Wizard of the Pigeons (11 page)

He felt more than saw her abrupt movement. He kept his eyes on the ground before him, hoping she had missed. For a moment all was silence and he started to relax, then
he heard the frantic flapping of wings. It was the crisp sound of wing pinions beating against hands, of delicate flight feathers bending against a relentless grip. Wizard's stomach turned over.

‘Let him go.' He spoke before he knew he was going to, turning to confront her. She held his gaze, their knees nearly touching as they shared the bench. The pigeon she held was a young one; its beak was shell pink and looked too large for its head. Its feathers were white with grey splotches and an even shading of black across the end of its tail. It was frantic. It struggled with all its strength against Lynda's hands, panic in its round orange eyes. Lynda had one wing pinned neatly to its body. She had partially trapped the other wing with her hand and was trying to fold it back down. But the struggling pigeon was still trying to open it. Lynda was pushing on it, not roughly, but relentlessly. It folded beneath her strength, but not naturally. Lynda's face was calmly preoccupied.

‘Oh, so you can talk? I thought you were part of the bench.'

‘Let the bird go. Its wing doesn't fold like that.'

‘I just want to hold it for a minute. Come on, little bird, quiet down, put your wing down.'

‘You're going to hurt it. Its heart will burst from terror. That's no way to handle a bird. Give it to me.'

‘I'm not hurting it.'

Wizard reached, not swiftly, but efficiently, and took her right wrist between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He caught it right at the soft spot between the wrist and the hand itself, just past the knobby little bones. Before she knew what he was up to, he squeezed firmly. ‘Hey!' she exclaimed, but she had already released
the pigeon. It floundered away from her in wobbly flight to the top of a tree. The rest of the flock had fled as soon as the flap had begun.

‘Why'd you do that?' she demanded angrily. He dropped her wrist hastily and leaned back on the bench. He found he was breathing heavily. Terrified. He had come so close to giving the twist and jerk that would have disabled the hand completely. He stared at her, looking deeply at himself and what he had just done. He felt sick and his hands were grey. For a long moment the world was tilting and sliding past him. His stomach squeezed acid up into the back of his throat.

‘You would have killed him,' he whispered hoarsely.

‘I would not. Now look what you done. Now I got to start all over again. Here, birdies!' Lynda threw more popcorn that bounced off the cobblestones and threw a penetrating look that struck deeply into him. ‘You don't look so good. You eaten today?'

Having spoken to her once, nothing was to be gained by silence. ‘Not much.'

‘I didn't think so. You look worse than these pigeons. Oh, look, here they come. Not too bright, are they?'

‘No, they're not,' Wizard admitted sadly. She was right. They were coming, the hungriest ones dropping from the trees like leaves, dipping down to peck at the farthest outreaches of the popcorn she had scattered. They were stupid, but they were his. He knew what would happen. They would come, a few at first and wary, to nip up the pieces of popcorn. Then they would get greedy, and more would come, and in the competition for the feed, they would forget the danger from the feeder. They would jostle and push, crowding ever closer to
her, until some unwary one was under her squeezing, gripping hand.

He shuddered. He picked up his own bag of popcorn and reached deep into it for a large handful. He flung it with a snap of his wrist that sent the seeds and popped corn scattering far beyond Lynda's tossed food. His flock swooped to it, feeding well outside her perimeter. Lynda dropped plump kernels right at her feet and sat perfectly still. He felt a sweat break out on the back of his neck as the birds ventured closer. He took another handful and threw it, deliberately pelting the birds that were daringly close to her. They started back, raising reproving eyes to him. He kept his face stony. Back! he thought at them. Back, you fools!

‘You're doing that on purpose!' Lynda accused him, but she laughed as she said it. She was very pretty when she laughed, all her sulkiness turning to softness. Like a different woman. She smiled at him looking at her, and gave her head a toss that sent her hair dancing. ‘Look. I give up, okay? You win. If you won't let me feed your birds, how about you? Why don't you let me buy you some breakfast?'

‘No. Thank you. I'm not that type of person.'

She didn't understand him and laughed at what she thought a joke. ‘Yeah, me neither. Let's just go grab a sandwich and some coffee or something. I was so upset this morning, I hardly ate a thing myself. I hate to eat alone. Look, we can go right inside to the Bakery. Ever been there? Right inside the doors? Good coffee.' She tilted her head toward the tall glass and metal doors. Her eyes had brightened, and in her red jacket she looked like a bright bird perched on the end of the bench.

‘I've been there,' he admitted grudgingly.

‘You are such a stone-face. It wasn't so hard to get you to eat yesterday. Look, don't feel awkward about it. It's just the way I am with people. I like you. I don't even know why I say that, but it's true. Even not knowing you much, I can tell we could be friends. Guess I knew it when I came to sit down over here. Rats!' She threw a handful of popcorn. ‘That's the last of mine. Share with me, okay?'

She tweaked the bag of popcorn from his grip and put her small hand into it. His heart tried to burst from his chest. She pulled out a fistful of fragments and threw them on the ground. ‘Hey, look, yours was all gone, too.' She shook the little bag upside down over the cobblestones. An errant wind carried away a few fragments of popcorn from it. Wizard stared with uncomprehending eyes. He reached numbly to take the empty bag from her fingers, but she wadded it up nimbly and stuffed it into her own empty bag. She thrust both into her pocket.

‘So, that's that! No more popcorn, so no more birds. Really, you might as well come and eat with me.'

He stared at her pocket. His throat was closed tight, too tight for any words to pass.

‘Oh, come on,' she begged impatiently. ‘Don't be so shy. Look, I know about guys like you. I'm not a kid. You don't stink like a drunk, but you don't shake like a junkie. I think you're just temporarily down. Lady dumped you, maybe, or your job ran out. I mean, look at how you're dressed. You're not really a bum. All you need is to get thinking straight again and get back on the tracks. Just have a cup of coffee and keep me company while I eat; it's no big deal. What do you say?'

He dragged his eyes away from her pocket and up to her face. Her front teeth nibbled appealingly at her lower lip, but he scarcely noticed. He mustn't stare at her pocket. If he agreed and went with her, he might have a chance to get his bag back. He could offer to take her coat, to hang it on a chair or something. A quick stab of his hand into her pocket and…No. He didn't want to feel it for himself, didn't want to stick his hand into an empty bag with a wrinkled paper bottom. Most of all he didn't want to pull his hand out with nothing in it for the flock. He agonized again over how it could have happened. But it was gone, his gift taken as abruptly as it had been bestowed. He had never known how he could feed the pigeons, and now he would never understand how he could not.

‘Lunch, then?' Her cool fingers touched his wrist, numbing it. She snatched them back with a cry of dismay and gripped her own wrist. ‘Oh, look at the time! I hate it when I'm on afternoon shift. Just about the time I start to enjoy the day, I have to rush off to work. Look, I'm sorry. I have to go now if I'm going to be on time, so I can't take you to lunch.'

He stared up at her miserably as she rose. She looked deep into his eyes and misread them. ‘Hey, look. It's not that way! I wasn't teasing you. Look, take this.' She dug in a bottomless purse and came up with a folded green bill. ‘Take this, I mean it, and get a bite to eat. You really look like you need it. And meet me here, tomorrow, early, and we'll talk and have breakfast. You can tell me all about yourself. Now, don't shake your head at me. You take this.' Boldly she tucked it into the chest pocket of his jacket. Wizard felt strangely powerless before her insistence. ‘You eat something, you'll feel better, and I'll see you tomorrow.
Don't look so surprised. That's how I am. I can never turn away from someone who really needs help. And I can tell a lot about people just by looking at them, maybe 'cause I been waiting tables for so long. Now you get something to eat. I mean it, now. See you later.'

She left him buried in the avalanche of her words. She looked back once as she hurried away to give him a friendly little wave and an admonishing shake of her finger that cautioned him to obey. It was all he could do to stare after her, totally unmanned.

When he looked away from her diminishing figure, the square looked unfamiliar. The light seemed dimmed, and his eyes would not focus as sharply as he wanted them to. Like waking from a nap you hadn't known you'd taken. He blinked and felt the wetness of his lashes. Rain. It was raining very tiny drops, millions of them, like a determined mist condensing on him. Wizard sat in it for a long time, feeling the money in his breast pocket where the popcorn bag had been. His birds were gone, abandoning him to seek shelter in treetops and on window ledges. He was alone in the grey rain, caught between numbness and a creeping cold. Just like bleeding to death, he thought to himself; once the shock takes away the pain, you just get colder and sleepier and dimmer. He turned his eyes down. His coat and slacks were dark and wet, but this time it was only rain. Only rain.

He dragged himself to his feet, forced himself to move. The square boasted a concrete monstrosity that passed for a rain shelter and benches. It was very big and stark, with the roof so high that the rain blew in under it. Even in summer, its shade was too cool. The cleverly designed brass drinking fountain beside it squirted everyone in
the face. The designer who had envisioned mothers and small children relaxing there was mistaken. Only street people did. Different clichés claimed different benches, sprawling or hunching on them as decreed by the weather. Hostile stares greeted intruders. Wizard walked past it. On one of the unsheltered benches a lone boy sat, trying to make fifteen years look like twenty. His black hair had been greased into spikes that were wilting in the rain. He reminded Wizard of a forlorn Statue of Liberty. He had scratched lightning strikes into his cheeks and etched fear behind his eyes. He sat very still as Wizard walked up behind him. When he leaned over the back of his bench, the boy neither moved nor spoke.

‘Go home, kid.' Wizard lifted the money from his pocket with the tips of his fingers and dropped it in the boy's lap. ‘Your mom threw out that guy that hurt you. She doesn't show it by day, but at night she cries, and she lets your cat sleep on the pillow by her head. She keeps the porch light on, and there's a box of chocolate mints in the freezer compartment of the fridge for you. She's not such a bad old broad; besides, she loves you. Bus can take you as far as Auburn. You can hike the rest of the way. Go for it, kid.'

Wizard stepped away. The boy never looked at him. He just nodded, as if to himself, and picked up the money in his lap. He rose a second later and headed for the bus stop. Wizard nodded after him, relieved. At least he had managed to get rid of the money. He tucked his bag more firmly under his arm.

He walked, through steets and weather too wet for walking, ignoring the buses. He walked away from his home and his territory, out past the King Dome, walked
right out of the Ride Free Area and into the uncharted lands beyond. Restless and rootless, he drifted, turning aimlessly down any street that presented itself, wandering through areas of warehouses, offices, and old residential sections, wandering much farther than he would have imagined he could.

He stopped in a Thriftway grocery to ask if his wife had forgotten her spare keys there, on a keychain with a green-dyed rabbit's foot on it. She hadn't, but while they looked, he had a free sample of Brim Decaffeinated Coffee and a heated Jeno's Pizza Roll served by a smiling lady from a tin-foil-lined tray. There was a dime on the floor of a phone booth outside a convenience store. In the drugstore, they didn't have his daughter's asthma prescription on file, but they let him use the bathroom while they checked. He looked at the man in their mirror. The rain had helped, actually. He did look like a harassed father sent on a wild goose chase on a rainy day. Darn kid had left her prescription in her gym locker and someone had stolen it. Probably thought they could get high on it; you know kids these days. Well, he'd have to get the nurse to track the doctor down and phone it in again. Thanks, anyway, and back into the rain. Outside the Langendorf Bakery thrift store, a man with a farm pickup full of rotten produce and brown lettuce dropped two packets of tiger-tails as he was loading in three boxes of outdated baked goods. After he drove away, Wizard salvaged them and ate them as he walked. They were squished and stale; their sweetness made him long for rich black coffee, hot enough to burn their cloying taste away. He thought longingly of Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice, down on Virginia across from the market. Or better
still, the Elliott Bay Café just under the book store; there was something about the old books on their shelves gazing down benignly on him as he sipped from a steaming mug. He wanted coffee and he needed home. He circled the block and turned his steps back.

The day was cooling and the rain had finally managed to soak through his clothes. He shivered. Walking was no longer enough to warm him, not even fast walking. The paper sack under his arm had started softening. Now he wished he had folded up the plastic shopping bag and stuffed it in his pocket. He didn't know what he would do if the tired seams of the bag gave way and the wizard things dropped out on the wet sidewalk. He snuggled it protectively against him and walked a little faster. Streetlamps began to come on, blossoming overhead against the gathering darkness.