The WWII Collection. William Wharton
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.
Alfonso’s been too busy to do much singing, but now with Birdie on the new eggs and the babies feeding themselves, he begins again.
The first time, he sings lightly, up on the top perch. I’m doing my homework and it’s dark in the room. It’s great to hear him. He’s singing without passion, with a feeling of description, as if he’s trying to tell his children about the world outside the cage.
The next morning he sings just as I’m waking up. I lie in bed above him and try to hear what he’s saying. I know if I can only open myself to him, I’ll understand what canaries can tell me. I lie there with my eyes shut and try to be Alfonso, to feel as if it’s me singing. It is coming. I have some knowing, but I can’t put it into thoughts or words.
The little dark one, and the yellow one, the one I’d thought was a female, start making chirping bubbling noises along with Alfonso. This is a good sign that they’re males. After a few more days listening to Alfonso’s songs, all of them sing at one time or another. I can’t believe it’s possible but it looks as if the whole first nest is male.
At school, I carry in my mind the songs and notes Alfonso sings. There’s no way I can imitate them with my big throat and