Wizard of the Pigeons

by Megan Lindholm

  “Well.” Cassie shifted. “Me. But I’m someone, and it makes sense to me.”

  “I’d have to think it through, thoroughly. But there is still something I’d like to ask you. Mir said I was one of them, that I was there. Was it true?”

  Cassie had to nod.

  “Which one, then? I remembered being all those boys, as soon as the grayness showed them to me. But surely I could have been only one of them. Yet having seen them from the inside, I would not choose to have been any of them.”

  “Poor Wizard.” Cassie put a hand to her face to scratch the bridge of her nose and then rub at her eyes. “Don’t you see? You were there, yes. But you were the Black Rooster.”

  WIZARD SHIFTED IRRITABLY in his sleep. The room was cooling off. He had been comfortable enough when he had dozed off, even though he had scrunched himself to fit onto the loveseat.

  He had stared at the tracing of tree branches against the moon’s face until she had blinded him and he closed his eyes. How long had he slept? He opened his eyes a slit. The branches still twined before the moon’s round face, but even as he stared at her, she winked out.

  He struggled to rise but felt the world tilt; he fell. Cold cobblestones slammed up against his hands and knees. After a shocked moment, he clambered back up to a seat on the park bench and sat rubbing his scraped palms against his trouser legs. He glanced once more at the globe light fixture at the top of the pole. Tree limbs did twine between it and him, and he would have sworn they were in the same pattern as the ones seen from Cassie’s chamber. But he was here, in the cold predawn of Occidental Square. He found that he had been using his bag for a pillow. He picked it up and stood yawning in the chill air. Such were the awakenings after an evening with Cassie. They always left him wondering where reality and sanity touched.

  He walked slowly through the square, easing the softness of cold muscles, and groaned softly to himself as he realized just how awful this day was to be. He could not return to his den to get clean clothes and stash his bag. Daylight was too close. So here he was; no change, his overcoat wrinkled from a night on the bench (or wherever), his suit beneath it showing a day and a night of wear, and a crumpled paper sack for a companion. He tried to weigh his alternatives. Most places with public restrooms were not open yet. There was the train station, but he had been there only yesterday, and his present attire would not make him welcome. He considered trying it anyway, but sternly rejected his impulse. He had to live strictly by his rules now; Cassie had said as much. He could not cut any more corners.

  In an alley between buildings, he stopped to run his comb through his hair. He took off his overcoat and shook it zealously to remove as many wrinkles as possible. He brushed at his jacket and slacks as best he could. He didn’t need a mirror to know how inadequate it was. He took a deep breath and tinned himself against the day. He was a scavenger and a survivor, he told himself firmly. He must either seize the day and accept what it offered him, or go join the other bench squatters.

  He spent the first hour walking the alleys, inspecting the dumpsters the trucks had not emptied yet. They didn’t have what he was looking for. He needed a raincoat or an overcoat of some sort, in reasonably decent condition, to replace the crumpled one he wore. He found assorted small items of marginal usefulness, but took few of them, only what could fit in a pocket. He didn’t want to crowd anything else into his wizard bag. As the sky shifted from gray of dawn to gray of overcast, he found a plastic Pay N Save shopping bag. He dumped out its load of tissue paper and cellophane shirt wrapping. This was how it was to be today, he mused as he fit his brown paper sack inside it. A day of coping, of imperfect camouflage, of minimal surviving.

  As soon as his bag was protected, he felt better. In the next dumpster, he found an unstained, unrumpled newspaper. He rolled it casually, and stuck it out the top of the bag. He strolled on, eating half an orange and throwing the moldy part into the next dumpster. He would make it, he cheered himself on. He just had to keep moving today, had to flow with the day as it presented itself to him. With a little faith, a little work and a touch of imagination, Seattle would take care of him.

  He was at Pike Place Market at nine when it opened, having scavenged all the alleys between it and Occidental Square. He had precious little to show for his efforts, other than a bit of food in his belly and a plastic sack. His head was starting to ache; he needed a shot of coffee. But he wouldn’t get it looking as he did right now.

  He had never liked the bathrooms at the market. For one thing, too many people passed through them; they were never truly clean or in the best repair. Although they were not dim, they were scarcely lit for shaving, even if they had boasted mirrors. He had to do a quick job by touch. He shook out his jacket, tucked his shirt in tightly, straightened his tie, and wiped his shoes over with a damp paper towel. Frantically, he tried to decide who he could be today. He looked, he decided, like a salesperson whose wife kicked him out of the house last night. No. The Pay N Save bag didn’t fit. Perhaps he worked in a slightly sleazy pawn shop, or adult book store. So what would he be doing in Pike Place Market in the middle of the day?

  It didn’t work. He couldn’t get into it. The day had begun badly and would run badly. He ran over his mental list of sanctuaries and decided on the Klondike Gold Rush Memorial Park. That strange designation meant a storefront building on South Main where a bored man in a ranger suit presided over memorabilia of the Gold Rush. But Wizard could spend time there, sitting in a darkened room while the park ranger ran educational films about the Gold Rush era, or perhaps about the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. It didn’t matter which today, for he wouldn’t be watching. He’d only be marking time until evening when he could make a run for his den.

  He boarded the bus and sat staring out the window. Depression stuck to him like old gum on a shoe. Hiding would not make him less vulnerable. One had to blend, to be unnoticed.

  The bus paused to let two more people board. Both of them walked past the empty seat beside Wizard to stand in the aisle at the back of the bus. When he realized it, he tried to keep the anger and panic out of his eyes. So be wasn’t passing today.

  So I’m a derelict, he thought savagely. Well, then I’ll damn well be one today. There’s camouflage, and there’s camouflage.

  So today he’d be a bum on a park bench, looking just as defeated and incompetent as the rest of them. He could tough it out until nightfall. He discarded the shopping bag and paper on the bus, wedging them down between the seats. When he stepped off at his stop with his wadded paper bag and wrinkled suit, he scowled at the people boarding. No beggar asked him for money today.

  Resentment seethed through him as he stumped back to Occidental Square, and he didn’t try to resist it. A sense of being wronged by everyone fit well with this new character.

  He’d enjoy it. So why hadn’t Cassie put him out last night so he could have headed for his own den? Why hadn’t he thought of it himself? She warned him to conserve his strength and guard his weapons, then kept him at her place with small talk until he dozed off, and had to awaken and face this day. If only he had dressed a little more casually yesterday, in jeans and a sweater, it wouldn’t have mattered today. But no, he had followed Cassie’s idea for him. “Always dress up, never down. A little bit of class implies authority and intimidates. Besides, dressy clothes are discarded before they are worn out, and a truly classic style varies little from year to year. Take the blazer, for example, or a man’s black raincoat. How much have they changed in the last ten years? Now, if you went to the secondhand store and looked for jeans, you’d only find worn ones with the knees and crotch gone, and new ones in improbable sizes. But dress slacks are given away because hubby got a bit too chubby, or they don’t go with the new jacket. It’s the same for dress shoes. You ‘II never find decent sneakers in a dumpster, but one out of every ten dumpsters will yield a perfectly good pair of loafers or oxfords. Keep looking and you’ll find a size close to yours.”

  He could almost h
ear her. She was right, usually, he grudgingly admitted. He had once spent an entire day in the Elliott Bay Bookstore, looking at the shelves, and no one had asked him to leave. He’d had a tie on.

  His pigeons dipped and wheeled to meet him; his black mood lifted slightly. Then he noticed the heaviness of the clouds that made up their backdrop. It was going to rain today, rain as only Seattle knew how. “Like a cow pissing on a flat rock,” someone had bitched to him once. He tried to catch the fleeting memory and got a confusing image of a triple-canopy jungle and a sweating black man with rain dripping off his chin. He blinked away the non sequitur and sat on his bench to begin his methodical scattering of popcorn. Lost in thought, he watched the feathered backs before him as the birds pecked and scrabbled for the feed. Their tidy industriousness sank him further into bleakness. He was failing today, defeated by himself before he had even confronted the grayness of Mir. If only he had a cup of coffee.

  He was unaware of the woman until the pigeons swirled up in alarm. He shot her a quick scowl as she seated herself on the end of his bench with her own sack of popcorn. It wasn’t so unusual for this to happen, but usually it was a kid who didn’t have the patience to dole out feed a bit at a time and acquire his own following of birds to feed. He didn’t mind it when kids horned in on his flock; kids weren’t supposed to have patience. But this woman was a grown adult and should have had more courtesy, if not patience. She was almost as rude as those who walked right through the middle of a flock of feeding birds.

  He glared at her again and felt the bottom of his stomach tilt. He knew her. He scrabbled frantically through memories, his alarm building. He had no business knowing her; she wasn’t even a street person. It was as dangerous for him to know a regular person like her as it was for him to be known to one.

  He turned slightly away from her and tried to calm himself. He was being foolish. Maybe he had sat next to her on the bus last week, or stood behind her in line at some coffee shop.

  Maybe. But he didn’t think so. She was danger.

  “Bet you thought you were cute yesterday,” she said.

  Wizard stiffened. Carefully he took another handful of popcorn from his bag and scattered it for his pigeons. He had not heard her.

  “You coulda cost me my job, you know that? I don’t know why I didn’t give the whole thing away. Yes, I do. It was because I was so pissed at Booth for right away assuming it was me. And because I knew he woulda knocked you right outa your chair. He loves to show his muscles when he gets mad. Showed them to me once too often. So I showed him mine.” The quaver in her voice belied the toughness of her words.

  “He came home from the night shift, and found his junk piled up on the staircase. So he comes down to where I’m working and tries to raise a fuss. So I tell him to leave my key, ‘cause the lease is in my name, and if he doesn’t, I’m calling the cops. Booth knows he can’t afford to talk to the cops about nothing. He’s got a bunch of speeding tickets in the glove compartment of his car. Oh, he still thinks he’s tough. He phoned me last night and threatened to come by and ’see‘ me. But I told him I had told Mrs. McWhirter to call the cops if she even seen him come in the lobby. And I did, too, and she will, too. So he can blow it out his ass for all I care.”

  Worse and worse. Wizard’s hands shook slightly as he scattered popcorn. Should he stand up, gather his bag, and leave? That was admitting too much. Silence and the back of his shoulder for her. He wasn’t even listening to her monologue.

  The pigeons pecked at his feet.

  “I’m sposed to be working afternoon shift today. But I forgot and got here early, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll go feed the pigeons and kill a little time. Then I seen you out here already feeding them, and figured I’d let you know that I knew what went down. Waitresses aren’t as dumb as most people think. You gotta really know people to be a waitress. And you gotta have a good memory, especially for matching up faces and orders. That black one sure has a funny tail, don’t he?”

  The black pigeon’s mother had been a full fan-tail, but Wizard wasn’t going to chat about it. She was a talker. So let her talk as much as she liked, and when she ran down, she’d leave. She’d have to go to her job soon, anyway. He’d never set foot in Duffy’s again, and that would be the end of this whole sorry mess.

  She had already fallen silent. He saw, from the corner of one eye, a handful of popcorn pelt the ground with more than necessary force. A short moment later he heard a light gasp, as if someone had poked her with a pin. She took a husky breath and was silent again. Now she would go away. But she didn’t. He wished he could stop thinking about the waffle and the strawberries and whipped cream. It wasn’t as if he had asked for it. She had given it to him, of her own free will, and there was no reason for him to feel guilty or obliged to her.

  He intended to take only a quick peek at her, to see if she showed signs of leaving. But when he turned his head for a glimpse of her, she was already staring at him. Her eyes were too shiny; he saw her stuff a tissue back into her pocket.

  “So go ahead and stare,” she said bitterly. “Stare at a stupid woman who sits on a bench and talks to some bum like he’s listening and then starts to fall apart. Go ahead and stare. See if I give a damn.”

  He had snatched his eyes away as soon as their gazes met, but that was already too late. She had seen him look at her and knew she had his attention. Now she would talk until the clock made her go to work. It was through his own fault, his most grievous fault, and his penance would be to listen to it. He threw more popcorn.

  “I don’t know why I keep going. Why the hell should I keep going? I get up. I go to work, I get my pay, I eat, and I sleep. What the hell kind of a life is that? You know how bad it is? It’s so bad that when some shit like Booth treats me so lousy that I throw him out, after he’s gone, I cry. You know what my sister says when I’m like this? She tells people, ‘Don’t mind Lynda, she’s just between men now.’ She says it in this bitchy, whiney voice, like someone else would say, ‘She’s on the rag.’ And she’s my own sister. She thinks it’s just terrible that I’m not married. So is that my fault? I like men. It’s not my fault I haven’t found the right one just yet. Does that mean I’ve got to live like a nun to keep her happy? Women have needs. We’re not supposed to, but we do, you know. When Booth welted on me and I called her up, do you know what she said? You know what she said to me? She said, ‘You sure can pick ’em, Lynda, can’t you? You got yourself into it with that creep, so you get yourself out of it.‘ And she hung up on me. Well, I did get myself out of it. I wasn’t asking for her goddamn help anyway. I just wanted someone to talk to. C’mere, birdie.”

  He felt more than saw her abrupt movement. He kept his eyes on the ground before him, hoping she had missed. For a moment all was silence and he started to relax. Then he heard the frantic flapping of wings. It was the crisp sound of wing pinions beating against hands, of delicate flight feathers bending against a relentless grip. Wizard’s stomach turned over.

  “Let him go.” He spoke before he knew he was going to, turning to confront her. She held his gaze, their knees nearly touching as they shared the bench. The pigeon she held was a young one; its beak was shell pink and looked too large for its head. Its feathers were white with gray splotches and an even shading of black across the end of its tail. It was frantic. It struggled with all its strength against Lynda’s hands, panic in its round orange eyes. Lynda had one wing pinned neatly to its body. She had partially trapped the otherwing with her hand and was trying to fold it back down. But the struggling pigeon was still trying to open it. Lynda was pushing on it, not roughly, but relentlessly. It folded beneath her strength, but not naturally.

  Lynda’s face was calmly preoccupied.

  “Oh, so you can talk? I thought you were part of the bench.”

  “Let the bird go. Its wing doesn’t fold like that.”

  “I just want to hold it for a minute. Come on, little bird, quiet down, put your wing down.”

  �
�You’re going to hurt it. Its heart will burst from terror. That’s no way to handle a bird. Give it to me.”

  “I’m not hurting it.”

  Wizard reached, not swiftly, but efficiently, and took her right wrist between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

  He caught it right at the soft spot between the wrist and the hand itself, just past the knobby little bones. Before she knew what he was up to, he squeezed firmly. “Hey!” she exclaimed, but she had already released the pigeon. It floundered away from her in wobbly flight to the top of a tree. The rest of the flock had fled as soon as the flap had begun.

  “Why’d you do that?” she demanded angrily. He dropped her wrist hastily and leaned back on the bench. He found he was breathing heavily. Terrified. He had come so close to giving the twist and jerk that would have disabled the hand completely.

  He stared at her, looking deeply at himself and what he had just done. He felt sick and his hands were gray. For a long moment the world was tilting and sliding past him. His stomach squeezed acid up into the back of his throat.

  “You would have killed him,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “I would not. Now look what you done. Now I got to start all over again. Here, birdies!” Lynda threw more popcorn that bounced off the cobblestones and threw a penetrating look that struck deeply into him. “You don’t look so good. You eaten today?”

  Having spoken to her once, nothing was to be gained by silence. “Not much.”

  “I didn’t think so. You look worse than these pigeons. Oh, look, here they come. Not too bright, are they?”

  “No, they’re not,” Wizard admitted sadly. She was right.

  They were coming, the hungriest ones dropping from the trees like leaves, dipping down to peck at the farthest outreaches of the popcorn she had scattered. They were stupid, but they were his. He knew what would happen. They would come, a few at first and wary, to nip up the pieces of popcorn. Then they would get greedy, and more would come, and in the competition for the feed, they would forget the danger from the feeder. They would jostle and push, crowding ever closer to her, until some unwary one was under her squeezing, gripping hand.