himself he can jump off any height and not hurt himself. Now, that’s really nuts.
He tells me to look at newsreels of people falling off high places or jumping into firemen’s nets. They start accelerating fast at first but then they reach a certain speed and seem to float. He says you can throw a cat out a three-or four-story window and it can land fine and that’s like a twenty-or thirty-story window for a person. It’s all dependent on weight and surface and density he says, and more than that, knowing you can do it. I ask him why it is they die when they hit the ground; people, that is. He says you can fall off a curb and kill yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing.
While we’re hassling this out, we haul the wings and the bike back to Birdy’s yard and put them in the garage. We take out a little time to look around for the baseballs but don’t find anything. She’s got to be selling them. Birdy shows me where he has his freaky pigeon suit hidden. I ask him if, when he learns to fly, he’s going to start wearing it, like Clark Kent slipping into his Superman costume.
Birdy’s not fighting me anymore about taking another flight right away. He’s decided he needs to do some more work on the wings and strengthen his arms. He wants to practice gliding before he tries flying again. He says he has to arch his back while he’s flapping. He’d done all his working out on the saw-horse and forgotten he needs to keep his body out stiff in the air. I try once more to talk him out of the whole cockeyed business but he’s not listening to me. He’s planning some kind of brace to go under his stomach that he can arch against.
He’s already talking up those three or four seconds when he seemed to be flying so you’d think he’d flown around the world a couple times.
When we get home he shows me how he can jump off his back porch roof without hurting himself. You wouldn’t believe it. He hunches himself down, springs out like a diver with his arms spread, then, in midair, pulls himself together, pushes his feet in front of him, just before he reaches the ground, then collapses both against the direction of his jump and the vertical drop. He says the more horizontal movement you can develop, the easier it is to absorb the vertical force.
He takes me upstairs to show me his drawings and calculations on this. He’s talking vectors and points of impact and trying to make it clear to me. I can’t believe this is the same Birdy in Algebra with me who’s having a hard time pulling B’s.
We sit around in his room for a while and he makes me watch his birds through the binoculars. He’s really built a great little aviary under his bed. I don’t know how the hell he talked his old lady into it. My mother’d skin my ass. Birdy wants me to watch how the birds take off and land. He’s convinced the birds are in the air before they even use their wings. I can’t see it. Birdy has quick eyes and he’s been watching the birds a lot. I can’t even pick up what he’s talking about.
He’s named this one skinny bird Alfonso, after me. It looks like a mad, hungry sparrow. I tell Birdy it’s OK so long as he spells it with a ‘ph’. I’m the one and only Alfonso with an ‘f’ around here. Birdy says it doesn’t matter because that isn’t his real name anyway, it’s only what he calls him. I ask, ‘What is the secret name?’ Birdy says he doesn’t know. He tells me he doesn’t know enough canary talk to ask him yet. Yet! he says and he doesn’t blink, just wiggles his crazy eyes. He isn’t smiling and I know he’s not kidding.
It’s hard to figure if somebody like Birdy is crazy or not.
Next morning I decide to take the risk. I open the door to Birdie’s cage. Then I go out of the aviary and sit behind my binoculars. I can always go in and rescue her if it gets too bad.
Birdie hops out right away. Alfonso is up on the top perch. Birdie sees I’ve put in new bath water, so, after a few inquisitive queeps, she hops down to take her bath. She’s completely ignoring him. He stands up there on his perch menacing. I’m expecting any minute he’ll swoop down.
Birdie goes through her whole bath routine but he doesn’t move; he doesn’t take his eyes off her, either. It’s the last thing I expected. Birdie flies up to the top of her little cage and starts preening her feathers.
After some minutes of watching her, the dive-bomber zooms down, has himself a few seeds and a little drink. He hop-flies around the wet places from Birdie’s bath. He hops up onto the edge of the bath, wiggles his face around in it as if he’s going to take a bath himself, then decides against it. He goes over and has a few more seeds. I’d put in some treat food too, and he gobbles some of that.
Then he does his straight-up jump and with a few wing flips re-establishes himself at the top of the aviary. He perches there and stretches his wings a couple times, trying to look bored. He wipes his beak about ten times on the perch to show what a big shot he is, then does that kind of bird gargle where they open their beaks wide and wiggle their tongues around. He flips his tail up and takes a couple quick pecks at his asshole. I’m getting bored myself, especially when I’d been expecting an attempted murder, at least.
Then, seemingly for no reason, he starts to sing. He starts quietly enough, going through a few bars just slightly more powerful than before, but gradually increasing the volume and the emotional content. A certain harshness begins to dominate. Meanwhile, he’s started rocking back and forth on his thin legs and agitatedly moving the length of the perch. He sings leaning forward with his throat fully extended. His wings are slightly lifted from his body and his stomach is pulled taut. Altogether he’s damned impressive. He impresses me, that is, but apparently not Birdie. She’s just finishing off the last little soft feathers on her back.
Now, Alfonso starts holding notes. He holds the same note till I think he’s going to fall off the perch. It seems as if he doesn’t breathe. He’s in a regular frenzy. Suddenly, he pounces down to where Birdie is basking. He lands about a foot from her, continuing his song during the drop and while he’s standing there. Birdie looks over at him. He begins his pursuit immediately. Birdie jumps up and flies to the perch he’s just abandoned. He’s right after her, in full song. His whole body is quivering.
It gets to be a regular WWI dogfight with Birdie finding no place she can land without his swarming all over her. He even manages somehow to harry her in midflight. It’s obvious he wants to mate but equally obvious that Birdie is totally unprepared for his cave-bird tactics. At last, she makes the mistake of flying into her cage. He goes right in after her and there’s such a scramble, I hurry into the aviary and put my hand in the cage to rescue Birdie. He’s got her trapped so she can’t escape. She doesn’t resist but I get a few good pecks on the back of my hand from the tiger himself. I intend to close the door and keep him in there, but before I can do it, he’s flown out and is up on the highest perch menacing me, with his wings lifted and his beak open.
I go out of the aviary and close the door to keep him in there, at least. I let Birdie loose. She flares her feathers, gives me a queep, a QReep and a couple peeps, then flies over to the wire of the aviary. Now, she’s flirting. She knows she’s safe so she’s going to tease him.
She flies to one spot and Alfonso, singing madly, swoops over to her, then she flies a foot or so away from the wire and lands in another place. He flies to meet her there. This goes on for about five minutes. Then he flies up to his perch again. I guess he’s pooped or maybe he’s tired of having her make fun of him. Birdie hangs on the wire and queeps at him, very plaintive, very demanding.
After a few minutes, he starts singing in a normal tone. We listen. He really can sing. Then, gradually, he gets all worked up again; it’s as if his own singing turns him on. This time he flies down to the floor. He stands there on the floor and sings up to where Birdie’s hanging. He looks like an opera singer; standing in the light on the white sand, turning left and right and taking short steps backwards and forwards as he sings. It’s
