It
was strange, how it happened that day, with the clouds becoming increasingly
darker, and the boys playing in the yard.
It was surreal, and I couldn’t imagine myself ever in a predicament as
such. Yet there I was, and there they
were, and no one else around.
The boys were playing with a bird
they had found. Well, not actually
playing with it but, rather, torturing it.
Yes, they were torturing a baby Robin they had found. It had fallen out of its nest, and was
hobbling along in the yard. Prior to
this, the boys had been jumping on the trampoline, arguing about who would jump
first and about who could spell “yellow” faster or some such argument, when the
bird fell out of the tree and they both noticed it at the same time because of
the way it had fallen. It sort of
jumped, helter skelter, from one low branch to the next until it landed on the
ground, like in those action films you see where the man falls out of a four
story building and bounces, rather luckily, from the third floor awning to the
second floor awning, to the first floor awning, and finally the ground, where
he gets up and runs, unscathed, away from his predator. It was like that. Totally unbelievable.
It was fun; I mean to say, they were
having fun, and I was watching it all from the kitchen window. I was washing dishes. Or maybe I was just standing there thinking
what to make for dinner. I don’t
remember. Either way, I was kind of lost
in the moment, standing there and thinking, wondering what it would be like to
be a boy again, to be young and running around and chasing a bird.
And then, all of a sudden, I began
to think that perhaps this thing they were doing, this chasing the baby bird
around and yelling at it and making fun of it, that it couldn’t yet fly, was
not fun anymore. At least not for the
bird. And I didn’t think it was all that
great, but I stood there still.
Watching.
They had trapped it in a corner, up
against the fence, and were standing there and laughing, pointing at it and
slapping each other on the back. I
couldn’t understand the slapping each other on the back – some male bonding
type of thing, some ritual rite of passage into male friendship, boyhood – but
either way, they were having the time of their lives there in the back yard, as
the baby bird, a Robin as I have said before, hopped back and forth and couldn't find a good chance to break free, to break past them. And I wondered if it knew what was happening
then; I began to wonder what it could possibly be thinking and if it could
think at all, and if it knew the potential danger it was probably in.
The boys closed in on the bird then,
and the sky was beginning to turn a metallic, shark gray. A clap of thunder rolled along the outer
edges of the horizon, and this made them jump and the bird jumped a little as
well. Something behind me made me turn,
I don’t quite remember what it was now, maybe a click from the oven that I had
pre-heating at the time, or a sound coming from behind the wall – a mouse,
perhaps – and I took my eyes off of the display of evil transpiring in the
backyard.
That must be when it happened. That must be when the baby bird took it’s
last breath and my son came running toward the house screaming my name and
sounding quite hysterical, quite unlike anything I had ever heard, or ever want
to hear again, for that matter.
His friend, Matthew Sharp, a friend
from kindergarten who lived down the street from us, was standing in the back
still, by the fence, near the gate that leads out to the pasture, with his back
to me, his back to the house, and I wondered what he had done. That was the first thing I wondered. What had he done?
I remember when I was about ten or
eleven, and standing in the Snowwhite’s driveway, hanging out. Maybe it was a Saturday, maybe it was summer,
but either way, it was a tenuous feeling, my being there, as these were my
enemies one week, my friends the next, something which was in short supply
during the years I was growing up.
Anyway, there was AC/DC on the
stereo and motorcycles up on stands in the garage, and cuss words flying out of
the mouths of every boy there except mine.
A frog had jumped from the grass onto the drive and Ben Snowwhite had
taken his boot-covered foot and stomped the life out of it, blood squirting out
from beneath the tread of the boot. And
they all laughed. Like crazed hyenas,
they all laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen, and Johnny,
Ben’s older brother, made some crack about how he’d like to see my brother’s
head under that boot, and I laughed too at that because if I didn’t, I likely
would have gotten the tar kicked out of me right then and there.
And this is
Matt. In the backyard, this is what Matt
is doing, laughing hysterically as he turns around with the twisted bird in his
hand and a wicked grin upon his face.
There is something like guts or blood running down his forearm and up
underneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. I
am still unclear as to what happened exactly, but I think it makes pretty good
sense to me now, and I quickly check the hands of my son, who has found his way
up the back porch steps and into my arms.
I check his hands for blood. This
is the first thing I do. He is still
crying hysterically and I know that this is not how he had intended for the
game to end up.
I am
afraid, suddenly. I am afraid of
approaching Matt and trying to speak to him.
I am afraid that all of my childhood fears about the Snowwhite’s and
about growing up without friends, and without a father to show me what it is
like to be a man, will come spilling from me - blood from a slit throat, a
twisted neck.
I am afraid that I will take my
anger out on this boy of five.
I fear that everything I say to him
will sound wrong.
I fear what he will think of me as
his friend’s dad, and that he will go home today and tell his father that his
friend cried and that only babies cry and that I was upset about a stupid bird
that was probably going to die anyway.
I hold my son and let him know that
everything will be okay, that the bird didn’t feel any pain, that Matt made a
mistake today by killing that bird, and that God will punish him one day for
being cruel to animals. This I don’t
know if I believe, and a whole flood of memories rushes back just then,
memories of the catholic church and of Father Harlan, and of Sunday mornings as
an altar boy, and of my ruined family, the one that did not stay together even
though they were catholic, and of the priest who touched me inappropriately
even though he was a catholic, and all of this and more that has happened to
me, all of this stuff that should never have happened because it wasn’t the
Catholic Way.
So I don’t know right now, as a
father of three, a married man of thirteen years, if I really believe that
everything is going to be all right; I don’t know if I really believe that
there is a god who will punish people for their earthly wrong-doings, for the
crimes they somehow get away with while enjoying their time here on earth. And I lump five-year old Matt into this category,
into this category of evil because of what he has done to the bird and for
laughing and thinking it funny; but even more so because of how he made my son
feel.
And I don’t know anything in this
moment, really, except that my son will be a good person, that he has feelings,
and that I am at least partially responsible for this. I clean Matt up, drive him to his home, leave
him with his father. We don’t say a word
to each other, where usually there is at least light conversation about the
weather, our jobs, our kids. It is
awkward, but all I want to do is get out of there; all I want is to forget, and
to bask in the glow of the knowledge that the past is the past.
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