The Man Who Loved Birds (22 page)

“You, for example, smoke
ganja
more than is good for your health, physical or mental.”

“When I want advice about my health, physical or mental, I’ll pay for it.”

“This taking of drugs is a question of escape. Wanting to escape suffering instead of confronting and engaging it.”

“But I aint suffering and I like a cold beer and a hit of pot as much as the next guy.”

Meena stopped in mid-stride. “I have to ask myself why I am doing this.”

“I been asking myself that selfsame question.” Johnny Faye kept walking. “I expect we’re both interested to find out the answer. Now just down this little creek we’ll come to the Rock House, big overhang that’s always dry underneath and with a little spring in the back. There’s a red-tail hawk that shows up, there’s a pasture left from an old farm just over the ridge, mousey heaven, he orders up his supper over there and then flies over here to chow down.” He turned around then. “You coming along or what? See, you just got to ask the right questions. You got to put yourself in the place of the bird—you got to be the bird instead of yourself. You got to look for the little things that hardly nobody sees except for the birds. They don’t miss a lick. All animals are curious. Except people.”

“Mr. Johnny Faye. Why do you suppose I am interested in all this chatter?”

“You’re here, aint you. If you ask me it has to do with getting closer to God.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Taking drugs.” He pointed skyward. “We don’t call it
getting high
for nothing. The problem is you get too close to God and you caint find your way back or you don’t want to, amounts to pretty much the same thing. I seen a lot of people lose their ways. I come
pretty close myself.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Look. Turn around, slow.”

She turned around and saw only the dark line of the water seep at the rear of the overhang. She turned to him. “You mean over there? Nothing. A waste of—”

A great flapping of wings so close to her head that she ducked. Johnny Faye placed his finger against her lips and then his hands over her ears and slowly turned her head toward the far end of the great overhang. “I don’t see—” And then she did see, the slate-blue bird grasping a faintly struggling smaller bird.

His voice at her ear. “I’ll be damn, it aint a redtail, no, this one’s a sharp-shin, a female, I’d say, they’re bigger. And she’s caught herself a goldfinch.”

The hawk began to pluck its prey, starting with the top of the head and working its way down to the breast. Turning its beak from one side to the other, the bird seized a mouthful of feathers, yanking them loose with a twist of the head. It devoured the smaller bird’s head, neck, wings, legs, feet, leaving a small pile of feathers. Then it turned to cleansing its talons, splaying its claws to grasp each in its beak, plucking them clean as if here indeed was the greatest delicacy.

They watched in silence. The light failed.

“I am telling you, you caint just
see
, you got to
look
. And you got to look for what’s there instead of what you want to find.
Especially
if what you want to find is nothing.”

“Please. I would like to return to the car.”

They turned to go. “You don’t have much stomach for killing?”

“I am trained to heal—to help people recover and to stay well. That is my focus.”

“You ever thought about healing yourself?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Neither do I but I like getting a rise out of you. That was the goal—that was the
objective
, like the U.S. Army taught me to say.”

“I
aint
the U.S. Army.”

“You could of fooled me.”

They moved down the path.

“But you still got to have a objective. Knowing what you’re looking for don’t mean you’ll find it but it sure improves the chances.”

She quickened her step to catch up with him, touching his swinging arm so that he turned around. “And what are you looking for? What is your
objective?”

She had been drawn to his dark eyes for their openness and transparency—now they grew narrowed and clouded with secrecy. “I don’t rightly like to say. You?”

“I am looking to immigrate. Since my first day at the Medical College I have thought of and worked for nothing else. No, that is not correct. I have thought of it since the day I saw my first American movie when I was ten years old, alone in a Calcutta cinema.”

He resumed the path. “You got to want something bigger than that. You got to want something that’s yours, not theirs. You go wanting something that’s theirs, that’s a sure ticket to hell. You got to want something they caint take away from you.”

Matthew Mark presented himself to her thoughts.

“My mother told me that we meditate at dusk or dawn because that is when good mixes with evil, light with dark. Everything is a part of the whole, including illness and death, that what we call good and evil are different sides of the same coin, dependent on each other. Night and day, life and death. And though we are to strive for the good we are also to know that our effort is part of a turning wheel too large to comprehend. Our job is to submit to the wheel. Submit and accept. But I could not submit and accept. Everything I have achieved, I have achieved by refusing to submit and accept.”

“You seem pretty accepting of the deal with Officer Smith over that boy. Sorry, I caint let it go. I got my own share of bullheadedness.”

Meena sighed. “The situation is not as simple as you believe.”

“It never is. Maybe that boy is your fate, to put it your way. Maybe he’s been put in your life to teach you something. I was mad as hell at the U.S. Army until I got old enough to see that maybe for a independent warthog like myself a few lessons in obeying orders wasn’t such a bad idea. One person I learned to obey was myself. You might give that a try. There was this time, a priest was saying mass and he asked me to throw a camouflage tarp over a pile of mortar rounds to make a altar and it was no big deal except that I got to thinking about that altar, what we were going to use it for, and sure enough not a half hour later—”

“Please. Finish your story.”

“Naw, I want to hear your story first. Here we are at the statues.”

That night he came to her in her dreams.

Dr. Chatterjee was making her first rounds of the monastery infirmary—the abbot had appointed her visiting physician. She accompanied Flavian as he listened, cajoled, and ministered to his aged brothers. She busied herself elsewhere when he sneaked a beer to Brother Zaccheus from a stash concealed in the medications refrigerator but insisted that he take one away from Brother Dismas who had diabetes and no business drinking. She listened as Brother Wilfred, lost to Alzheimer’s, told the same anecdote three times. She stood by as he plumped pillows for Brother Eustache, who needed his bed cranked up so he could watch the changing light.

Their last patient was Brother Zaccheus, immobile and obese from multiple sclerosis. Flavian handed her the blood pressure cuff, which she looped around the great ham of Zaccheus’s arm. She pumped and released the bulb—a pneumatic sigh.

“A priest, a rabbi, and a minister were walking down a street in San Francisco,” Zaccheus said, “when they ran into a prostitute carrying one of those yellow plastic bananas that squeak when they’re pumped.”

Flavian put his finger to his lips. “Later with that one, Zack.”

“Your pressure is marginal, the dipstick shows you spilling protein, we need to check that further. We’ll do a blood test—I may need to change your medications.”

Zaccheus placed the back of his hand on his forehead and rolled his eyes upward. “
She’s
the reason my blood pressure is up. How about a sponge bath?”

Flavian tucked the cuff into his tote bag. “Sorry, for that I need a second pair of hands and Adrian’s stuck with the cows.”

“
She
could help.” Zaccheus gave Meena a beseeching look. “Puh-
leeze
.”

Meena patted his puffy hand. “I’m afraid that’s not my job. But do save your joke for my next visit. I want to know what happens to that banana.”

“No you don’t,” Flavian said. “Take my word for it.”

Zaccheus cupped his hand at Meena’s ear. “Adrian won’t show up because the abbot brought in a woman doctor.”

“Oh, so that is the story.” Meena laid down her clipboard and pushed up her sleeves. “Perhaps I may lend a hand after all.”

Flavian was already at the door. “Not to worry. Zack can wait on his bath.”

Meena was poking in the closet, pulling out towels. “Brother Flavian. The abbot has appointed me physician in residence. That means
all
the monks are under my care, including those who may not
want
to be under my care. As attending physician, I shall require Brother Adrian to perform his assigned tasks. But for today I will take his place.”

A thumbs up from Zaccheus. “The boss has spoken.”

Meena looked at her watch. “The paperwork will require ten minutes. Enough time for you to draw water.”

She returned to find Zaccheus shirtless and sitting on the edge of his bed. Together she and Flavian levered him from his bed and into the bathing chair. Flavian began sponging his great folds of flesh while Meena changed the linens. “Brother Zaccheus,” she said, “what do
you
think the abbey should do with its cows?”

“Big Macs,” he replied promptly. “With cheese. Good old American cheese, too, not that smelly French stuff we make around here.”

Meena took a sponge and began soaping his back. “What if we understood that the cows and the trees and rivers are God’s ways of making herself known to the world? Is it so hard to see each of these creatures as one of the infinite aspects of God? Consider how much they give us and how little they ask in return.” She wrung out her sponge and soaked it in rinse water. “Must compassion always yield to efficiency?”

“Everywhere except in a monastery,” Zack said. “Or so I’d like to think. By any standard of efficiency, the abbot would have parked my ass in some cheap nursing home ten years ago. Instead here I am being hand-washed by a gorgeous woman.”

Meena squeezed her sponge over Zaccheus’s back. “If the choice must be efficiency or compassion, then perhaps we should prefer compassion.”

Flavian dropped the soap, splashing water into Zack’s eyes. Consternation and confusion until Meena flushed Zack’s eyes and Flavian regained his composure. “That’s a new tack coming from you,” Flavian said. “Last time we talked you were in the Big Mac camp. ‘Institutions must make difficult and unpleasant decisions.’ And so forth.”

“That is correct.”

“So what changed your mind?”

Meena considered. “A little bird.”

“Women change their minds,” Zaccheus said. “That’s what they do. They’re the river, we’re the rocks. And we know who wins that war.”

Meena tested the water with her elbow. “Too cool. More hot water, please.”

“Yes,
ma’am
,” Flavian said. He left to draw water—Meena was not unhappy to be left alone. “Close your eyes,” she said to Zaccheus, then lifted the sponge over his head and squeezed. Warm water ran over his tonsured head, down his neck and over his shoulders, which seized up in an involuntary shiver of pleasure. “Do that again,” he said. “These guys would never think of doing that.”

Meena had not been this intimate with a patient since her first months in medical school, when as a newly-arrived student she had been assigned similar caretaking tasks. And yet was not caretaking the best medicine for someone beyond the help of drugs and machines? The healing touch of the hand in love. Had anyone touched her in this way? Only Johnny Faye—the memory came of its own accord: placing his hands on her temples and turning her to look at the hawk devouring the goldfinch.

“Oh, ma’am, I’m so sorry.” Zack opened his eyes and looked down. “It’s got a mind of its own, I swear I have nothing to do with it.”

Meena draped a towel across his lap. “Your physician is happy to see that the nerves to your trunk and leg are still responsive.”

Zack gave a bitter little laugh. “They can get that thing to stand up but can’t be bothered with the rest of me.”

Flavian returned then and set about sponging Zack with rinse water while Meena worked with his feet, testing them for sensation. “What comes to mind when I speak of India?” she asked. “Disease and poverty and filth? That is what most people say.”

“That’s not what I think of,” Zack said. “I think of elephants. Tell me there are elephants.
Ow!
”

Meena smiled. “There are elephants.” She moved her hands up his calves.

Zaccheus closed his eyes again. “And opium smokers, I guess. Don’t know where—
ow!
that came from.”

“Yes, very good. I am sorry to hurt you but I am establishing benchmarks for sensation.”

“You’re not a doctor, you’re a theologian,” Zack said. “Punishing me for enjoying myself too much. As for opium smokers, we have our own, right here in the hills. Calls himself Johnny Faye.”

A long silence. Zaccheus cracked one eye. “Did somebody say plastic banana?”

Flavian busied himself toweling Zaccheus dry. “So how do you know Johnny Faye?”

“Flavian, if you’d lift your nose out of a book you might learn
something. Everybody knows Johnny Faye. If it weren’t for his philandering ways, the kitchen ladies would have to talk about, I don’t know, something important and boring. Like God.”

Now Meena busied herself with towels and talcum powder. “And what do they say about his philandering ways?”

“Sorry,” Zack said. “The Rule of Benedict tells us: ‘Above all, no murmuring.’” He drew a finger across his lips.

“He doesn’t really smoke opium,” Flavian said. “Pot, grass, weed—marijuana. There’s a lot of it around here.”

“Well, now, listen to the expert,” Zaccheus said. “How do
you
know Johnny Faye?”

“Didn’t you just say everybody knows Johnny Faye?
Everybody
includes me.” Flavian directed Meena to Zack’s other side. “Careful, now, this is the risky part. One, two,
three
,” and they hoisted Zack into his bed and eased him back on his pillows.