Chris Bachelder - The Throwback Special

“Guys?” Trent said.

“She was trying to find audio recordings of different animals stuck in chimneys. She played them. She apologized again for calling me. I said it wasn’t a problem. I put on my big work gloves, and maybe she had that scared look again. She said, Hold on, does it sound like this? She played another recording of an animal stuck in a chimney. All the recordings of stuck animals sounded like the animal stuck in our chimney. Every one. I got a cardboard box from the basement and I put it inside the fireplace. She said to hold on, she wanted to look up a few more things. I squatted down, and I used the poker to open the damper. When the damper opened, I threw down the poker and got ready to close the flaps on the cardboard box when the squirrel fell out. Wait, my wife said. Don’t do that. At first nothing happened, but then all of a sudden — plop plop plop — three baby birds fell into the box, squawking and cheeping. And then I could hear the mother bird up in the chimney, making all kinds of noise. Now of course the mother bird sounded exactly like the recording of birds that my wife had played on her computer. It’s birds, I said. My wife said, I told you to wait. She read to me from her computer. She said they were chimney swifts. She said they’re common in our area. She said they would have flown the nest in another two to three weeks, all of them, mother and young. There had been no need to do anything. I could have left them alone and they would have been fine, but now what? We both looked down into the box. The baby birds were wet-looking, and covered in black dust. Their eyes weren’t even open. Christ, Henry, she said, they’re federally protected! I took the birds outside in the box, I don’t know why, and then a while later I brought them back in, so at least they could be close to their mother. My wife paced around the room, and then she got back on the love seat with her laptop. She was leaning way over, her hair nearly touching the screen. She said, Please don’t do anything. Just don’t do anything at all. She found something online. Plenty of other people have had baby birds fall out of their chimneys into a box. The thing to do, she said, is place them gently back where they came from. They will try to clutch you with their claws, but they will not hurt you. Try, she said, to reach above the damper and place them on the wall of the chimney. They like to be on a vertical surface. I thought you weren’t supposed to touch baby birds, I said. She said, Just put them back! They’re federally protected . I took off my gloves and one by one I picked up the baby birds and placed them back into the chimney, above the damper. They did grip my fingers with their claws, which made it difficult to let them go. But I did it, and then I closed the damper. The mother and the babies made a terrible racket for a while, but then they all got quiet. Everything seemed to be okay. My wife closed her laptop. She stood up from the love seat, and thanked me for coming, though she wouldn’t look at me. My hands were black from the soot in the chimney.” The pizza guy looked down at his hands. “I told her I thought we made a good team. We saved those birds, I said. She said, We saved those birds from the danger that you created for those birds. Which, she said, feels pretty familiar. Then I left.”

“What happened with your consulting job?” Chad said.

“Long story short,” the pizza guy said, “the next weekend I was down in the basement. I would come in through the bulkhead, sit in the old rocking chair that used to be in the nursery, and just listen to my wife and kids upstairs. I liked to hear them. This night they were playing Yahtzee — my son, my daughter, my wife, and some man named Kent I had heard a few times before. It’s my Yahtzee game, by the way. I’ve had it since I was a kid. They were playing in the living room, and every time they shook the dice in that cup, the birds in the chimney went nuts. They clearly were thriving. They chirped like crazy at the dice, and then my family and Kent all laughed and laughed like it was the funniest thing. I could hear my daughter say, They like it! And then Kent said, Or they don’t! Laugh, laugh, laugh. Now who’s the fraud? Now who? And that’s why I went upstairs, and that’s how this whole thing got started.”

“Guys?” Trent said.

“Chad? George?” Trent said.

“Jeff?” Trent said.

“Take it easy,” the pizza guy said, and he left. He had another delivery.

“Guys, let’s do this,” Trent said.

•

FANCY DRUM lay capsized in the hallway, but really, any container would have worked just fine. With mock altruism several men simultaneously offered up the use of their capacious jockstraps, while Gary suggested Vince’s purse.

“It’s not a purse,” Vince said.

Someone stripped a pillowcase off a pillow, and the case was passed hand to hand up to Trent, who stood in front of the television. Trent began to transfer ping-pong balls from a large freezer bag into the pillowcase. Some of the balls were yellowed like teeth. Four or five of the men tried quickly to formulate a joke about Trent’s weight, and Gary got there first. “Don’t eat them, Trent!” Gary yelled, just as Bald Michael was about to do his Cookie Monster voice. Trent smiled mirthlessly, patting his stomach. The weight had simply come with his third marriage. His habits had not changed. He hadn’t stopped going to the gym, hadn’t altered his eating or drinking. This was just who he was in this marriage. With his first wife he had been an outdoorsman; with his second wife he had been really into live music, and he had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day; with his third wife, apparently, he would be overweight. From what Trent could gather online, his first wife still enjoyed the outdoors, as did her current husband.

When Trent had finished dropping the ping-pong balls into the pillowcase, he gripped the opening as one would grip the neck of a large bird, and he gave a trial shake. The soft clacking of the balls in the case was pleasing, and several men closed their eyes to hear it better. It is true, however, that many men felt the absence of the lottery drum, though they knew it to be ridiculous and excessive. The drum, like the conference room, had become part of the way things were done, and its excess, it might be said, had become part of its necessity. It was, perhaps, after all, appropriate. Not just any container would have worked just fine. More than one man had the odd sensation that a lottery without the drum somehow wouldn’t count . Others felt exposed somehow, or denuded by the loss of ceremony. This anxiety caused them to be garrulously nonchalant about ceremony.

“RIP, Fancy Drum!” Myron called out, raising his red cup of beer. “Let it never be said she shirked a fight.”

“To Fancy Drum!” the men said, and drank. Several men slapped Steven on the back. This small tribute was composed of a complex alloy of sincerity and derision, the ratio of which was a dark mystery to every man present. Still, it was sufficient for Steven, who stopped pouting, and accepted the attention with a smile and a raised cup. It could be said of Steven, as it could be said of each man, that he was the plant manager of a sophisticated psychological refinery, capable of converting vast quantities of crude ridicule into tiny, glittering nuggets of sentiment. And vice versa, as necessary.

“She’ll be back,” Steven said.

“Yes, she’ll be back. .” Gil said, raising his arms like a choral conductor.

“But she won’t be back tonight!” the men shouted on cue.

“Let’s keep it down,” Robert said.

Indeed, the men were boisterous. Peter chewed his mouthguard, feeling the strain, poignantly familiar from a childhood spent salvaging curbside furniture, of making do.