The Complete Collection. William Wharton

chew nails and spit tacks; but so what. We can still go on trying to put things together, shifting, arranging, so things come out right.’

      ‘What’s that mean, Birdy? You going back to squatting there in your cage, letting people feed you and I go back to leg pressing a thousand pounds and running around catching people so I can hold their shoulders to the ground for three seconds? I don’t see it.’

      ‘Listen, Al. I think what I’m trying to say is, we really are loons. We’re crazy because we can’t accept the idea that things happen for no reason at all and that it doesn’t mean anything. We can’t see life as just a row of hurdles we have to get over somehow. It looks to me as if everybody who isn’t crazy, just keeps hacking away to get through. They live it out day by day because each day is there and then when they run out of days they close their eyes and call themselves dead.’

      Al looks straight into my eyes. He’s still not sure if I’m talking sense. I think I am, but I’ve been wrong so of ten lately. I can’t hold back a smile.

      ‘Aw, come on, Birdy. Let me tell you something first. You’re going to have one hell of a time just getting out of this place. Your psychiatrist, that fat slob Weiss, has you pegged for a once-in-a-lifetime case. He’s never going to let you go.’

      ‘He’s OK, Al. He brought you down here and I’m fine now. You’ve got to admit he did the right thing. I’m not a bird and when I decide to get out of here, I’ll go. I’m not ready yet, but when I decide to leave, I’ll go. I just need more time to put it together, to figure out what I can do so my life will be some fun and I can stay alive.’

      ‘You don’t seem to get it, Birdy. You’re locked in here. You can’t walk out just like that.’

      ‘I’m not worried, Al. I’ll get out. That’s not the problem.’

      ‘OK, Birdy, OK. Then we con Weiss into giving you walking papers. You get a pension and live a life of luxury with nobody on your ass. How’s that?’

      ‘It’s not enough, Al. That’s just hurdling, getting through, leaning back. We can do better than that.’

      ‘But you have no idea, Birdy. This place is a regular prison. First, there’s these two doors; we can manage that, OK; but then there’s the door to the ward. I think Renaldi’d help us there. But there’s a fifteen-foot wall all around this place with guards at the gate. If you think you can fly over that, then you’re still a loon.’

      I stare at him. I don’t want to hurt Birdy, but I’ve got to know.

      ‘Tell me, Birdy. What the hell happened to you? How’d you wind up here anyway?’

      Al’s embarrassed asking. I know I have to tell him something.

      ‘Well, Al, it’s like everything else, it just happened. Would you believe I got hit going into Waiheke Island off New Guinea? I think it was one of those little Japanese twenty-five-caliber machine guns.

      ‘I come to in a hot tent with the sun making everything yellow. I’m connected up with tubes and pipes. I’m on my back and can’t move. There are long rows of cots and hanging bottles of blood and water. I pass out.

      ‘I wake up again and there’s a lot of noise. People run past the cot; I hear rifle fire. It’s either morning or evening. There’s a noise at the far end of the tent. It’s a Japanese soldier cutting through with a bayonet. He goes down the line of cots. There’s no screaming, only the thump of his rifle and the tear of the cot when his bayonet stabs through each time.

      ‘I rip off the tubes, crawl under the edge of the tent, and start to run. Then, begin to fly. I fly past the Japanese, over the tent, and into the jungle. I look back and see the tent on the edge of the sand and the water glistening. The next thing I’m here listening to you talk about pigeons.

      ‘Would you believe that, Al? It’s what I remember.’

      ‘Shit, Birdy. That’s crazy! Nobody can fly! What do you think really happened?’

      ‘That’s what happened, Al.’

      ‘Jesus!’

      Al’s backing off again. I didn’t want to lie to him, but now he’s worried.

      ‘All right, Al. So everything is crazy. Maybe without knowing it, I’m making up the whole flying part; but here we are now, let’s find some endings we can live with. Let’s get the old combination going.’ We sit quiet for several minutes. It’s so wild I’m afraid to bring it up, especially after the ‘flying story’ he just told me. Birdy’s liable to wind up squatting in the middle of the room again. But, I can’t help myself; I’ve got to tell him. ‘I got an idea in sort of a dream, Birdy. It was a terrific dream after the other ones. I woke myself up laughing out loud.

      ‘You know, Birdy, I asked Weiss to ship all those baseballs down here, the ones your old lady used to steal.’

      ‘Yeah. I remember. You told me.’

      ‘I didn’t know you heard.’

      I can’t believe my mother kept those balls all these years. There’s no end to the absurd things people will do trying to make life mean something.

      ‘Well, those balls tripped off this dream. I woke up in the middle of it and then kept it going, the way you do with dreams when they’re good. If we could pull this off we’d out-crazy Weiss in spades. The fucking army’ll give you a hundred and fifty percent disability just so they don’t ever have to see or hear from you again.

      ‘First, I’ll give Weiss a full load of bullshit about how you seem to be coming along and how when I talk about those baseballs you perk up. I’ll work up a sob story about your mother taking the balls, making you feel guilty. I might even tell him something about you wanting to fly, and balls flying through the air. I’ll give him the super dramatic version of you flying off the gas tank.

      ‘Now, here’s where I bring up the suggestion of bringing the balls into your cage here and watching what happens. He’ll fall for it. I can see it all.’

      Weiss starts hmming and hummming. A few times he strokes his chin, then tries to wrap one arm across his fat chest so he can rest his elbow on it. He’s almost too fat to pull it off. How can you be a psychiatrist if you can’t fold one arm across your chest, rest the other elbow on it and stroke your beard with your hand? It must be terrible to be a psychiatrist in the army and have no beard to stroke. Poor bastards go to school ten years practicing beard stroking and proper hmming and they zip the beard right out from under them. Weiss would look better with a beard, a nice black beard to hide extra chins.

      So, the next morning, early, we march down the corridor, the three of us, Weiss, Renaldi, and me. Renaldi’s proof you don’t have to actually be in the army to hate it.

      Weiss’s in the lead with his clipboard and fresh note paper. Renaldi’s behind him, acting very serious and professional. I bring up the rear with the box of balls. They smell moldy and are a mixed bunch, nobody could’ve bought them anywhere. These are the original baseballs, the real thing, stolen one at a time from live baseball players. This is one of the great collections in the world. Birdy’s mother, the left-center field ball hawk; burier of lost baseballs.

      We get to the cell and Weiss steps aside for Renaldi to open the door. He stands there, rocking up and down from his toes to his heels, back and forth, rocking his whole body like he’s fucking the air. He has his head tilted up, looking at the ceiling of the corridor. He’s like a monster choirboy; there’s something eunuchoid in his smooth-skinned face. A nice bushy mustache might help. I can just hear him breaking out with a quick Gregorian Kyrie eleison in high C. I stand there sniffing the baseballs and trying to hold myself in.

      I’m really into the story now and Birdy’s laughing. God, it’s good to hear him laugh.

      Renaldi gets the door open and Birdy comes hopping on over to us. He’s flapping his wings to be fed. Weiss jerks out of his choirboy position and stares. He