Visions of Gerard Read Free Page B

birds that neighbor and relative could swear did know him personally, they came to his windowsill in the time of his long illnesses, especially Spring, when his rheum-rimmed eyes’d look out on fresh undefiled mornings like captured princesses in must towers—Vile visitations of bile’d turned him green, and white, in the night, his bedpan beneath the bed, but for the birds he had roses for words—“ Arrive, mes ti’s anges , Come my little Angels,” and he’d sow his (by Ma prepared) breadcrumbs on the sill and on the short slope roof up there where his sickroom was (a location for a room that forever frets my brain when in gray dreams I dream of houses, that location is always the one that makes me sink, somewhere to the north and west of misery, by peaks, mystery, gables)—Cherry blossom’d May brought him hundreds of gay birds with gloomy beaks that chattered on the roof around his crumbs—But he’d cry: “Why dont the little birds come to me?! Dont they know I wont hurt them?”
    â€œOf course they dont, they cant know—for all they know you’re a boy, and boys hurt birds.”
    â€œAnd birds hurt boys?”
    â€œAnd birds never hurt a boy, but the boy will stone his dozen and upset the nests of a dozen fledgelings in his nasty prime.”
    â€œWhy? Why is everyone so mean? Didnt God see to it that we—of all people— people —would be kind—to each other, to animals.”
    God made no provisions for that winter.
    The birds chatter, come come close at hand, he glees and jumps up and down at his pillow: “That one’s coming, that one I’m tellin you, he’ll end up in my hand!”
    â€œI hope,” my mother’d say with wise eyes and unwisely in the night pray for it and worthily praise him—My father couldnt believe it.
    â€œAh, if I could buy him birds!”
    â€œJust one little bird, just ONE,” he’d cry, as I sat in my little chair by the bed watching, fingering the crumb pan with little pudgy fingers so fat they called me Ti Pousse , Little Thumb.
    â€œCome here, Little Thumb, look, the little grey bird, doesnt he look like he wants to eat in my hand and give me a little kiss?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWouldnt you like to kiss that little thing?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYes yes little bird come on.”
    But a chance noise of breadtruck drives the whole flock away kavroom , for the next tree, where they jabber the new news—Tears come to Gerard’s eyes, his lips form a fateful pout, a groan comes, it means “Ah what’s the use—if I loved them any more they’d have honey and balm for breakfast and have beaks of gold, yet they avoid me like a rat dripping bacteria—like a falcon—like a man.”
    â€œGerard,” my mother’d explain, “dont make yourself sad about the little birds. Do you know why? Because God sees and knows you love them and he’ll reward you.”
    â€œIn heaven I’ll have all the birds I want.”
    â€œYes in heaven—and maybe on earth, have courage, patience.”
    With his little belly he heaves a heigh ho sigh, ‘t’would be a good thing to be in that snowy somewhere and rosy nowhere where patience is just a word and no bellies burdenly pain. “Yes, in heaven there are birds, millions of birds, even smaller than these, big like butterflies, smaller, like ants, white like an angel—everywhere.” He’d turn to his drawing board propped on his lap and start drawing his dreary eternities and dreams of paradise. He was an amazing artist at the age of 8. He drew pictures that my old man actually disbelieved as his own when he saw them a-nights:
    â€œGerard did that?—look here!”
    Ditto my father’s friends—To prove it he’d draw right in front of them, boats sailing on the blue ocean (copied from the Saturday Evening Post), birds, bridges,