Ferris, Texas is the sort of place you wouldn't want to visit, much less drive through, on an afternoon road trip through the middle of Texas. Yet that's just what my Aunt and Uncle did one hazy day in mid-July. A Dairy Queen, a Post Office, and a few vacant buildings with broken windows and signs whose bright hand-painted letters faded long ago in the blazing light of the ever-present sun is all that remains in the heart of town. Tumbleweeds roll across the dirt roads past little white matchbox houses. Old dogs lie in grassless yards under trucks that only run on a good day. Ferris is a town that ran out of luck a long time ago, or perhaps never had any in the first place.

A few years back, my aunt and uncle, Kay and Robert, got it in their heads to buy a house in the country so that their kids could grow up somewhere besides the crime ridden streets of east Dallas. They found what they were looking for when they drove past a shoddy little structure just outside of Ferris. It wasn't for sale, but their monetary offer to the elderly couple that lived there soon made the farmhouse theirs. Every summer after that, my mother drove me out to Ferris to spend weekends in the country with my cousins.

Outside of town, the wind wailed through the tall grass, causing it to wave wildly and beat against my bare tanned legs. Out in the back field behind the house, the grass provided a perfect cover during games of hide and seek. When I ducked out of view, I might be lucky enough to find a strawberry patch or a bird's nest, or cursed enough to find my ankle caught by a low-lying bramble bush. In this case, my cover was broken as I yelped in pain when the thorns scratched my bare legs bloody.

Sitting on the back stoop, I could see a thunder storm or tornado coming from miles away. This part of Texas is flat as a pancake, with only a scrub oak or two fighting a battle for mere survival against the rocky soil and relentless heat. Parents in these parts send their young children out to play in their underwear because it is so sweltering hot. Modesty is not an issue when you only have siblings to play with. The next house might by five or more miles down the road in either direction, and a car might drive by once every three or four hours. If you happened to be in one of those cars, you might peer out the window to see me, my little brother Pete, and our cousins Meg and Ian sitting solemnly in a kiddie pool in the front yard, too hot to move and too bored to talk.

We had to watch out for certain things in the country. There were rattlesnakes out there, and they often slithered into the yard to take shelter in the shade under the porch or the car in the gravel drive. More than once, Uncle Robert had shot an innocent grass snake with his BB gun, thinking it was a rattler after one of us or the dog. Another concern was the fire ant population. Swarms of the red and black biters would come forth from the cracked ground in the spring, hunting for seeds. There were so many, they could disassemble the carcass of a prairie dog in a few hours and carry it piece by piece to storerooms in the ground. Ian was a short sighted toddler and sat his diapered bottom smack in the center of a fire ant pile one afternoon. Within sixty seconds his pink little arms and legs were smarting with the sting of the soldiers' vicious bites. Aunt Kay gingerly lifted him from the swarm and rushed him into the house for an oatmeal bath.

The sky was filled with the cries of birds who could withstand the tough life of the plain. There were of course the vultures, who preyed on the less fortunate, the sparrows, whose do-anything cheerfulness was contagious, the blackbirds, afraid of nothing, and the mockingbirds, pranksters of the field. A mockingbird pair had built a little nest that teetered on the edge of the back shed one spring. This delighted Aunt Kay, who was quite the nature lover. It also delighted Applesauce the tabby cat, who made a killing in the springtime stalking the tender flesh of baby birds. One afternoon Aunt Kay looked out the kitchen window after hearing a loud racket, to see Applesauce creeping through the grass toward something flailing madly among the weeds by the shed. Momma mockingbird was dive bombing him relentlessly, screeching and hissing, calling for backup from her mate.

Aunt Kay ran out there to scoop up the tabby, depositing him onto the porch by way of the screen door. There in the weeds was a baby mockingbird, shivering and distressed, his eyes only just open. He called helplessly for his mother, little wings outstretched and beak to the sky. Aunt Kay knew a thing or two about this kind of situation, and she went into the shed to collect her garden gloves and a stepladder. With the gloves on, she lifted the baby form his potential death site and place him back in the nest with his kin. The mating pair circled above the shed at about twenty feet.

Aunt Kay returned to the house to watch from the window. She was dismayed when momma bird returned to the nest, inspected the rescued nestling, and promptly shoved him off the ledge. She had sensed something very wrong with that one, and he had to go. He might endanger the rest of her offspring. Well, that was it. Now Kay knew she had to try to raise him on her own. She made a bed out of hay from the horse barn and put him in the rabbit hutch, in the empty cage next to Bluebelle the lop-ear. She bought fishing worms at the feed store, ground them up into a mash, and fed the nestling every few hours with an eyedropper. He grew at the same rate as his kin, and when they were learning to fly from the top of the shed, he watched them with keen interest, prancing about the hutch with arrogant self-importance, eager to do the same.

I was nine that sweltering summer, just as eager to do things on my own as that little bird. I burst with pride when I climbed the tallest tree or beat a boy in a foot race. My mother had been coping well with letting me go. She knew I didn't want her brushing my hair in the morning or tucking me in at night. I could do those things on my own. Aunt Kay let me run wild that July, chasing the last glimmering light of my childhood. She knew I would be grown soon enough, and not be able to hear the magic in a cricket chirping or feel wonder at the sight of thousands of fireflies gleaming their love messages to one another in the moonlight. Grown ups can't understand the gossip of the magpies or hear the wind singing, but they don't forget what it is like. They don't forget to let their own children hold on to that for just as long as possible, until one morning you wake up and it is gone. It is gone and in its place is a wall of obligation and responsibility, manners and expectation. You can't climb back over this wall and be a kid again. All you have are the memories.

The mockingbird wanted out of that rabbit hutch. He had been pacing its length for days, calling madly and eying the beetles crawling below the wire floor. All he had ever known was this little space, his hay nest and his bowl of worms delivered twice daily on a dependable, precise schedule. He wanted to feel the fear and exhilaration that is borne on the breeze outstretched wings flying for the first time. Aunt Kay knew it was time, and she left the door open one morning. We took quiet shallow breaths and watched as the winged rogue took hesitant but solid steps toward the opening. He suddenly hopped from the ledge and allowed his outspread flight feathers to bear him up into the scrub oak's low-lying branches. There he stayed for the remainder of the evening, and he was still there at daybreak, surveying the great wide world around him with the awe and caution of a traveler arriving in a strange land. The mockingbird eventually taught himself to fly, and quite well might I add. For the next few weeks he managed not only to stay out of the tabby cat's paws, he also took great pleasure in dive bombing Applesauce in the most mocking manner, causing the cat to duck low to the dirt with his tail between his legs.

The bird just could not seem to leave the yard, and I could not leave the comfort of that summer. I clutched it with all of my might, but it slowly slipped away with the last brown leaves still clinging to the scrub oaks in the sharp wind. I did not want the summer to end because I knew what that would bring. Aunt Kay and Uncle Robert were selling the house and property and moving out to Killeen. My mother and father had recently told me we were packing to move north, where they could find more work. My last weekend at the house in Ferris was filled with the deep sadness of knowing I would never see this place again. I would have to grow up and be brave, brave enough to leave all things familiar behind and face a new life in a strange place. I spent a long time on that last day just staring out the window at the sea of grasses waving wildly in anticipation of a thunderstorm. That's when I realized that the mockingbird had not shown himself for two days. I had not seen him in the tree or harassing the cat, nor at the windowsill looking in as he often did. He was gone.