Birdy (2 page)

The witch is in and out. Sometimes she’s gone three, four days at a time. Even though she’s making us all that money, I wish she
won’t come back some time. She gives me the willies. I don’t like the way Birdy is with her, either. They’re creepy together, especially when he’s wearing that stupid pigeon costume.

I take another peek up and down the corridor. For a loony bin, it’s awful quiet. Most rooms have double doors. The outside door only has a small glass window so you can look in at the crazies; the inside door has bars. I’m sitting in the space between the two doors.

It’s a lot better looking hospital here than the one at Dix. I’m in plastic surgery there and everybody’s in and out all the time. We have to wait two, three weeks, sometimes a month, between operations. We’re not sick so they let us out while we’re waiting. I’m heading home between operations; big hero in the hoagie shop. They tell me one more will do it; but I’ll never be able to grow a beard on that part. Who the hell wants to grow a beard anyhow?

I have a feeling for a minute there I got to him, just the way his fingers unfold and fold again. He really could be putting this whole thing on. What the hell, it’s no sense bucking for section eight. They’re letting everybody out anyway.

That corny used to parade back and forth in front of Birdy, cooing low and shimmying down her back the way a pigeon hen does when she wants a cock to jump her. She’s flirting with him, the witch. When Birdy’s spread some feed on the floor, she doesn’t go down and hustle with the others; oh no, she flies over on Birdy’s hand and gets him to feed her. She makes all the same moves a hen makes when she gets fed by a cock. Birdy even puts some grains between his lips and she picks them out. Christ, sometimes I used to think Birdy actually thought he was a pigeon.

I want to see if I can remind Birdy of when we went on the treasure hunt. This was after the gas tank and after they made us break up the loft. We’d already graduated from elementary school and Birdy was going to a Catholic school. I’m going to Upper Merion, the public school. My parents are Catholic too, but they’re Italian Catholics and don’t go to church much. Birdy’s old man and old lady are big for mass and all that crap.

Anyway, I have to write a story for my English class and since I have practically no imagination, I decide to work this gag on Birdy and write it up just the way it happens. We’re reading ‘The Gold Bug’ in class and maybe it gave me the idea.

I came over to Birdy’s place with the map. I’d spent almost a week making it and getting everything else ready. I have it all browned with fire and burnt on the edges. Christ, it’s a masterpiece. It’s all in code and we figure it out in Birdy’s room. We move a model for one of Birdy’s crazy birds off his desk so we can spread out the map. It’s raining that day.

Birdy’s always making bird models. He makes them with balsa wood and paper the way you make a model airplane, only his are bird designs with rubber-band power to make the wings flap up and down. Some of them are complicated, with wings that rotate so they twist vertically on the up stroke and horizontally on the down. He’s actually gotten some of them to fly. Trouble is, none of them fly as far as a regular model airplane; it takes too much rubber-band time to flap the wings for any kind of long flight.

The message part has all kinds of complicated directions, like from this tree to that rock, all that treasure map talk. It leads us to a wall where we’re supposed to find another message. Birdy eats it up; Christ, he’ll believe anything. He’s talking about how he’s going to build a giant aviary with his money. I almost give away the whole thing; I don’t want to hurt Birdy, I’m just having a joke and getting my English homework done.

We go down that night. It’s raining like hell. I try getting Birdy to postpone but nothing can stop him. He believes things so hard he’s getting me to believe; I almost expect to actually find some treasure myself.

We tromp around in the dark, sopping wet, no flashlights. Birdy’s leading me to a treasure I didn’t put there. We do find the old tobacco can where I hid the second message; it’s shoved between stones of the Cosgrove ruin, beside where the fireplace used to be. Birdy slips it into his pocket and we hightail out of there and run all the way back to his house. We go in through the cellar so nobody’ll see us. Birdy’s a little runt but he runs like the wind.

We sneak back up to his room again and spread out the new map. I’ve used the same code and burnt off a part of the writing but left enough for us to figure out it’s a treasure map. There’s an X to mark the spot. Birdy wants to go straight out again. I talk him into going the next night. We need proper tools and stuff. I’m wishing I’d never started the whole damned thing. I’m sorry I don’t have some kind of treasure to bury for Birdy to find.

The treasure is supposed to be buried at the north-east corner of the old barn ruin. This is all said in treasure talk again so we have to figure it out. I help Birdy over some hard parts but he gets most of it himself. He deserves a treasure all right.

We agree to get together after supper when it’s dark. I have no trouble getting out, but Birdy has a fancy plan with a dummy in his bed and a way to lock his door from inside. He could probably just say he was coming over to my place but he’s deep into the treasure business. The Tom Sawyer of Upper Merion.

We have a shovel and he has a compass and a string and I
bring along my twenty-two just in case. Naturally, it’s started raining again. Didn’t rain all day but now it’s pouring. It’s a thick, dark night. We go across center field, down the hill behind the flagpole and along the path leading to the Cosgrove barn. It’s late fall, past my birthday, so there isn’t much grass or bushes. Summer, you can hardly get into this part; wouldn’t even know the old walls are there.

I didn’t come down here when I made the map. I just made up the spot, ‘north-east corner of barn’. It runs out, with a compass, there
is
a north-east corner. Turns out, eerily, that there’s a slight depression in the ground right where the X should be. I’m ready to dig for gold myself. Maybe I’m getting messages from the other world. Maybe old man Cosgrove’s been getting through to me. Everybody always says Cosgrove buried his money. For years people used to dig around here hoping to find some of it.

We start digging, taking turns every five minutes. I’m torn between laughing my balls off and shitting my pants. Birdy’s dead serious, checking my watch to see I don’t get more’n my share of digging. He’s digging when he hits something. ‘That’s it!’ he says. I’m turning green. What if there is a treasure; it’s too spooky. He digs like mad, clears a corner of something made out of metal. I start digging on my turn and turn it up finally. It’s an old can of motor oil. I laugh; I figure now’s the time to tell him. I’m mud up to my ass and wet. We’re getting into clay and it’s slippery. Digging in the dark when you can’t even see the rocks you clink against is no fun.

‘There isn’t any treasure, Birdy, I made the whole thing up.’

He takes the shovel and starts digging again.

‘Christ, no sense digging anymore, Birdy, there isn’t any treasure here! I made up the map and everything. I did it as a school project.’

Birdy keeps on digging.

‘Aw, come on, Birdy. Let’s go home and get dry.’

Birdy stops, looks over at me. Then he says he knows the treasure is here and we shouldn’t give up. It’s got to be here and I only think I made up the map. That’s too much. I tell him he’s
crazy and I’m leaving. He keeps digging. I stand around another five minutes, then take off. He’s still digging madly, not saying anything.

I don’t see Birdy for another two or three days. I decide not to write about the treasure hunt for school. I go down to where we’d been digging and there’s a hole at least six feet deep, deep as a grave. I don’t know how the hell Birdy got out of the hole when he was finished.

When I finally do see Birdy again, we don’t talk about the treasure hunt at first. A few days later, Birdy says he figures somebody got to it before us; that’s why the ground was sunk in like that. He still won’t believe I made it all up; even when I tell him how I did it. He only gives me one of his crazy eye-wiggling looks.

We get such a good business going, selling pigeons, we decide to go out and get some birds ourselves. That’s what we were doing up on the gas tank that night. It’s a big storage tank at Marshall Road and Long Lane. This is a place where several different flocks of pigeons roost and nest.

Damn; he’s not paying any attention to me at all.

Crazy ass thing to say; anybody hear me, they’d lock me up too. Anyway, Birdy’s not afraid of things people are supposed to
be afraid of. No way you can make him do something he doesn’t want. No way to hurt him; like he just doesn’t feel anything he doesn’t want to. Typical of what I mean is the way I met Birdy.

Mario, my kid brother, comes in and tells me this freak down at the Cosgrove place took his knife. I ask him where he got the knife; he tells me he found it. I figure he stole it but I’m always looking for fights anyway. I’m naturally strong and I’ve already started lifting weights; have my own miniature gym down in the cellar. I’m walking around squeezing spring things to increase my grip; reading
Strength and Health
; York, Pennsylvania, is a kind of Mecca for me. I start all this crap when I’m only about eleven – probably because the old man used to beat me up so much. Anyway, I’ve got all this strength and I want to try it out with fights.

I’m just starting these crazy ideas when Mario tells me about Birdy taking his knife. I’m thirteen. Birdy must be all of twelve. I see us in my mind as older, not as little punks like that.

I go down and walk across the ball field. I’m wearing my new brown leather jacket and Mario’s tagging along behind me. He shows me the place. I lean over the gate in the wall and Birdy’s sitting on the steps of his back porch cleaning off the knife. I tell him to come over. He comes with a look on his face as if he’s glad to meet me.

I tell him to give me the knife. He says it’s his; says he bought it from a kid named Zigenfus. He tells me I can check with this Zigenfus if I want. I ask him to let me see the knife. He gives it to me. We’re talking over the wooden gate in the wall to his house. It’s the wall of the baseball field.

I see right away this is a really good knife, a switchblade. I try to work it. Tricky kind of catch and spring; seems to be broken. Birdy reaches over to show me how it works. I pull the knife
away and tell him to keep his crummy hands off
my
knife. He looks at me with his wiggly eyes as if I’m nuts. I turn and start walking away with Mario. He opens the gate and comes after us. We keep walking. He gets in front of us, walking backwards, and asks for his knife. I stop. I hold it up. ‘This knife?’ I say. ‘Try and take it.’ He reaches for the knife. I’m holding it up in my left hand so I can give him a good one with the right. Somehow I miss, and he gets hold of the knife. I snatch the knife out of his hand. I hold it up and he reaches again. I swing and miss again. His head is right there, but by the time my fist gets to that place, he’s gone. I swear he moves after I start the punch. I put the knife in my pocket so I can use both hands; I figure I’m really going to massacre this fool. He keeps reaching for the pocket. He’s always there and I keep swinging but can’t hit him. I start trying to set him up. Nothing doing; it’s like I’m doing everything in slow motion and he’s at full speed. He’s not doing anything like bobbing and weaving; he just moves away from the place I hit at, the way you’d step from in front of a car.

I decide to grab him. If I have to, I’ll put him on the ground where he can’t move, then clobber him. Mario’s not saying anything. Next time Birdy reaches in for the knife, I step forward and get a good headlock on him. I bend to throw him over my leg and he’s gone. The feeling is exactly the way it feels when a snake slips out of your hand. He squirmed or vibrated.

I try everything. I try tackling him. I try getting him in a bear hug. I try another headlock. Nothing holds him.

Later, when Birdy switches to old U.M. High, I want him to go out for wrestling but he won’t do it. The only exception is one time when we have an intramural competition and there’s nobody to wrestle against Vogel at a hundred thirty-five. Vogel is district champ; Birdy says he’ll suit up to fill in.

The whole school is out to see the match; intramural sports are a big thing at U.M. At the opening of the first period, Vogel misses the takedown a couple times, then he dives at Birdy. Birdy steps aside and falls on Vogel for a takedown. Birdy can’t weigh more than one twenty-five soaking wet. Vogel’s getting mad. He
tries to roll. Birdy slips loose and lets Vogel roll alone onto his back. All Birdy has to do is flop on him, hold him down and he has a pin, or at least a near pin. Birdy stands up and smiles down at Vogel. Vogel scrambles for an escape. Birdy has two points for the takedown and Vogel one for the escape.