When she seems to be finished, I wait a few seconds, enough to make sure she’s finished and not so long that my father is going to have to say something. I know he hates this kind of thing.
It’s too bad my parents didn’t have more children. My mother says it’s because my father chose the wrong trade and the depression came at the wrong time and my father was out of work for four years. He did his apprenticeship making wicker chairs, the kind people have on porches. It used to be high-class to have those kinds of chairs and they were hand-made. We have a porch around two sides of the house, and my father made our chairs. There are all kinds, some rocking chairs and some with high fancy backs. It’s fun to watch him. He keeps the wicker lengths in water and weaves them into the forms of chairs with his hands and a few simple tools. It’s like watching Birdie build her nest. His hands move fast and automatically. He served a six-year apprenticeship and has his master’s papers. It’s hard to be so good at something nobody wants anymore.
I start telling him my idea. I explain how this year alone with only two birds I’ve raised eighteen young birds. The males are worth eight dollars apiece on the wholesale market. I can sell off the females and pay my feed bills. That means a profit of almost ninety dollars. That’s a month’s salary for my father, working at the high school. I point out how most canaries in the United States are imported from Germany and Japan. Now that we’re at war, these sources are drying up. Raising canaries could be a good business.
I’m talking fast. I’ve got to convince him. I take out my calculations and show how much money I could make if I had fifteen breeding couples. If they all only produced an average of ten birds, and half of them males, I’d make fifty dollars on each breeding pair, that would make seven hundred and fifty dollars. The chances are the price for canaries is going up, too.
My mother says she isn’t going to have hundreds of birds stinking up the house no matter how much money I say I can make. I tell my father I want to build an aviary in back of the garage where I used to have my pigeon loft. I tell him I have enough money saved to build the whole thing.
My father sits with his elbows on the table and his hands in a double fist in front of his mouth. He has his thumbnail jammed between his teeth while I talk. My mother stands up and starts taking the dishes off the table. She’s making a lot of noise doing it. My father doesn’t look at her.
‘You say you think you can make seven hundred and fifty dollars a year raising canaries?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That’s almost as much as I make working a full year, day in and day out. Are you sure of that?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. I know I can do it.’
He sits with his thumbnail still between his teeth. He only takes it out to talk. It’s then I notice how thin and thin-skinned he looks. If you didn’t know, you’d think he was sick. His veins show on his hands and on the side of his head. He looks dead next to my mother.
‘What would you do with this money?’
‘I’ll do whatever you say.’
He looks straight at me. It’s as if he’s seeing me, too. I’m glad my mother is in the kitchen.
‘All right. But you give the money to me. I’ll put it in the bank so you can go to college. I don’t want you working all your life for a lousy twenty dollars a week.’
So, that’s how it is. My mother won’t talk to me but there’s nothing she can do.
I start building my aviary on the back wall of the garage. It’s away from the ball field so nobody can see it unless they come into our yard. Still, it isn’t too visible from the house; either. It’s the perfect place.
I get most of the wood the same way I got it before. I buy the wire mesh, nails, hinges, paint, and things like that. I have over a hundred dollars from the dogcatching. I only told my parents about the dollar an hour, not about the dog money. I gave them all the actual salary but I kept the dog money for myself and hid it with my pigeon suit.
I build the frame with two-by-fours. The whole exterior dimension is twelve feet wide by six feet deep. It’s six feet high at the front and seven feet where it butts against the garage wall. I cover the roof with small, dark blue composition shingles. Inside, I divide the aviary into three parts. The center part has the outside door opening onto it. That’s where I’m going to have my breeding cages. It’s exactly six feet by six feet. On either side, and opening onto the center section are the flight cages. These are three feet by six feet and the whole height of the aviary.
I stretch the wire mesh over the framework and nail it in place. The mesh has quarter-inch square holes. I put sand in the bottom of the flight cages and then move all the birds except Birdie down from my room. I put the females in the left cage and the males in the right. They zoom around like crazies checking everything out. They fly against the wire of the cage to look at the outside. It’s the first time the babies have seen the sky. Their world is expanded a million times. Still, the actual flying space is about the same. Sometimes, wild birds come up against the outside wire of the cage to look in. Alfonso, with some of the young, fights them off. I wish I could find a way so my birds could fly free like pigeons. It’d be great to have them loop and fly all over, singing and roosting in the trees; then come when I called them into the cage.
I paint the outside gray and white. When I’m finished it looks like a true little house. While the birds are in the flight cages I start building the breeding cages. I’ve decided to breed one male to a female. I’m not really in business. The males can help with the babies and it’s too confusing with two females.
I build five rows of cages, three cages in a row; one on top of the other, going from the floor to the roof on the back wall of the center room. Each cage has two parts with a sliding door between. That way, I can separate the male or the young ones, or both, from the female, when she’s started a new nest. I work out automatic feeders and waterers and build sliding trays in the bottoms of the cages for easy cleaning. It’s really fun building the cages; like making my own nest.
I get tremendous advice from Mr Lincoln. He builds his cages himself and has some great ideas that I use. He’s really a genius with birds. I tell him my idea about breeding canaries for flying. He laughs in a circle around his aviary. Tears come into his eyes. When he stops, he says nobody’s going to buy my canaries. He says if I can breed up a canary that can’t fly at all, then I’d really have something. People could keep them on a stick without a cage, like parrots. He says cats’d like my non-flying canaries, too.
I finish the breeding cages before Christmas. The males in the flight cages are singing their heads off. Almost anything is music to a canary. They sing when I hammer or saw or when I run water. The wind blowing is a symphonic concert to a canary.
While I’m working, I keep watching them fly. Alfonso is still the star, but there’re two or three others who have all his tricks; dive-bombing, jumping straight up, turning sharp in midair. One of them even has a new trick. He dive-bombs, then instead of landing, turns just above the ground and shoots straight up again. Somehow, he uses his downspeed to turn up. I watch it a hundred times but can’t figure how he does it. I can see he tilts his body so he’s practically standing on his tail with wings full out at the split second when he pulls out of his dive, then, he hunches his shoulders over and traps the fast air under his wings to give him the thrust up. This bird is yellow like Birdie but has all the hawk look of Alfonso. He’s not as mean as some of the dark birds, but he fights if anybody pushes too hard. Most times he just moves away to another perch. He’s one of the ones who flew with all the weight.
Alfonso
