Chapter 3Jesse stood by the bedroom window, looking out at the back yard. Mrs. Brill had an ingenious bird feeder. Made of steel, it had a counterbalanced perch. The smaller birds could sit on it and peck at the feeder tray. But as soon as something heavier, like a squirrel or even a mourning dove, climbed onto the perch, a flat piece of steel slid down and covered the tray. The chipmunks were small enough to climb into the tray itself, but the fat squirrels were literally baffled.
Mrs. Brill had told him that one of her former boys had installed that for her.
She liked to reminisce about her boys. First there had been Hank, who graduated and went off to a job in Atlanta. Then there was Brody. She said Brody was still in town, a student at CSU. He had been in the Marines in the Middle Ea
