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The Flock

Kristen Johnson Ingram

The goldfinches arrived the same day the children died.

I had my binoculars and was heading outside to look at the darting little yellow creatures when I heard the TV say, “CNN breaking news. . . . Shooting at Thurston High School, in Springfield, Oregon.”

Tragedy was only four blocks from my house. Thurston High is one of the nicest schools in the county, surrounded by houses with rhododendrons in the yards, small white churches and hills forested with Douglas fir. There are fir trees on the campus, too, kids in shorts and sweatshirts, and bright spring grass. That morning, hundreds of parents were swarming over the grounds, looking for their children, remembering how they had hollered before school about the popcorn mess in the den, remembering how they had been in the bathroom and hadn’t said goodbye, remembering how they had been angry about the failing grade in chemistry. Their faces were studies in terror; they knew their kids were in the school, but nothing else. When Kip Kinkle, a sweet-faced 15-year-old, had walked into Thurston High with a semi-automatic rifle and begun shooting , one boy had crawled out of the cafeteria and called his dad on the phone in the hall. “Come and get me,” the boy had said. His father was the only parent on campus that morning who knew for sure his son wasn’t dead.

I had to go somewhere, and as I drove past the end of the block by the school, police cars and ambulances were clogging the road. I wanted to go and stand on the campus with the parents, saying, “Don’t be afraid. I’m sure your child is all right.” But I couldn’t.

My cell phone rang. Someone was looking for my husband, who is relief chaplain at the hospital. They needed him desperately, to deal with parents. I gave the caller his pager number and switched on the radio. One student had been pronounced dead for sure, the announcer said, and 23 others had been transported to hospital.

That evening, I cut roses, lilies, snowballs and irises in my yard, wrapped their stems with foil, walked to the high school and thrust them into a corner of the fence. There were four other bouquets like mine. The narrow street was full of cars driving past to look at the school; high school kids who hadn’t been shot, hanging out, holding each other and weeping; and TV sound trucks.

Debbie, a member of our church is a teacher at the other Springfield high school, and she was Faith Kinkle’s best friend. Faith, Kip’s mother, now lay dead in her house along with her husband. After I stuck the flowers in the fence, I went to see Debbie. She was lying on her family room couch, crying; she looked like a rag, tossed against the cushions. Her son said he had taken karate lessons from Kip. “He was nice,” the boy said, and went to his room.

My own son, Victor, called when I got home; he was taking the boys to the coast for the day, he said. Although they attend schools across town, they were upset. The oldest boy, ready to enter high school, was afraid. He had announced that he wouldn’t go to school anymore.

The grandsons came to my house the next day. I asked my son if I could take the boys down to the school fence; he said no, but then called later and said maybe it would be a good idea, perhaps healing. I took them to the supermarket, where they bought bouquets. The fence that had held four bouquets was now covered with flowers, teddy bears, signs, posters, poetry and photographs.

“I’m moving in with you,” my grandson Victor said as we pushed our flowers into a notch in the fence. “I’m going to live with you during the week and you can home-school me.” School was boring, anyway, he said. They taught him the wrong things. I convinced him that this was not a possibility, and he said, well then, he’d just stay home and study on his own.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said when we got home. I added that perhaps his fear would make him vigilant and keep him alive. I said he was creative and would make decisions that would save him from disaster. I quoted statistics and recited other silly facts.

He gazed at me a while with patience, and then said that I’d have to face the fact that schools weren’t safe. I looked into my grandson’s face, and saw fear. Perfectly rational, logical fear. Never mind the possibility of nuclear war; today kids blow each other away in the school cafeteria.

“Look,” Victor said suddenly, and pointed out the back window. Myriads of goldfinches were surging through the air, lighting on branches and swooping down on the bird feeder.

“It’s a celebration,” Max, the eight-year-old, said.

It started to rain and the goldfinches disappeared into the woods.

Let it end here, I thought. Please. Let it end so they don’t have to be afraid.

Goldfinches usually move on after a week; this year, for no reason the Audubon society could give, they stayed all summer. The fluttering yellow gave me hope – hope that guardian angels will protect our children, hope that movies will quit glorifying violence, and a daring hope that men and women will beat weapons into ploughshares and teach their children to love God and one another. Maybe then our kids could grow up without fear.

Kristen Johnson Ingram is a writer from Springfield, Ore.

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Last modified June 29, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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