Call Me Alastair

by Cory Leonardo

  It would seem he isn’t too worried about my take on his fashion fiasco.

  But finally, by summer’s end, as the mercury soars and Porky’s tutu troubles fade into the distant past, my second wing decides it’s going to heal. The first broken wing, on the other hand – well, that’s a topic I won’t discuss further, because there are bigger goldfish to fry.

  Fiona’s textbook castoffs have been a gold mine, and Fritz has managed to save enough money for a used birdcage taller than him and plans to erect in the shop, where Aggie and I will be officially up for sale by the end of the week. “Should be here by Friday!” Fritz informs us when he arrives later that day. “Just in time for Alastair to move in. For real this time.”

  He’s also bought a battery-powered, handheld fan that he hasn’t put down in days. “Catching a breeze is about as likely as catching cholera these days. Why’s it gotta be so hot?” he whines, and takes a long swig from the orange Fizzy Pop holstered to his belt. “As a pre-pre-med student, I know I shouldn’t be drinking this. The sugar alone could send me into diabetic shock – but a person can only drink so much water.”

  He collapses on to the cool floor and tears a towel he’s fashioned into a headband from his head and rockets it in the direction of the basket Pete uses for the shop’s soiled towels and blankets. It misses.

  Aggie, who’s been visiting three hamsters with colds Fritz brought to the Infirmary this afternoon, climbs down the shelving, beak to foot, beak to foot, and flops on to the floor. She waddles over to Fritz’s towel and takes it in her beak.

  “Get it, Aggie!” Fritz cheers. “Make your basket!”

  “Go! Go! Go! Go!” chant the hamsters in tiny voices, but they dissolve into fits of coughing.

  Beside Pete’s laundry basket, Fritz has placed an empty fishbowl. He’d spent a few days teaching Aggie to fetch any small pieces of laundry that have missed their mark, and now Aggie obediently gathers all hand towels and blanket shreds (courtesy of the puppies) and drops them inside.

  I can hardly abide it.

  If she weren’t so proud of herself, I’d put a stop to it. But I won’t, no matter how much I hate it. No matter how ghastly the cause of her present happiness.

  Because all ghastly things must come to an end.

  And that end is coming soon.

  Aggie deposits the sweaty towel in the bowl and receives praise and her new favourite treat, a cashew, from Fritz. She’s positively aglow as she bobs over to me. “That’s so fun,” she sings. “You really should try it. I’m working on my beak muscles, so I can pick up bigger stuff like blankets. Fritz said laundry service will be part of my chores when I—”

  “Aggie,” I interrupt. “Aggie, do you remember what Fritz said?”

  “What Fritz said about what?”

  I’m beginning to think Aggie doesn’t understand the gravity of our situation. A sales sticker means that we could be separated anytime, could go home with anybody. I’ve got a pretty good scheme in place to toss a few sunflower seeds at the wall of the fish aquariums Aggie’s told me about, breaking the glass and riding the wave out of the shop, but I don’t think Aggie’s taken my latest escape plan seriously. (Her comment, For ever’s not long enough to spend with you and Fritz, but at least I have a lifetime, may have tipped me off.) I clear my throat and try to sound comforting. “You know, what Fritz says will happen at twelve weeks.”

  “Oh, yes, I know.”

  She obviously doesn’t. I try again. “Aggie, you do remember Pete wants to sell us, don’t you?” I wince, hoping it didn’t come out too harsh, and wait for tears.

  Aggie climbs on to the colourful wooden swing Fritz installed for her here in the storeroom and swings back and forth, happily attacking a wood block.

  “Ag, he wants to sell us.”

  Aggie stops pecking the block and stares at me. She blinks. “I’m aware, Alastair,” she says. “Pete’s going to sell us…”

  Mm-hmmmm.

  She flaps her wings. “Sell us to Fritz!”

  Oh boy.

  “Fritz told me, Alastair! He said he’s saving his money – look, it’s in his bank!”

  I look to where Fritz’s bank, a replica of the human heart, sits on the desk, leaking bills. There’s money there, sure, but even if Aggie’s right, even if Fritz is expecting to buy us, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out a cage and all those PARROT CROSSING stickers he’s bought recently must’ve eaten into his stash.

  “He said as soon as he has enough, he’s going to plunk that money down – that’s what he said – and then we’ll be together for ever,” Aggie adds, clasping her wings to her chest.

  And just then something begins to worm its way into my mind.

  Now, Fritz will lie as fast as look at you. Says something about a “proper cage cleaning” and pulls the poop papers right out from under you. I can’t tell you how many times he’s come up to me and asked, “Polly want a cracker?”

  There are never any crackers.

  I ate his “science” report on cherry trees. Ridiculous stuff. Cherry trees?

  Listen, I’ve got a good instinct about trees. Pines, I know. Palm – got it. But cherry?

  Nope.

  And since when is an instinct wrong, I ask you? Besides, nothing that perfect just leaps from the ground. Perfect things don’t just happen. Perfection takes planning, brains.

  Fritz’s talk of buying us might be just like the rest, a string of lies and fairy tales, but now, as I listen to Aggie’s story about Fritz’s careful saving, the thought wriggling around my mind makes its way down, curls up in the pit of my stomach.

  Fritz is planning on buying a bird.

  One bird.

  And it’s Aggie.

  With enough time and diligence, he just may be able to do it. He’d been dangling this fish story about the both of us, and Aggie ate it up. Hook, line, and sinker.

  “Here you go, Alastair,” Fritz says, interrupting my thoughts and plopping a large paperback book in front of me. “This was left over from my garage sale,” he continues. “Sorry about all the water damage. It’s good enough to rip up, though. You want it?” He waits a moment as if expecting a thank-you. Instead, I turn my back to him to study a particularly thrilling knot in the pine flooring.

  I will not be bought, you see.

  A customer rings the bell out on the sales floor.

  “Come on, Aggie. Let’s see who it is,” I hear Fritz say.

  “Welcome to Pete’s Pet (and Parrot!) Shack! How can we help you?” Aggie squawks, not in words any human could understand, of course, but in the language of birds. Our language.

  I turn around in time to watch Fritz place her on his shoulder, and the two of them head into the store to answer the bell.

  All of it needles my growing pinfeathers. Makes me itchy. I look down to angrily rearrange a few feathers and see the book.

  Hm.

  Here’s the problem: I’ve already shredded the last of Fritz’s school papers, and I’ve had a hankering for anything lined, typed, printed or bound for a good week now. At this point a sticky note would do.

  I listen as a muffled Fritz begins chirping away about flea combs. I try to interest myself in that knot on the floor. But I still see the book out of the corner of my eye.

  What’ll it hurt? I just need a taste.

  I cave and poke my beak into a few of the curled pages. The water damage has puffed and feathered them, but even so, I notice they’re thinner, airier than most. The pages crinkle as I nudge them, and I try one last time to control myself.

  But Fritz knows my weakness. The lure is too much.

  I tear out a single sheet and begin to gnaw at it.

  Cue the angels.

  On First Biting into Norton’s Anthology1

  Much have I tasted in the reams2 of white,

  And many cable bills all long since due;

  Through many yellow phone books have I chewed

  With beak of iron strength and awful might.

 
Through thus, this printed tripe,3 did I then bite,

  And twaddle in scores to justly conclude

  That all was scribbled garbage, foul and crude,

  Till I nipped Norton, and all became light:

  Then felt I like some thresher of the wheat

  Who grinds his grain for finest feel and taste;

  Or like some baker when by flour and sweet

  He stumbles on bread seemingly heaven-traced –

  Snowflakes of manna4 from firmament’s5 seat –

  That melt on tongues, dew-frosted, honey-laced.

  1. An unexpectedly sweet (and spicy) regurgitation. Inspired by John Keats’s poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

  2. reams: large quantities of paper

  3. tripe: worthless writing

  4. manna: bread from heaven (I ate a biblical account of it. Bread that tastes like honey and falls to the ground like dew? I’ll take two helpings.)

  5. firmament: blue, blue sky

  CHAPTER 8

  I tolerated the odd worksheet. I tried my beak at a few pages on gut bacteria.

  I drool over poetry.

  Something about the way a poem tickles the taste buds, blooming in the mouth, taking on flavour after flavour the longer you roll it around. I’ve found my beak can’t tear poems to bits like it might a pizza box or a parrot pamphlet. I’ve never had a problem cracking a nutshell, feeling for its weakest point with just the tip of my tongue, but I can’t crack a poem for hours. It’s just a dash of words, a sprinkle of sentences, but I’m forced to savour it slowly. And savour it I do.

  But here’s the craziest thing:

  I feel like Fritz when he talks about that Letizia Tortelloni person. “She’ll be chopping garlic or tossing noodles in pots and shouting, perfetto! and I think, Hey! I could do that! or, I betcha if you added grape jelly, it’d be even better!” he’ll say.

  I might be dipping into a little poetry snack myself and find myself thinking, Huh. I could whip up something like this. Or, maybe I’ve eaten and digested a poem a week ago, and, like a light, appealing belch after eating a bowlful of peppers, it comes back to me.

  I check the poem’s flavour. I season it with a few words of my own. I might add a little spice to Keats, a little zing to Tennyson.

  Shakespeare’s got a pretty good recipe to work with. Today, Fritz has bought Aggie a new harness, so he can take her outside. Without thinking, I say, “To bite, or not to bite – that is the question.”

  Isn’t that always the question.

  But not for long. Fritz has no idea of the lengths I’ll go to for my sister.

  And I mean it now. Distraction’s over.

  In addition to poetry, I’ve taken the liberty of altering a little Latin for you:

  Fritz: Homo sapiens. Latin for “wise man”.

  But perfection takes planning, remember? Brains.

  Alastair: Psittacus homo sapiens erithacus. Parrot-man of the wiser African grey sort.

  Perfetto.

  FROM THE DESK OF ALBERTINA PLOPKY

  Dear Everett,

  I was beginning to think my ringer was broke. After my guinea-pig get-together, I didn’t talk to a single soul for the rest of the week. And then some. That telephone’s been silent as a stone.

  It was this morning when it finally rang. And guess who should call but our long-lost son!

  I tell you, Everett, he’s getting to be a busybody.

  Remember how I told you he’s been nagging me to move down to Key West, near him and the family? Says I’ll love the palm trees? Just won’t get it in his head this old bird doesn’t want to fly away from Shirley River and everything I know?

  Well, I got an earful again. Henry said I shouldn’t be living alone. Said I shouldn’t be driving. (So I bumped a curb or two!) Delores Greenbush’s son told him I started a conga line at the church picnic, and he said I shouldn’t be doing that, either.

  Worries I’ll break a hip, he does.

  Now get this. Then the boy says he’s got a plan to move me, says he’ll help pay for it even. Where, you guess? Into the Prickly Pines with the gals.

  I wonder where he got that idea.

  (Her name’s Irma, and she likes kitten stamps.)

  Everett. Now, I know my friends love their Friday night cards and their afternoon yoga. And those social dances do seem mighty fine (you know how I love to dance). But I cannot, will not ever leave our home. How could I? And leave your flower boxes? Move your toothbrush from the holder?

  Nope. I just won’t do it. No sirree! You’ll have to move that toothbrush yourself, and that’s the end of it.

  Besides, I can look after myself here and don’t need anyone badgering me about taking my pills or giving up my canned peas. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do. I’m free as a bird.

  And I got a few plans of my own.

  First, I signed my name up for one of those hippy-hoppy dance classes down at the community centre. Last week’s senior social didn’t work as well as I thought. The guinea pig nearly kicked the bucket soon as I put a tutu on him. I guess rodents have real strong opinions about their fashion choices. I’ll change the name and start it back up when I’m ready.

  Which leads me to number two: I’m considering a new pet. Maybe a bird. I keep thinking about that little thing I buried in the cemetery. I got the stamina for it. I always did think I’d enjoy having one, and who knows what poor little bird is out there that could use my company?

  Course, if it all goes south, and Delores gets wind of it…

  I’ll never hear the end of it.

  Yours,

  Bertie

  PART II

  One Flew Over the Parrot’s Cage

  – or –

  Parrot-Ise Lost

  CHAPTER 9

  “Ah, my pretties!” says Pete the moment Aggie and I are installed in our new digs. He rubs his hands together greedily. “Ready to make ol’ Pete a buckaroo or two?”

  Our cage, festooned with perches and toys of every sort, is parked in the middle of the shop next to several rows of metal shelves holding things like canned dog food and dandruff shampoo. There’s a wall of fish that lines one side of the shop. The puppies have a pen on the floor. Kittens and bunnies get the front windows as people are more likely to come inside if they fall in love through the glass, Aggie tells me. Off in a back corner, the rest of the shop’s birds blather on, a cacophony of chirps, chirrups, squeaks and squawks, every one of them trying to talk over the noise of the bird next to him, all of them packed together on a single wooden perch. In a cage with forty birds, the last place you want to be is on the bottom rung.

  Across from us, several walls of glass house every type of rodent and tortoise, and the oddball hermit crab. And once again, I’m staring into the fat and furry face of Porky, patriarch and guinea pig extraordinaire.

  “Hey there, buddy!” Porky says. He’s recovered from the whole tutu ordeal. It was touch and go there for a while.

  There’s a siege of fur, and Porky’s quickly enveloped. His head pops up over the roiling mass. “Meet the kids, Alastair! Right there’s Lentil; Bean’s over there.” He pulls a guinea pig nearly identical to himself close. “And this here’s the missus! The McPorksters, at your service!”

  I wave. Sort of.

  Porky cups a small paw next to his mouth and whispers to me in his wheezy way. “The wife’s name’s Tuna, so you know, but it’s a sore subject. Just call her missus.” He winks.

  Beside me, Aggie squeals. “Oh, Alastair! There are so many animals you still need to meet!” She proceeds to introduce me to every furred, scaled and feathered thing in the place. “… and that’s Harriet, that’s Gloria, and you know Babs.” I spot Babs and a few other familiar rabbit faces. They’re surrounded by their own fleet of fuzzy youngsters.

  “I think that’s it!” Aggie says. “Do you have everyone’s names straight?”

  I wasn’t exactly listening. I’m too distracted, bowled over by what lies outside the windo
w since the moment I entered the shop.

  Trees. Leaves quaking in the warm afternoon breezes. Sunlight splashing over a brick building and winking off its windows. And in one tiny corner of the store’s front window, the bluest blue I’ve ever seen.

  The sky.

  Pete’s is located on a busy street, and at any one time I witness cars fighting for parking spots, window-shoppers tripping over cracks in the pavement, and sparrows stalking the hot dog cart. Aggie says she loves the balloon man.

  “Pretty great, isn’t it?” she asks.

  I just swallow hard and continue to take in that tiny patch of blue.

  “And look! There’s another glowing box behind the register,” Aggie says. “It’s called a television. The one in the back room is different. It’s a computer.”

  Oh.

  “I have watched lots of episodes of Taste of Tortelloni. Pete likes Port Luna Love. Fritz says soap operas are dumb, though.”

  It’s a lot to take in. Between the trees, the sky and finally being reunited with my sister for the foreseeable future, I’m downright giddy.

  I didn’t know that was possible.

  “It’s Monday!” Aggie squawks.

  We’re deep into September before my eyes stop spinning and things start to focus. The distraction outside the window’s worn off, and the remains of my Norton Anthology is sitting over there behind the register, where Pete threw it the day we moved to the sales floor. A blob of duck sauce from a take-out container oozes down the binding and plops on to the counter.

  “It’s Monday!” Aggie squawks again. “You know what that means!”

  I do know what this means. Mondays equal more of the same: puppies wiggling, mealworms wriggling, and gerbils giggling (wickedly). Pete will arrive at the shop (late). Customers will come and buy (but mostly not). And children will run to and fro throughout the store, screeching, making faces, and pointing their fat, baby-carrot fingers every which way and asking to take home every last goldfish and tailless lizard in the place. (They never ask for me. Seems they get the picture soon as I snap my beak at their tasty-looking fingers.)