they turned around to head down - and Jeff crawled onto the deck to pull down the jib - he saw a blue heron standing on a little muddy point of land across the creek. He pointed and Dicey followed his eyes. The blue raised its flat head to look at them. Its feet were in the water, its feathers slightly ruined as if by a recent annoyance. Jeff watched the bird, waiting for it to take off, anticipating the squawk with which it would trumpet its disapprovals. But the blue seemed not to find them threatening. It stared across the creek at them, then turned its back on them in a stately gesture of dismissal. Jeff knew the bird knew they were there. But, from all you could tell, the bird had never noticed them. It raised its head to look out across the marsh, unconcerned, solitary, ignoring them with great determination. Dicey's low voice told him to pull down the mainsail, and he did. When he had it gathered around the boom, he looked back to the bird. The great blue still stood there, its back still to them. It wasn't going to let the suspicion that they were there chase it off of its fishing territory. Jeff wrapped the sheet around the loosely furled mainsail and went up to the bow to fend off. Dicey concentrated on maneuvering the boat, propelled now only by its own weight. Her hand rested on the tiller as she waited patiently for the sluggish hull to respond to her directions. The landing was perfect. Jeff held onto a piling with one hand while he looped a clove hitch around it. Then he looked back at Dicey. "You know who that bird reminds me of? You." Her expression changed, and he didn't know what he'd said wrong. Then he saw that the change was caused by Dicey trying to hold back laughter. "I was thinking how much it was like you," she told him."
( Cynthia Voigt )
[ A Solitary Blue ]
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