birds, and personal anecdotes from farmers across South Africa, New Zealand, and Canada. I summarized my conversation with Elena’s father.

“Basically, there’s two kinds of stargazing in birds. One’s the result of a deficiency in diet. A lack of thiamine.”

Liz opened her mouth. I held up a hand. “I know. Deebie’s diet hadn’t changed. And she wasn’t showing symptoms –”

Steve opened his mouth. I held up a hand.

“– for very long. Steve said Calvin would take her for a walk whenever she acted oddly, whenever she wanted to see the stars, as Liam puts it. I think Calvin knew what was going on. The second kind of stargazing is a reaction to stress or loneliness. And yes, it can be fatal. And it can happen fast.”

I recalled Viktor Dobrov’s thunderous baritone: “Yep, what you’ve got there is behavioural stargazing. You’re in northern Alberta? I’ll bet your friend doesn’t let that bird out much on account of the cold. But he’s gotta get ‘im out, gotta get ’im exercising in the fresh air. He doesn’t do that, and that bird’s neck muscles’re gonna stiffen up. It won’t be able to eat or drink – and then it’ll starve. They get like that when they’re confined, when they’re missin’ their flock. But if your friend takes ‘im out for a walk – once, twice a day – I guarantee that bird’ll be fine. It can handle a bit of cold. But it can run like a mother, so make sure that paddock’s closed.”

On the other end of the line, Dobrov laughed loudly at the image of a farmer in northern Alberta chasing an ostrich across a snow-covered prairie.

Around the table, there was a painful silence.

“That daft bird,” said my mother.

Steve pushed his chair back and left the room. We could hear him down the hall, pulling out drawers and opening cupboard doors. He came back through the kitchen, pulled on his boots and coat, let the door bang closed behind him. We could hear his footsteps on the snow.

Liz put her head down on her arms. She looked small and frail, like she did when she had to put her head down for detention in elementary school and I waited for her in the hallway. Not Gaia. More Every Child.

The door opened and Steve came in, a thin layer of snow dusting his bare head. He kicked off his boots and threw a well-thumbed pamphlet onto the table.

“It was in his desk in the barn. Page 3. Abnormal behaviours. Dammit, Liz. He told us to keep it company. How the hell am I supposed to keep an ostrich company? And all I had to do was take it for a goddamn walk?” Anguish etched his face. “That goddamn daft bird.”

My mother touched his arm. “Takes one to know one, eh, Steve?”

Steve laughed. Then he began to cry. Great wracking sobs that seemed to carry with them all the grief of that long, horrible year.

THEY DECIDED TO WAIT AFTER ALL, tell Cal at the end of term, when we could be together around the kitchen table.

Second thing to know about northern Alberta: things happen around the kitchen table.

It was long after dark when the truck pulled in the drive. Despite our coaching, Liam ran forward as soon as the passenger door opened. Calvin picked him up and Liam cupped his cheeks in his small hands and said solemnly, “She’s dead, Cal. Deebie is dead.”

In the silence, we all heard Cal say, “I know, Liam. It’s okay.”

When Calvin went out to the barn after dinner, Liz turned on Steve.

“I didn’t tell him, Liz. That whole drive from the airport, neither of us mentioned That Daft Bird. He must’ve known before he got on the plane in Toronto.”

“Well for God’s sake, who told him?” She looked accusingly at me.

I held up my hands. “Don’t look at me. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past twenty years, it’s to never miss an opportunity to not tell someone that someone else is dead.”

“Nicholas?”

“Nope,” Nicholas didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “Wasn’t me. Mother fucker.”

“Nicholas!”

“The controller’s glitching! I didn’t call you a mother fucker, Mom.”

“Nicholas!”

Steve leaned over and pulled the plug from the wall. The screen went dark.

Nicholas opened his mouth, but a look from Steve sent him slinking down the hallway to his room.

“Maybe I should go talk to him,” said Liz. “I texted, but he hasn’t answered.”

“Leave it,” said Steve. “He needs to process things in his own way.”

My sister looked torn. “There’s something off about him, Steve. Did he say anything to you on the drive home?”

“Sure, he said lots. He talked about his classes, final exams, the girl he met at a Hallowe’en party.”

“That’s it?”

Steve threw up his hands. “It was a four-and-a-half-hour drive, Liz! Most of it was in the dark! He listened to music. I watched for moose. I brought him home, Liz. What more do you want?” He left the room. We heard the bedroom door slam.

Liz looked at me.

“I’ll talk to him.”

Thank you, she mouthed. Then hesitated. “Cal, not Steve.”

“Oh, I know. Steve’s all yours.”

She rolled her eyes.

The night was clear. The clouds had moved east. When I pulled open the barn door, a lip of snow fell from the jamb onto my neck. I shivered.

“Cal?”

The barn was quiet except for the steady thrum of the cows’ breath. I looked over at Deebie’s stall, but it was empty, the straw clean and fresh.

In the far corner, the desk lamp was on.

“Calvin?” I called up towards the loft.

No answer. I walked slowly down the centre aisle, the familiar scent of milk and manure and cud dulling the faint disquiet in my chest.

No sign of Cal. I walked back up the aisle to Deebie’s stall. I ducked my head under the wooden beam. On the pockmarked surface of the desk was a single sheet of paper.

Shit.

In Calvin’s handwriting were the words Gone to watch the stars.

I crumpled the paper in my hand.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I pushed the barn door open.

“Calvin!” I shouted. “Calvin!”

In the starlight, the tracks that he hadn’t bothered to cover and that I hadn’t bothered to look for were plain to see. They led through deep snow to a clearing behind the east paddock, where Steve had chopped a hole in the frozen ground with a pickaxe, a hole large enough for an ostrich. He’d marked the spot with an iron stake.

As I waded through the drifts, I ran the numbers. Minus twenty degrees Celsius (outside temperature). Ninety-eight point six Fahrenheit (average temperature of the human body). Three hundred seconds (time for the human body to show signs of hypothermia).Thirty minutes (death by exposure in moderately severe winter weather).

I knew I was too late. Cal had left the house ages ago.

Plenty of time to fall asleep in the snow. Plenty of time to stargaze oneself to death.

I’d seen it before.

I stumbled over his too-still body too soon. His blank eyes were open, reflecting the light of the sky.

“HEY, UNCLE KYLE,” he said.

“Goddammit, Cal. I thought you were dead.” I flopped down beside him, breathing heavily.

He raised himself up on an elbow. “Why would you think I was dead? I left a note.”

I turned over and punched him on the arm. “Because you left a note, you dope. I thought you were dead because you left a note.”

Cal leaned back in the snow. “Jesus, Uncle Kyle. You’ve been attending too many suicides.”

I said nothing. He was right. I lay on my back in the snow, feeling my heart slow, watching the slow parade of constellations across the infinite sky.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “We’re all sorry. We should’ve paid more attention.”

Cal took a deep breath. “It’s all right. I knew I wouldn’t see her again. Like I knew I wouldn’t see Gramps and Grampa Joe. Dad can run a farm, but he’s not much of a nurturer. And Mom’s always been better with people than animals.”

I realized this was true.

Cal sighed. “What a shitty year.”

I couldn’t disagree.

“How’d you find out? We couldn’t understand how you knew already.”

Cal’s grin was wry and brief. “Gran told me. I asked her to call me if Deebie died. I showed her how to use the one-button call feature on Mom’s phone. I told her to leave a message if I didn’t answer.”

I couldn’t imagine my mother using a cell phone, let alone leaving a voice mail message.

Cal seemed to read my thoughts. “I told her to pretend she was having a conversation with me. Here,” he took off a glove and dug his hand into the pocket of his parka, pulled out his cell. “I saved it.”

He hit a few buttons and passed the phone to me.

I held it up to my ear, aware that my cheek was beginning to freeze.

“Cal? Cal?” My mother’s voice seemed faraway and uncertain.

And then she said, more forcefully, “Hey, Gran, what’s up?”

I was momentarily confused. Then I understood that my mother, bless her, had taken Cal’s instructions to heart. This was my mother, pretending to have a conversation with her grandson, on his voicemail.

“Hey, Gran, what’s up?”

“That Daft Bird is gone, Cal. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, Gran. We knew it was going to happen, didn’t we? We talked about it. We knew it would happen when we said good-bye in September.”

“We did, Cal. And now, it has happened. That Daft Bird is gone.”

“Which Daft Bird, Gran?”

“Both of them, Cal,” my mother said sadly. “Both daft birds are gone. It takes one to know one, Cal.”

There was a long silence, and then the line went dead. Alexa gave me the option to delete or save. I passed the phone back to Cal.

Cal carefully re-saved the message and slid the phone back into his pocket. “I don’t know why I keep saving it,” he said.

“I do,” I said.

We lay for a few more seconds, stargazing.

“I’m cold,” said Cal.

“Me too. Let’s go in. Not much to see out here, anyway.”

He stood up in one fluid motion and held out his hand. I took it. In that moment, backlit against a night sea of stars, he was the man, and I the child.