Fucking Birdy! It’s the knife all over again.
‘All right, hotshot flying ace! Let’s hear your ending. Are we all going to just fly over the walls or something and pretend it didn’t happen?’
‘OK. This is the way it goes, Al. Before we leave here, after the ball game, we gather up the baseballs and put them in the box. Then we climb up onto the roof of the hospital.’
‘I knew it, Birdy, I knew it!’
‘Listen, Al! Up there, we start throwing the balls out over the walls. It’s a beautiful day, blue sky, sunshine with big, soft, fat clouds. We’re just whipping those balls underhand and overhand up against that blue sky and watching them sail over the wall.
‘Then we look behind us and there’s Weiss, he’s smiling at us gently, he isn’t wearing his glasses. You offer him a ball to throw but he just keeps smiling, a big, soft, loving smile. It’s the kind of smile that helps you know inside that you’re valuable.
‘We watch Weiss as he reaches over his head to the back of his neck. He starts pulling and it’s like a giant zipper. He unzips over his head, across his face, his neck, over his stomach and down to his crotch. Then, he steps out of his fat-major-psychiatrist suit. He stands there in the sunlight and he’s beautiful.’
‘Aw, come off it, Birdy!’
‘Let me finish, Al. Weiss is thin with long, strong sinuous muscles. His movements are quick and lithe, and he’s covered with a golden-colored down like a baby duck. Without the glasses we can see that his eyes are round. He springs to the edge, motioning us to follow him, smiles, then glides, with his back arched, his arms out flapping strongly, quickly but without hurry and his feet flipping gently. He glides across the grounds to the wall surrounding the hospital and lands there. He turns back and motions again for us to follow.’
‘Not me, Birdy. I’m not even going near the edge. I’m not going to jump off a building and get myself killed.’
‘I’m not either, Al.’
‘So what do we do then, Birdy?’
‘Well, we take the suit that Weiss molted and we put it in the box with what’re left of the moldy baseballs. We go back downstairs and check the box at the entrance. Then we walk right on out of here, out the gates.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘And, so what happens then?’
‘Nothing, Al; just the rest of our lives.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all?’
‘And that’s the way it ends?’
‘Not really, Al. It’s never that easy. Nobody gets off that way.’
But it’s worth trying.
Contents
AAA CON is the first name in the phone book of most large American cities. This outfit arranges drive-aways; searches out people to drive cars for delivery from one place to another.
My son Billy and I are waiting in the L.A. AAA CON office. I’ve had my medical exam, deposited a fifty-dollar bond, filled out forms and given references. Billy’s too young to take a drive-away; the minimum age is twenty-one. A car’s already been assigned to us and we’re waiting now for them to drive it up.
Billy’s excited because it’s a Lincoln Continental. I dread telling him he isn’t going to drive. I’m not a super-responsible person, but I’m that responsible, especially with someone else’s fifteen-thousand-dollar automobile.
So I’ll be driving all the way across this huge country and I’m not looking forward to it.
The office here is grim. These places are only processing centers; nothing’s spent on carpets or fancy furnishings. I figure they make a hundred bucks or so on each car they move cross-country.
Finally, the beefy fellow at the desk calls us over. He asks what route we want and agrees to 15–70–76. It’s the least trafficked by trucks because of the high, unfinished pass at Loveland. After that, it’s double-four most of the way.
We’ll be delivering this car to Philadelphia, my old hometown,