Beyond the Laughing Sky Read Online Free

Goosepimple was so tiny it was often forgotten on maps, so overlooked that people only seemed to end up there by accident. The village reminded Nashville of an old neighbor forever napping on their porch. But sometimes the neighbor would startle awake, almost knocking over their rocking chair. Sometimes, that is, someone new would catch sight of Nashville for the first time.
    Once it had been an out-of-town aunt on a visit. She’d nearly fainted when she saw Nashville, and promptly called the police.
    â€œWe’re sorry, ma’am,” replied dispatch. “But we don’t respond to cases of bizarre-feathered boys. Nor do we show up for curiously beaked youngsters or peculiar-shaped lads.”
    Nashville had made babies cry and dogs bark. He’d made at least two elderly in-laws on a visit get their glasses checked. And to top it all off, there was the issue of the ice-cream truck.
    â€œBut why ?” Protested Junebug on the hottest days each summer, days when the sidewalk sizzled and the pecan tree tried to hunch over into its own shade. “Why does the ice-cream truck go up every street but ours?”
    â€œWho can say,” replied her mother, who suspected the snub had more than a little to do with her bizarrely feathered, curiously beaked, peculiarly shaped son.
    When they reached the center of the village, Nashville and his family went to the doctor’s office for Junebug’s yearly checkup. In the waiting room a curious girl stared wide-eyed at Nashville. She looked at his feathers, and she looked at his beak. She looked until she finally had the courage to ask.
    â€œSo,” she said. “Whatta you got?”
    Nashville looked around. He put down the Audubon magazine he’d been reading.
    â€œPardon?” he replied to the girl.
    â€œI mean,” continued the girl. “What’s the matter with you? Why do you look like that?”
    â€œNothing’s the matter with him,” interrupted Junebug. “What’s the matter with you ?”
    â€œFell off my bike,” said the girl, holding up her arm in a cast. She turned back to Nashville. “You think the doctor will be able to fix whatever you’ve got?”
    â€œI told you,” said Junebug. “There’s nothing to be fixed.” She had just balled her tiny hand into a fist when the nurse emerged and called out her name. The girl’s mother pulled her daughter a few seats closer, in the opposite direction from Nashville.
    Nashville had been a patient at this same office for exactly one day of his life. Ten years earlier, the day he hatched from an egg, his parents had attempted to take him to this regular doctor.
    â€œI . . . I’m not sure I’m the right doctor for this, er, specific case,” the physician had stuttered. He tapped at the newborn’s feathers, shined his headlamp at Nashville’s beak.
    â€œWell, where exactly do you recommend we go?” asked Nashville’s mother.
    And that’s how Nashville ended up at Dr. Larkin’s office, the veterinarian down the street—a veterinarian who, as luck would have it, specialized in ornithology and the general care of birds.
    The day of his birth, Dr. Larkin put Nashville’s baby X-ray up on the wall and flipped on the light. He studied it, the bones white in the dark like a bleached shipwreck beneath the sea.
    â€œSeems healthy to me,” the doctor had said that day.
    â€œBut he has feathers,” replied Nashville’s father. “Can it be fixed?”
    â€œNothing to be fixed,” said the doctor. “Some children have freckles. Some have interesting birthmarks. Nashville happens to have feathers.”
    â€œFeathers . . .” said Nashville’s father shaking his head, his face still wearing a troubled look.
    â€œSo he’s healthy?” asked his mother.
    â€œWell, there is this one thing,” said the doctor. “Nothing to be