Takeoff
Birds banging into windows. Birds bumping door fronts. Every surface they can find. It’s been happening for days now. The hours marked off in tiny booms against each upright plane, our house a target for creatures with their secret ability to fly. My family looks to me for answers, a way to make it all stop. But I don’t have explanations. And in that empty space, just birds and more birds, hollow-boned and filled with feathers.
A neighbor says it has to do with phases of the moon. My remaining sons think it’s a terrorist attack. Their mother, with her small smile, says it’s a Hitchcockian nightmare come to life. But there’s no denying our dreams filled with ticking clocks. Our breakfast table becomes a silence contest until one of us has to say something, even if only to reassure it has to end soon.
Our oldest remaining son wants them killed. He’s getting headaches and can’t stand the sleeplessness. He suggests a recipe of peanut butter, birdseed, and D-Con. He wants revenge, while my other remaining son, our youngest, wants them saved. They need help; some kind of relocation. He doesn’t realize they can’t be caught; even Animal Control shrugs their shoulders. Yet to see them congregate in trees is like witnessing a symbol from a song, a signal from above. It’s not reassuring yet still seems like a sign of something. Like a force watching over us though we’re not sure the reason.
We’re curious what they’re up to. Do they see through the windows like a house of mirrors? Do they sense a lurking shadow of themselves until they’re compelled to mate with our windowpanes? At the start, they’d scatter when neared, but now they just sit with unflinching stares, their eyes slick as tar. They’re not scared of us, but nor are they scary. They loom but don’t cause damage. Their beaks don’t peck our glass. They don’t build nests under our deck. And they certainly don’t fly with enough force to feel the hurt. They simply pound with a sly persistence that even the dark can’t impede. The attempt is almost awe-inspiring if it weren’t so doomed to failure.
My wife with her sad smile, her continually unkempt hair, her fingers always atremble, says it’s sort of pleasant. So what if they’re desecrating our patio with white smudges? It’s nice to see things still alive, attempting to roost. In fact, she says it’s lonely when they leave. After all that clatter, the silences seem deafening. When they begin again, it’s almost like a homecoming.
My youngest remaining son wants to name them. At first, he made a list of possibilities: the traditional moniker of everyday boys. All-American boys. Once-expected boys. But now he calls every bird with variations of a single name. The one name that still makes my wife weep, my older boy run to his bedroom. But my youngest loves that name. Thinks every name should be that name. And though it makes my wife shake, makes my oldest call us jerks for using words what never belonged to us, I don’t scold him for saying it. He needs to hear it aloud, and if that’s a thing of comfort, who am I to stop it? All I know is it’s nice to hear the sound, even if only to christen birds bullying our foundations.
Except this evening, after dinner, after my youngest remaining son baptizes every bird he sees, my wife’s smile finally shatters. She bites back a lip, clamps a hand over her mouth, but her eyes can’t prevent what’s overtaking them. And before my boys can look away, before they can look to me for answers, my wife has run from the room. My oldest soon follows her upstairs. But my little one stays, a strange wink perched on his face. He asks, Can’t we just leave them alone?
I tell him we could. Still, they don’t leave us alone, do they?
He nods his head. But I don’t want them to.
Me neither.
So tonight I take my youngest outside and pour seed into his small hands. Most of it funnels through his fingers but eventually some collects in his palms. It’s a pretty sight. The seed sitting there in those held-out hands, as if receiving a prayer. He wants more now. That’s how he phrases it: More! Now! And so I grant his wish, emptying the sack. Kernels slowly fill his grasp, overflowing it like a waterfall of food. It piles at his feet, a tiny mound of grain raining down around him until the birds arrive. They besiege him in a flutter. They don’t squawk or peck his eyes. They simply flap around him in a flurry of flight. The beat of their bodies sound like laundry whipping on a line—the sound of propellers coming to a slow stop. So I don’t attempt to save him. I don’t even try. I wouldn’t even know how because he’s laughing so hard I can’t tell if he’s scared or thrilled, if he’s yelling for help or joy. But it doesn’t matter since right now, at this very moment, my son flocked by a tornado of wings, I can’t help but imagine him already taking flight. The tiniest of kites. A brittle-blown leaf. My little boy at last aloft, forever stolen and flown away to a far-off land where all lost children are someday found.
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