The Legend of Birdman

by Paul Rogov

War was their shepherd. “Don’t fall.”

“I’m hanging upside down.”

“Impressive. I can see that. Where’s your brother?”

Charlie’s son---knees bent---hung from the front yard tree branch, upside down. He leapt off of the branch, smiled evilly, then attended to his hands.

“What’s Mom making? Salisbury steak with gravy?”

“Yes. All right, let’s eat. Did you almost pack? We’re leaving now, remember?”

Moonbeams flushed through the suburban streets. Charlie, ennobled with a creased newspaper under his armpit, lead his son into the house. The three of them ate, though quickly. After dinner, Charlie paced upon the carpeted aisle of their Winnebago (parked along the curb), as if he were staking out his house. He thrust down a button on a walkie-talkie that he held up to his lips. “Where’s your brother? Speak up. What’s that? Our trash? What birds?” He parted the blinds with splayed fingers: there were scraps of litter, all over the street, by the family mail-box. It’s a sign, he thought. Lord, what does it mean? Many had gone to sleep early, bored with television, or were still trying to adjust to the Spring time shift. Adapted survivors ceased mourning the loss of the ghost minutes and, in the morning, will go back to their self-appointed tasks. If one looked through Charlie’s library, one might be deceived. He was a civil engineer and a Christian, yet he had mostly geology books. He never went camping---even if his sons pleaded with him---yet possessed a glossy book on poisonous plants and three copies of Pilgrim’s Progress. He was a man of sound reasoning in many respects, and was fully convinced Darwinian evolution and the Book of Genesis were absolutely reconcilable, if one noted the correspondence of between their linear progressions (after taking into account the value of precious allegories).

An hour ago, it was a different story. Charlie pushed a massive, wide metal cart that he loaded with one hundred gallons of drinking water through a bright, musty warehouse after filling the top basket with first aid kits (complete with Atrophine Sulfate Tablets) and Swiss army knives. He heaved twine on spools, snare wire, boxes with four tents, packages of insect head-nets, three inflatable rafts, onto the lower tier, paid---came home, purchased Israeli gas-masks on E-Bay (with expedited shipping), got underneath his bed, loaded and unloaded a .308 Winchester rifle and his late father’s .38, brought them and the boxes of ammo into the Winnebago, settled them inside, then gawked down at a pair of mittens lying on the kitchenette counter, which he had yet to figure out what do with, let alone consider when exactly he would use the plastic yellow whistle that hung around his neck. The birds, that returned that Spring, attacked their recycling bins and trash---and much too early, he thought---no doubt about it. They were not the real problem. The problem was answering the immortal question: when do we leave? It was a question he loathed more than others. The day before, he sought answers from the Lord.

“What kind of sister supports People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals! Frankly I don’t have time for this, Darla! We have to pray and we have to pack.”

“Why don’t you just talk to him?”

“Because he already knows what he did was wrong.”

“Aren’t you afraid of litigation?”

“No. Apparently, the kid’s a weirdo. Raised by his grandmother. I hardly think she’d sue us. Here, take the gear.” Yet, Charlie Snyder---husband of buxom Darla (biweekly recipient of his missionary position), father of Jacob (17, who forges parental signatures to ratify certificates to surf) and Jeremiah (12, who mows down hundreds of soldiers an hour as a video game sniper)---alone, with a juvenile thrill, put the walkie-talkie he used to converse with the house into a drawer, then reclined back in the leather seat in a small carpeted kitchen within his newly bought Winnebago Vectra, which was parked along the curb in front of the home he had recently sold. With the time change he felt indecisive, though excited---suspended in time, yet suspended in time for a reason. For like many of his brethren, he was awaiting the Second Coming of Christ: which he suspected would happen sometime after true believers had long gone off the grid; five new countries were added to U.N. Security Council; and, they had endured the tremendum et fascinans of the Great Tribulation and the Earth’s pole-shift---which was the context of God’s plan that prompted him to quit his job, sell his stocks, his two cars, back up his finances with gold and treasury notes, so he could flee with his family, in his recreational vehicle, ride up the California and Nevada border, then move North, deep into the tundra of Canada.

#

“Turn it down, please! Can we eat?”

“What’s wrong?” Darla looked over at Charlie during breakfast. “What?”

“Dad, I hate this bread,” said their oldest, changing the channel on the television.

Charlie looked at him, across the table. “Jacob, why are you always complaining?”

Charlie glared at the screen. Devout Muslims by the hundreds struck their foreheads with stones in Tehran. Blood flowed between eyes, down faces, into lips and chattering teeth, as they made their procession through the streets. Charlie looked away from the Motorola oracle perched up on the kitchen shelf by the canned goods and strainers, which offered him a glimpse into a part of history he had not considered. “Did you forget?”

“Dad, I know. I’ll clean it up, all right? Stop pestering me.”

He looked away from his shaggy-headed son while considering why the birds attacked their trash. “He’s losing it,” he said, as he opened up the paper. “You hear he got into a fight?” He spread the paper out. Newspaper ink stained his thumbs. He got depressed after watching CNN for a minute, roved absent-mindedly alongside the commentaries of scholars supplanting historical revisionist scenarios on the History Channel---which his wife had dubbed the Fantasy Channel---flipped to the local section of the newspaper. He had already informed the leasing office about the birds, but what can a leasing office do about birds anyway, he thought: birds went wherever and whenever they wanted; it could not have been the food; it was nature; so, he shoveled up abandoned soggy bran flakes into his mouth, drove his eldest son to school, reprimanded him, listened to him attempt to justify it, dropped him off, put in some hours at the office, got home, silently cursed the craggy bread, then sat up late at night, shoulder to shoulder with Darla, in the bedroom.

“You already know all these answers.”

“I’m trying to clear the season. What if I went on?”

“Then I think you’d win. Didn’t you that try once? Like take the quiz?”

They watched Jeopardy and glanced at one another every now and then. Whenever they heard an impassioned eruption, a Herculean applause---even during the hesitation before it ensued---they trembled viscerally, in their livers, stomachs, spleens, then turned back to the glow of screen. Yet the show just ran. The host kept talking. The contestants kept answering in the form of a question; and, the television got muted; and, it was so predictable; and, it was so surreal; and, Charlie, for whatever reason, thought about the house he was moving away from, and started remembering the one summer that was ushered in by him bleeding profusely. It was a week prior to sixth grade.

He had just cupped the back of his head, looked at the blood in his clawed hand, glanced through the timberland and sedges then ran---“AAAH!” His sandals slapped against the sidewalk as he ran parallel with the neighborhood fences, houses, as he ran beyond the bike-trail; beyond gawking adults and don’t-care children; while a scarf of migrating birds sailed in the shape of arrowhead, above everyone: passed the spotted trail of blood that came down his crown, down his back like a backwards bib, produced by the holy war games. It was rock war. He went to the hospital, was stitched up with thread, hooked scissors, came home, dizzy, weak—scrambled upstairs, to his room, lied down in bed, drew a blanket over himself, was kissed on the forehead by his shushing mother, then drifted off to sleep. He tried to play with the kids from the rock war later that week, though something did not feel right. When he went back to school, he saw swarms of children. They lined up against a fence to get to the playground---having left the flattened mushroom-shaped tables with encircled seats, then dandered through the swung open gate with hexagonal grating for recess.

Reasoning he should play safer games---no monkey bars (for contortion), nor swings (for long-jump)---he just walked around, watched dodge-ball players pick teams. Podgy children blathered stories, on a curb, by the classroom. He sat on such a curb, tied up his shoelaces, crooked his elbows around his knees---considered the charley horses produced by the rapping knuckles of fists onto the side of kid’s legs, the melvins, the wedgies, the yanked-up shorts, that smaller, clever kids got from bullies (that he did not have to deal with---for he was well-liked). Never did he get stuffed into the roaring whirlpool of a flushed toilet bowl, nor was he ever carried by three kids, under his arms, then forced to sit in a trash-can. Perhaps, the Lord was protecting Him---saving him.

He heard the freeze-bell resound. Kids on the playground stopped dead in their tracks---overly identifying with the emergency rule in many strange poses---(more or less, frozen like breathing statutes). After a week of drizzle, dew on the football field was like a film of silver. He noted tetherball ropes wrap poles, ricochet by the limit of the canvas orb, arc back, seek rotational inertia. A bell echoed. All were called forth. A boy on the monkey bars, still hung upside down with bent knees as a fulcrum: reaching his fingers onto the tar mat, above himself, to halt. Charlie joined the cliques that made their exodus back to the classroom, understanding all games ever to be played: those to acquire points; to acquire treasure; those won because someone else broke the rules; or, the worst of all, games of elimination, like that hanging boy had probably played, who was then put in exile, as if already barred from playing all games to begin with.

Charlie walked home, ate a snack----felt settled once the sun had set. There were no murmurs in the house He walked parallel with the banister, on the second floor, passed his father’s office. His father, in a chair, removed his spectacles when Charlie walked up to him, glaring up at him. “Papa, what do I do if a boy hits me?”

“What’s that? Are you all right? Did Mama give you aspirin?”

“Yes.”

“Go to sleep,” said his father. “You need your rest. Don’t you know that?”

And Charlie said yes, though could not sleep. After several minutes of face-to-face chat, they lie on their backs, side by side, in the master bedroom.

“Of course, you hit him back. Are you to do nothing? You have to defend yourself. What are you going to do---just stand there? Does that make sense?”

“No---but the kids are sometimes stupid and---maybe, its not okay---because then you can get in a fight---and then get suspended from school, right, Papa?”

His father reasoned with him for a half-hour.

Charlie went to sleep, though felt split---he considered the advice of fighting back. There was nothing good about getting hit. Papa is right. Yet, the second week of sixth grade, he was in the den, in the morning, and he got different advice.

“What would Jesus do?” said his mother.

“You have to turn the other cheek, I know,” he said softly. “But Mama. . . . ”

“No ‘but Mama’---it’s early September. This is California! Wear these.” “Come on. You’ll thank Mama later,” said his father, setting down a cup of coffee on the table. “It’s too hot to wear those. Your Mom’s right.”

“But all my friends wear sneakers! It’s a field trip!”

“So?” said his mother. “Charlie Snyder happens to wear sandals, instead.”

He got dropped off at school, got a name tag, boarded a bus, arrived at the Natural History museum. Whistles were blown to get the kids to re-congregate before the buses after the lazarium. Everyone boarded. After the trip, he exited the bus, came home, went to his room, and realized his toys were hostages not in their natural habitat. He left his house, walked across the street, to the neighbor’s, ascended a porch step, onto a furry mat upon whose negative-space was carved “WELCOME FRIENDS,” then rapped on a door. The door swung open. “Oh! Como estas, Charlie?” “Bien, gracias.” He heard scurrying footsteps. He peeked through a parted door. Etienne, who looked like an Aztec/young Paul-McCartney, stomped down the staircase, leapt off the last three steps.

“What’s up, Charlie? I finally cleared it. Wanna play video games or Fort?”

Charlie looked at the shadowy hillock---adjacent to a copious, dark patch of land directly to the right-yard of the house. The front door shut.

“What’s grosser than gross?” said Etienne.

“What?” said Charlie, smiling.

“When you’re kissing your Grandma and she slips you the tongue.”

“Awww.” The boys chuckled.

“How do you embarrass an archeologist?” said Charlie.

“How?” said Etienne.

“Give him a used tampon---then ask him which period it came from.”

Etienne laughed. “Why did Helen Keller's dog jump off a cliff and kill itself?”

Each struck their left breasts with maimed hands, then said it in unison:

“You would too if your name was neh-tuddah-med-ah.”

The boys giggled.

From Etienne, he learned about wildebeests and three-toed sloths, how to kill Daddy-longlegs spiders and never look back. From the group of kids from the rock-war, they created a splintering faction. One afternoon, their troop was late for dinner. They walked to school, ambushed a dark merry-go-around and dark tetherball courts, climbed up on the railing of the walk-ramp of a bungalow---part of complex of transition buildings for the part of their school that seceded (where separate kids, in separate classrooms, awaited for their official buildings to be constructed---and kid’s fates were suspended, in the cold dead hands of the school district). “Charlie, now go, it’s your turn. Come on---what are you waiting for?” After Etienne climbed up onto the roof, Charlie and two other boys, followed suit. After one of them leaped over, cleared the distance between two roofs with a running start, ended up on a neighboring roof, everyone else had to prove to the rest they were not afraid, even though they all had already risked being grounded for the dinner they missed. They walked home, together, satisfied, stronger, uttered the Japanese they had learned: “Sayonara” for goodbye. Everyone was sure that real commandos not only had to be tough, they also had to stay informed. Charlie expressed he did not know where Guam was, though was told it was part of U.S. Territory: a tiny island, south of Hawaii, which was a military base during World War, Part II. The conversation switched from geography to science. When Charlie asked Etienne who invented the radio, he was told it was Marconi, yet Charlie did not believe him, for his father told him it was Tesla.

Back at their fort, after dinner, Etienne picked up a loose branch, pitched it next to him like a shepherd’s crook, as if turning himself into a momentary sorcerer.

“That’s not what the Encyclopedia says. I read it was Marconi---an Italian.”

Charlie said nothing. When he realized there was no way to fight with someone who had proof in a book, he walked home---anticipating another field trip, in which he would learn more stuff outside of class.

#

And so, they found themselves within the illustrious fort that they had built: whose drooping tarps clung to darkened shrubbery of gangly branches as a roof and perimeter that encased them in a hovel at the foot of a massive pine. Having sneaked supplies from base---blankets, cushions, water-rifles, sandwiches stuffed into cookie-boxes, which they considered rations---they tended to their fort, prepared to stop anyone from invading it.

Slinking under pine-needles that pricked, swished against, and raked their shoulders as they moved through the shadows, they crawled on their hands and knees, breathed in the tang of noxious sap that dribbled down the trunk of the gargantuan pine, which jutted up, far above the house, tripling the house in height, so an initiated climber standing on a partly sturdy, partly sagging branch---near the peak---could see entire neighborhoods, satellite dishes on homes, and the wooden chaffs and marble-cradles thatching multitudes of roofs. One day after school, Charlie stood on such a branch.

“See! I told you. It’s like being God, huh?!” said Etienne.

“What?!”

“It said its like being God, right?!”

“Yeah! I know! I can even see Costa Mesa!”

Everything in the world was optional---a visual palette. Charlie could see what he wanted to see: if he closed one eye, half the neighborhood disappeared. If he closed both eyes, all that was left was the Christmas odor of the tree and sound. Bike chains daintily grappled onto and clicked onto rotating gears; skateboard wheels scraped concrete while kids ollied over and up curbs; the chiming jingle of the ice-cream trunk that made rounds through their neighborhood could be heard in the distance. And when he opened up both of his eyes he could see the scrolling freeway, the high-rise buildings clad in shimmering windows, dots of joggers running towards the beach.

He was about to climb down, through the tree, when he looked beyond his house, at a parallel street, and saw Birdman climbing onto his own roof, doing his daily ritual.

“Guess who’s standing on his roof?!” Charlie called down. “He’s wearing the cape! He’s even got the bucket!”

“Don’t look at him,” said Etienne. “You’ll turn to stone like the Kraken!”

“What?! Hey! Are you going to fly now or what!”

“Shut up, dude! Climb down!”

Charlie looked down the tree. “What?”

“Just climb down!” said Etienne.

“What? Why? Why are you so nervous?”

Charlie started climbing down the tree, having forgotten about their neighbor.

#

Birdman was a slender boy with a bowl-cut, and looked like a Roman eunuch or a space-cadet from Logan’s run. He was always alone, walking around with a Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucket filled with half-constructed and half-deconstructed Transformers and dismembered G.I. Joe’s. Pale, ridden with moles, blue-eyed, with blonde eyelashes, he wore shoes that looked galoshes. Two kids from their sixth grade class---who hated Birdman, who accused him of eating boogers, fucking his sister, stealing a box of veal patties from the cafeteria and micro-waving them so that he could use them as bait to fish in a man-made lake not far from the junior high school---suggested Birdman was trying to launch himself and his energy from the landing pad of his roof, so as to get to the stars, because he had already contacted the Xeti Reticuli, and was planning a sneak attack on their school and the neighborhood, wherein tons of ooze would flow through the streets and carry off their brothers and sisters in a massive flow of alien sewage. Before he descended the tree, Charlie took one final look at Birdman, on his roof, who did that every day, set up his shop there. After school the next day, Birdman walked his bike, in oversized Velcro shoes, down a winding road, with a lanky waddle, passed all the ruffians encamped by parked paddle-boats, in a shadow, at the man-made lagoon. All four of them, chewing Top Chewing Gum, knew there was little they could to phase him. “Where you going, dork? Can’t ride your bike without your Mommie?” The red-faced fat boy in their troop spit a loogie on the concrete in front of Birdman’s feet. Birdman, in brown turtleneck, looked back at them, said nothing, scurried away, lead his bike down a winding trail that was laden with leaves, and looked back only once, in a flurry, then disappeared. The clan hurried back to their fort.

“‘Nasty Nick’ is ‘Evil Eddie’’s double,” said Charlie. “Take ‘Junk-food John.’”

“Fuck that,” said Etienne. “It matches my ‘Ray Decay.’”

“Yeah, right! You bought the whole box!”

“Yeah, it belongs to my cousin’s. He’s letting me look at it.”

“Dude, why you such a liar? I saw your Mom buying it for you.”

“Yeah, and she got it from the ice-cream man.”

“I bet your Mom did get it from the ice-cream man.”

“I’m telling you. It’s a different series!”

“No, its not, it’s the same one. You’re a liar.”

“Better than being an Indian giver.”

“I’m not an Indian giver. I told you, I’m still giving you ‘Junkfood John.’”

“Then give me Dead Ted as an early birthday gift.”

“Dude, your birthday was like four months ago!”

Charlie considered “Dead Ted,” an illuminated chubby-cheeked infant jutting up from the grave, a card within his trading card collection of vulgar stickers. He never laminated them, was not interested in keeping them shiny. He would remove the chewing gum that was laced in a saccharine-powder from the pack in a hurry because he was thrilled to read a clever name in an oval border, see the picture of the card. Under pine-needles---sitting on a patch of soil, near the trunk of the tree, with rollie-pollies (sow bugs) and crawling ants---he was unable to convey how, if there was anything to be nervous about was that Bird-Man might discover their fort and steal their card collections.

“Look at him, he’s wearing a cape.”

They both watched while Birdman walked across the street, across their field of view. “He thinks he’s a superhero,” said Etienne. “This isn’t Justice League of America!”

“He’s going to take them. I know he is!”

“Shhh. How do you know? Birdman’s scared. He can’t do anything.”

“Just because he’s a loser, doesn’t mean can’t. He collects them, doesn’t he?”

Yet Birdman never came to their fort. Instead he stayed on his side of the street, threatening them with his foreboding presence.

#

“Birdman fucks his sister?”

“What do you mean---he fucks his sister?”

“Shut up---he’s standing there right now.”

From the peak of lunch break at school, rumors about Birdman increased, slid down from kid’s lips and tumbled like avalanches home. They looked up one afternoon, and Birdman was there: holding two buffalo chicken wings in his cupped palms, as if he were a balance, on the roof, glistening. They ran to their fort for their fluorescent squirt-rifles, armed themselves with water in the kitchen, staked out the neighborhood by the sloping muddy mass by their tree, getting shoes sludged for their counter-ambush. Yet the real ambush was launched by a platoon of other commandos, not them, a month later. The classroom was reduced to twelve or so, mostly due to chicken-pox. Birdman stayed home longer than usual. They thought since he was the first to get the scratching ailment, he gave it to them; so, when the classroom returned to full capacity, Birdman was given wedgies by the dodge-players at recess, was called sissie by the gangly girls while they walked to lunch, was stuffed into a whirling toilet bowl by the rock-war kids when he was excused to go to the bathroom. After he returned, he was asked by the teacher---who did not know what was going on---to sit in the corner with a newspaper-hat for time out (after refusing to solve word problems during math). With his back turned, Birdman looked back at the class with no visible emotion on his face. And then he disappeared for a week. No one talked about Birdman; some wondered if he left school because of the rumors. Then one morning, Charlie was walking to school and saw him on his roof.

“Hey, aren’t you going to school anymore? Aren’t you still in our class?”

Birdman, sniffling, looked down; he was sitting on the slope of the roof, crying, with his held knees close to his chest. His face was pink and red; his hair was matted. All the cars that were parked in their neighborhood at night were not there.

Charlie wanted to say something, though did not. He continued to walk through the park. Sneakers swished upon lawn dew. Anticipating the field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits, he scampered along the sidewalk parallel with foliage, vines, leaves, and stipules that curled over the yards of neighborhood homes. Kids congregated in the cold oblique playground introgression in front of their classroom, with knapsacks, baseball caps and visors. Their frazzled principal showed up. The trip was cancelled. “What? Why?” someone asked. “You mean we’re not going?” “I need everyone to follow directions, okay? There’s been an emergency. Mrs. Barker is meeting with some parents now and you’re getting a substitute---yet we’re waiting for the school board. Just do what I ask and everything will be fine. We’re going to take the trip another time. Has everyone gone to the bathroom? I’m with you for a while, okay?”

Everyone shuffled into class without any books, with expressions of hurt and concern, unsure of why the trip did not happen. Charlie heard fire-engine sirens blaring during the first hour of school, listened to the rise and fall, the scouring the fabric of space-time, its squeals, as if heard it all before: all the words of the principal, and the substitute, that day. There was a calm back home. No one was home. Charlie went up to his room, played Nintendo for hours, staring at the screen: at the glowing ships; at the controlled soldier hurling over bulwarks and mines and boulders. He unplugged the controller, was about to plug in the gun, when his mother walked into his room, and asked him if he knew a boy named Scott. “Fovall?” He knew. Because Scott was Birdman and Birdman was not in school, and was rolled into class later that month, in a neck-brace and a metal halo, and had casts on his arms and did not speak. Neither the teacher, nor the kids, knew what to do with him; and, he stayed inside, during recess and lunch. Before everyone else, he was gone. Someone said he broke almost every bone in his body. And yet that wasn’t true. When Charlie came home, he asked why kids tried to kill themselves.

“You’re lucky. Do you understand? That this boy has an illness?”

“Because he’s sad? Because being sad’s an illness?”

“That’s right. Being sad’s an illness,” said his father, who looked down at his son, then over at his wife. They were in the library since their dinner, which was interrupted by a volley of parent-to-parent phone-calls.

“But you and Mom get sad sometimes.”

“Charlie, honey---we get sad because we work so much. You can’t get sick from someone who is sad----that’s what Papa is trying to tell you.”

“So it’s not like chicken-pox?”

“No,” said his father, who got up off the chair. He announced he had to pick up Charlie’s baby-sister from Church wherein the day-care was; that in doing so---driving there, getting groceries---tomatoes, bread, chickpeas, kidney beans, milk, eggs, chicken breasts (en route with a toddler in the shopping cart, in the child chair)---was the task in front of him, which Charlie inferred had to do with what was good; which was related to carrying on with homework, related to focusing on what the teacher had to say in class; related to staying informed and learning about the world, which left Charlie with an empty feeling in his heart when he left the library, went to his room, because it seemed all questions about doing right had been answered.

#

Yet before Charlie knew it, sixth grade came and went. Everything changed: Etienne moved away prior to junior high, prior to their commando faction storming the exhibits at the La Brea Tar-pits; prior to them going to the Natural History Museum where they studied the skeletons of the primitive beasts. Yes, it was the summer before junior high that Charlie realized that their tree and fort no longer belonged to them---even at night, that 4th of July, as he watched firecrackers spin, on the concrete, in front of his house: watched the held-up thin metal antennae of sparklers sizzling, while white fountains of light sprayed; and, the smoky smell of gun-powder infiltrated the neighborhood; as all packed up the trash from the boxes, disposed of them, while an owl, hooed and whooed; and spread its wings, then launched off a tree branch, filling the streets with its echo.

For Charlie passed on to junior high and things got pragmatic; during the second week of class he was issued shorts and dual-colored reversible shirt as his uniform for Physical Education, wherein he was taught to stretch, commanded to run a mandatory mile, coaxed into playing football and soccer. Whiskers, he noticed, like grains of dirt had materialized on some 8th grade chins. He felt like a failure standing in front of a cold locker---that musty polygon, while sliding on his civilian clothes. Everyone had grown in height since summer; there were boys much taller than he. Still lanky, Birdman was one of the tallest and walked, with drooping shoulders, through the hallways. Everyone could not find their classes at first. “Where are you going? Over there. Room 242.” “I don’t get it. It’s the wrong building.” After lunch, Charlie came to the conclusion that Birdman was weak for the controversies that had grown about him had matured. Charlie, trying to be nice, however, walked up to him one day to ask him if he had the double for one of his Garbage Pail Kids; yet, Birdman looked at him with stoic disgust, devoured his lunch quickly so as to shock him, then left with his backpack held over his head, as if it were going to rain, though there was no clouds---certainly not when Charlie made his way down to the bike-racks, where throngs of hoodied children were unlocking bikes, already walking or riding them through the passageway that led to the winding path that led passed the lake, through the school, to the bridge upon which everyone fought at, pretending to win, in front of their friends, wanting to be known for something.

Then one day in eighth grade, Charlie and his animal-loving sister were dropped off at the community pool. He walked with a bundled towel in his arms, in flip-flops, unlocked the pool gate, walked along the perimeter of the pool with his sister who, like a mermaid guppy, in a matter of time, jumped into the shallow end. After ten minutes of swimming, Charlie realized that Birdman was there. “Marco.” “Polo.” “Fish out of water, ” someone cried. He looked at his sister floating on her back at the shallow end, getting ready to do underwater somersaults whilst Birdman dunked himself into the water, plugging his nose, across from her, on the same side of the pool. It was if there was an invisible roof over the facility---a bio-sphere in which the echoes could be heard: splashing, rise, or dip of every breaststroke. He saw Birdman dunking himself, testing himself to see how long he could hold his breath, watched him rub the sting of chlorine from his eyes, watched him peer at his sister in between breath tests, then at him, to see if he noticed he was there. Charlie glared at him. Birdman was wet, weak, thought Charlie. Stay away. Don’t look at us. What’s he doing? He saw Birdman was getting closer to his sister; he was hopping towards her, with arms outstretched, cubically, at his sides, like a forklift, bouncing, bouncing. Perhaps, he was trying to get her, thought Charlie.

He swam over to the shallow end, guided himself through the water, within the water, along a wave of ripples, planted his feet on the concrete, bounced on his tip-toes with arms free above the surface of the swishing pool. “What?” he said, with the meanest face he could make. Birdman said nothing, looked back at him, confused. “What are you looking at? She’s seven years old. All right? I’m talking to you. Are you deaf?”

Birdman swam into the corner of the shallow end, looked back at the accuser, glanced at the sister in question, dunked himself into the water, again, arose, in a burst, with snot and water coming through his nose. He peered over at Charlie.

Charlie thought he could teach him a lesson like the dodge-ball players in grade school. By the barbecues, zebra-planes of light and shadow produced by the gazebo were strewn upon empty picnic benches while Charlie watched Birdman lift himself up, with both hands, onto the grooved edge of the pool, shoot upward, hoist himself over the edge, then with sopping shorts, walk to the Jacuzzi with a trail of drips following his steps. Few people were there, yet in Charlie’s mind it was magnified. He considered how poor of a swimmer he himself was; how weak he was for not being particularly quick. He started swimming towards the edge, palms, dipping into the water in perfect formation, in a sprint, to prove to himself he could swim well. He started walking through the water.

“Are you all right,” he called out to his sister. “Dad’s going to pick us up.”

“Yeah, why?” said his sister.

He said nothing, though looked at Birdman soaking in the Jacuzzi.

“I don’t want to leave. I want to swim more.”

“We have to eat dinner. We’re going right now.”

“Why? We just got here. Why can’t we stay?”

Charlie saw a clan-line of bicycles, on the side-walk, zipping passed the gated bars, of the pool, beneath the shade of shivering elms. He thought about being in 8th grade, saw how still and mute the pool was, and them, only the kids left. It was disgusting to him to think Birdman could kiss or fuck his own sister or do what he was accused of doing in grade-school. Stories spread about him for a reason. When he saw Birdman dry himself off with a towel and look over at his sister, who was separated from Birdman, in another body of water than Birdman, who was lounging in the Jacuzzi, he felt satisfied with the boundary and saw justice in the separation. “We’re leaving. Get out of the pool. That’s it.” Minutes stacked upon themselves; and, he shook the pool keys out, wrapped up in a towel at the waist, with his Def Lepard T-shirt on, and was about to lead his sister away from the quagmire of Birdman’s legacy, to spare her the news that Birdman existed. Yet he would be leaving with an unanswered question. “Where’s your brother?” some kid cried. Charlie got distracted, thinking why Birdman jumped from his roof. There was something wrong with him. He was a dork. So Charlie told his sister to wait; and they sat on the lawn-chair, near the gate that lead to the sidewalk and street, beyond the pool; and he looked at the on-coming traffic chug passed---kids on bikes and skateboards.

“Why are we waiting so long,” his sister asked. “I thought you said. . . .”

Charlie looked at his sister. “Just wait---all right? In a second, we’re leaving.”

They sat next to one another, sodden with pool water on a fold-out lawn chair, waiting for Birdman to leave the Jacuzzi. A few minutes passed. Birdman got out of the Jacuzzi, got his things, stuck his feet into flip-flops, then walked towards them.

Charlie stood up. “You cannot pass---.”

Birdman said nothing.

Charlie walked up to him, tried to snatch the keys from Birdman’s hands.

“Hey! Hey!”

Keys jingled; a tug-of-war; both relented.

“You can’t go through. You’re not going through unless I say so,” said Charlie.

It was as if there were a silence in heaven for an hour, yet only minutes passed on earth; Birdman managed to retrieve a grip on the keys; he walked to the gate. Charlie flung back, looked at Birdman as if Birdman were wearing snow-shoes instead of flip-flops. “Where you think you’re going? Do you know? You’re disgusting.”

Charlie ran up to his face before the creaking gate. He let Birdman walk through.

A patch of grass, beneath the shade of a tree, awaited the three of them; they all passed through; Charlie was about to lead his sister in the opposite direction, seeing Birdman was walking towards the junior high football field, for he seemed to hang-out near it.

“Wait! All right? I have to do something.”

Charlie walked towards Birdman, who was ready to cross from the lawn where dry crisp autumn leaves, below a tree. He stomped towards him---grass shuffling---picked up a fallen branch from tree, flung it upright, turned it into a hooked and makeshift scimitar, then ran up to Birdman, whose back was turned, smacked him over the shoulder. “Wait!” He smacked him. “Wait!” Birdman flinched and turned around, tried to swipe the sword from Charlie’s hand. A jolt ran through Charlie; a hatred accompanied the shadows of the tree and the leaves, where birds and bugs and squirrels roosted. He hit Birdman for he did unspeakable things; he would never return to school; he whipped him; trying to defend the dignity of his sister and all sisters anywhere; for there would be a reckoning that day; and the boys at school and all of those who cared would know he was fighting for the sake of all of them; there was evil in their amidst; and, no matter if Birdman knew all the names of the dinosaurs, or ate lunch in the quad by himself to avoid contact with those who did not understand why he jumped from the roof in grade school, it was not good of him to make them feel what they felt whenever they saw him, whispering, as he walked through hallways, in a bulky backpack, with squinty eyes. “You fuck your sister? Are you sick?” He hit him with the branch. Birdman fell to his knees. Blood etched into his forehead; a streak of red, he looked up at him, breathing heavily, pouting, heaving; shoulders slouching, upward, downward. He felt no mercy; for Birdman did not play like they played; he did not speak as they spoke; he was alone and weary; his parents were not good and he was not good; and it would be better for all of them if Birdman did not exist; so he hit him: whipping a boy who did not cry out; who did not react, and this provoked him to hit harder, until he would break his spirit.

Birdman, lifted one arm up. “Please, stop! I’m sorry! Please!”

And Charlie told him, to run and never return, which he took care to say with perfect pronunciation---never. He watched Birdman get up; he looked at his face. A bubble of snot, like a balloon, blew up, then burst in his nostrils. He was not expressionless; his lower jaw quaked, jittered up; he wept, without shedding tears; so, Charlie hit him with the whip, hating him for being able to feel; wondering why blood did not gush from him like in a movie, why the neighborhood was not there to see what he was doing. Yet all that was heard were whirling smacks and ‘I’m sorry!’ even as Birdman ran away. . . . .

#

There would be legends in the hallways in high school: about who knew whom and who did what. In the library, Charlie sometimes overheard conversations about gadgets and technology. Sometimes he would hear it in passing: “Remember that kid who tried to jump from his roof?” “Didn’t he get wrap an extension cord around the chimney and his waist---then fall?” “He was hanging upside down. I thought he was trying to fly.” Sometimes he would hear it while eating with friends at lunch. “Remember Birdman? What ever happened to that guy?” All of them were fictions. All of them had a stake. They were all initiated into the horrors of high-school. Surely, that was the end of it; yet life was only beginning; and one day, Charlie got grounded and was not allowed to play with bad kids, so he got dropped off at the movie theatre and the film was over; and, he walked to Ray’s Pizza, played pinball, ate, slurped up a Coke, found himself under an umbrella, at a patio chair, by Golden Spoon, and was approached by two evangelists from Mariner’s Church. “Do you know the word of God?” “A little,” he said. “The Bible?” They talked by a metal mausoleum-like wall of pigeon-hole P.O. boxes and something gripped his heart. And in a half-hour’s time he was standing before the evangelists, eyes-closed, head bowed, with their arms and hands hovering over his aura, in prayer. “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” They talked about blood of Christ, the washing away of sins; he stood there swimming in the rivulets of his thoughts, thinking about what some god, some Heavenly Father, what some universe was trying to tell him. “Dear Lord, we pray you protect our brother, Charlie, here; guide him, draw him closer to You, bless him, so he may know your will for him, to do your work, as he walks with you, in times of light and in times of darkness---in Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.”

Amen it was.

For years, he forgot about what he did to the boy associated with the birds. He carried on: challenging those in youth group; telling them before he left for college; at a youth group event, how striking someone down in anger was not something Jesus would do and he took his faith with him to college, met a girl, fell in love, sired a son; got a degree; got a job, was hired as an engineer to work for the city; felt content with the good life, though always wondered when judgement was coming, always prayed and wondered when the rapture would come; how one day the Lord would appear, in a flash, then take all the Christians up, while the unbelieving world would suffer plague-ridden doom. He read doom-story after doom-story, conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, only to grow frustrated with the society he lived in, wondering when the saved would be free.

And so he bought a Winnebago one day, sold the house and was packing. The house was almost all in boxes. Birds had attacked the trash; it wasn’t a big deal; there was nothing that could be done about it, except clean up.

“Jeremiah! We’re leaving! Where’s you brother?!”

“I don’t know. We have to pick him up! He’s at Matt’s!” said his youngest.

And they all got in: searching for their son and their brother before they left---rolling into intersections quickly, red-light to red-light, then got to the gas station, then filled up their tank; and, when Charlie got back into the Winnebago he saw his family cozy and Jeremiah playing video games, and his eldest, finally found, finally asleep, sprawled out on the couch. He realized how it made him feel blessed: that the world could fall to shit, yet he and his family would win salvation. And the Winnebago made its way to through the city that night, rolled passed a school and its flickering neon sign. And he could still see a boy standing there defiantly, in the grass, in the center of a football field with laps being done by a platoon of invisible children. Birds were harvesting in the clouds. He shifted gears, looked into a rear-view mirror, at a mobile force he could control: thought of Phone Tooths, Birth Control patches, the genome mapping, the harvesting of organs to replenish withering cells, recyclable sewage, electromagnetic cars speeding down grids, pyres of corkscrew buildings resplendent with light. Cloaks of invisibility. He could see First Contact made, treaties signed, treaties betrayed, riots, revolutions, climatic changes unfurling in heat, ice, in plate tectonics of doom. Progress. Innovations.

Yet beyond all the hydrocarbon, marl, granite, and stone, he could never forget the boy he pretended to hate---so he could be master, to rid the city of strange flying dreams. He drove along the coast, through sunrise; seagulls dissolved from a majestic migrating V, returned to the playground, onto the track, where Birdman still stood the field---with outstretched arms. High-powered winds whipped; snow-flecks hurled; sleet and ocean water cast elemental traces of the earth on his emotionless face---he was enduring it, with chattering teeth, shivering for centuries, nay, a millennium more. Machines implanted into the human body gave rise to wars unforeseen. Roving tanks shook with the change of seasons. And earthquakes could devour earth. Beasts could rise from the seas. People could flee to hills, to caves, live on purification tablets dissolved in water. And the boy would remain, ready to fly, while they inherited the wind.