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Bird
The bird came in through the chimney and despite many opportunities to experience freedom he stood around paralyzed by fear or a damaged spine and would not leave for two days. He frightened me a little because of the manic wildness of his demeanor followed by a catatonic stupor resembling resignation. I wished he would make up his mind. I thought he was gone a couple of times but then there he would be, hiding in the corner by the two hard drives on the floor under the sewing table, or hanging onto the bottom of a curtain right below an open window, and hours would pass. The bird, I should mention, looked a bit like one cast from hell.
The third day J came over wanting to be paid for work done and taking advantage of the eagerness he was feeling due to his proximity to easy money I said take care of this little bird for me while I write the check. I made it sound like a task equal in simplicity to getting a glass of water. And it would be if you weren't afraid. He said I'll shoot it and then put it out? That seemed a little severe but I was curious. How would you shoot it I asked. With a bb gun he said but I didn't want him to do that and told him just do it man, put the bird out, its only two feet from the open window. I asked him if he was scared because it was interesting to me that we were both scared of the bird. He thought I was calling him a pussy but I wasn't. I just wanted to understand why the both of us were scared. He said he didn't want to get pecked. I guess that pretty well summed it up for me, too. But I didn't relent. I wanted that bird out and I wanted J to do if for me. Being a caretaker is not all glamour. Sometimes you have to boss people around.
I got a small bucket for him and he went to it like a man doing something he didn't want to do, like a man afraid, like a man run completely out of metaphors in search of easy money but instead coming face to face with a task which made him feel like the very essence of his manhood was no longer a certain thing. He asked me for something to put over the top when he got the bird scooped up and I got him a blue, wide-ruled notebook. The notebook was not big enough to completely cover the top of the bucket. A very eager bird would probably figure a way to squeeze out. But I told J, J, this bird is not so very eager. If he were eager he would finish climbing up that curtain he has been hanging onto for eight hours and fly out that window right above him. The bird is disoriented, J. He needs the helping hand of a man who may or may not be getting paid today. J thought the bird looked evil. I did not respond to that except to raise an eyebrow.
J had a brainstorm and in one aggressive burst he captured the bird by covering it with the bucket and then scooted the bucket up the wall and out the window and the bird flew away.
J was some shook up but I slid the check across the table to him and he seemed to get some of his color back. I think by the time he backed out of the driveway he was a whole man again. I was standing where the brick pavers meet the gravel driveway. J leaned his head out the car window and pointed to a black speck of tornado-propelled lint or a mini tumbleweed from the charred plains of Armageddon, which was moving unrecognizable across the quaint canvass of my perspective, and said, there go your bird.
I've been reading books lately and they all ok but I'll be damned if I can figure out why people write them. They certainly can't be doing it for my lukewarm appreciation of them and when I say lukewarm you know I'm not talking about Slyvia Plath's, Bell Jar, which I just re-read whenever I lose my faith in whatever could be the reason for people to write books. Some people just have so much to say, I guess, or let's face it, they don't really have but one or two things to say, they just so talented they have no alternative but to keep saying it over and over with the most amazing phrase turning in one tome after another. I read a book about NYC rats and a few E.B. White stories which are very clean and I'm still working on the Samuel Johnson biography, and Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not his most readable work but whenever you want to consider polygamy and revolution in a lunar setting in a way that doesn't make you feel dirty but may put you to sleep, repeatedly, I would say Heinlein's TM is a HM is your book. I read that bestseller, Blueblood, about a Harvard educated NY cop and it was a good read but approximately 187 pages too long. The Saul Bellow I am reading, Mr. Sammler's Planet, I don't fully understand, but Bellow, what are you gonna say, he's one of the god's, so your criticism can only amount to sour grapes.
Though, that doesn't keep me from wondering why the hell he wrote the book.