1

The Scarlet Ibis

JAMES HURST

It was in the clove of seasons, summer was dead but autumn

had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the bleeding tree.1 The

flower garden was strained with rotting brown magnolia petals and

ironweeds grew rank amid the purple phlox. The five o'clocks by the

chimney still marked time, but the oriole nest in the elm was

untenanted and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle. The last

graveyard flowers were blooming, and their smell drifted across the

cotton field and through every room of our house, speaking softy the

names of our dead.

It's strange that all this is still so clear to me, now that summer

has long since fled and time has had its way. A grindstone stands

where the bleeding tree stood, just outside the kitchen door, and now

if an oriole sings in the elm, its song seems to die up in the leaves, a

silvery dust. The flower garden is prim, the house a gleaming white,

and the pale fence across the yard stands straight and spruce. But

sometimes (like right now), as I sit in the cool, green-draped parlor,

the grindstone begins to turn, and time with all its changes is ground

away-and I remember Doodle.

Doodle was just about the craziest brother a boy every had. Of

course, he wasn't crazy crazy like old Miss Leedie, who was in love

with President Wilson and wrote him a letter every day, but was a

nice crazy, like someone you meet in your dreams. He was born

when I was six and was, from the outset, a disappointment. He

seemed all head, with a tiny body which was red and shriveled like

an old man's. Everybody thought he was going to die-everybody

except Aunt Nicey, who had delivered him. She said he would live

because he was born in a caul,2 and cauls were made from Jesus'

nightgown. Daddy had Mr. Heath, the carpenter, build a little

mahogany coffin for him. But he didn't die, and when he was three

months old, Mama and Daddy decided they might as well name him.

1 bleeding tree: reference to a certain tree prevalent in the South; the name derives from the

fact that the tree emits a milky substance whenever a branch is broken from it.

2 caul: a membrane sometimes surrounding the head of a child at birth.

They named him William Armstrong, which is like tying a big tail on

a small kite. Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone.

I thought myself pretty smart at many things, like holding my

breath, running, jumping, or climbing the vines in Old Woman

Swamp, and I wanted more than anything else someone to race to

Horsehead Landing, someone to box with, and someone to perch

with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn, where across

the fields and swamps you could see the sea. I wanted a brother. But

Mama, crying, told me that even if William Armstrong lived, he

would never do these things with me. He might not, she sobbed, even

be "all there." He might, as long as he lived, lie on the rubber sheet in

the center of the bed in the front bedroom where the white Marquette

curtains billowed out in the afternoon sea breeze, rustling like

palmetto fronds.

It was bad enough having an invalid3 brother, but having one

who possibly was not all there was unbearable, so I began to make

plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow. However, one

afternoon as I watched him, my head poked between the iron posts of

the foot of the bed, he looked straight at me and grinned. I skipped

through the rooms, down the echoing halls, shouting, "Mama, he

smiled. He's all there! He's all there!" and he was.

When he was two, if you laid him on his stomach, he began to

move himself, straining terribly. The doctor said that with his weak

heart this strain would probably kill him, but it didn't. Trembling,

he'd push himself up, turning first red, then a soft purple, and finally

collapse back onto the bed like an old worn-out doll. I can still see

Mama watching him, her hand pressed tight across her mouth, her

eyes wide and unblinking. But he learned to crawl (it was his third

winter), and we brought him out of the front bedroom, putting him on the

rug before the fireplace. For the first time he became one of us.

As long as he lay all the time in bed, we called him William

Armstrong, even though it was formal and sounded as if we were

referring to one of our ancestors, but with his creeping around on the

3 invalid: ill, disabled, or weak and sickly.

2

deerskin rug and beginning to talk, something had to be done about

his name. It was I who renamed him. When he crawled, he crawled

backwards, as if he were in reverse and couldn't change gears. If you

called him, he'd turn around as if he were going in the other

direction, then he'd back right up to you to be picked up. Crawling

backward made him look like a doodlebug, so I began to call him

Doodle, and in time even Mama and Daddy thought it was a better

name than William Armstrong. Only Aunt Nicey disagreed. She said

caul babies should be treated with special respect since they might

turn out to be saints. Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest

thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from

someone called Doodle.

Although Doodle learned to crawl, he showed no signs of walking, but

he wasn't idle. He talked so much that we all quit listening to what he said.

It was about this time that Daddy built him a go-cart and I had to pull him

around. At first I just paraded him up and down the piazza, but then he

started crying to be taken out into the yard, and it ended up by my having to

lug him wherever I went. If I so much as picked up my cap, he'd start crying

to go with me and Mama would call from where she was, "Take Doodle

with you."

He was a burden in many ways. The doctor had said that he mustn't

get too excited, too hot, too cold, or too tired and that he must always

be treated gently. A long list of don'ts went with him, all of which I

ignored once we got out of the house. To discourage his coming with

me, I'd run with him across the ends of the cotton rows and careen

him around corners on two wheels. Sometimes I accidentally turned

him over, but he never told Mama. His skin was very sensitive, and

he had to wear a big straw hat whenever he went out. When the

going got rough and he had to cling to the sides of the go-cart, the hat

slipped all the way down over his ears. He was a sight. Finally, I

could see I was licked. Doodle was my brother and he was going to

cling to me forever, no matter what I did, so I dragged him across tile

burning cotton field to share with him the only beauty I knew, Old

Woman Swamp. I pulled the go-cart through the saw-tooth fern,

down into the green dimness where the palmetto fronds whispered by

the stream. I lifted him out and set him down in the soft rubber grass

beside a tall pine. His eyes were round with wonder as he gazed

about him, and his little hands began to stroke the rubber grass. Then

he began to cry my shoulder and carried him down the ladder, and

even when we were outside in the bright sunshine, he clung to me,

crying, "Don't leave me. Don't leave me."

When Doodle was five years old, I was embarrassed at having a

brother of that age who couldn't walk, so I set out to teach him. We

were down in Old Woman Swamp and it was spring and the sicksweet

smell of bay flowers hung everywhere like a mournful song.

"I'm going to teach you to walk, Doodle," I said.

He was sitting comfortably on the soft grass, leaning back

against the pine. "Why?" he asked.

I hadn't expected such an answer. "So I won't have to haul you

around all the time."

"I can't walk, Brother," he said.

"Who says so?" I demanded.

"Mama, the doctor-everybody.

"Oh, you can walk," I said, and I took him by the arms and

stood him up. He collapsed onto the grass like a half-empty flour

sack. It was as if he had no bones in his little legs.

"Don't hurt me, Brother," he warned.

"Shut up. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to teach you to

walk." I heaved him up again, and again he collapsed.

This time he did not lift his face up out of the rubber grass. "I

just can't do it. Let's make honeysuckle wreaths."

"Oh yes you can, Doodle," I said. "All you got to do is try. Now

come on," and I hauled him up once more.

It seemed so hopeless from the beginning that it's a miracle I

didn't give up. But all of us must have something or someone to be

proud of, and Doodle had become mine. I did not know then that

pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life

and death. Every day that summer we went to the pine beside the

stream of Old Woman Swamp, and I put him on his feet at least a

hundred times each afternoon. Occasionally I too became

discouraged because it didn't seem as if he was trying, and I would

say, "Doodle, don't you want to learn to walk?"

He'd nod his head, and I'd say, "Well, if you don't keep trying,

you'll never learn." Then I'd paint for him a picture of us as old men,

white-haired, him with a long white beard and me still pulling him

around in the go-cart. This never failed to make him try again.

Finally one day, after many weeks of practicing, he stood alone

for a few seconds. When he fell, I grabbed him in my arms and

3

hugged him, our laughter pealing through the swamp like a ringing

bell. Now we knew it could be done. Hope no longer hid in the dark

palmetto thicket but perched like a cardinal in the lacy toothbrush

tree, brilliantly visible. "Yes, yes," I cried, and he cried it too, and the

grass beneath us was soft and the smell of the swamp was sweet.

With success so imminent,4 we decided not to tell anyone until

he could actually walk. Each day, barring rain, we sneaked into Old

Woman Swamp, and by cotton-picking time Doodle was ready to

show what he could do. He still wasn't able to walk far, but we could

wait no longer. Keeping a nice secret is very hard to do, like holding

your breath. We chose to reveal all on October eighth, Doodle's sixth

birthday, and for weeks ahead we mooned around the house,

promising everybody a most spectacular surprise. Aunt Nicey said

that, after so much talk, if we produced anything less tremendous

than the Resurrection, she was going to be disappointed.

At breakfast on our chosen day, when Mama, Daddy, and Aunt

Nicey were in the dining room, I brought Doodle to the door in the

gocart just as usual and had them turn their backs, making them cross

their hearts and hope to die if they peeked. I helped Doodle up, and

when he was standing alone I let them look. There wasn't a sound as

Doodle walked slowly across the room and sat down at his place at

the table. Then Mama began to cry and ran over to him, hugging him

and kissing him. Daddy hugged him too, so I went to Aunt Nicey,

who was thanks praying in the doorway, and began to waltz her

around. We danced together quite well until she came down on my

big toe with her brogans, hurting me so badly I thought I was

crippled for life.

Doodle told them it was I who had taught him to walk, so

everyone wanted to hug me, and I began to cry.

"What are you crying for?" asked Daddy, but I couldn't answer.

They did not know that I did it for myself, that pride, whose slave I

was, spoke to me louder than all their voices, and that Doodle walked

only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother.

Within a few months Doodle had learned to walk well and his

go-cart was put up in the barn loft (it's still there) beside his little

mahogany coffin. Now, when we roamed off together, resting often,

we never turned back until our destination had been reached, and to

4 imminent: about to take place

help pass the time, we took up lying. From the beginning Doodle was

a terrible liar and he got me in the habit. Had anyone stopped to

listen to us, we would have been sent off to Dix Hill.

My lies were scary, involved, and usually pointless, but

Doodle's were twice as crazy. People in his stories all had wings and

flew wherever they wanted to go. His favorite lie was about a boy

named Peter who had a pet peacock with a ten-foot tail. Peter wore a

golden robe that glittered so brightly that when he walked through

the sunflowers they turned away from the sun to face him. When

Peter was ready to go to sleep, the peacock spread his magnificent

tail, enfolding the boy gently like a closing go-to-sleep flower,

burying him in the glorious iridescent, rustling vortex. Yes, I must

admit it. Doodle could beat me lying.

Doodle and I spent lots of time thinking about our future. We

decided that when we were grown we'd live in Old Woman Swamp

and pick dog-tongue for a living. Beside the stream, he planned, we'd

build us a house of whispering leaves and the swamp birds would be

our chickens. All day long (when we weren't gathering dog-tongue)

we'd swing through the cypresses on the rope vines, and if it rained

we'd huddle beneath an umbrella tree and play stickfrog. Mama and

Daddy could come and live with us if they wanted to. He even came

up with the idea that he could marry Mama and I could marry Daddy.

Of course, I was old enough to know this wouldn't work out, but the

picture he painted was so beautiful and serene that all I could do was

whisper Yes, yes.

Once I had succeeded in teaching Doodle to walk, I began to

believe in my own infallibility,5 and I prepared a terrific development

program for him, unknown to Mama and Daddy, of course. I would

teach him to run, to swim, to climb trees, and to fight. He, too, now

believed in my infallibility, so we set the deadline for these

accomplishments less that a year away, when, it had been decided,

Doodle could start to school.

That winter we didn't make much progress, for I was in school

and Doodle suffered from one bad cold after another. But when

spring came, rich and warm, we raised our sights again. Success lay

at the end of summer like a pot of gold, and our campaign got off to a

good start. On hot days, Doodle and I went down to Horsehead

5 infallibility: the state or condition of being incapable of error

4

Landing, and I gave him swimming lessons or showed him how to

row a boat. Sometimes we descended into the cool greenness of Old

Woman Swamp and climbed the rope vines or boxed scientifically

beneath the pine where he had learned to walk. Promise hung about

us like the leaves, and wherever we looked, ferns unfurled and birds

broke into song.

That summer, the summer of 1918, was blighted. In May and

June there was no rain and the crops withered, curled up, then died

under the thirsty sun. One morning in July a hurricane came out of

the east, tipping over the oaks in the yard and splitting the limbs of

the elm trees. That afternoon it roared back out of the west, blew the

fallen oaks around, snapping their roots and tearing them out of the

earth like a hawk at the entrails of a chicken. Cotton bolls were

wrenched from the stalks and lay like green walnuts in the valleys

between the rows, while the cornfield leaned over uniformly so that

the tassels touched the ground. Doodle and I followed Daddy out into

the cotton field, where he stood, shoulders sagging, surveying the

ruin. When his chin sank down onto his chest, we were frightened,

and Doodle slipped his hand into mine. Suddenly Daddy straightened

his shoulders, raised a giant knuckle fist, and with a voice that

seemed to rumble out of the earth itself began cursing the weather

and the Republican Party. Doodle and I prodding each other and

giggling, went back to the house, knowing that everything would be

all right.

And during that summer, strange names were heard through the

house: Chateau-Thierry, Amiens, Soissons, and in her blessing at the

supper table, Mama once said, "And bless the Pearsons, whose boy

Joe was lost at Belleau Wood."6 So we came to that clove of seasons.

School was only a few weeks away, and Doodle was far behind

schedule. He could barely clear the ground when climbing up the

rope vines, and his swimming was certainly not passable. We

decided to double our efforts, to make that list drive and reach our

pot of gold. I made him swim until he turned blue. and row until he

couldn't lift an oar. Wherever we went, I purposely walked fast, and

although he kept up, his face turned red and his eyes became glazed.

Once, he could go no further, so he collapsed on the ground and

began to cry.

6 Chateau-Thierry, Amiens, Soissons, … Belleau Wood: World War I battle sites

"Aw, come on, Doodle," I urged. "You can do it. Do you want

to be different from everybody else when you start school?"

"Does it make any difference?"

"It certainly does," I said. "Now, come on," and I helped him

up.

As we slipped through dog days, Doodle began to look feverish,

and Mama felt his forehead, asking him if he felt ill. At night he

didn't sleep well, and sometimes he had nightmares, crying out until I

touched him and said, "Wake up, Doodle. Wake up.

It was Saturday noon, just a few days before school was to start.

I should have already admitted defeat, but my pride wouldn't let me.

The excitement of our program had now been gone for weeks, but

still we kept on with a tired doggedness. It was too late to turn back,

for we had both wandered too far into a net of expectations and left

no crumbs behind.

Daddy, Mama, Doodle, and I were seated at the dining-room

table having lunch. It was a hot day, with all the windows and doors

open in case a breeze should come. In the kitchen Aunt Nicey was

humming softly. After a long silence, Daddy spoke. "It's so calm, I

wouldn't be surprised if we had a storm this afternoon."

"I haven't heard a rain frog," said Mama, who believed in signs,

as she served the bread around the table.

"I did," declared Doodle. "Down in the swamp-"

"He didn't," I said contrarily.

"You did, eh?" said Daddy, ignoring my denial.

"I certainly did," Doodle reiterated, scowling at me over the top

of his iced-tea glass, and we were quiet again.

Suddenly, from out in the yard, came a strange croaking noise.

Doodle stopped eating, with a piece of bread poised ready for his

mouth, his eyes popped round like two blue buttons. "What's that?"

he whispered.

I jumped up, knocking over my chair, and had reached the door

when Mama called, "Pick up the chair, sit down again, and say

excuse me."

By the time I had done this Doodle had excused himself and

had slipped out into the yard. lie was looking up into the bleeding

tree. "It's a great big red bird!" he called.

The bird croaked loudly again, and Mama and Daddy came out

into the yard. We shaded our eyes with our hands against the hazy

5

glare of the sun and peered up through the still leaves. On the

topmost branch a bird the size of a chicken, with scarlet feathers and

long legs, was perched precariously. Its wings hung down loosely,

and as we watched, a feather dropped away and floated slowly down

through the green leaves.

"It's not even frightened of us," Mama said.

"It looks tired," Daddy added. "Or maybe sick."

Doodle's hands were clasped at his throat, and I had never seen

him stand still so long. "What is it it?" he asked.

Daddy shook his head. "I don't know, maybe it's-

At that moment the bird began to flutter, but the wings were

uncoordinated, and amid much flapping and a spray of flying

feathers, it tumbled down, bumping through the limbs of the bleeding

tree and landing at our feet with a thud. Its long, graceful neck jerked

twice into an S, then straightened out, and the bird was still. A white

veil came over the eyes and the long white beak unhinged. Its legs

were crossed and its clawlike feet were delicately curved at rest.

Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the earth like a broken

vase of red flowers, and we stood around it, awed by its exotic7

beauty.

"It's dead," Mama said.

"What is it?" Doodle repeated.

"Go bring me the bird book," said Daddy.

I ran into the house and brought back the bird book. As we

watched, Daddy thumbed through its pages. "It's a scarlet ibis," he

said, pointing to the picture. "It lives in the tropics-South America to

Florida. A storm must have brought it here."

Sadly, we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles

it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree.

"Let's finish lunch," Mama said, nudging us back toward the

dining room.

"I'm not hungry," said Doodle, and he knelt down beside the ibis.

"We've got peach cobbler for dessert," Mama tempted from the

doorway.

Doodle remained kneeling. "I'm going to bury him."

"Don't you dare touch him," Mama warned. "There's no telling

what disease he might have had."

7 exotic: foreign; strangely beautiful

"All right," said Doodle. "I won't."

Daddy, Mama, and I went back to the dining-room table, but we

watched Doodle through the open door. fie took out a piece of string

from his pocket and, without touching the ibis, looped one end

around its neck. Slowly, while singing softly "Shall We Gather at the

River," he carried the bird around to the front yard and dug a hole in

the flower garden, next to the petunia bed. Now we were watching

him through the front window, but he didn't know it. His

awkwardness at digging the hole with a shovel whose handle was

twice as long as he was made us laugh, and we covered our mouths

with our hands so he wouldn't hear.

When Doodle came into the dining room, he found us seriously

eating our cobbler. He was pale, and lingered just inside the screen

door. "Did you get the scarlet ibis buried?" asked Daddy.

Doodle didn't speak but nodded his head.

"Go wash your hands, and then you can have some peach

cobbler," said Mama.

"I'm not hungry," he said.

"Dead birds is bad luck," said Aunt Nicey, poking her head

from the kitchen door. "Specialty red dead birds!"

As soon as I had finished eating, Doodle and I hurried off to

Horsehead Landing. Time was short, and Doodle still had a long way

to go if he was going to keep up with the other boys when he started

school. The sun, gilded with the yellow cast of autumn, still burned

fiercely, but the dark green woods through which we passed were

shady and cool. When we reached the landing, Doodle said lie was

too tired to swim, so we got into a skiff and floated down the creek

with the tide. Far off in the marsh a rail was scolding, and over on the

beach locusts were singing in the myrtle trees. Doodle did not speak

and kept his head turned away, letting one hand trail limply in the

water. After we had drifted a long way, I put the oars in place and

made Doodle row back against the tide. Black clouds began to gather

in the southwest, and he kept watching them, trying to pull the oars a

little faster. When we reached Horsehead Landing, lightning was

playing across half the sky and thunder roared out, hiding even the

sound of the sea. The sun disappeared and darkness descended,

almost like night. Flocks of marsh crows flew by, heading inland to

6

their roosting trees; and two egrets, squawking, arose from the

oyster-rock shallows and careened away.

Doodle was both tired and frightened, and when he stepped

from the skiff he collapsed onto the mud, sending an armada of

fiddler crabs rustling off into the marsh grass. I helped him up, and as

he wiped the mud off his trousers, he smiled at me ashamedly. He

had failed and we both knew it, so we started back home, racing the

storm. We never spoke (What are the words that can solder cracked

pride?), but I knew he was watching me, watching for a sign of

mercy. The lightning was near now, and from fear he walked so close

behind me he kept stepping on my heels. The faster I walked, the

faster he walked, so I began to run. The rain was coming, roaring

through the pines, and then, like a bursting Roman candle, a gum tree

ahead of us was shattered by a bold of lightning. When the deafening

peal of thunder had died, and in the moment before the rain arrived, I

heard Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out, "Brother, Brother,

don't leave me! Don't leave me!"

The knowledge that Doodle's and my plans had come to naught

was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened. I ran as

fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us.

The drops stung my face like nettles, and the wind flared the wet

glistening leaves of the bordering trees. Soon I could hear his voice

no more.

I hadn’t run too far before I became tired, and the flood of

childish spite evanesced as well. I stopped and waited for Doodle.

The sound of rain was everywhere, but the wind had died and it fell

straight down in parallel paths like ropes hanging from the sky. As I

waited, I peered through the downpour, but no one came. Finally I

went back and found him huddled beneath a red nightshade bush

beside the road. He was sitting on the ground, his face buried in his

arms, which were resting on his drawn-up knees. "Let's go, Doodle,"

I said. He didn't answer, so I placed my hand on his forehead and lifted

his head. Limply, he fell backwards onto the earth. He had been

bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were

stained a brilliant red.

"Doodle! Doodle!" I cried, shaking him, but there was no

answer but the ropy rain. He lay very awkwardly, with his head

thrown far back, making his vermilion8 neck appear unusually long

and slim. His little legs, bent sharply at the knees, had never before

seemed so fragile, so thin.

I began to weep, and the tear-blurred vision in red before me

looked very familiar. "Doodle!" I screamed above the pounding

storm and threw my body to the earth above his. For a long time, it

seemed forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis

from the heresy9 of rain.

8 vermilion: bright red

9 heresy: something that contradicts what is generally thought of as right