Movie Stars from Kansas

By Lynnette Horn

"Look! There's another one," Debbie pointed at a silver speck inching westward across the clear, autumn sky.

Jan cupped a hand over her eyes and looked up to where Debbie was pointing. The jet sparkled in the afternoon sun.  "Where do you think it's headed?"

"Gee, I don't know, maybe California,"  Debbie paused and then her eyes grew big and round.  "Maybe a really famous movie star is on that plane."

They took off at a clip, waving and shouting, but by the time they reached the end of the block, the jet had already arced over the horizon.  They tumbled out of breath onto the Greer's front lawn and watched the jet stream fade away.

"Do you think anyone saw us?"  Debbie asked as she propped herself up on an elbow.

"Sure, I bet a movie star was looking out the window right when we waved,"  Jan said more to make Debbie happy than because she believed it.

A smile flickered across Debbie's freckled face.  She let her head fall back onto the crisp leaves and announced that she was going to be a movie star when she grew up.

"Uh-uh--movie stars don't come from Kansas," Jan said.

"Do so!"

"No they don't!"

"Do so!"

"Don't!"

"Do!"  Debbie's eyes became watery.

"Well, if you're going to be a baby about it, you just go ahead and try to be a movie star. . . See if I care. . . you'll see!"

The two girls lay side-by-side on the ground, no longer seeing the sky, silently fuming in their own rightness and determination.  But Jan wouldn' let the silence go on very long.  She knew she would have to answer to her mother if Debbie went home pouting.  Debbie's mother, Mrs. Morris, would see to it. She'd be on the phone telling on her faster than jackrabbit.  Like so many times before, her mom would apologize for having such an incorrigible child, and then punish Jan for making her look bad in front of the neighbors.

"Debbie's not like you," she'd say. "She's got a more tender spirit, so it's up to you to smooth any ruffled feathers."

Jan had tried to argue the point with her before, "I gotta give in even if I'm right?"

"Right or wrong makes no difference," her mother had snapped back.  "You have to be the peacekeeper and make amends."

Jan didn't think it fair she always had to give in to Debbie's whims and tantrums, but she couldn't bear seeing her mother side with the neighbors against her.  The shame she felt when her mother wouldn't stand up for her was far worse than any punishment she'd receive.

Jan thought about all of this as she lay next to Debbie, her arms clenched across her chest, so sure she was right.  As hard as it was to let Debbie win, she decided the argument wasn't worth disgracing her mother again.  She threw a handful of leaves into the air so they'd fall back on both of them and laughed.  Debbie turned toward her and glared, still mumbling about movie stars.

Overhead, a large flock of birds were flying southward, heading for their winter homes.  Jan watched them swoop and swirl in graceful precision, each bird matching the movements of the one next to it in perfect unity, as synchronized as any chorus line ever was.  She wished she could fly right along side of them, far above the petty bickering and beyond her mom?s disapproval.

"Dad says just about every bird in the country flies over our house," Jan once again tried to change the subject in her own child-like way.  "He says we live smack dab in the middle of the migratory highway."

Debbie didn't respond.

"I tell you what,"  Jan jumped up and brushed the leaves from her jacket, resorting to her ace in the hole.  "I'll let you try to kiss Forest if you want."

Debbie bolted upright.  "Really?"

"Cross my heart."  Jan had set her claim on Forest Parker, the blue-eyed, blonde heartthrob of Cherokee Elementary, at the beginning of the school year but was willing to give him up just this once to keep the peace.  They spit in their hands and shook on it.

Debbie grinned from ear to ear.  Already Jan was regretting their pact, but she swallowed hard, gritted her teeth, and offered a hand to help Debbie up.  But as they headed home, Debbie began to talk about how she was going to trap Forest into kissing her.  Jan's heart sank deeper with each step.  Fortunately, they didn't have far to walk.

The girls lived across from each other at the far end of Meadowlark Lane.  It was a short street, consisting of only six houses, three on each side, but sheltering enough children to play a decent game of baseball.  Jan's father laughingly referred to it as a good Catholic street.  It dead-ended abruptly at a sewer ditch that bordered the lots of Debbie and Jan's families.  Beyond the ditch lay an open field, sometimes planted in wheat, but usually untilled.

Halfway down the street Debbie stopped and tugged on Jan's hand. "Listen," she whispered.

Jan held her breath and cocked her ear, not knowing for what she was listening.  She detected the distant, faint rumbling of a supersonic jet.

The girls began to count, "One. . . two. . . three."

The thunder grew louder.

"Four. . . five. . . six."

It roared almost on top of them.  "BOOM!"

They screamed until their ears stopped ringing.  Then listened again, trying to detect the tiniest thread of the distant rumbling of another jet.

The Air Force had recently broken the sound barrier.  On any given day one or two jets would rip through the sky at sound-shattering speeds.  The blasts were louder than cherry bombs set off in clothesline poles that shook the ground and made ears ring.

Jan loved the blasts.  At the first rumble she'd feel the tension start to build like she was on a roller coaster chugging up to the top of the first crest.  Then she'd feel the sonic blast with all of her being, an internal explosion that could bring her to tears.  It would be all she could do to keep from screaming at the top of her lungs in all the excitement.  Only the presence of a grownup, who'd remind her "she was a little lady not a monkey," could contain her zeal.

Jan's father, a World War II veteran, had a different take on this latest technology.  He'd make Jan and whoever else was around to stand at attention with their right hand over their heart for the duration of the after-blast ringing.  "See, that proves we're better than those Russian commies," he'd tell them.

On this particular day not a single grownup was in sight.  Jan didn't have to listen to her father's national pride lecture nor be ladylike for her mother.  The blast was hers to enjoy as she saw fit.  She picked up the rumble of the next jet first.

"One. . . two. . . three," she began to count.

The thunder grew louder.

"Four. . . five. . .six," Debbie joined in.

Again, the roar almost toppled them.  "BOOM!"  The ground vibrated under their feet.  Somewhere glass was breaking. Then an extraordinary thing happened--two more blasts in rapid succession ripped open the sky. The earth rolled, the houses shook, and a lone red-winged blackbird fell to the ground, landing a few feet in front of the girls.  It was the first of many birds to follow.

Jan looked up and saw countless migratory birds spinning out of V-formations, plummeting toward earth. Beyond them, from incomprehensible heights, specks of dust grew larger and larger, taking on more feathery forms as they descended upon the now terrified girls.

"Come on!"  Jan grabbed Debbie's hand and pulled her along as she ran.

Debbie, yanked out of her stupor, worked to match Jan's stride.  They piston-pumped as fast as their legs would carry them, but couldn't outrun the falling fowl.  Birds dropped all around them--blackbirds, bluebirds, robins, meadowlarks, and sparrows.  Their lifeless bodies squished, then crunched under the weight of the girls' feet.

One bounced off of Debbie's head, hit Jan's shoulder, and rolled down her arm.  Another pelted Jan's face, jabbing feathers into her eyes.  Their screams once ecstatic turned to horror.  They threw their hands over their faces and ran blindly home, each forgetting the other.

Jan slammed through the front door and rushed to her mother, who had been watching from the living room picture window with Sis, Jan's older sister.  "Why didn't you help me?" Jan shouted at her.

Her mother hugged her tightly and stroked her head.  "Now, baby, you know I couldn't.  It's. . . it"s just not in me.  Besides I knew you'd be fine."

Jan couldn't help but feel her mother was more concerned about how it might look to the neighbors to see a grown woman prancing about dodging dead birds, but as soon as she thought it she felt a twinge of guilt.  In all fairness, Jan had never known her mother, in spite of being raised on a farm, to touch an animal dead or alive.  Her father or Sis had to empty the frequently sprung mousetraps, while her mother fretted from a safe distance.  And once, when Jan had caught a field mouse and wanted to keep it for a pet, her mother went into such hysterics at the mere sight of it that Dr. Glen had to come out and sedate her.  Jan sighed at the truth.  No, her mother wouldn't have been much help against a storm of dead birds.

Now in the safety and shelter of home, curiosity replaced Jan's fear.  She peeked out the window, her face still partially buried in her mother's apron.  From the corner of her eye she saw Sis making a sour face.

"You're such a baby," Sis sassed.  "Haven't you ever seen a bird storm before?"

"Now, Sissy, quit teasing your little sister."  Her mother thumped Sis's head.  "You haven't seen nothing like this here neither." Then she went to the kitchen to start dinner, leaving Sis to fume.

"So there."  Jan stuck out her tongue.

Sis punched Jan's side, which would have under normal circumstances started a fight but now drew little response.  The panoramic view of the bizarre storm captured their interest.  They stood next to each other spellbound, watching the last few birds fall.  It couldn't have lasted more than fifteen minutes from start to finish, but it seemed like an eternity to the girls.

When it was over, birds covered everything--lawns, driveways, sidewalks and street.  They clogged roof gutters like fallen leaves and hung precariously from trees, caught in webs of bare branches.

Once the sky had cleared, Jan and Sis spotted Debbie and her older brother, Ernie, checking out the damage from the safety of their open garage.  They waved until they got their attention.  Then both Debbie and Ernie motioned for them to come over.

Jan and Sis looked toward the kitchen at the same time.  They could hear the sound of a roast braising in a skillet.

"She won't even notice we're gone," Sis whispered. "And if she does. . . well, you know she'd never follow. . . not with dead birds out there."

"What about Dad?"  Jan's butt involuntarily clenched at the thought of her father's punishment of choice.

They frowned at each other, and then looked back outside.

Debbie and Ernie were already piling up birds.

They stared back at one another.  Their dad wouldn't be home for a couple hours, but the birds were waiting to be explored now.  The threat of their dad's belt couldn't compete with this once in a lifetime opportunity awaiting them outside.

By the time Eleanor Denton realized her daughters were sneaking out it was too late.  "Don't you be going. . .,"  The bang of the storm door cut off her sentence.  She went back to cooking, grumbling to herself.

Sis and Jan headed straight over to Debbie and Ernie's yard.  Bill and Joey Armstrong, older boys who lived next door, had already joined them.  Forest appeared from around the corner, kicking birds out of the way with each step.  Debbie gave Jan a smug look and called him over.

"You don't have to gloat."  Jan pinched her arm.  She felt her bargain with Debbie had railed back to slap her in the face.

Some of the other neighborhood kids managed to escape from their houses, as well.  Together, they looked around in wonder.  Jan had to keep reminding herself that it was real and not a bizarre dream; it felt so much like a creepy nightmare.

Bill and Joey started throwing birds at one another.  Before long, teams were chosen for an all-out battle.  They made forts out of metal patio chairs and old rag rugs scavenged from their backyards and garages, and heaped piles of birds next to them for ammunition.

The first bird Jan picked up was a robin, soft and silky on the surface, but brittle in her grip.  The bird;s crackling bones sent shudders clear through her.  The contrast, soft and brittle, captivated her attention.  She couldn?t stop staring at the bird in her hand.  She couldn't move.

"Throw the thing, will ya!"  Bill shouted.

Jan looked up just in time to jump from the path of an incoming blackbird.  Debbie was standing next to Forest on the other side, laughing at her.  This was war.  Jan threw the robin with a vengeance, but it fell far short of the mark.  She grabbed several more birds, no longer thinking about how they felt, and ran out from behind the fort to get closer.  She threw bird after bird with a growing mania and even less accuracy.

Bill and Joey aims were more accurate.  Joey threw a fat lark at Sis and caught her in the face.  It jarred her plaid framed glasses and knocked her clean off her feet.  For a few moments everything was silent.  The war paused, while all eyes turned to Sis and all mouths dropped open.  Someone had finally gotten the better of Sis, who was the neighborhood tomboy.  The invincible had fallen.  What other miracles might appear on that eerie day, they could only guess.

"Na na na na na na," Joey and Jan's team taunted the other side, which answered with a fury of feathery fire.  For a while they kept Jan and the others pinned behind the metal chairs, unable to fight back.

Bill got the idea to divide up the remainder of the ammunition and make a charge at them.  "Jan, you run to the right; Joey, you flank them to the left; and I'll charge them straight down the middle," he ordered.

"Yes, sir!"

They scooped up as many birds as they could and on the count of three, charged the enemy, catching them off guard.  Jan discovered that at closer ranger her aim improved.  She even managed to hit Debbie once or twice, though not hard enough to cause her to flinch.

By the time Jan's team reached the other fort they ran out of ammunition.  They were forced to run back to their own fort for protection, while Debbie?s team rallied a counter assault.  Back and forth the teams charged one another, playing without thought or reason, like their very existence depended upon it.

At such intensity it didn't take long before Jan grew weary and her arms weakened.  She stood back and looked around at all the dead birds, stopping just long enough to catch her breath, and it was as if her senses reawakened, kicking into overdrive.  The fowl stench, which had previously gone undetected, now pummeled her nostrils.  The repulsiveness of the war game hit her like a sucker punch. She grabbed her stomach and swallowed hard to wash away the nasty taste rising in the back of her throat.  She didn't want to touch another bird.

About the same time, on the other side Debbie had also stopped playing.  Drained of color, she stood motionless, except for her quivering lips, while dead birds whizzed past her head.  Suddenly, her knees buckled from under her and she began to retch.  The game screeched to a halt.

The older kids stood around stunned and confused, like they had just awakened from a trance. Ernie rallied to his sister's side, helped her back on her feet, and walked her home.  All questioning eyes then turned to Jan.  Would she be next?

The sound of soft, turned brittle, carcasses crackling in her grip reverberated through her bones.  She felt the ground spinning out from under her, but she fought hard to steady her balance.  She didn't know what to do.  Nor did the others.

They all stood around feeling helplessly guilty and sick until Ernie returned with a wheelbarrow piled high with bushel baskets.  The older boys passed out the baskets and took charge of the carcass collection.  Everyone started gathering birds--everyone except Jan.

Forest walked over and took her hand.  "We'll make it all right, Jannie."  He gently pulled her hand down to a pile of birds, like a guide helping a blind person.

Jan fought back tears, but didn't pull away from his lead.  In a daze she began to pick up birds and fill Forest's basket.  When it was full they carried it to the wheelbarrow, one on either side, dumped it, and started over again.  She thought she could hear fluttering wings in the bare branches above her.  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she wondered if birds had souls.  She felt as if they were hovering over her, watching her work, but she was too scared to look up.

The children picked up as many birds as they could and dumped them in the empty field.  The sun was setting; their fathers would be home soon.  Jan felt pressed to get home before her father.  Maybe he'd go easy if he didn?t see her playing with the birds with his own eyes, she thought.

Their mother stood waiting at the door when Sis and Jan ran home.  She grabbed them by their sleeves and marched them into the bathroom where a scalding hot tub, soap and scrub brush awaited.  She scrubbed their skin raw, all the while clicking her tongue and scowling down at them, but never saying a word.  Their father came home soon afterwards.  Anticipating his thunderous anger, the girls were too scared to come out of their bedroom.  They cracked the bedroom door open ever so slightly and strained to hear what punishment they'd get, but it was futile.  Their parents, who were in the kitchen at the other end of the house, kept their voices low.

The girls couldn't stay hidden forever; there was still dinner to be gotten through.  Jan expected the lecturing to begin around the dinner table and the belt for desert, but the silence continued.  She didn't know which was worse, being punished or waiting through the silence in fear.  She couldn't eat for worry.  Neither could Sis.  They picked at their food, scooting it strategically around their plates to make it look half eaten, while their parents stared at their plates and picked at their food, as well.

"I better go out to help with the cleanup. The other men, I imagine, are already out there."  The silence was broken.  Their father dropped his napkin over his plate and pushed away from the table.  The sound of his chair scraping across the floor echoed through the kitchen.  "Maybe you kids better go on to bed."

"Yes, sir."  They quickly scrapped their plates and scampered straight to bed, where they could watch the cleanup from the windows of their darkened room.

The men worked under floodlights and lanterns, on top of ladders with brooms or on the ground with shovels.  They cleaned out gutters and shook feathered fruit from trees.  They raked up birds from the lawns, hidden under the leaves. They raked up birds from the driveways, sidewalks and street.  The chalky grate of metal scraping across asphalt set Jan's teeth on edge, but she couldn't pull away from the window.

The men worked well into the night until they had gathered every bird.  Then they dug a large pit in the field, deep enough to avoid plow blades, and buried them.

Sis and Jan watched until their eyelids grew heavy and they drifted off to sleep with their heads still propped on the windowsill.  Jan's sleep was fitful.  She dreamed she was frantically swimming through the air, while giant blackbirds in hot pursuit pecked at her feet.

The next morning she awoke in her own bed, wondering if the bird storm had really happened or if it had been part of her dream.  Everything seemed normal.  A steady stream of sunlight was pouring through the windows; the aroma of her mother's overly browned toast was wafting through the air; and Sis was already rifling through the closet for something to wear.  Jan jumped out of bed and ran to the window.  Nothing looked out of place.  All the lawns looked neat and trim.  Mr. Morris was backing his car out of the garage.  Mrs. Armstrong was outside in her robe retrieving the morning paper from her rose bushes.  Everything seemed as it should be for a weekday.

Jan began to relax and get ready for school, assured it had all been a nightmare.  But as she buttoned her blouse, her eyes wandered to the window overlooking the field.  What she saw set her in a tailspin.  There in the field a large, dark circle of freshly turned soil stood out from the rest of the barren ground.  Morning dew steamed from it like spirits rising.  Her stomach knotted.  "This can't be!" she cried and climbed back into bed, pulling the covers over her head.

A pillow sailed across the room and hit her. "Get up," Sis squawked. "We're in enough trouble as it is."  But, the trouble never came.

The silence continued much to their surprise and dismay.  Jan figured their parents must have thought they had learned something out of the experience on their own, and didn't want to go messing it up by punishing them on top of it.  Exactly what they were supposed to have learned, she wasn't certain, but she did feel changed some how--nothing she could put into words.  As for her parents, she wasn't sure she liked their new hands-off approach.  She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Talk about the birds kept the community hopping for weeks.  Everyone had a bird story to tell.  Everyone had been affected one way or another.  There were reports of car accidents and property damage comparable to that of baseball size hail.  Stories of being stranded, power outages, and panic attacks.  After a while talk turned from what happened to why.

The grownups discussed it during bridge games and cocktail parties, across clotheslines and over backyard fences, at PTA and VFW meetings, at bonfires and junior league football games, in grocery lines, and waiting rooms.  For weeks they analyzed, speculated, and theorized.  Jan and Debbie were there to take it all in.  They sneaked behind chairs, hid under tables, and listened in doorways whenever they could.  They acquired such a fine sense of tuning that they could be playing paper dolls totally oblivious to grownup conversation, but at the mention of the birds their ears would automatically perk up and they?d attend to each word.

Mr. Morris blamed the farmers.  "Damn crop dusters, poisoning us just as much as those damn birds," he said at one of the Dentons' dinner parties.

Debbie and Jan were suppose to be playing in Jan's bedroom but, under the ruse of needing drinks, had slipped into the living room unnoticed and hidden behind a leather recliner to listen.  The girls had heard the crop dusting theory many times before.  It was especially popular among the neighborhood men, all of whom had served their country in one war or another.

The other most probable cause was too unthinkable, too unpatriotic, to entertain.  Most tried to tiptoe around it, fearful of tripping the land mind it posed.  While the sonic blasts would forever be linked in Jan?s memory as the cause of the dead birds, she couldn't bring herself to voice her judgment, giving substance to what in her heart was true.  Being right didn't seem so important if it threatened all that her father held near and dear.  She peaked out from her hiding place and saw her mother worrying over her martini.

"It's not natural, those jets tearing through sound the way they do," her mother said, while intently staring at the olive at the bottom of her glass.  "Lord knows what damage it causes."

Mr. Morris' mouth dropped open and Jan's father's clenched shut.  How could Jan's mother break the taboo?  Jan and Debbie sucked in their breath waiting for someone to say something.

Finally, Mrs. Morris broke the silence. "Why, Eleanor, I think you're on to something. There were a lot of blasts that day, weren't there?"

Jan's father cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.  Her mother abruptly stood up and started collecting empty glasses.  The party broke up quickly.

In a matter of days Jan witnessed a remarkable change in her mother.  Eleanor Denton--the mother she'd always known to kowtow before neighborhood opinion, who obsessed over smoothing ruffled feathers--had transformed into a crazy woman willing to take on the whole U. S. Air Force.  She mounted a campaign to stop the supersonic jets from flying over the community, while Jan's father watched helplessly from the sidelines, looking hurt and betrayed.  She rallied the neighborhood women into canvassing the district with petitions.  She called everyone on the PTA phone tree to write letters to their congressmen.  Soon women from other communities that had also been affected by the sonic blasts joined the fight.  In no time the campaign took on a life of its own.

A rift formed as a by-product, splitting the neighborhood for the most part down gender lines.  One night while the women were away at a rally, a delegation of men visited Jan's father.  Jan crawled through the kitchen and peeked around the doorjamb to watch.

"You're the man of the house," Mr. Greer said.  "Can't you do something about your wife?"

Jan's father sighed, took off his glasses, and wiped his eyes.  "What do you want me to do. . . Don't you think I've tried?"

"Eleanor's not the only one," Mr. Morris said.  "All of our wives have gone crazy. Let's not worry about how it all got started.  We've got to figure out what we're going do about it."  So the men started making plans of their own to force the women to stop.

Daytime conversations between Jan's parents became strained. At night Jan and Sis would lie in bed and listen to the angry muffled voices coming from behind their parent's bedroom door.  Some nights their father would storm out the front door, but when the girls woke up in the morning, he'd be back, sitting at the breakfast table, looking a little worse for wear.

"What would become of us if Mom and Dad got divorced?"  Jan asked Sis.

"Don't be silly.  We're Catholic.  We don't believe in divorce."

Jan found little comfort in Sis' reasoning.  She didn't see how religion could hold her parents together, not when they both felt so strongly they were right.

On the other hand, having a celebrity in the family had its own rewards.  Eleanor Denton's picture appeared in both the Kansas City Star and Times.  Then the United Press picked up the story and her name appeared in newspapers across the nation.  A certain amount of notoriety followed Jan just for being her mother's daughter.  Suddenly, everyone at school knew who she was and wanted to be her friend.  Instant popularity made her feel heady, but then she'd think about her father and guilt would set in.

As quickly as the campaign started, it ended.  The Air Force, though never admitting guilt, announced plans to quit flying supersonic jets over heavily populated areas.  That was good enough for Jan's mother.  She hung up her activist shoes for good.  The men were satisfied, as well, since no blame had officially been heaped on their beloved military.  Eventually the tensions eased along Meadowlark Lane and the rift mended.

Jan no longer worried about her family splitting up, though at times she'd look at her father, standing not quite so tall and proud as before, and feel a twinge of sadness.  Her mother, who had reverted back to the way she was before, never spoke of the birds again, but through the winter Jan would catch her gazing out the window up at the sky, her face a picture of anxious hope.  Jan felt it too--the question no one dare ask hanging over them like a heavy snow cloud, threatening but never giving up its flakes.  "Would the birds return?"  Only spring would bring the answer.

In the meantime life trudged onward.  Sis got a crush on Ernie and quit being such a tomboy.  Bill and Joey continued to play war games, getting into trouble more than once for shooting b.b.'s at picture windows.  Debbie never got the chance to kiss Forest.  He only had eyes for Jan after that fateful day.  And, Jan became the peacemaker her mother had hoped for, no longer jumping to snap judgments between right or wrong, true or false, but readily searching for common ground where differing viewpoints could coexist.

By early March the temperatures had risen above freezing and the snow began to melt.  No birds had yet been seen, but the children kept watch on their walks to and from school.  One day, Debbie and Jan spotted a jet heading westward.  It flew low darting in and out of the clouds.  The girls watched it disappear over the horizon, and both sighed.

Debbie gave Jan a confused, strange look.

"What. . . you think you?re the only one who wants to be a movie star?"  Jan said.

"But you said movie stars don't come from Kansas."

Jan smiled and draped an arm over Debbie's shoulder.  "If birds can rain from the sky and moms can stop planes from flying, anything is possible, anything at all."

They quickened their pace against the blustery wind, while the sun threatened to peek out from behind its wintry cover.

"Listen. . . do you hear it?"  Debbie stopped and grabbed Jan's hand.

Jan held her breath and cocked her ear, not knowing for what she was listening.  The faint sound of a robin's song trilled in the distance, four lovely notes to herald in the spring.