The Man Who Loved Birds

by Fenton Johnson

  The light was draining from the room.

  “I mean, I know it’s crazy but I figured better to do my duty and let you sort it out.”

  A growing weight of silence.

  “Maybe you could telephone Officer Smith and just get some assurance as to where he is and what he’s up to.”

  Vetch swiveled his chair so that he was looking out the French doors to a view of the garden, where yellow and lavender chrysanthemums were coming into their own. The yard was intensely green in the dying late summer evening light. A few scarlet leaves drifted down from a dogwood planted at its center. “And what are you proposing that I do in response to this, I have to say it, cock-and-bull story?”

  “Well, gee. I don’t know. I figured you’d know the answer to that. Check in with Officer Smith, I guess.”

  Vetch turned back around. “Brother Flavian. Your story is riddled with holes through which I could drive a Mack truck.”

  “Well, yes, I can see that but—”

  “All the same I’m ultimately in charge of enforcing the law in this county and you’re correct in assuming that it’s my duty to respond to concerns and complaints of its citizens. No matter how crackpot.”

  “Well. Crackpot.”

  “Crackpot. I might begin by inquiring why you feel so responsible to your duty at this particular moment when by your own admission and evidently for some time you have been abetting a drug dealer and a lawbreaker. Respect for your position enables me to set aside that question but just barely and only for the moment. Now. I can pick up the phone and call the dispatcher and have him locate those officers in this county. You’re correct—I can do that and I have sufficient respect for your judgment and your position as a man of the church that I would do that for you.

  “But let’s suppose your story is true. Let’s suppose Officer Smith is on his way to arrest a man whom you yourself have acknowledged is engaged in criminal activity. Isn’t this his job? And if violence should ensue—well, violence begets violence, and I submit to you that those who willfully break the law are guilty of committing the first act of violence, whether or not they are using a weapon, and that the law is entirely justified in responding in kind. It would be highly inappropriate for me to interfere with an officer who is enforcing the law. Even more inappropriate to interfere on the basis of a rumor. Unless I knew the officer to be in violation of the law. But that’s no more than the responsibility of any citizen.”

  “Such as me.”

  “Well, yes, I guess you could say that.”

  “So you’re leaving any action up to me.”

  “I don’t believe any action is warranted. If I felt otherwise then I’d act.”

  “Well, then, would it be OK for me to use your telephone to call the dispatcher?”

  a silence in which the darkness of the universe distilled itself into this moment, here and now in this ornately furnished room looking out onto a view of a garden where chrysanthemums were coming into their own

  “Mr. Vetch.”

  Vetch stood and turned his back and spoke with a low tense fury. “Brother Flavian. I would ask that you have some sense except that you have no sense. I guess that’s why you became a monk. Of course you can use my phone, but what are you going to say to the dispatcher? Some crackpot story involving aftershave lotion and a conversation overheard at the gun store?”

  “I’d just like to register my suspicions with someone who may or may not sympathize but at least they’ll be on the record.”

  At the phrase “on the record” the county attorney sat and swiveled to face the garden. After a moment he swiveled back, a soundless semicircle. He rested his hands on the glass top of his desk. His face was a mask. The space between them hardened into something tangible, a wall.

  “Brother Flavian. Allow me to explain some nuances of the law of which I’m sure you’re aware but you will allow me to refresh your memory. For all I know you have been an innocent and well-intentioned bystander, used as a foil in a way common among hardened criminals, but intentions count for very little in my book, especially when I know you to be aware of the consequences of your decisions since I personally educated you along these lines. I must say that only a few years back I’d have found your actions incredible but this job has taught me that very little on God’s earth is truly incredible. You may pick up that phone and call the dispatcher, yes. But I should make clear that I don’t share your tender heart for drug runners and that I’ll interpret any effort on your part at what I consider to be interference with the law to be another fact in a mounting pile of evidence that incriminates you in this matter.” He lifted his hands from his desk—a slight sucking sound broke the silence. He folded them as if in prayer. “I recall to you our first meeting. At that point I indicated very clearly that if marijuana was found growing on monastery property, I would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. I recall to you, you may check your notes, you are a good note taker, yes?—that I offered to provide the abbey with personnel to search its acreage. No one followed up on my offer.

  “Now you sit in my office in a strikingly analogous situation. You may cooperate with the law or you may be an obstacle to its enforcement. I’m offering you a choice. You are aware of your complicity and by extension that of the abbot and abbey in a felony, with all the consequences such a decision entails—confiscation of property, prison sentences, public disgrace, financial ruin. If you’d like to contact the dispatcher by all means do so but know that your doing so will—complicate, is a good word, I think—my efforts to help extricate you, your abbot, and your community from a difficult situation of your choice and making. I believe I’ve made your alternatives clear but I’m happy to entertain questions.”

  Flavian wanted to stop time, to have some time, make some time, he needed more time but if what he suspected was correct he had no time, there was no time.

  The silence deepened to darkness. What was this mass that pressed on his heart? When it comes right down to it I’m better at hard and sharp than I am at soft and round. Flavian could not breathe. How was it possible that he, a healthy man, could not will himself to breathe? He contracted his chest but the air stopped somewhere in his throat. The telephone sat between them. The clock chimed the half-hour. All time passed and no time passed.

  The phone rang. Vetch took it up and turned away from Flavian. “I see,” he said into the mouthpiece. A pause. “That is not true,” the county attorney said. “I never authorized—” He swiveled in his chair and glanced at Flavian, then covered the mouthpiece with one hand and waved at Flavian with the other. “Excuse me. I need to take this call in private. Please. The front room. Close the door.”

  Alone in the front room. From behind the door the murmur of Harry Vetch’s voice. A fly buzzed Flavian’s ear. He struck at it savagely and there it was, smashed in his palm.

  Vetch appeared in the doorway. “I think, Brother, that it’s always right to side with the law. This is after all the teaching of our church, yours and mine. After many centuries we may discover that, for example, the earth is not at the center of the universe. But she is our Mother Church and our first duty is loyalty to her judgment, leaving to history the workings out of right and wrong.

  “As it turns out there’s been an incident involving the use of force to subdue a suspect who resisted. I’m not free to divulge more details but I have to let you go. As I’m sure you can understand, I have business to attend to.”

  Flavian half-rose from his seat, then sank back. The county attorney wanted him to leave but once he left where was he to go? The phone rang again. Vetch took up the waiting room extension. A form greeting, then a low but audible “Shit.” Vetch pushed a button and replaced the phone and turned back to Flavian. “My patience has run out. I have important matters that must be arranged in confidence. I thank you for your concern. I’ll inform you if you may be of service. Now you have to go.”

  Flavian spread his hands. “I want justice.”

  The county attorn
ey rolled his eyes. “You come to me speaking of justice when what I have to offer is the law. Allow me to realign your thinking. Now and always the question to ask is not, What is just? The question to ask is, Who has power? Now leave. That is a command, not a request.”

  Flavian rose on unsteady legs, searching for something to say—stalling, he knew it, because once outside the door he would be alone with the magnitude of whatever it was that he had done or not done . . . and then he could stall no longer, he was outside, the door shut behind him, he was alone.

  In the basement of the funeral parlor, the body. The coroner out of town. In his absence, the only local person empowered to sign the death certificate: Dr. Chatterjee, summoned by Harry Vetch and presented with paperwork.

  “I cannot do this. I must—summon the proper authorities.”

  “I am the proper authority.”

  The body lay face down on a stainless steel gurney, covered with a bloody sheet. The room held no air.

  “I will need to examine the body.”

  “You don’t have to examine the body. You can take my word for the events as described as well as the word of Officer Smith who was present at the scene. The coroner would, if he were in town. I wish that he were here. I am sure you wish the same. But he is not here and the responsibility falls to you.”

  “But I am not the coroner and I must examine the body.”

  A long moment. Vetch closed his eyes and pinched his thin lips together. No one spoke. Finally he opened his eyes and nodded.

  Officer Smith pulled back the sheet. Johnny Faye’s shirt had been cut away. The broad mottled shoulders and the skinny waist. The undertaker had wiped the blood from his back—two dark clotted gaping wounds. “You see? Enough.”

  “I will need not merely to look at but to examine the body, starting from the front. Please turn him over.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Chatterjee, but those bullets do a lot of damage along the way and he was shot at close range. The mortician hasn’t had the time—he was waiting until we arrived. Now we’re here, you’ve seen what you need to see, let him finish his job.”

  “Shot at close range while attempting to flee.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” This from Officer Smith.

  “I would like to examine him from the front.”

  “Doctor Chatterjee.” Vetch passed a hand over his thinning hair. “Officer Smith may have acted without authorization—”

  “Excuse me, sir, but you said—”

  “—without authorization but he was well within the bounds of appropriate response. We need only your signature.”

  “Mr. Vetch. As you are surely aware, professionalism assuages a guilty conscience. One may find solace in the knowledge of a bad business thoroughly done. I have no desire to compound evil with cowardice.”

  “I will have none of that kind of talk here,” Vetch said, but before he could interfere she stepped to the gurney and lifted Johnny Faye’s dead weight. “Hold on,” Vetch said, “you can’t do that—” Meena leaned in with all her strength but the body was falling back and then Brother Flavian was at her side. He stepped in and placed his hands under Johnny Faye’s body and helped her turn him over. Johnny Faye’s chest presented two small bloodied holes. Their hands were covered in his blood.

  “Brother Flavian. Leave immediately or Officer Smith will remove you by force.”

  “Officer Smith. It is your contention that Mr. Johnny Faye fell on his gun? Shot himself in the chest, perhaps, while running away?”

  “Bullets act in unpredictable and confusing ways,” Vetch said.

  “A confusion an autopsy would resolve.”

  “How could you know that crop was his?” Flavian cried. “How could you justify murder?”

  “He made it easy,” Smith said. “He wrote his name in the mud. Like advertising. We got pictures but if you don’t believe me, go see for yourself. It’s still there.”

  “Officer Smith. Enough. You’re not on trial. Keep your mouth shut.” Vetch turned to the doctor. “The law allows me to bypass an inquest in circumstances where I feel none is warranted. We have before us such circumstances. A chronic lawbreaker caught in the act of committing a felony tries to escape. An officer who’s done his best to resolve the situation is forced to resort to violence. The result is regrettable—I regret it—but that doesn’t absolve Mr. Faye of his crime nor render Officer Smith’s response anything but appropriate.” Vetch produced and unfolded a piece of paper, which he displayed to Meena. “This note was found in the pocket of the deceased. A very interesting note and, if I’m not mistaken, under your signature.” He refolded the note and replaced it in his pocket. He held out a file folder and a pen. “Given that you spread your signature so easily about, you can surely sign once more. That’s all we require for all of us to go home except the mortician who can then get about his work. With the signed death certificate in hand I may forget Brother Flavian’s explicitly illegal complicity in felony drug trafficking as well as the curious fact of a note under your signature in the possession of a drug dealer. Lacking your signature, all of our lives become much more complicated. Yours, Dr. Chatterjee, most complicated of all, if I am to believe what I hear from Miss Shaklett and I am given to believing what I hear from Miss Shaklett. She is, as you know, eminently reliable.”

  Flavian reached out, then dropped his hand. He spoke in a low voice. “Dr. Chatterjee. Meena. You don’t have to do this. This is America. You have choices.”

  The doctor bent to the bloody corpse, to be brought up short by the strangest of sensations, so unfamiliar that she paused and straightened. She looked down to find her hand on her stomach. Before she could name the feeling it was gone, leaving behind not absence but presence and in that presence she understood: a stirring in her womb. Impossible this early, she knew that, but all the same there it was. The little voice. I am.

  Every day of Meena’s childhood, a street vendor brought coconuts to her parents’ house. He had survived a childhood famine with his arms and legs grotesquely deformed but he lived in her memory not mangled and broken but as the peddler who set aside his smallest coconut for her, small enough that she could hold it in her little girl’s hands. He split the coconut with one chop of his machete and offered it to her with a straw. With time I hope you may forgive. But there was to be no time. What is time? Creator and Destroyer. She turned back to the body. Those bullet holes—the two small holes in front turning to gaping holes in back, then the single small hole in the back. She had chosen well. She had no choice. He is dead. She is alive. Their child is alive. She took up the papers and signed.

  Flavian was inside his head and then he was outside his head. He had been outside the funeral home and then he was inside it. He saw the bloody corpse. He looked away. He looked back. He looked, he made himself open his eyes and see. He saw the doctor struggling with the body. He crossed the room to her side. Together they turned it over.

  this was, how much, how long?

  And the dog—where was the dog? What happened to the dog? Where he goes I go and vice-a versa. “What did you do with JC?” Flavian was shouting in Officer Smith’s face. “What did you do with the dog?”

  “I advise you not to answer that question.”

  “I didn’t see any dog.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Officer Smith shrugged. “If that’s what you need to think.”

  Where was JC? Flavian would find JC. He would find JC and they would go live with the cows that were on their ways to slaughter. Somehow he would pray his way into the place where the cows lived all the time, the place where they knew death as surely as they knew the cycling of day and night and they paid it no attention. Somehow he would forget that he was mortal man.

  Shotgun wore a mask and Little drove and where the road turned right to go to town Little turned left toward the monastery, and though Johnny Faye knew what was coming down, that was when the fact rose from his gut to his gorge and he started to sweat.

  And so
what did the man think about as the law was taking him to his death? A death he had freely chosen. Johnny Faye’s mind went to the cloven hills, to his peacemaking place and below it the field, at least that was what he and anybody he had ever known except Brother Flavian would have called it, and probably it was just a plain old field. Flavian might have called it a meadow but the fact is that the creek running along one side had eroded its banks, exposing raw red clay, and the soil, though as good as it got in this part of the world, was stony and thin and gave forth equal parts of hay and thistles. But above the field a cleft between two rounded forested knobs held a clear-running spring where birds and deer went to drink, and each year between those two hills on one particular summer evening the full moon rose. Mist rose from the creek and hung above thistle and hay, thrush and doe and the mist was shot through with lightning bugs like starlight through angel hair and above the mist the clear mild light, soft as a lover’s hand and the hills dark breasts against the moonlit night. Johnny Faye thought of his longing to be anywhere else but here in the back seat of this police car, about to go to his rest in the place where history had put him. For a man from Kentucky home is no other place. He had seen many men die and he was a singing bundle of fear. He thought of Meena, draping the sky around her earth-dark body only then to come walking through the fields to him, for him, for them. He thought of Flavian, what kind of big-worded answer he would give to these questions and how much he, Johnny Faye, loved his big words and mind and heart and clumsy hands. He thought of Rosalee, loyal to her duty, loyal to the law. He thought of Matthew Mark. He was muttering something over and over. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” until Little who was driving said without turning around, “Shut the fuck up,” and Shotgun who was wearing a ski mask said, “Let him talk.”