Alfonso jumps on top of Birdie and starts singing, pumping and pecking her on the neck. Birdie varies between whimpering and trying to escape. Alfonso gets off, squats and feeds Birdie in the nest. Then he sings to her. Birdie tries to get up on the edge of the nest but Alfonso forces her back and does the whole singing, pumping, pecking routine again. He flies down to get more burlap.
Birdie finally gets the idea. She jumps up on the edge of the nest, then back in again. She snuggles down in it. She jumps out again, then back in. By this time, Alfonso’s arrived. She takes the burlap from his beak and drops the pieces into the nest. She jumps in on top of them and wiggles around. I hope that at last we’re on our way.
That night, after chow, I meet the CO who’s the orderly on Birdy’s floor. We get to talking. He tells me his name is Phil Renaldi; he’s Italian but not Sicilian. His grandparents came from around Napoli. He invites me over to eat some fruitcake he just got from home. I’m still not sure if he’s queer or not but I go. What should I care if he’s queer; I’m not all that sure about myself. Maybe I’ll get a chance to ask him about what it is to be crazy.
He’s got a great place. It’s a little squad room, walled off and independent. It’s like the platoon sergeant’s room at Jackson. He has it all to himself. Renaldi’s got this room fixed up almost like home. He has a record player on a table at the end of his bed and another table in the center of the room. He’s rigged a light with a lampshade hanging from the ceiling over the table. He even has a little hot plate and a tea kettle.
One of the things I’ve never gotten used to in the army is bare light bulbs. At home, my mother has all the lamps covered with colored lampshades. It gives our house a good Italian look; a place to eat fettucini or zeppoli. The army has bare light bulbs high up in the ceilings. They flatten everything out and make it even more depressing than it is.
Renaldi’s made his lampshade out of some orange paper. It gives the place a warm, civilian look. He brings down the fruitcake and it turns out his girlfriend, not his mother, sent it. He comes from a place called Steubenville, Ohio. His girl is there and writes him every day. He shows me bundles of letters, enough to fill a mail bag. He has them stored in boxes under his bed. He shows me some pictures of her; Italian girl, going to get fat with the first baby.
I don’t know how to bring up the idea of what it is that makes somebody crazy. I’m fishing around and somehow we get sidetracked on the whole CO business. I’m ready to listen. I tell him I joined the State Guard and then enlisted. I can hardly believe it myself, now. He’s curious about why. He’s not being hot-shit or anything, he’s just honest-to-God interested. Like I said, I’m ready to listen but this guy’s a champion listener. He’s really interested.
Not many people are interested in what somebody else is thinking, or what they have to say. The best you can hope for is they’ll listen to you just so you’ll have to listen to them. Everybody’s loading shit on everybody else. Sometimes, somebody’ll act like they’re listening, but they’re only waiting back in their minds for you to say something, something they can jump on or kick off on themselves. For me, conversation’s usually a bore.
Renaldi is truly listening. He wants to hear. You get the feeling you’re doing him a favor by telling him things. He listens as if what you’re saying is interesting to him and he asks the questions you want asked exactly when the right time comes. This Renaldi is some kind of mental enema. I come close to spilling it all. I manage to hold back at the last minute. Maybe he seems this way because I need somebody to talk to.
Renaldi starts by telling me how hard it is for his parents. He’s their only son and the only one in his neighborhood who went CO. His mother doesn’t get to hang a blue star in her window. Some ladies in the neighborhood sent her a blue banner with a yellow star on it. This was yellow, not gold. If you’re lucky enough to have a son or husband or brother killed in the war, you get to hang a gold star in your window and you’re a ‘gold-star mother/sister/father/wife’. These ladies call Renaldi’s mother the ‘yellow-star mother’. She writes Renaldi about things like this or how she found shit on the porch or spread on the doorknob. Renaldi tells how, a couple times he’s almost given in. His girlfriend keeps it secret that she writes to him and he writes her care of General Delivery.
We agree the only crazy thing is wars. That’s where I should’ve gotten him off onto the crazy business but I missed it. Renaldi turns on the hot plate and pours some water in it from a jerry can. We talk some more.
Renaldi’s twenty-five and was taking his master’s in philosophy at Columbia when they tried to draft him. He has the idea you can only stop things like wars one person at a time. He says, nobody’s going to outlaw them. He asks me if most of the guys in my outfit wanted to fight. I couldn’t think of one who was charging in there for the old war after the first artillery came in. He wants to know how it was back in the States before we went over. To be perfectly honest, the only person I could think of who wanted to get into combat was me.
Then, we get on the atom bomb they’ve just dropped. This is something Renaldi’s all hung up on. To me, it’s what ended the Japanese war; probably one of the best things that ever happened. I couldn’t care less how many Japs got killed, or whether it was one at a time or a couple thousand. The best and easiest way as far as I’m concerned.
‘Yes, but think of it, Al. They bombed women and children who weren’t involved in the war at all!’
‘So what’s the difference, they’re all Japs. If we’re fighting Japs, we kill Japs.’
‘OK, Al, but soldiers choose to fight; these were innocent victims.’
I tell him I can’t buy that. Sure, kill off nuts like me, hostile assholes looking for trouble, but most guys don’t want to fight any war; they’re victims like everybody else. They’re out there carrying guns because of how old they are and the kind of plumbing they have. Women, old men and even kids make wars happen as much as anybody. Everybody isn’t like Renaldi and Birdy; and they even got Birdy. You can’t build a world around them either, they’re too rare.
Renaldi’s still giving me a fishy stare, so I decide to tell about Birdy and my old man. That’s a story I hope will give some idea what I’m talking about. Probably I could just recite the multiplication tables and Renaldi’d eat it up.
He cuts us each a piece of fruitcake and pours out some more tea. Can you beat it? Tea! Six months ago, nobody could’ve convinced me this guy wasn’t queer.
There was a used car lot on the way up Long Lane to Sixty-ninth Street. Every Friday evening, when we took our books back to the library, Birdy and I used to stop by there to look at the cars. We were both motor freaks. The cars themselves didn’t interest us much – in fact, Birdy swore he’d never drive a car – but the way motors worked did. We’d already played around with small airplane motors, and the motor from a bombed-out motor scooter, and we fixed Mr Harding’s lawn mower.
My old man bought a new car every year and kept it parked in front of our house to show what a big shot he was. I had to wash and simonize the beast once a week; Birdy used to help. We’d read all the manuals that came with these cars. My father bought De Sotos because the mob had an agency in Philly, so with the trade-in, he got them for practically nothing. My mother’s brother is one of the big capos in Philly and he’s the one who arranged it. We were the only ones on the block who had anything like a new car. Birdy’s mother and father didn’t even know how to drive. Birdy’s father rode to school on the school bus.
Anyway, we used to clean the sparks, check the timing, clean the points, adjust the carburetor more than those cars ever needed. We kept that motor looking as if it’d never left the showroom floor.
Birdy
