The Complete Collection. William Wharton

celery top or a dandelion leaf but it doesn’t matter. He’ll eat it only when I’ve removed myself to a distance. He’ll eat it, keeping an eye on me every minute, as if he expects me to charge up and take it back. He most definitely is the mad bird.

      St Valentine’s Day comes. It’s the traditional day for beginning to breed birds if they’re going to be kept inside, but Alfonso stays mean, and keeps apart from us. I give both Birdie and Alfonso a big leaf of dandelion that day. It’s supposed to get them all hot for breeding. Mr Lincoln told me that. He also told me it’s French and means ‘lion’s tooth’. That’s the kind of thing I like to know. He told me not to eat any dandelion leaves or flowers myself or I’d get all hot and bothered and maybe wet the bed. He said the French also call dandelion ‘pissenlit’, which means ‘piss in the bed’. Urinate is the way Mr Lincoln said it. He must be the smartest man I’ve ever met.

      I’m dying to get Alfonso out so I can watch him fly. One afternoon, I can’t wait any longer. I open the door to his cage, then go back to my corner in the aviary. It doesn’t take him long to figure out the door is open. In about five seconds he’s on the door sill looking around. He’s awfully suspicious and looks over to where I am. Just to be safe, I hold Birdie in my hand. Finally, he decides to take a chance, and shoots out like a dart for the highest perch across the aviary. He wipes his beak all over the perch; showing it’s his and maybe smelling Birdie out. He looks down at me. The way he looks down, with his pointed head, thin body, and long legs he makes me tense up a bit. Then he pulls one of his wings-folded sky-dives down to the food dish and water cup. He stomps all around, looking for traps I guess, then eats and drinks. He’s an incredibly messy slob; scattering seeds over the floor before he finds a seed he’ll accept. After he’s eaten, he starts hopping over in our direction, like he’s preparing to charge. Birdie makes a few queeps and I make some myself. He cocks his head from side to side trying to get a good look at us. Up till now, he’s usually looked at us straight on, more or less just to see if we were going to make any fast moves or try to get behind him. He doesn’t care about us individually; we’re just a vague danger he wants to be ready for. That’s the way it is. If you only look out for yourself you’re a lot safer. You’re vulnerable when you let yourself go out.

      So, for the first time, Alfonso gives us a real going over. He’s trying to find out what the hell we actually are. After five minutes of this, he flies up on a near perch and scans us from a new angle. We don’t move. Finally, he gives a rusty peep. It sounds like a voice hailing a ship after spending twenty years on a desert island. It’s the most reluctant peep I’ve ever heard. You feel he wishes he could put it back into his beak almost as soon as he’s made it. Birdie and I peep back enthusiastically. We peep back and forth a few times but he gets tired of that, too. He flies over onto the top of his cage, hops down onto the sill, then hops into the cage. We wait. I know he’s testing me to see if I’ll jump up to close the door while he’s in there. I can’t see into the cage from where I am but I’m sure he’s in the back, waiting to spring out if I make a move toward the cage.

      He comes out again. I think about letting go of Birdie but I’m afraid. Mr Lincoln’s probably right. I don’t want to take any chances with Birdie. I wait until Alfonso’s on a perch away from the cage, then I carefully get up and put Birdie into the little cage. She gives me every kind of nasty peep she can muster but I turn around and go out of the aviary. I want to watch what Alfonso does when he thinks I’m not there.

      At first, all he does is enjoy the size of the aviary. He flies from one end to the other, twisting in mid-flight and catching himself at the end of each run. He flies straight up, trying to catch himself a high place under the bed springs. He does quite a few of his straight drops. He can really fly. He’s like a test pilot checking to see if all the mechanisms are still in order after a plane’s been grounded for a while.

      He goes down and splashes more seed around and eats a few. He washes his face off in the water cup but he doesn’t take a bath. He ruffles out his feathers and combs them down again; fast, nothing like the leisured preening of Birdie.

      Birdie in the meanwhile is practically hanging out of her cage trying to see him. I think she’s gotten the idea of my strategy. At least this way we can watch him do things.

      After a few more gymnastics and some more exploration he lands on top of Birdie’s cage. She queeps madly. He hops around and shits so he just misses her head. Then he jumps over the edge and slides down the bars on the front of the cage till he can look into the empty treat cup on her perch. Birdie hops near him and gives him a gracious peep; he gives her a half-hearted growl. She stands her ground and they stay like that, next to each other; Birdie queeping and he looking at her as if she’s in a zoo. He scrambles around the side of the cage to the regular food dish and Birdie hops down to join him. Just to be sociable she dips her head into the dish for a seed. Alfonso flies into a regular rage. He lets go, makes a flurry of wings, and screeches. He attacks the side of the cage. Birdie jumps away. She recovers and cowers at the other end of the cage. Stupid Alfonso keeps attacking for about five minutes. He flies back to the floor of the aviary, then attacks again. He hangs onto the door as if he’s trying to pull it open. I begin to think there, just for a minute, he might manage it. It’s a snap-swing hinge and I’m getting to the point where I’ll believe anything. I’m also beginning to think maybe I’ve made a mistake. He seems hopeless.

      Things go on the same way for a week. Birdie trying to be nice and Alfonso being a bastard. To give Birdie some exercise, I take her out of the aviary at night while I’m doing my home-work or working on my models, to let her fly around. She keeps flying to the wire of the aviary, trying to attract Alfonso’s attention. I’m coming along fine with my flying model. This one flies, but in a long down glide. The rubber-band motor doesn’t give enough flapping power for lift. I don’t know how much weight it could carry, not much. I have to get some calculations on the weight and density of birds.

      In the evenings, when I let her out to fly, I turn the light on in the aviary. Birdie keeps flying over and hanging onto the wire. She peeps and queeps until it’s embarrassing but Alfonso just ignores her. You’d think he didn’t like birds. He doesn’t seem to know what it is to be lonely, or even care.

      I’ve about decided to give up and take him back to Mr Lincoln when something happens. It’s a Friday night. I’m in bed reading. The light on my bed is the only light in the room.

      At first I think I hear water running. I listen hard, then realize it’s coming from under me. The sound increases in volume, then develops into the unmistakable sound of a long rolling note. Alfonso has finally decided to sing. He sings as if he’s trying not to wake us, as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear; as if he’s a trombone with a mute, practicing some complex piece of music to himself before a performance.

      After the long roll, continued unbroken, undulating in volume and pitch, for a half a minute, he breaks into three almost sobbing, soft, drawn-out melodious notes. Those three notes are enough to break your heart. Then he quickly crescendos to the top of another roll and brings it down slowly, tortuously, to a sound that has a clicking rather than a whistling quality, the kind of sound that had first caught my attention.

      He stops. I hold my breath. I wish I could see him; I try to calculate where he is from the direction of the sound, but I can’t. He starts again, the same low clicks becoming melodious, increasing in volume, tone, pitch, simultaneously, moving over at least an octave but in a different register. This time there is a single drawn-out note at the top and then directly across with another very round sounding roll to a stop; three staccato, almost unmusical peeps and then the descent. He stops. I wait but nothing more happens. I turn out the light; somehow I’ve got to keep him. Listening to him sing in the dark like that was close to flying for me. I feel myself somehow unbound.

      I sit there all afternoon till it’s dark. Nobody bothers me. I watch Birdy. He doesn’t do much except take a crap or pee once in a while. He does this by squatting over the toilet with his feet on the toilet seat. A bird doesn’t even know when it craps, so Birdy isn’t a real bird.

      A few times he turns toward me and watches. He turns his head back and forth, shifting his whole body each time. There’s a sink in the corner filled with water and once he