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Overview
Lyman, a thirty-year-old orphan, is sipping coffee on the front steps of the trailer he calls home one morning, when a ninety-year-old parrot arrives with a beakful of cryptic sayings—such as “That which hath wings shall tell the matter” —and a mysterious past. Convinced that heeding the bird’s wisdom will lead him to answers about himself he so desperately seeks, Lyman combines his night job as a courtesy patrolman, circling the highway that loops around Fort Worth, with days in the library. Together with Fiona, the loquacious librarian, he traces his adopted pet’s origins, and while what Lyman ultimately discovers may not help him piece together his own past, it paves the way for a future he never imagined.
“Read this book—and feel better while you wait for the world to make sense.” —The New York Times
“Coomer writes so well, with such freshness and authenticity, that we hate to put the book down.” —The Boston Globe
“Joe Coomer is a marvelously creative comic writer: Lyman’s lonely, lively mind, his generous and timid spirit, Fiona’s quirky originality, and, of course, the aged parrot who proudly announces, ‘I’m an eagle,’ takes the reader on an adventurous and all too brief, ride around the Fort Worth loop.” —The Washington Times
“Deliciously quirky and perceptive . . . the denouement both heartens and satisfies.” —Publishers Weekly
“Impossible to resist.” —The New Yorker
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780684871240 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 212 |
| Sales rank: | 286,615 |
| File size: | 548 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
From Chapter 1
It was winter now. The dry leaves ticked past, scudding across the rusting wire of the screen door. He sat here every morning, a few feet from the open door, looking out into his backyard through the screen, challenging his memory. What's changed since yesterday? The wire divided the world into units and by sitting in the same spot at the same time each morning he was sure he'd someday net the moment, notice that point of departure where the future left the past. There were times when he stared so intently that the screen dissolved everything behind it and became a soft blankness of emotion. The wire would expand, float, hang so fluidly that fish were caught, brilliant gills of scarlet. Then there seemed a bewildering urgency, a writhing moment of opportunity, and he reached for the lip of the fish as if he were retreating from a burn, or an electric shock, or the barb of a hook. He almost dropped his coffee.
The grass beyond the door was sparse, brown, the weathered stockade fence grey, and the leaves so dry they cartwheeled to powder. It was winter now, he thought. When did that happen?
The parrot came then, lit on the handle of the screen door, but soon swung like a stone on a string beneath the handle, and finally rested there upside down. The bird looked into the kitchen. For a moment Lyman was so startled he felt as if he were hanging upside down rather than the parrot. He opened his mouth. The bird opened his mouth. The parrot's green and yellow was almost arrogant against the grey of the backyard. But he was weathered too: a tuft of down torn from his breast, a spot of blood between his eyes, a wing feather broken and thrust up under his beak as if he were trying to scratch his chin. Lyman stuttered, trying to snare the moment. He fought against the obvious but finally couldn't help himself, and said, "P -- P -- P -- Polly want a..."
"Shut up!" the bird screeched.
Lyman was immediately convinced of the parrot's sincerity. But he wavered when the bird didn't continue, didn't fly away. He was mesmerized by the brilliant green plumage, the yellow eye, the lolling of the body in the breeze. He asked again, "Polly want a..."
"Shut up!"
The bird's voice grated through the screen shrilly and slapped him. The moment, the moment, the moment, he thought. But the parrot interrupted Lyman again. He righted himself on the door handle, tearing triangular holes in the screen with his beak. The feathers on the nape of his neck bristled and he dropped his head between the shoulders of his wings. Then he turned to Lyman directly.
"I'm an eagle," he said. The parrot said it again, "I'm an eagle."
Lyman, speechless, nodded slowly and put his coffee cup on the floor. He rose and walked to the door and opened it gently. The parrot, windblown, grabbed the edge of the door with his beak and swung one foot around to the inside handle, then the other, then released the edge of the door. Lyman let it come softly to and backed away.
For the longest time there had been only the burying of dogs, his shadow flung full-length into the roadside night by the headlights of his truck and passing cars, his shadow shoveling out shallow graves for the bodies of smashed and disemboweled and quartered animals.
*
Lyman began taking notes, writing on a Texas State Department of Highways pad the things the parrot said. In a small neat hand: "Shut Up." Beneath this: "I'm an eagle." He went back and capitalized "Eagle." Beneath this: "Speak for Yourself." The parrot had said this to him many times, with a conviction surpassing anything Lyman himself had ever had. The bird seemed sure.
Lyman took a single Polaroid of the bird sitting on the back of a kitchen chair. A single portrait because the flash caused the bird to utter a piercing scream and fly directly into the refrigerator door. He didn't seem to see very well. Lyman felt the bird staring, narrowing his field of vision, trying one eye then the other. He'd tried to speak occasionally, Lyman had, but his first syllables brought back the same shrill "Shut up" or the even more irritating "Speak for yourself." So he was silent and moved only slowly through the kitchen. Each time Lyman walked across the room, even though he stayed well away from that startling greenness and tilting head, the bird shifted nervously from foot to foot on the back of the chair. He shut the open door and pulled the curtains across the windows, then turned off the light hanging above the table. He wanted to calm this large flying beast, and he'd seen cloth covers hung over cages to put birds to sleep. The darkness seemed to help. Both of them were lulled. The bird lowered his bill to preen a feather, and Lyman, yawning, poured his coffee into the sink. He'll want something to eat, he thought. What does a tropical bird eat? From the cupboard he mixed a variety bowl: Captain Crunch cereal, pretzels, cheese balls, onion and garlic croutons. The parrot was on the chair in the far corner of the room. Lyman walked slowly to the kitchen table and slid the bowl across the formica toward the bird. He was shocked when the parrot jumped immediately from the chair to the bowl, lowering one eye to the level of the croutons and pretzels. A four-toed foot, almost a hand, lingered forward and lifted a pretzel from the bowl, brought it to the bird's beak. The beak dropped the pretzel back to the bowl, and the bird returned with a short hop and flap to the chair.
"What then?" Lyman asked.
The parrot looked up at him. Suddenly Lyman realized the bird had let him speak.
"You let me speak."
The bird brought a long-clawed toe up between his heavily lidded eyes and scratched at the scab there. Lyman moved back to the refrigerator, opened the door, and bent low to see what else he might have to offer the bird. He heard the rush of wings then, beating hard, flapping down on him, and all his thoughts were of the long claws and the thick, curved beak. He screamed, ducked lower, and covered his head with his arms. The parrot screamed too, coming in low, screaming in mid-flight, screaming out of the darkness toward the forty-watt bulb.
The bird screamed, "Give some to the parrot!" and lit on a shelf in the refrigerator. Lyman looked out from underneath his arms, squinting, ready to cover himself again. The parrot was rooting among the contents of his refrigerator, pushing bottles aside with his head and beak, moving from shelf to shelf. Behind a gallon of milk he found a plum and began making stabs at it with foot and beak.
"OK," Lyman said, "OK." He reached around the far side of the milk carton and snatched the plum, showed it to the parrot and carried it back to the table. The bird followed him, but this time made his way back across the kitchen on the floor, waddling over the linoleum, hopping up to a chair seat and then to the tabletop. Lyman moved away, and the bird began to eat. It gave him a warm shiver of pleasure, watching this foreign creature eating a plum on his kitchen table.
"Speak for yourself," Lyman said. "I'm an eagle," he said. But he couldn't get the parrot to respond. He'd have to find out who he belonged to. Somebody must be missing him. Who had taught him to say such extravagant things? He went back to the refrigerator and took more plums from the fruit and vegetable drawer. He washed them, yawning, and placed two more on the edge of the table. He thought that might be enough till the afternoon. He didn't have a cage, until he thought of the whole trailer as a cage. It would only be for the one day anyway. He watched the bird eat for a while longer, feeling the pleasure again, but it had been another long night, so he closed the kitchen door on the big green bird, and walked the length of the trailer to his bedroom. Just before he fell asleep he remembered the last thing the bird had said and wrote this down at the bottom of his list: "Give some to the parrot."
*
He dreamed there was a parrot in his kitchen and that the parrot called his name.
*
Lyman woke at 2:30 in the afternoon thinking not of the parrot but of Fiona at the library, the thing she'd said to him. She worked at the library of the northwest campus of Tarrant County Junior College. Lyman spent many nights there before work, catching up on his homework. He'd been studying there long before she'd come. The thing she'd said in a hot whisper that swabbed the convolutions of his ear, that made him feel as if she were tucking the hem of his shirt into his already buttoned pants, the thing she'd said: "Lyman, underneath this skirt my legs are almost miraculously transformed into my ass."
And Lyman had leaned away from her slightly, putting his finger in his ear, and said, "Why're you telling me this?"
"Because to everyone else it's obvious." And she straightened up then and walked back to the return counter. What was she trying to say?
*
The phone rang, rang, rang again, and Lyman looked at it beside his bed, but it did not ring. Then he remembered the parrot. Things never seemed to be what they seemed. He peed and the phone rang again, three short "brrriingggs." At the kitchen door he paused for a moment, then opened it slowly, following the arc of the door in a quick scan, but he couldn't see him. Then the bird lifted his head above the rim of the sink, where he'd been drinking water out of a dirty cereal bowl.
"MA17," the parrot said, and climbed out of the sink.
"MA17?" Lyman said queryingly.
"MA17," the bird assured him.
Lyman wrote it down. Then, surveying the kitchen, he noticed the long chalky streaks of feces ringing the room like some stranded bead curtain from the sixties. It was an amazing amount of feces for a bird, he thought. It dripped from every conceivable perch, down the front of the refrigerator, along the cabinets and chair backs, from the very doorknob he now held in his hand. The bowlful of pretzels and cereal lay scattered across the table with the remains of the plums. The parrot took flight then, lighting on the hood above the stove, and shat on Lyman's skillet.
"This won't do," Lyman said, but again he had an almost queer bodily pleasure in this animal's physical presence. It actually pleased him to watch the bird defecate. They looked at each other for a few moments and then, wetting the corner of a dish towel, Lyman approached the bird with the intention of rubbing the dried blood from between his eyes. When the towel was inches from the wound the parrot spread his wings and, snipping forward, drew fresh blood from the meaty part of Lyman's thumb. Lyman retreated, consoling his thumb by surrounding it with his healthy hand, and concurrently shouting, "Goddamn it!"
The bird shouted back, "Goddamn pinch-faced buttlick!"
Lyman smiled broadly at the bird for the first time. "Who made you?" he said. He looked at his torn thumb, ran water over it, wondered distractedly about rabies. There was a positive need for a cage. He'd have to see to that. He bandaged his wound, then thought of not writing down the bird's last outburst, but did so anyway. He'd never written down the word "buttlick" before. But it might prove useful in determining the bird's owner. Beside "MA17" he wrote: "Could it be the bird's name?" Had he escaped from some sort of scientific experiment? Lyman ruled out the possibility that he'd flown north from the tropics because he hadn't spoken any Spanish or Portuguese.
"¿Habla Español?" Lyman asked. The parrot didn't answer, but nearly bent himself double on the stove hood so he could look at Lyman upside down. Lyman took this for a no. He decided the only course would be to put a "pet found" ad in the Star-Telegram. Perhaps someone had already placed an ad looking for him. Whoever claimed the bird would sure as hell have to describe him.
But he couldn't imagine the person behind this bird. He looked at his list again, occasionally glancing up at the parrot to make sure he wasn't about to be attacked. I'm an eagle. What a preposterous and wonderful thing to say about yourself. Lyman said it out loud. "I'm an eagle." Then he said it again, assuming the bird's tone of authority. "I'm an eagle." He already understood it made him feel good to say it. He said it many more times, placing the emphasis first on "I'm" then on "eagle," then whispering the entire phrase under his breath as if it were a secret. He glanced up at the bird again. The parrot had one foot behind his head, smoothing the feathers on his nape. Lyman took this opportunity to squeeze open the refrigerator door and snatch the last plum. He washed it, then rolled it to the center of the kitchen table. The parrot watched him but didn't move.
Lyman took the far path to the door, and as he slid through it, heard the flapping of great wings. The sound made his heart beat wildly. He walked down the hall, past his living room and past the room with all his trophies, to his slope-roofed bedroom, and he dressed. He took down one of his ten fluorescent orange-and-yellow jumpsuits, and climbed into it, zipping himself in. His cap was fluorescent as well, orange with a long yellow bill. There was much to do before work at ten that night. As the screen door on his trailer slammed to he heard the phone ringing again. And although it was hard for him to control his hands, he kept on walking.
Copyright © 1992 by Joe Coomer
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Much of the book's plot revolves around the main characters' work. Are Fiona and Lyman suited to their jobs? In what ways do their career choices seem unlikely? How does Coomer use Lyman's and Fiona's jobs to reveal their personalities? Recall and discuss Lyman's experiences, encounters, and discoveries on the Loop highway. How do they affect him? How does Coomer use the Loop as a metaphor for Lyman's stalled life? Why does Coomer choose to have Lyman work the night shift? What effect does this have on the mood and tone of the book?
2. Discuss Lyman's complex relationship to dogs. Considering his affection for canines, why doesn't he have a pet dog of his own? What does Lyman's ability to both love living dogs and bury the unfortunate ones on the Loop reveal about his character? What do you make of his impulse to call the owners of the missing pets he buries? At one point, Lyman refers to Fiona's dog, Floyd, as her "religion." What does the book as a whole seem to say about the nature of people's relationships with their pets? What purpose do pets serve in the world Coomer describes? What do they provide? What can't they provide?
3. Discuss the theme of religion throughout the book. Considering Lyman's cynicism toward religion, why does he treat the parrot as a prophet, calling its arrival a "blessing" and its sayings "revelations"? What exactly does the parrot symbolize? God? Wisdom? The allure of the past? The unknown? The unknowable? Is Lyman searching for a religion he can believe in, or an alternative to religion? Or is he simply, as Fiona suggests, looking for confirmation of his own personal philosophy?
4. Compare and contrast Lyman's reactions to Fiona and the parrot, the two loquacious creatures who intrude on his solitary life. How does he behave toward each? How does he respond to what they say? Why are the parrot's random and repetitive utterances more meaningful to Lyman than Fiona's eloquent insights and blatant advances? Why does Lyman initially view Fiona as a distraction from his "mission," thwarting her efforts at closeness while devoting himself to the bird's needs and care?
5. During their nocturnal adventure on the Loop, Fiona disparages Lyman's friend Tammy for missing a tooth and Lyman says: "Most of the people I know are missing something." Indeed, several characters in the book are missing body parts. And other characters have lost parents, children, and pets. Discuss the themes of loss and discovery throughout the book. If the book were viewed as a "Lost and Found," would the losses outnumber the "finds"? What is Lyman missing? What does he think he's missing? What is he most in need of finding? What is the significance of Lyman's losing a toe during his heroic rescue of Floyd?
6. Lyman believes that finding the bird's owner will be "akin to finding the message behind the universe." But instead of revelations or a wise prophet, Lyman's quest turns up a string of rather ordinary people. Do their diverse stories and circumstances shed light on Lyman's search for meaning? Do their reminiscences have common themes? Whose past connection to the parrot has the most relevance to Lyman's own life? Though they are not what Lyman expects, in what ways do the prior owners provide more of what he needs?
7. Throughout the book, does Lyman look for wisdom in all the wrong places? Is he guilty, as Fiona accuses him, of "looking for meaning where there is none"? Who are the wisest characters in the book? Does Lyman recognize their wisdom? What is the significance of Lyman's giving away his unusual trophy collection?
8. Most of the parrot's utterances are attributable to a previous owner. But the saying from Ecclesiastes -- "That which hath wings shall tell the matter" -- remains an enigma. Why does Coomer choose to preserve this piece of the bird's mystery? The final "black, unknowable hole" of the bird's past is a band of gypsies who speak with foreign accents. What is the significance of this?
9. Discuss the significance of Lyman's living in a "blocked up" trailer, a dwelling designed for movement that has been stuck on a lot for decades. How does his home and its contents reflect Lyman's personality and reveal his character? Why is it important that Fiona is the one to get his mobile home back on the road? Does her preparation and "hijacking" of Lyman's trailer seem a fitting start to their future together?
10. The second to last section of The Loop is told in Fiona's voice. What effect did this shift from a third-person to first-person point of view have on you as the reader? Did it change the way you viewed either or both of the main characters? Why does Coomer let Fiona speak to us directly at this point in the novel? By the end of the book, does Fiona know Lyman better than he knows himself? Does she better understand his needs?
11. Lyman's search for the parrot's owner becomes a quest for enlightenment. What do the results of his search say about the author's views on man's plight and the meaning of life? Does the book as a whole argue that there is meaning in the world to be found; that we each have to create our own meaning; or that any search for meaning is a fallacy, a dead end. Does the book as a whole support Lyman's belief that life is utterly capricious and arbitrary? How does love factor into the equation? What is love's role in helping us find or create meaning?
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
The Loop began with a happenstance sighting of a courtesy patrolman burying a dead animal in the highway median of Loop 820 around Fort Worth, Texas. My own headlights reflected off the blade of the shovel for an instant. I wondered what kind of person would take such a job, and had a simultaneous sensation of guilt that it wasn't me. Having given a character his work of circling a hot city in the dark, of burying the animals who tried to enter or escape it, and who cares for human wreckage as well, I wanted to know how he got there. Luke is the means to this end. He was born when a woman walked into our antique mall and told us she'd been given a parrot who insisted he was an eagle. While searching for the parrot's history, Lyman has to come to terms with the simple value of searching and moving beyond a tight orbit. Fiona, my alter ego, sees that part of the world "handled" by others so the rest of us won't be bothered, and must come to terms with her own responsibilities, and does so by actually carrying Lyman, who's been wounded, off the field of honor, and on to a destination, a road with an end. For me this is a love story, inhabited by people on the verge of understanding. They're animals caught out in the middle of the road, blinded by light. All the people and animals they meet have crossed this road. Their stories, however abbreviated or disguised, are Lyman's and Fiona's and Luke's stories, too. I came to write this novel in a roundabout way, aided by characters and ideas that appeared at random. I wrote this novel in the exact same way I fall in love.