Twerp (2 page)

“Holy—!” Lonnie said.

“Oh no! Oh God … you said they’d get out of the way!”

“That was my
hypothesis
.”

I ran over to the bird for a closer look. The poor thing was spinning around and around, getting nowhere. It wasn’t bleeding, at least not that I could see. I thought for sure the rock had gashed it or split its skull wide open. But it looked kind of okay, except for the crazy way it was flapping its wings. Maybe it just needed to calm down for a minute and figure out it wasn’t hurt too bad.

“C’mon,” Lonnie called to me in a loud whisper. “Let’s get out of here.”

“No, wait!”

“Let’s cheese it, Julian. It’s over and done with.”

“No!”

Lonnie came up behind me, and the two of us stared for about a minute as the pigeon began to tire itself out. It went from flapping around in a circle, to hopping side to side, to walking back and forth, to standing still with its
head bobbing up and down. Then it stopped. It just sank to the ground and sat there.

“There, you see?” Lonnie said. “It’s going to be just fine.”

I took a step toward the pigeon. It stood up and walked a couple of bird steps away from me, then settled back down. I took another step, and so did the pigeon. “I don’t think it can fly,” I said.

“Sure it can. Watch ….”

Lonnie stepped in front of me and lurched at the pigeon. It fluttered its wings for a second but moved about six inches. Then he stamped his foot on the ground. This time the pigeon didn’t react, except to turn its head away—as if it wasn’t interested in what happened next.

Lonnie said, “That’s one messed-up pigeon.”

“What are we going to do?”

He shrugged. “Cheese it?”

“No, a cat’s going to get it.”

“Then there’s only one thing left to do.”

“What?”

“We’ve got to put it out of its misery.”

“Kill it?”

“That’s what you’ve got to do if it’s dying.”

“But we don’t know for sure it’s dying.”

“Then let’s get out of here!”

“But—”

“Julian, it’s got to be one or the other.”

Lonnie stepped past the pigeon and picked up the rock, the one I chucked, which was lying about a foot away. As soon as he picked it up, I closed my eyes real tight. I didn’t want to see what he was about to do. But then, a second later, I felt him put the rock in my right hand. I opened my eyes and saw it there.

“Oh no—”

“You have to do it, Julian.”

“Why do
I
have to do it?”

“Because you’re the one who chucked the rock.”

“But it was
your
idea.”

“But I didn’t chuck it.”

“But it was your idea!”

“But I didn’t chuck it!”

“C’mon, Lonnie—”

“Look, we can go back and forth forever. So I’m just going to tell you:
I’m not killing that bird
. So either you’re going to do it, or we’re going to leave the bird out here to die on its own. Those are the only two possibilities, okay?”

Say what you want about Lonnie, but he knows how to break things down. I didn’t want the bird to die a long miserable death, but that’s what was going to happen if I didn’t do what was necessary. It’s like Lonnie picked up the record needle and moved it to the end of the song. We
both knew what I had to do. We just got there quicker than if we’d gone around in circles.

So I walked up to the bird until I was right over it—I didn’t want to take a chance of missing with the rock or winging the poor thing and causing it to suffer even more. I had to go for the head. It had to be a kill shot. I thought about kneeling down next to the bird, but that meant I wouldn’t be able to take a full windup. Instead I decided to straddle the pigeon, with one foot on either side of it, so that I could throw the rock straight down.

I reared back, but then, a split second before I fired the rock, I felt my eyes close. I came an inch from firing it blind—which was the last thing I wanted to do! So I shook my head, reared back again … and again I felt my eyes close.
C’mon!
I told myself. I reared back for a third time, and for a third time I felt my eyes close.

“What’s the problem?” Lonnie said.

I took a deep breath. “It’s no good.”

“Just kill it.”

“I keep closing my eyes.”

“Well, then, don’t close your eyes.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I said.

“You don’t need to get sarcastic.”

“I just want to get it over with.”

“There’s got to be a right way to do it.” Lonnie started
glancing around, which is what he does when he’s thinking real hard, and I knew, I just
knew
, he’d come up with an idea. Maybe ten seconds later he had one. He went running over to the far end of Ponzini and disappeared behind one of the rusted-out wrecks. Then, a few seconds later, he staggered back out.

He was lugging a concrete cinder block.

He shouted, “Hey, I could use a hand!”

So I ran over to him, and the two of us started lugging the cinder block back toward the pigeon. That cinder block weighed about a ton. I felt sadder and sadder with every step, thinking about what we were going to do with it, thinking about how helpless the pigeon was, thinking about how much pain I’d caused the poor thing so far, and about how much more it still had to go through. I mean, even if it was only for a split second, the pigeon was for sure going to feel the crush of the cinder block. But at least the end would be quick.

When we were about three steps from the pigeon, Lonnie stopped in his tracks and said, “You got it from here?”

I was huffing. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a one-man operation.”

“Lonnie!”

“Julian, you’ve
got
to do it.”

“Why don’t both of us do it?”

“Because if we do it together, we might not let go at the same time. Which means it might not fall straight down. That’s the only way we might miss the bird.”

I shook my head. “What you’re saying is you won’t do it, right?”

That cracked him up, despite the situation. He laughed and nodded.

I inhaled, then exhaled. “Fine, I’ve got it from here.”

He let go of the cinder block, and I felt its full weight for the first time. I had to hold it tight to my body to keep from dropping it right there. It seemed to want to get out of my hands and fall to the ground, like I was keeping it from being where it was supposed to be.

With the cinder block hugged to my waist, I trudged the last three steps, and then I stepped over the pigeon so that the cinder block was centered above its skull, and I said a prayer for the pigeon—not out loud, just to myself—and I asked God to take mercy on it, and to take mercy on me for what I was about to do, and then at last I looked down, and the pigeon looked up at me, but it didn’t make a move otherwise.

Except I couldn’t do it.

I stepped back and dropped the cinder block a foot from the pigeon, which didn’t flinch at the dull
thud
it
made, the
thud
of concrete against concrete. Then I glanced back at Lonnie. He was standing with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.

“Now what?” he asked.

But then I had a thought. “I’ll take it home.”

He rolled his eyes. “You can’t take that thing home.”

“I’ll just take care of it until it heals up.”

“Your mom will go nuts. Pigeons are filthy birds.”

He had a point, but I’d made up my mind. I knelt down next to the pigeon, and I slid my right hand underneath its body. The bird didn’t like that one bit. It gave me a hard peck and fluttered out of reach. But I went after it. I knew the longer I chased it, the worse it would be. So I grabbed it with both hands before it could make another move. For a couple of seconds, nothing happened. I had it in my hands, and it didn’t seem to mind. But then it began pecking the daylights out of me. My fingers. My palms. My wrists. I held on to it. I could feel how mad it was. It was like a wadded-up ball of anger, except with flapping wings and a pecking beak.

Finally, because I was afraid I would drop it, I held it to my chest and rolled it up inside my T-shirt. That calmed it right down. I could feel its heart beating against mine, and I glanced over at Lonnie, and he was rolling his eyes again like I’d gone nuts, which maybe I had, but I was going to do the right thing and heal up that pigeon.

Lonnie gave me a rap on the back for luck, but then he headed home, still shaking his head.

You can picture the expression on my mom’s face when I came through the door with the pigeon. I know
I
was picturing it as I walked up the two flights of stairs, past the Dongs. The Dongs are the old Chinese couple who own the two-story house I live in. We rent out the top floor from them. They’re good neighbors, quiet as can be, except Mrs. Dong cooks the foulest-smelling food you’d ever want to get your nose around. It doesn’t taste bad—at least that’s what my sister Amelia, who’s five years older than I am, tells me. I wouldn’t go near the stuff myself. But Amelia had dumplings and noodles with them once, and she lived to talk about it. Even so, when Mrs. Dong’s got that stove going, my advice is hold your breath and run up the stairs as fast as you can.

I lucked out because Mrs. Dong wasn’t cooking when I came back with the pigeon. But I was dreading the look my mom was going to give me. She was in the kitchen, and she heard me come through the door and called out her usual, “Supper’s almost on the table, so wash up.”

I could’ve gone straight to my room. But to get it over with, I walked into the kitchen, and I told her what I had rolled up in my shirt. That’s when the look came. Her eyes narrowed down to slits, and her face seemed to go tired, like,
Oh, good grief!
But the thing was, once I started
telling her what had happened, she softened up. She took a quick look at the pigeon, and she asked me if I was sure it couldn’t fly, and I told her I was sure, and then she nodded and went into the hall closet and came out with a beat-up canvas suitcase. It was one she hadn’t used in years. She told me I could keep the pigeon in the old suitcase until it healed up, and then I could throw out the suitcase. “Just make sure that bird doesn’t wind up flying around the apartment,” she said, then went back to the kitchen.

Sometimes when you brace yourself for a storm, you get a gentle breeze. The storm only comes when you’re braced for nothing whatsoever.

I called out for Amelia, who was in her room at the far end of the apartment. I knew she’d lend a hand because she’s soft for animals, so even if she had no interest in helping me out, she would want to save the pigeon. I was right. She dragged the suitcase into my room, and then she dragged in a week’s worth of old newspapers my dad had piled up next to the couch. She tore up the papers and stuffed them in the suitcase so that the pigeon would have a nice feathery surface, and then I unrolled my shirt, and the pigeon plopped down and took a minute to collect itself—which is what you’d do too, if you’d been brained by a rock and then rolled up in a T-shirt.
But after a minute, the pigeon began to look around and seemed to realize it was all right.

Even though I didn’t know if it was a he or a she, I decided to call the pigeon George Sauer after my favorite football player—the split end for the New York Jets. That annoyed Amelia. “If you name it, you’re going to get attached,” she said. “Then you’re not going to want to set it free.”

I told her she was wrong. I was only going to keep George Sauer until he healed up, and that was the end of it. “Once he can fly again, he’s going out the window.”

But of course she was dead right. I never should’ve named that bird. Never should have started to think about “it” as “him.” You see, “it” isn’t personal. But “him” … I mean, the minute I named the pigeon George Sauer, I began to notice how the name kind of fit him, how the shape of his head looked like a football helmet.

You’ve likely figured out the end of the story by now, so I won’t beat around the bush. George Sauer never made it out of that suitcase. I fed him bread crumbs, but he got tired of that fast, and then I went to the pet store and bought him proper bird food, but he didn’t take to that either. He couldn’t right himself. He kept me up with
prrriiiilllrrrp
sounds the two nights he was in the suitcase, but by the third morning he was in a bad way. I could tell
because when I reached into the suitcase, he didn’t even bother to peck at me. So I picked him up, and I just held him for a minute. I stared into his eyes, as if he might forgive me for what I’d done to him. But I got nothing back. Not a thing. Just a look that seemed to be saying,
I’m a pigeon, for God’s sake! I don’t do stuff like forgive people!

When George Sauer died that afternoon, I bawled my eyes out.

January 16, 1969

Selkirk got the biggest kick out of
what I wrote so far. (Am I supposed to call you
Mr
. Selkirk whenever I write your name? Because, to be honest, that’s not how kids talk about their teachers.) He says that writing is my thing, and that nothing’s more important than doing your thing. So now he says that if I keep going with it, I can get out of the next few English assignments he’s got lined up, and maybe even more after that. Which suits me just fine, if for no other reason than because I know what he’s got lined up. Right there at the end, glaring up at me from the reading list he handed out after Christmas break, is
Julius Caesar
. I
hate
Shakespeare. I know that’s hard for English teachers to hear, but it’s the truth.

I didn’t have a feeling about Shakespeare one way or
the other until two years ago, in fourth grade, when Mrs. Graber assigned each kid in the class a Shakespeare speech to learn by heart. We had to stand up in the front of the room and say our speech—which was bad enough, except it also meant we had to
listen
to the rest of the speeches. I got so sick of the stuff by the end that I could have vomited. It took up two full days in English class. What did I get out of it? The only thing I remember is the first line of my speech: “What a piece of work is a man!” That’s it. I don’t remember what came next, and I still don’t know what in the world he’s talking about.