The library was empty except for old Mrs. Stokes, who stood by the card catalogue and smiled at him, nodding knowingly. If she only realized—her grey hair would turn white. He walked straight to the exact aisle, the exact shelf, selected the exact book, and took it to a table in the back of the library, even though he was the only other person in that large room. He sat by a window overlooking the long, sloping lawn, spring green, that dipped into the pine-filled woods.

It was a huge book. White cloth with elegant gold lettering: Encyclopedia of North American Birds, a book he had known since elementary school, with its crisp photographs and neat diagrams and its definitions upon definitions upon definitions. Because it was a reference book he couldn’t check it out, so for long hours he would sit and read about migratory paths, the use of tail feathers, the gestation periods of eggs . . .

As he opened the book he felt the blood rush to his head, and the first color plates cranked up his imagination like a locomotive: gulls, cranes, owls, storks, turkeys, eagles. He flipped through the book, faster and faster. Which bird? Sparrow, wren, jay. No, larger. Mallard, grouse, pheasant. Larger. Goose, swan, cormorant. Larger. Egret, heron, condor. Pages flipped; his heart beat faster; his mind grew fuzzy with possibilities. Raven, rook, blackbird. Crow . . .

He slammed the book shut, realizing that he had been riffling through the pages like a madman. Mrs. Stokes looked up quickly, startled, then gave him that brief, knowing smile.

He closed his eyes and thought of the only way he could make his decision. He thought about the land: the soybean fields surrounding his grandfather’s house, the woods that surrounded the fields, the tall, massive long-leaf pines. He thought of the miles and miles of highways, asphalt poured over mule trails that etched themselves into the North Carolina landscape, onto the beach, the sandy white, the sea, a murky, churning, the foam, spray, white, the smell of fish and rotting wood. He thought of winters, the floor of the woods a carpet of dry leaves, brown-and-black patchwork carpet. He thought of the sky, not a blue picture-book sky with a few thin clouds, but a storm sky, black and mean, full of wind and hate, God’s wrath, thunder, pelting rain. He thought of houses, new and old, brick and wood, high and low, roofs mildewed and black, chimneys, lightning rods, TV antennas. He was trying to think like a bird, the bird, the only bird he could become. And when he saw a rabbit, dashing, darting through a field of brown rye grass, and when he saw talons sink into the soft brown fur, he knew.