Birdy

twelve dogs. After the first few, I’ve made up my mind to quit. Maybe somebody has to do it but I don’t want to be the one. Birdy is pale green in that dark cellar and we’rewatching each other. I know we’re both torn between taking off and bursting out laughing or crying. I know Doc Owens and Joe are watching us.
    Doc Owens asks Joe what we’re going to do with the dead dogs. Joe says he’s made arrangements for that, too. Birdy and I carry the dead dogs out and put them in the back of the wagon. They seem one hell of a lot heavier dead than alive. We drag the heavy, bigger dogs out by the tails, then lift them together and push them through the door. It’s amazing the difference between dead things and live things.
    We jump on the back of the wagon and Joe drives us over to the next township. Birdy and I stand so we block the wire screen door. We don’t want anyone looking in and seeing all those dead dogs when we’re stopped at a red light.
    We drive to the big incinerator in Haverford Township. It’s one of those tall tower jobs that burns all the time. The smoke and smell are supposed to go straight up so nobody will smell it. We get the dogs out, two apiece, throw them over our shoulders and climb to the top on winding steps. The dogs are already getting cold and stiff. Up there is a manhole cover. Joe opens it and we can look straight down into the flames. We drop the dogs down that hole. It’s enough to turn a person religious.
    By the time we come up with the second set of dogs, it’s already smelly. We drop them in, put the cover back and Joe says, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ It’s about one-thirty in the afternoon now, so we get our hoagies and beer, and drive up behind the golf course again.
    Birdy starts off by telling Joe he’s not sure he can stick it out. The killing of the dogs is too much. Joe begins telling us stories about the things he’s seen as a policeman. He says we should quit if we really feel like it but we might as well get our feet wet here as anywhere else. We’re probably going to be cannon fodder for the war and we’d better get used to it now. He says this seeing dogs die and learning to live with it might actually save our lives later on. In twenty years on the force he’s seen all kinds of shit and life is no bag of cherries.
    Joe is medium height and thick, not fat, and he looks strong. He has a full head of graying hair cut short. He looks so much like a man that even the other policemen look like boys beside him. He has a deep voice and a deep laugh; he laughs a lot. We listen to his stories about all the rot going on in just our township and we know he isn’t lying. It’s the first time Birdy and I really begin to learn something of what a mean shitty world it is. What makes it all worse is Joe laughing at some of his worst stories and expecting us to laugh with him. We don’t have the guts to quit either. I think we can’t face up to having Joe laugh at us.
    Well, it turns out that all the smell from the incinerator doesn’t go up. A regular war starts between Upper Merion Township and Haverford Township. Joe is called before the commissioner and bawled out. The commissioner’s getting mixed reviews about the whole dogcatching operation anyway. Gardeners, mothers of small children are sending nice letters, but dog lovers are up in arms. They’re threatening to get the ASPCA after us. It looks like Birdy and I won’t have to quit after all. The dogcatching operation is suspended for three days. Birdy’s glad because he has a lot of work to do with his birds. He’s catching dogs so he can build that dream aviary of his; the same reason he was digging for buried treasure in the rain.
    I go over to his place and help him out some. He has more crazy canaries than you’d believe. Birdy gets all excited showing me some of the experiments he’s carrying out with weights on the birds’ legs and pulling flight feathers from the wings to see how little a bird needs to carry a heavy weight. He’s also built some beautiful models. He wants me to help when he turns one of these into a working model big enough for him to fly. He wants me to help with the launching. I say I’ll do it when we get some time off from dogcatching. I’ve got an idea for an underwater diving bell myself and I’m going to need help when I try it out. We agree to do both those things when the dogcatching thing folds.
    The next Monday we’re back on the wagon again.