The Bird is Gone: A Manifesto

Blue Moons

IBLUE MOONS cortez (my father's armor) Picture a boy and he's running. Everything washed out Ii~e a memory: grass the color of beer; hiS house stained with it He sWings onto the porch and lets the blind dog smell him. In the liVing room the horizontal hold on the television is shot, and the picture rolls up and up li~e smoke and he watches it. breathing hard. Behind him the blind dog has its nose to the screen door. its marbled eyes dry. unblinking. He doses the door on them but it won't: the hinges have been ~ic~ed in. There's rawhide there now. tied to something deep in the modular wall and then to the screws in the door. bac~ed out halfway. just far enough to tie to. Is this how the old Indians did it? 138 I STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES He lifts the door into its rectangle of light. lines the deadbolt up. The house is qUiet: wrong. He won't ever forget this. In the thick amber curtains. backlit by the sun. is a shape. a form. a man. Neither of them moves. Neither of them says anything. from the back of the house-his mother's room-the floor creaks: a footstep. He turns to it. opens his mouth. then turns bad to the shape. father. He's home. USing the leg of the kitchen table that comes off. he lifts the curtain gauze away. falls back into the couch swinging. It's a suit of armor: a hust He narrows hiS eyes at it. doesn't say Dad Hasn't ever seen him really. just heard him when he comes through. Seen the silver cans when he's gone. accepted the gifts he leaves on the coffee table. the kitchen counter. Behind the curtains. The commercial on the television is a milK commercial. that girl. He turns it off after touching her face with his Finger-a kiss-then stands before the armor. looking up. It's golden. powerful. The gift this time. He smiles. looks down the hall. Thank you. It's exactly. Touching it with hiS Fingertips. he's Incan. Holding it around the waist. the side of his face pressed to its stomach. he doesn't know what he is. He lowers it to the carpet gently. as if it could shatter. Imagines his father dragging it across three states for him. day and night No. wearing it Looking down at his poker cards and then up at the conquistadors Sitting around the table with him. taking them for everything they have. He opens the face part and it's empty. He rolls it over and the back opens up. He puts in one leg. then the next. and it comes apart at the waist leaVing just the breastplate part He crawls in anyway. into the fetal pOSition. and doses hiS eyes. wakes hours later. the metal the same temperature as hiS body. People are screaming around him. His mother and father. spilled out of the bedroom. Larger than the bedroom. They haven't seen him. THE BIRD IS GONE \139 Glass crashes: the rest of the legs come off the kitchen table. Eyes closed or open it doesn't matter. And the words are all the same. He feels the armored legs get kicked away, into the halfwall between the kitchen and the living room. They still haven't seen him. Are still screaming. Mother: Father. Dad. If he cries it doesn't matter. As long as he's qUiet He pulls his ears down into his shoulders when they talk about him. Is running again. Out the oppoSite armhole he can see the refrigerator open finally, the beer pour out It's almost over. All that's left is his mother. thrown against the back door. then his father's legs leaving by the back door. clOSing it on his mother's hair. Her arms won't reach the knob. either. They never see him. That's the thing. An hour later the front door crashes in again. the rawhide hinges giVing because the deadbolt won't Dad. HiS mother looks up at him, and they stare, and then she stands with a tearing sound. scalping herself. her hair locked in the back door. blood trailing down her face. and his father kneels breathing by the breastplate. unhooks the helmet. watching...