Birdy. William Wharton

How’d you like a little pigeon nookey, right now, huh?

      I have a feeling for a minute there I got to him, just the way his fingers unfold and fold again. He really could be putting this whole thing on. What the hell, it’s no sense bucking for section eight. They’re letting everybody out anyway.

      That corny used to parade back and forth in front of Birdy, cooing low and shimmying down her back the way a pigeon hen does when she wants a cock to jump her. She’s flirting with him, the witch. When Birdy’s spread some feed on the floor, she doesn’t go down and hustle with the others; oh no, she flies over on Birdy’s hand and gets him to feed her. She makes all the same moves a hen makes when she gets fed by a cock. Birdy even puts some grains between his lips and she picks them out. Christ, sometimes I used to think Birdy actually thought he was a pigeon.

      To bend the tree or fill the sail is nothing. Knowledge only, not knowing. A bird knows the air without knowledge.

      I want to see if I can remind Birdy of when we went on the treasure hunt. This was after the gas tank and after they made us break up the loft. We’d already graduated from elementary school and Birdy was going to a Catholic school. I’m going to Upper Merion, the public school. My parents are Catholic too, but they’re Italian Catholics and don’t go to church much. Birdy’s old man and old lady are big for mass and all that crap.

      Anyway, I have to write a story for my English class and since I have practically no imagination, I decide to work this gag on Birdy and write it up just the way it happens. We’re reading ‘The Gold Bug’ in class and maybe it gave me the idea.

      – Hey, Birdy!! How about when we went looking for old man Cosgrove’s buried treasure? Jesus, what a riot.

      I came over to Birdy’s place with the map. I’d spent almost a week making it and getting everything else ready. I have it all browned with fire and burnt on the edges. Christ, it’s a masterpiece. It’s all in code and we figure it out in Birdy’s room. We move a model for one of Birdy’s crazy birds off his desk so we can spread out the map. It’s raining that day.

      Birdy’s always making bird models. He makes them with balsa wood and paper the way you make a model airplane, only his are bird designs with rubber-band power to make the wings flap up and down. Some of them are complicated, with wings that rotate so they twist vertically on the up stroke and horizontally on the down. He’s actually gotten some of them to fly. Trouble is, none of them fly as far as a regular model airplane; it takes too much rubber-band time to flap the wings for any kind of long flight.

      – Boy, you really fell like a ton of bricks for that crappy map, Birdy.

      The message part has all kinds of complicated directions, like from this tree to that rock, all that treasure map talk. It leads us to a wall where we’re supposed to find another message. Birdy eats it up; Christ, he’ll believe anything. He’s talking about how he’s going to build a giant aviary with his money. I almost give away the whole thing; I don’t want to hurt Birdy, I’m just having a joke and getting my English homework done.

      We go down that night. It’s raining like hell. I try getting Birdy to postpone but nothing can stop him. He believes things so hard he’s getting me to believe; I almost expect to actually find some treasure myself.

      We tromp around in the dark, sopping wet, no flashlights. Birdy’s leading me to a treasure I didn’t put there. We do find the old tobacco can where I hid the second message; it’s shoved between stones of the Cosgrove ruin, beside where the fireplace used to be. Birdy slips it into his pocket and we hightail out of there and run all the way back to his house. We go in through the cellar so nobody’ll see us. Birdy’s a little runt but he runs like the wind.

      We sneak back up to his room again and spread out the new map. I’ve used the same code and burnt off a part of the writing but left enough for us to figure out it’s a treasure map. There’s an X to mark the spot. Birdy wants to go straight out again. I talk him into going the next night. We need proper tools and stuff. I’m wishing I’d never started the whole damned thing. I’m sorry I don’t have some kind of treasure to bury for Birdy to find.

      The treasure is supposed to be buried at the north-east corner of the old barn ruin. This is all said in treasure talk again so we have to figure it out. I help Birdy over some hard parts but he gets most of it himself. He deserves a treasure all right.

      We agree to get together after supper when it’s dark. I have no trouble getting out, but Birdy has a fancy plan with a dummy in his bed and a way to lock his door from inside. He could probably just say he was coming over to my place but he’s deep into the treasure business. The Tom Sawyer of Upper Merion.

      We have a shovel and he has a compass and a string and I bring along my twenty-two just in case. Naturally, it’s started raining again. Didn’t rain all day but now it’s pouring. It’s a thick, dark night. We go across center field, down the hill behind the flagpole and along the path leading to the Cosgrove barn. It’s late fall, past my birthday, so there isn’t much grass or bushes. Summer, you can hardly get into this part; wouldn’t even know the old walls are there.

      I didn’t come down here when I made the map. I just made up the spot, ‘north-east corner of barn’. It runs out, with a compass, there is a north-east corner. Turns out, eerily, that there’s a slight depression in the ground right where the X should be. I’m ready to dig for gold myself. Maybe I’m getting messages from the other world. Maybe old man Cosgrove’s been getting through to me. Everybody always says Cosgrove buried his money. For years people used to dig around here hoping to find some of it.

      We start digging, taking turns every five minutes. I’m torn between laughing my balls off and shitting my pants. Birdy’s dead serious, checking my watch to see I don’t get more’n my share of digging. He’s digging when he hits something. ‘That’s it!’ he says. I’m turning green. What if there is a treasure; it’s too spooky. He digs like mad, clears a corner of something made out of metal. I start digging on my turn and turn it up finally. It’s an old can of motor oil. I laugh; I figure now’s the time to tell him. I’m mud up to my ass and wet. We’re getting into clay and it’s slippery. Digging in the dark when you can’t even see the rocks you clink against is no fun.

      ‘There isn’t any treasure, Birdy, I made the whole thing up.’

      He takes the shovel and starts digging again.

      ‘Christ, no sense digging anymore, Birdy, there isn’t any treasure here! I made up the map and everything. I did it as a school project.’

      Birdy keeps on digging.

      ‘Aw, come on, Birdy. Let’s go home and get dry.’

      Birdy stops, looks over at me. Then he says he knows the treasure is here and we shouldn’t give up. It’s got to be here and I only think I made up the map. That’s too much. I tell him he’s crazy and I’m leaving. He keeps digging. I stand around another five minutes, then take off. He’s still digging madly, not saying anything.

      I don’t see Birdy for another two or three days. I decide not to write about the treasure hunt for school. I go down to where we’d been digging and there’s a hole at least six feet deep, deep as a grave. I don’t know how the hell Birdy got out of the hole when he was finished.

      When I finally do see Birdy again, we don’t talk about the treasure hunt at first. A few days later, Birdy says he figures somebody got to it before us; that’s why the ground was sunk in like that. He still won’t believe I made it all up; even when I tell him how I did it. He only gives me one of his crazy eye-wiggling looks.

      I want to think to make real this that I know and can’t hold. I’m pulled down. The earth in me is strong; the drifting dust is in my bones.

      We get such a good business going, selling pigeons, we decide to go out and get some birds ourselves. That’s what we were doing up on the gas tank that night. It’s a big storage tank at Marshall Road and Long Lane. This is a place where several different flocks of pigeons roost and nest.

      – How about us up on top of the gas tank, Birdy. That was