by Lee Hayton
The Birds and the Bees
(the Birdman Companion Series)
LEE HAYTON
Copyright © 2017 Lee Hayton
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Dedication
With eternal thanks to Kat Lind, the SIL Creative team, the Ds, and our fellow boot-campers at Phoenix Prime.
Rise up from the ashes, people.
Phoenix Prime is a Ph.D. level workshop that spans approximately four months. It uses applied industrial psychology to address components of writing, marketing, branding, business, contract issues, and productivity that combine Creative Writing and Business perspectives.
The participants will create a portfolio to showcase their work alongside students in doctoral programs in several major universities. The objective, in addition to expanding the professional growth of all the participants, is to study the impact of the independent author-publisher on the commercial fiction industry.
Table of Contents
The Birds and the Bees
Thank you for reading!
The Birds and the Bees
The sun glinted off the trophy in Gregory Mancini’s hand as he turned through the gate. It was a brilliant day. The sun streamed down. A highlight in the periwinkle blue sky. Barely a cloud to mar the picture, and those that were dotted about puffed out white just like a fairytale.
He’d won the trophy in an open race at track that afternoon. The 400 meters—not usually one of Gregory’s better distances, but he’d been eager for the win and had the energy to burn.
The residual heat in his lungs made him feel giddy with happiness. Add to that the 100 percent score he had received in English comprehension, and Greg thought it was an inspiring day all round.
Then, as his hand reached out for the front door handle, the shrill voice of his mother cut through the muffle of the door. His stomach knotted with anxiety, and he stood still for a moment of hesitation on the threshold. Considering his options.
But where else would he go? His mom and his sister were the best friends he had.
Even when they didn’t act like it.
“But she said she was staying over,” Iris Mancini said. There was a ragged edge of frustration in her voice. Greg would be amazed if this were the first phone call she had made.
Judging from his sister’s recent indifferent behavior, the call wouldn’t be the last.
As he pushed into the room, the temperature dropped by ten degrees. The curtains were drawn closed tight against the sunshine outside. Judging from the gloomy chill inside, they’d been that way most of the day. The rank smell of cigarettes hung in a thick, smoky fug in the air.
“Afternoon, Ma,” Gregory said, leaning his head to kiss his mother on the cheek. He caught the sharp scent of whiskey on her breath before she batted his attentions away with her hand.
She had stopped drinking months ago. She’d promised. Gregory felt his stomach tighten with disappointment and anxiety.
An expression of pure fury suddenly knotted his mother’s brow. “I do not let my daughter run wild,” she shouted. “Don’t try to tell me how to look after my child. Everyone knows that Jack got that girl pregnant last year.”
Gregory rubbed his forehead and walked through into the kitchen. He thumped his trophy down on the counter hard enough to make the metal sing. The air felt thick and choking. It made it hard for him to breathe.
If she were talking about Jack, that meant Mr. Thompson was on the phone. Jack had been sniffing around Layla for months now, they’d circled each other like dogs in the heat. At least Thompson was getting on down the alphabet. The couldn’t be that many more surnames to get through from his mom’s little black book of danger.
The bell on the old rotary dial phone dinged as his ma slammed down the receiver. She plucked a cigarette from the packet on the couch and snapped the lighter. Shaking it and cursing when it didn’t light the first try.
“I got a good mark on my exam this morning,” Gregory said, his voice swelling with pride. His mother usually valued academia more than his sporting prowess. Back when his dad was alive the pendulum had swung the other way.
But his mother either hadn’t heard or didn’t care enough to answer him. She took a long drag of her cigarette then coughed, the sound wet and full of phlegm.
“You didn’t see your sister at school today?”
Gregory shook his head. Since his sister was still in junior high, he hadn’t expected to either. But when his mom was upset, she often forgot the details of his life.
He left the trophy on the counter for his mom to find later and headed upstairs to his room. The frustration bubbling under the surface made want to slam the door. If he did that, he was no better than Layla. And Layla was on the bottom rung of his opinion right now.
Hard to believe that six months ago, he had respected his sister. Enjoyed her company even. Now, she was like one of those friends you made at preschool. The ones that shadowed your whole life, though the only thing you had in common was being born on the same day.
Gregory supposed he should have seen it coming. Layla looked exactly like their mom, hardly surprising she’d started to act like her too.
Only a few months ago, he’d smelt booze on Layla’s breath for the first time. In whispered giggles, she had excitedly explained how she had siphoned off a couple of glasses from the open bottles. All the while, their mother lay comatose on the sofa.
Gregory had tried drinking himself, but the buzz in his head wasn’t worth the discomfort of everything else. He preferred to be in control, both of his stomach and his head.
Layla didn’t care about her stomach. A number of times he’d woken in the night to hear her retching in the bathroom, showed him quite well where her priorities lay. Sometimes she threw up so badly, he expected her stomach lining to pull away.
Then, a few weeks ago, he’d sniffed out a new scent upon her. Instead of the dank dry smell of cigarette smoke that clung to their mother, Layla had been enveloped in a sweet rank scent of skunk.
Gregory wasn’t thick. He may not like drugs and alcohol, but he knew what was available. Layla had progressed from alcohol to marijuana. If the public health videos were correct, she was just a short jump from there to heroin.
Heroin meant prostitution. Heroin meant a terrifying death.
He crossed over to his dresser and picked up the feather bracelet that lay upon it. At Bible school the year before, he and Layla had made them for each other. The cheapest craft on offer.
#
Gregory and Layla attended Bible camp often during the summer months. It grew hard to remember a time when disappointing days spent there hadn’t been part of their boring daily lives.
With their mother having to work, then later having to drink, they were dispatched from the house at the crack of dawn and not allowed to return until late afternoon. If it had been up to their mother, Gregory doubted she would have cared where they went. But a neighborhood of prying noses encouraged her to make an effort at respectability.
So, Bible camp.
It wasn’t even a camp. The name was as misleading as the class itself was dull. Just the same old dusty church they sat through each Sunday or yawned through Bible study midweek. During the long summers, it opened its doors all day long to abandoned kids who would otherwise have roamed free.
Old Mrs. Henderson, who read
out tired stories about Noah or Christ in his manger at Sunday School, oversaw the camp during summer. The old woman seemed to ignore the possibility of having a life outside the church.
If you pressed him, Gregory might admit how much he liked the way the light spilled in through the old-fashioned windows. The glass had been poured by hand, long ago. Thicker along the bottom than the top.
One large window featured an inspiring leadlight scene of John the Baptist at the river. The carefully cut and arranged colored glass would be hit by strong rays of midday sunlight. It cast the room in a glow that made Gregory feel like he lived inside a television.
Sometimes he’d stare in rapt attention, tilting his hand back and forth to see the colors play out on his skin. Until a boy shoved him in the back, or a girl's high-pitched giggle grated a sarcastic note in his ear.
No matter how many times Mrs. Henderson vacuumed, dust mites forever spun lazy circles through the air. It was as though the church itself was demolishing cell by cell. Each day another layer, an atom thick, drifting down toward the floor.
In the summer heat, sometimes the church room could grow stifling. The pretty windows less than useless since they’d long ago been painted shut. Even with the door propped open front and rear, on hot days the air inside barely stirred. The kids who gathered there, sometimes as few as four sometimes as many as thirty, each raised the temperature until it grew almost too hot to breathe.
Despite the collection plate for charity, every Sunday, bible camp didn’t fund itself. Unless you settled for painting a picture on scraps of butcher paper, using thick brushes that molted bristles onto the page.
The paint came in hardened discs, turning into muted red, blue, or yellow with water from centralized jam jars. Kids couldn’t be trusted with the task of refilling them during the day. In the end, no matter what Gregory painted, every color melded into brown.
Mrs. Henderson would pin up each painting when it was finished. They’d wrinkle and crumple in the Church heat. Freezing in dry waves. On some efforts, the paint was so liberally applied that the thick paper curled in from each corner. Even after being pinned out to dry, they’d curl into a tight tube during the short walk home.
But this morning Gregory’s mother had grumbled as she tossed a week’s worth of paintings into the dustbin. “I’d like my white fridge to remain white for a while,” she muttered, lining up the magnets in a short row.
Where other mothers might express delight over their children’s artistic endeavors, Gregory’s mom wasn’t one to let affection soften her criticism.
“For God’s sake, make something practical,” she’d ordered over breakfast.
The problem with practical crafts was they cost actual money. Gregory could choose to die a sheepskin, or tool some leather with a small old-fashioned hammer and crimping steel. Even when his mother gave them an allowance, it wouldn’t be enough to finance those.
As they looked around the trays. Weighing up the crafts on offer, Gregory and Layla pooled their change together to see how much they had. A stack of nickels and dimes. Some doled out reluctantly, some earned through fishing on the back of the couch. In total, they had a grand sum of four dollars.
Not enough for headbands. Neither the ones where you could apply fluffy ears to represent the animal of your choosing or the ones that let you play Indian and sew a giant feather into a plaited cotton band.
Feather bracelets, though, were half the size. They also required half the talent. At a dollar fifty per item, they could even afford a popsicle each on the way home.
The choice made, Layla clapped her hands together in glee. Gregory saw at once the way she thought the wind was blowing. Making a girl’s bracelet meant she ended up with two, while he came up empty.
“We can make friendship bracelets,” he said. “I’ll make one for you, you make one for me.”
It was worth the embarrassment of trotting out of church wearing jewelry, to watch her expression crumple upon her face.
Gregory wasn’t cruel, but he had a powerful sense of fairness.
They spread out the instructions on the table in front of them. Although Mrs. Henderson pretended to be skilled in all aspects of the camp, they already knew from experience that wasn’t so. Apart from a well-established nose for trouble, Mrs. Henderson’s craft skills were few and far between.
The slender threads of elastic had to be plaited into a braid, then plaited once again. Gregory peered so closely at what he was doing, when he looked up the room loomed like a cavernous mouth.
“What are you doing?” a pimply boy asked.
Gregory didn’t know his name, but he recognized the boy from the year above at school. Why he’d decided to amble over and target his little sister made Gregory’s jaw stiffen with repressed anger.
But he needn’t have worried. Layla tilted her perfect nose up at him and sniffed, then rolled her eyes at Gregory. He smirked, then burst into laughter as the boy slunk away.
Paying meticulous attention to what he was doing, to get his money’s worth as well as to make the day go by, Gregory found himself whistling a joyful tune beneath his breath. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Layla, occasionally butting her with a friendly elbow. A breeze caught the door at the right angle and swirled around the room to keep the temperature nice and even.
A good day.
When it was at an end, he made Layla stick her hand out so he could ceremoniously place the bracelet upon it. She gave a curtsy, then return the favor to him. Even though he’d tried—really tried—still, his fingers weren’t as nimble as his sister’s. He peered at the way she’d layered the feathers in to see if he could pick up some tricks. In case there was a next time.
They packed away the tables, folding them against the walls so that the evening choir had room to spread out. If either one of them had a talent for singing, no doubt their mother would have forced them into that as well. As it was, their caterwauling would have forced even an easy-going choir to kick them out.
Gregory hung about, waiting for his sister to finish fidgeting and dawdling. Finally, she caught his eye and told him flat out, “Go home. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He shrugged as though it didn’t matter, but inside he felt the piercing hurt of dismissal. Of course, he didn’t need an escort home. Neither did his sister. Not for the six blocks’ distant they lived.
Outside the church, Gregory kicked a stone along the pavement. Now he was planted in the full sun, the afternoon temperature climbed a few degrees. Soon, his fringe was plastered with sweat to his forehead. He felt out of sorts, in direct contrast to his well-being from a few hours before.
As he walked, he kept checking over his shoulder to see if Layla was following along behind. Maybe she was catching up with a girlfriend or just wanted to walk alone. The second would have hurt him more than the first.
When he reached the first corner, he ducked out of sight to openly stare back the way he’d come. Layla still wasn’t visible, even though Mrs. Henderson had exited, which meant the choir was in full swing.
Even though she wouldn’t care, Gregory convinced himself that his mother would be disappointed if he returned home without a sister. Crossing the road, and keeping to the long afternoon shadows of the parked cars, he ambled back towards the church.
He almost missed the vehicle, parked a few yards down the side street. It was the flaking orange rust, contrasting with the bright white paint job that caught his eye. That, and the rhythmic movement.
Telling himself once again he was acting out of concern for his mother, Gregory circled the car at a distance until he could peer in through the window. Layla was in the back seat, dress pulled up to her waist with her legs splayed open. The pimply teenager from earlier was thrusting away on top of her, face so red it looked like his head was about to explode.
As Gregory watched, the boy jerked and shuddered, then withdrew to the side to fasten his trousers. Layla blinked slowly, once, twice, then reached down to where her panties
were strung between her knees. As she pulled them up, she looked out and caught Gregory’s eye through the back window. The immediate smile of recognition turning into a contortion of horror and dismay.
Gregory ran home, once again keeping to the shadows. This time to hide the pulsing erection that throbbed along his leg.
#
Gregory pulled and twisted the bracelet in his hands. The tiny floating feathers started to bend and break under strain, releasing a tiny puff of dander into the open air.
Even with his low levels of skill, Gregory always thought he’d done a damn fine job. Of course, it was far easier to make an object just for starting at. Pulling at it in a show of anxiety tested it in another way altogether.
In the lounge room downstairs, Gregory heard his mother start to weep and wail. On the phone to someone new. Probably a drinking buddy — Marilyn maybe, brassy blonde and childless — bemoaning the fate almost exclusively wrought by her hand.
If Gregory’s dad were still here, Layla wouldn’t have gone off the rails. An army veteran, their dad had ruled the roost with an iron fist, softened only by love for his children. Their reciprocating love hadn’t been enough to bring him out of his coma when a truck T-boned him at an intersection.
After they had turned the machine off, Gregory had hidden in his room and cried for the first time since he was eight. He hoped it would be the last time too. Snotty tears had run down his cheeks, and his throat constricted until he felt like he was suffering from laryngitis. Instead of providing relief from his sadness, the more he cried, the more his distress grew.
But although Gregory was only sixteen he already knew wishing things to be different wouldn’t make them so. If he wanted to enact change in the world he needed to be proactive.
The next time Layla came home, dragging herself back from whatever dump she’d found herself in, Gregory needed to confront her. This rubbish had been going on for long enough. He was the man of the house now and he needed to make sure she knew it.
