It’s a long time before Birdie lets me stroke her head or her breast. Birds are that way; they don’t even stroke each other. Birdie learns to like it though. She’ll come to my hand and puff up when I run my finger over the top of her head or down her wings. Her toenails need cutting, but every time I try to wrap my hands around her to pick her up, she panics.
Usually when I let Birdie out, I pull the window shade, but one day I forget. She flies out of the cage door when I open it and straight at the window. She hits the pane of glass in full flight and falls fluttering to the floor!
I dash over and pick her up carefully. She’s unconscious, limp in my hand. There’s nothing deader than a dead bird. Movement is most of what a bird is. When they’re dead, they’re only feathers and air.
One of her wings seems dislocated. I carefully fold it back and hold her in my two hands to warm her. She’s still breathing very lightly and quickly. Her heart’s beating against my hand. I look for something broken or bleeding. Her neck is hanging loosely over the end of my fingers and I’m sure she has a broken neck. The way she flies, with her head so far ahead of her body, confident with her flight, this is what would happen.
Her eyes are closed by a pale, bluish, almost transparent lid. There’s nothing I can think to do. I pet her head softly. I PeepQuEEP at her and try to breathe warm air over her. I’m sure she’s dying.
The first sign she shows is to move her head and lift it from hanging over my finger. She opens her eyes and looks at me. She doesn’t struggle. She blinks her eyes slowly and closes them. I PeepQuEEP at her some more. I stroke her head. Then, she opens her eyes and straightens her head. She couldn’t do that if her neck were broken. I begin to hope. I pull her legs out between my fingers and straighten the toes so she’s standing with them on my thigh while I hold her. She closes her eyes again but she keeps her head up. She doesn’t grab with her feet on my thigh. The toes are limp and fold in on themselves.
I hold her quietly some more, petting her head and queeping at her. Then she queeps back; tired, a faint queeEEp? I queep and she queeps again. I loosen my grip and she manages to stand on my thigh. She’s all puffed out in a ball and her feathers are ruffled from the sweat of my hands. I cup her on both sides with my hands so she can’t fall. I hold her again and try to smooth her feathers. I feather out her wings one after the other. They seem all right. I let go of her and she stands alone on my thigh. She bristles and fluffs out her ruffled feathers. She leans back and runs each flight feather in turn through her beak. She shits. Then, she straightens herself and hops along my knee and queeps, quite like her old self. I queep back and put my finger out to her. She hops on it and turns. She wipes her beak on my finger. She’d never done that before. It’s wonderful to see her moving again. I didn’t know I was crying but my face is wet. I carry her over to the cage and she hops off my finger and into the cage. She’s glad to be back in her safe place. She eats and drinks.
I watch her for about an hour after that but she’s fine. I can’t believe my luck. It would have been awful without her. From this time on, I can always pick her up and hold her. A few days later I cut her toenails.
I begin wanting to tell somebody about Birdie and all the things she can do. I try talking to Al about it but he isn’t interested much in birds anymore.
She’s such fun. I leave her out at night sometimes and train her to sleep on top of the cage so her droppings fall onto the cage floor instead of all over the room. I put her cage on the shelf behind my bed, so she feel comfortable. It’s the highest place in the room. In the morning, she hops down onto my head and picks at my nose or the corners of my mouth till I wake up. She never picks at my eyes.
I learn a lot of canary words and can tell her to stay and to come and I learn a sound for eat and hello and good-bye. I’m beginning to hear the differences in the things she says.
That night they put me up in quarters with the orderlies. The CO guy on Birdy’s ward shows me around. I pump him about Birdy. He tells me Birdy’s been here almost three months. He says, for a long time they didn’t even know who Birdy was; had to go through all the records for somebody missing in Waiheke, the place where Birdy was hit. That’s an island off in New Guinea, he says. He tells me Birdy has bad malaria on top of everything else.
That night I have one of my screaming dreams. I wake up hollering out loud. At Dix, on the plastic surgery ward, nights, it’s more like a damned loony bin than this place; everybody trying to work it out. The CO comes over but I tell him I’m OK. I’m having the sweats again, whole bed soaking wet. I move over to another empty bed. I wonder if the CO will tell anybody; Christ, they’re liable to lock me up, too.
Next morning I go see Weiss. He’s not in yet but there’s a fat T-4 with a typewriter; Underwood, stand-up job. He says he just wants some information for the doctor. I try to explain I’m not one of the crazies but he’s got out a blue form and turns it into the machine. He sits there grinning at me. He’s got me pegged as a loon for sure.
Great questions he asks, like, How many people in my family have done themselves in? or, Do I get pleasure when I take a shit? What creepy questions! But that’s not the really weird part. First, he asks me my name. He types it out, four fingers hunt and peck, then he looks at it and spits! Spits right at my name on the paper! Jesus! I figure maybe something got caught on his lip; try to ignore it. Then he asks me my serial number and outfit. He types this out, stares at it, and spits again! Maybe he’s a loon, slipped in here while the doctor’s out. Maybe it isn’t happening at all and I’m nuts myself. I try to get a look at the T-4 without his noticing. He grins back at me, a bit of spit still hanging on his fat lip. Maybe it’s some kind of a new psychological test, the spit test. Who knows?
He starts asking more questions. Same thing every time. Not big goobers or anything gross, just a fine spray kind of spit. The whole typewriter must be rusty inside. He asks another question, types it out, looks and spits. I check the door and distances. This light blue form he’s typing on is turning dark blue. He’s almost finished when the doctor-major passes through to his office. He gives me his psychiatrist smile; holding out on the military this morning.
We finish. The T-4 gently pulls the form out of his typewriter. He knows what he’s doing; he’s pulled wet forms out of that machine before. He holds it by the corner and carries it into the doctor’s office. Then he comes out, thin grins at me, rubs his hands together, probably wiping off the spit; and tells me to go in. The doctor-major is staring at the wet paper and reading it. He motions me to sit down. The paper is flat on his desk; he’s not touching it.
I’m waiting for him to comment on the spit. Maybe congratulate me for passing the spit test or blaming me, or something. Nothing! He’s used to spitty papers. He might just be the nut himself, won’t read anything that doesn’t have spit on it; hires this T-4 especially to spit on his papers. Could be anything. He looks up; very serious, very dignified for a fat man. His eyes are glinting behind his glasses; very much the working psychiatrist this morning.
‘You say here you were court-martialed?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
Give him the old ‘sir’ bit; get no doctor-ing from me. Got to get out of here with my skin. Should’ve lied about the fucking court-martial.
‘What type of court-martial was it, Sergeant?’
There it is; Sergeant; now we know.
‘Summary, sir.’
‘And what was the offense?’
‘Attacking non-commissioned officer, sir.’
He gives the old hmmmm and two ahhhaas. Then he looks to see if the door to the office is closed. It is. Almost expect him to get up and open it. Here he is locked in with the mad officer killer. I give him my killer stare from under one eyebrow; Sicilian, Mafia, contract-killer look; all rolled in one. I used to practice it in front of the mirror; have to get some advantage out of being Italian.
I’m not giving an inch. I’m thinking of getting up from the chair slowly and moving
in for a pin. He clears his throat and folds his hands just behind the spit pile.
‘Do you get these violent impulses of ten, Alfonso?’
The psychiatrist is back in the office. He’s got the Santa Claus grin on and all. Hell, I’d be a better psychiatrist than this moron. He doesn’t quite know what to do. I don’t know which way to play it myself. I’m wishing this had happened in the middle of the war instead of after it’s all over. Maybe I could’ve gotten myself a big pension as a homicidal maniac. That’s right; they turned this little neighborhood boy into a raving maniac by horrible war experiences. I’d live the rest of my life in gravy, just growl every now and then or beat up some old man.
He’s still grinning at me; not a single flinch in that grin; he’s got the psychiatrist grin down to the nickel. He’s trying to shake me up. I’m tempted to tell him how much I enjoyed pushing that hunky’s face in with the shovel. Niggers in the coal truck sure were scared shitless, too.
‘No, sir. Not of ten, sir.’
‘Would you mind telling me how it happened?’
Sure I would, but I know a direct order when I hear one.
‘Only in the army four days, sir. Corporal at Fort Cumberland grabbed me by the arm and I reacted instinctively, sir.’
‘Oh, I see.’
He doesn’t see and he knows he doesn’t see. I smile back at him. Big smiling game. Great being Italian; all the movies make everybody afraid of you. When people think of a bad guy, they think of an Italian. I give him my dangerous look again. He’s going over the wet form; doing the hmmm, ahhhaa thing some more; we’re not getting anywhere.
‘Sir, should I go back to the ward this morning?’
‘That’s right, Sergeant. I think it’s the best chance we’ve got.’
I wait. I can’t really get up and leave till he does something. When you’re in the army, you’re tied down all around. I can’t figure why he isn’t asking me if I’ve ever clobbered Birdy. That’s the first question I’d ask.
He stands up at last and I stand, too; give him the salute. I have a feeling he’s pissed at me and pissed at himself for being pissed. I scare him; this makes me feel good. I keep hoping I’m finished with that crap but when somebody starts leaning, it all comes back.
‘OK, Sergeant, I’ll see you tomorrow about this time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Bastard’s going to write to Dix for my records. Please Lord, just let me out of the goddamned army!
I get back to Birdy and even though he’s still squatting on the floor, I know it’s different. I know he’s knowing I’m there. I know it’s Birdy and not some fake, freaky bird.
– Had another session with your doctor, Birdy. You’re going to have a great time with him when you decide to talk. Whatever you do, don’t tell him about the pigeons and the canaries and all that bird shit. He’ll have you pinned into a case as a specimen.
I know he heard me that time. I want to hang in there, keep it going.
– Hey Birdy, remember when we were selling the mags? Christ, that was a scene!
After we get back from Wildwood and I finally recover from old Vittorio’s revenge, we have to figure some way to pay back the money. We owe our parents ninety-two dollars in train fare. We get the idea to sell magazines door-to-door in apartment houses.
We work out a smooth deal. The building superintendents try to keep us out but we push all the call buttons and somebody is always lazy enough just to push the door buzzer without calling back. Once we’re inside, one of us keeps the elevator busy while the other goes from one apartment to the other selling the mags. We’re selling Liberty, Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Cosmopolitan. The best time for selling is from right after school till about five-thirty, when the men start coming home. A lot of the ladies are alone because their men are off fighting the war. We get a regular route of ladies who buy from us. I’m the one who usually does the selling; Birdy does the elevator business and keeps the superintendent chasing after him. Fat chance that super has of ever catching Birdy.
Most of those ladies are bored out of their minds and I’m always getting invited in for a cup of tea or coffee. If I were older and knew what to do, I could probably really make out.
Birdy’s already started with all his crappy breath-holding. He’s getting to be more and more of a freak. He shows me once how he can hold his breath for five minutes. He sticks his head in a pan of water in my cellar. He tells me he turns his mind off breathing. That’s nuts!
Then he’s always talking about flying. He tells me once, ‘People can’t fly because they don’t believe they can. If nobody ever showed people they could swim, everybody’d drown if they were dropped into the water,’ is what he says. Really weird ideas. He’s going to a Catholic high school, now, down at Forty-ninth Street in Philadelphia. The things he tells me about that school, I begin to understand why he’s turning so crazy. It’s a regular prison.
He’s also beginning with his canary thing. He talks about that canary all the time and he starts different goof y exercises. I try getting him to work out with weights to build himself up, but he only does his arm flapping and jumping up and down. Sometimes he talks about his canary and I think he’s talking about a real person. I think maybe he’s finally noticed there are girls in the world but it’s just the canary. He calls her Birdy, named after himself I guess.
The school he goes to is too cheap to have buses so he rides in on his bike. I cut one day and ride in with him. What a miserable place. Freshmen and sophomores use outside staircases like fire escapes and everybody is always robbing everybody else’s locker. They have Christian brothers teaching there. They wear long black skirts like priests except they have little stiff bibs sticking out from under their chins; real bunch of creeps; guys who want to be priests but are too dumb or don’t have the guts.
The whole school smells funky, like a gigantic jack-off party going on all the time. Big places like that without any girls are always funky. On wet days, Birdy says it smells so bad you have to wear a gas mask.
The way you eat lunch in this school is to walk round and round the track. Brothers are standing in the middle like lion tamers. If you want to take a piss or something you have to ask for one of these wooden passes. They’ve got five passes for more than three hundred people. Everybody walking around, holding a lunch bag, eating and holding back from peeing.
Birdy starts faking library passes to get to the library during lunch. He has the inside of a book cut out and he’s eating sandwiches out of it. He gets away with it for almost three months but they catch him just before Easter vacation. Some brother bears down on Birdy in the library and bops him on the back of his head. Birdy throws books, sandwiches, the whole works at him and scoots down one of those fire escapes and away. They toss him out. He comes over to old U.M. to finish the year with the human beings. I figure it might turn him on with all the girls and everything but he only gets worse. People at U.M. start calling him Birdy, too. Jesus, he’s actually beginning to look like a bird.
He’s getting even skinnier and his chest’s beginning to stick out in front like his ribs are broken. His head juts forward from his shoulders and his eyes are always darting around loose in the sockets so he never seems to be paying much attention to any one thing. I know he’s seeing everything. Birdy sees everything but he doesn’t, what you could really call, ‘look’ at anything. Like the weather; somehow Birdy always knows about the weather. If the paper says it’s going to rain and Birdy says no; Birdy’s right.
The next summer, Birdy and I take the job as dogcatchers; Birdy’s deep into his creepy canaries. We’re standing on back of the truck with those huge nets and Birdy’s talking about how many eggs are in this nest or which bird is already cracking seed. He’s out of sight.
Then the next year, Birdy and I don’t see too much of each other. I go out for track, throw the discus; make varsity running guard, and wrestle. Birdy has no interest in sports. He’s back there with the birds.
&n
bsp; In my junior year, soon’s I’m seventeen, I join the State Guard, I want to learn how to shoot rifles, pistols, all that shit. I go down to the Armory on Thursday nights to drill. Birdy comes along with me sometimes. He sits up in the balcony bleachers in the dark and watches us. I get issued an old Springfield 06 and learn how to dismantle it. I’m a gung-ho soldier bastard. Going to get me a few Japs before the whole thing is over.
I start going with Lucy then, too. She’s one of the cheerleaders at school and totally dumb; a commercial major. One afternoon, I’m sitting out in the parking lot at school in Higg’s car, making out with Lucy, when Birdy comes rolling up on his bicycle. We’re both juniors and he’s still tooling around on this wreck of a bicycle. Same crummy bike he got after we lost ours in Wildwood, trying to sell them. It won’t go more than about three miles an hour without wobbling. Birdy’s the only one who can ride it; he doesn’t even lock it in the bike rack. He just stands it there. Nobody’s going to steal it. It’s the only bike in the rack anyway; they built those racks back in the twenties when people rode bikes to school. Birdy’s tooling that bike to school every day, rain or shine; won’t take the school bus. Jesus, what can you do with somebody like that?
Birdy comes over and we talk about exams we’re having. Birdy and I are in a lot of the same classes; both academic, both half-assed B students. Lucy’s looking at Birdy. I don’t think she ever knew we were friends. To her, I’m big killer Al, wrestler and football player, something to cheer about.
Birdy starts talking about his canaries. Everybody at school knows he has about a thousand canaries by now. He brought some of them in to Chemistry class once to study their blood and he built a flying model in physics that actually worked, his crazy ornithopter. He even writes about them in English. Birdy, the bird freak. I’m still half interested in pigeons but Birdy’s too much. I’ve visited his aviaries and it’s about the same as his coming down to the Armory with me. We’re more a habit with each other than anything.
Birdy Page 6
