Uncle Tallulah

What man in his right mind would try to teach a wild swan how to fly? Rob Malone, that’s who. It happens in Uncle Tallulah, Bruce McLean’s novel after the belligerent swan suffers a crippling wing injury. The flying lessons are a triumph of love over hostility in the novel’s telling of three love stories. One of them has Rob Malone keeping his beloved Anna alive in spirit after she drowns while feeding the swans on the lake near their farm. He creates auras of her presence wearing different hats. A favourite thing for them had been playing a Schubert piano duet. The music becomes a story motif with Anna’s ghost and Rob side by side at the keyboard, his two hands instead of four in a forlorn lonely playing of the duet. Among the swans, the wildly elegant Uncle Tallulah and his mate Beulah have an abiding love for each other quite separate from their devotion to new life. They take turns keeping her eggs warm in the nest. After Beulah is killed by coyotes, Rob shares Uncle Tallulah’s palpable grief, one widower to another. Equally poignant is Rob’s relationship with Uncle Tallulah. It starts with simmering hostility after the big cob cracks three of Rob’s ribs with a wing swat and later give him a black eye by pecking him on the cheek. At issue between them is ownership of the farm. Rob Malone’s name may have been on the deed to the farm. In Uncle Tallulah’s measure, his turf extends well beyond the nesting squat on the lakeshore. He roams the farm defiantly, shitting here and there to mark his territory, hissing loudly, raising his wings and puffing out his neck feathers to aggrandize himself. Rob meanwhile ranks himself down with one of the untouchables in India while he cleans up the farmyard swan shit with a broom and shovel. Distraught over Anna’s death, he looks for solace in smoking marijuana. Getting high, he berates Uncle Tallulah for failing to save Anna from drowning after the lake ice cracks underneath while she’s feeding the swans. Even more wasted on pot, Rob is reduced to fantasising about an erotic relationship between Anna and Uncle Tallulah. Rob, a victim of his own dynamic imagination, turns briefly to believing what is absurdly unthinkable. Later on, Uncle Tallulah suffers a crippling wing injury when he’s plowed under by a jet ski. He’s such a woebegone sight with a broken wing dragging beside him that Rob becomes the care giver in the triumph of love over hostility when he must choose between a mercy killing or having the wing surgically removed and finagles his way into opting for none of the above. Rarely if ever have a man and a wild bird been drawn so intimately together. Swan and farmer became patient and caregiver. They are companions in Malone’s truck going back and forth to the veterinary clinic. Rob replaces the passenger seat in the truck with a makeshift swan’s nest so that Uncle Tallulah can ride in comfort. He plays peekaboo with him, sings to him and mystifies him by closing in, nose to beak and going cross-eyed. The swan recuperates in the farmhouse and watches Antarctic penguins on television. Malone coddles him with apple slices and cherry tomatoes. After months’ convalescing, the swan has forgotten how to fly. Rob, harnessed up in Beulah’s wings, becomes the flying instructor, flapping like mad, briefly airborne, then crash landing on the sloped runway overlooking the lake. Rob’s tutorial continues over several days. He doles out cherry tomatoes a couple at a time to get Uncle Tallulah’s attention. He remains obstinately immobile, declining to participate. He’s bogged down in what the vet describes as learned helplessness after weeks of Rob’s soft touch, pampering care. With patience running out, Rob threatens dire consequences. “If you don’t shape up,” he says, confronting him again, nose to beak. “I’ll take you up onto the barn roof and throw you off and force you to fly.” It was as if Uncle Tallulah understood every word and decided to make it unnecessary for Rob to carry him up onto the roof of the barn, throw him off and hope for the best. That morning all on his own, the big cob flapped his wings powerfully, at a standstill, warming up. Then he’s galloping down the runway with long springing strides and launches himself into sky over the lake. Rob, eyes dimmed with tears of joy and relief, watches him soaring high enough over the horizon to conjured up a glimpse of heaven itself.