The Complete Collection. William Wharton

ever beat you excessively? Do you have some deep feeling of being hurt?’

      Son-of-a-bitch!! He fooled me with all the fat and the smiles and glasses. He knows. I’m beginning to know, too. I’m stuck with some crazy things, like Popeye.

      I yam what I yam

      And that’s what I yam;

      I’m Popeye the sailor man:

      Toot!!! Toot!!!

      I eat all my spinach and

      Fight to the finish.

      I’m Popeye the sailor man;

      Toot!!! Toot!!!

      Bullshit!!!!

      I spend all that summer, when I’m not catching dogs, watching the birds. There are eighteen young birds besides Birdie and Alfonso. We get through the molt without losing a single young one. I’m really enjoying learning their different flying styles. Each bird has its own way. The flying is what interests me most. The way Mr Lincoln is interested in color, I’m interested in flying. I could watch all the time; it’s almost like flying myself.

      With the warm weather, my room is definitely beginning to smell ‘birdey’. My mother keeps sticking her head into the room and sniffing. I’ve got to do something before she goes over the edge.

      In the meantime, I’m doing experiments with the young birds. I want to know exactly how much weight a canary can carry and still fly. I also want to know how important wings are to flying. Would a bird without wings keep trying to fly? I take one of the young birds from the last nest and pull out its flight feathers as they grow in. It does everything the other birds do, except when it jumps out of the nest it can’t fly. It hops around the bottom of the cage. The others grow and are out flying in the aviary while it’s still bound to the bottom of the cage. However, when its flight feathers do grow in, it catches up with the others and is soon flying as well as they are.

      I choose some of the best flying young birds and put weights on their legs. For weights I make little bands from solder. I increase these weights a bit at a time, putting on more and more bands. My calculations show that, with my volume, to equal the density of a bird, I’d have to weigh less than fifty pounds. I can never make that and live. I’m hoping that birds can still fly when they have a higher density.

      The way I weigh the birds is to put our kitchen platform scale in the aviary. I spread some feed on the platform and wait. When one of the birds lands to eat, I read the scale. That way I get the weights of all the birds. The birds all weigh almost the same; there’s less than a few grams separating the heaviest from the lightest. It’s hard to believe, they’re so light. I don’t put any weights on Alfonso or Birdie; I figure they’ve already worked enough.

      I keep increasing the weights until a bird refuses to fly. There’s quite a difference in endurance. Some birds quit after I’ve only put two bands on each leg. They just sit on the floor of the cage puffed up and pretend they’re asleep. It seems that when a bird thinks it can’t fly, it gives up. I have to take the weights off these birds or they won’t even eat.

      In the end, there are two of the young males who keep flying, without giving up, even when I’ve more than doubled their weight. They can struggle their way up to the highest perches in the aviary. These two young ones take some hard bumps before I remove the weights. Still, now, if I get myself down to below a hundred pounds and can keep my strength up, I have a chance.

      One night, after dinner, my mother starts in about the birds. There’s only one thing to do and that’s let her go on. My father and I sit and wait till she winds down. My father looks at me once but I can’t tell anything.

      My mother complains about the smell, the mess, the noise, the mice, the fact that I’m spending all my time with the birds and don’t even have any friends except for that wop up on Radburn Road. That’s Alfonso. I really don’t know what I could do with my life that would make her happy. 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