The Fish and the Not Fish (2 page)

One of us boys said that there were no more Byrds, that Bird was the last to live in our town.

I don't know for sure if this was true.

Though I don't know why it'd be the kind of a thing a boy like one of us would make up.

Look up.

See Bird.

Bird built a nest. In a tree. Made out of dirt and mud and twigs. At night he slept like a bird.

When the sun rose up in the sky, Bird sang like a bird glad to see the sun.

Hear his song.

The sky is blue by day, Bird sings.

At night the sky turns black.

There was a time when Bird was a boy just like all the rest of us.

There was a time when Bird, just like all the rest of us, was a boy who had to go to school.

The man who was there to teach us things would call out to us Bird's real name.

Byrd, James.

Bird, just like the rest of us in this room, should have known what to do when he heard his name called out like this: last name first, first name last.

Bird should have raised up with his hand.

But Bird did not do what the rest of us in this room knew was the right thing for us to do.

So the man who was there in this room with us called out Bird's name one more time.

Raise your hand, was what we told him.

But Bird did not do what we told.

The man who was there in this room to teach us things we did not need to know, he stood up from where he sat in back of his desk and he walked to where Bird in his own desk sat.

Aren't you Byrd, James, was what this man asked Bird what he was.

Bird shook his head.

Then who are you? was what this man asked of Bird next. And what's your name?

Jim, was what Bird said. James, Bird said, was the name of my dad.

The man who was there in this room to teach us things we did not need to know, we were taught to call him Sir.

Sir took Bird by the bone of his arm and pulled Bird up from his seat. Sir led Bird by the bone of his arm up to the front of our room where we got taught things we did not need to know.

We watched Sir try and teach a thing or two to Bird on this, the third day of school.

Turn to face the rest of the boys, Sir told Bird to do.

Bird did like he was told.

Bird looked his face at the rest of us in this room.

The look on Bird's face was the look of a boy who did not look like the rest of us.

We watched the look on Sir's face look.

The look on Sir's face was the look of a man who did not like to look at us.

Sir took this look and he looked this look back at his desk.

In Sir's desk there was a flat hunk of wood stashed back there that used to be used to row a boat with.

Sir held this wood up for all of us to see.

Bird did not see it, but he knew it was there.

Touch your toes, Sir told Bird what to do next.

Bird did.

When Bird did what Sir just told, Sir did with this wood what Sir liked to do best with this wood.

He hit.

And he hit.

And then Sir hit some more.

Bird did not wince, or flinch with his face, or make with his mouth a sound that most of us boys would make.

When Sir was done with this wood, Sir told Bird to stay where he stood.

Bird did.

Bird stayed and stood where he stood.

Pull out your books, Sir told the rest of us in this room.

We did.

We read what our books said.

The words made as much sense to us then as a broke piece of wood did to Bird.

Most of us boys would walk with a limp if Sir had done to us what he'd done to Bird.

But not Bird.

Bird walked the walk that he walked.

We watched him walk.

We watched him walk to where the train tracks in our town ran through the town that was ours.

The tracks in our town had all gone to rust.

There was a time when trains once ran through this town that was ours.

We all once saw trains run through our town on the way to some town that was not ours.

But not the past few years.

The past few years no trains had run through this town with the tracks all gone to rust.

Bird's house was built so close to these tracks, Bird could throw a stone and hit a train on its way through our town on its way to a town that was not ours.

No train runs through town these days, but if they did Bird could show you, Bird would tell you if he could tell you, it's true when I said it to you that Bird could take a stone and throw this stone at a train, his house was built that close to these gone to rust tracks.

When Bird walked up to these tracks, he did not cross them.

He stopped.

Then he sat down on them.

Bird looked down at the ground. Picked up a rock that he saw there. Held it like this in his fist.

When we walked up to where Bird was, what we asked Bird was, What are you up to?

Bird did not look up.

Bird did not say a word.

Not for a while.

But then he did.

He looked up.

In our faces.

What he said was, I see I must have missed the train.

Bird stood up.

He walked.

He walked in the tracks.

He walked like he was a train in these tracks.

We watched.

Then we walked like how he walked in these tracks.

No one said a word.

We walked like this till there was no more track to walk in. When the track stopped, we stopped where we stood in these tracks.

We stopped and we stood like this to see what Bird would do next.

Bird looked at the end of the tracks.

Then he looked up.

The sky was blue on one side, but one side of it had gone gray.

The side of the sky that was black, who of us could see it?

Bird's who.

Bird could see it.

Bird knew that night was on its way.

He sat down.

The rock in his hand was still in there in his fist.

There was no way he would drop it.

That night, we watched Bird look up when the night sky got dark.

There was a moon and the stars for us to see that made the sky not seem so black.

Bird looked up.

We watched him look up.

Bird found a tree.

He walked up to it. Stood with his face faced to it.

But Bird did not climb up it.

That was not how Bird got up in this tree.

What Bird did was, how Bird did what he did was, to get up and up in this tree, Bird flew was what Bird did and how he did it.

Bird took flight.

He raised up with his head. Raised up with his arms out by his sides. And to this tree, Bird, he rose up.

Up in this tree the moon, when it rose up, it looked like Bird could reach out with his hand and touch it.

Bird did not touch it.

Bird just watched it with his bird eyes.

The moon, in the night, it glowed.

In Bird's eyes, in the night, in the black of night, the moon, it glowed right back.

Up here, at night, as Bird watched the moon at night glow, the wind blew through the leaves of Bird's tree.

Up here in the tree where Bird rose up to sit in this tree, Bird said to us one day that the wind in the tree, when it moved through the leaves of the tree, when it made the leaves of the tree move in the wind, that's when he said he could feel it.

When the wind would blow like this through the leaves of Bird's tree, the wind that moved through the leaves and made the leaves move in the tree, it made a sound that sounds like the sound that a bird's wing makes when the wind blows through it.

Bird said this to us too.

The sky is blue.

The sky at noon is blue.

At noon the sky is blue like a sky that is blue.

The sky at noon is blue like the blue of a noon sky.

At night the sky turns black.

Black like the black steel of the steel mill in our town where steel used to get made.

Where steel used to be made.

There was a mill in our town, where the gone to rust train tracks came to an end in the dirt, where steel used to get made.

Be made.

The men in our town made steel in this mill till there was no more steel to be made.

Get made.

When the mill shut down, when the tracks turned to rust, these men did not know what else to do.

They worked.

And worked.

It was what they did.

Was who they were.

What they went to, night and day.

Work.

The mill.

Steel.

To make.

Now there was no more work for these men to do.

So some men drank.

Some men sat in the back part of their yards and hit nails in wood.

Some sat back in the back of their yards and stared up at the noon sky.

Some men sat out back in the back of their yards and stared down at the ground.

Some got in their cars and drove and drove some more and some of these men did not drive back.

Some men found work to do in towns that were like ours but were not like our town if there was work there in these towns for them to do.

The moms in our town who called these men Dear or Bob or Fred did what they did, day in and day out, back when the men of our town had a mill for them to go to.

But now they did it, the moms did, while the men looked back at them with eyes that did not know what else to look at.

Look at Bird was what we should have told them.

But these men in our town would not have heard us say it.

These men did not hear it when we said what we said.

The boys in our town who called these men Dad or Sir or Pa, we went on and we did what we did like we did when these men did what they did when they had a place for them to go do their work.

To make their steel.

To get their steel made.

Now these men were more in the house now to tell us what to do and to tell us to go, to get, don't you boys got a place to be, don't you got a thing or two for you to do, if not let us know and we'll put you to work, and by work they did not mean for us to go to a mill to make steel in.

We'd nod at these men with our heads and go and do what it was we could do so that these men and their gray as ash eyes would not burn holes in the backs of our heads.

We had Bird to look at.

We had Bird to walk through town with, to watch what it was that he might do next.

Bird was ours.

Bird did not have a man like this in his house by the tracks to tell him to get, to go, to scat.

There was a man who lived in Bird's house who went to work at the mill in our town where steel used to get and be made, but this man did not give Bird his name.

That man in Bird's house whose last name was Brown did not say two words to this boy we called Bird.

Or when he would say words to Bird what he would say was, Who in God's eyes are you?

What could a boy like Bird say to words like these?

I'm Bird?

Or else:

I'm just the boy who sleeps in a room at the back of your house with no light to push out the dark.

At night, in the dark of his room, Bird would dream of what it would be like to fly.

In his dreams, Bird flew.

Bird flew on top of the trees.

Bird flew through the blue of the sky.

One night Bird flew all the way up to the moon and when he flew through it, the moon, like a mouth that did not like the taste that Bird left in it, it spit Bird right back out.

There was a pole in our town made out of steel that had a flag run up its side. The flag was red and white stripes with white stars framed in a square that was blue. One night Bird woke up and climbed up to this pole's top with a wood match stuck in his mouth. He dragged this match hard on the pole's gray steel till a spark leapt out and turned to flame. So did the flag when Bird reached out with his hand to touch it.

When the flag caught flame its light lit up the town's night sky. We all got out of bed to watch it burn. We stood and looked up at Bird and at this light that burned bright in the night's sky. Bird looked down on all of our town who looked up at him perched up there with the lit up flag and Bird did not say that he did not do it when we all of us knew that he did.

There was a man in our town who wore a steel star on his chest. We were taught to call him Chief. When the flag burned down to ash, Chief called up to Bird to climb back down, then Chief told the rest of our town to go back home to our beds.

Most of us did. But there were a few of us who did not go, who hid out in the steel cans on the street where trash and things of no use, things that had broke, were thrown in by our town's hands.

Our eyes looked up from where we hid to see and hear Chief call up to Bird come on down.

When Bird came down, he did not fly down like a bird. What Bird did was, just like Chief told him, he climbed. One hand at a time, Bird climbed down from this gray pole where this flag of red and blue and white once flew in the dark that was night.

Chief took Bird by his hands and jerked them in back of Bird's back. Boy, you come with me, Chief told Bird, and he walked with Bird's cuffed hands to the place in our town where the drunks of our town got put when things with them got out of hand.