Birdy

I can’t even talk. I don’t have enough breath. My ears feel like they’re filled with snow.
    Al picks me up and throws me over his back in a fireman’s carry. I have no energy to resist. Al goes jogging along down the center of the creek. He can’t go fast because it’s slippery. He puts me down once and throws the ice skates under a tree growing over the ice. That’s the last I remember.
     
    It’s a good three miles we’d skated up that creek. While I’m running along, I’m keeping my eyes open for somebody up in the old factory or on the golf course who can help us. Birdy’s passed out. I decide against trying to get up the side of the hill to Sixty-third Street. I could never make it. I’m to the point where I’m going on automatically. If I stop for anything, I’m finished.
    When we get to the fire, it’s almost burned out. I put Birdy down beside it and throw on some more wood. Birdy’s gone all right. I slap him a few times to bring him around. It’s like he’s in a deep sleep. He’s breathing shallow, noisy gulps of air. I’m not cold at all myself; I’m sweating, but I’m dead tired. I lift Birdy up and walk him around to force some circulation into his legs.The fire starts burning fine but it’s not giving off enough heat. I know I have to get Birdy home. I can’t squeeze our shoes on either of us, so I string them around my neck and pick up Birdy again. This time I carry him piggy back. I hate to face his bitchin’ old lady.
    I trot up out of the woods and across the fields along the railroad tracks. I take the back way up to Birdy’s house past the Cosgrove place. The last part is uphill and I’m about pooped. I get him to his gate and put him down on his feet so it won’t look so bad. He can walk a bit now.
    Lucky nobody’s home. Birdy has a key. I get him upstairs and run some water in the bathtub. Birdy can’t get his buttons undone, so I undress him and get him into the tub. I sit on the john and watch to see if he’s OK. I’m starting to get cold myself; my clothes are starting to thaw in the warm house and I’m sopping wet. The sweat is turning cold, too. The bath brings Birdy around fine. In fifteen minutes he’s almost good as new. I take off for my place.
    When I get home, I jump into the tub. I throw my wet clothes into the hamper. I lie in that hot water for at least half an hour. My feet are bruised and cut. As the hot water starts to defrost them they begin to hurt. When I was running I couldn’t feel a thing.
    Next day, school is still closed. Birdy and I go up the creek to get the skates. We find them OK. In this weather, nobody’s sneaking around stealing ice skates. We go on up to the place where we went in. It’s frozen over again. We check the ice and it’s more than three inches thick already. If Birdy’d been alone he’d never been able to break his way through.
    We pace it off on the way back and it’s over three miles from the falls to the fire. Then, another mile to his house.
    Birdy comes out without even a cold but I practically get pneumonia. I have to stay home from school for three weeks; lose ten pounds. Birdy doesn’t tell anybody about it till I get there and we have the fun of telling it together.

It’s amazing how fast they grow. By the end of one week their eyes are open and they begin laying their heads on the edge of the nest. Birdie doesn’t sit on them nearly as much and spends most of her time hauling food.
    At the end of two weeks they’ve developed pin feathers and feathers over their backs. Their eyes are bright, wide open, and they cower down in the nest when I come in to look at them. Little tail feathers have started and stick out about half an inch. They’re beginning to look like birds. I even think I can tell the males from the females. I decide there are three males and one female. The dark one is definitely a male and one of the yellow ones. The spotted one is probably a male too. I judge this partly from the shape of their heads and the look in their eyes but more from the way they act in the nest. All the males keep away from the door and the wire of the cage and the little yellow one I figure for a female is less afraid. It’s this bravery which almost does her in.
    By now, the nest is beginning to get messy. At the beginning, Birdie took their droppings in her mouth; then, by the time they’re a week old she has them trained to shove their butts up over the edge of the nest. Still, it doesn’t