Flight

Seventeen

I THINK HE BROKE my jaw.

I shamble through an alley, blood filling my mouth and nose, and wonder if a man can drown in his own blood. Well, yes, of course, a man can drown in his blood. But can he drown while walking? If I stay upright, will I stay alive?

This alley smells like rotten food. Huge Dumpsters and garbage cans line both sides. They’re filled with expired food and half-eaten meals. This must be an alley between rows of restaurants.

Other homeless folks forage. Flocks of sparrows, pigeons, and seagulls forage. And murders of crows bully the other birds and bully the humans, too.

I wish I’d wake up inside a crow.

Nobody looks at me as I stagger past. I’m not an uncommon sight. I’m a beaten bloody Indian. Who turns to look at such a man? There are other beaten bloody Indians in this alley.

What do you call a group of beaten bloody Indians, a murder of Indians? A herd of Indians? A bottle of Indians?

I want the other Indians to recognize me. To shout out my name. But they are hungry. And their pain is more important than my pain.

I don’t remember how I got here. I remember that Paul punched me. And then I remember stepping into this alley. I don’t remember the in-between. I have lost time.

Losing time: That’s all I know how to do now.

Jesus, I’m pathetic. Didn’t I just force that poor guy to hit me? Didn’t I want his violence? Fuck me. I’m leaving this alley.

I’m going to walk out of this sad-sack alley and find a bathroom. And I’m going to wash my face and clothes. No, I’ll steal some clothes. Good clothes. A white shirt and black pants. And I’ll steal good shoes, too. Black leather shoes, cap toes, with intricate designs cut into the leather. In good clothes, I can be a good man.

And so I shamble out of the alley. No, I suck in my stomach muscles, straighten my spine, and hold my head level and I strut out of the alley.

And I horrify my audience. People sprint around me. A few just turn around and walk in the opposite direction. One woman screams.

Jesus, I must look like a horror movie. But that doesn’t matter. I am covered with the same blood that is inside everybody else. They can’t judge me because of this blood.

“I want some respect,” I say.

Nobody hears me. Worse, nobody understands me.

“I want some respect,” I say again, louder this time.

A man walks around the corner, almost bumps into me, and then continues on. He didn’t notice me. He didn’t see my blood. I follow him. A gray man, he wears a cheap three-button suit with better shoes. He talks loudly into a Bluetooth earpiece.

“I want some respect,” I say to him.

He stops, turns around, and looks at me. He regards me.

“I want some respect,” I say.

“I’ll call you back, Jim, I got some drunk guy talking to me,” he says into his earpiece, and hits the hangup button. And then he asks me, “What the fuck do you want, chief?”

He thinks the curse word will scare me. He thinks the curse word will let me know that he once shot a man just to watch him die.

“I knew Johnny Cash,” I say, “and you ain’t Johnny Cash.”

The man laughs. He thinks I’m crazy. I laugh. I am crazy. He offers me a handful of spare change.

“There you go, chief,” he says.

“I don’t want your money,” I say. “I want your respect.”

The man laughs again. Is laughter all I can expect?

“Don’t laugh at me,” I say.

“All right, all right, chief,” he says. “I won’t laugh at you. You have a good day.”

He turns to walk away, but I grab his shoulder. He grabs my wrist and judos me into the brick wall.

“All right, all right, chief,” he says. “I don’t want you touching me.”

He could snap my bones if he wanted to. He could drive his thumb into my temple and kill me. I can feel his strength, his skill, his muscle memory.

It’s my turn to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“I’m just wondering how many white guys are going to beat my ass today.”

“Chief, you keep acting this way and we’re all going to beat your ass today.”

We both think that’s funny, so we laugh together. And we almost bond because of our shared amusement.

“I’m going to let you go,” he says. “And when I do, I want us both to act like gentlemen, okay?”

“I want some respect,” I say.

“Are you going to be a gentleman?”

“I want some respect.”

“How many times are you going to say that?”

“I’m going to say it until I get some respect.”

The man looks around. He realizes that he’s pinned a bloody homeless man against a brick wall. Not one of his prouder moments. But he’s scared to let me go.

“All right, all right,” he says. “How do I show you some respect?”

Shit, I don’t have an answer for that. And then I realize that respect isn’t exactly what I want. This body wants respect. I don’t know what I want. And I don’t know how to define respect, for me or for this homeless guy. So I take a guess.

“Tell me a story,” I say.

“You want me to tell you a story?”

“Yeah.”

“And that will give you respect?”

“Yeah.”

The guy pauses again. He is flabbergasted to be in this situation. And I’m flabbergasted that I have used the word flabbergasted. This homeless Indian has an old-fashioned vocabulary wired into his brain.

“All right,” he says. “What kind of story do you want to hear?”

“Something personal,” I say. “Something you haven’t told anybody. Something secret.”

“I can’t tell you secrets,” he says. “I don’t even know you.”

And then the guy realizes that he can tell me anything precisely because he doesn’t know me. He realizes that any stranger can be your priest.

“All right,” he says. “I got a bird story.”

“Bird stories are my favorite stories.”

“You liar,” he says, and lets me go.

He takes a step back. I turn and face him. He waits to see if I’m going to attack him.

“I’m listening,” I say.

“All right,” he says. “I have a daughter, Jill. She’s seven. And she’s been crying about getting a pet. A dog, a cat, a turtle, anything with four legs, right?”

“Kids like pets,” I say.

“Just let me tell the story, Captain Obvious,” he says.

“Then tell it.”

“So, okay, we don’t want to get a cat or dog or turtle or whatever because we don’t want to clean up shit. Or we don’t want to clean up a lot of shit. So my wife and I, we go to the pet store, and we ask the clerk what kind of animal shits the least.”

“Fish,” I say.

“See there, that’s what I thought, too. Little fish, little poop. But then the clerk says that fish might shit small but they shit in their own water—”

“—so the aquarium itself becomes one big shit,” I say.

“Gallons of shit and piss,” he says. “So the clerk says that snakes only eat once a month, so they only shit once a month.”

“And then you asked him what kind of asshole father would give a snake to his seven-year-old daughter.”

“Well, I didn’t say it in so many words, but that’s essentially what I said.”

“Then what did the clerk say?”

“Bird.”

“What?”

“He said parakeet.”

“Small bird, small shit.”

“Exactly.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yeah, stupid of me, right? I mean, we took that little bird home and he was a shit-master. Poop, poop, poop everywhere.”

“And you hated it, right?”

“Well, I didn’t like the shit, but I loved that bird.”

The man is embarrassed to admit that. I like him for it.

“You see, he was a smart little fucker,” the man says. “Could talk, liked to dance to AC/DC, and sat on my shoulder.”

“You let him out of his cage?” I ask.

“Well, his wings were clipped.”

“A clipped-wing bird ain’t a bird,” I say.

“All right, all right, Dr. Earth First, I’m not the one who clipped them. He was clipped when we bought him. And it wasn’t like we bought him to be a tiny little Thanksgiving dinner. We loved that bird. I loved him. My daughter named him Harry Potter.”

“That’s cute.”

“Damn right, it’s cute. You want to hear the cutest part?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m the cook of the family, the domestic, and Harry Potter loved to sit on my shoulder while I was cooking and insult my food.”

“No.”

“Yes, my wife and daughter told him to say Too much salt and I’m being poisoned and I want pizza instead.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“Yes, it is. And there’s more. You see, my daughter’s favorite dish is pasta-anything. So I’m always boiling water. And Harry Potter is always sitting on my shoulder.”

“Oh, shit,” I say, already guessing at the end of the story.

“You got that right. A few days ago, Harry Potter jumped off my shoulder. And maybe he forgot he couldn’t fly or maybe he thought the pot of boiling water was a birdbath. All I know is that he fucking splashed into the water.”

“You cooked him?”

“He was only in there a second. I scooped him out with a spoon.”

“Where was your daughter?”

“She was right there, and she was screaming like she was burning to death.”

“Well, you killed her bird.”

“I didn’t kill the bird. The bird committed suicide. Attempted suicide. He wasn’t dead. He was moving around in my hand. And he was struggling to breathe. And my daughter was screaming at me to save her bird. And I was trying to figure out how to do CPR on a fucking parakeet.”

“So you panicked, then.”

“I froze. But my wife was on the phone, calling up the all-night emergency vet place. I mean, man, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an all-night animal ER.”

“Did they send an ambulance?”

“Oh, fuck you, you know they didn’t send an ambulance. They told us to get that bird into the ER as soon as we could. And so we all piled into my car and busted ass over there.”

“Where was the bird?” I ask.

“My wife had it wrapped in a towel on her lap.”

“And it survived the ride to the hospital?”

“Tough bird, man. He made it to the hospital. And the doctors took him into the back room and we waited in the waiting room. And my daughter was crying and my wife was crying.”

“Were you crying?”

“Yeah, I was bawling like a baby. And there were, like, twenty other people in the waiting room crying for their pets. It was the Waiting Room of the Damned.”

“What happened to the bird?”

“He was still alive. The ER doc came out, like it was a fucking movie, and told us the bird was in critical condition and might not make it through the night. So my daughter asks if we could see Harry Potter, and the doc says yes, so he leads us back into the ICU, and we see the bird, and he’s hooked up to this tiny little oxygen machine and this tiny little oxygen tube is running down his throat.”

“No,” I say. I try not to laugh, which makes me laugh. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh. It’s not funny.”

“Oh, no, that’s the whole thing. It is funny. It’s horrible, too. But it’s hilarious at the same time. And when I saw that bird hooked up to those tiny little machines, I laughed.”

“No.”

“Yes, I laughed so hard that I forgot my wife and daughter were standing there. And when I remembered, I turned and looked at them, and they were staring at me with those eyes. Do you know what kind of eyes I’m talking about?”

“Disappointed eyes.”

“Yeah, disappointed eyes. But I’m used to those eyes. I mean, I’m married, right? My wife gives me those eyes sixteen times a day. But my daughter was giving me those eyes. And you know what’s worse?”

“What?”

“She was ashamed of me. My little girl was ashamed of me. I turned her love and pain into a big fucking laugh.”

The man was crying slow tears.

“And then my wife and daughter left me. They got into the car and left me. They went to my mother-in-law’s house and they won’t talk to me.”

“Jesus,” I say.

“Christ,” he says.

“What happened to the bird?” I asked.

“He died, you stupid shit. You think there’s a long list of birds who survive a pot of boiling water? You think God pardons a few parakeets every fucking Memorial Day?”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You keep your sorrow to yourself,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Do you feel respected now?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Can I go now?”

“Yes — no, wait,” I say. “Do you have a picture?”

“Of the bird?”

“No, of your daughter.”

He opens his wallet and shows me a school photo of a pretty little blonde with missing teeth.

“She’s great,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “And now she hates me.”

“She’ll forgive you,” I say.

“Do you have any kids?”

That startles me. I don’t know this homeless Indian’s name, let alone if he has any kids. Does he carry a wallet? I reach into my pockets and find a mess of cards, photos, and receipts fastened with a rubber band.

I snap the rubber band and sort through the mess until I come across a familiar photo.

“Is that your son?” the man asks.

I study the boy’s eyes and nose and chin.

“Is that your son?” the man asks again.

“No,” I say. “It’s me.”

“You carry around pictures of yourself?” he asks.

“I don’t mean to,” I say.

“All right, then,” he says. “I’m late for work. I’ll see you later.”

Without further emotion, the man leaves me. I stare at the photograph. It is me, the five-year-old me. The five-year-old Zits. The real me. How did this homeless guy get my photograph? Did my mother send it to him?

I walk over to a delivery truck and turn the side-view mirror. I stare at my bloody reflection. I am older than I used to be. I am battered, bruised, and broken. But I know who I am.

I am my father.