“Ha!” said Fred again. “The gravity, Theo, the gravity! It’s too strong today.”
Together they walked to the front doors.
“I was wondering how the gravity was today,” said Theo.
“Much, much too strong!”
Fred moved slowly through the door held open for him by Mr. Bunchley. Theo, following, smiled at the wink Mr. Bunchley gave him.
On the sidewalk, Fred stopped, tilted his head well back, and with his hands on his hips, breathed in deeply.
“That’s better,” he said. “The air’s good today. Very good. Not too sweet and not too salty. Right amount of minerals too, and I put the AQI, that’s the Air Quality Index, in case you’re asking, at forty-two. But that could change. There’s a lot of activity there, a lot of activity. We’ll have to watch that. But it’s the gravity that really needs attending to. First and foremost! We’ve got to bring it down. Are you coming with me on my rounds?”
“I can’t today, Fred,” said Theo. “I’ve promised Mr. Bunchley to help him with some replanting later on.”
“Ho! Ho! Replanting! Digging! Moving! Moving plants! Displacing dirt! Digging dirt! Moving dirt! Moving dug dirt! Dirty dogs. Dirty hands! Hands across the sea! Ho! Ho!” Fred, continuing loudly in this way, turned and moved slowly down Garden Avenue. Theo watched him walk to the end of the block, where, stopping at the corner, he peered into the large trash can. Fred reached deep inside and pulled out a plastic container, which he opened and looked into carefully.
Theo waved, unseen, and then passed through the doors into the lobby.
Back at the corner, Fred examined the contents of the plastic container. By his estimate, it held three ounces of pasta salad, two ounces of garden salad, an ounce or so of salad dressing, and at least two ounces of a half-eaten hard roll— about half a pound of food. Removing just the hard roll, Fred closed the container and returned it to the trash. He placed the hard roll in a plastic painter’s bucket, which was slung over his shoulder with a long leather strap.
“Onward!” said Fred.
It was Fred’s habit, on three afternoons out of seven, to sample the city’s trash cans, collecting from them bread, buns, pastries—anything made from grain. Up and down Garden Avenue he went, or Lexington, or even Park, starting from our building at Seventy-seventh Street, traveling as far uptown as Ninety-sixth, and as far down as Forty-second Street. Rain did not deter Fred. Nor did cold. On the normally hot days of summer Fred went shirtless. On the especially hot days Fred tied knots in the corners of his handkerchief, filled the resulting vessel with water from any ornamental fountain, and slapped it on his head.
Our city accepts most spectacles on its streets with equanimity, that is, without much comment. But Fred stood out.
Expensively dressed women turned their noses away from him as he passed. Children on scooters stopped briefly to watch him at his work and then rolled on. The doormen of the avenue, who knew Fred well, smirked or shouted a mocking “Hey, Fred. How’s the gravity?”
•
On this particular day, a particularly hot one, Fred returned with only a half-full bucket of gatherings. Mr. Bunchley handed a glass of water to him.
“Thank you, Mr. Bunchley,” said Fred.
“Hot day,” said Mr. Bunchley.
“The gravity. The gravity,” Fred said weakly. “I’ve got to lie down now, but then I’ll deal with it first thing. Tell Theo that if he wants to come along and help, I’ll be going out again after I’ve had my Postum at four.”
•
“It is an outrage and a disgrace, and what’s even worse,” said Mrs. MacDougal, “I fear that it could be damaging to the value of our property here at 777.”
Mrs. MacDougal stood at the building manager’s desk. The building manager stared at the single large golden button on Mrs. MacDougal’s blouse, which, like a UFO in a solar storm, heaved and bucked with every breath and every word that Mrs. MacDougal either drew in or spat out. He rubbed the top of his forehead with the first and second fingers of his right hand. With a sigh, he let his eyes travel up Mrs. MacDougal’s blousy form in a determined attempt to meet her gaze. But this gaze was beamed not at the building manager but along Mrs. MacDougal’s up-turned nose, into some vague middle distance.
She continued, “I know that Fred Adams has been a resident here for many years—”
“Since long before you arrived,” said the building manager almost to himself.
“—nevertheless, this is no reason to allow him to tarnish the reputation of this building. We must put a stop to it.”
“A stop to what, Mrs. MacDougal?”
“Why, don’t be such an obtuse little man! You know that to which I refer. Fred’s walking up and down Garden Avenue and all over our valuable neighborhood collecting food out of trash cans. Trash cans! Has the man no shame?” At this she snapped her head so forcefully in order to look hard at the
Fred and the Pigeons 17 building manager that the half-moon glasses she sometimes wore on a chain leapt off her nose and then swung helplessly, like a hanged man, on her chest.
“And he sometimes is to be seen in our very lobby without a shirt! Disgusting!”
“Look, Mrs. MacDougal, I don’t like him any more than you do. He gives me a pain. Every time he opens his mouth I want to stick a sock in it. I got enough to worry about without him and his gravity. Sheesh! Have a seat, Mrs. MacD.”
“I prefer to stand, thank you.”
The building manager twisted a large fat finger back and forth in his ear.
“Listen. If I could get rid of him, I would. Like a shot. But he hasn’t done anything wrong. Technically-like. He hasn’t committed any crimes! If only he’d rob a store or something, then we’d have him!”
“He has already committed enough crimes against good taste to be convicted by any sane body of persons. He need commit nothing more. Can’t you simply make it plain to him that this is not a proper residence for him?”
“What do you suggest?”
“Turn off his water or something.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.” The building manager removed his finger from inside his ear and then scratched at the nape of his neck. “But maybe I could slow it down a little.”
Mrs. MacDougal pulled her lips together like she was sucking a tiny straw, nodded, and left.
•
Theo and Fred quietly sipped their hot drinks and nibbled Fig Newtons.
“Ha!”
“Fred?”
“Theo!”
“Fred.”
“The gravity’s worse! I can feel it. It’s getting me down. Don’t you feel it?”
“Not really, Fred.”
“I’ve got to get to work! Can’t sit around all day. Where are my pants?”
“On the bed, Fred.”
“On the bed, Fred! Standing on my head, instead! Ha! I stuck a spoon into Ted, he bled, saw red, I fled! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Fred hopped on one leg as he tried to insert the other into a terribly stained pair of khaki shorts.
“There, that’s done it,” he said, coming to rest.
He then moved toward the back corner of his room, shifting stacks of books and bric-a-brac as he went, bric-a-brac that seemed almost to lean in his direction, as if begging for attention.
“Not now,” said Fred.
At the back, Fred lifted a three-string guitar from the lid of a barrel and then removed the lid. Taking a ladle from a nail on the wall, he dipped it into the barrel and pulled out a large dollop of brown lumpy pudding.
“The bread mash!” he said. Taking his bucket from another nail, he plopped in the mash. He added a couple more spoonfuls.
“Should be sufficient,” he said.
Fred replaced the lid and guitar. Choosing a large spoon from a dusty metal bracket and slipping it into his breast pocket, he said, “Let’s go.”
“Off to feed the pigeons?” said Theo.
“More to the point, we’re off to fix the gravity. Ha!”
On
the sidewalk, the air had cooled somewhat.
Fred squinted up at the sky.
“It’s just what I thought.”
“What do you mean? I don’t see anything. Nothing’s happening.”
“Precisely. Exactly. You have put your finger on it.” Fred began to walk along the avenue. “Bingo. One hundred percent. You win a cigar.”
“What?”
“Don’t you see?”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly.”
“What?”
“What don’t you see, exactly?” Fred had slung the bucket over his shoulder and was now tapping the spoon against it as they walked.
“What? Exactly. I exactly don’t see.”
“Must I spell it out for you? P-I-G-E-O-N-S. Pigeons. You don’t see any pigeons. And I’ll tell you why you don’t see any pigeons. They’re moping.” Fred looked at Theo. “And that’s what’s causing the problems with the gravity. Ha!”
•
Up in apartment 15B, Mrs. MacDougal, wearing white cotton gloves, dusted her vases. Mrs. MacDougal’s vases were her pride and joy, as they say, and occupied three long shelves stretching across her entire living-room wall. The vases of colored glass, some cut and faceted, others blown into swooping zoomorphic forms, stood near the windows where they could play with the sunlight—catching it, throwing it, absorbing it, fracturing it, in hushed, always changing ways. Farther from the windows stood the vases of ceramic, many frosted in glazes so delicate that Mrs. MacDougal rightly feared the gentlest sunlight might dim them or even crack them. The very farthest end of the shelves was reserved for the antique vases, some of them hundreds of years old, mostly Chinese.
Mrs. MacDougal replaced a flaring octagonal vase, in mustard yellow, of the art nouveau era, to its accustomed spot.
“There now,” she said. “Isn’t that better. All clean.” She backed away from the wall of shelves, all the while gazing at her treasures. She leaned against the arm of her long sofa. Sighing, she said, “If anything happened to my babies, I think I’d just die!”
•
“You see, Theo, the force of gravity, as we feel it, is not a fixed thing. It’s not a number that doesn’t change. It changes plenty!” Fred removed his heavy glasses, coughed on them, wiped them on his filthy shorts, and then placed them back on his knobby nose. “Mostly it’s in response to the particular distribution of mass on the earth’s surface for any particular area that determines the gravity. Over the whole face of the globe on average gravity stays about even, sure. But at individual locales it varies enormously.”
They crossed over to Lexington Avenue, Fred stirring the bread mash and occasionally waving the spoon to make a point.
“Here in New York City, we’re particularly susceptible to variation because of all the buildings going up and coming down. Messing with the gravity!”
“Massing with the gravity, too,” said Theo.
“Ha!”
“Making a mass.”
“Ha! Ha! A big mass.” Fred drew his eyebrows together. “But there is another force, a crucial force that is just powerful enough, fluid enough, and intelligent enough to counteract the fluctuations in local mass.”
“Massive fluctuations?”
“Ha! And you know what it is?”
“What? What is it?”
“Pigeons.”
“Wow. Pigeons?”
“Pigeons are what keep us steady. Pigeons are what keep these buildings from falling down all around us.”
Fred let his spoon balance on the edge of the bucket and then teeter and fall into the bread mash.
“You might think that pigeons aren’t massive enough to make much difference. Oh, but they are. Especially when they’re in a flock and flying. Their combined mass is like a tiny hand on an enormous lever. By flying out and up over the city, and then wheeling and diving, a big flock can readjust any kinks in the gravity that some new skyscraper in mid-town is causing. They’re like gravity doctors constantly weaving the loose threads of gravity yarn back in place. Without them, anything could happen. Cyclones, tidal waves, even small earthquakes.”
“I thought they were doctors, not weavers,” said Theo.
“They’re both.”
“It’s a mixed metaphor.”
“Ha! Doesn’t matter. The precise patterns they fly in are important though, of course.” Fred smiled and looked far up, squinting into the sky over midtown. “But sometimes they mope.”
“And that’s where you come in?”
“And that’s where we come in and here we are.”
Over the last few blocks, Fred had led them to the right, to the west, coming to the bottom corner of Central Park where the Sherman Monument stood. Fred put his bucket down and pulled from the pocket of his shorts a small red rubber ball. He threw it up several feet into the air and caught it gently in his hand.
“Hmm, hmm, hmm,” he said.
He threw it a little higher and caught it again. Then he held the ball at forehead height and dropped it. Theo ran to retrieve it from beneath the bushes where it careened.
As Theo crawled out, Fred said, “It’s what I thought. The gravity’s way off. Much too high. Let’s get to work.”
Fred put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and let rip a mighty whistle blast that sent several families of tourists skittering away. Then he began hurling great spoonfuls of bread mash onto the tourist-free pavement. It took about three minutes, but only about three minutes, before the space around Fred and Theo, roughly the size of half a basketball court, was wall-to-wall pigeons: gray, blue-gray, bronze, black, white, piebald, big and little, but mostly big, pecking at the pavement, talking, shoving, laughing, and pecking at the pavement some more. Above, three times the number of pigeons that were on the ground flew in three enormous flocks, describing great arabesques in the air, banking, diving, settling in trees for a moment and then leaping up again, following their leaders—presumably ones with PhDs in gravity arts.
Fred and Theo sat on a bench and watched.
When the first flock of pigeons had dined to everyone’s satisfaction, the second flock bellied up to the stones and Fred threw more of his delicious, one guessed, bread mash over their heads. And when the second flock finished and had wiped their mouths and excused themselves, the third and then the fourth flocks fell in and feasted. Throughout this feasting the cooing and scratching—small noises when coming from one pigeon—was a loud roar coming from the great mass.
Have you ever been in a school gymnasium that is also used as the cafeteria at lunchtime? The sound was a lot like that, only without the consonant sounds.
When the four flocks had all been fed, the pigeons left for a bit of after-dinner reflection. Some perambulated in twos and threes on the cobblestones. Most, however, sat quietly or fussed happily over their feathers in tree branches, on traffic-light stanchions, or, if they were really lucky, on the golden head of General Sherman on his golden horse.
“You see, Theo,” said Fred, “they look happier already.”
“How can you tell?”
“The eyes. It’s in their eyes. It’s not so much that they were hungry. It’s more that they just wanted a little attention. They wanted to know we still cared.”
The pigeons now became very quiet. The last murmuring cooer stopped murmuring. The strollers stopped strolling. A great stillness fell on that particular part of the city. When they themselves weren’t making a racket, the pigeons’ insulation, their feathers, worked like sound dampers, muffling much of the excess city noise.
Half of all the pigeons’ eyes stared at Fred, half because each pigeon had turned his or her head, presenting a profile with a single golden, gray, blue, copper, or green eye fixed on the old man with the bucket.
Fred looked around once at the huge throng. Then, taking Theo’s arm, he stood up, bringing Theo up with him.
Instantly, the pigeons rose up. The force of their wing beats buffeted the air and Theo’s eardrums in a hundred
thousand short shock waves. They flew up first slowly, then with more and more speed. How they didn’t all tangle up with one another is a puzzle. The sound was like a helicopter, or a diesel locomotive—anything that concentrates a lot of power in a small place.
Maybe it was due to the noise, or to the way he stood up so quickly, but Theo was quite unsteady on his feet, feeling that either he or the pavement he was standing on was rocking.
The pigeons were flying in a huge cloud, the four flocks perfectly harmonizing in grand swoops and dives, towering climbs, and wide falling spirals.
Again, more than ever, Theo felt dizzy, the whole world around him was spinning and shifting. He clutched at Fred’s arm.
“Don’t worry,” said Fred. “It’s just the gravity readjusting. You feel it because we’re standing right at the center of all the changes.” He smiled at Theo, and then squinted back up at the sky and the pigeons.
After a minute and a half the great cloud of pigeons split into separate flocks, and then these dissolved into smaller flocklets, and doubles, and singles, and everyone traveled on to other parts of the city.
Fred sat back down lightly on the bench, stretching out his legs in front of him.
“Ah! That feels better,” he said. “The gravity is right back down to normal. A healthy level.”
Theo threw the red rubber ball hard onto the pavement, letting it bounce high into the hot evening air, and caught it.
•
The Doorman's Repose Page 2