Читать книгу The WWII Collection - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 20

That afternoon, I stay on again to watch Birdy being fed. I ask Renaldi if I can come in. He says it’s against the rules but it’s OK with him. He opens the door with his keys and I push the cart in behind him.

Birdy’s squatting there watching us; he’s watching me more than anything. I’m convinced he’s bullshitting me now. Maybe he wasn’t before, but now he is. I push the tray to the side and stand in front of Birdy. Renaldi goes around the cart and lifts covers off the food.

‘Well, Birdy; I’m here. This is Al and you know it, you bastard. Are you really going to squat there flapping your arms like a baby canary while this guy feeds you?’

I say this to him in a quiet voice while Renaldi tinkers with the food. Birdy is looking at me full face, no shifting from eye to eye, none of that bird business. He’s looking at me; his eyes aren’t even wiggling. I can’t say he shows any signs of recognition but he’s definitely looking me over, seeing if he can trust me. It’s Birdy all right, but he’s different. This isn’t the old Birdy who used to believe everything; he looks as if he can’t believe anything anymore. He doesn’t look as if he can even believe in himself.

Renaldi signals with some cereal and a spoon to me that I can feed him if I want. I reach over and take the bowl and spoon from Renaldi. He’s checking the doors to see if anybody’s looking in. What’re they going to do, fire him? They aren’t paying him or anything; they tried putting him in the army, that didn’t work. They can’t kill him. It’s stupid how most of us get in the habit, looking all the time to see if somebody’s watching us, as if they’re going to catch us doing something wrong. Somewhere, when we’re kids, our parents and the shits at school get us all feeling guilty about almost everything.

I hold the food and the spoon out in front of Birdy’s face. He keeps looking at my eyes, not at the food.

– All right now, Birdy. It’s time to start flipping your wings and peeping. I don’t believe it.

He doesn’t move.

‘OK. I’ll feed you anyway. This is all ridiculous. If you could see yourself squatting there on the floor and me shoveling this crap down your throat, you’d probably laugh yourself to death.’

I push the food toward his mouth. He keeps his mouth closed and turns his head.

‘Come on, Birdy; open up! Let mommy put some mush down your throat. It’s good for you.’

He turns his head the other way. Renaldi is beginning to come around the cart. I give him a hard look to keep him away.

‘Look, Birdy. This guy’s giving me a special chance to feed you. Open up! I know the whole thing is damned undignified but what’s the difference? Either he feeds you or I feed you. If you’re going to pretend you’re a stupid bird, at least be consistent. You know you don’t crap like a bird. You can jump around all you want, but you’ll never fly out of here. They’re going to keep you in this cage the rest of your life!’

Birdy stares at me. He’s pissed. It’s hard to get Birdy mad. He doesn’t usually care enough about most things. What I’ve heard him say more than anything else is, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ According to him, nothing matters. I’d be burned up about something, at school, or his mother, or my father, and he’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Then, I notice his wings, I mean arms, coming away from his sides. For a minute, I think he’s going to spring at me like some crazed bat but he brings them around slowly in front of his face and looks down at them. He turns them around, uncurls his fists, and feebly wiggles the fingers. He looks at me and reaches for the bowl and spoon. I put them in his hands. He doesn’t look down, his eyes are still burning into mine. Mad! I’m not sure he isn’t going to pitch the mess at my head, but I keep my eyes on his. There’s something going on and I’m not sure what it is.

After about two minutes of boring into me, he looks down at the bowl and then at the spoon. He shifts the spoon a few times in his hand as if trying to remember how to hold it. I want to reach out and help but I don’t. I’m knowing, for the first time, just how far away Birdy’s been. It’s a long way back, a long way for him to come. He gets the spoon almost right and starts moving it and the bowl together. He misses twice, then gets the spoon into the mush and stirs it. He stirs for a least three minutes. I’m beginning to ache in the back of my legs from squatting. I’m wishing I didn’t have the bandages on my face so it would be easier for Birdy to see me and recognize me.

Finally, he lifts the spoon out of the dish with some mush in it and puts it into his mouth. He has a hard time getting the spoon out of his mouth because he bites down on it. It’s like watching a baby learning to eat; he has his elbow sticking way up in the air. He probably thinks he’s a bird imitating a human being now. Maybe he is.

It takes more than an hour, but Birdy gets a fair amount of food down. He gets to where he’s spearing some of the meat with a fork. He lets me take the bowls and fork or plates from him but there’s no reaction. His face could be a beak for all the movement it makes. He looks as if he has a mask on, with his eyes glittering out from behind it.

We get outside and Renaldi’s all excited. He says this is a big breakthrough; we’ve got to tell Weiss. I ask him what the hell Weiss will do except write it in his papers or have the T-4 type it out so he can spit on it; can’t we keep it to ourselves? Renaldi listens to me. He doesn’t want to, but in the end he’s willing to go along. I ask him what good is it if Weiss is going to come watch Birdy feed himself. What good is that going to do?

Renaldi leaves and I take my place in the chair between the doors. Renaldi says there’s no way he can leave me in the cage with Birdy.

I sit there for a long while watching. I think Birdy’s beginning to feel silly squatting all the time. Twice he stretches out one leg or the other. He hasn’t done that before. He goes over to the toilet to take a leak. Instead of squatting on the crapper, the way he usually does, he half straightens himself up so he’s leaning across the john, opens up his pajamas with one hand and uses the other hand to support himself against the wall. Probably he hasn’t straightened out his back that much in months. I don’t think he can stand up anymore. Renaldi tells me Birdy sleeps in a squat; won’t use the bed. He says sometimes Birdy leans against a wall and sleeps standing on one foot. You’d know Birdy would carry it too far.

When he finishes pissing, Birdy takes a few hunched over steps toward the middle of the floor, like a skinny hunchback of Notre Dame or something, then he goes back to the old squat.

– Nobody’s watching now, Birdy. Stand up like a human being. I won’t tell anybody. This is Al, you can trust me.

He looks straight into my eyes. I still have the feeling he’s mad at me and this is really rare. Like I said, it’s hard to get Birdy mad. Even with my old man and the car that time, Birdy wasn’t so much mad as discouraged. He couldn’t get himself to believe anybody’d do a shitty thing like that. He was sure there’d been some kind of misunderstanding and when he could talk to the person who bought the car he could make it all right again.

There was only one time I can remember Birdy actually getting mad. That’s the first time I realized what it would be like when a crazy, trapdoor-minded person like Birdy got mad. I knew then I’d never actually been mad in my life; I’d been pissed or angry, but mad is like crazy.

– Birdy. How about the time that O’Neill kid stole your bicycle. I really think you’d’ve killed him.

It wasn’t too long after Birdy and I’d met each other. We were still going to Saint Alice’s Elementary School. We were taught by sisters and it was enough to ruin anybody’s life. I’d sit in the back row and think about the nuns menstruating away under those long black, hot costumes. Habits they called them, the costumes I mean.

There was always a plaster statue of the ‘Blessed Mother’ up at the front of the room dressed in light blue, flowing, plaster robes with a snake and flowers crushed under her feet. I used to wonder if she had tits under all that. There were girls in our classes, but it was boys on one side and girls on the other. The girls all wore these crappy dark blue uniforms. I was really glad when I got to the junior high school.

This is just when we’re building the new loft in the trees down in the woods; before the gas tank. We’re stealing all the wood, but we need money for the wire screen and hinges and things.

The third floor of St Alice’s is the auditorium. They serve lunches up there and every Friday afternoon they have a movie at ten cents a head. Anybody who doesn’t go to that movie is a real pauper and doesn’t love God either. This church has more damned ways to gouge the last dime out of poor people.

Anyway, up on the third floor they also have a beat-up old piano. Half the keys don’t work and there’s practically no ivory left on them so it looks as if the piano has most of its teeth knocked out.

The church got a ‘donation’ of another piano and they want this old one taken away. The guys who brought up the new piano say it’ll cost five dollars to haul this beat up one down but Father O’Leary, the pastor, says that’s too much, so it sits up there. Everybody thumps or bangs on the piano when they go by. The other piano has a key to lock the keyboard and the music sister keeps it locked. She gives piano lessons, at another twenty cents a head, on the new piano.

Birdy tells Father O’Leary he’ll get the old piano down out of there for two dollars. O’Leary tries to talk Birdy into ‘donating’ his work for the ‘love of God’, but Birdy holds out for cash. He tells me about the project and we go into it together. Birdy’s plan is to chop up the piano and throw it out the window into the school yard after school when everybody’s gone.

So, one day after school, Birdy gets the ax and sledgehammer from his garage and we set ourselves to hammering and hacking away at that piano. The real reason we’re doing it is for the metal. The sounding board is mounted in cast iron which is worth at least five dollars at the junk dealer’s in Greenwood. This is 1939 and everybody’s selling scrap metal to the Japs to help along their war effort.

The job goes fast. I’m thumping away and Birdy’s chucking huge hunks out of the window. We’re having a fine time. The damned piano is making great slunking, thonking noises as I swing away at it. Terrific workout. I get all the strings vibrating by hitting them with the sledgehammer and it sounds like heaven. They make a swell sound when I slice through them with the ax, too. We’ve got an OK to burn the wood in the incinerator and we’ll haul away the metal.

Now, Birdy used to ride his bike to school even then. This is the bike the cops stole from us later in Wildwood. He’d lock it to the fence outside the back gate to the play yard. We can see it from up where we are. Birdy’d made the trip right after school, to get the ax and sledgehammer, and then parked the bike in his usual place. I didn’t know it, but he didn’t lock it when he came back.

We’re just about finished with the job and the two of us are pushing a huge hunk of cast metal up onto the edge of the window, when we look down and see a kid getting on Birdy’s bike.

Birdy doesn’t say anything, he takes off across the auditorium and down the stairs. I hold onto the hunk of metal and yell down to the kid, ‘Leave that bike alone, you bastard.’ I can see who it is. It’s one of the stupidest kids in the school, Jimmy O’Neill. There are six O’Neill kids going to the school, one stupider than the other. There can’t be one complete brain in all of them put together. This Jimmy O’Neill is in the seventh grade but he’s sixteen years old. He’s short, with bunched muscles. He thinks he’s pretty tough. I never remember him except with snot running down his lip and with frayed, torn snot-stiff sweater sleeves. He’s a great one for beating up on sixth-and seventh-graders at recess. I’ve knocked the shit out of him twice already but I don’t think he remembers from one time to the next. The last time, he picked up a horse turd and threw it at me. You wouldn’t believe a kid that stupid would be allowed to walk around, let alone go to school. He still can’t read.

He knows I see him but he rolls off on the bicycle. He’s so stupid he can hardly ride the thing. He goes across the sidewalk, wobbling, and turns up Clarke Avenue, he’s getting it straightened and is starting to pump away. About half a minute later, Birdy comes running out. I yell, ‘He went up Clarke! It’s Jimmy O’Neill!’

Birdy takes off. I want him to know what he’s going to run into when he catches the bike, if there’s any chance he can catch a bike by running after it.

I lower the big piece of cast metal onto the floor and take off down the steps myself. I figure Birdy’s going to get his block knocked off if he catches O’Neill. I’m looking forward to knocking O’Neill’s teeth in. This time I’ll have an excuse and no shit-face sister or priest to butt in and save his white Irish ass.

When I get to the corner of Clarke Avenue and Franklin Boulevard, I look up and down. Way at the end of Franklin, I see the bike on the ground; Birdy and O’Neill are having at it. I start running that way and I’m surprised when O’Neill breaks away and starts running in my direction. Birdy’s right after him. O’Neill looks up, sees me, and turns back.

I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it. Birdy leaps into the air, at least five or six feet, and lands on O’Neill’s shoulders. O’Neill keeps running and Birdy is kicking at him with his feet and punching him in the face and on the side of the head. O’Neill goes down. He shakes Birdy off and stands up. His face is bloody. He takes a shortcut through a yard and back toward the church. The church is next to the school. Birdy’s right after him. I slow down. I’m bushed from running and now I want to see what Birdy’s going to do. He’s left the bike lying in the street up there on Franklin Boulevard.

Now, this is something to be surprised at, considering the way Birdy is about that bike. Birdy bought it with his own money when he was only about ten years old. It’s an old-time bike with giant wheels and old-time thin tubeless tires. Everybody else is getting balloon tires with coaster brakes, but Birdy wouldn’t have balloon tires with mere twenty-eight-inch wheels. He keeps his tires pumped up till they’re about to explode and tools that bike around at tremendous speeds. He can balance himself on it standing still, only twisting this front wheel once in a while. I’ve seen him sit that way five or ten minutes, watching something or somebody, then wheel off without ever putting his feet to the ground. He has a way of turning around by lifting up the front wheel and twisting like a horse in a rodeo. He keeps it clean, so the spokes and rims shine like new. Birdy practically lives on that bike.

After I get to know him, I really begin to use my bike more, too. Saturdays we’d go on all kinds of trips. There isn’t any place within fifty miles of where we live that Birdy hasn’t pedaled to at one time or another. He keeps a big map on the wall in his room with the trips he’s made marked on it. Birdy’d say, ‘Let’s take a ride to Abington’ and we’d be off.

Once Birdy said that when a person is on a bicycle, he’s almost totally separated from the earth, practically free from gravity and friction. Birdy is always worried about being held down.

So, I’m really surprised when he leaves the bike and takes off after O’Neill. Maybe he saw me coming and knew I’d move the bike out of the street, but I think he was so mad he didn’t see anything and didn’t care. I go over and put the bike on the curb leaning against a tree.

I go after Birdy and O’Neill. I’m about to believe they’ve run off to hell or disappeared in the ground somehow, when I hear this godawful yell from inside the church. I dash in the back door and Birdy has O’Neill on the floor at the top of the aisle, between his legs, and he’s pounding him in the face as O’Neill twists right and left trying to get away. Birdy is all over him, not saying anything, just pumping them in, left, right, left. I run up the aisle. O’Neill’s squealing like a stuck pig. Somebody’s going to hear him for sure and come in. The rectory and the convent are right next to the school and church.

I have to actually pull Birdy off. He looks at me the same way he just looked at me here over that bowl of mush; like he doesn’t know me and might just take a poke at me. His eyes are black and the irises are completely open. He looks crazy-mad.

‘Leave him alone, Birdy! For Christ’s sake, let’s get the hell out of here before somebody comes!’

Birdy looks at O’Neill as if he doesn’t know him either or how he got there. He doesn’t say anything, then turns and starts walking down the aisle of the church. I lean over O’Neill. His eyes are puffed up and he’s missing teeth. No great loss, his teeth were all bucked and crooked anyway.

‘Look, shithead! You tell anybody who beat you up and I’ll kill you myself. Nobody’d believe it anyway.’

He looks up at me from the floor. He reaches and feels the spaces and loose teeth in his mouth. His mouth is a bloody hole. Then he rolls over onto his knees with his head toward the altar. He kneels there on his hands and knees and cries and bleeds. I figure it’s better than being eaten by lions; maybe a little praying will do some good.

I go back to Franklin Boulevard and Birdy is up checking his bicycle over. There are a few bent spokes and some scratches across the top of the handlebars. The front wheel is out of line, too, but we straighten that out OK. I look at Birdy and there’s not a mark on him, not even a red mark or a scratch. O’Neill must’ve been getting nothing but air with those big fists of his. He probably figured he was fighting a ghost or one of the little people, maybe.

Birdy gives the bike a test ride and says it’s OK but it’ll never really be the same. He’s like an old-fashioned Sicilian whose wife has been raped. Even if he knows it isn’t her fault, even if she’s beaten up from fighting back, he can never be the same toward her. Birdy’s like that about the bike. It’s one of the reasons he’s willing to sell it in Wildwood and why he never got a decent bike again after that. He loved that bike and after it was violated he didn’t want another one. Somebody with a mind like that is hard to deal with.

I look at Birdy there, squatting, watching me, open, soft, empty-eyed. I begin to realize he’s been violated himself somehow. And now he doesn’t want him anymore.