The Tender Birds, page 9
Yet she loved working with children, so she composed herself, sitting in the middle of the group with Daisy on her gloved fist, explaining to the kids what a falcon was, how it flew and hunted, how fast it could fly. “What do you feed Daisy?” “Does she bite?” “Can she sing?” “How old is she?” While she answered questions, the kids raised their phones, beckoning to Daisy, and she obliged by turning her head in their direction.
It was at one of these moments that Alison noticed Cam. He was standing at the edge of the crowd, leaning against the thick bark of a huge oak tree, only half-visible. Camouflaged. Shy, like a long-eared owl, she thought. I don’t like people who hide themselves. What is he doing here?
She wondered how she could avoid him. Yet he did not seem in a hurry to disturb her.
As the session ended, Cam moved through the thinning crowd, and when he reached her, he told her he was driving through the area, that Father Matt had mentioned the good work she was doing with raptor education, that he’d been curious about Daisy since their time in the chat room, that he just wanted to say hello.
“Hello,” she said.
“Could we walk a bit with Daisy?”
Alison hesitated. “Okay.”
“I enjoyed the chat room,” said Cam. “It was a great distraction.”
“From what?”
“Well, life in general.”
She could tell he was startled by the directness of her look, by the way she could shake a handful of stuck words loose.
He told her more about his son who’d died in Iraq, about the loss of his wife.
“What a terrible shock.”
“Yeah, well. Life throws curveballs.”
She stopped walking. “Would you like to hold Daisy?”
“You sure?”
“She offers great solace.”
She pulled an extra glove from her pocket, and with great care, she handed him the tethers, showing him how to hold them as she rested the bird on his wrist. Daisy reared upwards, fanning the air with her outstretched wings. Cam shifted his arm, and Daisy adjusted her footing, folded her wings and settled down. “Now don’t fuss,” Alison whispered.
She could sense that Cam was moved by the falcon — golden-eyed, slate-winged, a creature redolent of wind and fire.
“I see why you love her,” he said at last.
“It’s because of my father. He was a falconer once,” she said.
They meandered along in silence. Then Cam told her that Daisy’s lightness held a kind of tranquility new to him. He saw that the bird did not acknowledge him in any way; she gave him only the gift of her presence, her fullness of life. She was, perhaps, everything that God might have intended of a falcon. Claws and talons and majestic wings — and for all her predatory power, innocent.
“Yes, she is a gentle bird.” Alison didn’t know what else to say.
Cam returned Daisy to her. “I feel better already,” he said.
“I apologize.” She looked at him. “You’re very eloquent. I don’t know how to respond to you.”
“It’s okay.”
She felt as if she were about to cry, as if she’d been stung by her own words, by the pain of some grievous longing that wracked her body as she uttered them. I don’t know how to respond. Yet she wanted to have friends. She was afraid to have friends. “I feel you understand Daisy,” she said at last.
He told her yes, that he admired her devotion to her falcon.
She could relate to someone who cared for Daisy. She felt most people were afraid of her falcon, or thought she was weird for keeping one. Alison thanked him for his kindness, sure he saw his own grief reflected in her eyes.
He stopped walking and turned to face her. “Alison,” he said, “I have something I want to give you.”
She felt afraid.
“I would like to be your friend. And Daisy’s.”
Daisy was watching Cam while he took Alison’s free hand and pressed it between his. For a moment, Cam had the distressing sensation that Alison had become feral, a wild creature, terrified and skittish—that unable to swim, she was drowning in the fast currents of her own estrangement, that his hand was trying to pull her back to shore.
“That’s all I’ll ever ask of you,” he said. “Just friendship.”
Daisy looked at Alison, inclining her head in Cam’s direction. Alison glanced at the falcon, then at Cam. “We all need friends,” she said.
All Are Welcome, Sort Of
MATT HAD ASKED CAM FOR HIS IMPRESSIONS of Alison, so he wasn’t surprised when the man showed up at his Boston College office. He had come to drop off copies of his books, but he hadn’t much else to offer. “I’d say she’s very shy, that’s all,” he said.
“I don’t know what to make of her.”
“How so?”
“St. Bart’s is an openminded parish. No one asks too many questions. ‘All are welcome,’ as the song goes: homeless people, panhandlers, LGBTQ, and Daisy, the Falcon.” He paused. “I don’t meddle where I’m not asked. She never mentions family. I suspect something there.”
“She needs someone … to … be a friend to her, Matt. That’s all.”
“She’s well-liked in the parish.” The priest eyed him. “But what are you getting at?”
“Nothing. Just …”
“Just watch it. She’s twenty years your junior.” Matt was taken aback by his own words. “I would be careful is all I’m saying.”
“Alison’s just a kid. I know that.”
“Okay, so it’s not about Alison. It’s Daisy you’re nuts about.”
“Matt, she prays with Daisy.”
“And you follow her on Twitter, right?” Matt saw that Cam felt stung. “I hope you know I’m kidding,” he said, unsure if he was. He wished his colleague a good trip back to New York as Cam excused himself and stomped out of the building.
There was a bus stop in front of the church. A few waiting people turned bewildered looks on the wild-haired man striding by, glasses askew, hands knotted into fists.
Reading
To: cameraman@fordham.edu
From: alison@sbas.com
Re: Your book
Date: July 17, 2010
Hi Cam,
Just a quick email to thank you for your kind words of friendship. Could you tell me where I might find your earlier book, The Birds of the Air? Amazon doesn’t have everything, after all, and neither do our local booksellers.
Daisy is happy and making the rounds of summer schools and camps. I’m sure that your visit was a high point in her young life.
I hope your classes go well in the fall. I keep you in my prayers.
Alison
A few days later, Alison received a parcel with a copy of the book. Cam had attached a note. “It’s hard to locate old books these days,” he’d written. “Please accept this as a gift.” He’d signed the book, “To my friend and fellow birder, Alison. With best wishes, Cameron Byrne.”
Before she began to read it, she said her father’s prayer: “Blessed be God, who broods upon the world. May we nest in God.”
At home, she placed the book on a table beside a bowl of flowers, a sprig of Easter palm, two of Daisy’s feathers, and a crucifix. Later that evening, she sat down and began to read it. She read all night.
Matthew
What Alison Does
SHE’S STRUCK UP A FRIENDSHIP with Cam Byrne. Matt felt an unexpected pang, a feeling close to jealousy, that the man would have a relationship, however innocent, with Alison. He imagined the sort of dialogue he should have begun himself as a spiritual advisor. More to the point, he recalled the chat room, where he’d sensed an ease between Alison and Cam, a casual way of speaking that he could never master with anyone.
Cam was comfortable with who he was, while Matt observed the world from the prison of his body. He did not like to be reminded of this.
He tried watching Alison through the eyes of Father Ron, the pastor.
“She sits with the homeless people in the Common,” Ron told him. “She tells them Daisy stories and a lot of our parishioners used to freak out over street people and now they don’t. They follow her and Daisy out the door.”
He did not experience the same ease. In a hurry, he often strode past vagrant men and women on park benches in the Common, and he hated to admit that to his ear, the sound of a shaking hand rattling change in a paper cup felt close to reptilian, a rattler’s noise, a warning of a poisonous bite if he got too close. Worse were the mutterings: “There goes Father Cheapskate.” He never dwelled on his instinctive reaction or the anger stirred in him by a sarcastic remark. Instead, he hurried down the path, off to whatever appointment (real or hoped-for) that might await him in the rectory.
Yet he felt he had to respond to Father Ron’s observations. So, it happened that one Sunday after the ten a.m. Mass, he watched as parishioners filed out of St. Bart’s. Alison was among them, Daisy perched on her gloved fist. She was walking alone in the direction of the Boston Common, and behind her, a mass of chattering individuals managed to shape itself into a slender line of walkers, trimming away the indolence of an hour in the pew — ready, it seemed, for some grown-up form of communion. Yes, he knew it was a cruel judgment, especially from a priest, but parish liturgies were often repetitious, and so, it never surprised him when many congregants responded with looks of utter stupefaction. All the more reason for the astonishment he felt that this crowd would be energized enough to fall into line behind Alison and Daisy.
He decided to follow them. Clad in civvies, no one would pay attention to him.
The Man with the Wine
ABOUT FIFTY PEOPLE MADE THEIR WAY along the irregular pathways of the Common, all of them following Alison who stopped at a park bench not far from the great fountain. Two men were seated there, one of them playing guitar, and Matt positioned himself alongside a sheltering tree, close enough to hear the conversation. “It’s the bird lady,” said the guitar player, and he stopped playing. The other man stared at his feet, at his backpack and sleeping bag.
“Mind your manners, Tom,” said the guitarist. “Say hello.”
“Don’t know her name,” said Tom.
Alison sat down and introduced herself.
He stared at Daisy. “That an eagle?”
She told him Daisy’s story, adding how intelligent she was.
“She can count to ten, like Big Bird?”
Alison laughed. “She likes music, right, Bill?”
The guitarist plunked a chord. “Not much of a singer, but she gets the beat.”
“You play her a song, then,” said Tom.
Bill began to play and hum “Yellow Bird.” Daisy’s head swayed in time to the music.
By then, the line of walkers were circling the bench, standing and sitting and paying attention. Some of them began to hum along to the tune, a song so old that only a few of them could remember the words. Among them were homeless residents of the park who were sitting on the grass, enjoying the warm summer weather, saying hello to some of the parishioners who’d followed Alison.
One woman stood out — Hispanic, Matt thought, her bonnet adorned with ribbons and flowers. She dressed well in what appeared to be Goodwill finery: a loose-fitting yellow dress of Indian cotton, cinched with a gold and orange brocade sash. Nice touch, that sash, he thought. Just as he was wondering if she’d fashioned it out of ancient drapery, he heard a voice, one with the stench of familiarity, a man sitting close to the bench who turned around to address the crowd. “Hey, you guys, look who’s here. It’s Father Cheapskate, who walks by all the time, and makes like he doesn’t see us.”
Matt would have cleared out, but he was too close to the front of the group to hide.
“Now don’t be rude, friend,” said Bill to the man. “We have guests.”
The man stood up and glared at Matt. “Well, maybe you can give our guests a little something special, huh?”
Matt felt uncomfortable. Many of the parishioners, fearing confrontation, were beginning to leave.
“I don’t want your damned spare change.” The man spat the words out.
“Why don’t you tell him what you want, then?” asked Bill.
“I know what he wants,” said Tom. He looked at the man. “You told me before. You want Father to say Mass.”
“That’s right! Mass on the grass! How about it?”
Why was I nuts enough to come here? thought Matt. Yet he could not help noticing a murmur of assent from the men and women who lived in the park, who carried their belongings in backpacks and duffel bags, whose faces turned to him, torn with the battle of old shadows and sudden hope. Raw need was something he seldom faced in the eyes of his fortunate parishioners. They were his buffer against these wounded people, and now, they were ebbing away like rinse water down a drain.
“We can’t come into the church,” said a woman who gestured to her bundle buggy.
“She’s right, same goes for us,” murmured a chorus.
“Haven’t got my gear with me,” said Matt. No vestments, no missal, no bread and wine, cup and plate.
“Father Matt,” said Alison, looking at him intently. She handed him a booklet with the prayers of the Mass.
“See, you got the prayers,” said Bill. He raised his old guitar. “And I’m your choir.”
Matt wanted to leave.
At that moment, the Hispanic woman made her way forward through the crowd — tall and lean, he realized, with the russet skin and high cheekbones of a Native American. Then she untied her brocade sash, slipped behind him, and draped it over his shoulders.
“Isn’t this what the priest wears?” she asked. “Sun and flowers and a bird. Very beautiful.”
He realized he would not get away from a man with a plastic bag striding through the crowd with his haul of day-old hamburger buns that some fed-up restaurant owner likely dumped on him, just to get him out of his hair. The man set the full bag down in front of Matt.
I am going to consecrate hamburger buns, he thought.
Then he heard that voice again, like a needle etching a bitter tattoo on his soul.
“Only one thing missing.” The garrulous man came forward with a paper bag, the neck of a wine bottle protruding from it.
Just as Matt was about to ask if anyone had a cup, the man with the wine thrust the bottle in his hand, leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Just so you know, I got fucked by a priest. I should spit on you, but I won’t. God owes me this Mass.”
Shocked, Matt thought it best to ignore him.
“Best wine there is,” said the man, and he laughed.
“You need something to drink it from.” Another man came forward with a large, unused paper cup. “Swiped it from Starbucks,” he said.
Matt never managed to spot the pack rat who set up the battered card table, or the woman who provided the paper plate with the floral design. He poured wine into the cup, placed a hamburger bun on the plate, set the bagful of bread alongside the table. We don’t need candles; we have sunlight. He gestured for everyone to gather around him. Then, oblivious to stares from passersby, Matt opened Alison’s prayer book and began.
Alison later wrote that the air was silent, that even the birds held their breath.
Matt spoke the prayers, read the gospel, then realized he was supposed to preach. He had no thoughts, nothing prepared. He looked out over the crowd. “It’s good to be here, celebrating Mass with you,” he said. “I should have done it long ago. All of us carry wounds, and some of them refuse to heal. He paused. I am not always sure how to approach you. Forgive me for the ways in which I have not helped you. Pray for me, and I will continue to pray with you.”
Matt felt shaken by the wave of anguish and trouble that surrounded him. When he looked up, he noticed that the man who had given him the wine was watching him with a look that was both guarded and alert — unhinged, a broken door pried open by a blade of light.
He reminded himself to be patient.
He prayed over the bread and wine, calling upon the Spirit to bless the gifts, and he thought to himself that only one who understood suffering as Jesus did would think to be present in these unhappy offerings. Yet he felt certain that the goodness in which these humble gifts were given would in some mysterious way transform them.
At Communion time, he broke off a piece of the day-old bread and ate it, chewing the tasteless lump, swallowing in it the misery surrounding him, the suffering ignored — so real that it seemed to hover at the edge of memory, a moment forgotten, a sin of omission on his part, and this troubled him. As if there were something I lived through and forgot. Something I saw. That close.
He looked at them as he blessed the cup of wine, and he noticed the hard stare of the man who had given it to him. The blood of Christ. He brought the cup to his lips and drank. It was bitter wine, rock-bottom plonk. He saw that the man stood, arms folded, watching him.
He called people forward to receive the bread; most stayed away from the wine. While they filed past, Bill picked up his guitar and played in the background — softly, and rather well, Matt thought. He must have been a club musician once. He wondered what sad twist in his life had driven him into the street.
At the end of Mass, it was part of the ritual to consume the remnants of bread and wine, but Matt called over the man who’d given him the bread and returned the outsized bag to him. Likewise, he signalled to the man who had given him the wine, but what remained in the cup was consecrated, and he was supposed to drink it. He wasn’t certain he could or should The man took back the bottle, and stood there, watching him.
