Birdy

Everybody’s squeezing the Nazis. Then, Hitler puts a bullet through his head. It’s like reading a novel; it doesn’t seem real to me. It’s as if everything went from super real to mushroom soup in one morning. I’m not complaining. I can’t even get myself to worry much about being a coward either. I’ll make new tracks. I’ll find something to do so nobody will ever know. Maybe I’ll open a pizza parlor or a hoagie shop. ‘ ALFONSO’S ’, great name for that kind of place.
    It’s hard for me not to put on the tough guy thing with the nurses and the doctors. They want me to, I can tell. That heroic shit is hard to stop.
    By this time, the whole side of my mouth is twisting to one side. It’s getting hard to open my mouth at all. The doctors decide I’m an emergency case and put me in an airplane. I’ve never been in an airplane before; I’m wishing Birdy could be with me. He’d love it.
    I’m in America almost without knowing it. A hospital is a hospital. I’m rolled off the plane in a stretcher and into an ambulance. We go through New York with the siren blowing. I’m playing poker with another guy in the bottom bunk as we go. The nurses at Dix are different, older and very sympathetic. Everybody seemsguilty. They’re practically crying over us. I’m feeling about seven years old now; great feeling. I’m turning into a great baby. Maybe I’ll win a prize in the war baby beauty contest.
    I have two days of X-rays with all kinds of doctors fingering my face flaps. Then they put me under anaesthetic and do the first operation. I still haven’t seen my face; it’s always bandaged up. I don’t really want to see it. I can see enough of what it looks like from the other people’s faces when they look at it. I know I’m not as bad as Scanlan. I’ll bet he was a nightmare for some plastic surgeon.
    I’m still just relaxing and letting things happen. They call my parents and tell them I’m in the hospital. They come tooling up in the De Soto. I can’t say I’m sorry to see them, except my old lady keeps staring at the bandages on my face and crying. The old man looks tired, much older, and for the first time I realize I’m his kid and he does care. Only he can’t allow himself to show anything. He’s standing pale and scared there trying to be the Sicilian big shot. His face lights up when I tell him I made sergeant. It’s a dumb sad life most men live.
    When they go home I turn back into my private world. My body is still my ticket. Come on, doctors, punch holes in it. Punch all the holes you want, it’s gotten me this far, all the way back to America. Punch away.
    Now, I start hurting from that first operation. I’m put on intravenous for a week and then I’m fed with a tube. I feel like a baby pigeon being fed regurgitated food. I don’t care; take care of me, world. It’s two weeks before I can even drink thin soup. I can’t chew at all, even on the good side. The doctor tells me how they’ve put in a metal plate and pins to hold my jaw. They have to get the jaw straightened before they can start any plastic surgery. He tells me I’ll have a slight malocclusion anyway. I don’t know what that is so I ask one of the nurses. I have to ask her through my teeth. She says it means my jaw won’t come together quite right. I can live with that. The doctor also tells me he’s going to bring some skin from my ass and put it on my chin. Got a match? Yeah, my face and my ass. That’s when I find out, too, I won’t beable to grow a beard. I’ve got enough hair on my ass, more hair than most people have on their faces, but it won’t help. They’re taking very thin layers.
    ‘I’m just finished with the third operation when they tell me about you, Birdy. They say you’re down in Kentucky and they want me to go talk to you. Even your shit old lady comes over to our house and asks me to go down. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to see anybody who knew me the way I used to be. I know I’m not me anymore and I don’t want any more pretending than I have to. We were too close. Birdy; we were too much to each other. But I can’t say this to your old lady; she’s crying all over my mother. The crummy pigeon poisoner and baseball crook is crying. I tell her I’ll go.
    ‘I come down and talk to fatface Weiss, here, and then I start talking to you, Birdy, about how it was with us with the pigeons and all that shit. You’re some kind of freaky bird looking out the window,