Birdy

average, he’d be in the air corps. I’ll bet any half-baked air corps psychiatrist would be better for Birdy.It’d be a real twist. All day long they’re dealing with guys who don’t want to fly and here’s one guy who wants to; without an airplane, yet.
    He’s still smiling at me. I wonder if he practices in a mirror. OK, if that’s the way we’re going to play. He hasn’t had much experience with Sicilians. Sicilians can sit at a table all day long smiling at each other, talking about the weather, telling each other how wonderful they are. At the same time, they know there’s poison in the glass of wine in front of the other guy; they have a knife open and ready under the table; and three friends have shot guns pointed at the other guy’s head. They can do this when they know the other guy has all these things on them, too. There’s something crazy in most Sicilians, probably has to do with all those generations of sun and then mixing the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans. It’s a bad combination. We wound up with the sneaky qualities of the Phoenicians, the cleverness of the Greeks, and the meanness of the Romans. I go into the routine. I’m smiling my ears off but with the bandages he can’t get the full effect. I figure I’ll go for openers.
    ‘What made you decide to be a psychiatrist, sir?’
    Not a move. He could be a Jewish Sicilian.
    ‘I mean, sir, did you know when you were in high school or did it slip up on you the way things do, sir?’
    Weiss grunts in his throat. These are fair questions. He leans forward on the desk, still holding himself down with his hands.
    ‘Well, Alfonso; it was in medical school, actually. You know the old joke about “What makes a psychiatrist?”’
    I know it but I’m going to make him say it. I smile back. ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Well, they say a psychiatrist is a Jewish doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood.’
    Oh, great. I don’t know what he expects me to do but I laugh. I laugh just a bit too long. Most Sicilians have a built-in fake laugh they can bring out for any occasion. They can laugh at their own funeral if it’s to their advantage. It’s a laugh that can fool anybody except another Sicilian.
    ‘That’s a good one, sir.’ I’m not going to cut and fill for him either. ‘But, seriously, sir. How did you get interested in dealing with crazies and loons as a profession?’
    ‘Well, Alfonso, all my work isn’t with abnormals you know. Many people will have some little thing that’s bothering them and I can help them work it out and make their lives better.’
    ‘The army pays for this, sir?’
    He’s moving in fast for the kill. He’s a smooth son-of-a-bitch all right. He’s just itching to get inside my head somehow.
    ‘The army isn’t all bad, Sergeant. Fighting wars is never pleasant under any conditions, but the army takes care of its own.’
    ‘It’s certainly taken care of me, sir.’ I give this to him straight on. He’s good. He just smiles back at me.
    ‘Alfonso, tell me something. What was your father like?’
    ‘My father’s still alive, sir.’
    He looks down at the pile of papers under his hands. There can’t be anything there, not about my old man anyway. He’s acting psychiatrist again. ‘Oh, yes. I mean, what is he like; how do you get along with him?’
    ‘Oh, he’s a great guy, sir. We were always like buddies. He used to take me out on camping trips and we made model airplanes together; things like that. He’s really a great guy; wonderful to my mother, too. She’s the best mother in the world.’
    Maybe a few verses of ‘Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy’ would fit in here.
    ‘Ah, yes. And what does your father do for a living, Alfonso?’
    ‘He cleans out sewers for the city, sir. He calls himself a plumber but what he actually does is shovel shit all day. He comes in the back way nights, takes a shower in the cellar and scrubs himself with a big laundry scrub brush. He keeps his fingernails cut so short, you’d think he bit them. That’s to keep the shit out from under them, sir. When he comes up to eat dinner, you’d never know he’d been standing in shit all day. He’s just a great guy, sir. I’ve never heard him complain even once and he gives everything he earns to my mother. We’re poor but we’re clean and honest, sir. We’re glad to have a chance in this great country of ours.’
    Right here a quick ‘And Who Do You See, It’s Little Orphan Annie’ would be