The Complete Collection. William Wharton

song of fields and seeds in their natural places. It’s a song I’ll never forget. It’s with this song I began to understand something of canary. Canary isn’t a language like ours with individual words, or words put into sentences. In the singing, you let your mind go, not think, and it comes to you, clearer than words. It comes as if you’d thought it yourself. Canary is much more feeling, more abstract than any language. Listening to Alfonso that night I found out things I knew must be but I’d never known. It was the song of someone who knows how to fly.

      The next day’s Sunday and after mass I let Birdie into the aviary. She glides down and hops over to the food. Alfonso sees her and swoops down immediately. I think it’s going to start all over again, but he stands on the other side of the food dish and eats a few seeds. Birdie hops to the bath and starts her morning ablutions. Alfonso stands near by to watch and when she sprinkles water she showers him. He flies up to the first perch, then flies down again. He hops to the bath dish and jumps in. He really splashes, scattering water all over the aviary, tossing it up over his back with his beak in a way Birdie’d never done. Then, they get in the water together, in and out, until there’s no water left in the dish. They both fly around the aviary wildly, drying off. Birdie’s entered into the spirit of this frantic bathing style. The feathers around Alfonso’s beak are ruffled and you can barely see his eyes. He’s gotten himself so wet, his feathers are heavy, hanging from his body. He looks really bedraggled. He keeps flying back and forth long after Birdie’s quit and is cleaning up. He rubs his wet face against the perch and against the bars of the cage. He flies down and rubs his face on the wall, of all things. It’s obvious he doesn’t bathe of ten and doesn’t like it when he does.

      At last he’s clean and dry. They both eat again and she starts whimpering and giving her ‘feed-me’ signal. He starts to feed her but this gets him so excited he begins singing and then goes into a little dance. He dances around in circles beside her while he holds a single note. He dips his head up and down, stomping his feet to some hidden rhythm. I figure, here we go again.

      While he’s doing this, Birdie begins her own little dance. She’s squatting, whimpering, twisting around to keep lined up with him while he dances. All in one movement, Alfonso flies up over her and hovers while he lowers his dong under her upraised tail and into her hole. It lasts only a few seconds and he’s hovering in the air all the time. The only real point of contact is where he fits in.

      When he’s finished, he lands beside her, squats and starts giving the ‘feed-me’ signal himself. They twirl beside each other for half a minute alternately feeding and being fed. Then he does it again. This time he doesn’t sing and there’s only the pleased whimpering of Birdie and the sounds of his wings as he pumps the air to hold himself over her. Her wings beat in a counterpoint to his and there’s a great trembling of air. It’s something to think how much a bird can flap its wings without moving an inch and how, when he wants to fly, the quickest, simplest flick of wings transports him straight up, twenty, thirty times his length. Flying is much more than flapping wings.

      Now Birdie goes berserk. She flies around the cage, peeping little peeps and flapping her wings as if she can’t stand still. She seems too excited even to eat properly. She goes down, eats one seed, then looking as if she’s forgotten something, flies madly all over again. She ducks into the old cage about every five minutes, inspecting and making sure. Then she starts tearing paper up from the bottom of the cage and carrying pieces of it around. She begins storing these pieces of paper in the corners of the aviary and in her cage. Every half hour or so, Alfonso recovers enough to chase after Birdie, feed her and they do it again. It’s a hectic Sunday afternoon.

      The next day, Monday, I buy a wire strainer without a handle, about four inches in diameter at the top. I wire this into the small cage. All the books say this makes the best kind of nest because it doesn’t harbor lice. Then I scissor off the top of a burlap bag, cut it into squares about two inches each way and shred it into two-inch length strings. I put bunches of this stuff in different corners of the aviary. Birdie attacks this new challenge with vigor. She starts by scattering it all over the aviary, then she picks up a piece and flies back and forth till she forgets she has it in her beak and drops it. She seems to think it’s some kind of new game. She’s interested but has no idea what practical use she can make of it.

      Two days pass and I begin to get worried. Usually, the egg will be laid within four days of fertilization. I’d read about birds who lay their eggs on the floor; all kinds of crazy things. Birds, like people, have been living in cages so long they’ve forgotten many things they should do naturally.

      On the third day Alfonso takes over. For the first time he picks up a piece of burlap. He flies straight to the nest and drops it in. Birdie watches with obvious incomprehension. Then Alfonso jumps into the strainer-nest and wiggles himself around as if he’s taking a bath. He jumps out. Birdie’s followed him into the cage. She has a piece of burlap in her beak. Alfonso jumps into the nest and demonstrates again. Birdie jumps into the nest holding the string in her beak. She jumps out again. Alfonso pulls the string out of her beak and drops it into the nest. Birdie looks at him as if he’s some kind of nut and flies out of the small cage to play with the strings again. Alfonso gets into the nest and waits for her. Birdie comes back with two pieces in her beak. Alfonso gets out of the nest and Birdie jumps in. 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