A Georgia Whip-poor-will In Moscow

Arm in arm, they took their leave of the seventy-six statues of the Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro station. They’d not long left the Catholic Church and a Western Christmas mass. Now their plan was to walk down to Red Square and enjoy the various winter and Orthodox pre-Christmas evening festivities. As they began to stroll under the lights over Nikolskaya Street, Pericles adjusted his new fur Cossack hat from Blackglama, a Christmas gift from Julia, and said to her, ‘That was really great. Almost a daily occurrence in these stations, eh?’

   ‘Just about,’ she said. ‘All subways should have a little live classical music from time to time. A little Schubert is good for the soul.’

   ‘Great, but we can’t really dance to it. I ride the system as much for cutting rugs with you as for transportation. You know me,’ he said, hitting on one of their inside jokes. Then he sang to her in silly fashion, ‘…Oh, my love, since we pay. Somewhere in the dark, I’m always dancing with you on a Moscow train.’

   When they stopped laughing, she held tight to his arm and said, ‘Always a good time, and I love your version. I loved the real song when I first heard it. She released it the year I was born! Almost like it was for me.’

   ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I was in high school at the time. Thanks.’

   ‘I just had a great thought!’ she said happily. ‘Tell me the little story about the Christmas bird in the Georgia mountains, my love! And it was your Georgia, right? Not ours?’

   ‘Correct,’ he said. ‘A true story from the Blue Ridge back in the good old State of Georgia, CW of A. And I’m not sure if it’s a Christmas story, though it certainly involves a bird. Someone was supposed to write it up, but that’s been delayed like so many things. Heck, we’ll just say it was set around Christmas, say, back in 1983. How’s that?’

   ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Far enough away so that imagination can artfully fill in any blanks the memory leaves open. But what kind of bird was it?’

   ‘That would be the charming Whip-poor-will,’ he said. ‘It makes that exact sound, the sound of its name. And it makes it constantly. But I never found it to be a melancholy bird as some do. From Washington Irving to H.P. Lovecraft to Steven King, everyone says that it represents horror, death, or anxiety. And they might, under certain circumstances, have a point about the anxiety the bird can induce with all of his singing, especially at night. Long, long ago, Thoreau noted, The Whip-poor-wills now begin to sing in earnest about half an hour before sunrise, as if making haste to improve the short time that is left them. He astutely noted the melodious night birds sang the evening away with an encore performance just before dawn. One such little feathered voice of my acquaintance once strove to weave a never-ending concert of notes, in defiance of scheduling, custom, and even the efforts of some to shorten his time. I think they normally get busy in the autumn or summer, but I’m sticking to the Christmas theme here.’

   ‘Christmas, Gregorian calendar, 1983?’ she clarified.

   ‘Yes. To make this a Christmas story, I’m now dead set on it happening in December of ‘83, just outside Blairsville, Georgia,’ he said. ‘You see, my grandparents—we called them Granny and Pa—my mother’s parents, retired and bought a little cabin up in the mountains, a very nice place. Kind of like a village in the Urals here. You’d like it. We used to go visit them from Mississippi every chance we had. And one year, we kept hearing all these rumors, mostly from Granny, about a troublesome Whip-poor-will. She claimed it sang and whipped day and night, especially at night, and wouldn’t give her a break. It was a little funny, but I got the idea mom thought it was driving Granny crazy. Anyway, we were aware of the bird. And, anyway, we made our way over for, again, a Christmas getaway.’

   ‘Was that a long trip? By car?’ she asked.

   ‘It sure seemed like it at the time,’ he said. ‘And, yes, by car; it was maybe an eight-hour drive. The speed limits were artificially low back then and many of the roads were two-lane and narrow. And so forth. But it was always worth the time and travel. So on that trip, we arrived and had our normal good time. I can’t recall if any cousins or anyone else joined us that year. Sometimes they did, other times not. Nothing out of the ordinary jumps out in my memory. I’m sure Granny carried on about her singing friend, and maybe I initially heard him once or twice, but I really can’t say. But I did unmistakably hear something one night.

   ‘It was late and I think I was already asleep. That might have meant the couch or a sleeping bag, but I just can’t remember. What has stuck in my mind were the shotgun blasts, two of them. Like everyone else, I was awakened in the night by BAM, BAM! Two shots were fired near at hand. Everyone jumped up in alarm. Daddy and Pa were running around trying to figure out what had happened. This was, and is even now a very quiet area. One hears the infrequent gunshot during the day sometimes, particularly during fall and hunting season, but generally not in the dead of night. But we then rapidly figured out what was going on. The front door was open a tad and we could all hear Granny outside cussing and yelling. 

   ‘It appears that her friend came calling that night and she had enough and went out to confront him. We found her in the front yard, up the hill a short distance, looking up at the roof, cussing some more, and holding her four-ten-bore shotgun, a double-barrel model that rarely left her side. She claimed she’d gone out and caught a glimpse of the offending Whip-poor-will up on the ridge of the roof, silhouetted in the moonlight. And not being able to stand his harassment anymore, she let him have both barrels. At the time, the results of her actions hadn’t made her too happy, and Pa was far from elated. He walked around, looking at the ground. There was no dead bird, and no feathers, but he did see several bits and pieces of shingles lying around. Everything calmed down a bit after that scene and we got Granny back in the house. I think we were talking about finally going back to sleep, and all was quiet once again. Then from outside, we heard, Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will! He was a fervent little fellow and not the least bit perturbed by the night’s shocking events. It’s funny looking back at it all now.’

   They were now walking next to the skating rink on the Square. After a period of silence between them, she said, ‘And then what?’

   ‘What?’

   ‘What happened next? How did the story end?’

   ‘That was it,’ he said. ‘All I can remember. I think the bird won, and I can’t ever recall hearing more about him. Nothing else slowed down that Christmas, or the one after, or, really, any of them going forward. How’s that?’

   ‘Well, it was a funny tale,’ she said. ‘But it’s not the normal kind of Christmas story one thinks about!’

   ‘I never said it was normal,’ he said. ‘Hey, wanna skate a bit, or get a drink and walk the sights? Or how about some GUM shopping?’

   ‘Anything in particular at GUM?’ she asked, her interest piqued. 

   ‘Well, there’s something, a gift for someone for the Seventh or New Years. I really need her to try it on for size and then act like it’s a surprise when I give it to her later,’ he said.

   ‘Would it be something to compliment our hats?’ she asked.

   ‘It just might be!’ he said.

   ‘Ooo,’ she said, now rather excited. ‘Then let’s grab the drinks, walk for a minute, and then go in for sizing! I’ll let you skip the embarrassment of skating since you’ve been a good boy.’ She was now pulling him forward by his hand.

   ‘An excellent plan! Lead the way, darling,’ he said, thinking he’d had the last word of the hour. It turns out that he did not. For as they approached the first vendor’s stand for drinks, somewhere high above the din of the crowd, and most out of place in the central city, there came a lone, shrill cry: ‘Whip-poor-will!’ Of course, giving the little bird the benefit of the doubt, that probably meant Merry Christmas!