"Well, coincidentally, wasn't the night the tree fell and the wee songsters blew town, was not that the first fall night of autumn?"

Fentriss clenched a fist and struck his brow.

"You mean?"

"Your friends have flown the coop. Their migration must be above San Miguel Allende just now."

"If they are migratory birds!"

"Do you doubt it?"

Another pained silence, another blow to the head.

"s.h.i.t!"

"Precisely," said Black.

"Friend," said Fentriss.

"Sir?"

"Drive home."

It was a long year, it was a short year, it was a year of antic.i.p.ation, it was the burgeoning of despair, it was the revival of inspiration, but at its heart, Fentriss knew, just another Tale of Two Cities, but he did not know what the other city was!

How stupid of me, he thought, not to have guessed or imagined that my songsters were wanderers who each autumn fled south and each springtime swarmed north in a cappella choirs of sound.

"The waiting," he told Black, "is madness. The phone never stops-"

The phone rang. He picked it up and addressed it like a child. "Yes. Yes. Of course. Soon. When? Very soon." And put the phone down. "You see? That was Philadelphia. They want another Cantata as good as the first. At dawn today it was Boston. Yesterday the Vienna Philharmonic. Soon, I say. When? G.o.d knows. Lunacy! Where are those angels that once sang me to my rest?"

He threw down maps and weather charts of Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and the Argentines.

"How far south? Do I scour Buenos Aires or Rio, Mazatlan or Cuernavaca? And then? Wander about with a tin ear, standing under trees waiting for bird-drops like a spotted owl? Will the Argentine critics trot by scoffing to see me leaning on trees, eyes shut, waiting for the quasi-melody, the lost chord? I'd let no one know the cause of my journey, my search, otherwise pandemoniums of laughter. But in what city, under what kind of tree would I wander to stand? A tree like mine? Do they seek the same roosts? or will anything do in Ecuador or Peru? G.o.d, I could waste months guessing and come back with birdseed in my hair and bird bombs on my lapels. What to do, Black? Speak!"

"Well, for one thing"-Black stuffed and lit his pipe and exhaled his aromatic concepts-"you might clear off this stump and plant a new tree."

They had been circling the stump and kicking it for inspiration. Fentriss froze with one foot raised. "Say that again?!"

"I said-"

"Good grief, you genius! Let me kiss you!"

"Rather not. Hugs, maybe."

Fentriss hugged him, wildly. "Friend!"

"Always was."

"Let's get a shovel and spade."

"You get. I'll watch."

Fentriss ran back a minute later with a spade and pickax. "Sure you won't join me?"

Black sucked his pipe, blew smoke. "Later."

"How much would a full-grown tree cost?"

"Too much."

"Yes, but if it were here and the birds did return?"

Black let out more smoke. "Might be worth it. Opus Number Two: 'In the Beginning' by Charles Fentriss, stuff like that."

"'In the Beginning,' or maybe 'The Return.'"

"One of those."

"Or-" Fentriss struck the stump with the pickax. "'Rebirth.'" He struck again. "'Ode to Joy.'" Another strike. "'Spring Harvest.'" Another. "'Let the Heavens Resound.' How's that, Black?"

"I prefer the other," said Black.

The stump was pulled and the new tree bought.

"Don't show me the bill," Fentriss told his accountant. "Pay it."

And the tallest tree they could find, of the same family as the one dead and gone, was planted.

"What if it dies before my choir returns?" said Fentriss.

"What if it lives," said Black, "and your choir goes elsewhere?"

The tree, planted, seemed in no immediate need to die. Neither did it look particularly vital and ready to welcome small singers from some far southern places.

Meanwhile, the sky, like the tree, was empty.

"Don't they know I'm waiting?" said Fentriss.

"Not unless," offered Black, "you majored in cross-continental telepathy."

"I've checked with Audubon. They say that while the swallows do come back to Capistrano on a special day, give or take a white lie, other migrating species are often one or two weeks late."

"If I were you," said Black, "I would plunge into an intense love affair to distract you while you wait."

"I am fresh out of love affairs."

"Well, then," said Black, "suffer."

The hours pa.s.sed slower than the minutes, the days pa.s.sed slower than the hours, the weeks pa.s.sed slower than the days. Black called. "No birds?"

"No birds."

"Pity. I can't stand watching you lose weight." And Black disconnected.

On a final night, when Fentriss had almost yanked the phone out of the wall, fearful of another call from the Boston Symphony, he leaned an ax against the trunk of the new tree and addressed it and the empty sky.

"Last chance," he said. "If the dawn patrol doesn't show by seven A.M., it's quits."

And he touched ax-blade against the tree-bole, took two shots of vodka so swiftly that the spirits squirted out both eyes, and went to bed.

He awoke twice during the night to hear nothing but a soft breeze outside his window, stirring the leaves, with not a ghost of song.

And awoke at dawn with tear-filled eyes, having dreamed that the birds had returned, but knew, in waking, it was only a dream.

And yet . . .?

Hark, someone might have said in an old novel. List! as in an old play.

Eyes shut, he fine-tuned his ears . . .

The tree outside, as he arose, looked fatter, as if it had taken on invisible ballasts in the night. There were stirrings there, not of simple breeze or probing winds, but of something in the very leaves that knitted and purled them in rhythms. He dared not look but lay back down to ache his senses and try to know.

A single chirp hovered in the window.

He waited.

Silence.

Go on, he thought.

Another chirp.

Don't breathe, he thought; don't let them know you're listening.

Hush.

A fourth sound, then a fifth note, then a sixth and seventh.

My G.o.d, he thought, is this a subst.i.tute orchestra, a replacement choir come to scare off my loves?

Another five notes.

Perhaps, he prayed, they're only tuning up!

Another twelve notes, of no special timbre or pace, and as he was about to explode like a lunatic conductor and fire the bunch- It happened.

Note after note, line after line, fluid melody following spring freshet melody, the whole choir exhaled to blossom the tree with joyous proclamations of return and welcome in chorus.

And as they sang, Fentriss sneaked his hand to find a pad and pen to hide under the covers so that its scratching might not disturb the choir that soared and dipped to soar again, firing the bright air that flowed from the tree to tune his soul with delight and move his hand to remember.

The phone rang. He picked it up swiftly to hear Black ask if the waiting was over. Without speaking, he held the receiver in the window.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," said Black's voice.

"No, anointed," whispered the composer, scribbling Cantata No. 2. Laughing, he called softly to the sky.

"Please. More slowly. Legato, not agitato."

And the tree and the creatures within the tree obeyed.

Agitato ceased.

Legato prevailed.

JUNE 2003: WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR.

"DID YOU HEAR ABOUT IT?"

"About what?"

"The n.i.g.g.e.rs, the n.i.g.g.e.rs!"

"What about 'em?"

"Them leaving, pulling out, going away; did you hear?"

"What you mean, pulling out? How can they do that?"

"They can, they will, they are."

"Just a couple?"

"Every single one here in the South!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"I got to see that. I don't believe it. Where they going-Africa?"