The WWII Collection. William Wharton

corridor when the orderly or guard or whatever he is sees me. It must be some crummy job walking up and down a corridor checking on crazies.

      ‘How’s he doing?’

      ‘He’s taking a crap.’

      This character looks in. Maybe he likes to see guys take a crap. Maybe he’s a part-time nut. I ask if he’s a civilian. You can’t tell anything when they all wear those white coats. He could even be a piss-ass officer or something. Never know in a hospital. He tells me he’s a CO. I think at first he’s trying to put on he’s the commanding officer. Turns out CO means conscientious objector. He’s been working in this hospital most of the war.

      ‘You want to knock off for lunch now? I have to feed him anyway.’

      ‘Whaddaya mean, “feed him”; can’t he feed himself?’

      ‘Nope. He won’t eat anything; wants to be fed. I have to spoon-feed him. No trouble or anything, not like some of them. I just shovel it in. He squats on the floor and I put it in.’

      ‘Holy Christ! He really is a loon! Won’t even eat?’

      ‘He’s nothing. Guy across the hall there won’t wear any clothes. Squats in the middle of his cell like your friend here; but if anybody tries to go in, he shits in his hand and throws it. Boy, he’s fun to feed. More like a zoo than a hospital on this ward.’

      He looks in the cell. I look too. Birdy’s finished. He’s squatting on the floor, in about the same spot, like the pigeons after the el goes by. The orderly comes with a tray of food. He takes the key, opens the door and goes in. He tells me to stay out. He squats down beside Birdy and starts feeding him. I can’t believe it! Birdy actually flaps his arms like a baby bird being fed! The orderly looks around at me and shrugs his shoulders.

      ‘I forgot to tell you, Doctor Weiss wants to see you after lunch.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      Weiss is the doctor-major. I look in once more at Birdy and go down the corridor. I know where the cafeteria is because I had breakfast there. It’s really a cafeteria, too, not a mess hall; doctors and nurses eat there; good food. I eat and think about Birdy being fed like a baby pigeon. What the hell could’ve happened?

      When I go to see Weiss, I ask what’s the matter with Birdy, but he’s sly and manages not to answer. Suddenly, he gets to be the major talking to the sergeant.

      He’s watching me with a shit-eating grin on his face as if I’m some kind of nut myself. He starts out asking about what they’re doing to me at Dix. I tell him about how the jaw is smashed and how they put in the metal part.

      When they first told me, I thought I’d have a steel jaw like Tony Zale. Doctor there tells me, actually I’ll have to be very careful, a punch could undo the pins and shock me into the brain. So now I’ve got a glass jaw. That’s about right.

      I’m telling Weiss all this stuff and then I see him. He’s smiling, hmming and ahhing just to keep me going. He doesn’t give a damn. I decide I don’t want to tell too much about Birdy.

      He asks how long Birdy and I were close friends. I tell him we’ve been friends since we were thirteen. He asks this in a way so you know he really wants to know if we were queer together; if we jacked each other off, or gave each other blow jobs. I’ll say this, there’s a lot of that crap in the infantry. A four-hour stint in a foxhole with the wrong guy can get awfully funky.

      Actually, I can’t remember Birdy being interested in sex at all. Take that whole scene with Doris Robinson. If he couldn’t make it with her he’s hopeless. Maybe all he had it for was birds. This quack’d sure flip if I told him that.

      The doctor-major keeps trying to pump me about Birdy. I’m completely turned off. If he could just look sincere. He knows I’m holding back. He’s no dummy. I have to be careful. Under that white coat he’s solid brass. He’s liable to lower the boom on this buck-ass sergeant any minute. So far, he’s been talking like a doctor but I’m waiting for the old military manner to strike again. All doctors in the army ought to be privates.

      Just as I’m thinking this, he comes out with it: ‘OK, Sergeant, you go back there this afternoon and see if you can make some contact. It’s probably the best chance we’ve got. I’ll make an appointment to see you again here, tomorrow morning at nine.’ He stands up to dismiss me. I fuck him with the salute and hold it till he returns it. Son-of-a-bitch.

      On the way back to Birdy, I have a little talk with the CO orderly. Nice guy; probably not queer. I get him to talk about being a CO. He says he spent some time being starved for experiments on how little food a person really needs and then he was up in a forest planting trees and he’s been here at the hospital the last eighteen months. He tells me all this as if it’s what’s supposed to be. He’s a bit like Birdy; hard to hurt. Real losers never lose.

      He asks me about my face and I tell him. He’s truly sympathetic, not like Weiss. You can see it in his face and how he reaches up and touches his own chin to see if it’s there. He opens Birdy’s door for me and I get my chair from the corridor.

      Birdy’s still squatting in the middle of the floor and staring up at the window when I come in

      – Hey Birdy! Just had a long talk with Weiss. He’s sure one sweet pain in the ass. If I were crazy, I’d pretend I wasn’t, just to get out of his fat hands. How about that?

      Birdy actually turns his head. He doesn’t turn all the way around and look at me. He turns half way, the way a bird does when it wants to look at something directly with one eye. Of course, Birdy isn’t looking at me, he’s looking at the blank wall across the room.

      – Birdy! How about the time we took off and went to Wildwood. I’ll never forget the way you jumped around in the waves.

      I have the feeling Birdy’s listening. His shoulders are lowered as if he’s roosting and not getting ready to take off. It could be just my imagination, but I don’t feel alone. I keep talking.

      After the gas tank, Birdy was in the hospital more than a month. It was all in the newspapers about how he’d fallen from the tank and hadn’t been killed. There was a picture with a dotted line showing where he’d jumped from, and an X where he landed. Reporters asked me what’d happened and I never should’ve said anything about flying.

      Naturally, the whole business with the pigeons comes out. Birdy’s father tears down the loft and burns the wood. The pigeons fly around there for a week looking for the loft. It’s the place they’re homed to. Those first blue bars fly up to Birdy’s house and hang around there till his mother poisons them. I don’t know what happens to the pigeon witch.

      The kids at school ask me the same questions about Birdy flying. Even before he gets out of the hospital, they’re calling him Birdy, the bird boy. Sister Agnes has us all write letters to Birdy and we collect money to send flowers. I don’t say anything much in my letter; I don’t tell him what’s happened to the loft and the blue bars.

      When Birdy comes out of the hospital, he looks even runtier than usual and his hair’s long. He’s pale as a girl. I tell him about the loft but not about the blue bars being poisoned. He doesn’t ask. We’re in the eighth grade; Birdy catches. up and graduates with us.

      After the gas tank, I knew I had to fly. Without thought, a bird denies all in a moment, with an effortless flick of wings. It would be worth everything to learn this.

      If I could get close to birds and enjoy their pleasure it would be almost enough. If I could watch birds like watching a movie and become inside them, I’d know something of it. If I could get close to a bird as a friend and be there when it flies and feel what it’s thinking, then, in a certain way, I would fly. I wanted to know all about birds. I wanted to be like a bird and I still wanted to fly; really fly.

      That summer, Birdy and I take off. We don’t plan it. We’re always bicycling down to Philadelphia and the Parkway. We’d go down there, play around the art museum, the aquarium, and the Franklin Institute. There’s a place on Cherry Street