Short Story 78 THE Macaw BIRD Greg Perreault twas Thanksgiving morn- ing and the sweet smell of cranberry mutbread and stuffing tickled my nose 2s T watched the Broadway artists and marching bands parade down Main Street. Broad brass horns droned past the sereen in front of a giant Garfield balloon just 2s my sister dashed inside breathlessly and announced like a Roman herald that a ‘macaw bite had landed in the neighbor's oak tree. 1 knew it was a lie and I said so. You cant hope for things like that in a world of pleasant early evening sitcoms which ease disastrous family dinners. “Why donit you go look anyway?” Momma suggest- cd as she whisked away ata bowl of warm creamed Te coulda hart, could iT followed my sister out the door and across the empty lot where my friends and I used to play baseball in the summer, pretending to be Nolan Ryan and Don Mattingly as we ran across che spray=painced bases, But no one played baseball there now and all that was left were sticker butts that lodged on the skin of your leg and held on for dear life. Today, dew covered the tall grass and the fallen raindrops seeped through my socks as I hurried across the field to the tree chat stood alone like a bburning bush in the baseball lot I stepped over the thick, deep roots and craned my neck around the branches spread in wide, open arms, hoping for just a single flutter of tropical blue and yellow feathers. My eyes searched through a forest of green leaves as I circled che tee like a vulture. “De you see it” my’ sister called from the front porch. “No! I shouted back. She skipped through the ral grass, her ponytail wav- {ng back and forth like a metronome, and leapt up on the root next co me. Her smal finger poinced up che branches to a patch of yellow. “Up there” she said. Her tck-tock ponytail stopped acsix and the music stopped with it. There were red triangles on cither side of her nose where her glasses should have been. I took a step off the root, but my sister grabbed my’ hand, driving her thumbnail into my palm co will my eyes up the tre. What I saw made me forget about watching a King Kong balloon glide past Macy’ or Garfield held down, from heaven only by a few strings—the brilliant, blinding colors, the stately beak and the gentle way its claws gripped the branches. I wanted the macaw bird to descend upon me and to flap its kingly wings before me. If ic had, 1 would have fallen to one knee because it was a sight incomparable to the parade that awaited me at home. Words filed me, but I opened ‘my mouth to speak anyway. “The macaw bird eyes flashed down. Wings erupt- ed, Before my mouth could shut with the awe of its righty wingspan and is glorious glide into the sky, the macaw bite was gone. ‘My sister and I stepped away from the tree and Iheaded back across the wasteland of sticker burrs and dead weeds. ‘And I beld on to my message of hope. Livin Waters REVIEW