The Fish and the Not Fish

I

We called him Bird since that’s what, to us, he looked like to us: a bird. Nose bent at the tip to make like a beak. Eyes like two black seeds, too small, it seemed like to us, for him to see with. But Bird could see, it turned out, what the rest of us could not.

Bird.

It’s what he was.

Bird liked to sit up in trees. Perched up there just like what he looked like to us: a bird.

Where’s Bird? we’d ask.

We’d look left and right. Then lift our eyes up. There Bird would be, up, up, in some tree’s top.

Bird.

Bird, we’d say. We’d ask him to tell us, What’s it look like from up there?

Bird would look down. Then look back up. The sky is blue by day, Bird would tell us.

At night the sky turns black.

That was Bird’s song.

Then Bird would say down to us, Come up and come see.

But the trees that Bird climbed up, they were too tall for boys like to us, us boys who did not look like birds, to climb our way up to.

These trees were big trees. These big trees did not have limbs down low for us to grab hold of and for us to make our way up.

The trunks of these big trees were too big for us to hug them with our arms. That’s how big these trees were to us.

The bark of these trees, we liked to rip off chunks and chew them in our mouths.

We’d spit out what was left.

We ate what we could not spit out.

Bird, like the bird that he was, liked to eat worms. He said, when we asked him what did worms taste like, Bird said to us, Dirt.

We liked dirt too.

We liked mud.

We were boys.

But we did not like to eat it.

There were these one boys in our town who liked to eat mud, but they were not one of us.

One day Bird built a nest way up in some tree. This nest, it was made out of twigs and dirt and mud. Bird sat up in this nest like a bird would sleep and eat and live in a nest just like this.

Bird would not come down from up in this tree.

He would not look down when we called up to him his name.

Bird stayed up in this nest for three straight days.

And then it rained.

Then Bird stayed up there in his nest in this rain and he did not come down.

Bird would not come down.

Bird had a house and had lived in a house just like all the rest of us.

Bird’s house was a house made out of wood and brick. He lived in it with a mom and a dad who weren’t Bird’s mom and dad but were the mom and dad of a boy with a last name that was not the same last name as Bird’s.

Bird’s last name was Bird but it was spelled Byrd with a y and not with an i.

Jim Byrd was his real name.

But we just called him Bird.

Bird Byrd was what this boy was to us.

Or just plain Bird.

No one knew where Bird’s real mom and dad were or why Bird did not live in a house with a mom and dad who were his own.

Most of us lived in a house with a mom and dad who were our own.

But some of us lived in a house with just a mom or with just a dad and then some of us lived in a house with a mom and that mom’s mom and dad who lived in the house with us too.

None of us lived in a house with just a dad or with just a dad and that dad’s mom and dad.

I don’t know why none of us did.

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.

II

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.

III

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.

Bird spent the night in this place where the steel bars you looked out through cut the world up in small squares. Bird liked it the way the bars made the world seem not so big. The sky, when Bird looked out to it, was not one big hunk of blue or black, but was now made up of small chunks that were blue by day and black by night and Bird, he saw, could hold a broke piece in the palm of his hand and then raise it up and press it up to that place on his chest where he knew was his heart.

We did not see or hear from Bird for three days, but when Bird did show his face back at school he held, in the palm of his hand, not a piece of the sky, not a hunk of his heart: no, what Bird held out for all of us boys to see, there in his hand, was a bird that was as blue as the sky.

This bird in the palm of Bird’s hand, this bird that was as blue as the noon sky, it had a wing that was broke.

This bird, with its wing like this, it could not up to a tree fly.

Bird would not let us touch it when we asked him could we touch it.

Bird held it up close to his heart.

When the bell rang for school to start, Bird put this bird in his desk so that Sir would not see it.

Once in a while the bird would make bird sounds with its mouth, chirps and cheeps and cawed bird cries, and when it did, Sir would turn back to face us and then he would ask us, What’s that sound? Which one of you thinks he’s a bird?

Sir looked right at Bird when he said what he did and what Bird did was this.

Bird stood up at his desk. Then he made his mouth in the shape of an O.

When Bird did this with his mouth, the bird in Bird’s desk chirped just like a bird trapped in a desk.

Sir looked back at Bird and with his eyes cut at Bird Sir told Bird to stand where he was till it was time for us all to break for lunch.

When the rest of us boys got to go to the room in our school where lunch was served to us, Sir told Bird to stand with his head pressed up to the black slate where Sir wrote down the words and the dates and the names of those things that Sir thought he was there to teach us.

When Bird turned back to face us at the end of that day, his face was chalked white with dust.

All the while that Sir had taught us the words and the dates and the names of those things that we did not need to know, the bird in Bird’s desk did not make a sound.

It did not sing.

We all thought it had gone to sleep.

But the bird in Bird’s desk, when one of us boys looked in Bird’s desk to see it, it was not there.

It had gone, was what we all thought.

It had flown the coop.

But we were boys wrong to think this.

The bird in Bird’s desk, the bird with the broke wing that Bird had brought with him to school that day, when Bird turned to face us all at the end of this day, when Bird stood with his mouth in the shape of an O, there was the bird, as blue as the sky, it looked out at us from the O of Bird’s mouth.

And when the bell rang to end the day, the bird in Bird’s mouth, it opened its mouth to sing.

It sung.

IV

We were at school with Sir the man who taught us things we did not need to know when this new boy walked in the room and told Sir and us all his name when Sir asked this boy what it was.

This new boy’s last name was Crane, Bill Crane, so he sat in the desk right in the back of where Bird sat. It did not take all of us long to see that this boy Bill Crane was not the kind of a boy you’d want to have sit in the seat that is the seat that is right in the back of you. He liked to spit what it was that he’d put in his mouth and hit Bird on the back of the head with it.

Bird did not turn back his head to face his face at this boy to see what it was that he spat at him.

Bird took it, to the back of his head, till this boy could see that Bird was not the kind of a boy who would turn back with his head and spit back with his mouth or hit back at this boy with his fists.

When school let out this boy who liked to spit things at the back of Bird’s head, he told us to call him Dog.

If you don’t call me Dog, he said, though he did not have to say more. He had a look in his eyes that told us to do what he said, that this kid Crane was not a boy to mess with.

So we called him Dog. He was new. He had a look in his eyes. We’ll give you a shot, we said with our heads, not with our mouths, to see if you can live up to your name.

V

When Bird was a boy not as big as the boy he was now, back when Bird was not yet the name he’d get called by back when he was just plain Jim or James (if you were like the man whose job it was to teach Bird things he did not need to know), back then when Bird was just plain Jim or James, Bird liked to look with his eyes all day long up at the sky, to watch the birds, to watch the birds give shape to the blue that was up there to see.

One look in Bird’s blue as sky eyes and you could see that Bird had it in his boy head that if he could he’d one day like to learn how to fly. But what kind of a school would a boy have to go to to learn how to fly like how a bird knew how to do it?

Men like Sir who taught boys like Bird things that boys like us did not need to know did not teach in his school’s room how a boy like Bird could one day be a bird like a bird in the sky. So Bird knew, he learned this much from men like Sir, that he’d have to learn how to be like a bird in the sky, not a bird in some room, but a bird up in a tree which is where most birds spent most of their time when they weren’t in flight: not in some room in some school for boys but up in trees where the blue of the sky was like a lake that, like fish, birds swam through it when they were a bird in flight.

There was a tree in our town that was as big as a tree can get to be in a town like ours. It was so big, this tree, that when we stood down at the trunk of it and looked up to see what was up in this tree, or up at its tree’s top, we could not see up to its top. This tree, it was all trunk, is what we’d like you to see, for as far as our eyes could see up it.

One day, up in this tree, though we could not see him, Bird called down to us boys from up in the top of this tree. We did not know it was Bird till one of us looked up to see the top of this tree as it moved in the wind like a hand that waved down to us. It could have been just the wind, we knew, up there at the top of this tree that made the top of this tree sway the way that it made it. It could have been just some bird, not our Bird, as it cawed out at the sky from its top of the tree nest.

But no, this was not just some bird that made the top of this tree move back and forth like it did this.

This was Bird, we knew this in our hearts, though it was hard for us to hear what he said when he said it.

Bird called out to us and he kept on with these sounds that he cried out as if to say, Look out.

We looked up, not out.

Bird cried out but we kept on with our looks looked up.

That’s when we saw what we saw.

We saw Bird.

We saw Bird jump.

He held out his arms out by his side to hug all the blue up in his arms.

Like this, with the blue held in his arms, Bird flew out and up to take hold of the blue that was the sky’s blue sky.

The wind, for a while, held Bird up in it.

The blue, for a while, held Bird up in it.

The sky, for a while, held Bird up in it.

But then it let Bird go.

The wind, the blue, the sky.

Bird fell.

As Bird fell, he did not move his arms to try to make him fly. Bird held his arms straight out by his sides. Like this, Bird dropped like a big drop of rain that fell from the sky’s blue sky.

Most of us closed our eyes.

Some of us ran so as not to get hit.

When Bird hit the ground, face first to the dirt, Bird did not die the way we thought that he would.

Bird got back up is what Bird did. He rubbed his head. He brushed the dirt and the dust from his hands.

Bird looked us then all in our eyes.

What we said to Bird then was, We thought you were a bird?

When Bird spoke, he spit out two of his front teeth.

I am, Bird said.

I’m a bird in the sky.

A bird in a tree, Bird chirped.

We thought you’d be dead, some of us said, when you fell the way that you did.

Some of us said, We could not look up to see it.

One of us then asked, Why’d you do it? Why’d you jump and choose not to fly?

I had to know how it would feel, Bird said, to fall and not have the sky be there to hold me up in it.

I’m a bird, Bird told us. I’m not an egg, Bird said, that breaks when all you do is drop it.

The birds in our town, when they’d see Bird perched up in a tree, or up on a pole, they saw Bird, not as just some boy up in a tree, they saw him for what he was, as one of them: a bird. Who or what else but a bird, or a cat, would sit perched up in a tree?

But there was this one bird in our town that did not see bird eye to bird eye with most of these birds. This one bird with a stripe of red that ran down its bird head, this bird saw Bird as what he once was: a boy and not a bird. This bird cawed at Bird to get, to go, to fly, to leave, back down from this, its tree. Bird looked at this bird in its black bird eye, but Bird did not want to fight it. But Bird did not want to leave. Bird did not want to be seen, by this bird, to be not a bird. So Bird and this bird that did not see Bird to be what he was to the rest of us boys — a bird — they fought. This bird took a peck at Bird’s left eye. This bird bit down hard on the tip of Bird’s nose. Bird did not bite, but Bird fought back. Bird took hold of this bird by its black bird wing and he pulled back on it twice till the wing pulled loose from its bone. Bird held this bird wing in his hand and looked at it for what it was. He did not know what to do with it, this wing, though he knew he should make some use of it. He looked at it some more. Then he held his mouth in the shape of an O, but no, this time, Bird did not sing. What Bird did, with this wing in his hand, when he held his mouth in the shape of an O (though he did not with his mouth sing), he took this wing, he brought it up to his mouth, and then like this he ate it.

VI

One day the boys in our town took some fur from some things that we found run down dead on the side of the road, this road that runs its way through and out of our town, and we stuck this fur with dirt and mud so that it stuck to the skin on Bird’s back. The fur, we thought, would make Bird look more like a bird and less like a boy and this would help him to fly. We took dirt and mud and mixed in the fur with it — black and white and brown, all mixed to make a shade like the sky at dawn when the birds like to wake up and sing — till it stuck to the skin on Bird’s back. The fur, it did, it made Bird look more like a bird than he did when he did not have fur stuck with mud and dirt to the skin on his back. Some of us boys said, so that Bird could not hear it, that Bird looked more like a dog — a dead dog run down on the side of a road — than he did like a bird, but if you want to know the truth, what Bird looked most of all like was like a boy who had the fur of some dead things stuck, with mud and with dirt, to the skin on the back of his boy back.

One day Bird came to school with twigs and leaves and bits of bark stuck to the clothes on his back. It looked as if he’d had a fight with a tree and the tree was what won out.

The next day Bird came to school wet from head to foot as if he got caught in the rain.

It had not rained for three weeks, not a drop. The grass in our town had all turned to dirt.

Sir gave Bird a rag that was used to wipe the black slate that Sir wrote on in chalk all of those things that boys like us did not need to know and then Sir told Bird who the past two days had been late for school to dry his head and his hands off. Bird took it, the rag, and held it in his hand. What we thought was rain dripped off of Bird’s head and back and pooled there at his bare feet.

The sea, the sea, the sea, the sea.

This was the word and the sound that Bird made with his mouth, more than just once, though he said it so low Sir could not hear it.

Where, do tell, are your shoes? Sir said this to Bird when he saw what we saw too.

This school, Sir said to Bird, it is not some barn. I’m not here to teach you how to milk cows.

A few of us laughed when Sir said what he did. Those of us who did not laugh gave those who did looks.

The sea, the sea, Bird said, to make it now six times that Bird had said these sea words, though once more Sir did not hear it.

The rest of us in class did not know what to make of what or why Bird said what he did.

What did Bird mean when he said what he said: The sea, the sea, the sea.

What did boys like us know of that place called the sea? The sea was not the kind of a place that boys like us had been to see.

The road out of town, we’d been told, by Sir and by men like Sir who were here to teach us those things that we did not need to know, if you took it as far as it will go, we got told, it ends up at the sea.

That much we knew.

We’d been told what got told.

But we knew, too, that there was more for us to know of a place such as the sea than just this.

The sea was a big place, this we knew, as big as the sky, a place too big for eyes like ours to see it with just one look.

When we’d close our eyes to see it, what we’d see was a place like the sky, it was as blue as the sky, a blue for boys like us, in our eyes, to swim in.

It took Bird all day for him to say to us, when he could, what it was that he had to say.

The sea, Bird said, his skin gone white where the rain had been on it. It is time to go see the sea.

Bird sang out, so loud this time so Sir too could hear it, It is time to go see the sea.

When Sir heard Bird say that it was time to go see the sea, Sir turned to us and told us, In your dreams you will see the sea.

Sir was right.

That night, each one of us boys, we dreamed we were at the sea. We stood at the sea’s edge and looked out and looked up: at the sky, at the black. The moon in this sky was a fish.

We fished.

We caught fish that, when we touched them, when we took out the hooks, they all turned, in our hands, to stars.

This fire did not burn us.

But the stars in our hands left their mark.

We took this as a sign.

At school, the next day, we each of us held out our hands for each of us to see.

We each of us said, Last night I had a dream.

We were boys who did not talk of our dreams.

We were not boys who made much of the dreams that we dreamed.

Bird was the one boy of us who did, who dreamed.

Bird’s dream was, we knew, to fly.

And so he flew.

Bird flew to see the sea.

Bird dreamed this dream for us.

Bird dreamed this dream with us.

To the sea, we knew, Bird would take us.

We just had to find out where he was. Bird was not at school that day. When we looked in all the trees that Bird liked to sit in, Bird was not perched up in the trees where we looked up to find him.

When we found Bird, where we found Bird, Bird was on the ground with his legs crossed at the knees.

Bird, we said. Bird.

We said, We all dreamed the same dream.

And then one by one we told him the dream.

We held out our hands so that Bird could see what the stars had left in our hands.

Bird looked up at us with his bird eyes that liked to look through what they looked at.

Then Bird held out his hands for us to see.

In one hand, his left, there was a mark in the shape of a star.

In his right hand, with an eye shaped like a moon that looked up at us, there was a fish.

Bird took this fish and put it in his mouth.

Bird bit the fish head off of this fish.

Then he held out the rest of this fish for the rest of us to eat it.

We ate it.

Bird sang as we ate what we ate.

Once we ate, we held our mouths in the shape of an O.

Out of these holes in our heads, no words came out.

There were just sounds.

When Bird heard these sounds, Bird stood up from the ground.

Bird looked at us with this look.

There was this look that Bird liked to look at us with.

It was the kind of a look that felt as if Bird could look right through us with this look.

We wish you could see this look.

We turned back to see what Bird had just looked at, or what it was Bird had seen when he looked this look right through us.

There was just the road that ran its way out of our town on its way to end at the sea.

There was just the dirt of the road with just the dirt of the road on it back there for us to see.

Bird walked out to the edge of this road.

Then he turned and walked out on it.

The sea, Bird sang, is blue by day, but at night the sea turns black.

VII

Where the train tracks crossed this road that ran its way out of town on its way out to the sea, this was where our town came to its end and the rest of the world got its start at.

Here we stood, all of us boys, and knew that the road ran through us.

In two rows of four boys in each of our rows, we crossed from our world out to see the next.

Our names?

You want us now to give you names?

There’s Burke and Holt, Welsh and Locke, Clark and Spur and Fisk. That’s eight when you add me to the mix.

My name’s Link.

You can call me The Boy Who Lived To Tell This Tale.

Bird makes us nine.

We are nine and there are nine of us on this road that runs its way out of our town on its way out to the sea.

VIII

The road that runs its way out of town on its way out to the sea, it is made out of dirt and rock and dirt and rock. When we walk, we make dust. When it rains, we make mud for us to cool our skins with. When it rains, we make mud for us to eat.

IX

We were on our way out of town on the road out of town that runs out and ends up at the sea when we saw Dog. Dog was on the side of the road, on his hands and knees, like a dog would be, though when he saw us he stood up on two legs like a dog on four legs can’t.

Look, one of us boys said. There’s Dog.

We looked. We saw.

Dog.

So what? one of us said.

It’s just Dog.

He’s not one of us.

We did not, with our hands, wave at Dog for him to come walk out of town with us.

The one of us who said that Dog was not one of us was right when he said this.

We all knew this.

Dog knew this too.

We looked with our looks back at the road that would run us out of town to see the sea.

Dog looked with his dog eyes back at the backs of us boys.

Dog asked, What are you fleas up to?

We knew we should not tell him, but one of us still did.

We’re on our way to the sea, this one of us who said it said, though he too, when he said it, knew he should not have said what he did.

Dog laughed when he heard us say it. The sea? Dog said. There’s no sea for you fleas to see.

At the end of this road, we all of us then said, all of us at the same time, we said this to this boy Dog.

We knew, in this, we were right when we said what he did, though none of us had with our own eyes seen it — the sea. And none of us had yet done it: none of us had walked on and on on this road out of town till it ran out at the blue of the sea.

You won’t make it, Dog said.

He looked at us with a look that we knew was looked at us to scare us.

We took this as a dare, for us to make it, when Dog said that we would not make it to the sea.

Dog said, What will Sir think?

Sir think?

We did not think of Sir.

We did not care.

We were with Bird.

We did not know how long it would take us, or what we would do once we got there, or what the sea would do with us. It was just us, with Bird who walked with us, and we were on our way to see, what Bird told us, was ours in this world to see.

This road runs through fields that are made of dirt and rock and weeds. There are trees, too, with birds up in them, there are trees bunched up to make woods, but a few of these trees, the trunks of these trees, they look more like they’re made out of bone than they do wood. A tree made out of bone, or a bone shaped like a tree? Did Bird see it this way too? Or did Bird see tree and see it as a place to fly up to, a place for him to sit in and rest, a place for him to sit and like a bird sing in the dawn’s new day?

The moon in the sky, that first full night, it was full and it pulled us, it pulled us to the sea.

The moon, it was a mouth shaped like an O, a hole in the sky that called out to us, in the dark of the night, The sea, it said. To the sea, it sang out. The sea, the sea, the sea.

And so it was to the sea that we went.

We went to see the sea.

We ate when the sounds from our guts told it was time to eat. We ate dirt and the leaves from trees whose names we did not know. We knelt by the edge of a creek to drink from the cold of its flow. The creek smelled of cow though it could have been the air that had the smell of cow in it. Once we ate and drank we kept on with our walk down this road made of dust and dirt that made its way to where the sea was a thing none of us had seen. We went to see it with Bird who was there to take us to this place that none of us had been. Once in a while one of us would say, Bird, are we there yet? Is this what you mean when you say we are off to see the sea? Bird would turn his head to say what most of us knew — that we’d know we were there when, in fact, we were there, where we’d set out for us to be.

We slept in the weeds on the side of the road so that no one or no thing could see us. We gazed up at the sky, at the stars in the sky, and made up things that we saw there. We saw a bird in the sky that was made out of stars, it was a bird that Bird said was God. When Bird said that this bird in the sky that was made out of stars was God, we looked at Bird as if he had just said there was no such thing as the sea.

At dawn we woke up to the sound of a bird with a cry from its beak that made us want to stuff its mouth shut with mud. This bird, we knew, it was close by, hid up in some tree, though we could not in this gray light see it. Is that God, too? one of us said, and we all laughed at the thought, though Bird said, God does not wake us with sound.

Once we woke up, we stood up out of the weeds and looked up at the sky, then we looked our eyes down the road and took off on foot down it on our way to see the sea.

We saw rocks and trees, sky and weeds, a dead dog dead on the side of the road with its dead legs stuck up in the air like a chair that some man kicked on its back but this dog had no man or boy to kick it or to call to it by name.

We saw cars here and there that honked when they saw us and then sped by us with tails of dust. There was a field filled with corn that was more brown than it was green and the cobs, when we broke them from their stalks, they turned to dust in our hands. We found creeks that looked more like just roads that ran off to where there were woods. When one of us pulled down his pants and said we should see if we could bring the creek back from dirt, we tried but none of us had piss in us to give it.

Won’t be long now.

It was Bird who was the one of us to say this.

What Bird said, we’d come to trust it. It was the way that he said it. It was like Bird knew. Or like he saw what the rest of us could not.

So we walked on like this to see the sea. We did not stop when night drew down on us. We could not see but we knew what was there: the road that we walked on, the sea we walked on to go see.

The sea, the sea, the sea.

X

When we got to where the sea was, we stood at its edge and looked out at its dark. The sea, it was like the sky, like the sky had come down to see us. We looked out at the sea’s face and felt its breath blow back on us. We smelled the sea on us. We were in the sea’s mouth, all of us. We were like drops of rain that the sea could eat up.

Bird told us to close our eyes.

So we did.

We breathed in with our mouths till we could taste the sea with our tongues.

We heard Bird sing, By day the sea is blue, Bird sang, at night the sky turns black.

When he said what he said, Bird turned once back to look at us, in the dark, and with his arms held out by his sides, Bird walked out and walked out in the dark to the sea.

The sea, it held Bird up.

Bird walked on and on like a stone skipped from one side of the sea to the next.

We turned our heads up and then down to watch Bird walk out when it was Dog who walked up, out of the dark, and Dog was the one who pushed us, one by one, out in this dark.

This dark we were told by Bird was the sea, it turned out not to be what Bird said that it was.

Dog took turns and he pushed us, one at a time, out in this dark that was not the sea.

What was not the sea, what was not the black of the sea by night, was the black that was the night’s sky.

Each one of us boys, one at a time, we took turns, we fell through this dark, it was a dark that did not catch us, it did not hold us up. The sea that was black, it ate us all right up.

But not all of us.

I was the last of us to be pushed by Dog.

You’re next, Dog said, with a hand at my back. You’re the last one left. It’s time for you, like all the rest, to see the sea as it used to be. It’s time, Dog said, to die.

You mean fly, I called out, to this boy we called Dog, and then I leaped out to be with the dark.

It’s true, I fell, this first time I tried to fly, but it was Bird who was there, it was Bird who came, out of this dark, to lift me back up, to give me back to the sky.

XI

That night, we gave each star in the sky a new name for us to call it by. When the moon rose full, out from the black that was the sea, we knew it was ours to name too.

We called it the fish.

The fish that walks on the sea.

XII

It was dawn when the blue of the sky blew its cool breath on my face to tell me it was time to wake up.

I woke up.

I woke up to a blue that had Bird wrapped up in it.

The sky, Bird sang, is blue by day.

At night the sky turns black.

This is how Bird took flight.

Bird flew up to see the sun.

The sun in the sky held Bird up trapped in its light.

Bird, I said, to bring Bird back.

Bird. Bird. Bird.

I sang this word with the hole of my mouth to see if Bird might sing a song back.

The sun, it shined bright back.

And the sky made a sound like the sea might make when a stone is dropped down in it.

XIII

When an egg is pushed from its nest, when the egg breaks in half, a bird lifts up its head.

It opens its eyes, its beak.

To see. To sing. Its song.