Peter Markus: The Fish and the Not Fish

When Bird turned back to face us at the end of that day, his face was chalked white with dust.

All the while that Sir had taught us the words and the dates and the names of those things that we did not need to know, the bird in Bird’s desk did not make a sound.

It did not sing.

We all thought it had gone to sleep.

But the bird in Bird’s desk, when one of us boys looked in Bird’s desk to see it, it was not there.

It had gone, was what we all thought.

It had flown the coop.

But we were boys wrong to think this.

The bird in Bird’s desk, the bird with the broke wing that Bird had brought with him to school that day, when Bird turned to face us all at the end of this day, when Bird stood with his mouth in the shape of an O, there was the bird, as blue as the sky, it looked out at us from the O of Bird’s mouth.

And when the bell rang to end the day, the bird in Bird’s mouth, it opened its mouth to sing.

It sung.

We were at school with Sir the man who taught us things we did not need to know when this new boy walked in the room and told Sir and us all his name when Sir asked this boy what it was.

This new boy’s last name was Crane, Bill Crane, so he sat in the desk right in the back of where Bird sat. It did not take all of us long to see that this boy Bill Crane was not the kind of a boy you’d want to have sit in the seat that is the seat that is right in the back of you. He liked to spit what it was that he’d put in his mouth and hit Bird on the back of the head with it.

Bird did not turn back his head to face his face at this boy to see what it was that he spat at him.

Bird took it, to the back of his head, till this boy could see that Bird was not the kind of a boy who would turn back with his head and spit back with his mouth or hit back at this boy with his fists.

When school let out this boy who liked to spit things at the back of Bird’s head, he told us to call him Dog.

If you don’t call me Dog, he said, though he did not have to say more. He had a look in his eyes that told us to do what he said, that this kid Crane was not a boy to mess with.

So we called him Dog. He was new. He had a look in his eyes. We’ll give you a shot, we said with our heads, not with our mouths, to see if you can live up to your name.

When Bird was a boy not as big as the boy he was now, back when Bird was not yet the name he’d get called by back when he was just plain Jim or James (if you were like the man whose job it was to teach Bird things he did not need to know), back then when Bird was just plain Jim or James, Bird liked to look with his eyes all day long up at the sky, to watch the birds, to watch the birds give shape to the blue that was up there to see.

One look in Bird’s blue as sky eyes and you could see that Bird had it in his boy head that if he could he’d one day like to learn how to fly. But what kind of a school would a boy have to go to to learn how to fly like how a bird knew how to do it?

Men like Sir who taught boys like Bird things that boys like us did not need to know did not teach in his school’s room how a boy like Bird could one day be a bird like a bird in the sky. So Bird knew, he learned this much from men like Sir, that he’d have to learn how to be like a bird in the sky, not a bird in some room, but a bird up in a tree which is where most birds spent most of their time when they weren’t in flight: not in some room in some school for boys but up in trees where the blue of the sky was like a lake that, like fish, birds swam through it when they were a bird in flight.

There was a tree in our town that was as big as a tree can get to be in a town like ours. It was so big, this tree, that when we stood down at the trunk of it and looked up to see what was up in this tree, or up at its tree’s top, we could not see up to its top. This tree, it was all trunk, is what we’d like you to see, for as far as our eyes could see up it.

One day, up in this tree, though we could not see him, Bird called down to us boys from up in the top of this tree. We did not know it was Bird till one of us looked up to see the top of this tree as it moved in the wind like a hand that waved down to us. It could have been just the wind, we knew, up there at the top of this tree that made the top of this tree sway the way that it made it. It could have been just some bird, not our Bird, as it cawed out at the sky from its top of the tree nest.

But no, this was not just some bird that made the top of this tree move back and forth like it did this.

This was Bird, we knew this in our hearts, though it was hard for us to hear what he said when he said it.

Bird called out to us and he kept on with these sounds that he cried out as if to say, Look out.

We looked up, not out.

Bird cried out but we kept on with our looks looked up.

That’s when we saw what we saw.

We saw Bird.

We saw Bird jump.

He held out his arms out by his side to hug all the blue up in his arms.

Like this, with the blue held in his arms, Bird flew out and up to take hold of the blue that was the sky’s blue sky.

The wind, for a while, held Bird up in it.

The blue, for a while, held Bird up in it.

The sky, for a while, held Bird up in it.

But then it let Bird go.

The wind, the blue, the sky.

Bird fell.

As Bird fell, he did not move his arms to try to make him fly. Bird held his arms straight out by his sides. Like this, Bird dropped like a big drop of rain that fell from the sky’s blue sky.

Most of us closed our eyes.

Some of us ran so as not to get hit.

When Bird hit the ground, face first to the dirt, Bird did not die the way we thought that he would.

Bird got back up is what Bird did. He rubbed his head. He brushed the dirt and the dust from his hands.

Bird looked us then all in our eyes.

What we said to Bird then was, We thought you were a bird?

When Bird spoke, he spit out two of his front teeth.

I am, Bird said.

I’m a bird in the sky.

A bird in a tree, Bird chirped.

We thought you’d be dead, some of us said, when you fell the way that you did.

Some of us said, We could not look up to see it.

One of us then asked, Why’d you do it? Why’d you jump and choose not to fly?

I had to know how it would feel, Bird said, to fall and not have the sky be there to hold me up in it.

I’m a bird, Bird told us. I’m not an egg, Bird said, that breaks when all you do is drop it.

The birds in our town, when they’d see Bird perched up in a tree, or up on a pole, they saw Bird, not as just some boy up in a tree, they saw him for what he was, as one of them: a bird. Who or what else but a bird, or a cat, would sit perched up in a tree?

But there was this one bird in our town that did not see bird eye to bird eye with most of these birds. This one bird with a stripe of red that ran down its bird head, this bird saw Bird as what he once was: a boy and not a bird. This bird cawed at Bird to get, to go, to fly, to leave, back down from this, its tree. Bird looked at this bird in its black bird eye, but Bird did not want to fight it. But Bird did not want to leave. Bird did not want to be seen, by this bird, to be not a bird. So Bird and this bird that did not see Bird to be what he was to the rest of us boys — a bird — they fought. This bird took a peck at Bird’s left eye. This bird bit down hard on the tip of Bird’s nose. Bird did not bite, but Bird fought back. Bird took hold of this bird by its black bird wing and he pulled back on it twice till the wing pulled loose from its bone. Bird held this bird wing in his hand and looked at it for what it was. He did not know what to do with it, this wing, though he knew he should make some use of it. He looked at it some more. Then he held his mouth in the shape of an O, but no, this time, Bird did not sing. What Bird did, with this wing in his hand, when he held his mouth in the shape of an O (though he did not with his mouth sing), he took this wing, he brought it up to his mouth, and then like this he ate it.