Idle Conversation
Idle Conversation
All the people in his many photographs looked sad, or, at the very least, hesitant, and he could understand why. The walls were lined with newspaper clippings, some of heroics, some of failure, but mostly of truth. He liked to post truth around him, let it line the walls of his small apartment like a dark paint. His past, his mistakes, they clung together. They were the same, they came out of the same attitude, and he liked to remind himself of that.
A sliver of sunlight stung the lining of his temple with a bizarre midsummer ferocity. He kept brushing, scrubbing those bones of every last fiber, and all the while the mirror in front of him reflected the walls soaked with the past.
Jim’s water ran cold and slow. His toothbrush was bloody with repetition and his teeth were clean and burning. The sun bothered him a little (he’d promised himself that in his next apartment he would not face East), but it was manageable. His carpet was coarse, and yes, a bit stained, but he could manage that right now too. He was a management expert.
Shutting the water off he turned quickly for a towel and stuck a knee deeply into the porcelain cabinet of his sink. Pain shot to his head like a bullet train, making no stops, accepting no passengers, aiming only to arrive with maximum irritation.
“Son of a bitch,” he barked as he grabbed for his aching (and recently reconstructed) knee. His blood pumped with frustration. He’d told himself to move slower. This was a matter he could control and he had failed. Failure! The green linings of his bathroom vibrated, and he started shaking, the pain and frustration mixing into a violent brew. I should have avoided that, I could have slowed down, this pain is unnecessary, he berated himself mentally, fists beginning to clench, sweat slowly building around his broad stubborn shoulders.
Jim, after inadvertently kneeing his cabinet, was no longer acting manager of emotions. He breathed in and out quickly, fiercely, choking on spit. Then he spun around violently and punched his green bathroom wall; Sending a strong vibration through the plasterboard wall that awoke mice and horrified early morning neighbors. Then, turning red now, he swung around in his bathroom looking for something to shatter. Demanding something. His rage would be quenched. The train had left the station and only exhaustion would slow it down. He would break and bite and claw-
“I love you Jim, it’s OK, calm down Jim, I love you Jim.”
There was a voice on his shoulder and a small furry pinball sized head rubbed soothingly against his neck. The voice repeated: “Calm down Jim, these things happen, I love you”. And that voice grabbed him from the mist of confusion and brought him back to reality. It centered him fully. He was back in his apartment, surrounded by his family photographs, done brushing his teeth. His knee no longer ached. The furry pinball continued its kind massage.
Jim looked himself in the mirror, his two large hands gripping the sides of his sink, and he breathed in once (heavily). He closed his eyes and counted to six. Then reached into his pocket and produced a small soft almond and gave it gently to the Gray Macaw on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Pete,” he said to the bird, “I was on a roll”.
“I love Jim,” it squawked back as it playfully devoured the almond joy.
And Jim continued getting dressed for the day without incident. He looked to a sheet of clean white paper stuck tactfully to the board above his dresser:
13:00: Lunch with Jen
14:30: Movie
17:00: Home, dinner, spaghetti
Jim planned his days. They didn’t generally work out strictly as planned, but he planned them nevertheless. He noted the list, put Pete’s small red cotton jacket on (a bit chilly today), and walked towards his oak wood door. There, he breathed in heavily again, shuffled his feet once or twice and opened the door.
“Spaghetti”, Pete said from his shoulder.
“Yes,” he said to the bird, “We’ll eat some later”.
“Spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti!”
His psychiatrist had told him to always have Pete on some sort of leash, but he’d never found that necessary. And the small red jacket was his idea (he knitted it himself) and Pete seemed to like it. He liked to get out everyday, to breathe fresh air, to mock mockingbirds and to say spaghetti. Jim had never eaten it terribly often before getting Pete, but now he found himself having it at least three times a week. He wasn’t sure why.
Down his apartment hall, between brown walls, soft lighting, useless fire hoses. His complex was always quiet and generally a bit cold. Jen had sometimes said Jim was quiet and a bit cold.
The sun was screaming outside, but his shoes crunched ice laced grass. Northern sun was like a laser pointer: harshly bright and completely useless. Everyone told Jim to wear sunglasses, but he wished to see the world strictly through true lenses. And this world was wide today, bulging at the seams, filled with color. It felt good. Jim breathed in deeply, letting the cold air ignite fireworks within his lungs and heart.
“Spaghetti!”
Under the lone leafless tree out front of their Grand View Apartments sat Matt, his next door neighbor’s son. He was playing a Gameboy with cracked edges and a dusty screen, its twenty-year old cartridge probably blinking and biting. Matt sat there fighting through his outdated technology. His head snapped up at Pete’s spaghetti squawk and a big grin sliced across his face. Matt dropped his Gameboy and came skipping over.
“Hello, Matt”.
“Hello, Matt”.
“Hey, Jim and Pete.”
Jim’s hulking frame kept Pete a good four feet above Matt, but the one time the bird would leave his giant shoulders was for friends. Matt was a friend. Standing in the still air Pete jumped without using his wings and landed softly on Matt’s head. The boy lit up with amusement and Pete pecked mischievously at his soft blonde hair.
“What are you doing out of school?” Jim asked. Matt seemed to be not only the lone child on the street, but the only person out at all. It wasn’t that cold.
“Does your apartment have calendars?”
”It does.”
“How many?”
“Two, one next to my Mike Tyson lamp and a miniature one that hangs in Pete’s cage, but I can’t really read that one.”
“Did you read yours?”
Jim thought about this with some concern. Did he ever actually read it?
“I guess I didn’t.”
Pete looked up from his pecking and squawked to no one in particular, “Jim can’t read, I love Jim.”
Matt found this hilarious, and clapped like a drunken comedy club patron. Doubling over and giggling until he had to reach desperately for breath.
“Nice one,” Jim said, and he gently picked the bird off of Matt’s head and put him back onto his shoulders, cupping his giant hands into a soft stadium. Finally a green car drove by.
“I can read, Matt, but didn’t look at my calendar today.”
Matt kept laughing. “Have you looked at anything lately?”
Jim stared at him blankly.
“It’s three days before Christmas, we haven’t had school in over a week.”
“Ah, Christmas, yes, right,” Jim muttered.
“You did know it was almost Christmas didn’t you?”
“Uh, yes of course,” Jim trailed off, looking past Matt towards the apex of 47th street and downtown. “What did you ask for?”
Matt shrugged and looked down at the ground. He kicked a little dirt around and mumbled something inaudible.
”Spaghetti, spaghetti!”
This brought him back and he smiled wholly again.
”Come on, what did you ask for?” Jim repeated.
Matt’s smile faded. “Well I wanted a new DS,” he said.
”A what?”
“A DS, it’s, uh, like a new Gameboy,”
“Ah,”
“But my Dad’s out getting me a BB gun. He says I need to be tougher.”
“I see.”
Matt Kicked more dirt. “At least I’ll get it this afternoon I guess.”
“Three days before Christmas?”
“Yeah, Dad’s leaving tonight, my Mom doesn’t want him here any longer,” Matt trailed off and looked past Jim, deep down the road before them.
Jim mentally kicked himself in the ass. A small part of his potentially ferocious anger simmered somewhere, a place from which it used to have access but no longer did. Mentioning the kids lame Dad before Christmas, nice job, good work, well done.
“Sorry, buddy,” he looked past Matt to his tired first generation Gameboy as it lay on the firm frosty ground. They wouldn’t even use that thing for scrap, he thought.
“I hate Jen, I love Jim, go see Jen,” Pete’s voice snapped him to attention (as it usually did). Although, on a second level, it felt a little eerie to Jim that Pete might now actually be reading his little daily lists. He looked down at his watch set to military time: 12:32.
”Damn, Pete’s right, I got to go Matt,”
Matt nodded, kicked more dirt, and wandered back to his tree. Jim wondered where Matt’s friends were.
The judge had told him to rely on his friends in his final day of court. It was a stern suggestion. He’d never been able to. He burned them out and made them fade away. Now Matt faded he used his long strides to head in the direction of the bistro he was to meet Jen at. Long strides, metered, counted, the more simple Jim’s task the more he took to heart his ability to complete it fully. Stride, stride, stride. That’s what his life had come to after his second unfortunate incident: a constant continuation of simple tasks that allowed him to stay out of the nuthouse or prison, and at that, almost certainly prison. He had no doubt of that.
Walking past a tired Dodge (with Pete bouncing along) he glanced at the tough metal fender. Sunlight careened off it and winked at him. It was the same kind of fender he’d ripped off an old Dodge some strange twisted day eight months ago. The same kind he’d swung wildly at some cocky mall security guard, and the same kind that he (after missing the stupid bastard easily) smashed repeatedly into a fine luxury car parked next to that very Dodge.
That was strike two of three. And each pitch had involved lots of bright colors, dizziness, and a strange filmy taste in his mouth. Then, of course, he’d top those vibrations with random screams of violence. When he was soft he was soft, but when he bubbled with energy and intensity…
Judge Strickland had even seen that anger in the courtroom when a clumsy bailiff stepped on one of his massive feet. He’d seen enough, enough of Jim, of excuses, of battered plaintiffs and a man who could be curiously intelligent but then belligerently ferocious. The judge had seen the two Jim’s over the course of three years and was completely tired of one them. He gave the other a last chance to completely secure freedom. Judge Strickland set for Jim a strict schedule of therapy sessions with a young psychiatrist from Milwaukee. Progress would need to be made.
On his first meeting, Jim had been staring out the window, tracing power lines, trying to unearth their source and failing every time. They would get tangled in a web of complication, Jim would try to untangle that complication, quit bitterly, and then go back to staring at cars. Counting colors. Red was popular, but gray ruled the day. As for listening to this state appointed psychiatrist, he was doing little of that. He heard the words reconciliation and clonazepam, but these titles drifted by like uncontrolled satellites. He knew his danger, but had always been quite gifted at ignoring it thoroughly.
On his fourth session, he had become such an expert at disconnecting with this small wood-paneled room that it often felt as if he were merely sending a representative. Some strange automated Jim that would never get angry, but would also never engaged. Then on a solemn Tuesday evening he heard Dr. Angelo say, “Do you have any friends?”
Jim stopped counting cars; he looked down and started counting the wrinkles on his hands, decided against that task, and said, “No”.
Dr. Angelo had smirked in some strange way that wasn’t quite satisfaction, but was certainly some form of mental confirmation. It was as if some application had just been submitted regarding his long and expensive education, and even more, perhaps his worth as a being was indeed definable. That application was immediately accepted.
Then Jim heard him speak of a new version of anger-based therapy that centered on the patient becoming close to an animal. In Dr. Angelo’s example, a Gray Macaw, one who would act as the patient’s intermediary. On that warm September day, having exhausted all conventional routes, after losing a love and stepping within an inch of a lifetime of solitary confinement, Jim just nodded simply at this suggestion and continued to count cars.
Over the next four weeks Jim visited the Wallace Veterinary Center every other day to meet with an orphaned Gray Macaw. Dr. Angelo was often there, and he (along with a veterinary technician) taught the small bird buzz words that he felt could calm Jim. And Jim named that fuzzy bird Pete after his favorite undersized middleweight boxer Pete Mead. In all reality, those were the only clear facts Jim could remember when it came to acquiring his best friend.
Now, Jim found himself standing on a sidewalk running his hand back and forth along the chrome like an automotive massage therapist. Mumbling a little (to Pete, of course) and randomly soaking his mind with the hard wood of a courtroom day eight months ago. Don’t let me see you back here friend, because you’ll never see me again. He stood up and started walking again, his mind still filtering frames of the past. He’d never see anyone real and free again. He understood those words of the judge perfectly. Strike four. Because you know goddamn well that last pitch was in the zone.
These thoughts were vibrating around his head as he stood in front of the Florentine Bistro searching its dark corners for Jen. Jim would rather not talk to the maitre de about the bird on his shoulder if he could avoid it.
“Thirty minutes late Jim, I love you”.
Jim looked at his watch. He was thirty-five minutes late on the button.
“Quiet down, lets just get in here without any problems”, and he gave Pete an almond.
He spotted Jen and slid quickly into the bistro like a shade starved lizard. She was curling her hair and sipping distractedly from a small glass of Pinot Grigio. Pete started dancing on his shoulder when they sat down. Jen had said that he looked like a circus freak with that bird on his shoulder. Pete didn’t like Jen.
“Thirty minutes late?” She said without making much eye-contact.
“Thirty-five, actually,” he said.
Jen made eye-contact. First with Jim then, slowly, deliberately, with Pete.
“And you brought Pete I see.”
“He doesn’t leave my shoulder unless I’m sleeping,”
“Spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti!” Pete squawked much louder then usual.
Jen sighed. The quaint touristy looking folks sitting at the table next to them shot a glance over.
“Why does he say that?” She said after stirring her drink and absorbing it, slowly, for just enough time to let an awkward silence consume the air.
“I think he just likes the word.”
“Is he an Italian parrot?”
“He’s not a parrot, he’s a Gray Macaw.”
She smiled and tried to hide it.
“So,” she said and she looked at him very closely, “how have things been?”
“Good. Simple.”
“Because of the parrot?”
“Because of the Macaw?”
“Yes, the Macaw.”
He breathed in quickly and shallowly, like Jeff Goldblum, and shot a glance at the shy waiter that was keeping his distance from them. Keep it that way.
“He helps me in moments of panic”, Jim said, “In moments where I would lose control, he gains it for me.”
“How?”
“I’m not really sure. He’s a voice of reason.”
“But he’s not really talking. He’s just repeating things that he’s heard.”
“So are we.”
She looked away, out the large window, and sipped her wine again.
“And,” Jim said, “How have you been doing?”
“Not in the Christmas spirit quite yet,” she said.
“I actually didn’t even know it was near Christmas until my little friend told me today.”
“Matt wants a DS!”
At this Pete outburst that shy waiter shot them a more direct and stern glance He had been talking to an official looking member of the bistro bureaucracy and now seemed ready to make a move. The slender tightly dressed man strode over to them carefully. Jim had his eyes on him, but at the same time he could see (or feel) that Jen was looking at him very closely.
“Sir,” the kid said in an exceptionally metered voice, “I’m afraid, we can not have any animals in this establishment.”
Jim said nothing. He calmly reached into his pocket and produced a business card that read in medium sized print:
Hi, my name is Pete! I’m a State Approved Medical Pet.
I am covered under the American Disabilities Act. Good to meet you!
The waiter looked at the card and then at Jim. Then he looked back at the card again.
“So that’s a seeing-eye bird?” He said.
“No,” Jim said calmly, “This bird was prescribed to me by a doctor to help me with my mental health. He has all of his shots, is quite well mannered, and, under ADA law, perfectly legal to have in any public establishment.”
The slender waiter was thrown off his game. Jim could see Jen grinning at him out of the corner of his eye, but he maintained smooth and even eye-contact with the waiter. That waiter now looked back at the manager and shrugged his shoulders. He gave Jim his card back.
“Need I get in contact with my lawyer?” Jim asked.
“No, no big deal. Just, uh, enjoy your drinks and don’t let him fly around.”
“I assure you he won’t.”
And the waiter turned back around quickly and scurried in the direction of his manager. Pete rubbed his small head on Jim’s neck.
“Wow,” Jen said, “that was pretty impressive.”
“It’s also bullshit. There’s no ADA law. Dogs are the only pet recognized to help medically.”
“No, I mean the way you handled that. I was waiting for you to throw your water in his face and smash his head into the table.”
Jim grinned. He gave Pete another almond. Jen was giving him this strange distant look. He felt like she was trying to tell if he was bluffing. Wondering if as soon as she left the restaurant he was actually going to run into the kitchen, grab that skinny waiter and throw his head into a fryer.
“Well,” she said snapping to, “I have to go. No time for lunch I guess. Montgomery is meeting me downtown,”
“Good for him,” Jim said, “And sorry I was late.”
She got up and slid out of the booth, coolly collecting her purse and finishing off her wine in one graceful motion. Walking past him she stopped and put a soft hand on his shoulder. She leaned in and whispered quietly, “It was never actually your fault. It wasn’t you, it was something inside of you.” And she stood motionless for a moment.
Jim said, “I still have the ring”.
She paused a moment and said, “So do I”.
Jim looked down, twisting an ice water in his giant hands like a barbershop light. Then he looked to his right and she was gone.
*********
Outside the air seemed to have warmed slightly. Not enough of to actually make a difference with the strange cold, but just enough to allow Jim to roll up his sleeves. He figured that Pete wanted to keep his little sweater on; he liked to wear it even if it was hot out. And a trip to the movies had seemed an interesting and extravagant idea the night before, but now, peppered by the chill and still a little edgy from the restaurant experience, he decided against it. The fake card his psychiatrist had given him probably had gotten him as far as it actually could, and explaining his bird to some usher seemed less than ideal. Instead he felt himself moving in the direction of the electronics store. Moving with some purpose.
Matt deserved a proper Christmas. The kid was tough and he fought through everyday. His faith needed to be rewarded. Jim would see to that. He strode. He began rumbling towards GST Electronics like a stubborn ram. Cars poured past him, dim lights clung to tired buildings, and he was but a cell in the veins of a turbulent holiday populace. He saw himself in a crowded room. And the walk to GST wasn’t very far, and down hill at that. Pete whistled on his shoulder and occasionally yelled spaghetti. Things were crisp, clear and vibrant. Jim absorbed it all, let it soak through his skin like a cheap vinyl, and he grinned all the way down hill.
The electronics store was a small brick building that seemed to have a concave roof. Crows used it as their bullpen, nerds thought of it as their tree house, and Jim thought of it as a prism with many bright colors but no actual uses. Now, standing in front of it, he paused at its glass doors, breathed in heavily, and then pushed in.
“Hey buddy,”
He kept pushing towards what he assumed was the game area.
“Hey pal,” now the voice was closer. Jim turned his whole body and looked finally at the oddly giant clerk. An ex-bouncer, probably, perhaps a bit washed up from years of true grit and now fully happy as the merciless overseer (and possible protector) of the local skinny and pale crew. He approached Jim with a surprising agility and speed.
“Can’t have that bird in here guy,” he said.
Jim calmly reached for his card. The clerk shot his palms outward.
“I don’t give a damn what you want to show me. Can’t have that bird in here.”
“He’s a medical-”
“Dude, don’t care. No pets.”
Colors began popping around Jim’s vision and the world around him began to be oddly carbonated. Lines of tension and anger started their sullen march towards his temple, his hands clenched and his heart began convulsing wildly within his chest (it no longer approved of its meaty confines). He envisioned himself punching the clerk in the gut and then slamming his face into the Xbox shelf. He started sweating in the cool store. He tried again.
“Pete was prescribed to me by a-”
The large store clerk stepped quickly and coolly into Jim’s chest (albeit a few inches lower).
“Take that bird outside or we’ll have a problem,” he said through clenched teeth.
Pete started rubbing his furry head against Jim’s neck. Consumed by the confrontation, he hadn’t even noticed him shuffling over from his usual post on the far end of his clavicle.
“I love you Jim, it’s all right, everything’s fine,” he squawked.
And Jim heard him and felt him clearly. His fists unclenched, and standing right in front of the tattoo laden clerk he took two long breaths in and immediately relaxed a bit. He dropped his brutal eye-contact with the clerk and stepped quickly around him.
“Fine,” he said basically to himself, “He can wait by himself.”
He had never actually left Pete outside alone before, but Matt needed that system. He deserved it. Either way, Jim wasn’t sure if he could stand walking outside his apartment again to see that boy struggling with that outdated piece of garbage his apathetic parents lumped on him. And he was pretty sure Pete wouldn’t go anywhere either; his tiny buddy hadn’t even jumped off of him the time he lit his right arm on fire in the kitchen.
Pete, seeming to read Jim to a notch, squawked loudly, “It’s OK Jim, I love you”.
Blasting through the store and out the glass doors, Jim scanned the block for a good place to let Pete sit. Next to him, there was a rotting wooden bench in front of the store’s large clear window. Jim carefully set three almonds in a straight line on the top post of this bench. Then he cupped Pete in his punch-bowl hands and placed him gently next to his favorite treat.
Then he turned away quickly and slid back through the store’s sleek doors, making a considerable effort to not make an ounce of eye-contact with the aggressive store clerk. Jim made no deviation from his path to the back of the store and to the Nintendo area. He found the system he believed Matt wanted (a DS, right?) locked securely behind a thin glass slider. No time for this. He coughed loudly as he made one swift and brutal pull at the slider. And he ripped the entire thing off easily and then grabbed something that looked bright and new. Something that functioned properly, something that a boy would be happy to use, something that rewarded hope. He rushed it up front to the burly clerk. That clerk was glaring at him, trying to peel him like a potato, but he rang the system up casually and without comment.
Pete was still visible from inside the store, and Jim watched as tightly bundled people vibrated by him giggling and pointing. He was, in all reality, putting on a show. Dancing, tossing his almonds around, mimicking passing conversations. The little Gray Macaw with the red sweater looked like a jolly oil baron. And indeed, Jim had not needed to rush: Pete was a master of his environment, a two-winged leader of any ecosystem he happened to occupy, and in that moment, Jim actually felt that the bird knew exactly where he was in the store and why he needed him.
The clerk followed Jim’s grinning gaze outside and said after a moment: “So the bird talks? He suck your cock too?”
Jim heard this but very distantly. He could see his little bird out the window still, bobbing and weaving, and that sight alone made this comment almost insignificant. Still….
In one unique motion he slid his credit card down the slot with the bright screen, and with his other hand he fiercely grabbed the brawny clerks arm directly on a pressure point. Catching him entirely off guard, he twisted that arm well behind the mans back and (after finishing his transaction) used his other giant hand to slam the clerks face into the fiberglass counter. The helpless clerk tried to growl something into that counter, but what came out was meek and high-pitched. Jim was in complete control.
Carefully, he leaned over the counter and in a very calm voice whispered into the clerk’s ear: “If it weren’t for Pete, I would have ripped this arm off and beaten you to until you blind with it.”
Then using his left hand he ripped off his receipt and scribbled a signature. He then released the clerk and turned towards the door. From behind he could hear the man gasping for breath. At the door he paused, purely confident in himself, and said, “I appreciate your customer service, and have a great day.” The clerk’s eyes were wide and haunted; he stood with his back to the wall drawing in mammoth sized breaths. He didn’t move an inch.
Jim hit the late afternoon sun with an odd smile and he looked down at Pete. The small gray bird had already polished off all three almonds, but seemed in no way hurry to go anywhere.
“What a cute bird, what a cute bird, spaghetti!” Pete squawked randomly. Jim sat down on the bench and Pete instinctively jumped onto his shoulder.
“Jim is happy, I love Jim”, Pete said and he started whistling.
*************
Thirty minutes later Jim was ambling down 47th Street towards his apartment grinning and throwing his remaining almonds around to the local wild cardinals. And in that brief pedestrian moment, Jim felt good. He felt unrestricted to any of the multiple realities he consistently inhabited, and instead, connected like an electrical plug to the vibrant afternoon that he had navigated with a geographer’s precision. A normal lunch with the ex-wife, a calm discussion with a waiter, and a minor reaction (for him) to what used to be a major threat. These were the things that he could mark on his calendar. And they would represent progress, strength, and above all, true stability. He would report this day with glee to Dr. Angelo.
As they walked down 47th street the trees enveloped them both in a cool haze. Cracks in the sidewalk were barren and lifeless. The ants of midsummer were replaced with the confetti of dead holiday grass. It was all one cohesive machine for Jim; a multi-angled fish tank of confusion and beauty. Jet trails savaged the sky above; supermarket trucks stressed the pavement below. His street was pure but distant, a choreographed menagerie of activity. Somewhere, far in the distance, Jim could hear someone softly playing the saxophone.
And they both absorbed it all like paying customers. A man and his bird. Jim let that soft distant sound vibrate around his body; it fused at his fingertips and bloomed like a sunflower in his temples. He was connected purely in the present; a spider completely confident in his own thin creation. In the air he smelled orange blossoms, but he was certain they were simply phantoms of his past.
He began to hum a tune his father had taught him many years ago. In a deep distant place that he rarely reconnected with, but a place that was natural, that was true, he found that song and began humming. Pete joined in easily and casually after just a few beats. This molecule, this combination of pure existence, walked along on the sidewalk in the dimming evening light of a cool winter day as if in their own ecosystem. A book purely stitched.
Approaching his building, Jim saw a rusted orange hulk of car parked horizontally across that large front lawn like an abandoned cargo ship. Its door was splayed open. He saw two people arguing, perhaps, one very small and one of a more regular size. The one of regular size was doing most of the arguing, he was also waving some black cylinder around. It looked like that man-sized figure also had a bottle in his hand. A phantom stuck to reality with Velcro, swinging, cursing and spitting, confident in its ability to cause distortion.
Pete stopped whistling. Jim wasn’t all that concerned from a distance, but as he moved closer he could spot Matt’s bright blonde hair. The very small person was Matt.
“It’s all right Jim,” Pete said, in a strange soft squawk. Jim didn’t think that the confidence of a bird could waver, but he had just heard it, and he could only define Pete as an uneasy rider.
And as Jim grew closer he could hear yelling about failure, about a lack of respect, about dignity, about strength. Then, when he was so close that he could hear the crack in Matt’s young voice, he heard the regular sized figure say something about dropping pellets. Dropping pellets? And it was then that he finally recognized both the man and the object. It was certainly Matt’s scraggly father with his unwanted BB gun. He was swinging it around wildly, yelling at Matt in crazy spurts, growing angrier with each lack of impossible obedience.
Jim heard himself yell, “Hey buddy, calm down”, but he was still out of range and neither of them took any note of him. He then watched as Matt’s father shoved the small boy to the ground and he was certainly in range to hear the gaunt man yell, “You shoot it like this, you dummy.”
Then, Matt’s dad, disconnected with beauty, polarized by forces that pulled simultaneously at his soft brain tissue and the strong firm Earth, wheeled around in a haphazard circle and fired shots randomly in many directions. He pumped pellets all around the front lawn of the apartment complex and the rectangular shape of 47th street. Yelling and laughing in one cruel motion. Then he dropped that BB gun and fell, still laughing, to the even ground.
Before he clumsily went down Jim heard the man growl “See!” at the poor boy. At this point he was almost running at both of them. Scared for Matt, and sure that he could defuse the situation. Jim, in the moment, was sure he could defuse any situation. His shoulder felt a little lighter. Matt was getting up from the ground and rubbing his knee. His eyes were red and distant. Jim was only twenty yards from them now and he was moving calmly over to Matt to see if he were all right.
His shoulder felt a little a lighter.
Jim stopped suddenly and looked at that very shoulder. Pete was not on it. He looked around at the branches that surrounded them, scanning for his fuzzy gray friend, but they were barren. He looked towards Matt (another likely place for Pete to go, a lone friend in trouble), but Pete was not there. Panic slipped in quietly now, Jim spun around abruptly in some bizarre circle searching for his friend, but he wouldn’t have flown off with his sweater on. He would not have flown off at all.
The panic was deep and fiery now. Purely definable. He felt across both of his broad shoulders, not trusting his eyes, then looked high above to see if Pete was perhaps circling. But there was nothing but jet trails in the clear cold sky.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught a fleeting glimpse of something red near the sidewalk a few yards behind him. The sweater! He turned and started walking back, but as he moved he was seeing to much red, and it was moving. Then saw Pete laying on the ground next to that very sidewalk and as he knelt down towards that small but growing puddle of red, he heard himself saying, “What are you doing on the ground Pete?”
And then, in the soft mid-evening light, he finally got his first good look at the gray macaw. He was trembling in a small pool of his own blood, breathing in and out shallowly, and making a soft cooing sound. His beady black eye was darting around in panic; searching the huge blue sky above for something that Jim could not define.
“Petey,” Jim muttered simply.
There was a small BB sized hole in the bird’s breast and it was leaking life. His sweater had been blasted off in the impact and it now lay next to Pete. His breath was becoming more occasional, and then, at some imperceptible piece of time, he stopped trembling. The light cooing also ceased, and the little bird opened and closed his beak once, slowly, trying for something. Now his one visible eye had stopped darting and, for one moment in the poorly woven fabric of reality, Pete looked calmly and peacefully straight into Jim’s eye.
“Go home, it’s all right Jim, I love you,” Pete croaked softly.
And then, his little friend stopped moving. His lungs quietly quit their job and he seemed to settle peacefully into the dark seething pool of red surrounding him.
Now Jim was shaking. Explosions of color consumed his vision. His mouth was dry and his throat was in a pure knot. He scooped Pete’s body off the earth by cupping him in his giant hands, and he waited for Pete to unveil this as yet another neat trick. But there was no trick, no composed strategy lying just below the surface, it was just the small lifeless body of his best friend. A small bird lost to a purposeless BB gun.
At this point Jim was talking to little Pete, asking him blankly to return to his shoulder. Mumbling out loud, in a distant voice, he heard himself tell Pete that it was all right. He held Pete in his right hand and knelt down gently to pick up his battered knitted sweater. He then tenderly wrapped it around his blood caked friend, and for a strange period of time, he just stared. Then he walked slowly and methodically to a nearby Elm tree and placed the small bird in a balanced clearing near the trunk with gentle care. His hands were now visibly vibrating as he withdrew them. Two coinciding tears rolled down Jim’s face, but he wasn’t even sure what they were.
Finally, he took his eyes off of Pete and looked around. He wasn’t sure where he was, wasn’t even sure who he was, his blood was pumping fiercely, and he was breathing in and out at a rapid fire pace.
Then he saw Matt and he remembered exactly where he was and what had happened. Matt was standing with his back to his worthless father, staring at Jim, and in his eyes was a strange combination of uncertainty and fear. Jim then looked sharply over at Matt’s father, but before he moved he took the boy’s present out of his large pocket and placed it strategically on the sidewalk behind him. Then he took three long and metered strides towards the scrawny man.
Jim was bubbling with intensity, wildly possessed by the situation, and he was focused intently at this person, this random insignificant being who had caused so much destruction. That man, that being, was wobbling around the front lawn with his back to Jim. He’d dropped the BB gun now, but he was still yelling about marriage and Matt and desperation. Jim heard little of it. As he strode towards this man he glanced over at little Matt and winked. The way he used to, in what felt like a different body, and he could see pure fear in Matt’s eyes. The boy was seeing at an angle that he had never seen him in, with a spotlight pointed at Jim’s darkest strengths, a light that, Jim at this point was sure, the boy would never see again.
Then, as if he sensed Jim coming up behind him, Matt’s father spun around and glared. His eyes were glossy and bloated. His arms were thin and splotched with red speckles. He stood swaying in the cold, unshaven, dressed in a ripped flannel shirt, drooling slightly out of the left corner of his swollen mouth. He looked dislocated. And then, as if hit from some strange current of inspiration, he slurred at Jim:
“And just what the fuck are you looking at?”
Jim felt a tautness take over his body. Without effort his giant hands formed into tight steel cylinders. Colors blasted around him, the earth seemed to heave and pitch under his massive feet. He’d been walking towards Matt’s father with his head down, and at this searing comment, he brought his head up slowly and focused a beam of intensity at the problem. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Matt take a few cautious steps backwards.
He was acting on instinct, on the air that crackled around him with intensity, on the rhythm of his heart as it mimicked a heavy train on an old wet track. His knuckles could be heard popping under the pressure of his sweaty fists. And in that moment, on that solemn street, the world held for him but one singular purpose.
There was no voice on his shoulder.
posted by PT Oliveri @ 12:58 AM
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