I can’t say things are getting better with Antonio. Boyce and Sammy have invited me to their places every night this week just to get away from him, but I find myself unable to leave. He is, of course, a beautiful bird, yet his very existence is a nightmare to me. I can’t leave him, though. Even when he bit me through the bars I didn’t get very upset at him. I can blame him for biting me no more than he can blame me when a drop of my blood fell into his food tray.
Even though I can’t leave Antonio, I can’t stand to be around him either. Two nights ago Sammy and the Lancasters came over to help distract me, but Boyce Jr.’s delight at the bird only made things worse, especially when he told Charlotte that he wished I had stuffed birds that he could play with. I showed him a couple of teddy-bear-like stuffed birds that I never had the nerve to give to Rachel, but Boyce Jr. said, “Those are for babies. I want the ones that were once alive.” Later that night I lurked in a support group chat room for parents whose children had committed grizzly murders. When their stories encouraged me enough to share my own, I wrote that my name was Cyrus, and one of my best friends’ boy thinks stuffed birds are cool. When someone asked whether I understood what the chat room was for, I wrote, “I mean the ones that were once alive!” Everyone ignored me from then on.
Last night I simply couldn’t sleep because of Antonio. His movements in the cage were so irregular that I would imagine for a moment that he wasn’t there, then I’d hear his clipped wing ruffle or his cage shake a bit. I thought about just losing the bet and letting Antonio go outside. A cat would get him pretty quickly, but I don’t think he’d mind going that way. I didn’t know his mate, but I bet she was pretty great, and Antonio is probably wondering why he didn’t die instead. But since he’s just a bird, his consciousness would only allow him to think, “She’s not here,” over and over. Or even worse, she’s completely absent from his bird memory so that all he knows is that he's incomplete.
At about one in the morning I called Sammy and asked him if we wanted to go out for a while. Sammy, of course, said yes, and we immediately called Boyce. Boyce is getting less and less hours as a locksmith, so he said he didn’t have anything to wake up early for. Boyce picked Sammy up first and when he came to my driveway gave a little honk. I rushed out with Antonio’s cage by my side. I could see both of their faces in the glass, and it was pretty clear they didn’t know I was going to bring Antonio. By the time I got into the van though, they were asking the bird how he was doing.
Of course no place was open besides a bar, so that’s where we went. It was one-thirty on a Wednesday so there were only a couple bars still open, and neither do we frequent. We decided on Big Lets. That’s not the real name of it, but no one really calls the place by its real name. On the side of one wall is, in big letters, the word BAR. So everyone in town just calls it Big Lets. When we walked into Big Lets there were only a few people there, but they were all gathered around the bar. They were all very happy, but momentarily very puzzled when I walked in with a bird cage. Sammy immediately said to them, “Ladies and gentlemen, Antonio.” A tall man walked out of the bathroom. He held his hands out to us and said, “For them, too! What do you have there, a bird? For him, too!”
Turns out the tall man is named Bruce Barenburg, and he was at the end of a very good day. We tried to sit at a table in the corner but Bruce called us over to his small group and got us free drinks. The bartender at Big Lets seemed to be nervous that he was losing control of his bar’s reputation. First, a gregarious, gentle looking man was buying drinks for everyone who walked inside, and now people were bringing exotic birds. When we joined Bruce’s group we found out that none of them knew him before tonight, but since Bruce had already bought them several rounds they were happy to let him tell his story again. Bruce said he was a real estate agent who that afternoon showed a house that just came on the market to a young couple. The house was an old Victorian house right in the middle of the city. On the outside it looked like it was falling apart, but inside it was immaculate. This couple that Bruce showed the house to weren’t newlyweds, but Bruce said they acted awfully happy. The wife was deaf, and she and the husband signed back and forth to one another. Sometimes though, when Bruce would forget that the wife needed to read lips, he’d speak with his back to her.
“Weird thing is,” Bruce told us, “When I figured out what I was doing and turned around the wife was nodding her head. She understood me. The husband, he hadn't signed anything. She understood me by herself. So I asked her, ‘What’s the deal, honey? Are you faking me out for a deal or what?’” The couple started to laugh, and the husband said that the wife’s hearing, which she lost during some viral infection as a child, was coming back. Every couple weeks she could hear a little more, and the doctors had no idea why. Now she could almost hear perfectly, but she still signed because she thought it was a beautiful way to communicate, and she had a lot of friends who were deaf.
“Right then,” Bruce said, “We’re on the second floor of this house, right? And the closet opens up. Listen to me, no one lives in this house. There’s no furniture. No one’s lived here for a while. The closet door then opens right up and out walks this guy. This guy just walks out of the closet right in front of us! Looks like he hasn’t bathed in weeks, wearing some knit cap like a bum. And in his hand—get this here—in his hand is a knife. The little shit is holding a knife. All three of us kind of freeze. He’s standing there at the open closet door, holding that knife. He says, ‘My sister is deaf.’ Then he puts the knife on the window sill, looks at us for a second, and walks down the stairs. We just listen to him—clump clump down the wooden stairs with these nasty boots. We hear the front door open and then close. Just like that. Are you kidding me? Just like that!”
There wasn’t any more to the story. Bruce had no idea who the man was, how he got there, and what he was going to do with that knife. He said he could have been living in the house, but the house didn’t have running water and it sure didn’t smell like he’d been living there. “I told that wife,” Bruce said, “you got some kind of charmed life, darling. You’re an angel. Your hearing comes back for no good reason and now psychopaths waiting to kill you are putting down their weapons.”
Bruce said he’d been celebrating the entire day, telling anyone who was willing to celebrate with him. Boyce said we were happy to join, and everyone in the entire group raised a glass. The only person who wasn’t thrilled was the bartender. He seemed to be more comfortable with someone breaking a chair over Bruce Barenburg’s head than clinking glasses with him. At one point Boyce asked Bruce if he knew a real estate agent named Keller Bigsby, the guy who hit me in the ear in high school, then took me to the emergency room. He said he knew “K-Bigs,” but that if we wanted to sell or buy we should go with Bruce who might provide us with a miracle, too. Sammy and Boyce both told Bruce the story about Keller Bigsby making me lose my hearing for a little while, and Bruce shouted this was no coincidence and called for more drinks. No one ever asked us why we had a bird in a cage with us. I figure after his day Bruce was willing to accept anything at face value.
When Big Lets closed Bruce and some others climbed into a cab and told us to follow them in “that sweet van.” I had other plans with Antonio, and I told Sammy and Boyce that I’d like to go see Hank’s grave if they didn’t mind. They agreed to go, and we went to the Roger Malvin Country Club and headed out to the little wood by the 14th hole where we buried Hank’s ashes. The tombstone had some pine cones and dirt on it, but otherwise it looked great. Sammy and Boyce let me tell Hank about Antonio and what just happened at Big Lets.
On our drive home Boyce said, “I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but did any of you think that Bruce was making it all up? Maybe none of it happened, and he’s just lonely. He makes up crazy stories and buys people drinks celebrating this stuff he invented.” Sammy said he couldn’t think of a better way to be lonely. “That’s water to wine, Boyce. Water to wine,” he said. Boyce conceded the point, but then thought maybe the bartender was angry because he goes through this all the time, that Bruce is always doing this. He’s this real estate agent by day but by night always trying to make up for some big hole in his heart. When it got quiet Sammy asked Antonio what he thought. I interrupted to say I needed to get rid of that bird.
