The Complete Collection. William Wharton

I feel in another place.

      I’m watching all the things as if I’m watching the birds through binoculars. I watch the doctor. I watch them taking me to the hospital. I open or close my eyes according to how much I want to see. I feel that I’ll never sleep again, never dream again, never move again. I don’t care too much. All I can do is watch; I’m enjoying watching. They lift my legs in the air. They lift my arms. They ask me questions. I don’t answer. I don’t want to answer. I’m not sure I can answer. Even my voice isn’t mine anymore. I’m between me and something else. Then I do sleep. It is the same kind of dead sleep.

      It’s as if there is no tie between before I go into that sleep and when I wake up. I wake up in the hospital. I’m hungry. I eat and I can move. I’m back with people. Perhaps the dream is gone forever. I don’t know how I feel about this. I’m like a small child; all there is, is me, feeding me, looking at things around, smelling things, tasting things, hearing things. I move my hand and watch it. It is all new.

      Three days later, they take me out of the hospital and I go home. I stay another week in my bed just enjoying being me. My father says he’s taking care of the birds. He tells me how many new birds he’s put into the breeding cages and what nests have been laid with how many eggs. I don’t care. All that is finished. I’m frightened; I don’t want to go back. He asks me what I’m going to do about the free-flying birds. He wants to lock them in the cage. He says he’s counted at least fifteen young males singing in the trees and there’re probably twice that many. That’s more than three hundred dollars flying around in the trees. I don’t want to talk about it.

      It’s the third day after I’ve started school when it starts again. I have all kinds of final examinations coming up and I can’t get myself to study for them. I’m enjoying riding my bicycle and watching people. I’ve never looked at people much before. They’re as interesting as birds if you really look. I go to a track meet and I’m all caught up watching people run, jump, throw things. Al wins the discus with a throw of a hundred and seventy-two feet. I have my binoculars with me and I can see all that’s happening with close eyes.

      It might be the watching with the binoculars that brings it back. In my sleep that night, I wake in the dream. I’m still on the ground under the tree. I get onto my feet. I stretch my wings. I hop over to Perta. She is dead. Her neck is broken the way the little yellow female’s was; there’s nothing I can do. I do not know I’m in the dream. I am completely bird. I have no arms with which to lift her from the ground. Still, I’m not bird enough to accept Echen and leave her there. I want to move her, to take her to some place where the cat won’t be able to eat her. I look around; the cat is not in the yard. I can’t leave Perta on the ground like that. I fly up into the tree to see our babies. They’re scrunched down in the nest, frightened. I feed them and tell them I’ll be back. I’m feeling stretched out. I’m confused about time. I fly back to Perta.

      Then I see me coming out of the aviary. I’m walking across the yard toward me. I stand there on the ground as bird and wait. I know there is a new hole in the dream. I can feel the mixing of the waves of two places, like an undertow. Two places are pulling at once.

      I do not see me. This is as usual. Then I lean down and pick up Perta. There is great unhappiness on my face. It is the unhappiness of a boy; birds’ faces show nothing. I pick up Perta and walk back towards the aviary. I fly painfully after me to the edge of the aviary roof. I watch myself come back out again with a small spoon and a matchbox. It’s one of the kitchen matchboxes in which I keep the eggs. I put Perta carefully into the box and close it. I dig a hole in the back of the aviary beside the wall and bury the box. I go back into the aviary.

      I hop from the top of the aviary and stand by Perta’s grave. I’m glad she’s safe from the cat. I know I must go to my babies but I don’t want to leave Perta.

      Then I see myself come out of the aviary again. I have a popsicle stick with me. I push the stick into the ground over the space where the matchbox is buried. I hop close and read the writing.

      MY WIFE, PERTA.

      I wake up.

      That next day at school I know all the things that have to happen. I’m not too frightened by the strange way the real world has to follow the dream. I’m sorry for Perta and I think of locking her into the flight cage but then her baby birds would starve. I could put those babies under other birds but this whole thing is something that has to happen. If it doesn’t happen as it must, then my Perta will never be really dead, I can never be free as a boy again.

      After school I’m working in the aviary when I hear the cat scream. I walk across the yard and over under the tree. She’s there exactly in the spot where I look for her. I look, but know I cannot see myself. I pick Perta up and her neck is broken. There is no other mark on her body.

      I carry her across the yard to the aviary and do the things I’m supposed to do. I’m feeling very calm inside myself. More than ever I feel that I am together. As boy I’m doing exactly what must be. I almost feel myself fitting into the space I occupied in the dream. I put Perta in the box and go out to the place beside the wall. There’s a slight depression in the ground. I dig the hole half-looking, expecting a matchbox to be there. Al will never know about the treasure we didn’t find. In some way it was there, there, in the power of our dream.

      There’s no matchbox and I put my matchbox with Perta into the hole. I cover it over and look for myself up on top of the aviary. I’m not there. I go back into the aviary and take the popsicle stick I use for scraping out the corners of the cages. I clean it off and print the message on it with a dark pencil. I go out and push it into the ground over the grave. There are no bird tracks. I wake up.

      During the day I can’t keep my thoughts from the dream. My throat hurts because I’m not crying when I should. We’re having final exams so no one notices me much.

      That night I’m still standing by Perta’s grave. The dream has become more like a dream. Things don’t happen the way they used to. I don’t see any of the other birds. When I fly, I fly in slow motion. It’s like a dream.

      I fly up to the babies and feed them. I tell them their mother won’t be coming back but I will take care of them. I spend all that day and night sitting on the edge of the nest, feeding them when they’re hungry and remembering Perta. I know they will not remember her. To them, she’s in Echen and that’s all there is to it. It’s not worth thinking about; it doesn’t matter.

      In my dream, over the next weeks, I bring the young birds up till they can fly from the nest and join the others. They are free, they can fly where they want to. My babies are completely bird. I do not show them where Perta is buried, it would mean nothing. I’m getting more and more boy in my dream, the bird in me is fading. The dream is becoming less and less real.

      As boy, I’m not as interested in the breeding of birds either. I’m seeing them for what they are, canaries. Everything in the aviary seems so automatic. The young birds all look alike. I can’t tell them from last year’s birds anymore. I can feel it all coming to an end. Something is finished.

      I build a feeding platform on top of the aviary. I build a roof over it to keep off the rain. I build perches for the feeders so the flying birds can feed up high away from cats. When it’s done, I let all the birds out of the new flying cage. Some few females are still sitting on nests, so I allow them to stay in the cage.

      When the last nest is finished, I put the floor back in the cage to separate the upper part from the lower. I begin to select out the singing males from the female flight cage, and put them in the lower cage. As the breeding birds finish up their third nests, I move them into the flight cages, too. Birdie is tired but as friendly as ever and I take her out for a free flight. I take Alfonso out too and it’s the first free flying for him. His flight is weak from the long time in a small cage but he quickly finds his wings and takes long flights to the tree and the house. I’m not sure he’ll come back to the cage but he does. I decide to leave Alfonso and Birdie out with the free fliers. They deserve it.

      The free fliers are now totally out of the cages. They sleep in the tree or on the house. I leave