BIRD MAN OF SING SING

The turtle says I'm all talk.

"Float around in this brackish tank for an hour or two motherfucker--walk a mile in my shoes for once."

"You don't wear shoes.  The claws alone would present problems...insurmountable..."

"Just give me the goddamn shrimp and go eat your faggy strawberry yogurt twinkle-toes.  Everyone's a critic.  Maybe if you get a free moment in your busy schedule you can get me some fresh water?  Whattya say Oprah?"

With that she banged her shell against one glass wall of the tank and swam off.  So I turned out her UV light.  Let HER wallow around in the darkness for awhile, little reptilian pain in my ass.

"Bitch," she muttered.

The hippie mailman took the front steps two at a time leaving a packet of bills and solicitations and a suspiciously dog-eared issue of Rolling Stone, with a vintage image of Jerry Garcia on the cover, commemorating the 15th anniversary of his death, so what does one expect?  I flip through the pages and a subscription card falls out.  It has my name and address already paper-mate'd in in red ink.  Instinctively I get a creeping feeling in my lower bowels and testicles like when my imagination gets away from me and fires his little projector up and blazes unwanted visions of catastrophe onto my skull wall (oh look, there's your daughter running into the path of an on-coming tractor trailer.)  I turn the card over:

Leaps of faithlessness
Are all that's required when
hopes float like lilies

Same red ink, different handwriting.  Is that haiku?  What the fuck?  The turtle flips the filter over in the tank and it (the filter) begins to make a weird sucking noise from no longer being submerged and now only taking in air.  The turtle is strangely cowering in the corner, raking at the rocks at the bottom of the tank seemingly trying to dig a hole to escape.

I see the shadow in my peripheral vision for just a millisecond before I get smashed in the side of the head and I taste the blood in my mouth.  The lights go out.  I had always imagined that a crime-novel blow to the head was something that put you completely out but my experience of it was more of a vague semi-consciousness in which I was completely aware of what was happening to me, but couldn't see nor move.  So I knew that I was carried and roughly thrown into the trunk of a car.  I was able to smell and breathe in the exhaust during the thankfully short drive to the warehouse where, tied to a chair, a bucket of dirty water was thrown in my face.

I came to--like in an Elmore Leonard novel--alone, and as stated tied to a chair in a warehouse.  I was facing a door about 100 feet away across the stone floor with little metal islands of what looked like rusty auto parts and various defunct machinery all lit florescently.  The door opens and a man strides through.  He's 50-ish, clean-shaven but with a shock of wavy white hair.  His glasses are still transitioning from the shift from sunlight.  He's wearing a suit and tie underneath a three-quarter length North Face rain jacket and unlaced mid-calf LL Bean duck boots that flop with each step.  Under one arm he's carrying a long blue-metal tube.  In his opposite hand he's carrying a white coffee cup.  The sides are stained with remnants of messy sips he's already taken.

"Johnny-boy!" he calls from halfway across the room, "what is UP?"

"Have we met?"

"Ah!  You may not remember.  That's OK.  Just give me a second."

He stops and looks around him before putting the coffee cup down on the floor muttering some dissatisfaction with not having a better place for it.  He then starts setting up the portable movie screen he carried in under his arm.  He works quickly taking obvious pleasure in showing that he knows what he's doing, knows the right way to hold the latches so the legs could slide easily open, so the spine could quickly rise over his head and the screen itself glide down where he fastens it into place.

"I got this at Target.  Not like the old Britelite Truvision my parents had.  'Course all the movies back then were all silent Super-8's.  Before your time probably."

I strained slightly against the ropes.

"Sorry about that.  Can't be helped.  You want some coffee."

He picks up the cup and crosses to me.

"You mind it black?  It's better that way."

He puts it to my mouth and pours without waiting for me to respond or assent to sipping.  The coffee cup's rim is wet and soft where he's been drinking.  The coffee itself is strong but bitter.

"They call that one Sly Jimmy Griff Grind.  It's made from 2/3 Kenyan AA and 1/3 Tanzania Peaberry.  My friend roasts it early so you gotta know to get there early.  Before 7 is best."

I cough.  The casual way he's addressing me seemingly oblivious to the fact that I'm tied to a chair throws me. But I can't help but go with it if only out of fear that if I get at all confrontational he might not want to just chat with me so pleasantly anymore.  He clearly has the upper hand.  That much is certain.

"Um, Have we met?"

"In a manner of speaking.  But c'mon, you can tell right off the bat that we're birds of a feather, right?"

"I..."

"You like baseball?  You're probably a Yankee fan, right?"

He was standing over me now.  I could see that coffee had spilled on his shirt.  He had missed a belt loop on his pants.  I had no idea what to say.  I was so confused.  What should I say?  What would get me into the least amount of trouble?

"I'm more of a basketball..."

He sings.  "Black crows in the meadow across a broad highway, though it's funny honey I don't feel much like a scarecrow today."

"What?"

"Bob Dylan could write a song, right?  (laughs)  You like birds though right.  I mean who doesn't.  The cats are the problem."

"Cats."

"The biggest threat to birds are house cats that are allowed outside.  S'why people should keep their cats indoors.  Or not have them all, right?  What was that a turtle in that tank?"

"Yeah."

"What's his name?"

"Paco."

He stepped away again, took a pull off his coffee and rooted around in his left-hand pants pocket.

"Where the fuck is that thing?"

"The turtle's name is Paco."

"Where'd you get that name from?"

"My daughter wanted to get a bunch of birds, can't remem..."

He finds a small grey rectangle--a remote control--in the third pocket he checks and presses one of its buttons.  An image leaps onto the screen.  He turns to look at it.  It's of a tall, full-breasted white bird with a long neck, bright red face and a long, pointed black beak.  The bird's eye is round and yellow with a small black dot at its center.  The eye is conspicuously unlidded giving the eye the quality of shock and surprise.  And a certain menace.

"Patricia, can you focus that a little."

The image pulls into sharper clarity as I strain to swivel my neck to see who's behind me.  It's no good.

"That's it--perfect.  This is a Siberian White Crane.  Also known as a Snow Crane.  It's a long distance migrating bird.  It breeds in Siberia but spends its winters in China and India.  This bird is dangerously close to  extinction.  It's a shame.  It's a beautiful bird.  Some of the larger males can have a seven foot wingspan."

There's a certain sadness to his voice; tinged with frustration.  He's clearly distracted by the beauty of the bird on the screen but annoyed by the possibility that it could ever die out.  I try to be sympathetic.

"What's threatening the bird?"

"Can you imagine seeing a bird flying with wings seven feet across?  I once had a Chinese girlfriend who grew up in India.  We spent a week hitchhiking across Texas together.  Good barbecue in Texas although not as good as in Tennessee.  Problem is..."

He had lost his focus and wasn't paying attention.  His thumb was leaning on the remote button and pictures of birds--one after another--were flashing across the screen.  Seagulls, orioles, bluejays, pigeons, bird after bird, some on nests, some flying through the air, some feeding their young, open-mouthed, straining for food.

"...you can't get good beer in Tennessee.  You want good beer the only place to go is Big Blue Beer Distributors in Brooklyn.  I mean if you want to just buy beer.  But you have to go on Fridays after 4 because that's when..."

Cardinal, chickadee, turkey vulture, titmouse.  I was becoming genuinely frightened now.  Not sure where this was going.

"...they get rid of the loose bottles from the cases because some people go there to buy bottles one at time that's how good it is.  I mean the selection, that is.  Think I'll come back here again, every now and then from time to time, how lovely you are my dear the ball game has gone much to far my dear...."

He was full-out singing now and the light from the flashes on the screen seemed to obscure all other light in the room as if the overhead florescents were drained of the power it took sustain them so that the images of birds flying by now, faster and faster, could begin to leap off the screen wafted and gusted into reality by his voice and his words and his love for them.

"...sing to me, do your thing to me, I'll meet you some mornin', meet you some mornin', in the sweet by and by, by and by, by and by..."

My chair flew back and I landed hard banging my head.  In the moment before I blacked out--fully unconscious this time--I thought I saw...I don't know how to describe it.  It was a beautiful snow white bird--angelic and benevolent.  I saw it upside down so I couldn't tell but I think it wore large round glasses and smiled at me.

I woke up on the floor of the living room below the turtle tank.  I could still hear him singing.  My head ached as I sat up.  In my lap was a copy of Audubon Magazine.  The cover photo was of a large colorful bird in profile: "Costa Rica's Loony Toucan."  A page of the magazine was marked with another subscription card, also filled out in my name.  On the back it read:

Read this for free in
perpetuity.  Sadly
birds aren't so lucky.

I could feel the turtle reading over my shoulder.

"Bad haiku.  Did you know birds descended from dinosaurs?  Just goes to show you..."