What Happened in Birding

*Note: this story includes the mention of the death of a child.

It was a craggy walk up to the front door and Leon had only ever talked to one of the Rutherfords. He stepped through the front gate, fumbling with the armful of packages and left his little white truck behind, making the long journey up towards the house. The early spring chill crept up his neck as the pea blossom vines tracing his walk shivered in the air. The Rutherford’s place was always covered in vines. 

A knock at the door and it was, of course, Sarah who answered - that one Rutherford Leon knew. They had grown up together all twelve years at the town’s only public school. Birding, Kansas had a population of 2,450.

She smiled at him.

“Hi Leon,” Sarah looked past him to the mail truck. “You’re not our regular guy. Is Daniel out today?”

“He is,” Leon handed the packages to Sarah and held out the slip for her to sign. He kept his eyes on the slip as she signed it and grinned again.

“I needed seeds,” Sarah felt the packages. “I think this one is a fern root. Springtime in Birding is my favorite.”

Leon finally looked at Sarah. She was still smiling. Since high school, he had avoided her family and by default, her, but she always smiled when she saw him.

“Well, bye,” He turned but Sarah called after him.

“Leon! Wait!” 

She was clutching the packages. “Would you please come for dinner this week? Is there a day you’re free?”

He stared at her. No one ever went to that house. Birding residents took it for granted that they saw Grant Rutherford and Sarah’s mother - Leon didn’t even know her name - at the Country Club, at local candidate forums, and so on. Of course they were out and about; you could always count on their presence. But no one ever…socialized with them. It was odd enough that Leon was in their yard; he had been apprehensive to cover for Daniel today as he might have to go to the Rutherfords. 

Sarah Rutherford was wide eyed. Her brown hair was in a braid, her large navy T-shirt had a small hole at the bottom hem. She looked bafflingly ordinary with mail in her arms and socks on her feet. 

“I’m..I,” Leon cleared his throat, which had suddenly gotten quite dry. “I’ll let you know? I…Can I let you know?”

Sarah’s eyes closed with her smile. “Of course, please let me know. Don’t forget to let me know.”

-

Four hours and a shower later, there was a knock at Leon’s door. 

“Oh my Leon!,” his cousin burst into the small house, swelling with joy and his natural ease. Elroy was always down to party. He visited his hometown and favorite cousin at least every few months; big city dreams can only nourish a soul so much. The two bear-hugged and Leon, already one beer in, relayed the exciting news - he had an in to the Rutherfords. 

“No way!,” Elroy grasped Leon’s slight shoulders. “Man, you’ve got to go! We’ve got to go! Ask her if you can bring a guest!”

“Don’t be stupid, of course I’m not going,” Leon snickered. “Sarah Rutherford? Gag me. I’m not dipping my toe in that. I can’t believe she asked me at all.”

“No, come on! This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in forever!”

Leon considered this. Elroy wasn’t really wrong. He had chosen the quiet life in staying in Birding, while many of his classmates got out to bigger cities as soon as they could. His plan had been to secure a stable, easy job, nab a cheaper slice of the Kansas countryside, then sit on the porch after work each night. He had been working at the post office for nine years now. Birding was quiet and kept itself hidden, the residents were paranoid and reverent, and the Rutherfords stayed there despite everything.

“Think of it!,” Elroy twirled towards the fridge, grabbing a beer. “Where no man’s gone before! I haven’t seen Sarah since high school…since it happened.”

“She might be glad of a friendly face,” Leon said. 

“You’ve got to call her!,” Elroy turned again to Leon. “I don’t imagine she’s seen a friendly face since then, actually.”

Leon pulled his eyes from the back door, as he had just been strategizing on how to get Elroy out to the porch. He had tried not to even think of Sarah, indeed, ever since high school and was already regretting telling Elroy about the strange invitation. Her smile from that day, soft in a frozen body, flashed through his mind. 

“I don’t even have her number, Elroy.” He chucked his beer bottle in the trash. 

“Where do you keep your old school stuff?”

-

Ten minutes later, Leon dropped a box on the kitchen table. Found at the back of a closet within a closet - all the houses in Birding were old and weird - Leon dug through the collection of yearbooks, folders, and handwritten reports. He pulled from the depths a spiral-bound book - the school directory. 

“Yessss!,” Elroy held it aloft, balancing his second beer with the booty. “Freshman year! Probably came out before it all happened.”

Elroy pulled out his phone and began to flip through the directory. Leon grimaced but he was also on his third beer now and felt he should at least let her know whether or not he was coming. Being with Elroy also made him braver, though he’d never admit it to him. 

…and he was curious. He had finally gotten curious. After all these years…why now?

“There’s no going back now, man,” Elroy’s voice rose theatrically. He was such a lightweight. 

Leon leaned on his cousin. “Both of us though,” he said. “I’m not going alone.”

“It’s ringing!”

“Hi, hello?,” Elroy leaped up and gestured to Leon, who watched him, solemn as a ghoul, from the floor.

“Hey, Sarah! This is Elroy Ecker, from high school? I’m Leon’s cousin…Yes!…Yes, I know…Hope you’re doing well…Uh-huh, that’s why I’m calling.”

Leon looked down at his hands. Memories began to come back, memories that kept him from Sarah but somehow tied him to Birding forever. He never looked back, but he never left town either. Lots of other families had left, when it became clear the Rutherfords were staying. His own parents asked him if he wanted to leave, too, but Leon had said no. He wanted to stay; he wanted the Kansas hills, he wanted whatever was almost taken that night.

“He’d be happy to, as long as it’s okay for me to come as well…,” Elroy was still talking to, Leon marveled again, Sarah Rutherford. “Yes…yes, we’ll see you then!”

Elroy hung up. “Tonight!,” he exclaimed. “She said we could come over at seven.”

Leon felt himself getting very red. “Reckless!,” he snapped at Elroy. “You weren’t even there! You don’t know what we’re getting into!”

Elroy looked a his phone. “It’s nearly six. Are you going to sober up and finally tell me what happened that night?”

-

The Rutherfords had tried to take Birding’s children. That was the skinny of the rumor; it was basic knowledge, basic legend, at this point. The family had moved to Southeast Kansas from just over the border; they had deep roots in Tulsa. But most of their immediate family had passed away and the couple had said they were overwhelmed with the ever-expanding Tulsa and wanted to relax in the countryside. 

Sarah, their only child, had been thirteen. One time, Leon and Sarah had played at the park together, ending up on the same team during a game of volleyball. During the game, she bumped the ball to him. She did it with a smile. 

September of that year, the Rutherfords threw a party for Sarah at their estate. Everyone was invited, even the homeschool kids and students from the little Catholic school. Her mother posted invites all over town. Leon was dropped off by his mom but Elroy fell sick that week. He stayed in bed. 

As the sun just started to set, the Rutherford yard - rolling with endless soft grass back then - was already swarmed with early partygoers. Nearly one hundred children and teenagers were in attendance, taken up by the bounce houses, yard games, and a spread of cold, sweet drinks.

At approximately, 7:30 PM, a man stepped out of the Rutherford house. Tall and thin, he wore a cheerful yellow jumpsuit. He climbed onto a platform erected in the midst of the party and began to play on a small, cheap recorder. Adult witnesses recalled the music as “nothing special”, even unpleasant. But the children reported a quite different response. As soon as the man began to play, kids and teenagers rushed to the stage. Enamored with the performance, they danced. They twirled each other around. They reached their small hands out to the simple whistler, who smiled while playing at his new crowd of admirers. 

After the incident, the children would say that the music being played was “the funnest thing they ever knew” and that it “made me want to laugh always”. 

The parents that were still there watched in bemusement and talked amongst themselves. 

With a newly flushed face, the recorder player leapt off his stage and danced with the children. He loped across the lawn, the kids racing after him. The group took one circuit around the yard, past the watching, smiling parents, and disappeared around the back of the Rutherford’s large house. 

The group of frolicking children were missing for three days. 

It took the waiting parents an hour or so to start wandering behind the house. More kids arrived and left periodically, saddened they had missed what was apparently the most exciting part. By 8:45 that night, there was a group of grown-ups searching the estate itself and several people hammering on the Rutherford’s door. One mother finally called the police at 8:49 PM.

When Grant Rutherford and his wife opened their door, there was a meal of pork and apples spread across their table. “We didn’t want to intrude on the fun,” Mrs. Rutherford had said wide-eyed. Grant spoke steadily to the police about the plans for the event, how they had purchased a catch-all party package from a company in Tulsa. Receipts and payments were reviewed. There was no mention of a flute player of any kind. The Rutherfords had no explanation for the tall, thin man and said that the stage had been put up in case Sarah wanted to play her violin. 

“He was in our house?,” Mrs. Rutherford covered her mouth. “And what about Sarah?”

It wasn’t until they received the report that their own daughter had been among the group of disappeared children that the Rutherfords glanced at each other and invariably turned to stone. They opened their home and estate up to investigators, they marched with flashlights during every search party, they sat at each press conference, they answered each question.

The Rutherfords cooperated to the letter and there was never, ever any evidence found that they orchestrated the small town catastrophe. The children were simply gone. The tall, thin man could not be traced. Three days of panic for Birding.

On the morning of the third day, one of the smaller search parties came across several of the missing children walking up the bank of the Verdigris River. As they came in sight, more appeared behind them. Leading the group, hand in hand, were Sarah Rutherford herself and a local student, Leon Carpenter. Every child was accounted for. Their clothes were fresh, their faces clean. They were hydrated. They were not hungry.

Some said the music led them into the side of a hill. Others reported a blurry few days, full of sleep and delicious candies. The tall, thin man was never found; many of the children said they didn’t even remember the man, just the joyous romp with their friends.

The story was not hushed up as much as it was laid to rest. The mystical aspect could not be contended with by police or citizens alike. The children lived on in much of the same way, except for Sarah, who was ostracized viciously by her peers. Leon smiled at his parents, stopped looking at Sarah, goofed off with Elroy, and told the police he couldn’t remember much. The Rutherfords stayed in town but shut their gates. They made giant, quiet donations across town. They stayed silent amid the rumors, they supported local businesses. Many families left. Birding’s population suffered.

Leon Carpenter became a mailman. 

-

“The tall man was real,” Leon muttered, staring at a spot just below Elroy’s chin. “He was real and he taught me to play his recorder. He called it a pipe.”

Elroy sat, waiting. 

“We were all together,” Leon continued. If they were going into the house, Elroy might as well know what had really happened. Someone, anyone might as well know. “We got to eat. There was a lot of light, but it felt like we were underground too.”

“-and I asked him,” he looked down. “I asked him to teach me to play. He taught me three tunes to practice. He handed Sarah a violin and we played together. Everyone loved it. It was the happiest I’d ever been.” 

“It didn’t feel like three days. We were devastated when he said we had to go, that his plans had changed. I didn’t even miss my parents,” Leon held his head in his hands. “I didn’t even miss you.”

“Before he let us go, he, the guy, he told me to keep practicing. That it didn’t have to be the end. I never did though.”

Elroy stopped him with a raised hand. “Get a jacket,” he said gruffly. “Let’s go see Sarah.”

-

Sarah had changed her navy shirt in favor of a pink blouse. She let the cousins in to a large foyer that opened up to a kitchen and sitting area. Elroy talked and joked with her, helping to finish the paella she was making, as Leon stood by with a glass of water. They sat to eat at the small kitchen table.

The food was delicious and the conversation light. Leon squinted at Sarah as she talked to Elroy, the two bantering about small town politics. Why?

Elroy had three helpings and once their plates were clean, Sarah turned to Leon.

“I invited you over because I wanted to give you something.” 

Her face, which was fair and drawn, was locked onto his so that he blushed. She stood and picked up a small box on the kitchen counter and handed it to him.

Loose in the box, scratched up and stained, was an old, plastic recorder.

Leon gasped. He jumped out of his chair, looking down at the instrument, as Elroy exploded with questions.

“Who was that guy, Sarah? You know him!,” he yelled at her. “What was he doing?”

Sarah murmured her answers, gazing at Leon, as she sunk to the floor. “A little brother,” she said, after Elroy had crouched down to hear her. “I had a little brother. He died one day when we were at the lake. They never found him down there and my mother couldn’t handle it. That’s why dad brought us here. To move on. But instead…mom started looking for people like him.”

“You know,” she shrugged. “It started with a fortune teller, there were a few mediums. I guess he’s some kind of magician but…he told mom he could bring Beckett back, not just talk to him. Not just make sure he’s ok, wherever he is. But that we could all be together again. She was desperate, she wasn’t in her right mind. ‘It would be a big trade,’ he told her. She agreed without questioning.”

“And the day of the party, she warned me,” Sarah went on. “The party is meant to start after sunset - don’t go out there before sunset. But…I did. It sure looked like a party and I was alone upstairs. Her and dad were already in the second basement with Beckett.”

Her eyes squeezed shut. “I didn’t even get to see him again, in the end.”

“So, she traded us,” Leon said. “Your mom traded us for Beckett.”

“I don’t think she knew what she was agreeing to, Leon.”

“But they gave him back?,” Eloy asked. “After they realized you had been taken too?”

“I think that snapped them back to reality, yeah,” Sarah wiped her nose and stood up. “Their son for their daughter, that didn’t make sense and then…everyone else’s kids too? They spent as long as they dared with Beckett, then asked the man to fix things. To make them as they were.”

Elroy rounded on Leon. “But you liked it,” he said accusingly. “You liked what happened. That’s why you never left Birding.”

“And that’s why I never left Birding,” added Sarah as she pulled an instrument case from behind the kitchen counter and opened it. “And I bet Beckett is back there, like I,” she looked at Leon. “Like we? Want to be.”

“But he’s dead, Beckett’s dead!,” Elroy took a step back from Sarah, who was tuning her violin with eyes only for Leon as he gripped the recorder.

No words passed between them as Leon put the recorder to his lips and filled it with breath, his fingers finding the patterns he had always practiced in his dreams. 

The front door slammed behind a retreating Elroy as their dizzying music began.