It’s not that flocks of birds or schools of fish or groups of improvising musicians are, when they are together, a single living thing with a collective personality, or that they are always only separate individuals who are just great at communicating with each other as they play together; it’s that they are both of those things and both at once. At least, we were at those times when we really did leave this everyday world and pass over into the Tone World.
The thought of being my individual self within the group, yet also joining the group, becoming part of that larger mind-soul, that bigger individual called the group, the flock, the band, and thereby knowing a kind of higher communication between individual souls, the thought of all of that, the thought of being there with you and the others, of sharing life and music with all of you: all of that sounds so good to me!
Oh, Howard, I’m so homesick! Thinking about all this makes me so lonesome for you and for the others, for the street, for all those people, all those sounds, the noise, the music of the city, our neighborhood. I’m homesick for those times we played together. I want to do something, make something, create something with a group, with our group, and not always, as I do here, alone. Alone. Alone. I’m not meant to be alone.
Well… I read a poem the other day by a Chinese poet named Hê Chih-chang called “Coming Home,” which, by the way, was written more than a thousand years ago::
I left home young. I return old,
Speaking as then, but with hair grown thin;
My people meet me, but they don’t know me.
They smile and say:
“Stranger, where did you come from?”
You see? What if I did come home? Who would know me? What good would it do? No. This exile is my home now.
I know you and a lot of others back there think I was out of my mind to come here all those years ago, way up here to this cold, white world. And staying here all these years has just proved to all of you that you were right! But I couldn’t help it. I had to come here. I had to leave there, I had to leave home. I couldn’t stand it there anymore. When I came here, I was just trying to be who I am, and not who somebody else says I am, and that’s what I’m still trying to be.
Do you know that great quote from Thelonious Monk? “A man is a genius just for looking like himself.” Well, it takes a lot of courage and work to look like yourself, “simple” as that may be. And Howard, sometimes the sacrifices I have to make to look like myself are almost more than I can stand.
I know another poet—I can’t remember his name right now—who got it right when he wrote:
When I was young I dreamed of home
And in my dream
I saw a place remote and in the mountains.
Now I’m in that place
And I call it home,
Yet home is still nowhere I can find.
It must be nowhere
Is the right place,
And when I get there I’ll be home.
And until I get to nowhere, I’ll be here.
And yet, so much of the time
I am so sad and blue.
So much of the time I am so lonely,
Sad and blue.
And sometimes, sometimes I just
Don’t know what I am going to do.
Your friend,
The Man finished the letter, put it in its envelope, sealed it, addressed it, and put on his outdoor clothes, and as he walked down the lane to the road and the mailbox, his eyes welled up with tears.
He opened the mailbox door, put the letter in, closed the door, put up the flag, turned, and headed back up the lane and toward the empty, silent house.
6. TROUBLE ON TOP OF TROUBLE
That night, it snowed about six inches. The next afternoon, as The Man walked back up the lane from the mailbox with the mail, he could see the story of many animal lives printed in the new snow.
Here, two red squirrels had dashed back and forth through the snow, going who knows where, doing who knows what, but both going and doing whatever it was with the derisive jeers and snickers and spasmodic jerks of feet and tail with which red squirrels do everything.
And here, a partridge had walked calmly and in a straight line through the snow, obviously going somewhere, its feathery feet holding itself up remarkably well; as did the webbed feet of the snowshoe hare, whose tracks wandered about up and down the lane and over the snowbanks on either side. And over here, a few hare pellets, droppings, scattered about as if waiting there to be periods at the end of sentences.
And there: the track of a cat, a housecat: almost without a doubt, the hated Arnold.
Then, as The Man moved further up the lane toward the house, he gave up studying the snow and looked up momentarily, just in time to see something he thought he’d never see.
There, right before his eyes, came Broken Wing: gliding, fluttering, flying down the hill from the dooryard apple trees toward the large white spruce that stood alone in the field below the lane. Yes, Broken Wing—gliding and flapping, not just with one wing, but two! Gliding and flying, actually flying, haltingly and awkwardly, but flying nonetheless, the couple hundred feet from the dooryard apple trees to the white spruce. It was clear that the effort took everything Broken Wing had, but he was doing it. He was actually flying, and with both wings. The Man stood amazed and full of hope at what he saw.
As Broken Wing landed safely on the tip of a spruce branch and began to walk toward the middle of the dense and protective tree, The Man turned and headed up the hill toward the house, shaking his head and wondering at what tenacity, perseverance, struggle and dogged will can do.
The days at the center of the winter passed almost seamlessly now, one into the other, yet within their steady pace and sameness. Slowly and daily, the light lasted longer at both ends of the day.
Day and night and day again and night, the cycle of the days moved slowly on.
The Man loved the regularity and sameness of these days, and he knew, in spite of his constant isolation and loneliness, that he could never live happily without them.
It was certainly true that much—well, some—of the time, he lived unhappily in this place, but trying to imagine living without this place and days like these was an equally unhappy thought. “Damned if I do and damned if I don’t,” he said to himself as he moved up the hill and toward the evening.
Another morning, and The Man was in his kitchen again, dropping a little milk into his cup and pouring the tea on top of it until his cup was full. He stirred the tea, stood at the kitchen counter, drank his tea, and looked out the window, out beyond the apple trees and toward the garden.
As The Man stood at his kitchen window drinking tea and watching the birds at the feeders, he thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a dark and vaguely familiar shape scurry behind a snowbank beyond the door-yard apple trees. Nothing. The Man must have been mistaken, yet he continued to watch that place where he thought he had seen a strange, yet almost familiar shape; thought he saw some movement, but nothing, only the birds feeding at the feeders or on the ground or at rest in the trees. Nothing, nothing but the stillness and the calm of another clear-cold winter morning.
Then, suddenly exploding out of the snowbank and upward into the morning air, all fur and fang and claw, The Man saw Arnold leaping toward the lowest branch of the nearest apple tree, where now he could also see Broken Wing resting, his back turned to the danger about to overwhelm him.
“No! No! No! No, you son-of-a-bitch! You bastard! No!” The Man screamed as he ran without coat or boots out the door, down off the porch and into the snow.
As soon as The Man appeared on the porch screaming, Arnold left off his attack and turned, and was now running down the lane toward the road below the house as fast as he could go. The Man leapt the few dozen yards to the apple tree, his now-wet stocking feet burning, to where Broken Wing lay fluttering, flapping in the new snow, trying to stay on the surface of this white and airy sea where just now he was literally drowning in the frot
hy, frozen water.
And where he beat his wings, the snow was red with blood. Although Arnold’s attack had been thwarted, the wing that Broken Wing had been painstakingly mending all last fall and this winter was now torn and broken again.
As The Man stood over Broken Wing, the helpless bird beat his wings weakly in the bloody snow. The Man could not leave him here. To do so would be to invite certain death, if not from a passing, or perhaps right-now-watching, predator, then from suffocation, drowning in the snow; and if not from that, then from the bitter cold. As much as The Man wanted not to interfere in the life of his little friend, The Man knew he must act and act quickly, or there would be no life left in which not to interfere.
The Man bent down and lifted the blood-soaked bird carefully and gently out of the snow. Now, on top of the trauma of the attack and the danger of the snow and cold, Broken Wing had also to deal with the fright he felt at being in the hands of, for all he could tell, a creature more dangerous than a cat. So frightened, in fact, was Broken Wing that he became still—what appeared to be calm. He was, however, anything but calm; rather, he was in a state of something closer to a coma, such was his agony and terror in this moment.
The Man labored through the deep snow toward the porch, his stocking feet still burning from the intense cold. Gingerly, he carried Broken Wing into the house. He stood for a moment next to the wood stove, thawing out and warming up his frozen feet and hoping that the warmth might also revive Broken Wing a little, also. But Broken Wing did not respond. He lay bleeding, cupped in The Man’s hands, his eyes wide open and blinking, but his body absolutely still. Broken Wing, it seemed, was frightened nearly to death, yet fully alert and prepared for whatever fate awaited him. The Man looked down at Broken Wing and marveled once again, as he had so many times since last October, at this small and brave life that lay now bleeding in his hands.
He moved to the counter in the kitchen, elbowed away the cutting board, the bread and butter and jam and teapot that had been his breakfast, and laid the bleeding and terrified bird down on the counter. The Man un-cupped his hands. Broken Wing didn’t move. The man ran some water in the sink, adjusting the temperature to something just a little warmer than lukewarm. Still, Broken Wing did not move. The Man washed his bloody hands, then wetted a cloth and began to daub at the blood, now already solidifying into clots on Broken Wing’s black feathers. He cleaned the broken wing as best he could and dried it carefully, patting at the wet feathers with a soft, dry towel. All this time, Broken Wing lay absolutely still, his eyes still wide open and staring at The Man.
As The Man worked on Broken Wing’s wing, he realized that of course, this was not the first time Broken Wing and Arnold had met. Arnold was almost surely the cause of Broken Wing’s original injury early last fall, and Arnold was also, no doubt, responsible for the scarred breast of Samovar, the little chickadee.
When The Man had washed and dried Broken Wing’s broken wing as best he could, he wrapped the bird in a clean, dry towel, and moved back to the wood stove again, where he stood for a long time, letting what he hoped was the heat and comfort of the warm stove and the clean towel salve Broken Wing’s terror. If Broken Wing was, in fact, comforted by The Man’s efforts, he showed no sign of gratitude—only that wide-eyed, blinking resignation in the face of what was surely, still, to Broken Wing, the terror of his impending death.
The Man moved across the room to the beautiful, four-story, bamboo birdcage. He held Broken Wing in one hand, opened the door to the cage with the other, and put the bird inside the cage, hoping that he would be able to grab onto a perch and sit there upright and not fall over. Broken Wing did just as The Man had hoped. The Man closed the door, stepped back, and watched his caged, wild friend. Broken Wing did not look at The Man anymore, but looked straight ahead with that same wide-eyed, blinking stare. Then Broken Wing closed his eyes and appeared to fall asleep.
For a time, The Man watched Broken Wing; then, when he was somewhat assured that Broken Wing was truly asleep, or at least resting comfortably, The Man turned to his morning’s work.
Some time passed, The Man didn’t know how long; though it must have been quite a while, because The Man had sunk deeply into his work when he heard a thrashing and banging in the birdcage. When he rose from his desk and came to the cage, he saw Broken Wing on the floor of the cage, striking out at the walls with his one good wing. The Man knew it was far too soon to let Broken Wing go, too soon to release him into the out-of-doors. What was he to do? Perhaps if he put a blanket over the cage, made it dark, he could convince Broken Wing it was night, and the bird might go to sleep—or at least get quiet, and thus help himself recover.
He drew a tiny cup of water from the faucet and placed it on the bottom of the cage. He poured a small amount of the cracked corn, wheat and millet mixture on the floor of the cage. Then he went to one of the windows in the living room and captured about a dozen lady-bugs in a small jar who had hatched out that morning and were crawling around now on the window glass, and put the jar of ladybugs in the cage, also. Then he covered the cage over with a blanket, and after a time, during which there was some sound under the blanket—The Man hoped it might be Broken Wing having himself some seeds and water and ladybugs—all got quiet.
The rest of the day passed, and there was nothing but silence from the cage beneath the blanket. Darkness came. The Man made and ate his supper, then sat in the evening beside the warming wood stove, picked up a book, and opened it at random to a poem by Mêng Hao-jan:
RETURNING AT NIGHT TO LU-MEN MOUNTAIN
A bell in the mountain-temple sounds the coming of night.
I hear people at the fishing-town stumble aboard the ferry
While others follow the sand-bank to their homes along the river
... I also take a boat and am bound for Lu-mên Mountain—
And soon the Lu-mên moonlight is piercing misty trees.
I have come, before I know it, upon an ancient hermitage,
The thatch door, the piney path, the solitude, the quiet,
Where a hermit lives and moves, never needing a companion.
When he was finished reading, The Man realized he had been so distracted by what was or was not happening under that blanket over the birdcage that he hadn’t heard, in his mind’s ear, a single word of the poem. He got up and moved across the room. After all, it had been hours, all day, since he’d gotten Broken Wing to settle down by putting the blanket over the cage. The Man went to the cage and lifted the blanket.
There he was, Broken Wing, alive and looking around; and this time, when he saw the light from the room and the face of The Man, Broken Wing began again to beat wildly at the walls of his cage. Quickly, The Man dropped the blanket again over the cage and put Broken Wing back in the dark. Slowly, Broken Wing got quiet again. The Man prepared for and went to bed.
In the morning when he awoke, and after he’d started a fire in the wood stove and put the water on for tea, The Man went to the birdcage and lifted the blanket. As soon as Broken Wing saw the daylight, he began banging again with his good wing on the bars of the cage. The Man knew he must let Broken Wing go. Even if he wasn’t as healed as he ought to be, he had to let him go. He could not keep this wild bird in the dark for days. To let him see the light was to release his wild and desperate desire to be free.
Outside, it was not safe. Dangerous Arnold was out there somewhere waiting, as were hawks, bobcats, fishers, and the punishing weather; but all those dangers, The Man knew, were better than the safety of this cage. Broken Wing was crippled, handicapped, lost in this white sea of the north country, the only one of his race left in these parts now; but all those handicaps notwithstanding, The Man knew it was better to be in danger and free than to be safe and in prison.
He went to the mudroom and put on his heavy boots, toque and winter coat, then he returned to the living room, opened the cage and reached in. He took Broken Wing again in his cupped hands and went out onto the porch, pausing there for a f
ew moments so Broken Wing could accustom himself to the cold winter air and the brilliant white light of another crystal, blue-clear morning. The Man stepped down off the porch and into the snow and went to the nearest apple tree, reached up and placed Broken Wing on a branch, and went back into the house.
He watched Broken Wing now from the kitchen window, watched him do nothing but sit there in the winter morning. The Man watched and watched and watched until his patience ran out and he turned to his work. Broken Wing had work to do, too. He had to begin all over again, as he had months ago, begin to try to heal his broken wing so that he might again have a chance to survive; and now, again, he had to do it all on his own.
When, after a time, The Man looked up from his work at the desk and turned his gaze out the window to that particular branch on that particular apple tree, Broken Wing was gone. The Man smiled to himself. In his smile was both pleasure and fear: pleasure at what seemed like Broken Wing’s boundless and indomitable will to survive, and fear for the wounded bird’s perilous future.
The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains went to his bookcase and took down from the shelf a book—the title of which was The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. The Man opened the back of the book, went to the index, and scanned down through it until he came to “S,” and then to “Sympathy.” He opened the book to page 102, and read:
SYMPATHY
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opens,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
Broken Wing Page 5
