In the break room of the Sleep Center we watched a bit about the spill on tv, and I informed Rex Tugwell that those birds down there have never seen oil and may think it’s harmless or even nesting mortar, like spider webs and mud. Rex said any bird dumb enough to take a beakful of crude deserves to have its stomach come out its backside. That got a few people to laugh, but I asked Rex what he’d do with a pygostyle if I put it in front of him. He said, "If that's a bird, I'd cook it on the grill and eat it." The joke, however, is on Rex: the pygostyle is the ossified end part of a bird's spine. People still laughed at what he said, though. God, I hate him.
I’ve actually been to some of the Louisiana wetlands to do some bird watching. I rented a car at the airport and asked the clerk the best place to see the "wild life." He gave me directions to an over-populated, tourist-soaked beach. I wandered around but all I could see were pathetic terns and gulls eating garbage and sitting in flocks on dock posts, undoubtedly wondering—like some momentarily contrite junkee weeping at the foot of his anemic daughter’s bed—why they are unable to resist popcorn and sand-covered Sun Chips. On that beach I saw a couple kids heaving Alka-seltzer into the air for the terns and gulls to eat. I watched them do it for a while and then informed them that what they were doing made no sense. They were emphatic that Alka-seltzer makes birds explode. I said, "First, a bird will never eat that. Second, birds can release gas just like you. And, you know Alka-seltzer is perfectly safe for people, right? You're not throwing antifreeze up there." It took five minutes but I eventually convinced them. So instead of heaving Alka-seltzer tablets, they began throwing stones and shells they found. I was so angry I spent nearly the rest of my trip gambling on a steamboat. I won over four hundred dollars, and used that money to take a private wetland tour for exotic birds. If I had a dollar for every time gambling saved a vacation gone haywire, I would have six or seven dollars. But I would then gamble that, and get even more.
It’s a good thing my father isn’t around to see this spill. He died only three weeks after the Exxon Valdez spill occurred in 1989. He was very old and weak at that time, but I’m convinced that’s what finished him off. All he did for three weeks was wander around the house calling out the Latin names of birds. He’d say, “The Histrionicus histrionicus…the Phalacrocorax auritus.” He was so sad he even called my mother. I got on the other line because I had only known my mother and father to interact a few times. He whispered into the phone, “Oh, Teresa. They made the sea kill the sky.” I was young and didn’t understand what he meant, and apparently neither did my mother, because she just burped loudly into the phone and hung up.
I told a lot of stories to Rachel about my mother and father, neither of whom she ever met. I think it was that story though that finally made her say, “How were you even born, Cyrus?” I told her, “That’s exactly what my mother used to say!”
My uncle finally came over for the last week of my father’s life. My uncle was actually my mother’s eldest brother, but he and my father grew up together. So he came over and drank with my father. I think my father knew, whether it was because of the Valdez spill or not, that his time was up, because he let my uncle tell stories about traveling the country on a motorcycle, and my uncle would let my father tell stories about Ragnarok, the unstoppable apocalypse in Norse mythology. Rachel never met my parents, but she did meet my uncle. I warned her he would be very drunk, and he was, but after we spent the evening together she kissed him on the cheek and told my uncle he was a good man.
