“Wait up,” Henry calls out.
Back at the table all are laughing at a joke one of the men makes and the women are shaking their heads at its silliness. All except Edgar Powell.
Edgar Powell is the sort of man who only says “God bless you” after the first sneeze. If multiple sneezes follow he pointedly ignores them. For Edgar Powell this is a pragmatic choice, a studied economy of words, not a malicious wish that the sneezer be condemned to damnation. He is equally frugal with his laughter.
“Boys, watch out for your brother,” their mother calls and Henry groans, watching his just barely two-year-old brother David toddle toward them, arms Frankenstein-extended. David David David, it’s always take care of your brother and watch out for your brother. Brad’s the oldest so he gets to do older-kid stuff, David’s the baby so he gets all the attention, and then there’s me, invisible me, he says to himself, kicking at a rock, waiting for Brad to shoot him like he always does. Henry’s truth is that he is the one who does everything right. But this seems very little compared to David David David and Brad Brad Brad, and he wishes his parents saw the gut punches, the head locks or the Chinese water torture where Brad pins him down and lets the string of spit hang down almost to his face before sucking it back up. Then there was the time Brad made Henry eat dirt, which still humiliates him even though it happened last year. Thankfully Matt Rollins, who gave Brad the idea in the first place, moved to Baltimore not long after. At least I’m not a tattletale, he thinks. His best friend, Petey, had cautioned against tattling and had told of even worse big-brother tortures. Never ever tell on him, Petey had said in the fort they’d built in back of Henry’s house.
Sometimes, though, it was easy not to tattle because Brad would unexpectedly stick up for him at school if the occasion presented itself. Or Brad would talk baseball with him—in a know-it-all way, but still. Life was good when this happened. It made it all worthwhile when, say, the Yankees won and they shouted with joy and leaped into each other’s arms and punched their fists into the air with happiness.
“David’s a cowboy with you,” he calls out to Brad.
“No, he’s not,” Brad yells, hiding somewhere out of Henry’s sight.
“Yes, he is. There are more cowboys than Indians so he’s on your team,” he says. He turns to David, who has now reached him. “Davey, go over there, Brad’s calling you. Go over there to Brad.”
“Bad?” David has not yet mastered his r’s and Henry has encouraged this coincidental nickname.
“Yeah, Bad,” Henry says, gently pushing his brother toward the fringe of the park. “Go over there.”
“Ha-ha,” he calls out. “He’s coming over.”
“Yeah, well, you just got shot so you’re dead,” Brad says, standing up from not as far away as Henry had imagined.
Cowboys and Indians gives way to a makeshift series of sticks balanced across rocks at different heights so the boys can leap over them, taking turns being Evel Knievel. But Brad hurts his knee and starts a wrestling match that is incomplete as David repeatedly tries to take part and boys, watch out for your brother dots it and it is therefore far less satisfying than any of them had hoped. Henry’s cousin, Tommy, at ten is bigger than both of them, and at one point has Brad pinned down requiring Henry to jump onto Tommy’s back to peel him off.
“Get off,” he says. “Get off,” because brothers innately stick together against outside foes even cousin foes.
It’s two against one. The Powell boys against cousin Tommy carries on until that, too, is exhausted. They scatter then and Henry wanders off into the wood to see what’s what. Let Brad watch David for once how come he always gets out of it anyway, Henry thinks. It’s such a gyp.
It is two or three yards into the thick, cool shade of trees when Henry happens on two birds. It’s clear they are fighting and he stops to watch. They are well matched—the same breed, the same size. It does not occur to Henry that he has the power to put a stop to this. To intervene. To interrupt the natural course of events. He is frozen and spellbound. He finds it strange how silent they are, the pecking brutal, the feathers—the long ones on top—start peeling off. The bird on the bottom, the one being nailed over and over again by the beak, struggles slightly but Henry sees it is resigned. Horrified, Henry watches the weak one give in. The downy smaller feathers underneath floating in the air like dandelion fluff. The beak pecking pecking pecking red with blood. Henry is surprised at the brightness of the color, so much like his mother’s lipstick or like the fake Dracula blood he had smeared on either side of his mouth last Halloween.
The dying bird finally manages a mournful squawk.
“Stop,” he says out loud, finding his voice. “Stop it,” he shouts, running forward, waving his arms. “Stop.”
The bloody beak rises and the bird flaps off. Henry’s spindly legs walk to the mess on the pine needles. He squats down next to the bird on its side, a beady eye finds his, locks and then shuts.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay now.” He is trying to soothe the bird but is sick at his stomach seeing he is too late.
Not so far away the stronger bird waits to finish what he had started.
“Go,” Henry yells. Tears in his eyes he rushes at the bird. “Go away. Go.”
He returns to the bird on the ground and kneels. This is the closest he has ever been to a bird. He reaches out, and with his index finger, he strokes the top of the bird’s head. The only part that is not bloody. It is membrane-soft, smooth and still warm and Henry finds it the saddest thing he has ever ever seen in the whole wide universe.
There is no time to bury it; Brad will be looking for him, Henry thinks. Or Tommy. Or maybe his mother. If he is gone too long. And it feels like he’s been gone too long.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry, bird.” On his haunches he allows the tears to fall.
It astounds him that he is only steps from his family, from all the picnic activity. He does not tell anyone about it. He keeps it for himself, feeling he alone was entrusted with the weight, the responsibility of being the only witness to this spectacularly rare event. It is fine with him that no one notices he is no longer playing. He takes a stick and hits random bushes at the edge of the clearing … mad at himself he had allowed it to happen. Come to think of it, he thinks, thank God Mom and Dad didn’t find me, not that they really would have, but still—they would have asked why I let the bird die.
The boys are called back to help throw out soggy paper plates and clinking beer bottles. The mothers are stacking the Tupperware and drinking out of plastic cups, giggling at something one or the other has said before the boys reach the table in near darkness.
In the car ride home the boys are quiet, drunk with exhaustion. David has fallen asleep between them, his head bobbing with each bump in the road. In front of them their mother moves closer to their father, who is driving. The station wagon has one long continuous front seat and their father reaches out and drapes his arm across the top of the seat back, across their mother’s shoulders, and their murmuring this and that about who said what mixes in with the sound of the engine and Henry next feels his father’s arms scooping him up to carry him into the house. Brad trails them, his steps weaving in sleepiness.
Ahead of them on the front walk his mother is carrying David.
Henry dreamily reaches his first finger to his little brother’s head he confuses with the bird’s, so soft and smooth. But David’s head just out of reach.
Chapter two
1977
Henry’s fingers are too numb to tie a good knot in his cleats so he jams the leftover strings under the tongue