Birdy

by William Wharton

  ‘That’s right, Al. I was pretending. I pretended I was a bird; now I’m pretending I’m me. I figured it out while you were talking. I think I’m me now. That’s not completely true either. I don’t know who I am, but I’m not a bird.’

  ‘Holy shit! I can’t believe it. You mean you remember everything; you’re not a loon anymore?’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that either, Al.’

  Al’s heavier. He’d have to wrestle heavyweight all the time, now. He must be a hundred eighty, at least. He looks like the invisible man from the movie with all the bandages over the bottom of his face. He has the same eyes, deep, dangerous, but softer, worried-looking. You feel he’ll jump away if you make a fast move.

  ‘OK, Al, so here we are. Birdboy meets Superboy. How’re we going to work our way out of this one? Can we possibly kid ourselves into thinking all this makes sense, has some reason?’

  Birdy laughs quietly and settles into a squat in front of the bars. This is his normal squat, the way he used to squat in the pigeon coop or watch pigeons in the street. He’s squatting flat-footed with his arms out over his knees, straight out, with the palms up. He cocks his head to the side while he listens. There’s still a lot of bird there.

  I watch Al. He’s having a hard time deciding whether to talk to me as a patient, the loon in the loony bin, or to me, as myself, Birdy.

  ‘OK, Birdy, so what do we do? I’m stuck. I can’t seem to make myself different and I can never go back to fooling myself the old ways. I know it; I’m finished. The old Al isn’t there anymore!’

  ‘You don’t really know that, Al. You just want to think you know it. It’s the easy way, quiet, bloodless, deathless suicide. I’ll tell you, Al, I’ve been thinking. Maybe crazy people are the ones who see things clear but work out a way to live with it.’

  Birdy takes a long staggering breath. He talks slowly, not much like Birdy; Birdy always talked five miles a minute.

  ‘Look, Al, you and I had a going concern. We could take almost anything that happened and turn it into a personal adventure, like comic book characters. Birdboy and Superboy playing at life. We just Halliburtonized our way through everything. Nothing could really touch us. That’s something special, you know. We were so good at playing we didn’t need to make up games. We were the game.’

  ‘OK, great, so now we’ve been shot down.’

  ‘It’s not that bad, Al. We’re still here. I know I can’t fly and I don’t even want to anymore. You know you can’t chew nails and spit tacks; but so what. We can still go on trying to put things together, shifting, arranging, so things come out right.’

  ‘What’s that mean, Birdy? You going back to squatting there in your cage, letting people feed you and I go back to leg pressing a thousand pounds and running around catching people so I can hold their shoulders to the ground for three seconds? I don’t see it.’

  ‘Listen, Al. I think what I’m trying to say is, we really are loons. We’re crazy because we can’t accept the idea that things happen for no reason at all and that it doesn’t mean anything. We can’t see life as just a row of hurdles we have to get over somehow. It looks to me as if everybody who isn’t crazy, just keeps hacking away to get through. They live it out day by day because each day is there and then when they run out of days they close their eyes and call themselves dead.’

  Al looks straight into my eyes. He’s still not sure if I’m talking sense. I think I am, but I’ve been wrong so of ten lately. I can’t hold back a smile.

  ‘Aw, come on, Birdy. Let me tell you something first. You’re going to have one hell of a time just getting out of this place. Your psychiatrist, that fat slob Weiss, has you pegged for a once-in-a-lifetime case. He’s never going to let you go.’

  ‘He’s OK, Al. He brought you down here and I’m fine now. You’ve got to admit he did the right thing. I’m not a bird and when I decide to get out of here, I’ll go. I’m not ready yet, but when I decide to leave, I’ll go. I just need more time to put it together, to figure out what I can do so my life will be some fun and I can stay alive.’

  ‘You don’t seem to get it, Birdy. You’re locked in here. You can’t walk out just like that.’

  ‘I’m not worried, Al. I’ll get out. That’s not the problem.’

  ‘OK, Birdy, OK. Then we con Weiss into giving you walking papers. You get a pension and live a life of luxury with nobody on your ass. How’s that?’

  ‘It’s not enough, Al. That’s just hurdling, getting through, leaning back. We can do better than that.’

  ‘But you have no idea, Birdy. This place is a regular prison. First, there’s these two doors; we can manage that, OK; but then there’s the door to the ward. I think Renaldi’d help us there. But there’s a fifteen-foot wall all around this place with guards at the gate. If you think you can fly over that, then you’re still a loon.’

  I stare at him. I don’t want to hurt Birdy, but I’ve got to know.

  ‘Tell me, Birdy. What the hell happened to you? How’d you wind up here anyway?’

  Al’s embarrassed asking. I know I have to tell him something.

  ‘Well, Al, it’s like everything else, it just happened. Would you believe I got hit going into Waiheke Island off New Guinea? I think it was one of those little Japanese twenty-five-caliber machine guns.

  ‘I come to in a hot tent with the sun making everything yellow. I’m connected up with tubes and pipes. I’m on my back and can’t move. There are long rows of cots and hanging bottles of blood and water. I pass out.

  ‘I wake up again and there’s a lot of noise. People run past the cot; I hear rifle fire. It’s either morning or evening. There’s a noise at the far end of the tent. It’s a Japanese soldier cutting through with a bayonet. He goes down the line of cots. There’s no screaming, only the thump of his rifle and the tear of the cot when his bayonet stabs through each time.

  ‘I rip off the tubes, crawl under the edge of the tent, and start to run. Then, begin to fly. I fly past the Japanese, over the tent, and into the jungle. I look back and see the tent on the edge of the sand and the water glistening. The next thing I’m here listening to you talk about pigeons.

  ‘Would you believe that, Al? It’s what I remember.’

  ‘Shit, Birdy. That’s crazy! Nobody can fly! What do you think really happened?’

  ‘That’s what happened, Al.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  Al’s backing off again. I didn’t want to lie to him, but now he’s worried.

  ‘All right, Al. So everything is crazy. Maybe without knowing it, I’m making up the whole flying part; but here we are now, let’s find some endings we can live with. Let’s get the old combination going.’ We sit quiet for several minutes. It’s so wild I’m afraid to bring it up, especially after the ‘flying story’ he just told me. Birdy’s liable to wind up squatting in the middle of the room again. But, I can’t help myself; I’ve got to tell him. ‘I got an idea in sort of a dream, Birdy. It was a terrific dream after the other ones. I woke myself up laughing out loud.

  ‘You know, Birdy, I asked Weiss to ship all those baseballs down here, the ones your old lady used to steal.’

  ‘Yeah. I remember. You told me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you heard.’

  I can’t believe my mother kept those balls all these years. There’s no end to the absurd things people will do trying to make life mean something.

  ‘Well, those balls tripped off this dream. I woke up in the middle of it and then kept it going, the way you do with dreams when they’re good. If we could pull this off we’d out-crazy Weiss in spades. The fucking army’ll give you a hundred and fifty percent disability just so they don’t ever have to see or hear from you again.

  ‘First, I’ll give Weiss a full load of bullshit about how you seem to be coming along and how when I talk about those baseballs you perk up. I’ll work up a sob story about your mother taking the balls, making you feel guilty. I might even tell him something about you wanting to fly, and ball
s flying through the air. I’ll give him the super dramatic version of you flying off the gas tank.

  ‘Now, here’s where I bring up the suggestion of bringing the balls into your cage here and watching what happens. He’ll fall for it. I can see it all.’

  Weiss starts hmming and hummming. A few times he strokes his chin, then tries to wrap one arm across his fat chest so he can rest his elbow on it. He’s almost too fat to pull it off. How can you be a psychiatrist if you can’t fold one arm across your chest, rest the other elbow on it and stroke your beard with your hand? It must be terrible to be a psychiatrist in the army and have no beard to stroke. Poor bastards go to school ten years practicing beard stroking and proper hmming and they zip the beard right out from under them. Weiss would look better with a beard, a nice black beard to hide extra chins.

  So, the next morning, early, we march down the corridor, the three of us, Weiss, Renaldi, and me. Renaldi’s proof you don’t have to actually be in the army to hate it.

  Weiss’s in the lead with his clipboard and fresh note paper. Renaldi’s behind him, acting very serious and professional. I bring up the rear with the box of balls. They smell moldy and are a mixed bunch, nobody could’ve bought them anywhere. These are the original baseballs, the real thing, stolen one at a time from live baseball players. This is one of the great collections in the world. Birdy’s mother, the left-center field ball hawk; burier of lost baseballs.

  We get to the cell and Weiss steps aside for Renaldi to open the door. He stands there, rocking up and down from his toes to his heels, back and forth, rocking his whole body like he’s fucking the air. He has his head tilted up, looking at the ceiling of the corridor. He’s like a monster choirboy; there’s something eunuchoid in his smooth-skinned face. A nice bushy mustache might help. I can just hear him breaking out with a quick Gregorian Kyrie eleison in high C. I stand there sniffing the baseballs and trying to hold myself in.

  I’m really into the story now and Birdy’s laughing. God, it’s good to hear him laugh.

  Renaldi gets the door open and Birdy comes hopping on over to us. He’s flapping his wings to be fed. Weiss jerks out of his choirboy position and stares. He whips his clipboard into place and starts scrawling away. Renaldi gets the second door open.

  ‘Birdy, you start jumping up and down now, flapping your arms and running around the room bouncing against the walls with those tremendous leaps you can do. We’d need one of your greatest bird imitations. You finish off by leaping up and perching on the edge of the toilet.’

  Weiss is stunned. He’s standing there, leaning forward till he’s almost falling over. His hands are hanging at his side, pen in one hand, clipboard in the other. I give him a shove with the ball box to get him all the way into the room. Renaldi locks the door.

  I walk past Weiss toward Birdy. Birdy hops off the toilet and over to me. He starts giving me the feed-me signal. I put the box beside him.

  ‘Here, Birdy. These are the baseballs your mother took from all the baseball players. You don’t have to worry about them anymore.’

  I back off to where Weiss and Renaldi are standing. I know if I look at either one, I’ll break up.

  Birdy hops around the box. He keeps his hands at his sides like wings and sticks his head into the box. He starts moving the balls around with his nose. He starts sniffing as if he’s a dog. Then he makes the big move. He spreads his legs over the box and lowers his butt on top of them, just the way a hen would lower herself onto a nest. He settles himself in and a slow smile spreads over his face.

  Weiss is a little recovered, his forehead is sweating and he’s scribbling away. Birdy sits there. Then, he lifts himself slightly off the nest. He looks down. His legs are straddling the box, more the way a male hovers over a nest than the way a female sits. Birdy reaches into the box with one of his hands and pulls out a baseball. It’s one of the better ones with the stitching still intact and almost white.

  He holds this ball up against the light. He peers into the light, through the ball. After somewhere between five seconds and five minutes, he stands up straight, still straddling the box of balls. ‘Sterile!’ he yells.

  ‘And then, Birdy, you throw the ball straight at Weiss’s head!’

  It’s a perfect bean ball! His glasses go flying! He turns and looks at me bare-eyed. ‘My God, Sergeant, the patient’s turned violent! Let’s get out of here. Where are my glasses?!’

  I pick up his glasses and hand them to him. The lenses are OK but the frame is bent out of line so they sit cockeyed on his face. He’s trying to get them on right when we hear the yell again.

  ‘Sterile!’

  Weiss is bopped again right on the forehead. He goes down backwards like he’s been pole-axed. His glasses are hanging by one ear. He gets on his knees with his back to Birdy and looks at Renaldi. ‘Open the door and get me out of here!’

  Weiss’s struggling to his feet when Renaldi picks up one of the balls and throws it toward the toilet.

  ‘Pick-off play at first!’

  There’s another yell.

  ‘Sterile!’

  Weiss is hit on the right cheek of his ass this time. The ball bounces toward me. I throw it up at the window, the one Birdy’s been staring out of all these days.

  ‘Foul ball, strike two!’

  Weiss looks over at me. He’s still on his knees and trying to hook his glasses over his ears. Birdy has another ball out of the box. He doesn’t look at it this time. He just throws it.

  ‘Sterile!’

  At the word, Weiss gives up on the glasses and huddles close to the floor with his hands over his head. A fat man down on the floor like that would bring out the worst in anybody. I know how lions must feel when they’ve brought down a water buffalo or some other big, dangerous animal. Birdy misses with this one but gets another one off right away. Before Weiss can move, it nips him on the back. The ball rebounds and Renaldi catches it on the fly.

  ‘Pick-off play at second!’

  He throws the ball past Birdy’s head to the far corner. Balls are bouncing all over the room now. Weiss keeps down, hunched, trying to get his glasses hooked back onto his face. He’s yelling. He wants Renaldi to open the door; he wants me to get the keys from Renaldi. We’re ignoring him. He’s threatening me with a court-martial; he should know better than that. He’s yelling for somebody to come save him. Nobody can hear much of anything through the two doors. They’re designed that way.

  We’re having a great time throwing the balls. Sometimes we throw them to each other, sometimes up at the ceiling trying to break the light bulb, or sometimes at Weiss when he looks as if he might be trying to get up. Every time we throw a ball, we yell out something basebally.

  ‘Cut him off at home!’

  ‘Squeeze play! Run him down!’

  ‘Double him off at third!’

  ‘Watch out for the steal!’

  ‘Sacrifice!!!’

  ‘Texas leaguer!’

  ‘Cut down the lead-off man!’

  We’re throwing balls every which way. We’re running around the room now. The balls are bouncing off the padded walls. We’re completely out of hand. I keep trying to throw one through that high window. We’re all getting hit by baseballs now. It’s like a free-for-all snowball fight. I’m almost wishing Weiss would get up off the floor and join in.

  We start running around the bases. We’re throwing balls and catching them or picking them up as we run. We keep up our wild yelling. The toilet is first base, the back corner is second, Birdy’s sleeping mat is third, and Weiss is home. We’re running round and round. We’re tagging Weiss with our foot each time.

  Then the playing starts turning into a game. Each of us stops to throw when we’re at home plate, that is, Weiss. We’re all throwing up at that window now. The window has bars on it and must be fifteen feet high. The bars are set so there’s enough space for a ball to get through if it hits right. Three or four times we hit the bars and Renaldi yells, ‘Ground rule double!’

&n
bsp; We get going faster. I’m running out of breath and I’m afraid one of those balls is going to hit me on the jaw. I can see myself trying to explain to the doctor at Dix how I hurt it playing baseball in a padded cell.

  ‘Then, suddenly, you stop at home plate, Birdy. You put up both hands like an umpire calling time out and you walk forward a step. I almost expect you to take out a little whisk broom and brush off old Weiss.’

  Birdy says, ‘Pinch hitter!’

  ‘Two men on base!’

  ‘Two outs!’

  ‘We’re behind by two!’

  ‘Last of the ninth!’

  ‘Batter up!’

  We stop on the bases to watch. Birdy has three balls. The first misses the window to the right. The second is a little low. The third goes through the bars, there’s the sound of broken glass and the glass falls down the wall. Renaldi’s at third, standing on Birdy’s bed. I’m straddling the toilet at first. Renaldi yells. ‘It’s a home run, a case of Wheaties! Clear the bases!’

  He runs toward Weiss who’s stuck his head up at the sudden quiet and the sound of broken glass. Renaldi races home. He tags up, then goes over to the door and opens it. I’m rounding second. Weiss’s ducked his head back down as I come on home. Renaldi gets over in time to shake my hand. Birdy’s just behind me and we both shake his hand and pat him on the back as he goes by us. Weiss is pushing himself up and Birdy hurdles clear over him. The height he jumps, he could’ve gone over Weiss if he’d been standing full up.

  ‘Then, Birdy, we run out the door and lock Weiss in there.’

  Birdy’s been listening and laughing through the whole story. He even puts in some parts the way it always happens with us. We keep interrupting and correcting each other to make it better and then agreeing that’s the way it really is. I stop and Birdy stares at me. We’re winding down.

  ‘Honest, Al. How many times are you going to have to pin your old man? Jesus Christ, I’m not throwing baseballs at Weiss for you. It doesn’t make sense anymore. God, we’re practically grown men. If you don’t watch it you’ll be taking it out on your kids, making them into wrestlers or football players or something so you can convince yourself that you really did pin old Vittorio. The whole thing has to end somewhere. Don’t you know, time pins everybody anyway.’