One Time, There Was a Bird, And
My legs felt heavy on the walk to the old folks’ home. July baked the asphalt and aluminum cars, cicadas rang a distant knell in the shade, and I was there. I was tired. Through the trees, far beyond the sidewalk, I was taunted by the lake and its cool jeweled sparkle on the water’s edge. I could’ve swam had I not been on my way to see the old folks. No clouds accompanied my languid stride, so I walked alone, and I was almost there.
The first thing I noticed upon arrival was the stale red carpet and the determined steps laid upon it by the women who ran the home. They swept past me in the hall carrying plastic trays of brown gravy and mutton, their hair gray and fuzzy on the top of their heads. And, cordially, they always said hello. Welcome back. Take a seat inside the leisure room. And there was a certain smell, too—the smell of ennui emitting from wrinkled skin. The food smelled like nothing. It was barely food, and I always made sure to eat before I arrived, so I never tried the food before, I don’t know what it tasted like.
I assumed my usual position by the window next to Nancy. She was leathered and pale and did not speak. Her and I fell into a routine of meditation. Per usual, we were subdued to a verbal fog as the past manifested around us: fond remarks about handsome Bogart and the Kennedys; Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher; maybe a late husband or a friend. Details were repeated in earnest each time, and each time, a glossiness in the eyes that I can’t forget. I guess it’s the kind of look you achieve when you find that, one day, you have nothing else to do in July anymore but talk about the past, perhaps to people who aren’t completely listening, and repeat the details in earnest each time. The sun beams and rings outside on the cars but you keep talking about the past, and the ice clinks around in your drink that you haven’t touched in quite awhile, but you only realize that after you’re done talking.
Nancy never participated in these conferences of nostalgia. I came to understand her, Nancy, the best through magazines. Her eyes declared passion at the sight of someone or something she remembered. I liked her a lot. I grew fond of her. Because she didn’t disfigure things with stories. She just looked at things, beautiful things, and let them be. She didn’t try to muddle that with the garbage of memories, the spillage of abstract brain matter, and if you chose to participate, it became a lot of fun. I liked that, which is why I chose to sit next to Nancy all the time. Her and I, like little brown mice. Elvis and other country crooners lay before us on the table in stale brown pages. She paused tenderly from time to time. I’d turn over the page when she waned interest.
Suddenly, the cleanest cattleman I’ve ever seen: The Rhinestone Cowboy. In his humble prestige, Glen Campbell from the Goodtime Hour had no dust on his boots or holster, embellished in silver and white with a steed to match. He smiles in a very American way. With one hand he holds leather reins next to the pink nose of his stallion and the grip of his pistol in the other. He gleamed piously in his wooden stable.
“You know him?” I ask Nancy.
Our silence, though, was quickly shattered by the league of women who ran the home. The one in the front carried in her hands a cardboard box. She placed it on a table and they gathered around it, exchanging murmurs and glances. But the old folks did not seem phased by this hastiness. They continued to relish inside the soupiness of each other’s eyes. With her hands folded before herself on the top of a walking stick, one of them said, I had a friend back in Tennessee who actually did kiss Elvis. But me, I thought it was peculiar to see their faces so dense with concern, so I left Nancy to peer inside. Nancy never answered my question but her eyes followed me as I walked toward the box.
There was a white body drowsy with restraint—a bird, with its wings opened in forfeit. I thought it was so strange to see a bird with its eyes half-closed; I continued to look, and examined the well in its chest where its heart was beating, watching it rise and fall. Its eyes blink slowly and possess a burnish I’ve studied in humans before.
The thud of its wings clinked around the box like ice in the drink you’ve forgotten you’ve touched, only after you’ve told the story, and you realized you have nothing to do in July anymore except tell the same story, repeating the details in earnest each time.