The Complete Collection. William Wharton

than the nest in the cage. Could the dream be getting ahead of real life? I’m beginning to think I don’t know what’s real anymore.

      When the nest is finished, Perta tells me she thinks she is going to lay the egg that night. For me as boy, the dream nights are the day. In the real day the thinking of the dream dominates me. I’m thinking all the time of our egg to come. It’s hard for me to realize that Perta the bird is asleep while I’m dreaming, and Perta the dream is awake while Perta sleeps. Are they dreams to each other? Is Perta right? Do birds not dream? Don’t they ever dream themselves out of the cage?

      That night the egg is laid. I sit beside Perta. She tells me she can feel the egg becoming inside her, how the shell is hardening and starting to move out into the world.

      She asks me to sing to her so the egg will come more easily. I begin to sing softly, absently, not knowing what my song will be. I sing about how we are there, together, living as one, in life just begun. Being the father of an egg is so far from what being a boy is.

      The sky is just lighting in the morning when Perta tells me the egg has come into the nest. She lifts herself carefully so I can see. It is beautiful. She leaves the nest and I lower myself slowly over it. The warmth of Perta’s body comes from the egg, from the nest, through my feathers to my breast. I hold myself still and this warmth goes through me. I try to feel what Perta has felt, is feeling. Perta leans over the nest and feeds me. Then she squats beside the nest and cups herself to receive me.

      Both Perta in the dream and Perta in the cage lay four eggs. Perta’s eggs in the cage are as lovely as ours. I leave the eggs in the nest with Perta the bird. I don’t want to take any chance that the eggs in my dream will turn into marbles and also I know that Perta the bird’s eggs must be sterile. If I know they must be sterile, there is no reason to take them out.

      I worry, as boy, that the eggs in the dream will be sterile, too. In the dream I don’t worry about this at all. I ask Perta why she has had only sterile eggs before and she tells me she was never properly fertilized. This is what I want to believe.

      Mostly, I want our eggs to be fertile. I wish it as hard as I can. With my binoculars, I watch the birds in the breeding cages as the eggs are hatched. I get it deeply printed into my mind. I want to know exactly what to do as a bird. I want to power my babies into this life.

      The other flight cage is getting filled with young birds. From the warbling going on all the time, it seems there’s a good proportion of males.

      I watch poor Perta in her cage with her sterile eggs. It doesn’t seem fair for her to do all that sitting for nothing. When she’s been sitting on them for seven days, half way through the brooding period, I take them out one at a time and hold them up to a light. They’re all sterile.

      I decide to do something about it. There are three hens who have nests due to hatch within a day or two of Perta’s. One has five eggs and the others have four each. I take two eggs from the nest of five and one from each of the others. Three birds in a nest is a good number, not too crowded, and the young have a better chance of survival.

      I give these four eggs to Perta as substitutes for the sterile ones. I feel much better. I’m sure Perta will be a good mother. Two of the eggs came from Birdie and Alfonso. I don’t think Birdie minded my taking them. Perta doesn’t seem to notice the substitution and accepts the new eggs without trouble. I check each egg before I put it in the nest with her and they’re all fertile. I use a small hand flashlight to check the eggs. A fertile egg of seven days has opacity and small red veins running through it.

      In the dream I look into the nest of our eggs but there is no change I can see. Changing Perta’s eggs in the cage has not changed our eggs. I’m hoping it will give our eggs a better chance to be fertile. I’m feeling a strong desire to be a father. I want to be able to feed my own babies. I of ten feed Perta on the nest and sing to her. Being a father, knowing I’m there in the new babies, will be more proof that I am. I feel that I’ll be more, not only as bird but as boy. Knowing he’s a father is one of the only proofs a male has that he is.

      On the night when the babies are to hatch, when Perta tells me she can feel the babies moving in the shell, I sit on the eggs while she takes a bath to help the babies by softening the shell. I feel them moving. I can feel movement in each egg. They will all hatch in the morning. I know it. When Perta comes back to the nest, I sing her this song. I’m sure the babies are mature enough to hear me now. The shell of the egg is so thin.

      Become now,

      Tap through the shell

      Of being and taste the

      Soft air of your beginning

      This is yours, the safe

      Surrounding blanket

      Of new life.

      The day the birds are to hatch is a school day. I play hooky for the first time in my life. I know they’re bound to catch me. I usually eat lunch with my father down in the boiler room; he’ll know I’m not there. I don’t care. I can’t hang around the aviary or my mother would catch me. Instead, I go down to the woods and climb a favorite tree, not far from where we had the pigeon loft. I wedge myself into a fork near the top, high over the bank of a hill.

      I spend the day up there. I can’t keep myself from thinking about my babies trying to hatch from the eggs. I can feel their struggle. I lie back on the length of the branch and try to put myself into the dream. I can’t do it. I know also, in my deepest part, it would be dangerous to enter the dream in the daytime. I’m not sure what would happen, whether it would break the dream or I would not be able to come out and back to life as a boy, but I know it would be dangerous to do.

      While I’m up in the tree, I think of myself trying to teach my babies to fly. I look down from the tree and wish I could fly here and have them fly with me in the open. It’s that day in the tree when I decide how to do it. I make all the plans and I’m so full of them, I hardly pay attention when my father and mother holler at me during dinner about cutting school. They keep wanting to know where I was. I tell them I was up in a tree but they won’t believe me. I don’t know where it is they wanted me to be.

      After my parents finally settle down, I go out to the cage and listen, but none of Perta’s birds have hatched. I wonder if the birds in the dream will hatch if hers haven’t. It’s hard to tell which is in front anymore, the dream or real life. I go to sleep not knowing what will be.

      When I arrive in the dream, Perta is excited. She tells me one of the babies is cutting the shell with its beak. She stands high on her legs so I can look in. One of the eggs is opening. Perta reaches in and carefully pulls off part of a loose shell with her beak. We can see a dark eye and moistened head. I’m nervous but Perta is serene and happy. I do some of my best flying around the cage to calm myself.

      Within two hours, all the babies are hatched. I help Perta take the shells out of the nest. I can see that two of the young ones are dark and two of them are light. Perta tells me there are two males and two females. Both the males are dark and the females are light. I’m a father! Perta lets me feed them and it’s such a wonderful feeling to put the small bits of food into their mouths. The little cries of demand and delight are a special bird song.

      The next morning before breakfast, when I go out to the aviary, I check Perta. She has eggshells under her nest. I put some egg food in the bottom of the cage and she comes down immediately. I look and there are four little babies, two light and two dark, the same. When I go out she flies up and starts feeding. I wish I could help her, too. I feel I’m using her, having her live without a male. I’m afraid to put a male in with her because of the dream. I might be jealous, too.

      During the days, I do everything I’m supposed to. I go to school, do my work, help at home and do some designing on my bird models. I’m trying to use things I’ve learned as a bird to improve the models. It also helps the days go by. It’s not so much I want to fly or make a model I can fly; I’m only trying to bring some of the dream into my life.

      During the course of the breeding season, Perta and I have three nests. For each nest we have, I take eggs from other nests