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[Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning writer James Kirkwood – author of There Must Be a Pony, Some Kind of Hero, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, and the book for A Chorus Line – was discovered in a UCLA Extension Writers' Program class. His teacher was the late Robert Kirsch. As the story goes, Mr. Kirkwood turned in a portion of his first novel, There Must Be A Pony, for his class critique. Describing the moment when – in a classroom on the UCLA campus – his world turned around, Mr. Kirkwood recounted his teacher's remarks: "This week I suddenly realized why I teach: because every once in a blue moon someone turns in something so original, so – I'm going to say it – brilliant, that it makes it all worthwhile. Now, who in this class is named Kirkwood? The James Kirkwood Prize in Creative Writing was established in memory of this most illustrious student of the Writers’ Program. Following his untimely death, Andrew Morse and several other friends created the James Kirkwood Prize which is given annually to a Writers’ Program student whose work has achieved literary excellence in the spirit of Kirkwood’s own work. In 2003, Andy Hunter was that student, and this story "Fledgling" was the work.]
Fledgling
by
Ted had agreed to meet his ex-girlfriend Rachel at the 101 Coffee Shop in Hollywood that afternoon because she said she was concerned about him. He arrived ten minutes late and found her sitting in a brown vinyl booth, wearing a navy blue broadcloth suit. Ted wore frayed brown corduroy pants and a T-shirt. Rachel’s jet-black hair was cut in a short bob. She had always had that hairstyle, but it had seemed artsy to him when they went out, back when she wore black turtlenecks. Now she looked intimidating, in a suburban way. She was in real estate, engaged to her boss, Richard, a tanned and handsome guy whom Ted had met only once. He had slapped Ted on the back and called him “buddy.” “Ted!” Rachel rose to greet him and kissed him on the cheek. As she sat back down, her blouse shifted, unveiling the edge of a black lace bra. The thought of her wearing black lingerie under her business suit, feeling secretly naughty as she sold condos on the West side, made Ted want to blow his brains out. “Hey, Rachel.” He was still staring at her outfit as he sat down. She noticed him looking. “I came straight from work. I don’t normally dress like this.” He figured that she didn’t want him to think she’d gotten boring. Then she laughed. “Sit down.” She doesn’t really care what I think, he realized. Ted sat down across from her. The waitress took that as her cue to come over. “I’ll have the chicken Caesar,” Rachel said, refusing a menu with a quick flick of her hand. “I’ll just have a slice of apple pie and a coffee,” Ted told the waitress, with a smile in case she thought Rachel was rude. Rachel touched his wrist, reassuring him. “Get what you want. It’s on me.” Ted glanced at her hand, then turned to the waitress. “I just want a slice of pie and a coffee, thanks.” “Okay, I’ll be right back with your coffee,” the waitress replied with a routine cheerfulness that made Ted regret smiling at her. “So how are you?” Rachel asked, emphasizing the “are” and extending the “you” in a soft coo to stress her sincerity. “I’m great.” She sat up straight. “So I ran into Joel and he told me you were borrowing money from him.” Joel, that asshole. Ted was glad he had worn a clean shirt. His pie arrived, and as he ate it, he tried to convince Rachel that everything was fine. He tried to sound upbeat. “I’m buying furniture,” he told her. “A bed. And a couch, or a couple comfortable chairs. I want to be able to have people over.” “Good. Stop being such a nomad. But when you buy stuff, please don’t go to St. Vincent de Paul.” She was eating the chicken off the top of her salad. “Ikea’s almost as cheap, and it’s clean.” “Of course, totally,” he agreed. “How can I be happy when I wake up every morning in a tiny, filthy hole?” With this, a twitch of recoil crossed her face, several levels under the skin. “It’s not really a filthy hole,” he backpedaled. “I’ve been keeping it clean. I don’t have any furniture, but it’s nice. It’s monk-like.” The false note in his speech, well buried at first, had been wiggling its way upwards throughout his assurances. By the time he claimed his house was clean, it was climbing up his pant leg. Suddenly he felt he couldn’t bear to sit there another minute. “Anyway, thanks for the pie, Rachel. I’ve got to go. I’m kind of late.” “Hold on, I’ll walk out with you.” She pulled a twenty out of her purse and tossed it on the table. Outside, she offered him a ride back to his place. “No thanks, I want to walk,” he replied. “But you said you were late.” “Yeah, shit, I better go,” he answered, and broke into a half-run, crossing the street.
* * *
He stopped running once he was sure she hadn’t followed him. He was under the freeway, stepping around the detritus that littered the sidewalk. Why had he agreed to see her? When they had met, she was a daily pot smoker. It didn’t matter that Ted didn’t like pot. She told him he was spacey enough as it was. They goofed around a lot; spent whole days making big, delicious meals, eating them, and lying in bed afterwards. “We’re sensualists,” Rachel had liked to say. Then her mom called her one night, announcing she had been diagnosed with emphysema. Rachel quit smoking completely. Then she started noticing all the dust in the corners of their tiny apartment, the unwashed dishes, the peeling paint, and the mildewed bathroom tiles. Finally she told him she was tired of the way they were living. She found a job at a real estate office and moved out soon after. Now she seemed to just like showing up every few months to tell him how to run his life. Their relationship, he thought, she could leave. It’s the bossing around that keeps her coming back. It was only the echo of the person he knew two years ago that made him try to be friends with her, but like an echo, it faded a little each time. Ted was shocked out of his reverie by an unexpected movement on the sidewalk to his left. He tensed and turned quickly, but found only an overturned plastic strawberry basket. Something was hidden under it, barely edging itself along the sidewalk. At first he thought someone had caught a rat beneath it. But the struggling gray body visible through the basket’s green mesh was too small. A mouse? He bent down to examine it. The creature’s weak, jerky movements convinced him that whatever it was, it was dying. Ted reached down and flipped the basket over. The sight of the baby bird underneath it was heartbreaking. Its pink translucent skin stretched awkwardly over its slight frame, taut along its head and the stretch of its wings but hanging in limp folds around its neck. Its body was mottled with a patchy blue-gray down, like a scalp after chemo. The bird pushed itself forward on its anemic wings. The wings had no feathers, just the tiny straw-like quills from which they would sprout. Its head was bald and ridged, with small, lidded dark eyes and a miniature beak like a hard black comma. It pressed ahead, drawing from some mysterious strength, a tenuous reserve that threatened to give out after each trembling forward motion. There was nothing but sidewalk, curb, and street for fifty feet in either direction. Above Ted, the stark colorless walls of the underpass rose upward unforgivingly, offering no nests, no cracks, no mother bird staring anxiously down at him. Just concrete, and over that, the underside of the freeway, thrumming the tune of the cars moving fast above it. Ted felt the familiar urge to flee that overtook him any time he sensed the emergence of some new responsibility. But he didn’t leave the bird. As a child he had a dog, two cats and a hamster. He would take home wounded animals — a pigeon once, and a squirrel — and he let spiders nest in the corners of his bedroom, removing the screens from his windows at night so that they might be fed. Whether it was this same compassion that acted in him, or just the memory of it, it moved him to gently lift the bird up off the concrete. It was a long walk home. At first Ted was only aware of the fragile body cupped in his hands, feeling its trembling skin against his palm, its small warmth. Slowly, he became aware of the people around him as he walked home through Hollywood. They all seemed to glance at his hands—an old woman, first, then a heavyset black man eating a sandwich at a bus stop. He was nervous that someone would ask him what he was carrying. He decided if someone did ask, he’d say, “I found a baby bird,” and open his hands for the person to see. He waited at a stop light with a Latina girl who looked about nineteen. Tense, he stared past her at the light. Did she wonder what he had? He opened his hands up a little bit, revealing the bird. Eyes closed, it was breathing gently. It’s probably exhausted, he thought. The Walk sign lit up and the girl walked across the street. Ted didn’t think she’d seen. He closed his hands and continued home. Ted’s apartment was in a squat, beige stucco building two stories high, one of eight studio apartments on each floor. He arrived to find his neighbor sitting on the bare cement bench that rested to one side of the front steps, smoking a cigarette. Susan was Ted’s only friendly neighbor. In her mid-twenties, she still radiated the jocular, spirited energy of a tomboy. Her skin was tanned and freckled; her hair sandy blond, close-cropped except for long bangs that partially hid her green eyes. She liked to smoke outside and she worked as infrequently as he did, so he saw a lot of her as he wandered in and out of his apartment over the course of his day. One afternoon about a year ago, right after he had moved in, Ted had picked up a twelve pack of Coronas and he and Susan finished them by the time the sun set. He was having a great time, finally forgetting how Rachel dumped him, when Susan’s girlfriend Ellen showed up. She came upon the two of them, sprawled out on the bench like a couple of sunning kittens, laughing at some joke already forgotten. Ellen was a big, dark-haired girl wearing denim overalls and a black tank top. Her arms were covered in tattoos. She said, “Hi, I’m Ellen. Get the fuck off of my girlfriend.” Susan sat up like a shot, dropping Ted’s head out of her lap onto the cement with a sick "thunk." He had a lump the next day. He and Susan had stayed friendly, but that was the only time they drank together. “What’s that?” Susan asked as he came up the walk. “I found a baby bird,” Ted answered, and he opened his hands to her. “Oh my God! Cute!” she exclaimed, then peered into the little thing’s face. “Oh my God — no you’re not. You’re ugly, you poor little thing.” She looked up at Ted. “Can I touch her?” Ted figured he’d been touching it for thirty minutes, so he consented. “Sure.” Susan gently prodded the bird’s diminutive head with her pinky. It opened its shining, round black eyes at her. “Oh,” Susan whispered. With visible effort, the bird lifted its head, seemingly huge on its frail neck, and cried out, a feeble “eee!” Then it found Susan’s pinky and jammed its mouth around it. Susan drew her hand back with a jerk. “Have you fed her?” “No,” Ted answered. “I’m going to now.” “What are you going to give her?” “I don’t know, bread and milk, I guess.” “You should hurry up. She’s hungry.” “Okay,” Ted said, and he started up the steps to their building. “Call a pet store and see if they have a bird formula,” Susan called after him. “Okay,” Ted called back as he entered the lobby. Inside his apartment, Ted dipped a tiny nugget of bread in a little pool of milk and placed it on his pinky. The bird ignored it. He nudged the tip of its beak. Suddenly his finger was down the bird’s throat to his first knuckle. It was an alarming feeling – not because he felt devoured, at all, but because the thin wet throat around his fingertip was the gentlest sensation he had ever felt. He dipped another piece of bread in the milk and brought it to the baby bird’s face.
* * *
“Whatever you do, don’t give it milk,” the woman from the bird store told him over the phone. “It could kill it.” Ted glanced over at the bird, asleep on a towel on his kitchen table next to a shredded bread crust soaking in a saucer of milk. “Okay, what should I use?” “Do you know what kind of bird it is?” “No,” he admitted. “It might be a pigeon. I found it under a freeway.” He described the bird to her. She said it didn’t sound like a pigeon, but they sold a formula that was good for almost all young wild birds. Unfortunately, it was nearly six and they were closing. “I don’t mean to alarm you,” she told him, “but most birds that young die in the first twenty-four hours outside of the nest. If it survives the night, come in first thing tomorrow and we’ll get you some formula and an eyedropper for feeding. We also have the number of a rescue operation we can give you. Okay?” “Okay,” said Ted, “thank you.” He hung up the phone and walked over to the table where the tiny thing slept. He reached out a finger and stroked its bare head. It woke up, let out a small cry, and pushed itself forward on the towel, leaving a milky gob of feces behind it. That seemed a healthy thing to do. Ted felt relieved. He walked to the bathroom and grabbed some toilet paper. When he came back, the bird had pushed itself to the edge of the table. Ted scooped it up in alarm, but one of its talons caught on a loop of the terrycloth and the weight of the fabric yanked its skeletal leg downwards. “Shit.” Ted reached two fingers down to free the claw. He watched as the bird bowed its leg into the underside of its body. It didn’t look hurt. Ted emptied his socks and underpants out of a cardboard box and padded the bottom with his sole dress shirt, which had a tight weave. He guiltily rinsed the milk out of the saucer and replaced it with tepid water. The bird began to cry, ‘e-ee-ee,’ a loud, earnest repetition both alarming and comforting. The milk hadn’t killed it yet. He dipped a little chunk of bread in the water and brought it to the gaping beak. The night passed like this, Ted feeding, Ted gently dabbing up excrement, the bird rarely silent. Around midnight, the bird appeared to be sleeping soundly. Ted climbed onto his narrow mattress and drew his sleeping bag around himself. He was woken at two a.m. by the bird’s furious cries. Hurrying into the kitchen, he found it half burrowed into the folds of his shirt, its leg caught in a ball of feces. He reached in and lifted it out of its mess. It was shivering, its body cold to his touch. “Shit,” he exclaimed, cradling it in the warmth of his hand. It was so cold, and would not stop calling out. When he offered it bread, it turned its head away. Ted attempted carefully to pry its beak open, but he was afraid he might crack it. The moment he withdrew his finger, the beak flew wide again, crying out. “Your momma’s not here. I’m all you got.” Ted covered it with his other hand. It didn’t seem to be warming up. He blew on it gently through the hollow between his palms. Ted’s heater had been broken all winter, but he had left it that way, unable to afford a gas bill. He regretted it now, pacing around the apartment, with the sound of the crying bird filling the spartan space as it froze to death. With alarm, Ted felt his hands growing as cold as the bird’s small body. Finally, in desperation, he turned on his oven. With the oven set to "warm," its door open wide, he removed the center rack and placed the box with the bird inside. It was a snug fit. He could feel the oven’s warmth radiating against his hands and face. He pulled up a kitchen chair and stared over the lip of the box. He could just see the curve of the bird’s small back in the dim light of the oven’s interior. Exhausted, its every breath was now a weak cry. Ted reached in every few minutes to check the temperature. After a half hour, it was warm. After an hour, the bird ate. At four a.m., it finally slept. Ted climbed back into bed. Ted dreamt he awoke to an acrid burning smell, ran into the kitchen, and found flames pouring out of the oven’s mouth. He woke up instantly and ran to the kitchen. The bird was breathing softly. Ted grabbed the pillow from his bed and curled up on the cold linoleum floor in front of the oven. For a couple hours he slept for five or ten minutes at a time, always waking with a start, convinced the bird was dead, cooked, on fire. He would tip the box forward and see the bird breathing normally, peacefully. Finally, when the dawn’s light broke through his ratty blinds and cut across his eyes, he rose up off the kitchen floor and pulled the box from the oven. The bird woke and started screeching. Ted sat against the wall on his mattress, cradled it in his hand and patiently fed it. With his toe, he turned on the small black and white television he kept by his bedside. On PBS a science show droned quietly on about radiation, half-lives, and decay. At seven-thirty Ted woke to the sound of the phone. He gingerly set the bird down on his mattress and answered it. It was Joel, a production coordinator who occasionally gave Ted work as a production assistant. He had a three-day job in Santa Barbara — a two-hour drive. It paid a hundred fifty dollars a day. Ted wasn’t in a position to refuse work. He had about sixty bucks in his wallet, nothing in the bank, and he owed Joel a hundred. Yesterday he had been praying for this call. He glanced over at his mattress. The bird was crying softly and pushing itself towards the edge. He told Joel he was sorry, but there was no way he could do it.
* * *
At the pet store, he bought the wild bird formula, an eyedropper, and a ten-inch egg-shaped wicker nest. He walked across the street to the drug store and bought a heating pad, along with a stick of butter, two boxes of spaghetti, and a six-pack of Tecate, the cheapest beer they sold. He returned home to a desperate shrieking. He hoped it only called out when it heard him — the idea of its plaintive cry ringing out for hours in his empty apartment was too much for him to bear. He prepared a tablespoon of formula. Mixed with water, it made a yellow, gritty paste. It smelled of old seeds, a dry, musty odor obscuring some latent wholesomeness. He resisted his urge to taste it and brought a full dropper to the mouth of the bird. After a few raps on the tip of its hooked black beak it opened its wide pink throat. Nervous, Ted pinched the black rubber ball of the dropper tight, sending a stream of thick liquid into the bird’s mouth, spilling out the sides and washing over its face and chest. After a spasm of frantic swallowing, the bird seemed more shocked than injured. Ted went to his medicine cabinet for a Q-Tip. They had been Rachel’s when they lived together, and somehow had hitched a ride with his few toiletries when they packed up the apartment they had shared for six months. It had never occurred to him to use one before now. He wetted the Q-Tip with warm water and gently traced the curves of the bird’s head, smoothing the patchy scruffs of gray down, mopping up the gluey formula. The bird was calm in his hand. “You’re still alive,” he told it.
* * *
The week passed like this. Ted would feed the bird every three or four hours, until the gullet at the base of its throat was swollen with food. The heating pad kept it warm at night, but it only slept for a few hours at a time, so Ted took to sleeping on its schedule. As the bird gained strength it became more restless. It scratched against the sides of its box and climbed the woven walls of the false nest and hung there uncomfortably. Ted would pull it off the outside of the nest and place it inside, but the bird would immediately stumble out and begin roaming petulantly around the box, screeching in frustration at life in a cardboard box in a stuffy apartment with an incompetent foster father. Still, it seemed to be growing at a healthy rate. Tips of gray feathers poked out of the ends of the small translucent quills that lined its wings. It lifted its head easily, gazing inquisitively at Ted and the small offerings (a leafy branch, a wide piece of bark) that he brought. It seemed to enjoy them, at least to the extent that they offered the illusion of the possibility of escape. It would climb and fall, climb and fall, until Ted was afraid it would exhaust itself. The only times it lay at peace was when it slept and when he held it in the palm of his hand. In the afternoons Ted would take meandering walks around his neighborhood, absently searching for scraps of wood to build a birdhouse. He began with a flat rectangle of plywood that he envisioned extending out from his kitchen windowsill. Atop it he built a simple three-walled shack. One wall was taller than the others, giving it a slanted roof that he felt was charming. By the end of the week all it needed was a front wall with a round hole for a door — something to keep the rain out. He’d left an expanse of bare wood around it, a sort of lawn on which to spread seed. When the bird matured, Ted figured it’d just move from the box to the house. This activity assuaged two of his three major fears: separation, and the nagging worry that he was preparing the bird for a brief, traumatic life of starvation in the wild. Money, his third concern, had become a crisis by the end of the week. He didn’t have any friends in Los Angeles close enough to borrow money from, and his parents had sworn two years ago that if he left Ohio for California, they wouldn’t support him financially. He couldn’t call Joel after refusing to take the Santa Barbara job. He called Rachel.
* * *
“Ha. It smells like a chicken coop in here.” Rachel marched past Ted into his apartment, hand fluttering in front of her face, high heels clacking across the hardwood floor. She reached the center of the room, stopped, and slowly surveyed the place. Ted had cleaned up earlier, so there wasn’t much to see. Bare walls. Mattress with sleeping bag and pillow. Portable television. Clock radio. The bird was in its box on the kitchen table, out of view. “So this is your filthy hole. Wow.” She nodded her head rhythmically as she spoke. “Yeah, this is it,” Ted answered her, with a sweep of his arms. The bird had been crying the entire time, and Rachel now chose to acknowledge it. “Is that your bird?” She stepped over into the kitchen. Ted closed his front door and went to join her. She was leaning over, peering into the box, with her hands knit behind her back. “Cute,” she said. “Yeah, I love him.” He had recently decided that the bird was male. “I know, I could tell when you told me about him. Have you called a shelter yet?” “No.” “But you’re going to, right?” Ted picked the bird out of the box and held him protectively in his hand. “I don’t know. I like raising him.” “But Ted, you can’t. It’s a wild animal. It needs to be raised to be able to survive outside. You don’t know how to do that.” Ted gestured to the house he built, sitting on the floor. “I know. I’m building it a house to live in on my windowsill. I’ll feed it.” Rachel gazed piteously at the ramshackle hut sprawled out on the floor below her. “Oh, sweetie,” was all she could say as she shook her head. They shared a beer, sat at the kitchen table, and talked it over. The bird cried and tried to escape during the entire conversation, undermining Ted’s position. Rachel agreed to lend Ted six hundred dollars, enough to cover his rent with a hundred dollars to spare, if he would let her call the animal rescue place and arrange for him to give the bird away. She had spoken to Joel and knew he had refused a job. “It’s like you and this bird are codependent,” she said. “You need to end this relationship and get on with your life.” Ultimately, it was her insistence that the bird would die in the wild, echoing his own fears, that made him agree. She called the rescue operation, and they put her in contact with a local woman who agreed to take the bird that night. “I’d go with you, but I’m eating dinner with Richard, and I’d rather leave him out of this.” When she left, they hugged for a long time. She ran her warm hands up and down Ted’s back and, despite himself, he felt comforted.
* * *
As he left his building at seven thirty that night, Ted ran into Susan and Ellen sharing a smoke out on the bench. “Hey,” Susan stopped him. “Is that your bird?” “Yeah,” Ted answered, and lifted him up for them to see. The light was dim, but the bird’s new feathers were apparent, and it moved with a liveliness that gave Ted a sudden thrill of pride. “Oh, she’s so sweet,” Susan exclaimed, leaning in and gently running her finger along the crest of its head. Ellen regarded them from a distance and smoked. “Where are you taking her?” Susan asked. “I’m giving him to a bird rescue lady,” Ted admitted. Susan looked up at him in surprise. “I thought you were building her a house.” “Yeah, but Rachel convinced me that was a bad idea. He’s not a pet, you know, and with only me for a role model, he’d probably die in the wild.” Susan sat back down next to Ellen. “Rachel, huh? Are you two back together or something?” Ted put the bird back into the box. “No, she’s marrying the asshole she dumped me for.” Ellen spoke in an exhalation of smoke. “She went straight from the pussy to the asshole.” She shrugged. “It’s only an inch away.” Ted started a nervous laugh, realized she was calling him a pussy, and suppressed it, emitting a sharp, strangled bark. Susan slugged Ellen in the arm. “Fuck off, Ellen. Ted, you shouldn’t let Rachel run your life.” Ted stared at her uncomfortably, still flushed from Ellen’s insult. “Aren’t you trying to run my life right now?” A short silence followed. Susan dropped her cigarette butt and ground it into the earth with the heel of her boot. “Ted, I guess there’s just something about you that makes people want to run your life.”
* * *
Ted pulled up at the bird rescuer’s house at five minutes past eight. It was a boxy two-story home, white with black shingles. He lifted the bird’s box out of his car and carried it up the walk to the front porch. Inside the house, several dogs sensed him, and a muffled but cacophonous barking rushed to greet him furiously from just behind the door. Ted rang the doorbell, which could barely be heard above the animal din. From deep within the house grew the sound of a woman yelling “calm down!” as she shuffled slowly to the front door. The din fell to a murmur, despite the occasional rogue bark. The woman opened the door in the forward leaning fashion of those who strive to block angry dogs behind them from passing. Ted had a terrible vision of the bird being knocked from his grasp and snapped up in a pair of loose, wide, salivating jaws. He braced himself. The dogs struggled against the woman’s thick legs, leapt up behind her, paws on her backside, but she, like a dam, held them back. Kicking rearward with her calves, she fended them off as she stepped out onto the porch and quickly shut the door behind her. “Hi,” she said, extending a broad white hand to Ted, “I’m Karen.” The thick, bulging stack of Karen’s body was wrapped in a sack-like power-blue floral print dress, with a black sweater-vest straining against its buttons over her chest. Her long brown hair hung flat down past her shoulders, held away from her face by a bobby pin at each temple. “Ted.” He steadied the box against his hip, freeing one hand to shake hers. Her hand was in and out of his in one fluid motion as she dove towards the box. “Is this the little baby?” She grabbed the bird, lifting it up to the porch light. “Oh, my goodness, it’s a swift.” “A swift?” Ted asked. “He looks like some kind of miniature hawk.” “A swift is a little like a miniature hawk,” Karen pulled its legs out to examine its feet. “You see its feet? These are talons; they’re not flat like seed-eaters. And see how its beak is hooked? He’s a carnivore — but swifts are too small to eat much besides insects. How long have you had him for?” “Eight days, I think.” “Eight days?” Karen seemed irate. “What have you been feeding him?” “Durkee’s baby bird formula or something.” “That crap? That’s for seed-eaters. I can’t believe he’s still alive.” She drew it protectively towards her body, placing it on her sweater, atop her wide breasts, where it clung precariously. “Be careful,” Ted said, resisting an urge to cup his hands beneath it. “Don’t worry,” Karen told him. “He’s a hanger. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m sure he had a lot of trouble walking in that box. Swifts spend almost all their time in the air. When they do land, they hang on the sides of trees or buildings. They’re not built for environments like that.” She kicked the box slightly. “How often did you feed him?” “Every four hours,” Ted replied, a little insulted. Karen regarded him skeptically, the sour note that had entered her voice now curdling. “I can’t even believe he would even eat that formula. When carnivorous birds are infants, you have to feed them moistened, ground up dry cat food. Then, when they’re about his age, you switch to mealworms and grubs and sometimes a cricket or two. Do you see how his feathers are patchy? I bet they’d have grown in evenly if he had been given enough protein. If you ever find a bird again, call me immediately. It’s very cruel to raise a bird like you have. It’s not kind. It’s selfish. I’m really amazed he’s even alive.” Ted stared at her with his bird hanging on her breast. He wanted to shout at her, I loved him! She didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. But his shame kept him silent. The thought that he was responsible for the patchiness of the bird’s feathers made him feel nauseated. It’s just a young bird. They’re still growing in. “Well, at least you did the right thing, finally, bringing him to me,” Karen said, breaking the silence. “Please take your box home.” She opened the door to her house, the bird still hanging off the edge of her chest as the dogs roused themselves in the room beyond. “Be careful that the dogs don’t eat him,” Ted warned her. “Don’t worry,” she replied, “he isn’t going anywhere.” “Can I see him for a minute and say goodbye?” For an instant he was sure she would refuse, but when she met his eyes something she saw there made her soften, pluck the fledgling off her sweater, and offer it to Ted. “Thanks,” said Ted, who closed his hand around the bird, spun, and sprinted down the steps towards his car. Karen ran after him, leaving the door unguarded and freeing the dogs, who tumbled across the porch and spilled out on the lawn in a delirious frenzy. Ted closed the distance from the house to his car in a fit of jerky, quick strides. Karen had barely made it off her porch by the time he opened his door. He leapt inside and slammed it behind him as he looked for the dogs he was sure were right at his heels, only to find them milling about the lawn and street in a confusion. Shaking, he jammed his key into the ignition, started the car, and drove off with the swift hanging from his tee-shirt collar. Driving home, he thought about Rachel trying to force him to give up the bird. Ellen was right — he had been a pussy. But now he felt the thrill of action filling him with courage. What was Rachel’s problem with the bird, anyway? Was she somehow jealous of him loving something new, moving away from her? But he didn’t feel like he had loved Rachel in a long time. When they had been together, he used to joke, mug, wheedle her out of her stiffness. Even when she was a stoner, it always seemed like she was playing grownup, and once he got her to play something else, they could act like kids together. He hadn’t seen her like that in a long time; certainly she didn’t let Richard see that side of her. So what is the half-life of the things that are good in us, when our lives stop nourishing them?
* * *
Ted named the bird Swifty. Swifty took to the ground up cat food voraciously. The grubs, which he fed it three times a day, were a much weirder experience for both of them. Suppressing his squeamishness, Ted fed him the stubby, writhing white worms off his pinky, just like the good old days. The crickets were the worst, though. Ted liked the noise they made in his apartment at night. Watching the growing swift, now with a full coat of feathers, chomp them down in a few precise, pitiless motions really made him feel like God was a sadist. If Ted were that small, would Swifty snap him up in the same way? Ted nailed the plywood birdhouse to his kitchen windowsill. He threw some birdseed out there and soon there were birds constantly hanging around it, fighting each other in an unending game of king-of-the-hill. He put Swifty’s box on a chair beneath the window so he could enjoy the company. When Swifty cried, Ted imagined the other birds occasionally glancing uncomfortably into the kitchen, but for the most part they seemed indifferent. Still, Ted was happy Swifty had some company during the day, because Joel had called him with a couple weeks of local work, and he was only able to run home for fifteen minutes or so during his lunch. Ted’s life, for about two weeks, became a pleasant routine. He learned from the Internet at the library that when a young swift became capable of flight, a caretaker should just bring him to a field and toss him into the air. Nature, presumably, took care of the rest. After Swifty began taking alarmingly long hops around the apartment, refusing to stay in his box, and peppering the walls and floor with excrement, Ted figured it was time. He drove to Griffith Park at six o’clock in the evening, hiked up a dry path until he found an empty field, and lifted Swifty from his box. He had become sleek with gray and black feathers, and his four-inch body was defined with aerodynamic lines. His wingspan was over a foot across. His head darted lightning quick, up and down, left and right, as his hard, shiny black predator’s eyes scanned his alien surroundings. Still, he didn’t leave the palm of Ted’s extended hand. “Really, you’ve become beautiful,” said Ted, as if just now seeing him transformed. He flipped his hand into the air. Swifty fell for an instant, flapped awkwardly, and then settled into a glide about two feet from the earth. He drifted steadily downward to the ground some fifteen feet from where Ted stood. The two appraised each other guardedly. Finally, Swifty began to cry. Ted scooped him up and placed him back into the box. “How are you ever going to make it out here?” A similar scene played out each night for the rest of the week, until that Saturday, when Ted decided to make a picnic out of it. He brought a cheese sandwich, water, grapes, and a couple of grubs. They’d just hang out in the field and see what happened. When they arrived, Ted opened the lid of Swifty’s box and lifted him up to the side of his head, on the upper ridge of his ear, where Swifty sometimes liked to cling. When he let go, Swifty opened his wings, attempting to find some balance, and lost his grip on Ted. His flapping wings elevated him into the air above, and before Ted knew what was happening, the bird swept across the field before him, growing smaller, flying higher, until he was just a speck against the sky and then, finally, gone. Ted sat there for hours, first eating the grapes he had brought for the picnic, then his sandwich, waiting for Swifty to return, but not really expecting him to. He had flown away like a creature who, discovering who it really is, sheds its past completely. When the sun was low in the sky and the trees cast long shadows across the dry grass of the field where he sat, Ted used his fingers to dig a small hole in the ground beside him. He carefully poured a rivulet of water into it, and the dry brown dirt turned dark, damp and rich. He dropped the three grubs into it and watched their stark white bodies writhe against the black earth. “Good luck.” He picked up his litter and started down the path to his car. Ted got back to his apartment building just before sundown and found Susan splayed out on her back across the bench. She didn’t look at him as he approached, but he looked at her. Her skin was flushed, the faint line of freckles that graced her cheeks disappearing into a blush that covered her whole face. Her green eyes, just visible beneath her long bangs, were reddened, and the skin beneath them had swelled into small rosy puffs, shining with a dampness of fresh tears. “Are you okay?” She turned her head toward him without raising it off the stone. “I’m fine. Ellen and I got in a fight. She can be such a fucking bitch, you know?” “Yeah.” Ted silently continued the conversation for a moment in his head. You and I should go out. Ted, I’m gay. Yeah, I know. I know you’re gay. Susan interrupted. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just pissed off.” She turned her head back away from him. “Okay, take care.” Ted walked up the stairs and down the hall to his apartment, which was quiet for the first time in a long time, and still smelled strongly of bird — bird food, bird feathers, bird dung. He pulled his checkbook out of his kitchen drawer, sat down at the table and wrote Rachel a check for six hundred dollars, half of what he had earned over the past couple weeks. He lingered for a second over the “For:” section on the check. Back when they had dated, Rachel would write things like “penis enlargement” there when she lent him money. He tried to think of something funny, but finally he just wrote “thanks.” When he walked out to mail it, Susan was still there on the bench. He didn’t say anything, and tried not to stare at her as he passed by. The mailbox on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard sat in front of a convenience store. After he mailed the check, he went inside, said “hello” to the Asian clerk, and grabbed a forty of Miller High Life out of the refrigerated case in the back. Then, after a moment, he grabbed a second one, slid the glass door shut and headed for the cash register. He was afraid Susan wouldn’t be there when he got back, but there she was, still lying in the same position. Probably, he thought, stubbornly waiting for Ellen to return. “Hey,” he said as he came up the walk. “I bought you a forty.” She sat up on her elbows and tossed the bangs out of her eyes with a shake of her head. “Thanks.” Her face was paler, her eyes less swollen now. He handed her the beer, wrapped in a paper bag, and she twisted the cap off and took a long swig. “Thanks,” she said again, placed the bottle by the side of the bench, and lay back down. “No problem.” Ted took a pull off his own beer and shifted his weight from foot to foot. Then he lay down next to her in the grass beside the bench. He glanced at Susan’s small hand, dangling over the side next to his head. Her bitten nails were painted powder blue. “So … how are you doing?” Susan asked. “Okay. Swifty flew away today.” “I’m sorry.” “No, it’s all right, it was what he was supposed to do.” For a few minutes, the two of them lay on their backs, staring upwards. The sun had gone down, and out on the sidewalks the streetlamps flickered on. A crow flew off a rooftop with a sharp cry. Ted watched as it flew past the palm trees. A few stars were becoming visible in the darkening sky. He swallowed. “Look for my bird.”
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