The Complete Collection

When I finally do see Birdy again, we don’t talk about the treasure hunt at first. A few days later, Birdy says he figures somebody got to it before us; that’s why the ground was sunk in like that. He still won’t believe I made it all up; even when I tell him how I did it. He only gives me one of his crazy eye-wiggling looks.

I want to think to make real this that I know and can’t hold. I’m pulled down. The earth in me is strong; the drifting dust is in my bones.

We get such a good business going, selling pigeons, we decide to go out and get some birds ourselves. That’s what we were doing up on the gas tank that night. It’s a big storage tank at Marshall Road and Long Lane. This is a place where several different flocks of pigeons roost and nest.

– How about us up on top of the gas tank, Birdy. That was wild. That night you almost convinced me you might just be part bird.

Damn; he’s not paying any attention to me at all.

– Listen here, birdbrain! I’m tired talking to the back of your head; you can’t be that crazy! Maybe if I come in and give you a coupla hard ones you’ll hear better!

Crazy ass thing to say; anybody hear me, they’d lock me up too. Anyway, Birdy’s not afraid of things people are supposed to be afraid of. No way you can make him do something he doesn’t want. No way to hurt him; like he just doesn’t feel anything he doesn’t want to. Typical of what I mean is the way I met Birdy.

Mario, my kid brother, comes in and tells me this freak down at the Cosgrove place took his knife. I ask him where he got the knife; he tells me he found it. I figure he stole it but I’m always looking for fights anyway. I’m naturally strong and I’ve already started lifting weights; have my own miniature gym down in the cellar. I’m walking around squeezing spring things to increase my grip; reading Strength and Health; York, Pennsylvania, is a kind of Mecca for me. I start all this crap when I’m only about eleven – probably because the old man used to beat me up so much. Anyway, I’ve got all this strength and I want to try it out with fights.

I’m just starting these crazy ideas when Mario tells me about Birdy taking his knife. I’m thirteen. Birdy must be all of twelve. I see us in my mind as older, not as little punks like that.

I go down and walk across the ball field. I’m wearing my new brown leather jacket and Mario’s tagging along behind me. He shows me the place. I lean over the gate in the wall and Birdy’s sitting on the steps of his back porch cleaning off the knife. I tell him to come over. He comes with a look on his face as if he’s glad to meet me.

Living things grow upward but are not free. The highest branches trap air and light but only feed endless grindings of earth. Growth itself is without meaning.

I tell him to give me the knife. He says it’s his; says he bought it from a kid named Zigenfus. He tells me I can check with this Zigenfus if I want. I ask him to let me see the knife. He gives it to me. We’re talking over the wooden gate in the wall to his house. It’s the wall of the baseball field.

I see right away this is a really good knife, a switchblade. I try to work it. Tricky kind of catch and spring; seems to be broken. Birdy reaches over to show me how it works. I pull the knife away and tell him to keep his crummy hands off my knife. He looks at me with his wiggly eyes as if I’m nuts. I turn and start walking away with Mario. He opens the gate and comes after us. We keep walking. He gets in front of us, walking backwards, and asks for his knife. I stop. I hold it up. ‘This knife?’ I say. ‘Try and take it.’ He reaches for the knife. I’m holding it up in my left hand so I can give him a good one with the right. Somehow I miss, and he gets hold of the knife. I snatch the knife out of his hand. I hold it up and he reaches again. I swing and miss again. His head is right there, but by the time my fist gets to that place, he’s gone. I swear he moves after I start the punch. I put the knife in my pocket so I can use both hands; I figure I’m really going to massacre this fool. He keeps reaching for the pocket. He’s always there and I keep swinging but can’t hit him. I start trying to set him up. Nothing doing; it’s like I’m doing everything in slow motion and he’s at full speed. He’s not doing anything like bobbing and weaving; he just moves away from the place I hit at, the way you’d step from in front of a car.

I decide to grab him. If I have to, I’ll put him on the ground where he can’t move, then clobber him. Mario’s not saying anything. Next time Birdy reaches in for the knife, I step forward and get a good headlock on him. I bend to throw him over my leg and he’s gone. The feeling is exactly the way it feels when a snake slips out of your hand. He squirmed or vibrated.

I try everything. I try tackling him. I try getting him in a bear hug. I try another headlock. Nothing holds him.

Later, when Birdy switches to old U.M. High, I want him to go out for wrestling but he won’t do it. The only exception is one time when we have an intramural competition and there’s nobody to wrestle against Vogel at a hundred thirty-five. Vogel is district champ; Birdy says he’ll suit up to fill in.

The whole school is out to see the match; intramural sports are a big thing at U.M. At the opening of the first period, Vogel misses the takedown a couple times, then he dives at Birdy. Birdy steps aside and falls on Vogel for a takedown. Birdy can’t weigh more than one twenty-five soaking wet. Vogel’s getting mad. He tries to roll. Birdy slips loose and lets Vogel roll alone onto his back. All Birdy has to do is flop on him, hold him down and he has a pin, or at least a near pin. Birdy stands up and smiles down at Vogel. Vogel scrambles for an escape. Birdy has two points for the takedown and Vogel one for the escape.

Same thing happens again and Birdie has another two points for takedown. Vogel escapes again just at the end of the period. Score: Birdy four, Vogel two. The crowd’s beginning to laugh; everybody’s rooting for Birdy. Birdy’s walking around looking goof y as ever, the wrestling suit hanging all loose on him.

The second period starts in referee position with Vogel on top. He really hunkers in on Birdy. Birdy’s not even looking at anything, just smiling to himself. I figure this is where Birdy gets pinned. Vogel’s a strong kraut bastard; he’s all red in the face he’s so mad.

The ref slaps his hand on the mat and calls ‘wrestle’. Vogel pulls Birdy’s arm for a breakdown and somehow, I don’t know what he did, some kind of forward roll, but Birdy’s standing and Vogel’s there all alone on the mat. Jesus, the crowd breaks up. Vogel’s on his hands and knees like an old bear, and Birdy is standing, looking down at him.

Vogel charges across the mat at Birdy. He fakes going into a wrestle position, then goes down for a leg drop. Birdy twists around and winds up sitting on Vogel’s head. It’s too much. I get so excited I bump my knee into the back of the guy in front of me. He has a sharp pencil in his hip pocket. The point jams into my knee and sticks there. I still have the mark; souvenir of the day Birdy beat the district champion hundred thirty-five pounder. Beat him twelve to six on points, didn’t even work up a sweat. Vogel’s so pissed he spends all season trying to make up for it. He just misses being state champion by two points; gets beaten in the final at Harrisburg.

When brought to meaning, all importance becomes small, as in death, all life seems nothing. Knowing is destroyed by thinking, not destroyed but sterilized; distilled into knowledge. Thinking, the processing of knowing to knowledge.

Finally, I’m puffing so from trying to catch Birdy I straighten up and look at him. He smiles at me. He’s still playing games. He wants his knife all right but he’s not mad at me. I’m just the long arm of fate. I take out the knife. I open it slowly to scare him. I go into a crouch like I’m going to kill him. He stands there watching me. I begin to suspect there’s no way I can get him with that knife, even if I want to. Throw it and he’s liable to reach into the air and catch it. I begin to see how funny the whole thing is. Mario’s still standing there. I throw the knife into the ground at Birdy’s feet. Birdy picks it up. He cleans it, closes it, then walks over and gives it to Mario. He says if it’s really his knife, he can have it. Says, maybe Zigenfus found it, or stole it, and maybe it’s Mario’s all the time. I tell Mario not to touch the fucking knife. I take it from Birdy, then give it back to him. I feel like General Lee surrendering his sword. That’s when Birdy asks me if I like pigeons and invites me into his yard to look at the loft he’s building. Mario goes along home and Birdy and I get to be friends.

– Birdy, you know you could’ve been state champion if you wanted to. You could’ve wrestled all those shrimps at a hundred twenty-five without even trying. Could’ve broken all kinds of track records too.

We’d sit across the street on Saturdays watching pigeons on the gas tank. Birdy has great binoculars he got at a pawn shop. They’re perfect for watching pigeons. We’d watch all day, taking turns and eating hoagie sandwiches we bought on Long Lane.

Birdy makes drawings of the pigeons. Birdy’s always drawing pigeons or any kind of bird, the way other guys draw hot rods, or motorcycles, or girls. He draws details of feathers or feet and he makes drawings of birds like blueprints, with arrows and top views and side views. When he sets himself to draw a pigeon like a pigeon, he can do that too. One of the things Birdy is, is an artist.

One day some cops sneak up on us. They say we’re peeping into people’s windows with the binoculars and they’ve had complaints. People are nuts. By luck, Birdy has a lot of his bird drawings and we say we’re making a report for school. This is something even a cop can understand. He’s going to have a hard time explaining to some lady why we’d rather look at pigeons than peep through her window and watch her pee.

There are a few good strays in those flocks at the gas tank and we want to get some. Birdy, most likely, could’ve talked them into his pocket, but we’re both sold on the idea of climbing that tank. It has to be done at night when the pigeons are roosting. There’s a fence and a night watchman but we’ve been checking and know where to go over.

It’s hard for me to do this. I must kill each bird, defeather it, disembowel it, for one bite. I must. I am hungry; I starve for knowledge. My brain spins in knowing. We trade all for knowledge.

We use our rope ladder with the hook to throw up and pull down the bottom section of the ladder on the back side of the tank. I go first; we both have gunny sacks to put birds in. We have flashlights, too, so we can see the birds and choose the ones we want.

We get to the top OK. There’s a fantastic view up there; we pick out the Tower Theater and lights going all the way into Philadelphia. We sit up there and promise ourselves we’ll come up again sometime just to watch the stars. That’s something we never get to do.

Scary as shit catching birds. We have to reach over the edge into the slits on the tank where the pigeons roost. I try it first with Birdy holding my legs, but I can’t make it. The top of the tank slants to the edge and you have to lean out so your shoulders’re clear over. I can’t get myself to do it. No matter how strong you think you are, there’re some things you can’t make yourself do.

Birdy doesn’t mind at all. He reaches under and hands them to me. If they’re junk, I hand them back; good ones I shove in the bag. We go all around the tank, stopping and checking whenever we hear pigeons. First time around, we get about ten reasonable birds that way.

Birdy says there’re more good ones in the next slit down. He shimmies out till he’s practically hanging from his waist over the edge. I put the bag of birds down and sit on his feet to keep him from flipping over. I’m ready to quit. It scares me just sitting on his feet that close to the edge. He’s leaning out so far now he can’t hand the birds back, so he takes another bag to put them in directly. I figure we’re liable to get all kinds of crap with Birdy choosing, but we can always let them go later.

That’s when there’s a clatter, and some pigeons flap in the dark behind me. I look around and see two birds getting out of the bag. Without thinking, I lean back to shut the bag. Birdy’s legs swing up in front of me and over the edge!

There’s a rush and pigeons fly out and up into the dark. I’m scared shitless; I wait, afraid to move. I have a feeling the whole tank is rocking. Nothing happens. I slide on my stomach toward the edge. Birdy’s clinging to the slits. He still has the gunny sack over his arm. He looks up and gives me one of his loose smiles. He holds out a hand.

‘Gimme a hand up, Al.’

I reach out but can’t make myself lean far enough out to grab him. I close my eyes but then I get dizzy and I’m about to fall off. He takes his hand back and shifts his grip. He tries to leg up over the edge of the tank but can’t make it. I’m beginning to shake.

‘I’ll go get somebody, Birdy!’

‘I can’t hold on that long. It’s all right, I can do it.’

He pulls his feet up to the next rung and tries to reach with one hand to the top edge of the tank. I try to reach for him but I’m absolutely paralyzed. I can’t make myself go near that edge. Birdy hangs there with his ass leaning out into the dark. I get down on my stomach and try to reach as far as I can. I get my hand to where he can reach it if he lets go with one of his hands. Birdy says, ‘When I say three, I’ll let go and grab your hand.’

Birdy counts, lets go and I catch him. Now we’re really shit up a crick. I can’t pull without slipping down off the tank. We’re just balanced there; every time he moves, I slip a little further toward the edge. That’s when I pee my pants. Jesus, I’m scared. Birdy looks back down.

‘I’ll try making it to the coal pile.’

I don’t know what he means; maybe I don’t want to know.

With his free hand, Birdy arranges the burlap bag in front of him, then lets go of me. He hovers for a second, turning himself around against the side of the tank, then leans forward into the air and shoves off. I can see him all the way down. He stays flat out and kicks his feet like somebody swimming. He keeps that burlap sack stretched across in front of him with his arms spread out.

The first time I flew, it was being alive. Nothing was pressing under me. I was living in the fullness of air; air all around me, no holding place to break the air spaces. It’s worth everything to be alone in the air, alive.

Birdy does get over to the coal pile and, just before he lands, closes up into a ball, twists and lands on his back. He doesn’t get up. I can barely see him, a white spot in the black coal. It’s a long way down.

I don’t expect him to be dead. This is stupid because it has to be over a hundred feet from the top of that tank. I even remember to bring the pigeons with me. I climb down the tank ladder, not thinking too much, just scared. I run around to the coal pile. The night watchman must’ve been asleep.

Birdy’s sitting up. He looks dead white against the coal; blood’s dripping out his nose and into the corners of his mouth. I sit down on the pile beside him. We sit there; I don’t know what to do; I can’t really believe it’s happened. The tank looks even higher from down here than it did from on top.

Birdy tries to talk a couple times but his wind’s knocked out of him. When he does talk his voice is rattly.

‘I did it. I flew. It was beautiful.’

It’s for sure he didn’t fall off that tank. If he’d fallen, he’d’ve been smashed.

‘Yeah, you flew all right; want me to go get somebody?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

Birdy tries to stand up. His face goes whiter; then he starts to vomit and there’s a lot of blood. He sits back on the coal pile and passes out.

I’m rat scared now! I run around to the night watchman’s shack! He won’t believe me! I have to drag him out to Birdy. He calls an ambulance. They come and take Birdy off to the hospital.

I stand there with the birds in the bag. Nobody pays much attention to me. Even the ambulance men don’t believe he fell off the tank; think I’m lying. I stop on my way home and put our birds in the loft. I hang around there for a while; I hate to go home. Something like that happens and all the things you think are important don’t seem like much.

Birdy shuffles over to the john in the corner to take a crap. No seat on the toilet or anything. No privacy. God, what a hell of a place for someone like Birdy.

I turn around. I’m looking up and down the corridor when the orderly or guard or whatever he is sees me. It must be some crummy job walking up and down a corridor checking on crazies.

‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s taking a crap.’

This character looks in. Maybe he likes to see guys take a crap. Maybe he’s a part-time nut. I ask if he’s a civilian. You can’t tell anything when they all wear those white coats. He could even be a piss-ass officer or something. Never know in a hospital. He tells me he’s a CO. I think at first he’s trying to put on he’s the commanding officer. Turns out CO means conscientious objector. He’s been working in this hospital most of the war.

‘You want to knock off for lunch now? I have to feed him anyway.’

‘Whaddaya mean, “feed him”; can’t he feed himself?’

‘Nope. He won’t eat anything; wants to be fed. I have to spoon-feed him. No trouble or anything, not like some of them. I just shovel it in. He squats on the floor and I put it in.’

‘Holy Christ! He really is a loon! Won’t even eat?’

‘He’s nothing. Guy across the hall there won’t wear any clothes. Squats in the middle of his cell like your friend here; but if anybody tries to go in, he shits in his hand and throws it. Boy, he’s fun to feed. More like a zoo than a hospital on this ward.’

He looks in the cell. I look too. Birdy’s finished. He’s squatting on the floor, in about the same spot, like the pigeons after the el goes by. The orderly comes with a tray of food. He takes the key, opens the door and goes in. He tells me to stay out. He squats down beside Birdy and starts feeding him. I can’t believe it! Birdy actually flaps his arms like a baby bird being fed! The orderly looks around at me and shrugs his shoulders.

‘I forgot to tell you, Doctor Weiss wants to see you after lunch.’

‘Thanks.’

Weiss is the doctor-major. I look in once more at Birdy and go down the corridor. I know where the cafeteria is because I had breakfast there. It’s really a cafeteria, too, not a mess hall; doctors and nurses eat there; good food. I eat and think about Birdy being fed like a baby pigeon. What the hell could’ve happened?

When I go to see Weiss, I ask what’s the matter with Birdy, but he’s sly and manages not to answer. Suddenly, he gets to be the major talking to the sergeant.

He’s watching me with a shit-eating grin on his face as if I’m some kind of nut myself. He starts out asking about what they’re doing to me at Dix. I tell him about how the jaw is smashed and how they put in the metal part.

When they first told me, I thought I’d have a steel jaw like Tony Zale. Doctor there tells me, actually I’ll have to be very careful, a punch could undo the pins and shock me into the brain. So now I’ve got a glass jaw. That’s about right.

I’m telling Weiss all this stuff and then I see him. He’s smiling, hmming and ahhing just to keep me going. He doesn’t give a damn. I decide I don’t want to tell too much about Birdy.

He asks how long Birdy and I were close friends. I tell him we’ve been friends since we were thirteen. He asks this in a way so you know he really wants to know if we were queer together; if we jacked each other off, or gave each other blow jobs. I’ll say this, there’s a lot of that crap in the infantry. A four-hour stint in a foxhole with the wrong guy can get awfully funky.

Actually, I can’t remember Birdy being interested in sex at all. Take that whole scene with Doris Robinson. If he couldn’t make it with her he’s hopeless. Maybe all he had it for was birds. This quack’d sure flip if I told him that.

The doctor-major keeps trying to pump me about Birdy. I’m completely turned off. If he could just look sincere. He knows I’m holding back. He’s no dummy. I have to be careful. Under that white coat he’s solid brass. He’s liable to lower the boom on this buck-ass sergeant any minute. So far, he’s been talking like a doctor but I’m waiting for the old military manner to strike again. All doctors in the army ought to be privates.

Just as I’m thinking this, he comes out with it: ‘OK, Sergeant, you go back there this afternoon and see if you can make some contact. It’s probably the best chance we’ve got. I’ll make an appointment to see you again here, tomorrow morning at nine.’ He stands up to dismiss me. I fuck him with the salute and hold it till he returns it. Son-of-a-bitch.

On the way back to Birdy, I have a little talk with the CO orderly. Nice guy; probably not queer. I get him to talk about being a CO. He says he spent some time being starved for experiments on how little food a person really needs and then he was up in a forest planting trees and he’s been here at the hospital the last eighteen months. He tells me all this as if it’s what’s supposed to be. He’s a bit like Birdy; hard to hurt. Real losers never lose.

He asks me about my face and I tell him. He’s truly sympathetic, not like Weiss. You can see it in his face and how he reaches up and touches his own chin to see if it’s there. He opens Birdy’s door for me and I get my chair from the corridor.

Birdy’s still squatting in the middle of the floor and staring up at the window when I come in

– Hey Birdy! Just had a long talk with Weiss. He’s sure one sweet pain in the ass. If I were crazy, I’d pretend I wasn’t, just to get out of his fat hands. How about that?

Birdy actually turns his head. He doesn’t turn all the way around and look at me. He turns half way, the way a bird does when it wants to look at something directly with one eye. Of course, Birdy isn’t looking at me, he’s looking at the blank wall across the room.

– Birdy! How about the time we took off and went to Wildwood. I’ll never forget the way you jumped around in the waves.

I have the feeling Birdy’s listening. His shoulders are lowered as if he’s roosting and not getting ready to take off. It could be just my imagination, but I don’t feel alone. I keep talking.

After the gas tank, Birdy was in the hospital more than a month. It was all in the newspapers about how he’d fallen from the tank and hadn’t been killed. There was a picture with a dotted line showing where he’d jumped from, and an X where he landed. Reporters asked me what’d happened and I never should’ve said anything about flying.

Naturally, the whole business with the pigeons comes out. Birdy’s father tears down the loft and burns the wood. The pigeons fly around there for a week looking for the loft. It’s the place they’re homed to. Those first blue bars fly up to Birdy’s house and hang around there till his mother poisons them. I don’t know what happens to the pigeon witch.

The kids at school ask me the same questions about Birdy flying. Even before he gets out of the hospital, they’re calling him Birdy, the bird boy. Sister Agnes has us all write letters to Birdy and we collect money to send flowers. I don’t say anything much in my letter; I don’t tell him what’s happened to the loft and the blue bars.

When Birdy comes out of the hospital, he looks even runtier than usual and his hair’s long. He’s pale as a girl. I tell him about the loft but not about the blue bars being poisoned. He doesn’t ask. We’re in the eighth grade; Birdy catches. up and graduates with us.

After the gas tank, I knew I had to fly. Without thought, a bird denies all in a moment, with an effortless flick of wings. It would be worth everything to learn this.

If I could get close to birds and enjoy their pleasure it would be almost enough. If I could watch birds like watching a movie and become inside them, I’d know something of it. If I could get close to a bird as a friend and be there when it flies and feel what it’s thinking, then, in a certain way, I would fly. I wanted to know all about birds. I wanted to be like a bird and I still wanted to fly; really fly.