Bruce Barenburg and a Night at Big Lets

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.

Name That Bird!

On Monday night I took the bus to the pet store and bought the bird some food.  At the register the lady asked, “What kind of bird do you have?”  I said, “Even more important—what kind of owner does the bird have?  Evil.  An evil one,” then walked off with the food and my receipt.  Sammy thinks I made that cashier’s day by saying something weird back to her.  He still remembers the guy from eight years ago who responded to Sammy’s have-a-nice-day with, “Right.  And you tell Antonio that if I see him again I’ll cut his throat.”  Sammy says sometimes he just lies in bed and wonders what Antonio did.  A few times I’ve noticed Sammy staring off into space.  I'll ask, “Antonio?” and Sammy whispers, “Antonio.”

The bird has not made much of a racket, but I do blame it for my disrupted sleep patterns.  I’ve been sleeping on my couch just to be nearer to it.  If it starts to squawk I want to be close to heave an item at its cage.  It hasn’t made much noise so far, but it’s upsetting my dreams.  For the past two nights I have dreamed about my father’s funeral.  There are only a few people there and I don’t recognize any of them besides my uncle.  My mother isn’t there.  There isn’t a priest— just a funeral director, and he says that the deceased’s son has prepared some music for the service.  He hits a button and the songs of birds begin to play.  It goes on for ten minutes, and I hear one of the people I don’t recognize say, “How long is this going to go?”  I am only ten, so it really scares them when I scream in response, “If you don’t like it then get out!  Go on!”  When I found my father in his bed, real peaceful like he said some day he’d be, I grabbed the tape recorder and ran knee-deep into the marsh behind the house.  I recorded the birds for hours.

All that really happened at my father’s funeral, and that’s exactly how it happened in my dream, too.  But in the dream, all the bird songs finish and sitting next to me is Julia Albert with that lovebird on her shoulder.  I tell her she isn’t supposed to be here, and she says she is.  Then she tells me to hold still and tries to pull off my face. 

I’ve had that dream two nights in a row, and I blame the bird.  I never dream about my father’s funeral, just like I never dream about Rachel.  I don’t need to dream about them.  They’re always right there.  When I told Boyce about the dreams, he said maybe it’s because the bird doesn’t have a name.  I told him it was more likely that birds make me think of my father.  He said if that's all it was then I’d have the dream all the time. 

Perhaps, but Boyce's dream interpretation skills are decidedly poor.  Once he dreamed that he was Abraham Lincoln and I was sitting next to him at Ford's Theater.  John Wilkes Booth walked into the box and, apparently, I saw him right before he was going to shoot.  Rather than warning A-boyce-aham Lincoln I just fell down and cried. I tried to interpret the dream for him as it relates to grief and the ceaseless march of time but he just kept laughing and saying, "Thanks for the help, friend."  Nevertheless, I told him that if the lovebird's anonymity was causing the dream, then he needed to help me out and name the bird.  He said this was more of a Sammy thing, and we got him on the phone.  “Name the bird,” I said. 

Sammy didn’t miss a beat.  “Antonio.”

Lovebird

Yesterday afternoon I received a knock on the door.  When I opened it I saw a teenager with eyeliner standing behind a square bird cage with a black cloth over it.  He had his head to one side like he was trying to read something upside down.  “Here’s your bird,” he said.  I tried to tell him it wasn’t my bird but he wasn’t interested.

I took the bird cage and asked the teenager if he wanted to come inside.  He said no and left.  Apparently he had to get back to sewing gun holsters into a trench coat.  Even if I lost the bet, I take comfort in the fact that Julia Albert has to take an extra drink of mojito before she comes up with something to say when her friends at the country club ask about her grandchildren. 

I put the bird cage on the kitchen table and took off the cloth.  She had given me a lone Peach-faced Lovebird, native to Africa.  It was a choice that suggested some diabolical intention, as was clear in the note that came attached to one of the bars.

Dear Cyrus,

Congratulations on your new pet, a lovely peach-faced lovebird.  Since you know your birds, you’ll know that it’s just a myth that lovebirds need a mate to be happy.  Birds and people can be happy alone, can't they?  Be aware, however, that this peach-faced lovebird is nearly ten years old, and only three weeks ago lost its mate it had lived with its entire life.  Poor bird, he might need some attention!

Its wings, of course, are clipped so don’t try freeing it.  My grandson has been instructed to stop by several times during the week to make sure you haven’t given the bird away.  I didn’t include food or toys but I did write a check to you that will cover the expenses.  Enjoy your trip to the exotic bird section of the pet store!

See you in a week!

As I watched that nameless lovebird stare off into nothingness—probably wondering why someone doesn’t just shoot it—I thought Julia Albert is way too wicked to be a grandmother driving a Chrysler.  Where are the maternal instincts that says this lost bird doesn’t belong in prison?  Is she blind?  Peach-faced Lovebird, I can’t give you a new mother.  If you want to eat before I get to the pet store, however, I can give you a can of Spaghetti-O’s.  Otherwise you’ll have to wait.

The Bet is On!

Boyce called me in the morning to make sure I wasn’t going to be upset if Charlotte took Boyce Jr. to the spring lunch sponsored by The Thunderbirds bird watching group.  I asked him if he wasn’t going too, but Boyce just laughed real low into the phone for a long time, like he was remembering when his worst enemy fell down a flight of stairs.  I assured him that I would never be resentful to Charlotte or Boyce Jr.  In fact, I told him I’d love a report on how everything went.  Boyce laughed again.

After hanging up the phone I laced up my bird-watching boots.  I couldn’t stay away.  Someone had to protect Boyce Jr.  I love Charlotte, but I knew those Thunderbirds could have Boyce teaching a toucan to speak before she even drank her first glass of world-class lemonade from group-member Karen.  I caught the bus to the park about thirty minutes before the lunch was supposed to begin.  I could see them putting some tablecloths down, and then a few people came in bringing rather large subs.  Not wanting to be noticed, I stationed myself on a bench about fifty yards away and hid from view thanks to a trash can.

It wasn’t long before the entire Thunderbirds group was assembled.  There were pitchers of Karen’s lemonade on the table, and a flood of emotions came rushing back to me.  I wasn’t sure how I should feel.  Did I want a local bird watching group to prosper despite its unjust practices?  Or did I want to bury my hands into the grass at my feet and beg sweet mother earth to rise up and swallow the entire group, sparing only Karen's lemonade?  I couldn’t decide as I watched them mingle and eat their giant subs.

After a while visitors began to show up, and finally I saw Charlotte and Boyce Jr.  To my surprise, I then saw Boyce and Sammy show up too.  They were laughing pretty hard while they were putting some chips on their plate.  Sammy and Boyce at a bird watching event?  It was something I had dreamed about for years, and now that it was happening I was banished behind an empty garbage can.  Oh, irony, you vampire harpy who feasts upon all promise of happiness!  Succubus of all that is dreamt in innocence and purity!  Slut!

Julia Albert then appeared from behind some of the members of The Thunderbirds.  I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but everyone was listening to her.  The visitors and members gave polite applause when she finished.  Boyce and Sammy kept laughing it up, having a gay old time, and pointing to the sky like they were thanking the heavens.  I watched plates get set down at the end of picnic tables while binoculars were passed from The Thunderbirds to the visitors.  When Sammy got a pair he pointed it way too low to see any birds, and Boyce must have warned him because he put his hand up in the air again.  And then they laughed.  Oh how they laughed.

I knew that showing up was a mistake.  Seeing The Thunderbirds was difficult, seeing Julia Albert getting applause from strangers was murder, but seeing Boyce and Sammy enjoying birds was just too much.  I had to take a stand.  I breathed deep and marched over to the table.  I went straight up to Sammy and Boyce and asked them why, after over twenty years of trying to get them to go bird watching with me, did they decide to do it now.  I was pretty hot and bothered but Boyce just laughed, and said,  “I knew from the moment I heard your voice on the phone that you were going to show up today.  So we had to come.  We’ve been waving to you for the last thirty minutes.  Sammy looked right at you with the binoculars.  I waved.  You didn’t wave back.”  Then Charlotte added that all the Thunderbirds knew it was me and had been having a pretty good time about me hiding behind a trash can. 

Julia Albert approached me with a grin on her face.  I stopped her before she spoke and said that I would take my complimentary slice of giant sub, a glass of Karen’s lemonade, and then be on my way.  She said she was hoping I had a change of heart and wanted to let bygones be bygones.  I informed her that so long as one clipped wing could be found in a Thunderbird home, I would never join the group.  She said, like I asked how her birds were, “They’re doing great, thank you.  I was thinking of getting a new one and calling him Cyrus.”  I have been punched by a woman before, but never have I been so stung.  I announced to the visitors that The Thunderbirds allowed bird ownership.  The visitors didn’t quite understand my meaning, and applauded politely. 

That’s when Sammy wiped his mouth and stepped between us.  He was still chewing his last bite but he was already smiling, and I knew he was working on an idea.  He said, “Ms. Albert and Mr. Wetherbee, you both want something.  Cyrus wants this group to ban bird ownership.  Ms. Albert, you want to show Cyrus that having birds is a good thing.  We can solve this.  We can fix this all with a friendly bet.”  Julia Albert gave a polite laugh like the way a mother does when her ninth grade son tells her he’s a communist.  She put her hand on Sammy’s shoulder and called him a sweet boy, but that she didn’t care what I thought at all.  Sammy told her that wasn’t the spirit.  On a nice spring afternoon in the park, the only thing we needed more than lemonade and birds was a friendly wager.  “If Cyrus wins, you make The Thunderbirds ban bird ownership.  If you win—well, Ms. Albert, what do you want?”  She laughed again.  She said she didn’t want anything but for me to realize I was wrong.  “Fine,” Sammy said.  “If you win, Cyrus has to have a pet bird.”  That’s when Julia Albert got real excited and laughed in a different way.  She said she’d love to see me eat crow, and I said it’s no mistake such filthy language comes from a bird owner.

“We just need a bet,” Sammy said.  Boyce offered up the idea of who could eat the most chicken wings in under ten minutes, but Julia Albert politely pooh-poohed him like he was a grandchild.  Boyce Jr. then shouted it should be whoever can shoot the most birds, and then air-shotgunned a few blasts into the air.  What have you done to that boy, Thunderbirds? 

Julia Albert is the one who decided the bet.  At first I said no, that it went against everything I felt was good and right.  Sammy and Boyce both assured me I could do this, and when I did, The Thunderbirds would officially be anti-bird ownership.  So I shook Julia Albert’s hand and agreed to the bet.  She told me how the girls at the country club were going to love hearing about this—“And they do love my Cyrus Wetherbee horror stories,” she said. 

Sammy, the Lancasters, and I walked away after the bet was made.  Sammy and Boyce were clearly very excited, and complimented me on bringing out the worst and most selfish in aging women.  Boyce hugged me hard and picked me up a little.  Even though the bet was that I had to keep a caged bird in my home for a week, I still smiled really big because thirty minutes earlier I thought Sammy and Boyce had betrayed me.  Now I knew they were always my friends.  Who else is going to help arrange my bizarre bets over bird ownership with a rich widow who hates me?  Cheers to Sammy and Boyce. 

And to you, Julia Albert?  Jeers.  Jeers in the worst way.

Progress on CBdB

Sammy has been trying to figure out different ways to celebrate The Year of Charles Brockden Brown, Sammy’s ancestor who used to write stories.  Sammy said he was America’s first real novelist, but I told him I’m America’s first real dream-gambling-ornithology guru, but no one’s buying any of my books.  Boyce said he was America’s first locksmith Aquarius who currently has all the albums of Freddy Fender under an antique four-post bed (Boyce believes that all of Freddy Fender’s albums look great because, well, Freddy looks great).

Nevertheless Sammy was looking for ideas about spreading the news of The Year of CBdB.  Last weekend Boyce gave him the idea of writing quotes by CBdB on the back of a receipt roll at Arby’s.  That way all the customers, when they were triple checking that no one put their fourth roast beef sandwich in the bag, would be enlightened.  It took a bit of an effort, but Sammy tried it.  We went over to his apartment and wrote at different points on an un-curled receipt paper roll.  Sammy drew lines every five inches or so and said after each transaction he would pull the paper out to the next line to make sure no one got half a quote.  So for an hour or so Boyce and I wrote as neatly as we could different quotes from Sammy’s books by CBdB.  It ended up being something of a disaster, since Charles Brockden Brown writes disturbing novels.  Most of the quotes we took from his books only served to frighten those customers who actually noticed the writing on the back.  Some examples:

“Of all kinds of death, that which now menaced me was the most abhorred.  To die by disease, or by the hand of a fellow-creature, was propitious and lenient in comparison with being rent to pieces by the fangs of this savage.”

“He was teacher of the negro free-school when he died.”  [As Sammy had to point out to one urban customer, the location of the dash is very, very important.]

“From these I was delivered only to be thrown into the midst of savages, to wage an endless and hopeless war with adepts in killing, with appetites that longed to feast upon my bowels and to quaff my heart’s blood.”

“Catharine!  I pity the weakness of thy nature: I pity thee, but must not spare.  Thy life is claimed from my hands: thou must die!”

It’s not easy to keep a customer happy when they read on the back of their receipt, “The sacrifice is incomplete—Your children must be offered.”  Sammy calmed that customer down, but I’m not sure how worried he was about their irritation since his explanation was, “They must be pranking us down at the receipt factory.”  Sammy always says the best thing about fast food is that bad customers are replaced even easier than bad workers.

I suggested to Boyce that maybe Sammy needs to get on the radio.  There are a few local stations that might be interested in a short lecture on a 18th century novelist between the latest offerings in country or rap.  Boyce and I are going to do our best to get Sammy on the radio so he can talk about the Year of Charles Brockden Brown.

The great thing about Sammy is that you can never go wrong.  If anything is good, he’s happy.  If anything is a disaster, he’s even happier.  He knows there is an inverse relationship between the comfort of a situation and the success of the story when it’s told later.  Sometimes people say, “live for today,” or “live like you were dying.”  Both of those are dumb.  They result in not paying bills and ingesting massive amounts of circus peanuts, which you previously avoided because they are obviously neon cancer.

Instead, live like Sammy: like you’ll get to tell Cyrus and Boyce about it all later.

The Thunderbirds

This past Sunday I read in the local paper an advertisement for the bird-watching enthusiast group that I am currently banished from, The Thunderbirds.  Although I was one of the founding members of The Thunderbirds, I actually had nothing to do with the name.  I expressed the desire that we name the bird-watching group after a local bird.  I believe my nominations were The Thrashers, The Sapsuckers, and, obviously, in order to attract potentially trust-funded frat boys who might die by falling off a paddleboat while drunk thereby donating their fortune to the group, The Titmice (see picture below ).  None of the other founding members approved of my choices.  I told them that The Thunderbirds made us sound like a middle-aged softball team very busy ignoring our effeminate sons, but the majority had their way.

The Thunderbirds advertisement read they would have a spring lunch on Saturday for those interested in learning about bird watching or joining the group.  Even though the Thunderbirds have banished me, I still long for that ornithological brotherhood.  Sammy and Boyce have both recommended I start a rival bird-watching enthusiast group, but I can’t do that.  Although I am banished from The Thunderbirds, and although their name makes me want to drink Budweiser while listening to Blue Oyster Cult more than watch birds, I cannot work against them.  This is why I wasn’t upset when Boyce told me that Charlotte was thinking of taking Boyce Jr. to the lunch on Saturday.  Boyce said he could tell Charlotte and his son to sabotage the lunch for my benefit, but that's not necessary.  Boyce Jr. should be allowed to be an innocent kid, uncorrupted by the pernicious betrayals of amateur ornithology groups.  Fly, Boyce Jr.  Fly.

It’s been almost six years since I was kicked out of The Thunderbirds.  It all came about because I found out some of the new members owned caged birds.  My dirty looks and vulgar mumbling wasn’t enough to convince these members of their moral deficit.  I demanded that Mukesh Patel, our president at the time, accept the following conduct policy for the group:

I, ___________, being born of human parents rather than wicked frost giants from a land where the sun never rises, believe that the caging of birds is not only stupid but wrong.  As birds were clearly meant to fly (no disrespect to the Southern Cassoway, Ostrich, Emu, etc.), putting them in a cage is the moral equivalent of putting the bird in a blender.

I also believe that if I cannot follow this most basic moral tenet, then I will throw myself into traffic at the first available opportunity.

Mukesh said he wasn’t going to make anyone read the statement, let alone sign it.  I said fine, and simply asked that we institute a policy of no bird ownership other than free range domesticated birds meant for fried, delicious consumption.  Mukesh didn’t agree, and when I brought it up to the entire group at the next Saturday morning meeting, I was voted down.  I then pointed out a squirrel and rabbit in the grass, and asked if maybe some of the group would like to put them inside a helium balloon hanging from a lamppost, just like nature intended.  I was then asked to leave by Mukesh. 

Two years later Mukesh moved away and a new president was named.  I showed up the following Saturday only to find out that Julia Albert was the new president.  I didn’t even open my mouth before she said, “I’ve still got my birds, Cyrus.  All of them.”  I turned around and walked home. 

On some days I think of caving and returning to The Thunderbirds.  Rachel, however, loved that I was banished from the group.  She told me when the birds are singing they’re singing to me, saying, “Thanks, Cyrus.”  I tried to tell her that birds sing for several reasons, but none of them is encouragement to humans.  She'd always interrupt and say, "What's that, little sparrow?  You just ate Julia Albert's finger?"  And I'd laugh because Julia Albert is fat and that sparrow would explode if he tried to eat her finger.

Tax Day

Today is tax day, and that means it’s Sammy’s day to shine.  Years ago Sammy fought to institute a NO TAXES day at Arby’s, which meant that all food would be tax free.  At first Sammy was going to get in trouble for doing a corporate-non-approved promotion, but he convinced the regional manager that telling people they weren’t paying taxes on their roast beef was really just a matter of dropping the price that day a few cents.  Sammy figured that political weirdos would find an ally in Arby’s and more than make up for the lost revenue.  And that’s exactly what happened.  Every year the special has gotten a lot of customers coming in on April 15.

I decided to have lunch at Arby’s, and I’d never seen so many people in the restaurant.  Most of them were wearing sandwich boards that reminded me of St Rick the Baptist, but instead of warning sinners about an afterlife their signs warned voters about children getting free lupus treatment.  The entire Arby’s turned into a political rally, and as I sat in a booth by the door I saw a couple young people with goatees and hemp bracelets turn around before they even got inside. 

I don’t much care about politics unless people are getting electrocuted.  There’s an old poem about doing nothing in politics.  I’m not exactly sure how it goes, but it’s something like:

They came for the Jews,
and I didn’t say anything because I’m not particularly religious. 

They came for the obese,
But I’m naturally thin and I enjoy now having more space.

They came for Canadians,
but I wasn’t a Canadian, so it didn’t bother me. 

But then they came back and must've thought I was Canadian,
So they shot me.

I know that’s not how it goes, but this is the version that Sammy and Boyce created after trying to remember the poetic abortion they heard me recite during speech class in high school.

As more people came into the Arby’s I noticed a disturbing number of shirts and signs of bald eagles crying, much like the picture below.  It finally became too much for me so I told the least threatening person wearing the shirt that, “You know bald eagles can’t cry.”  She tried to tell me it was symbolic over what we were doing to the country, but I asked her why couldn’t she do something more biologically accurate like having
the bald eagle try to fly while dragging a hammer-and-sickle-like anchor.  She told me that was a fine idea, but she liked the bald eagle crying.  I tried to explain to her that at best I should assume that the health care bill is some kind of intestinal parasite, and the tear is actually a watery pus due to infection.  In that case, of course, the bald eagle could use that free health care.  People don’t want dialogue in politics, though, and she just kept saying it was crying.

After a Few Weeks Alone

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written.  The last time I wrote we were on our way to bogus theater auditions where Sammy had promised a fabulous performance.  Even Boyce said he was going to audition.  On the way to the university, however, right on the interstate, we got a flat tire on Boyce’s van.  It was raining pretty hard, and there was a good bit of traffic, so it took a while for us to get it changed.  Once we knew we weren’t going to make it to the theater we started performing our auditions for each other in the rain on the interstate shoulder.  With a jack handle in his hand Sammy recited an interview by Randy “The Macho Man” Savage.  Whenever a car drove by Sammy would shake the jack handle and scream something about defending the intercontinental title.  I went next, but even in the rain on the side of a busy interstate with Boyce screaming at lugnuts, I still got performance anxiety.  So all I did was recite bird names again.  Boyce went next.  Apparently his audition was to tell a story that happened to him when he was a kid.  Boyce’s uncle used to have a farm, and while he was visiting one of the cows began to have a baby.  So there in the middle of the rain, Boyce told us the story of tying a chain around two of the calf’s legs that hung out of the mother, and how he and his uncle pulled the rest of the calf out.  Around that time a car pulled off on the shoulder and rolled down the window to see if we needed help.  Sammy made motions for Boyce to keep telling the story, so the good man’s question of, “Are you guys doing okay?” was met with these words: “Turns out there was a lot of blood that came with the delivery because she hemorrhaged, but it wasn’t too bad that we couldn’t eat her.”  The guy in the car stuck his head out the window and said, “What?”, like maybe Boyce had said, “We could sure use some help, friend.”  But then Boyce shouted, “She hemorrhaged a lot of blood but we still ate her!”  Then the guy rolled up his window and drove away.

We never got to the audition because we were pretty satisfied with freaking that guy out who didn’t want anything but to help us.  We went to a diner instead and let Boyce complain about his van and his job for a while.  After a period of quiet while we were all eating hash browns and toast, I felt a hand on my shoulder.  When I looked up it was someone I hadn’t seen in a real long time.  It was Rachel’s old priest.  He said my name real slowly, “Cyrus,” and then asked how I was doing.  I told him I didn’t get to theater auditions because of a flat tire on the interstate, and Rachel’s priest looked at Boyce and Sammy kind of the same way that guy did who wanted to help us.  Rachel’s priest said he hadn’t seen me in a long time, and that he would like to see me in church again.  Then he nodded at us and started to walk away to the people he was leaving with.  Then he stopped and said, “You know, Cyrus, I’m not mad at you.  You’re welcome any time.”  He paused, and like he was reminding me that I was soon to die, said, “Rachel would like it if you came.”  So I told him—and Sammy said I was practically pointing a ketchupy fork at him—“You think you know what she would want?”  He didn’t pause, and just said, “Yes.” 

I said, “How cosmic of you,” and then asked Boyce, “So you're saying the wingspan of the Great Egret is over four feet,” because I wanted to fake that I wasn’t going to pay him any attention.

I should explain that it wasn’t long after I met Rachel that I could tell she was religious, or as my mother would say, “mummy-man for Jesus.”  This is how my mother referred to religious people.  All religious people.  So when she was buying cigarettes from the Indian who had a little god on the counter, my mother whispered to me, “See all those arms on that thing?  That’s a lot of mummy-man for Jesus.”  When she watched a movie that involved a Jewish character, she said, “You can mummy-man for Jesus all you like, Shalom the Great.”  The first time Sammy ever heard my mom say that, I thought he was going to have a heart attack.  My mother hated Sammy a scary amount, but Sammy still loved her because she said things like “mummy-man for Jesus” about religious people and called books “heap-a-shits.” 

When I realized Rachel was religious, I told her I’d like to be a gladiator for Jesus.   She didn’t know what I was talking about, so after around five or six times of trying to remember what uncool teenagers called their religion at the Sleep Center, I finally just asked her to go to church.  She picked me up in her car that Sunday morning which was pretty awesome, but there were other people in the car so that wasn’t great.  But the other people in the car were married, so it was easy to imagine Rachel and I married then.  The first incident came when the priest was talking to the people and he said that some Jews tore up a guy’s roof to lower their friend to see Jesus.  And I don’t know why but I thought that was a little funny.  I think most religious stuff is pretty funny or stupid, especially Janice at the Sleep Center who tried to tell me about hell and how much pain is there.  Janice said she’s worried I’m going to hell and then she said she loves me.  I laughed hard in her face for a second, then told her anything Loki’s daughter can throw at me would be easier to take than not having Rachel around. 

Anyway, when the priest said that thing about the roof I thought he was making a joke.  I didn’t think it was very funny, but I wanted to be polite, so I laughed really hard.  No one else did.  So I got confused and announced, “I’m not laughing because they’re Jewish.”  Then some people laughed.  Things only got worse when Rachel went up to get some bread and wine from the priest’s goblet that looked like it came from an estate sale at Gandalf’s summer home.  She didn’t notice I guess, but I got in line a few people after her.  When I got up to the goblet the priest looked at me funny, and I didn’t understand.  So I pulled out my wallet and showed him my driver’s license.  That made him look at me funny even more, and then he told me to go sit down.  He said it politely, so I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me.  Was it a suggestion to sit down, or was it a request for me to reach out and take that big goblet from him?  I don’t know why, but I picked the latter and grabbed the goblet.  But then another guy took it from me and someone from behind the line walked me over to Rachel and asked her if I was retarded.  He asked Rachel real sweetly—which made it worse, since the guy wasn’t making fun of me but seriously thought I might be retarded.

Rachel was mortified by the whole thing.  She spent a good bit of time before we went home speaking with some of her girlfriends.  They must have told her what to do because when she dropped me off at the house she said, “Cyrus, you know I’m not looking for anything romantic.”  I told her I was gay and then tried to explain what it is I find attractive about a man, but she told me to stop.  She told me that if I ever wanted to see her again I’d have to get it through my head that nothing was ever going to happen.  I said okay.  I tried to say it real charming so she’d kiss me afterward, but she didn’t.  She apologized for what happened at church, said it was all her fault, and that I could come back if I wanted.

When Rachel’s priest walked out of the diner that night Boyce and Sammy asked how long I was going to need.  I said a few weeks. 

P.S. It’s not all her fault.  It’s his.  And no one gets to come back.