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Christopher Gronlund:

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…

My name is Christopher Gronlund, and every month I share a story. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time, they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny — other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never — EVER — share a story about lumberjacks.

This time, Cynthia Griffith narrates a story I wrote about an unemployed writer lands her dream job, but it comes with much more than she bargained for in the form of an African Grey parrot named Horus.

All right–let’s get to work…

Cynthia Griffith Narration:

Horus.

In the eighth month of my unemployment, I did something I hadn’t done since my early 20s: I picked up the local newspaper to look at the classifieds. My LinkedIn account had long gone stale, bringing in more spam than job offers. I’d long passed the frustration of loading my resume to company websites, only to then be forced to fill out all the information again through a form–never to hear if it was received, let alone if I was ever considered for the position. I even thought about Craigslist, but I’d heard stories. So the newspaper it was.

Trying to find a copy of the local paper wasn’t as easy as it used to be. For a while as I drove around town early on a Sunday morning, I thought maybe they had ceased publication. The possibility seemed odd, considering the town had grown from 5,000 people to almost 30,000 people in the 20 years since last looking at the classifieds. As long as a generation that grew up with newspapers still breathes, our small-town paper still finds a way. I finally found the one machine in town offering The Herald; it looked like the same machine from the 90s, which was probably already 20 years old when I first picked up a copy while looking for work when I was younger. It was in the parking lot of an old strip mall that now sits mostly vacant. The few shops and restaurants remaining come and go, the victim of people my age thinking, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to own a quaint little shop in our hometown?” only to find out that, no—it wouldn’t. A faux town square meant to look like it’s always existed on the other side of town buried the ambitions of the 80s strip mall about the time I graduated college in the early 90s.

I put a quarter into the machine and tugged at the door. Locked! I inserted another quarter and the worn door flopped open by itself with a creak and a clang. Fifty cents for the local paper dispensed from a machine so old that they never bothered to update the price. I tossed the paper onto the passenger seat of my car and got in on the other side. Before clearing the parking lot, my phone rang. My mother.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Nothing’s wrong. Why would something be wrong?”

“It’s a quarter after 6:00 on a Sunday morning. You sleep in.”

“I got up to pee and decided to call to see if you were getting an early start on your job hunt. It’s a new week.”

“Yes, Mom—I know. I’m picking up a newspaper at this very moment.”

“Good for you, Sarah. The early bird gets the good job.”

My mother had a funny way of reworking clichés into things she didn’t believe were clichés. Growing up, I heard things like, “Every cloud has another brighter lining,” “You need to get your ducks to the pond,” and “Don’t cry over spilled milk when there’s gin on the floor worth crying over…”

That last one. I wouldn’t call my mom an alcoholic, but from 4:00 in the afternoon to 9:00 in the evening, there was always a gin and tonic in my mother’s hand.

“Yep, that’s me,” I said. “The early bird.”

The dead air on the other side of the call meant that my mom really didn’t call about my job hunt; something more was coming. I counted in my head, “one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand…”

“You know,” my mother said. “I hope you find someone really nice next year. You really need two incomes to make it in the world today.”

No wish for a good job in the new year; for my mother, the solution was a man providing another income. Never mind that my mother never worked a job a day in her life. I’m convinced my mother and father fucked only once—my mother probably finding it all too sloppy, especially the mess that accompanied my entry into the world. I don’t know what my mother really wanted from life, but I know she never wanted a kid. My mother and father were a couple existing in space only, two electrons circling a nucleus of lies sold to them when they were young. I knew Susan, my nanny, better than I knew my mother. That strange way my mother looked at me, as though I were some kind of specimen, would take the rest of my life to decipher if I decided to carry that weight. But it was my mother’s burden to carry—not mine. I’m good at letting go of things.

“I like being alone, Mom. If I meet someone in the coming year, fine. If I don’t, fine.”

“You shouldn’t be okay with that, Sarah. I don’t know why you have to make everything so difficult. You can always come home and write and not have a worry in the world.”

“A little worry keeps me going. I really need to get going to get a jump on the job hunt. Tell Dad I said hello and that I send my love.”

“Okay, I’m going to go pee, now.”

I wanted to say something about how most people would have taken care of that before calling their grown daughter and pretending to check on her job hunt, but I wanted off the phone even more. “Okay, Mom. I love you.”

” Good day, Sarah.”

I thumbed through the local paper as I drank coffee and polished off a doughnut I picked up on the way home. The big news story was the upcoming annual holiday parade on Main Street and an angry letter to the editor about the “War on Christmas,” despite our town calling it a holiday parade from its start back in the 50s. That’s what constituted front page news where I lived, and I always found comfort in that. I like a place where the environment doesn’t take over the thoughts in one’s head.

It had been such a long time since looking at the paper for a job that I wondered who actually used the classifieds to look for work instead of going online with their search. There were postings for restaurant help, cleaning services, and plenty of warehouse jobs requiring skills like being able to count in multiples of 12, the ability to see colors, and not having issues standing for 10 hours. There were ads for plumbers, laborers, and delivery drivers; pickers, packers, and loaders. It’s not that I saw any of those jobs beneath me, but I was doing well enough that I could go another couple months before nerves really set in—and I knew there were people more in need of immediate work than me. Then I saw it:

Wanted: Writer’s Assistant.

Established novelist seeks writing assistant. Duties include: research, office tasks, and occasional errands. Perks include time to work on your own projects. Writing samples required.

(214) 555-1212

Ask for Lauren

I expected Lauren to live in a nice neighborhood when she told me she lived in Highland Park and to buzz her at the front gate, but as I drove along walled properties obscured even further by trees—only occasionally catching a glimpse of the massive houses situated far back on plots of land that gave way to even more space—I wasn’t expecting her to live in one of the houses off of Preston Road even I dreamed about living in when I was younger. My parents never wanted for money, but even they talked about Highland Park as though it were a magical place a million miles away from our family home in Southlake. I drove along a long wall covered in ivy before seeing Lauren’s address near an elaborate wrought iron gate leading into the property. I pulled up and pressed the buzzer. A few moments later, I heard an older woman’s voice say, “Yes?”

“Hello. My name’s Sarah Nelson. I have a two-o’-clock appointment with Lauren Mitchell.”

“Hello, Sarah. Please drive up. I’m wrapping up with another candidate now. I’ll meet you at the front door.”

The gate opened and I drove along the winding driveway, lost in a tangle of bare trees and landscaped evergreens. Sometime back in the 30s when the house was built, great care was given to present the home to visitors in all its splendor. A bend in the way revealed a mansion nestled in trees that opened like a stage curtain (I could only imagine it in the spring). It was the kind of place built as a reminder that Dallas is not without its own old money families.

I pulled around the large circle before the house and parked behind a Toyota Prius with a NAMASTE bumper sticker on the back. The sound of the fountain in the center of it all soothed any tension that had built up on the drive over. At the top of the stairs leading to the house, I bumped into the interviewee before me, a 20-something-year old who looked like she was trying a bit too much to look like a writer. Everything about her was meant to look natural and thrown together, but the effort was apparent: a floppy hat, scarf, and sweater—even though it was one of those December days in the upper 70s. Her skirt was light enough to billow when she walked, as though she were constantly followed by an unseen breeze. She put on a pair of vintage sunglasses and looked at the only part of her ensemble she had nothing to do with: a Band-Aid on her finger. The white-haired woman behind her exuding a natural style one cannot buy said, “I will get back to you later this week. And I apologize again about the bite.”

The interviewee said, “It’s okay,” but I could tell it wasn’t. When I said hello, she ignored me and scurried for her car.

I recognized Lauren Mitchell immediately, only I knew her by her pen name: Marie Sinclair. She smiled at me and said, “Do you recognize me?”

I hoped I wasn’t blushing. “You’re Marie Sinclair.”

“That’s a good start.” She stepped aside and said, “Please. Come inside.”

I made the connection that I’d already seen the inside of the house, in an issue of D Magazine featuring the homes of famous Dallasites. Of all the homes in the feature, Lauren’s was the home I dreamed about. The stone, French-style mansion could have been uprooted, moved to the North Shore of Long Island, and been Fitzgerald’s inspiration for a party in The Great Gatsby. A slate roof gave the appearance of sunlight breaking through dark clouds, making everything beneath appear bright and perfect. Stepping back and taking in the blue sky, gray roof, white building, manicured green shrubbery, and golden-brown lawn was like looking at a world layered in a parfait glass.  

“You’re the only one I’ve interviewed who recognized me,” Lauren said.

I wanted to say, “Of course I recognize you–you’re the writer I’ve aspired to become. To have a short chat about writing over a cup of tea would be wonderful, and here I am in your actual house!” Instead, I said, “I appreciate your writing and thank you for this opportunity.”

My mother would have been proud.

“Well, thank you. Between us, you provided the best writing samples of the three final candidates.”

My thank you was interrupted by a loud squawk.

“That’s Horus.”

Lauren stopped at the door leading into her study and gestured for me to enter. I couldn’t have imagined a better room in which to write. It was like stepping back to the mid-18th century. The rug on the floor looked like it had seen great leaders rise and fall; the plasterwork on the walls and ceiling seemingly applied by a giant wielding a massive pastry bag. Why bother with a desk lamp when you could have two crystal chandeliers lighting the way, and the Louis XIV style chairs may have been the real thing. What really caught my eye was to the side of the most ornate desk I’d ever seen: a cage as tall as me. Sitting on a perch attached to the top of it was an African Grey parrot. I smiled and said, “You must be Horus?”

The bird tilted his head to the side, and I looked at Lauren. She nodded, and I approached the cage. Horus climbed down from his perch and waddled to the edge, just about eye level to me. I extended my hand while thinking about the interviewee before me with the Band-Aid on her finger. Horus stretched out and then offered to me the back of his head. I ruffled his feathers against the grain and presented my hand. He rested the tip of his beak on my index finger and scrutinized it with his dry tongue. His pupils dilated, and he said, “Hello.”

“Hello, Horus,” I said.

The rest of the interview was a breeze; I was offered the job before leaving.

It was never lost on me how fortunate I was to stumble upon that classified ad. Lauren explained to me that she went to newspapers in smaller towns in the area because she figured someone still reading papers had better odds to be what she was looking for. She said, “I have nothing against 20-year-olds, but I hoped someone with a little more experience would respond. Also, I just didn’t want to fuck with Craigslist.”

I didn’t feel that I worked all that much during my days there. I did some proofreading, organized mail, and kept Lauren’s schedule, but most of the time I was allowed to work on my own writing. Lauren even read the occasional page at random, and always said, “You’ve yet to lose my interest.” Sometimes when she read my writing, Horus leaped to her shoulder from his cage and appeared to read along.

“He looks like he understands,” I said one day.

“He’s a very smart bird. Have you ever held a parrot?”

“Once when I was a kid. At a zoo.”

“Would you like to hold him?”

I nodded, and she picked up Horus and handed him to me.

I scratched the back of his head and said, “You’re such a sweetie.”

Lauren laughed.

“What?” I said.

“You didn’t use the baby voice. Everybody uses the baby voice.”

“Honestly, there’s something about his eyes. Like if I used the baby voice I’d piss him off.”

Lauren smiled and said, “Well, something tells me you’re safe.”

As I moved into my fourth month working for Lauren, she said, “Do you like your commute?”

“I don’t mind it,” I said.

“But you don’t like it?”

“Not particularly. The area’s grown so much. No matter how much they widen LBJ, it’s crowded and mean.”

“So was LBJ. If I may be a bit presumptuous, I assume the guest house out back is larger than where you’re living now?”

“Yes, I believe it is,” I said, knowing full well it was.

“It’s vacant and needs some work, but it’s yours if you’d like.”

“That’s very generous, Lauren, but I can’t accept that.”

“Sure you can. Think of it as passing a 90-day probationary period. You’re not going to find a better offer elsewhere, and I’m going to bother you until you accept.”

I don’t know why, but I looked to Horus. “What do you think?”

He ruffled his feathers and squawked, “Yes!”

“By needing some work,” Lauren meant the guest house by the pool only needed a little light dusting. Like the interior of the main house, everything in the guest house was designed to be magazine perfect. I hate to admit it, but I kept waiting to see what the catch was. A job, a free house, and all the time I wanted to work on my own writing didn’t come without a cost.

The phone rang one afternoon while I was sitting by the pool reading a galley for the book Lauren finished before I started working for her. It was my mother. After our Hello’s, she got right to it.

“I’m worried about you, Sarah.”

“Why, mother?”

“It’s not right. It makes no sense. This woman gives you everything and asks for nothing in return? Do you think she’s…you know…?”

“What, Mom? What do I know?”

“You know,” she said. And then she whispered, “gay…”

“I’m not going to justify that with an answer.” I didn’t care if Lauren was gay; I only cared if perhaps she was and had feelings for me that I would never have for her. I would never have wanted to see Lauren hurt.

“You say you work for her and that she likes your writing, but don’t be surprised when she asks you for…” More whispering, “You know…”

“No, I don’t know. Mom, I’m done with this call.”

“Don’t hang up on me, Sarah. I’m trying to help. Your writing isn’t that good—”

“What?” The years spilled out of me. “How the hell would you know if my writing is good or not? You were never there for me when I was young, and all you do is pick at me as an adult. You’ve never even read my writing; in fact, you’ve always told me it was a silly dream—that I should just get married and settle down! You know what? I’m tired of this shit. I’m done speaking to you. Not just this call—I’m just done!”

I hung up and blocked my mother’s number.

When I calmed down, I looked up and saw Lauren and Horus watching me from the conservatory.

The day after telling my mother I was done dealing with her shit, everything seemed to turn for me: the right agent, publisher, and then editor. Writing under the pen name, Cynthia Burkehart, my first published novel received more praise than I ever imagined, and all that came with supporting the release was more exhausting and fun than I believed it would be. Only on rare occasion was it insinuated that Lauren had anything to do with my success; Lauren insisted from the start that she’d help me find my way as a writer, but finding my way to publication was up to me. My third novel was my first bestseller, initially doing better than the book Lauren released that year. But there was a benefit to having history as a writer. While my releases and successes came in flashes, Lauren’s climbs and slides were never as quick. I was winning sprints while she was winning marathons.

And that was what my life was like for over a decade, until the day Lauren Mitchell–a.k.a. Marie Sinclair–died.

For all the things I took care of for Lauren over the years, we never discussed a will. I found nothing in the office cabinets, so I wandered into the library. That’s when I heard someone say, “I have never found a good way to ease into this, so I’ll just get right to it: I am not what I seem.”

I picked up a marble bust from a table and charged into the office, ready to defend myself and Horus.

There was nobody there.

“You can set Mr. Irving down,” Horus said, sounding almost wholly human. “While Washington would make as good a bludgeon as any author, there is no need to defend yourself against me.”

I was slack-jawed with surprise.

“I realize this is strange, that you might think you’re losing your mind. But I assure you, Sarah, you are not.”

“You’re talking. Not like parrot talk, but talking-talk.”

“Yes.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Yes. Normally, anyway. But as I mentioned, I am not what I seem. There is a safe behind the portrait of me on the wall. In case you’ve ever wondered: yes, that is me, and it is an original Audubon.”

“How old are you?” I said.

“I do not know for sure, but I remember The Battle of Hastings. So at least 950 years old or so. The memory fades a bit after a few hundred years.”

“There is no way.”

“I realize this is overwhelming. The contents of the safe should make things more clear.”

I carefully removed the Audubon painting from the wall and set it on the desk. Horus gave me the combination to the safe. Inside was a stack of large envelopes and an old, leather-bound book. I spent the afternoon going over everything with Horus, amazed by how quickly I came to accept him speaking like a human. The legal transfer of all of Lauren’s possessions to me were in order. I was overwhelmed by that, but even more struck by a letter in Lauren’s hand ending with this:

I never had a child of my own, Sarah, but know this: you were more than any son or daughter I could have imagined.

You’re in very good hands,

Lauren

The rest of the day was spent bombarding Horus with questions:

“Why wouldn’t Lauren have told me about you?”

“I am sorry. I take a strange pleasure in the initial reveal. I may be old, but my ego and sense of humor remain intact. I love the looks on people’s faces…”

* * *

“But what if someone along the way just dumped you off at a pet store or decided, ‘I’m going to make a mint off this talking parrot’?”

“Honestly, Sarah. Are you about to give up a parrot that genuinely speaks? And if you decide to suddenly throw away your writing career for touring with me, I am quite stubborn, and all a crowd will get is squawks and, ‘Polly wanna cracker.'”

“What if Lauren had suddenly died on you before I came along?”

“As you’ll soon see, we’ll set up the office phone so if something terrible happens to you, I will be able to call 911. A news story about a parrot calling the authorities and squawking out his address will ensure I end up someplace safe, with all this still in my possession.”

* * *

Later I asked, “What’s up with that book?” That book being the old book found in the safe with all the papers.

“That’s my journal. These days, everything is typed and stored on the cloud, but back then, the people I shared lives with wrote for me in their own hand. You’ll be amazed by some of the hands you’ll meet in that tome.”

He wasn’t kidding: he’d spent his years in the company of world leaders, artists, writers, and businessmen. I couldn’t believe the things I read in the journal.

“You came to America with Charles Dickens?”

“Yes,” Horus said. “1842. It was a rough crossing of the Atlantic on the HMS Britannia, and I was not about to return to England and relive that experience. Besides, Dickens never needed my assistance.

“I was given to Washington Irving, which was quite to my liking. Through him, I met other American writers. This may be hard to believe, but I am the inspiration behind Poe’s “The Raven”—and Melville’s Moby Dick is really the symbolic story of my crossing of the Atlantic in rough seas…”

I was regaled with tales of the New York City literary scene during Victorian times. To hear Horus tell it, his influence is all over early American fiction.

“I wanted something much different from British literature; something over which people would argue. It’s a wonderfully efficient way to keep a thing alive: insert just enough difference and provincial pride into opposing forces and watch people generations removed from a thing still argue about which is better.”

Regarding his name, he said, “No, I am not as old as the pharaohs, but as a very ancient bird, Horus is much better than my given name: Edward.”

I asked him how he got to Texas of all places.

“Irving gave me to Melville.” He laughed. “Listen to me, I make it sound as though I were an object to be traded, but I must admit to being limited in my mobility. As Melville aged, I went to live with an editor Melville was sure would become a great writer. It never happened, though—he refused to take my advice. He was more suited for business, anyway, and in the early 1900s, when oil was discovered in Texas, I suggested we head west. I typically move from family to family, but I stayed with the Mitchell’s for several generations. Lauren’s grandfather made a good life for himself and settled in Dallas after finding his fortune. I was passed on to Lauren’s mother and eventually to her. Now, I belong to you.”

I didn’t like the way that sounded, as though Horus were simply a knick-knack on a shelf. But then I remembered how the ages had influenced him and what he meant was that he’d given his service and care to me.

When everything was settled after Lauren’s passing, I asked Horus if he wanted to move elsewhere—even another country.

“Oh, no,” he said. “The trip to America was bad enough. While I fly, I have no desire to fly in a plane. I’d be crated, drugged, and quarantined. Stick a feather in my cap and call me macaroni—I’m happy to be in America, right where I am.”

And so was I.

There came a point in the years that followed where I locked into a stride and became the kind of writer Lauren once was: steady and patient. I toured less and wrote more, all the while with Horus right there at my side, reading from my shoulder. It’s not like I was without other friends, but I was always quite content with a solitary life even before meeting Lauren and Horus. The friends I had in publishing were plenty; I had more than I could ever want.

And then one day it was my turn to interview the person who would replace me and care for Horus when I was gone. I wasn’t as concerned as Lauren in finding someone creeping into middle age as I was when Lauren found me; besides, while the old newspaper machine was still in the parking lot of the shopping center near my hometown, it hadn’t seen a newspaper in ages. There were still, however, bulletin boards on college campuses, so I placed my ad at SMU, UTA, The University of North Texas, and Texas Women’s University.

Wanted: Assistant.

Established novelist (yes, some people still read and write novels) seeks an assistant. Duties include: research, office tasks, and occasional errands. Perks include time to work on your own projects. Samples of your work—whatever that may be—required.

(214) 555-1212

Ask for Sarah

Just as Lauren narrowed it down to three candidates, so did I. And just as Lauren chose me for recognizing who she was, I chose Ayana Danjuma; not solely because she recognized me, but because she was the only candidate who wanted to write. When I told her books were barely a thing anymore, she smiled and said, “I know, but I’m not going to let them die on my watch.”

For 22 years, just as Lauren did with me, I read Ayana’s stories and nudged her in the right direction. And I’ll be damned if she didn’t publish a novel right about the time the NeuralNet crashed and people looked for some kind of entertainment outside of cyberspace. For over two decades we worked together…until my days finally came to an end.

We’d reached a point with medicine where most of the things that killed us when I was young were no longer a fear. My lungs were never the best, though, and it’s not like I could swallow a pill and grow a new set. A series of colds, bouts of bronchitis, and pneumonia finally wore me down to a point where I was done fighting. I’d live on in Horus’s stories.

Ayana was in the guest house when it happened. Horus flew down from his perch in the bedroom where he’d insisted on staying while I was weak. I felt the tug at my sleeve and looked down to see Horus standing on the blankets. He was smarter than any human I’d ever met, yet it always amazed me when he’d do parrot things; so much so that I wondered if it was biological wiring or something he did just to calm me down.

The last thing I remembered was him saying, “This is the only part of being me that I hate.”

Epilogue

From the Journal of Ayana Danjuma

August 21, 2057

And that was what my life was like for more than two decades, until the day Sarah Nelson—a.k.a. Cynthia Burkehart—died. A pall fell upon the house, until the day I was in the library and heard a voice from the office:

“I have never found a good way to ease into this, so I’ll just get right to it. I am not what I seem…”

* * *

Christopher Gronlund:

A big thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks – and thank you to Cynthia Griffith for narrating Horus. All music by Ergo Phizmiz and Podington Bear, released under a Creative Commons license. Not about Lumberjacks is also released under a Creative Commons license. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and music…and cfgriffith.com for information about Cynthia.

Next month, the adult son of a hoarder finally figures why his father collects things when the two set out to retrieve some dogs seen running loose in a field.

Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!