“Like a parrot in a cage”

“Like a parrot in a cage” is the image Dr. Karl Hofferitz uses to challenge Irv Manders’s plan to keep Charlie McGee hidden at the farm. Its force comes from the contrast between the refuge’s safety and the confinement required to preserve it: the phrase returns through the winter as Irv and Norma Manders try to protect Charlie without knowing how long they can keep her apart from ordinary life.

The Image of Confinement

At dinner, Dr. Karl Hofferitz asks Irv, “You just gonna keep her like a parrot in a cage?” He makes the image concrete by listing the ordinary intrusions a small-town family cannot easily avoid: church and Grange obligations, visitors, dairy inspectors checking the cows, and a tax assessor examining the buildings. Concealment, he suggests, would require more than keeping Charlie indoors; it could mean building her a room in the cellar. The comparison makes the cost of safety visible as a life of enclosure.

Irv has no ready answer. He quietly admits that he does not know what to do, while Norma looks troubled. He recognizes the danger Hofferitz describes but also invokes the people pursuing Charlie. The phrase therefore marks a conflict rather than offering a simple solution: exposure could put her at risk, while hiding her risks making the refuge itself a cage.

Recurrence Through the Winter

No firm decision is made before winter. Irv and Norma resume going to church, leaving Charlie alone in the house with strict instructions: she is not to answer the telephone, and if someone drives in, she must go down to the cellar. Hofferitz’s words haunt Irv as these precautions become part of their routine. He buys schoolbooks in Albany and teaches Charlie himself; he is not a particularly good teacher, though Norma does better. Their lessons at the kitchen table offer some structure, but Norma sometimes looks to Irv with a question he cannot answer.

The phrase recurs as the months pass: New Year, February, March, and Charlie’s birthday, with presents bought in Albany. Charlie does not seem entirely to mind the confinement. Irv wonders during sleepless nights whether the quiet period of slow healing might have been good for her, yet he still cannot tell what should come next. The repetition keeps the original image unsettled: apparent calm does not resolve the question of how long isolation can continue.

The Limits of Hiding

In early April, after two days of heavy rain, damp kindling prevents Irv from lighting the kitchen stove. Charlie tells him to stand back, and a brief, hot force passes through the air before the kindling catches. The incident shows that the household’s secret cannot be treated as merely a matter of keeping Charlie out of sight: her ability can enter ordinary domestic life, even when she is helping with a stove.

Later, Norma argues that hiding Charlie cannot be a permanent plan. Even a small weekly newspaper is connected to news services, she says, and information can travel widely; she points to a little California paper whose reporting won a Pulitzer despite its circulation of fewer than fifteen hundred. She reminds Irv that he took Charlie sapping in the woods that afternoon, and that a growing child needs fresh air and exercise. Her practical concerns give the cage image a new urgency: the danger is not only that someone may discover Charlie, but that concealment will restrict the ordinary experiences she needs. The phrase captures the unresolved choice facing the Manderses, not a decision they have reached.