The Complete Collection. William Wharton

in the air where they belong. I wonder if they’ll stay close to the house now when they don’t sleep in the cages. At the end of summer will be the time for northern hemisphere finches to migrate. What will these birds do? Will this instinct take them off and in which direction? Will Birdie and Alfonso leave and fly with them? How far can a finch fly without eating? There’s no way I can think of for them to get to Africa, their original habitat. Will they learn to live on the grains and fruits our finches live on here? Will they interbreed with other finches or stay apart? It doesn’t matter. It’s so great to see them flying free.

      There are over two hundred birds in the flight cages. More than half are males. The price of birds is astronomical. I’ll be glad when the birds are old enough to sell. I don’t want to keep birds in cages anymore. I’d really like to set all of them free but these young birds without free flight experience could never make it. Also, my father is very happy thinking of the money we will get when we sell them. He’s kept my mother off my back, so I can’t let him down. He’d like to get all the free fliers into the cage and sell them, too. He keeps listening to them and has all the males identified. He’s up to thirty-five males.

      I’m dreaming again, but in my dreams I’m always alone. I see the other birds flying but I stay away. I fly all the night alone. I fly to every place I’ve ever been. I fly over the roof tops and trees or sometimes high in the sky. It seems so easy and I’m more me, not so much a bird. It’s me, a boy, flying. I’m flapping my arms like wings and it’s easy. It’s just knowing I can do it that makes me fly. In my dreams I’m always wanting someone else so I can show them how to do it. It would be such fun to teach Al or my father how to fly. When you can do it, it seems so incredibly easy.

      The wholesale man comes and buys all the birds. We get nine dollars apiece for the males and three dollars for the females. The total check is for over fifteen hundred dollars. My father doesn’t understand why I’m selling the breeding birds, too. He still wants to trap the flying birds and sell them, but I put him off. They are my birds. I let him think I’m going to use them for breeding the next year.

      It’s quiet in the aviary now. I clean it all up and cover the breeding cages with newspapers. At night, in my dream, I begin to sense a strange restlessness in myself. Even when I’m flying, I’m thinking of something else and I don’t know what it is. Then I know. I’m feeling the urge to flock and migrate. Is it in the other birds or is it only me? Is it in the dream birds, too?

      Daytimes I watch the birds and I’m sure they’re preparing to leave. There is much flocking and random flight. They have increased their eating and fly further distances from the yard. Sometimes there will be no birds at all in the yard for as long as two or three hours.

      My mother is starting to complain about the bird shit on things and the noise. The noise she’s talking about is the singing. My father says they’re all going to freeze in the winter cold. He says it’d be cruel to leave them out, and we have to get them back into the flight cages. Most of them have never lived in a cage.

      He opens up the door to the flight cage and moves the feeders inside. The birds start coming into the flight cage to eat, then they come in to sleep at night. A few of them, like Alfonso, still sleep out in the tree, but most times they all come in. I know the time is coming when my father will close the door and lock them in.

      In my dream I go to the birds. I tell them it is time to leave. I tell them if they go into the cage to sleep they will be closed in the cage and put into small cages. At first, they do not understand me, then they do not believe me. Alfonso speaks; he says he knows what I say is true, that I have never lied to the birds. It is time to leave. He says he knows how to go, that it is a long flight and some will die, but he is going, so is Birdie, and they are leaving in the early morning. I listen and I’m sad. The birds are excited.

      At dawn, all are ready; we go up in a single movement. Alfonso is at the head of the flock. We fly straight south, over the top of the gas tank, over Landsdowne, down over Chester and I am with them. I’m wondering what is happening with my life. Will I ever wake up in my own bed again?

      Then, somehow I am not with them. I am in the sky, flying, watching them go. I cannot keep up; they are leaving me. I see myself as bird, with them, flying, up behind Alfonso and Birdie. I know I will be with them wherever they go. I watch from my place in the sky as they, we, become small spots getting smaller until there is only sky. I find myself getting heavier, falling, gliding down to the earth only a little slower than I fell off the gas tank. I flap my arms as I fall and I just manage to get back into my sleep under the empty sky.

      In the morning there are no birds. My father is angry. I feel very lonesome. We wait all day for the birds to come back. It is Saturday and I spend the day watching the sky, trying to keep it empty.

      The next day I go out and take apart the aviary. I store the wood behind the garage. I do it quietly so no one will know what I’m doing. Things come apart much easier than they go together. The aviary is down and gone when I go inside to bed.

      That night I do not dream.

      The days pass slowly. I feel terribly alone. I’m worried about telling my father I’m not going to college. I’m also worried about being drafted. All this works itself out; it’s decided for me.

      In September, I get a letter from the army saying I’ve been selected to study engineering with the ASTP, the Army Specialized Training Program. They’ve assigned me to the University of Florida in Gainsville. I’d taken the test for the ASTP at school in February and forgotten about it completely.

      It seems like the perfect solution. I can get away from everything and it’s something I can live with. They tell us we’re being trained as engineers to help with the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after the war. My parents are happy, they think I’m going to be an officer, and that impresses them.

      I enlist at the end of the month. I’m sent to Florida for a semester, then they dissolve the ASTP. I’m sent to Fort Benning for basic training, then to the South Pacific as an infantry replacement.

      I think of ten about the birds, about Perta, and my children, but I don’t dream about them.

      The next day, when I go see Birdy, I swear he smiles at me. I fit the chair between the doors and wait till Renaldi is gone.

      ‘Hi, Birdy, this is your old pal, Al. How about it? You ready to talk yet? Remember who I am?’

      He’s squatting and watching me. His arms are crossed over his knees; his chin is resting on his arms. His eyes are on me but there’s no answer in them. He’s watching me the way he used to watch birds. His eyes are flitting back and forth but somehow staying concentrated on me. It’s a creepy feeling but I know for sure that he’s there.

      I begin talking some more about the old things we did but I’m boring myself. Birdy and I spent a lot of time together, walking on Sixty-ninth Street or going to the Municipal Library for books on Friday night, but those things aren’t worth talking about. I start with the old high school and the crummy little locker we lived out of, but that doesn’t go anywhere either. I’m getting the feeling he knows all that stuff and doesn’t want to hear it anymore. I know he wants to hear about me but can’t ask.

      I’m ready to talk, to tell him. I didn’t know how much I needed to tell somebody. If not Birdy, who else?

      After basic they send me to Europe as a replacement with the Eighty-seventh Division. I start telling Birdy some of the good parts; the funny things; riding in trucks in fine weather behind tanks. Then, all the French girls and after that the mud in the Saar. Then, I tell about Metz and the Twenty-eighth charging up that stupid hill at Fort Jeanne d’Arc and how Joe Higgins got it there. Higg played left tackle beside me at U.M. I’m having a tough time getting to the real part.

      By the time we go into Germany and are up against the Siegfried Line, I’ve actually gotten to be a sergeant all right. It’s not because I’m any hell-fire soldier, but there just isn’t much of anybody else left. One thing I didn’t know about myself is I’m lucky. That’s not the only thing I didn’t know about Al Columbato either.

      I