Black Pines, Colorado, 1977
The house at 18 Cedar Pine Drive fell silent in February and remained silent until July.
Frank Colon died in his chair while watching the evening news. His heart stopped while his favorite anchor was still on TV. His son Matt lived in Denver, and his daughter Jamie was in her second year at college in Colorado Springs. They came home for the funeral and left after a few days. Janet, Frank’s wife, left his chair as it was. She kept the television off because it reminded her of him. The kitchen clock ticked as she moved through the house.
At church, Emily Perkins told Janet that a bird was good company and easier to care for than a puppy or kitten. Janet had not kept a pet since her kids were small. She thought about it all through June. On July eleventh, she decided to get a bird, drove her Jeep down Rocky Blvd, and parked in front of the only pet shop in town.
Black Pines had just one pet shop. It was in a narrow store between the hardware store and Floyd’s Barber Shop, with a bell over the door. People shopped there because the next place to buy pets and supplies was twenty-two miles away in Millhaven, and the store charged more. People kept coming, even after what happened with the Deckers.
In May 1975, Rosco sold two small red-eared sliders to the Decker family at 13 Elm Street. Within a week, the Decker boys, ages eight and ten, both came down with fevers. County health found Salmonella in them. Officials came on a Thursday, dumped the rest of the turtles into a barrel behind the building, and fined Rosco seventy-five dollars. He paid the fine on Friday and reopened on Saturday, as nothing had happened. The Black Pines Chronicle said he was slow to learn what the rest of the state already knew about those turtles. Rosco told the paper he had cooperated when asked. The Decker boys got better. After that, people only bought seed from him when they had to. They stopped buying turtles, checked puppies, and washed their hands. The shop kept its hours. Rosco kept wearing his patterned shirts.
The bell rang as Janet opened the door. Fluorescent lights buzzed over a black-and-white checkered floor. Rows were filled with aquariums, stacked cages, heat lamps, and hand-painted sale signs. The air smelled like fish water, dry pet food, cigarette smoke, and damp newspaper.
Rosco stood behind the counter. He was balding and a bit heavy, with big glasses and a patterned shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Most customers forgot his face after they left, but when he wanted to sell something, he talked like a used-car salesman.
He asked her what she was looking for.
She told him the house was quiet now. It felt lonely. Frank was gone, and the kids were not home. A friend had suggested she get a bird. Less work than a puppy or kitten.
Rosco came around the counter and walked with her down the bird aisle. Most of the cages held parakeets. Two cockatiels sat under a heat lamp. A gray parrot ignored them. The green parakeet sat low on its perch near the seed cup, its feathers pulled tight.
Rosco tapped the cage, and the bird hopped. He told her parakeets were hardy. He said this one already had a name if she wanted it: Polly. He said it as if he was doing her a favor.
Janet asked for the price.
He gave her a price that included the cage, a box of seed, a cuttlebone, and a week’s worth of paper for the tray. While he wrote up the ticket, he talked about the weather and said birds liked the radio in the afternoon. He didn’t mention the Deckers or the fine. He tore the yellow copy from his carbon book and handed it to her.
She paid in cash. He carried the cage out to her jeep and set it on the passenger floor. He told her not to leave the cage in the sun because a closed cage gets hot, and glass makes it worse. A bird could die in a parked jeep or in a window that catches the afternoon sun, and no one would notice until it was too late. Janet nodded. She would decide where to put Polly once she got home.
Janet sat for a minute with the engine off. She looked at the bird, and Polly looked back before going for the seed. Then Janet drove home to 18 Cedar Pine Drive.
One-story houses and box hedges lined Cedar Pine Drive. Janet’s house was the white one with the broken birdbath Frank never fixed. She carried the cage inside with both hands, talking as she walked, the same way she had talked to the empty rooms since February.
“You’ll like the window,” she told the bird. “You’ll like the sunlight.” She thought about the jeep and reminded herself that morning light on the table was not the same as a closed car in a parking lot.
She set the cage on the table by the window, pulled the curtains back a little, and turned on the radio as she walked by. In the kitchen, she filled a small bowl with water. Frank’s mug still sat in the dish drainer, where she had left it five months ago. She looked at it and spoke out loud.
“I got a bird, Frank. Her name is Polly. So it won’t be so empty in this damn house.”
When she came back with the water, droppings already marked the paper in the tray. Some smeared. Some had dried enough to turn to powder when she touched them. She wondered if that was normal. She carried the tray outside to the backyard and dumped it so the dust wouldn’t stay in the kitchen, then slid a clean sheet from the stack under the seed box and put it in the tray. Polly sat low and ate.
She called Matt that night.
She told him she had bought a bird so the house would not be so lonely. Matt went quiet for a second. Then he said, “Great, Ma.” He said he was glad she had something to take care of. He asked where she got it.
Rosco’s, she said.
Matt knew the name. He asked if the bird looked all right. He did not mention the Deckers or the turtles.
Green, she said. Eating. Healthy. Rosco said they were hardy.
Matt said all right. He told her to call if anything went off. She said she would call Sunday.
Jamie was glad about a bird and not glad about the shop.
Jesus, Ma, she said. People still talk about that place.
Janet laughed. She said it was a parakeet, not a turtle. She said the Decker boys came out of it fine. She said the store did what county health told it to do in seventy-five.
Jamie said she knew. She said she only wanted her to be careful.
Janet told her she was always careful.
They hung up talking about how Jamie was doing at school.
After the calls, she sat in Frank’s chair where she could see the cage. She left the television off. Polly played with the little mirror and then settled down. Janet wrote “millet” on the pad by the phone, under the electric bill. She planned when to clean the tray so the smell wouldn’t get too strong. She slept with the bedroom door open in case the bird made noise. The bird stayed quiet.
In the morning, the house was still quiet. It was a different quiet. She and the bird now shared it.
In those first days, she talked to the cage while she washed a cup. She kept the radio on. Polly did not fly at the bars. She just sat low, her feathers pressed in. Janet thought the bird was settling in. She thought a shop bird needed a week.
The droppings changed. That first afternoon they smeared. By Thursday they were dry and dusty. Janet tapped the paper over the kitchen trash can and watched a pale film float in the window light. She washed her hands and tasted metal at the back of her throat. She blamed the can, the tap, or the way the house held heat in July.
She stayed at the sink longer than she needed and ran the water over her hands again. The taste didn’t go away. Polly watched her from the low perch and then went back to the seed. The radio played the same afternoon songs Frank used to like. Janet turned it down but left it on. She didn’t want the house to be completely quiet again. That was why she got the bird. She said this to the empty mug, felt silly, and decided it didn’t matter.
Friday, she took two aspirin for a headache and sat in Frank’s chair with the set on. She closed her eyes. Polly made the small sound parakeets make. Not words. Janet slept through the noon news. When she woke, the bird was still eating.
Saturday, the headache was still there. She called the clinic on Waverly Way. The girl at the desk said Dr. Lowell was out until Monday. If it was a fever, she ought to go to Millhaven.
Janet said it was just a headache.
The girl said a lot of people had a summer cold.
Janet hung up and went to bed at eight.
On Sunday, she forgot to call Matt, which was unlike her. She ate toast with jelly and watched the morning shows with the cage in sight. Polly sat low. The paper turned dusty overnight, almost like the tray did it on its own. Janet changed it before she planned to run errands, then never left. She sat at the kitchen table with a wet cloth on her neck.
Monday, the headache brought a fever with it. She called Jamie and got the machine. She left a message that she was fine and would call later. She called the clinic. Dr. Lowell’s girl offered her Thursday. Janet said that was a long wait for a fever. The girl said Millhaven County Hospital took walk-ins in the afternoon. Janet wrote the hours on the pad.
She did not want to leave the bird. She did not want to carry a cage into a waiting room either.
Justin Weaver lived across the road. He was twelve. He mowed for her in the summer, and he had already stood at the front window twice to look at Polly. Janet walked over with her purse. Justin’s mother was at the laundry. Justin came to the door in a shirt that had been Frank’s. Janet had set that shirt in a donation pile. Justin had seen it and asked for it. She had let him take it when he came for his mowing money.
She asked him to watch the bird for the day. She would pay him three dollars. He needed to keep seed in the cup, clean water in the bowl, and keep Polly company. If Ally came by, that was fine. Ally had already been at the window with him more than once. They were not to take the cage outside, and they were not to set it in the sun on the step. She would be back from Millhaven before supper.
Justin said yes before she finished the sentence. He said Ally might come if that was okay. Janet told him that was all right.
She walked back across Cedar Pine Drive more slowly than she meant to. The jeep sat in the driveway. Inside, Polly sat where Janet had left her. Janet checked the water twice and told the bird she wouldn’t be gone long. She locked the front door, left by the back, and put the key under the painted rock Frank had placed there a year ago, a year that now felt farther away than February.
She drove the twenty-two miles with the window down. The air helped at first, and then it did not. In the Millhaven lot she sweated through the back of her dress. The usual crowd sat in the waiting room. A man sat with a wrapped hand. A woman held a baby. An older couple did not talk. Janet gave her name to the nurse and sat under a picture of mountains that were not the ones outside.
Dr. Ellis Brown saw her a little after three. He looked young for the title. He listened to her chest and checked her throat. He asked if anyone at home was sick.
She told him she lived alone.
He asked about travel. She said she had run errands around town and that was it.
He smiled. He called it a summer cold. He said July was full of them: fluids, rest, aspirin. Come back if your cough deepens, changes color, or settles in your chest.
He did not ask about pets. She did not bring any up. There was no reason to. Rosco’s name had not made the trip over the hill in any form Dr. Brown would have written down as a red flag. He put summer cold on the chart and sent her to the window to pay.
The cashier asked if someone could drive her. Janet said she had driven herself. The cashier looked at her color and let it go.
Heat sat in the jeep seat. Janet kept the door open before she started the engine. A man from the waiting room smoked under the portico. He coughed into his fist and nodded at her like they shared a joke. She didn’t nod back. She wanted 18 Cedar Pine Drive. She wanted the chair, the mug, and the bird that never asked her for anything.
The two-lane ran through pasture and a stretch of burned sunflowers. She cracked the window. The air helped. Then the cough started, dry at first, and the air stopped helping.
Justin did the job she had paid him for.
He sat in the chair and looked in at Polly. The bird sat low. He tapped the bars. Polly hopped once and went still, then went back to the seed. He told her Janet had gone to the doctor. He changed the water. The seed cup was still half full, so he left it.
The tray only bothered him because he didn’t want the house to smell when Janet got back. The paper was dry, and the droppings were more dust than mess. Last spring at school he had cleaned a rabbit cage that was wet and much worse. He carried the tray outside and dumped it the way he thought Janet did so the dust wouldn’t stay in the kitchen. He fitted a new sheet and set the tray back.
He was still on the chair when Ally Kerr came through the side yard. She was eleven. She had a bag of chips from the IGA and two bottles of pop. She wanted to see the bird Justin had talked about on the way to the pool. Janet had said Ally could come. He told her that while he opened the bag.
They stood close to the cage. Ally put her face to the bars to make Polly move. Justin did the same. The bird did not perform. They ate the chips. Justin had not washed his hands after he handled the tray. Ally had not washed hers after she touched the bars. They passed the bag back and forth, leaving crumbs on the table. They turned the radio on and off.
Ally asked if the bird could talk. Justin said some of them did. They tried Pretty Bird, Hi, and Polly. Nothing took. Ally poked a chip through the wire. Justin told her not to. The chip sat in the tray. Polly ignored it and kept at the seed.
They stayed at the cage because that was why Justin had the run of the house. They dumped the dust from the tray in the outside can and did not look at it again.
Ally wiped chip salt on her shorts and leaned in until her breath steamed the bars. Up close, the bird smelled like paper and seed and something drier than that. Justin told her they should not take it outside. Ally said she knew. They started arguing about whether parakeets bite. Polly sat through it.
Janet started coughing harder on the two-lane home. The fit made her seize the wheel. She passed the shop on Rocky Blvd and saw the OPEN sign. The seed box on her shelf had felt light that morning. She did not want to go out again tomorrow. She pulled over.
The bell clanged. The bulbs buzzed. The floor looked the same. The smell had not changed. Rosco stood by the counter with a cigarette going in the ashtray instead of in his mouth.
Janet asked for millet mix, the same as before.
Her voice scraped. She covered a cough with the back of her wrist.
Rosco bagged the seed and asked how the bird was taking to the house.
Fine, she said. She eats. She sits a lot. Janet paused. The droppings are dusty now. That’s easier than the wet mess from the first day. I tap the paper over the trash can.
Rosco did not look up from the bag.
Dusty is better than wet, he said. Wet means you got a problem.
He twisted the top of the sack.
Sold two others this week, he said. People are still looking at the rest of the lot.
Janet paid him. While he made change, she looked down the aisle.
Dan Witt from the lumberyard stood by the parrot cages with his son. The boy’s mother had died two years ago. The boy was small and put his finger through the bars. Karen Pell, a bank teller in a blue blouse, stood next to them and asked the clerk if the birds talked. A crooked sale sign hung over the row. The paper in those trays looked like the paper in Janet’s kitchen. Dusty. She told herself that meant it was normal.
She took her bag. For a second she paused in the aisle and almost said something. The boy still had his finger in the bars. Karen Pell laughed at something Rosco called out to the clerk from the counter. Janet’s chest tightened. She wondered if she was being the kind of woman who saw trouble in a dusty tray. She coughed once in the doorway, and the bell tinkled over it.
As she left, Dan Witt told the clerk he would take the bird and the supplies. His son grinned. On the counter, the green one sat low and ate.
Justin and Ally still shared the chair with the radio on when Janet pulled up. Polly sat low on the perch. Janet put the seed on the counter and pulled out the money she had promised because they had stayed. She set six dollars on the table.
She thanked them. She said the doctor had called it a cold. She would be on the couch. If they could look in tomorrow and see if Polly was sleeping, she would leave the back door open.
They said they would. Ally said the bird was pretty. Justin said he had changed the paper for her.
Janet thanked him for that.
They took the money off the table. Janet walked them to the door and watched them cut across the yard with the empty chip bag.
The kitchen smelled like the cage. Janet filled the seed cup and waited for her cough to pass, her hand on the table. Polly sat low and watched her with one eye, then went back to the seed.
I’m sorry I was gone so long, Janet said, the same way she had been talking to Frank’s chair and mug.
The bird gave her the wire sound. That was enough for the hour. She took two aspirin and lay down on the couch with her shoes still on.
The cough kept her there through the night. In the dark house Polly made the thin noise. Janet slept in pieces.
Once she woke, she was sure someone was in the house. She called Frank’s name before she knew she had done it. Only the wire sound answered. She lay back and listened to her own chest. It did not sound like her chest. It sounded like paper tearing a long way off. From the table came the click of a beak on seed.
By morning the taste in her mouth was worse. She rinsed and spat, then rinsed again. The bird sat low and looked healthy. That should have made her feel better, but it didn’t, and she wasn’t sure why. She filled the water and told Polly to be good. Polly ate.
Tuesday, she felt worse. She called the clinic, and the girl offered her Thursday again. She was too sick to drive to Millhaven a second time. She drank water and ate almost nothing. She still changed the paper. The dust went up. She did it because the cage was dirty, and she did not want the house to smell.
Wednesday, Justin did not come to mow the lawn. His mother came instead. She stood on the step and said Justin had a fever and a headache, and she was keeping him in. She asked if Janet felt all right, because the boy had been in the house.
Janet said she had a summer cold. She said she was sorry. She might have given it to him.
Justin’s mother looked at the cage through the window. The bird looked healthy.
Thursday, Ally’s mother called Justin’s mom. Her voice sounded thin. Ally had woken up coughing. They were going to the clinic. She wanted to know if Janet’s bird was sick.
Justin’s mom said the bird looked fine.
Janet’s own fever climbed that afternoon. She did not make the Thursday appointment on Waverly Way. Matt called that night and got no answer. He called Friday morning and got no answer. He called Justin’s mom.
Justin’s mother used the key under the painted rock. She found Janet on the kitchen floor, out cold, birdseed spilled around her. Polly sat in the cage watching. The wire sound continued while she called for an ambulance.
They took Janet to Millhaven. The July chart still sat in the file. Summer cold. They put her in a room and started oxygen.
Justin’s mother did not leave Polly in an empty house. She filled the cup with water and put the seed in it. She did not tap the tray. She said later she did not know why she left it. The bird looked well. She locked the back door and went home to Justin, who was worse.
Matt reached Millhaven that night. Jamie got there an hour after him. They were not ready for how small their mother looked in the bed. The mask made a fog. Janet found Matt’s belt loop with her hand and then lost it.
She asked if the seed was low. She asked if Justin’s mother and Ally’s mother were angry. She said dusty was better than wet, like a thing worth passing on.
Matt looked at Jamie. Jamie shook her head.
A nurse asked if they had pets at the house.
A bird, Matt said.
The nurse asked what kind.
He did not have the right word. Green. Small. From the shop in town.
The nurse wrote “parakeet” and put a mark beside it, which Matt did not understand until August.
They slept that first night in the hospital lot, then drove to 18 Cedar Pine Drive at first light. Justin’s mother had left a note on the table. Seed in the cup. She had not cleaned the tray. Matt read it twice.
The cage was still on the table by the window. Polly sat low. Green. Quiet. Eating. Jamie wouldn’t go in the kitchen at first. Matt filled the water because his mother had asked about the seed, and because leaving a bird to die in their father’s house felt like one more thing they couldn’t let happen. He didn’t tap the paper. He saw the dust on it and left it.
They took turns after that. Days at Millhaven. Nights on Cedar Pine Drive. The bird stayed in the house the whole time Janet was on the ward. Nobody dumped her at the shop. Nobody took her to the vet. She sat on the same table and ate through the last week of July and into August, and she never looked sick. They dumped the droppings into the can outside.
Justin came onto the pediatric floor the day after Janet went in. Ally came the day after that. The nurses put them in separate rooms on the same wing. Both kids told the nurse they had cleaned a birdcage at Mrs. Colon’s and eaten chips at her table. Nobody on that floor had a name yet for what they were seeing. They treated the fever, the lungs, and a cough that started dry and turned wet.
Justin remembered the metal taste before he remembered the fever. Ally remembered putting her mouth to the bars. The nurses kept them apart. They asked about Polly. A nurse said the bird was fine. That was the word that went around the floor. Fine. The children were not.
The shop had already been sending people home with more than what they paid for.
The man who bought feeder goldfish in late June had not wanted a bird. He stood in that aisle anyway, waiting on Rosco. He started coughing the first week of July and died in his apartment the last week of the month. No bird in the house. Only the time he spent by the row.
The woman from the rooms behind the hardware went in for a dog collar on a Thursday in July. She brushed dusty paper off her sleeve. She started coughing a week later. They put her on the same wing as Janet, two doors down. She died before Janet did.
Paul Rieger, a sixteen-year-old high school student, worked part-time. He cleaned the bird row with a dry rag through June and July because the wet ones took too long to dry in the back, and Rosco did not like a mess in the aisle. He ate at the counter. He shook the rag out the rear door and went back to the till. He thought he had a cold from the register.
Dan Witt took his cage home the same Monday Janet bought seed. Pete put his finger through the bars in the shop and again at home. Karen Pell took hers the same day. She asked her husband to change the paper. He had never gone into Rosco’s. He changed it anyway.
Pete Witt ran a fever on the twenty-eighth. Dan followed him on the twenty-ninth. Karen left the bank window on the first of August and did not come back that week. Her husband lasted longer.
By the second week of August, people lined up at the clinic on Waverly Way. Dr. Lowell called it a bad flu. He hoped that was true.
County health reached Rosco’s on the ninth of August. He stood behind the counter in his glasses and his patterned shirt. He said he sold healthy birds. He said dusty droppings were better than wet. Wet meant you had a problem. He said he had cooperated in seventy-five and he would cooperate now.
The inspector counted the cages. He took paper from the trays and folded it into envelopes. He told Rosco not to sell the rest of the birds until the lab called. Rosco nodded. The OPEN sign stayed in the window. People still needed dog food. People still needed filters for the tanks. The inspector hung a sheet over part of the bird row. The rest of the shop stayed open.
People still came in. They stood farther from the cages, bought what they had come for, and left.
Janet Colon died on the twelfth of August at Millhaven County Hospital. The first certificate said pneumonia. After the laboratory work, they amended it to Chlamydia psittaci. Psittacosis. Parrot fever. She was fifty-two. She had bought a green parakeet because 18 Cedar Pine Drive had gone lonely and quiet.
Matt and Jamie were in the hallway when the floor nurse came. Jamie sat down on the vinyl bench and stayed there. Matt went in, came back out, and could not say what he had gone in for. The mask still sat on the stand. Down the hall, a television ran a game show with the sound low.
They drove back to Cedar Pine Drive in the afternoon. Polly was on the table. Seed in the cup. Dust on the paper. She ate while they stood in the doorway. That night, Matt moved the cage to the spare room and hung a towel over the back, not the front. He said he couldn’t leave it in the kitchen. Jamie said she couldn’t look at it at all. From the hall they could hear Polly’s wire sound.
Dan Witt died on the fifteenth. He was thirty-eight. His boy lived. Karen Pell lived and went thin in a way the nurses did not like. Her husband died on the twentieth. Justin Weaver spent eleven days on the pediatric floor and went home with his shirt hanging off him. Ally Kerr went home after nine. Both kids missed the start of school. Both of them later told the same story about the chips, the tray, and the dust hanging in the kitchen light.
Paul Rieger died last of the six. He was sixteen. He had kept wiping the trays after the headache started. The inspector found the rag on a nail in the store’s back room in August. It was still dusty.
Six names. Two never took a bird home. Two bought birds the afternoon Janet came back for seed. One wiped the row. One wanted the house less empty.
The lab work came in pieces. They took droppings from three shop birds still on the row. Matt bagged the dried paper from Janet’s tray when they asked for it. They took serum from the patients who were still alive. The men in Atlanta were not surprised. They had seen pet-shop clusters before. Black Pines was. Doctors guessed summer cold until the illness forced them to pay attention.
On the eighteenth, a field team walked Rocky Blvd and passed under the bell. The lights crackled. The floor was still checkered. The air still smelled like fish water, dry food, smoke, and newspaper. Rosco stood where he always stood. He remembered Janet Colon as a woman who wanted a bird. He did not remember her face well. He remembered she had come back for seed and said the paper was dusty. He had told her that was better.
They asked about the two sales that Monday. He found the carbon copies. Witt. Pell. He had told both of them the same thing. Hardy.
Neighbors on Cedar Pine Drive talked if somebody asked. One man said he had told his wife years ago not to buy any animals from that shop. He bought a filter in June and waited for a fever that never came.
The team took Polly from the spare room on the eighteenth. She sat low. She ate while they watched. She did not look like a source. She looked like somebody had fed her. Jamie stayed in the hall. Matt stood in the doorway.
Polly lived. That went in the record. She showed no signs of illness through September. Infected birds often look like this. They shed in their droppings and in the dust that comes off a dry tray. They sit. They eat. They make a small sound. They never look sick.
County health asked anyone who had been in the shop after the first of June to call the clinic if they had a fever or a cough. Callers filled the lines. The shop took a sanitation citation. Rosco paid the second fine, dumped the paper, and washed the trays with the bleach mix the inspector told him to use. In September they put the bird row back up with a card about washing hands. Nobody bought a bird, not for a while.
Dr. Brown added a line to Janet’s July chart. Bird in the home. Not mentioned at the visit. Nobody blamed him. A summer cold had been a fair first call. The county had not seen parrot fever in years.
Matt told the team that, on the phone in July, he had said he was glad she got Polly. She had wanted them to know the house was not as empty as it seemed. He had meant it when he said he was glad. He said he should have told her to take the bird back. In 1975, the county had warned the shop that what left the building could make a house sick. The shop paid the fine and did little else.
Rosco’s Pet Emporium stayed open. The bell still sounded. Rosco still stood behind the glass. The Decker boys were teenagers, and they did not go in. Other people did. They bought dog food and filters and, in October, a kitten that started no cluster.
Polly came out of holding at the end of September. They sent her to a veterinary office in Millhaven that agreed to keep her off public sale. The tech who took her said she ate on the drive. No discharge. Same low perch.
The bird was fine.
The town was not.
Black Pines buried six people. School opened late. The church stopped coffee after service. Justin Weaver grew out of Frank’s shirt. Ally Kerr did not like birds after that. Pete Witt went to live with his aunt in Millhaven. Karen Pell went back to the bank in November but never went back to the pet shop.
On the inspection day in August, the team stood in the kitchen at 18 Cedar Pine Drive and listened. The refrigerator hummed. The clock ticked hard. From the spare room came the sound of a healthy parakeet. Dust still hung where Janet, sicker now, had tapped a tray over the kitchen can instead of taking it outside, thinking the job was easy because it was not wet. The house had gone quiet again, except for Polly.
The outbreak started in the bird row. Dry dust carried it into houses and into lungs that only passed the cages. Janet went back to the shop with the cough. Rosco sold two more green ones while she paid.
What failed was ordinary. A dirty tray. A man who sold animals and did not ask enough. A doctor who did not ask about any pets, especially birds. A woman who wanted noise back in the house. A boy who cleaned a cage and shared chips with a friend. County health had already warned the town. Officials had fined the shop and dumped a barrel of turtles, and that had been enough.
The bird did not die.
That sat poorly with people who walked Cedar Pine Drive that August. Parrot fever does not need an animal that looks sick. It needs dry droppings, moving air, and lungs. Polly provided the first. The dust provided the second. The people provided the third.
On the fourteenth of November the count stood at forty-three cases and six deaths. The store stayed open. The green parakeet stayed alive. People who needed seed still went in, held their breath, and left with the jingle in their ears.
When they closed the house in October, Matt and Jamie put Frank’s chair and the kitchen clock in the truck with the rest of the boxes. They took the kitchen can out with the trash. Neither asked where the bird had gone. They already knew she was eating and healthy.
The last line in the technician’s book about Polly, dated the twenty-ninth of September, reads: Eating. Alert. No discharge. Perch low. Unaware.