La Rata No Es Bueno

La Rata No Es Bueno

Beyond the hanging Spanish moss a wobbly splintered dock ran out into the tidal flat rife with small crabs.  A methodical flock of white ibis combed slowly through the mud, probing with red decurved bills fanning along and other than a few stragglers eventually disappeared behind a stand of saw palmetto.  The morning sun was gathering its strength and radiated through the marshland and channels with a light haze around the distant islands as a ship moved soundlessly through the Intracoastal Waterway.  A few lean deer with twitching, delicate ears moved soundlessly as well as cautiously around the edge of the salt marsh.  As Maureen sipped her morning tea, she noticed a little tree frog sticking to the picture window behind her.  When it noticed her interest, it edged sideways along the glass and flattened itself against the door jamb. 

Maureen had been living here for more than a year and she still had trouble believing it was real.  She and her husband Albert had retired a few years prior and they decided to sell out their home in Long Island and purchase this home in Beaufort, South Carolina.  They bought their first home in 1979 for forty thousand dollars and thirty two years later sold it for nine times as much.  It was a tidy ranch house that was fit to raise their daughter who moved on her own twelve years ago to San Francisco.  Over the years they maintained and remodeled portions of the house as needed and in the end it was their greatest investment.  When Maureen’s father had finally passed away two years ago, they could finally ask themselves what they would want to do with the rest of their own lives.  They had visited their daughter in San Francisco several times and thought of moving out there because of its beauty and their grandchildren, but property was so expensive it would be a step backwards for them.  But Maureen had a friend from high school that lived in Charleston and they had a wonderful time visiting there.  The people were so friendly, the seafood so fresh, the weather so not freezing that they started to ask about real estate opportunities and when they compared the housing prices and the tax rates, they decided on moving.  All they had were a few adult cousins left on Long Island and both Maureen and Al realized they could live without barbeque birthday parties around an above ground pool.  So with Albert’s pension from Con Edison, and Maureen’s retirement from thirty years at the Department of Motor Vehicles, they sold their Long Island ranch home and bought this house on the water south of Charleston.  It was secluded but part of a gated golf club community.  They would joke to each other that their life had become a never ending vacation.

They spent mornings golfing, afternoons on the boat and evenings enjoying Al’s new love of healthy cooking.  After dinners of oysters, shrimp or fish and vegetables, they would relax on the back deck with a glass of white wine both content with a life deserved.  They both discovered joys and interests they hadn’t known before.  Aside from maintaining his boat and working on his short golf game, Al started to collect and repair old radios in his garage workshop.  Maureen discovered birds.

Al convinced her to let him put up a hummingbird feeder on their deck when she saw them buzzing around the large live oak on the corner of their property.

“But how much is nectar and where do you get it?”

“It’s just water and sugar,” he said.

“But won’t that attract bees and flies?”

“I doubt it.  Besides I think it attracts butterflies.  Remember that big black and yellow one on the seventh green?”

Within twenty minutes of putting up the feeder little ruby throats were zipping around their deck.  One hovered above her glass of iced tea on the table and another lighted on the deck rail before shooting up into the trees and she loved them instantly.  But she never loved birds before.

When she was young, like many women from her generation, she had seen the Hitchcock movie The Birds and developed a mild phobia of the fluttering and the beaks and the expressionless but knowing reptilian look in their eyes.  When she was ten, at a friend’s house for a birthday party, someone loosed the blue and yellow budgerigar from his cage and he flew around the living room until he became winded and entangled in Maureen’s hair.  Also, it didn’t help that her younger brother developed an unreasonable and inexplicable obsession with birds when he was ten and she was fifteen in 1970.  She loved Michael.  When he was born and brought home from the hospital she got her little pillow and blanket and slept underneath his crib for two weeks until her parents interceded, but there were many mornings she was caught sleeping underneath him again because after she crept into his room she drifted off looking up at the wire web of his crib.  He died young.

He began his obsession with birds after a blue jay swooped and clipped their father’s head requiring three stitches.  A young jay had fallen out of its nest in the bushy blue spruce that bordered their property and their dog was barking at it.  When Dad came out to investigate and grabbed the dog’s collar the jay dove and hit him.  When he returned from the doctor, he forbade anyone from leaving the house and put on his WWII helmet from his tour in Germany and France.  He also donned sunglasses lest he lose an eye.  He got out his wooden stepladder and a rake and ripped out the nest and crushed the remaining two nestlings.  Michael watched from the garage window as the jays, five adults, screamed and fretted in the trees.  They were so blue and animated, black and white and passionate.  He began to notice other birds and his obsession had begun.

She never knew another kid who had such a love of being outdoors.  He was always in trouble for riding his bicycle farther than he was allowed, riding to the brackish river and salt marsh a few miles from their home.  He would return after curfew in the summer, scratched, bleeding and reeking of sulfurous mud from stalking water birds or covered in boils from poison ivy for stalking woodland birds.  She still loved him those years when he became older and tolerated his silliness with a maternal constancy, but she was nearing the end of high school and had her own interests.  She would be married to Albert by 1975.  The only real problems arose when his boyish devil took hold and he left one of the expired birds he was always trying to rehabilitate under her pillow or in her dresser drawers.

He died at 23.  Through high school he worked in the restaurant at the country club on Bread and Cheese Hollow Road and became quite a cook.  He also became quite a drinker and used both those talents in Martha’s Vineyard, Cape May and Santa Fe working seasonally at country clubs and restaurants using his pay for partying and travelling and Maureen supposed still looking for birds.  He was with them the Christmas week of ’83, staying with her and Albert because their parents didn’t have the patience for him.  They would be civil on the holidays, but not beyond that point because he dismissed the idea of college and they thought he had so much promise.  At 5:35 am on December 27^th, he was killed in a drunk driving accident, but the irony was that he wasn’t drunk.  He woke up early to drive out to Shinnecock Inlet to look for eider when someone fell asleep at the wheel, went through a red light and destroyed Michael and his Jeep Cherokee.

One morning when Maureen was watering her rosemary and basil on the back deck she noticed a burst of color in the palmettos.  She descended the steps to her lawn and walked slowly towards a small bird of red, indigo and green.  She had never seen a bird of such exotic color in the wild, and it was so small and beautiful.  Much like the hummingbirds, this little creature enamored her.  Such a gorgeous and delicate little thing out here in the wild!  She went inside and grabbed from the book case A Guide to the Birds of South Carolina which someone had given her as a housewarming gift and found the bird almost immediately: Painted Bunting.  She was fascinated and flipped through the pages looking at all the other bird photographs in color plates.  Within a few days, she and Al put a bird feeder that was shaped like a small gazebo in the middle of the table on their bedroom deck.  Soon she recognized with ease chickadees and nuthatches, Carolina wrens and orioles.  It was a while before the painted buntings found the feeder, as well as others. 

They had been living in the new house for more than a year and were finally settled in and still joking about being on an eternal vacation, but a form of loneliness started to seep into Maureen’s being.  She had no friends around and really no interest in joining the social circles of the golf club as the women to her were older and foreign.  Her friend from Charleston and her husband would come visit every month or so because they loved Beaufort, but well-spaced weekends don’t consist of companionship.  She and Al would go to Charleston as well to see a Judy Collins concert or check out the Spoleto Festival.  Her grandchildren were on the other side of the country and her daughter had her own life, so they’d see them once a year and have to deal with her tedious and insufferable husband while doing so.  She and Al had each other and that was all.  She noticed sometimes his well-concealed exasperation at her clinginess since they were always together and sometimes felt jealous of his ability to get along with everyone.  He knew several of the neighbors, was cozy with the golf club manager and even began to run a bobcat and backhoe helping drainage on the course for free driving range balls.  So she found herself concentrating on improving her swing and really starting to enjoy the wildlife and birds around her. 

She loved the deer that crept along her property line, the bold and careless cottontail rabbit who grazed on her lawn, the white ibis in the marsh.  And she began to notice the birds beyond her feeder, the ones around the golf course.  She brought her guide book onto the course and identified brilliant red-headed woodpeckers and yellow-shafted flickers, snowy egrets and Louisiana herons, cormorants and the strange anhinga, or snake-bird, whose odd swimming habits had her captivated.  She saw two, necks twisting at strangle angles, almost form a heart shape before disappearing below the surface.  She only made the connection to her brother when she saw the spoonbills.

They were on the sixth hole and she looked back at Al who was in the middle of the fairway, but behind her.  On his right was the main pond of the course, on his left was a wide salt marsh with circuitous channels, and overhead were a couple jets from Parris Island performing their touch-and-go exercises with a deafening roar.  Even the few inconveniences of this life were beautiful in their own way.  As she watched him line up to swing, a group of long necked pink birds flew above him towards the salt marsh and they looked exactly like flamingoes.  According to her guide there were no flamingoes native to South Carolina, let alone any long necked pink birds.  She and Al reasoned that they were escapees from someone’s private estate.  When they were leaving Al had his usual lengthy conversation with the course manager and brought up the flamingoes.  The manager told him they were roseate spoonbills and they had been nesting on the property for two years and that they used to be only found in the Everglades in Florida.  When she got home to her computer, she found only references to the birds inhabiting Texas, Louisiana and Florida.  They were hunted almost to extinction in the 1800’s and there were 30-40 pairs left in existence until hunting them was banned. 

That evening after a salad and Al’s oyster bisque, they rode their bicycles with binoculars to the private road that ran through the course and edged the main pond where numbers of wading birds roosted, clamoring in the trees at night time.  As they scanned the trees amid the wood stork, the egrets, the ibis, the heron, there were the spoonbill, dozens of them unmistakable with a strange grey leathery bill that ended in a spoon shape.  Al said, “They must be moving up north now,” and she suddenly remembered her brother.  It would be difficult to remember all of his ramblings, especially about birds, but for some reason, she immediately connected Al’s statement to one night at the dinner table when her brother was fifteen and he was raving about bird species shifting north in their range.  He was eating the fat from the edge of his sirloin and pushing the lima beans to the side of his plate and talking like a madman about birds that were new to Long Island.  (He was talking about the red-bellied woodpecker.)  This time was long before people argued over global warming and thinking of the prescience and enthusiasm of her baby brother gave her a comfort she hadn’t known since his death.  From that point on, she looked at her birds as more than pretty things; she had more respect for them.  It also made her sad.

Albert was a kind and loving husband and he knew his wife well.  She never liked animals; they never had any pets because most of her life she was concerned with
“the mess they make.”  He was fine with whatever would make her happy and remembered with much pain the death of his own childhood dog when he was eighteen, two years before he and Maureen were married.  So when his wife took such an interest in birds especially he understood it was more than a distraction of retirement.  She was lonely and missed her friends from Long Island although she never really socialized much. She needed companionship more than he could offer but she refused to try to meet people from the course club.  He even encouraged her to get a part time job to get out of the house.  He knew her brother and was there for his death.  Birds of all things.  He didn’t need a degree in psychoanalysis to figure that one out.

Maureen had expressed concern that the squirrels might discover the bird feeder on their bedroom deck and make a mess of the seed.  They eventually did but before them they had another visitor.  Al was typically an earlier riser than his wife and one morning while he was out getting coffee and the newspaper from Adnan the owner of the nearest convenience store, Maureen woke and stretched.  She slipped out of bed and moved slowly to the glass doors of her bedroom that led to the deck eager to see if the buntings were back.  She had seen a wood thrush the previous morning.  She saw no birds but instead a squirrel at the feeder busy stuffing its cheeks with bird food.  Annoyed, she knocked hard three times on the glass hoping to send it leaping off the table without avail.  She opened the door briskly thinking it would send the critter forth but still it continued to eat as if she weren’t there.  She stepped out on the deck and realized that this squirrel did not have a bushy tail but rather a bald one.

Al was speaking with the clerk about the techniques of catching shrimp with a cast net when his phone rang.

“Al, there’s a rat at our bird feeder.  A rat!”

“A rat? Not a squirrel? Are you sure it’s not a squirrel?”

“It’s a rat!  Where are you?  It’s a rat!”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

When he got home she described how she watched it as it left the table, crawled down the side of the chair and disappeared below the deck. 

            Al went out and inspected the deck, the area below the deck, the garbage cans, the garage and the edge of the property and all he found was the startled but bold rabbit that grazed on their lawn.  They both decided it would be wise to hang the feeder from a tree limb reachable from the deck to discourage the rat.  They didn’t climb trees did they?  This rat did not and the birds quickly adjusted and after a few days, they thought it was a freak occurrence, some lone rat which saw an opportunity.  But then the squirrels discovered the feeder and although they shook the feeder and wasted a lot of seed it was far better than a rat to them.

            Another morning Maureen awoke to find nuthatches and chickadees taking turns at the feeder and took her tea on her bedroom deck rather than the main back deck because now that the birds didn’t feed at her table, they weren’t afraid of her and she could watch them feed from the tree closely.  As she sat in her robe, a female bunting alighted nearby and then dropped below the feeder to take advantage of the dropped and scattered seeds from the squirrels.  Maureen leaned forward slowly so as not to disturb it and saw the rat foraging next to the bunting.  It was grazing methodically using its forepaws to fill its cheeks with spilled seed and didn’t seem to notice the bunting hopping back and forth near it.  Maureen tossed the tea from her cup at it scaring away the bunting.  The rat paused and then turned and walked to the edge of the house and hugged it until in turned the corner towards the driveway. 

Two mornings later it was back and Maureen watched it closely.  It almost seemed benign filling its cheeks, chipmunk like, uncaring as she took a few steps down the stairs towards it.  When she got to the fourth step it halted abruptly, paused and this time ran humpbacked and wobbly to the edge of the house and cornered towards the driveway.

“We need to do something about this rat,” they both agreed.

“Well, should I trap it?”

“Not with one of those snap traps.  Can’t you get one that doesn’t kill it?”

“I’m sure I can.”

Albert entered Grayco Hardware & Home relieved by the strength of its air conditioning and with a little help found the section for pest control.  Above the roach baits, the heavy-springed rat traps and poisons, he found several metal Havahart traps of varying sizes.  The smallest seemed much too small and the next largest seemed too large but he went with that one because there was no way the rat would get through the small squares of wire and it seemed likely the rat was large enough to trip the door.  He looked around before he took it off the shelf thinking that if he had moved here ten years earlier he could have had an extensive conversation with the store owner about the pros and cons of certain rat traps.

He and Maureen researched the best bait for rats and it turned out to be bacon, gummy bears and peanut butter.  Al joked he may end up in the trap if he sleepwalks and Maureen laughed.  Since they were eating healthier he had to go out and buy the ingredients and when he fried the bacon, he had three pieces himself and secreted the bacon grease in a small container in the back of the dairy drawer in their refrigerator for future use.  They tested the trap’s effectiveness with a stick, made an appealing pastry with a bacon crust and peanut butter filling with gummy bear garnish and set it out that night.

“You’ll let him go in a safe place?”

“Yes, sweetie.  Down at the boat launch.  Lots of space in the rocks, no gators and people leave dead fish down there all the time.  He’ll be fine.”

“Alright, I just feel bad because he’s not doing anything.  He’s actually kind of cute in a way.  But we can’t have rats.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“We can’t have rats.”

Al woke with the first light of the next day.  He put on a shirt, shorts and sandals and went out back to check the trap.  Sure enough, it had been sprung and there was the rat sitting peacefully in it.  “”Hey, little guy,” Al said as he cautiously approached.  The rat’s whiskers twitched as it seemed to regard Al, but when he reached down towards the cage to pick it up, the rat lunged savagely at him and made a deep growling noise.  Al jumped back, surprised at the sudden change in the rat’s demeanor.  The rat seemed to grow in size as it growled loudly striking periodically at the side of the cage.  The growling was growing louder and turning into a scream so Al needed to act quickly because he did not want Maureen to wake and see this situation.  He went to his boat in the driveway and pulled out a long gaff pole that came with the boat when he bought it.  He hooked the end of the gaff under the trap handle and lifted the cage of turmoil from the ground.  The handle slipped so the cage was hanging at a 45 degree angle with the rat screaming and clawing savagely as Al used all his energy to hold it out straight from him and walk it to the back of his pickup truck.  Bathed in sweat, he took a moment to get his breath and walked to the side of the house to see if Maureen had been awoken.  The house was quiet, but the rat was continuing its horrible growl, a combination of anger and anguish.

The air conditioning of his truck was welcome to cool him down as well as drown out the noise of the rat.  Leaving his neighborhood and passing the entrance to the golf course he worried that someone may hear the noise coming from the back of his truck.  Al, what was all that racket in your truck yesterday?  That sure would be a good story to tell later, he thought.  The road past the course passed through a salt marsh with winding channels and a pool where he had seen a man using a cast net to catch shrimp a few days prior.  He really wanted to give that a try.

He turned left onto the main road that led to the boat launch.  He looked in his rearview mirror at the rat, hot in the sun in the back of the pickup.  It was breathing heavily and Al could still hear the growling noise which persisted as if the thing was possessed.  The road was straight and narrowed as he moved along, the live oaks crowding in.  Except for an occasional bright plot of fresh construction the shade of the woods grew darker and Al was happy because that rat must’ve been overheating in the sun.  What would he tell Maureen?  Yes, the rat was angry.  It was sure aggressive, but he’s fine now and far from us.  It was needed for sure and we have the trap if there are others.

As the road closed in even more he began to pass some of the Gullah houses, descendants of freed slaves who had lived there for generations.  He wanted to try some of the Gullah restaurants around but Maureen was so health conscious these days and they heard the cooks used a lot of grease.  Finally, the road ended at an expansive channel, the Intracoastal Waterway.  The grass and dirt parking lot was empty as he had hoped and as he got out of the truck he heard the spouting exhale of a pod of passing dolphins.  The sun was beginning to heat the land and the cicadas began to buzz, and when the rat saw Al its growling intensified again.  When he hooked the cage with his gaff and lifted it out of the truck, the rat started to make that screaming noise again and savagely attack the cage as if it were animate itself.  When he placed the cage on the ground, unhooked the gaff and moved back he said out loud, “Jesus.  How the hell am I going to get him out of there?”

All he had to do was lift the sliding door and run if it came bolting out of the cage like a greyhound.  It shouldn’t be a problem, he reasoned, but when he approached the cage the rat’s anger became exponential.  He leaned down at a safe enough distance to regard the rat as it lunged, snarling and screeching that terrible noise.  It looked at him with such rage and hate in its eyes he was stunned.  He said, “Alright.  Enough is enough,” and forced himself to grab the top of the sliding door.  When he did the rat lunged at his hand and he jerked it back quickly.  Growling the rat latched on the cage bars and bit so hard he saw some of its teeth break off with a terrible cracking sound.  He backed away while the rat still chewed at the cage, it’s mouth bloody with foamy saliva, its eyes wild, its ribcage heaving and pathetic, a keening now in its growls. 

“If Maureen saw this,” he thought.  He remembered how she was when her brother died, four days in a dark bedroom and then the months afterward when he worried most about their little daughter. 

He wished he had gloves, but even then…

Albert Jorgenson hooked the handle of  of the cage with his gaff as the rat continued his assault.  He held the long pole in front of him with the shaking cage hanging at an angle and walked down the boat ramp without looking forward.  When the water was up to his knees he was glistening with sweat and still looking away as he lowered the cage into the water.  He heard brief splashing and a keening gurgle as the cage submerged.  He unhooked the gaff and went back to the air conditioning in his car and sat for fifteen minutes.

“Did you just let the rat go?  Did we catch him last night?” she asked eagerly.

“Oh yeah.  Yup,” he said removing his sandals before stepping into the house.

“Where did you let him go?  The boat launch?  Was he okay?”

“He’s far from here and won’t be back.  I didn’t think he’d ever leave he cage, but he did and then ran out and disappeared into the rocks.  I bet he was hoping for another bacon pastry,” he kidded.

“Well, maybe we can bring one down to him once in a while.  As long as you don’t eat it on the way there,” she kidded back and gave his arm a squeeze.

“Good idea,” he lied successfully for the first time that he could remember.

That night, after a delicious crab gumbo and green salad, they rode again with their binoculars to the roosting site of  so many beautiful birds, yellow crowned night herons, roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets while below in the duckweed, the tiniest flowering plant in the world, alligators waited silently for the clumsy young to fall.

Draft     August 2016

Grape Jelly

Grape Jelly

Bob Partner closed his locker with more force than usual, which was more force than barely necessary.  On most days he would shut his locker, start away, and then turn back to push it and make sure it was closed completely. But that slight difference between slamming and absently shutting gave him the satisfaction he needed with the abrupt finality of the clicking lock and the knowledge he needn’t look back.  His head bobbed among other heads heading to classrooms, checked cotton shoulders and dresses of aquamarine, yellow and black, the boys’ hair cropped tight and the girls’ shoulder length and bobbed, headbands and bangs. 

Arriving at his first class, Chemistry, he was stalled in the doorway by a wall of red and white Wichita North football jackets, with one head a little taller than the others and unfortunately turned slightly toward Bob.  Karl Kendall’s head had the dimensions of a marshmallow with a haircut that matched Johnny Unitas.  He had wide set bulgy eyes, fleshy lips and had been shaving since the seventh grade.  But the only similarity between Kendall and Unitas was that each had once held a football in his hands.  Karl was manhandling two of his associates when he turned and saw Bob.  “Fartner!” he yelled.  He went back to pulling on his teammates’ jackets, one in each hand as the period bell sounded.  He held fast onto his two friends and pulled them slightly toward the doorway, then stopping and barking into the hallway, “Stop making us late to class!  You’re blocking the doorway!”  Bob and a few other kids sighed, looked at each other and waited.  Karl Kendall looked back to see his teacher standing, looking downward and absently scribbling on paper.  He continued blocking the way and looking back until he saw his teacher exhale, throw down his pencil, turn himself toward the doorway and take a stride.  That’s when Kendall let them loose turned to go in the class and said, “God, you guys are so annoying.  Hi, Mr. Beedo.  What’re we doing today?”

“Moribito.  You’ll see in a minute, Mr. Kendall,” the teacher said looking away from him.

Bob was happy to finally get to his seat and take notes.  Thank God this day was lecture and demonstration since the last thing he wanted to do was lab.  He could simply listen and take notes and relax.  On these days, the Karl Kendalls of the world were inclined toward hibernation, a torpor that was not quite sleep, but a form of listlessness that got them through lean periods.  Instead of the winter seasons, in these cases it was a forty-five minute class.  It was too exhausting for them to interrupt a teacher lecturing because then they would be asked pointed questions on the material and be put on the spot.  But on laboratory days they could stand, lumber about, grope each other and pour sulfur in your flask while you stood there mouth agape.

As his teacher droned on about mole calculations, Bob took productive notes but found enough time to draw in the margins of his paper because he had read the chapter assigned for homework the night before.  He was tired from a late night washing dishes at Maureen’s Kitchen.  He only worked at Maureen’s two nights a week because her cousin was the full time dishwasher and was only off on Thursdays and Fridays, but Bob worked raking leaves after school and before he went to Maureen’s last night.  He had made a lot of money that fall raking leaves, but now it was the end of November and this job was probably his last.  His grandmother’s friends had gotten wind of his efficiency and low price so he and his cousin Bucky found themselves with a lot of work and were forming a teenage boy’s version of a business.  They talked about shoveling the same clients’ walkways and drives when the snow was to come.  So far that fall he had saved $134.  After being called on, he correctly answered a question on a mole formula so he was able to go back to his drawing of a mole squinting at a page where he had written 1+2=?.   The lecture ended five minutes early, so the kids in his class got to chat for a few minutes before the bell rang. 

“No. It’s true.  Mr. Ed talks because they put peanut butter in his mouth.”

“Nah.  My dad says they shock him with some kind of like electrodes.  Not ones that hurt him, but they just like make his lips jerk around.”

“That’s terrible…”

“Nah…It doesn’t hurt him.  They’re the kind of shocks that don’t hurt.”

“No.  I heard he’s got a trainer right off stage who shows him carrots and he gets the carrots when he’s done with a scene.  That’s why he makes all those funny faces and jerks his head around.  That’s what I heard.”

“Wow.  If he really does that then he is one smart horse.”

“I love Mr. Ed,” he said chuckling and shaking his head back and forth.

Mr. Ed was Bob’s favorite show, but he also really liked The Avengers and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  The Avengers was exciting and Dick Van Dyke was funny, but he most enjoyed Emma Peel and Mary Tyler Moore.  They were the most beautiful women he had ever seen, even prettier than Elizabeth Taylor in the Cleopatra poster in front of The Crawford movie theater.  They both had beautiful brown hair and eyes and they both looked like Sally Thornton.  Sally lived a few streets over from Bob and they met in his third grade class.  For Valentine’s Day, their teacher Mrs. Restive sent a letter home that asked kids to bring in Valentine’s cards for each other.  They should bring one card for each of the girls in the class if they were boys and one card for each of the boys in the class if they were girls.  Although they were mostly vague and innocuous proclamations, when third-grade Bob was filling them out in his awkward print the night before V-Day, he agonized over which one to pick for Sally and chose one with a duck in a sailor suit and a heart that said, “Watch this Duck-Cling to You.”  It seemed the most forward out of the others.  He was eager and excited to give her his card, but when the time came for the kids to leave their seats and place their cards on their classmates’ labeled desks he was stricken with terror.  He thought his card for Sally was too forward and he was afraid she would know how he really felt, so when he got to her desk, he paused, withheld the card and moved on.  The only girl he wanted to give a card to was the only one to which he did not.  When all the kids were finished passing out cards and he got back to his desk, he had eleven cards waiting for him.  When he got off the bus that afternoon, he rushed into his house and tore open each card looking only for the signed name until he found Sally’s.  He saved that card and the envelope and threw the rest in the trashcan to the consternation of his mother.

On a later occasion when they were in seventh grade, he met her at a skating pond.  He was there with his grandfather and was learning to ice skate.  He took to it pretty quickly and began to enjoy the feeling of self-propulsion and then making a hard turn.  There was a lot of activity on the frozen pond, a hockey game with older boys took over a sizable section, while the rest of the people, boys, girls, parents, skated in a lazy perimeter.  He noticed the strength and skill of the hockey players, their confidence in their abrupt turns and stops and was a little jealous.  But he was having fun and getting better and better at his own accelerations and turns.  He returned to his grandfather who was gracefully moving along with his hands behind his back.  His grandfather was a slight man but had the amiable features of Gary Cooper.

“How’re ya doing, my boy?”

“Great, sir,” he said, sweaty and happy.  “I think I’m getting the hang of this now.” 

And at that point, Sally skated up to them.  He noticed there were some pretty girls on the ice, but at first he was nervous about the ice breaking and then he was busy with learning to skate.  After that he was enjoying it too much to take notice of anything, but now all he could see was her.  She was wearing a navy blue sweater and black snow pants with white gloves, scarf and headband.  Her almond eyes, like a gypsy woman’s eyes, were as bright as her smile, her lips and cheeks rouged from the cold air. 

“Hello, young lady!”

“Hello sir,” she said cheerily.  “Bob, right?  You live on Park?”

“Yeah.  Sally…”

“Thornton.  We were in Mrs. Restive’s together.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, we were.”

“Those are some nice skates you’ve got there,” his grandfather interjected and began a conversation that lasted while they skated the circumference of all the activity in the middle of the ice.  His grandfather was really good with people.  While she was chatting with his grandfather, she would frequently look to Bob and try to include him in the conversation, but mostly he could only stammer out a “Yeah” in agreement.  She was so pretty on the ice beneath the blue sky talking with his grandfather like they were old friends, if any boy can fall in love in an instant, it happened to Bob.  But in an instant a boy can destroy his own fantasies like a dropped pile of dishes.  One of the older hockey players slid up to Sally and started to speak with her enthusiastically.  He had ice shavings on his back across his broad shoulders and she turned him around so she could brush them off and just as quickly as he arrived, he dashed back for the game.  “So much for that,”  Bob thought.

Nothing had changed for Sally and his grandfather, so they all continued to skate together, but Bob avoided eye contact with her and ventured on some laps on his own before returning to their leisurely pace.  When it was time to leave Sally said to Bob directly, “So do you come here to skate a lot?”

“No.  Just this time.”

“Oh,” she said, “Hey, you know in the springtime my girlfriends and I play tennis in the park by your house.  Maybe I’ll see you there sometime?”

“Yeah.  Probably.”

“Okay then.  It was nice meeting you Mr. Partner.  Bye Bob,” she said smiling and then skated away. 

When they were in the car his grandfather said while driving, “Well, that Sally was a nice girl.”

“Yeah,” Bob replied watching the passing mailboxes.

“And she certainly seemed interested in you,” said his grandfather looking away from the road and directly at Bob.

“Yeah.  Well, she had a boyfriend there.”

“She did?”

“Yeah.  That hockey kid.”

“Oooh !  That hockey kid was her cousin from Salina visiting.  You didn’t hear us talking about that?” chuckled his grandfather.  Bob turned from the mailboxes and looked at his grandfather.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Rats.”

When they got to high school, they had several classes together, English three years straight.  Now, Sally was his friend and they often walked home together.  Sometimes they were alone, but not often, though those days alone were his favorite.    Mostly they walked with her friend Katherine, a mousy but pleasant girl who always walked with her arms crossed, Bucky who was always clamoring for attention by acting goofy and putting boxes on his head, and Emmie.  Emmie was a girl who lived a few doors down from Bob and took the special education class in a separate wing.  Her mother and Bob’s were close and Bob had known Emmie since they were young.  Emmie’s mother asked Mrs. Partner if it would be okay that fall if her daughter could walk home with Bob, now that she was getting older and getting along well in school now.  Bob’s mother considerately asked him about it.

“Well, yeah, mom…but she’ll try to hold my hand.”

“I’ll talk to Ellen about that.  You’ve always been so good with her.  And she really likes you.”

“That’s the problem.”

Emmie’s mother wrote a letter to the school asking permission for her daughter to walk home with a chaperone, one named Robert Partner, instead of taking her bus and after a meeting with Principal Strange, Mr. Robert Partner and Miss Emmie and Mrs. Ellen Boyle that discussed the responsibilities of a chaperone, permission was granted.  Emmie said several times on each of their first walks home, “I’m not going to hold hands with you, Bob.”  And at some time in October Bob noticed that when she became ebullient and started to swing her arms back and forth, she would stop herself and then walk quietly with her arms crossed.

“Hey Fartner.  Fartner,” Kendall insisted, tearing him from his thoughts.  He had come over to Bob’s table while the kids were killing time before the bell to end Chemistry.  “I’m making bets.  Bet you 10 cents I can fit my whole fist in my mouth.”  This was Kendall’s way of gathering money so he could eat extra servings at lunch.

“I’ve already seen you do it a hundred times.”

“C’mon Fartner.  You love it.”

“I’d give a nickel to see it,” said wiry wild-eyed Willy Sokol with delight.

Karl Kendall demanded the money be put on the desk, then put on a serious countenance, shook out his shoulders in preparation and brought his closed fist slowly to his mouth like a sword swallower.  He opened his mouth wide bearing large uniformly flat teeth and pale gums.  As he expertly turned his knuckles to the proper angle like professional movers can maneuver a couch through a doorway, his eyes bulged slightly and his forehead and cheeks were strained with red and white creases.  His hand was then gone to the wrist.  It reminded Bob of a film he saw in Biology the year before when a snake unhinged his jaw and swallowed an egg.  When Kendall popped his fist out of his mouth and wiry wild-eyed Willy Sokol was leaning back in peals of laughter slapping his thighs with his palms, Bob began to chuckle because he realized that even though everyone thought Willy was weird, Sokol was probably the smartest kid he knew.

“C’mon Fartner.  Now you.”

“I’m not trying that.”

“No. A bet.  25 cents says I go up and fart right in front of old Beedo.”

“I’m not betting that.  You’ll just get in trouble and you don’t care.”

“How about I do it and I don’t get in trouble you owe me and if I do get in trouble I owe you.”

Bob contemplated the situation.  He had fifty cents in his pocket and lunch was usually 35 cents, but he had another two quarters in his jacket pocket in his locker.  There was no way Mr. Moribito would put up with that and this way he would see Kendall get in trouble and win 25 cents. 

“You’re on,” said Bob.

“Money on the table first.”

“Okay, but you too.”

Kendall slammed a quarter down and Bob took out his own two from his pocket, only one was a nickel. “Oh,” he paused.

“What’s the problem, Fartner?  I didn’t know you was a Welsh man.”

Bob remembered quickly about the money in his jacket and slammed down his own quarter.  Kendall squared his shoulders back and adjusted his varsity football jacket and approached his teacher who was at his desk grading papers.  He did not look up when his student asked to use the restroom and simply said, “I’m not giving you a pass to leave when we have thirty seconds before the bell.”

“But I really have to go,” whined Kendall pretending to squirm his face reddening.  Then he let a loud one go.

Mr. Moribito sighed and said loudly, “If I wanted to work with sweating hogs, Mr. Kendall, I would have become a farmer.”  A success-filled Karl Kendall sauntered over and collected his winnings.  Bob didn’t care about losing the money since it was really Kendall that was losing, but then he thought and said, “Hey, what are they serving for lunch today?”

“Chicken and biscuits.  Oh, and peanut butter sandwiches with grape jelly,” replied Sokol.

“Grape jelly?” 

Every fall, Mrs. Clemence, one of the lunch ladies would make grape jelly from the vines on her home.  The jelly wouldn’t last two weeks and it would only be served on a few school days.  And on those days, they sold out if you weren’t in front of the line because she only made twenty or so of the sandwiches.  Grape jelly was his favorite and his mom would never buy it even when he asked her because she claimed she was allergic to grapes when she was young.  Grapes and crabmeat.  He was ecstatic.  All he needed to do was get the money from his locker early and then go straight from English to the lunch line.

During Latin his mind wandered as the teacher droned through declensions.  He almost asked Sally to go to the movies with him the day before when they were walking home.  He waited too long while cousin Bucky was distracting everyone by taking a framed still-life painting that was in someone’s garbage and smashing his head through its center.  Before he knew it she and Katherine peeled off from them with a wave and a smile when they got to her corner.   She had mentioned that she wanted to see the Hitchcock birds movie but was afraid to because she was so “creeped out by birds to begin with.”  He thought he could ask her to go with him alone and she would get the idea how he felt, even though he wasn’t exactly sure of what that was himself.  He was also getting to be really hungry.  He was distracted but mollified by the thought of a grape jelly sandwich and milk in his future.  He skipped breakfast that morning since he was tired from working the night before and he wished he didn’t.

Gym class was good because they were still outside and played soccer.  He scored two goals.  It was good too because he didn’t have the chance to get nervous about asking Sally or think of food.  But in the locker room, Kendall was telling his cronies about the girls he claimed to have stuck some part of his body into and listing the ones he planned on violating in the future.  When Bob heard him mention Sally as someone in his future plans he felt an uncontrollable anger, but then mild relief when Kendall didn’t say anything profane about her and then started talking about the new female English teacher. 

Through Study Hall Bob could only feel hunger and nervousness.  English was the next period and then lunch.  He couldn’t understand why he was so worried about asking Sally since she was practically asking him to go with her just a few days before.  He just had to figure out a way to make sure they were to go alone.  He wanted to kiss her and hold her hand.  He wanted her to be his girlfriend. 

He was also really, really hungry.

During English they had a substitute who was in fact 93 years old.  She was four feet tall, had hunched shoulders and used a cane.  She didn’t take notice of the seating plan so the students sat where they wanted and when Sally came in she sat next to Bob as he had hoped.  They were to silently read and answer questions on an O’ Henry story. The ancient substitute may not have enforced the assigned seats but she was certain on the silence.  When Eric Glover tried to whisper to Tim McGuire for a piece of gum, the substitute bolted upright from her chair, glowered at him with a confusing stare and emitted a phlegmy grumble.  Bob figured he’d delay while gathering his books at the end of class and she would wait for him.  Then he would say, “Hey, we should go see The Birds tomorrow.  The Saturday show is at 2.  I was thinking too that if it is kind of scary we should go with just us.”  He had it down perfectly.

He thought the story was okay.  It was  about some guy who drowned trying to get back a love letter in a bottle that he threw in the sea.  He had a hard time concentrating though because Sally looked so pretty and he was finally going to ask her.  Her face looked like it even smelled good.  It would be so nice in the theater and when she got scared she would grab his hand or maybe lean into him with his arm around her.  And he was also really hungry.  But it was only a half hour to lunch.  “Oh no!” he thought. The money in his locker.  He panicked because if he didn’t rush straight to the lunch line, there was a strong chance the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would be gone.  He couldn’t dally with Sally and his locker was on the opposite side of the school from the lunch room.  He would ask her during lunch instead, but he still needed to get to his locker somehow.  Principal Strange had announced last week that substitutes were no longer allowed to issue corridor passes because too many kids were taking advantage of them and some kids were smoking in the bathroom and set the garbage can on fire.

He waited until three minutes before the end of class hoping this woman would give him a pass to the bathroom.  It was his only chance.  If he left his books at his desk, he could get them after he finished lunch and it would look like a true emergency if he were to ask right before the bell.  He got out of his desk and Sally gave him a quizzical look as he approached the teacher’s desk.  She was putting a cap on a pen with great difficulty when she looked up at him with bulgy, glaucous eyes.  Her face did not look like it smelled good.

“Ma’am?  May I have a pass to use the restroom?  It’s a bit of an emergency.”

Her head shook with a slight palsy and she said, “What’s your name?” as she lifted the blue passbook from the desktop.  Walking swiftly he made it halfway to his locker, to the main atrium of the school, when Principal Strange stepped out from a restroom door.

“Excuse me, young man,” he boomed, “May I see your corridor pass?”  Bob’s heart rate quickened as he handed over his pass.  “Who wrote this?  It’s barely legible.”  The radio on the pricipal’s hip crackled and the voice of the main office secretary asked the principal to please come at once to the office.  It was an emergency.  Bob thought it sounded like she was sobbing.  “No shenanigans from you, young man,” Principal Strange said as he handed back Bob’s pass and turned quickly in the direction of the main office.  He bolted to his locker, fished the two quarters from his jacket pocket and slammed it shut.  The bell rang.

After a few quick and long strides, he was surrounded by kids pouring from classrooms into the hallway.  He kept a quick pace, not quite running but taking advantage of open lanes to pass those in his way.  He made excellent time to the cafeteria and there were only about ten kids in line.  “Everything worked out perfectly,” he thought and smiled as he looked at the pile of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.  He was going to buy two of those sandwiches.  He noticed the line wasn’t moving and saw the lunch lady fumbling with register tape.  The cafeteria was filling up with the bustle and noise of teenagers and the line behind him was growing.  Four kids ahead of him, he saw Karl Kendall walk up and butt in line.  The woman closed the hood of the register and began to accept money again.  He controlled his eagerness knowing that there was no way they would sell out the sandwiches by the time he got to the register.  Karl Kendall left the register after paying holding two trays of food, each with a wrapped sandwich placed on top of the chicken and biscuits.  The woman behind the counter, Mrs. Clemence herself, asked him what he wanted.  “Two PBJ’s and two milks, please.”

The kid in front of him paid and walked away with his tray.  Suddenly, Principal Strange’s voice came over the loudspeaker.  “All students report to the gymnasium immediately for an assembly.  I repeat:  All students to the gymnasium immediately.”

Bob was stunned and looked at the cashier in panic.  A girl came rushing into the cafeteria crying and yelled out, “The president was shot!  The president is dead!”  The entire cafeteria went silent as the students looked around in bewilderment. 

Karl Kendall said loudly, “John Kennedy is dead?”

“It’s true!” yelled a young man from the crowd.

There was more stunned silence which graduated from murmuring to sobbing and panic.  Bob looked to the cashier whose netted head was beginning to hang.  Her blue eyes through her glasses were starting to cloud.  Quickly, he thrust out his arm with the two quarters in his open palm.  “Please?” he implored.  She took his two quarters and gave him a dime.

He started from the register and saw the line behind him disperse as all the students began to head to the gymnasium.  He went quickly to a table and sat down amidst the sobbing and stunned.  He looked to the entryway of the cafeteria and saw Sally crying.  Standing next to her was Karl Kendall crying as well.  Then, very naturally, they joined in a consoling embrace and cried together, eventually moving with all the other kids and lunch ladies and staff members towards the gymnasium leaving Bob alone with the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich he ever had in his life.

August 2016   Draft

The Great Tree and the Reasonable People

The Great Tree and the Reasonable People

There was a great tree, at least 16 yards around its base that stood on the great lawn in the center of a village.  The village itself was not great, but above average and its only greatness was derived from this tree and its expansive lawn.  The towering silver maple could be seen from the ocean a few miles away and it predated any recorded history of the region.  Even the oldest  local man whose hundredth birthday was celebrated almost a decade before could only mumble out that not only had the tree been the same size since he was five years old, it seemed to become even younger and healthier as he had aged.

                Around the base of the tree were arranged in a circle wrought iron benches level with the ground and quite comfortable and the villagers of all walks of life would spend time beneath the great tree.  They were a reasonable people and would mildly socialize or remain meditative and silent.  They would observe the seasons and remark on their predictabilities or their vicissitudes.  Beneath the great boughs was a place that all knew as the very definition of comfort in that they felt safe, complacent, yet mildly alert to and interested in the things around them. 

                About four feet from the ground on the trunk was a public tap.  The tap along with the tree had been there before any person had started to record history whether in print or painting or oral tales.  It was a brass spout the size of an average bathroom spout pounded or screwed deep into the trunk.   Its handle was a simple lever, almost spoon like, and would accommodate with most comfort the right handed turn.  The even smoothness of its turn was matched only by the smoothness of worn metal which no matter the direction of the sun or wind was always the exact same temperature of the air.

                If one were to turn the tap and wait for almost a full two minutes, first a few drips, then a trickle of the clearest liquid would issue from the spout.  The trickle would seem to get stronger for a moment and then go back to a light trickle after its peak. Even though the liquid would seem to be the purest of waters, it came from a tree, so it was a sap.  But this sap was not a sugary viscous solution, nor was it a coniferous resin.  All who sipped it remarked that in essence it was completely tasteless, yet one of the most inspiring tastes they had ever experienced.  In fact, what they were sipping was the purest form of water possible with the exception of a trace amount of a dynamic and mysterious sugar.  This chemical compound defied classification and left many a university researcher pacing dangerously through the laboratory.  What was said, though, was that when ingested the compound increased one’s wisdom if only just a little.

Generations of villagers throughout  three or perhaps even  four centuries would spend an evening, an afternoon off from work, a lunch hour, or a summer morning before the heat became insufferable around the great tree lightly sipping from clear glasses.  Rarely would large gatherings occur because the villagers were a reasonable people and they understood the sanctity of that little rotunda beneath the great boughs.  Visitors, as well, recognized the inherent importance of the location and refrained from the gratuitous self-photographs at the tap which they had traveled so far to take.  Many arrived with the intention of imbibing the “cleanest of nectars” but simply stood back and marveled at the immensity of the tree above its great lawn flanked by the village municipal offices, Main Street, and the county swimming pool.  There was no local hierarchy, no threatening gestures or looks from the villagers to intimidate tourists, it was simply that upon arrival the visitors did not want to disrupt the peace at the base of the great tree.

Children did not climb the tree as the lowest boughs were a good 25 feet from the ground.  They also knew better than to try.  Even the most self-indulgent thrill seekers who travelled from far away, and during the cover of night attempted to cling to the thick strips of bark with sinuous muscles, grip shoes and chalked hands would recognize their attempts to mount the summit of this ancient entity as profane, turn themselves away at the top of the regular tree line and return to their cars and leave the village as quietly as they entered.

During one portentous spring afternoon, a particularly and declaratively wise and respected woman remarked on the slow properties of the tap.  She was not concerned about the time it took to fill the small glasses, though.  She was a woman of foresight and design, being chief civil engineer of the county.  She proposed with conviction while the idea was still forming itself that since the tap trickles so slowly, why not simply keep it open and let the sap dribble continuously?  Then the issue of waiting politely for five minutes for each person to get his portion would no longer be an issue.  With a tree of this immense size we could certainly be sure not to drain it with a simple continuous trickle and any loss of water the tree may sustain it would gather back straight through its roots.  And one can only imagine the fertilization properties of that mysterious sugar which has made us wiser and confounded those who have tried to categorize it.

As this plan was taking shape, many rubbed their chins thoughtfully, some nodded sagely, a few stared at the grass, and one man, a grade school teacher bit his nails.  Her presentation was met with positive reception.  A postman wondered about the ground and potential issues of drainage and eventually it was decided the best course of action would be to remove the grass and the circle of benches temporarily and line the periphery with gravel.  Over the gravel they would bring in and layer those beautifully white and smooth round stones from the local beach.  They would also extend the circle into a kidney shape down the slight slope past the eastern benches and onto the great lawn to ornament the western view and deal with any remaining drainage issues.

When the work was completed, the wrought iron benches were replaced with bronze benches designed by a local sculptor and they somehow captured the satisfying comfort of turning the tap handle.  He also fashioned a beautiful bronze drip plate for below the tap that split the slow trickle into three directions for maximum drainage. 

That year had been a most remarkable one, one that would become defining for the village.  It was a year of both beauty and wisdom which is a rare convergence for any people.  That spring saw the ground become richer than ever before.  Robins pulled densely fortified worms from the grass surrounding the white stones of the landscaping surrounding the great tree.  The birds themselves were more vibrant that year, even the yellow warblers and the myrtle warblers.  The crows were iridescent, and when spotted, the evening foxes were a glorious red with full bushy tails.  That summer lavender and blue flowers carpeted the lower portion of the white rocks.  The grass of the great lawn had a deeper and richer hue.  And in the evenings that summer, the local harpist played to the sunset in reds and blues.

Many wise statements were made that year beneath the boughs with goblet in hand.  In April, the nail biting teacher declared that the structures of life are less mechanical than fluid.  In June, the owner of the carpet mill declared that if the rich did not have wealth than people would not have the opportunity to excel in labor and in life.  The chief civil engineer of the county proclaimed that successful human progress depends on balance, ingenuity and perseverance.  There were many other moments of wisdom until the trickle stopped.

For a few days many discussed its meaning and a few days later the discussion stopped.  After a few weeks the discussion started again when people started to notice that the leaves of the great maple seemed to become paler and more brittle.  They became alarmed when the points of those leaves began to brown and curl upward like little skeleton fingers.  And the last wise thing that anyone said beneath those boughs was when the community groundskeeper looked up at the massive tree and said, “Well, what’re we gonna do if it dies and them big branches up there start to rot and fall down.  That’d be dangerous.”  When he said that, everyone knew that the original plan proposed to them, the one they agreed to even though each one knew in his heart was wrong, was a really stupid idea.

Garbage Day

Garbage Day

The starling paced back and forth on the windowsill making a low clucking sound, his bill catching here and there on the screen.  Mostly it rushed from one end of the sill to the other but sometimes it only made it midway before it stopped and pushed its head into the screen and darted back to the point at which it started.  Mark felt bad for the thing in its panic and wanted to lift the screen and let it out but he knew how John felt about the bird and didn’t know what to do.

Anyone who met Mark and John assumed they were father and son.  They were both 5’6” and lean with wide set blue eyes and had an affable stoop to their shoulders.  Both were amiable and soft spoken and both liked the Mets and the Jets.  John was appropriately older than Mark to be his father, but they were not related at all.  Neither had children and neither had been married, both for no other reason than it just never happened.  And even though they conveniently wore the same size clothes and shoes, they never borrowed or shared.

                They met when Mark was in his late thirties and John was in his late fifties working for a fence contractor, Daley Brothers Fencing.  They spent long work days setting posts, securing panels and prying rocks.  And they spent short evenings at the Shamrock Tavern drinking Utica Club in eight ounce glasses.  In 1973, they got a good deal to rent the second floor of a two-family house, and since neither was with a woman at the time, they moved in together and lived there for many years.

                Those years were good as both men didn’t need anyone and if they ever did they had each other.  Neither had any family.  Mark came from Pittsfield with a girl, leaving a shit brother and a crazy mother, but he was not so clear on John.  He knew that when John was younger he did a couple years in jail but never knew what it was for.  The past for the two of them consisted of referencing old jobs and shitty bosses with some good ones that failed.  Days of work if they were on the same crew consisted hard work and if there was discussion it involved current events such as sports or headline disasters.   They worked hard through the end of October or maybe even into November and then they’d get laid off by the company.  They’d live without issue on what they’d saved and on unemployment until the thaw of mid-March.  They’d spend a lot of days at noon talking with some neighbors, disabled and retired, about hunting and fishing and sometimes would actually get out in the woods or on the ice.  But both were solitary figures moving through life at a fixed distance, twin compasses as it were.  Many afternoons had the simple joys of smoking some weed with a friend and throwing darts in the living room. 

                The two were well-known fixtures for a while playing in the local dart league, but after some years John had less vigor than in the past and had to quit working at the fence company.  He was eligible for social security by then and Mark still had enough pay to keep them secure in rent.   They still lived comfortably never wanting for food, beer, or weed, but a combination of age, anger and money had John give up on darts as well.  He went to the bar less and less frequently and eventually never went there again.  The exponential spaces between his last visits were so precise it seemed as if they were planned and people had forgotten about him rather easily.  Few remembered to inquire to Mark about John’s absence and when he would return again and Mark would give his habitually evasive answers and finish by saying wryly, “I don’t know.  He just moved out.”

                Days that Mark went to work, John got in the habit of the noontime kibitzing with the neighbors Phil and Pete.  They would often go down to the park and sit by the river and Pete would brag about his Guard days in California and then run to his wife’s car when she pulled up.  If Phil didn’t drink too much he would talk about shooting turkeys.  Pretty soon, John’s patience began to wane and he spent less and less time meeting them with the same precision as his disappearance from the bar and Mark soon had to answer he neighbors’ questions with the same wry, “I don’t know.  He just moved out.”

                Their landlord owned three adjacent two-family houses and the garages behind.  There were no yards, but a large parking lot that spanned across the three lots.  In the back of the lot sat a blue dumpster that all the tenants used since there was a double driveway that accommodated easily a backing truck and it avoided the nuisance of dozen garbage cans.  During a hot evening in May, Mark was putting out the trash and he saw a small bird next to the dumpster.  When it saw him it immediately fluttered its wings and began to call loudly.  He threw his bag into the dumpster and looked at its wide open yellow beak.  It had wisps of down around its crown and continued to flutter its wings and call plaintively.  “Poor little guy, no mother?” he said as he straightened himself and looked around.  He shaded his eyes and squinted at a bird on the telephone wire but then it flew off.   He shrugged lightly to no one and headed back into the house and up the stairs to his apartment.  

                Mark walked through the kitchen into the living room and John was still in his chair watching the ball game.  “Anything yet?” he asked.

“Nah.  But it’s about time they got fuckin’ Darling in again.  Two fuckin’ losses.  And a win.”  John took a short sip of his beer with his eyes never leaving the television.

“We’ll get ‘em again tonight.”  Mark paused and started to take his shoes off.  “There was a bird out there…”

“The announcer mentioned all those assholes got killed playing soccer today.  You hear?  What do you mean a bird?”  John turned himself around in his chair and Mark paused with his shoe.

“A bird.  A young one I think.  It was making a racket at me out there.”

“Was it alone?  You left it there?”

“I don’t know…it looked alone.  What the fuck am I supposed to do?  Take it from its parents?”

John got up and shuffled to the window and looked at an angle towards the dumpster.  In the shadow of the corner of the dumpster, he saw a small object.  In the sunlit driveway he saw a black and white cat fixated on that same spot, its shoulders moving fluidly as it crept toward the bird.  “Well, what the fuck, you gonna let Phil’s cat kill it?” he yelled wildly back at Mark.  “Get out there and stop that thing!”

“Jesus fuck.”  Mark pressed his heel back down into his shoe and shuffled down the stairs and into the driveway.  The cat was about three yards away from the bird and as soon as Mark stepped into the driveway its pace towards the dumpster quickened.  “Hey, Sylvester,” he yelled taking a couple of quick strides towards the cat.  Sylvester snapped out of a trance, looked wildly back at Mark and darted off behind his own house.  Relieved, Mark trotted over to the little bird and cupped him in both hands.  As he turned to head inside, Phil weaving slightly called him from the doorway, “What’s a’matter Sylvester?”

“Nothing, Phil.  He’s just gonna kill this bird an’all,” he said gesturing with his cupped hands.

“Well…ain’t that what he’s supposed to do?”  Phil started to laugh with his belly and gave a little cough.   “Sides,” he waved his hand downward as he turned back into his house, “all they do is eat his food out here.  He had it coming.”

John sat more animated than Mark had seen him in a long time with the fluttering bird in his palm.  “Look at him,” he said of the fledgling.  “Look at his head.  He looks like an old man!”  The bird stopped calling and shut his beak with a glowering countenance, a ring of wispy feathers around his head.  “Old man!  He’s a little old man.” 

The bird spoke up again.

“He’s hungry.  He needs food.”

“I’ll get him some worms.”

“How do you know he eats worms?”

“All birds eat worms.”

“Not all fucking birds eat worms.”

“Yes they do.”

“Fucking robins eat worms.  Other birds eat seeds.”

“So we’ll get him seeds.”

“What if he doesn’t eat seeds?”

“Jesus fuck.  Then I’ll get him worms.  Wait, Phil said they eat his cat food.”

“Fucking birds eating fucking cat food?”

“Yes, fucking birds eating fucking cat food.  I’ll go get some.”

“Get it from Phil.  He needs it now.”

“Jesus fuck, John.  I’m not gonna get cat food from Phil.  You haven’t talked to him in two years.  I’ll go in the morning before work.  He’ll be fine ‘till then.”

“Who knows the last time he ate?  He’s starving now, the poor old man.”

The bird started up again.

“Just go ask him for some food.  His cat almost killed this bird.”

“Jesus fuck.”

Mark went back downstairs quietly entered the parking lot with an eye on Phil’s windows and grabbed a handful of cat food out of the bowl on the steps and went quickly back into his own house.  He handed John the kibble and John said, “Aren’t these too big for him?  I don’t want him to choke.”

“Maybe you should chew them up and puke them into his mouth like his mom.”

John nodded sagely, bit a piece in half with his teeth and with his fingers fed the baby who eagerly swallowed it.  “Jesus fuck,” said Mark. 

Over the next month, the Old Man lost his friar’s crown and grew into a nice steel gray.  He sat mostly on a towel on the arm of John’s chair and slept on an old hat rack that had been in Mark’s closet since they moved in.  They kept a towel underneath that as well.  Mark would complain about the extra towels he had to wash every week when he did their laundry in the basement, but it was only two extra.  But he did mean it when he complained about the bird when it would fly onto his TV tray to grab a French fry or fly into the kitchen to lick ketchup or open the bag for potato chips.

“Goddamn John, can’t you keep Old Man in here? I don’t need his fucking bird shit in the kitchen,” he had yelled several times. 

The bird flew back to John where John chuckled, his hand and chin with a newly noticeable but slight palsy.  “You can’t tell an Old Man what to do.”

Over the next year the Old Man developed a purple sheen with green and blue and speckles and a profoundly yellow bill and an impressive perspicacity that even Mark began to appreciate.  And while the bird ate from his own bowl, it became harder and harder for John to get to his own.  But he did.  It was only sometimes it seemed to Mark that he needed to help him get to bed or the bathroom.  He took care of most of his own meals but forgot to clean up the kitchen, so most of the time Mark’s complaints about “fucking Old Man shitting” were complaints directed at a bird with an outlet for John to chuckle and say, “You can’t tell Old Man what to do.”

It happened to be another hot evening in late May that Mark returned from work and saw John sleeping in his chair.  If you asked Mark today, he wouldn’t be able to tell you if Keith Hernandez hit anything or even if the Mets were on the television at all.  He walked in as quietly as he was used to, trying to let both old men relax.  He looked over and saw Old Man on John’s collarbone, his head twisted at an unusual angle, and the bird was pecking and licking at the fluid coming from his nose.  “Jesus fuck,“ Mark said as he chased the bird off to his hat rack perch.  Then he knew.

John’s eyes were half closed and did not seem pained.  He was simply there inanimate, his left hand slightly clenched, his feet flat on the floor.  Mark held his own face with his left hand and put his right on John’s shoulder.  He sat there like that for some time.

It was dark and Mark had to make a decision.  The last thing John would ever want is an ambulance flashing lights in front of the house until three in the morning while the neighbors came out and gawked at him in a body bag, gossiping and fretting over someone they didn’t care about.  And he certainly didn’t care about them.  Ambulance?  Along with an ambulance, they’d drive a whole fucking fire truck down the narrow street with one half on the sidewalk, rocking back and forth during the dips for driveways, as if corpses may spontaneously explode.  Police, firemen, crooked EMTs tracking dirt through the house.  The bird?  The weed? He didn’t have a car to drive him to the hospital or the morgue.  Who even knows where the morgue is?  As he was pacing back and forth, Old Man flew over and perched on John’s chair.  “And what the fuck am I going to do with you?” John asked and looked out the window to where he discovered the small bird.  “Tomorrow’s Thursday.  Garbage day.”

John, wrapped in a sheet, fit fairly easily into an oversized contractor waste bag and Mark found it surprisingly easy to lug him down the stairs like a lean and overburdened Santa Claus.  John was his size and they were both notoriously lean, but John had lost weight over the past few years.  It was past midnight and completely quiet and still behind the house.  He waited for any sound at all, then with increasing strain from the burden waddled across the lot, turned his back to the open dumpster and heaved John’s body onto the rim and relieved himself of the weight.  After a breath he turned himself around and let the body fall in.  He didn’t bother to cover it with other trash because he figured the truck would be there within five hours and it’d be best if the rest of the trash covered the body when dumped into the truck.  Sweating profusely with heaving breaths, Mark stretched himself straight and looked around the lot.  There were no lights and there was no sound.

He pulled a chair over to the window and sat the rest of the night watching the dumpster, thinking.  He smoked and drank and thought and chuckled about when he would have to respond, “I don’t know.  He just moved out.”  Old man was sleeping on his hat rack.  The house and the neighborhood were incredibly silent, an appropriate silence, the silence of death.  He was happy when he thought of how terrible that parade would have been, how angry John would be.  How happy John would be about this, he would chuckle and say something shitty about Pete and his wife and that screaming foster mom down the road.  They got nothing from him at all.  And as he sat there the rest of the night he considered logistics: send back unopened security checks and if they ever inquired, “I don’t know.  He just moved out.”; If anyone ever asked about him again, “I don’t know.  He just moved out.”  And he was nervous about a garbage discovery but it was worth it to think of John’s chuckle.  He didn’t have anyone anyway, so if he got caught and went to jail, who would he have to worry about?  Only that stupid Old Man.

When the sky began to show some light, the time when birds rouse and twitter, he heard in the distance the diesel and rumble of the garbage truck through the neighborhood.  He heard the compression brakes and the shift into reverse and its accompanying beeping.  The truck backed into view as the driver deftly slid the forks into the brackets of the dumpster.  In one fluid motion the dumpster was raised and turned and all of its contents fell into the waiting container.  At that point Old Man flew to the sill and began to try to get through the screen.

Mark sat for several minutes after the truck was gone, fascinated by this bird who had shunned open windows in the past.  He felt its distress but didn’t want to open the screen because he knew how John felt about the bird.  “Here, buddy. Here, here.” He opened the screen and Old Man flew out.  The bird flew towards the empty dumpster but turned and landed on the peak of one of the garages.  It preened itself in the growing sunshine as Mark watched through the open window.  When he sighed and stood and shut the screen, Old Man immediately flew back to the sill.  Relieved, he opened the screen and the bird flew to his hat rack.

May 2016 (draft)