The Quail Who Wears The Shirt by Jeremy Wilson

Author:Jeremy Wilson [Wilson, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tortoise Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Steak and Potatoes

“Nice backpack,” Cora said when she answered the door. She was dressed in pajama bottoms and an extra-large pink T-shirt with a neon green flamingo on it, a far cry from her usual power pantsuits. Her plume was brown and beautiful. Cora was the president of the Bank of Charity, just about the best name for a bank ever, but I didn’t bank there because it was mostly for quails. Some other banks weren’t too keen on doing business with quails because they had a reputation for being bad with money. “Like throwing a dollar to a quail,” as the saying goes. Cora saw to it that her kind was taken care of, handing out loans and mortgages to the quail community when other’s wouldn’t. Like most of them—the older ones anyway—she hadn’t always been one, but when she turned, she adopted it with grace and pride, like it was just another thing, like getting crow’s feet around your eyes.

It had taken me a sweltering, sweat-drenched hour to walk to their house, and I was desperate for a beer and a shower and a bed.

Marty wasn’t home yet, she said, but I was welcome, as always. I explained my predicament, about the ladybugs, describing the biblical nature of my ordeal, and Cora told me that ladybugs were a sign of good luck, and she sang me a song I’d never heard before, one she said she used to sing to her own kids. “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone. All except one and her name is Ann. She hid under the frying pan.”

As a lullaby this song was no better than “Ring of Fire.” Still I considered adding it to my night time routine. If I ever saw my kids again.

Cora cooked supper and drank a glass of red wine. She gave me a beer, and I sat at the table with her two kids, June and Michael, nine and seven, not quails, not yet at least, and we all entertained ourselves with an art project. Paper plates, glitter glue, markers, construction paper, pipe cleaners, stickers, pompoms, and popsicle sticks covered the table, and I couldn’t really tell exactly what was going on, but the object of the project seemed to be to make faces on the plates, some kind of mask or animal, or in a couple of cases an unrecognizable monster, and then attach a popsicle stick to the bottom with glue. In the end you could cover your own face and scare somebody, or hold them above the table like a puppet show.

“Does Marty seem…I don’t know, blue lately?” Cora asked.

“I guess.” I nosed my way through the craft supplies.

“I think he’s depressed,” she said. “But he won’t see anybody about it.”

I took a purple marker and colored the outside ridges of one half of the paper plate. “That why you gave him The Secret?”

“The what?”

“Some book he’s spouting off like it’s God’s word.”

“I never gave him The Secret.

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