The Birds Grandpa Carved for Someday

The boy’s mother laughed so hard she had to sit down on the grass.

Mothers kept asking what they owed. Grandpa said, “Not a thing,” every single time. One woman tried to put a five-dollar bill under a box, and Grandpa saw it and handed it back.

“My wife gave out peppermints on this green for fifty years,” he told her. “She never charged a penny. I’m not going to start.”

The woman looked at him. “Albertine Theriault,” she said. “She gave me peppermints. Every Sunday when I was little.”

“She gave everybody peppermints,” Grandpa said.

By half past two the line ran past the church steps and down the sidewalk. People I hadn’t seen since high school came up to shake Grandpa’s hand.

Gilles came by with his granddaughter, and she got the best loon on the table, and Gilles stood there with his arms crossed, trying to look like a man who didn’t care, while she showed it to everybody.

The kids who’d already gotten birds didn’t leave. They stood around on the grass, holding their birds up to the sun to see the colors, comparing whose was best. A few of them sat down at the edge of the table and watched Grandpa like he was a magician.

I kept opening boxes. I kept unwrapping newspaper and setting out birds and watching them go. Box after box went empty, and I stacked the empties behind the table, one on top of the other, with “someday” in pencil on the side of every one.

Grandpa’s hand started to shake a little around three, from holding the birds out so long. He didn’t stop. He just switched to his left hand for a while.

It was a little after three when I got down to the last box.

I was kneeling on the grass to open it when I looked up and saw Brady at the edge of the green, by the bandstand.

He had his little girl by the hand. She’s five. His boy, who is nine, was standing next to him, and on the other side of the boy was my aunt Lise.

They had come for the fair, the way Lise said they would. They had come to see their great-grandfather. They had walked onto the green and seen the crowd by the maple and come over to see what was going on.

Brady stopped walking. I saw his face change.

Lise kept going a few steps before she noticed he’d stopped. She turned around to look at him. Then she turned back and looked at the line of children, all the way down the sidewalk.

Then she looked at the table, and at Grandpa in his red suspenders, and at the tower of empty boxes behind him with “someday” written on every one.

I watched her count. I don’t know how else to say it. Lise had been in that shop a hundred times. She knew there had been twelve boxes on that shelf. I watched her count eight.

Brady’s little girl pulled her hand out of his. She had seen the birds.

She ran straight across the grass for the table, and her brother ran after her.

Grandpa saw them coming. He didn’t know it was them at first, I think, because his eyes aren’t what they were. He just saw two more children and reached for two more birds.