Birdy

people rode bikes to school. Birdy’s tooling that bike to school every day, rain or shine; won’t take the school bus. Jesus, what can you do with somebody like that?
    Birdy comes over and we talk about exams we’re having. Birdy and I are in a lot of the same classes; both academic, both half-assed B students. Lucy’s looking at Birdy. I don’t think she ever knew we were friends. To her, I’m big killer Al, wrestler and football player, something to cheer about.
    Birdy starts talking about his canaries. Everybody at school knows he has about a thousand canaries by now. He brought some of them in to Chemistry class once to study their blood and he built a flying model in physics that actually worked, his crazy ornithopter. He even writes about them in English. Birdy, the bird freak. I’m still half interested in pigeons but Birdy’s too much. I’ve visited his aviaries and it’s about the same as his coming down to the Armory with me. We’re more a habit with each other than anything.
    Birdy’s telling about some bird he’s gotten to fly with weights tied around its legs. This bird can carry almost three times a normal bird weight and still fly. The weight lifting champion of the bird world. He’s been training this poor sap of a bird since the nest. Lucy says something about Birdy being cruel and Birdy gives her one of his quick shifting glances just to show he notices, a fast almost-smile. Lucy’s mind’s too slow for it; she doesn’t see anything happening that fast.
    Birdy’s so thin you can almost see through him. It’s late May and he’s wearing a sleeveless shirt and his sharp chest bone sticks out against it. He gets more spooky looking all the time. He’s the only guy in school with hair long enough so it drops in his eyes and he never pushes it back. He walks through that hair.
    He’s spinning his bike around in small circles as he’s talking to us. Down inside the car, I’ve got my hand slipped up Lucy’s crotch. She’s flexing her muscle on and off against my fingers. Lucy’s got great strong legs; she can jump straight up and come down in a full split. That’s her specialty as a cheerleader. Break your heart to see her do it.
    Finally, Birdy rolls off. After he goes, Lucy wants to know all about Birdy. I tell her we went to elementary school together. She opens up her legs a little so I can slip in my finger; she’s juicyalready. I’ll take her down to the park in back of school. I know a great place under a bridge there. Whole bank is practically paved with condoms. Lucy gives me a good, stiff, strong tongue kiss and leans back.
    ‘Is he queer or something?’ she says. ‘He looks like some kind of homeysexual.’
    Honest to Christ; that’s what she says, ‘homeysexual’.

I got Birdie just before Christmas and by February she’s already showing mating signs. She stands in one place and flaps her wings without flying, a kind of nervous flipping. She also starts carrying around bits of paper or thread. She’s developed a new short Peip, and sometimes a trill of little peeps. When she eats from my finger, she Peips and goes into a mating squat with her wings quivering, wanting me to feed her. I put some on the end of my wet finger and Birdie opens her mouth and wants me to put it down her throat the way you do with a baby bird. A female bird gets to be a lot like a baby when she wants to mate.
    About then, my mother finds out I’ve been letting Birdie fly out of the cage and there’s a big scene. After all kinds of hysterics, my father says I can make an aviary under the place where I built the bed. My mother throws another fit but has to go along. My father understands things sometimes.
    I want the aviary to be as invisible as possible, so I make it with thin steel wire. I put staples in the floor and into the joists under my bed. Then I stretch steel piano wires tight up and down between the staples. I put them the same distance apart as the bars on a canary cage. I make the door separate, just big enough for me to wiggle through. I hang it on the bed frame.
    When it’s finished, you can barely see the wires. Inside, I cover the walls with light blue oilcloth and hang a light from under the bed. I put oilcloth on the floor, too, and white sand on top of it. I make different perches with dowelling and trim down a piece oftwisted bush to make a natural little tree in the back corner. It looks great. I take Birdie out of her cage and carry her on my finger, through