I was up in the dark of four o'clock. It was late in May, but the morning was chilly all the same. I went into the bathroom and wiped a rag across my eyes, ran wet fingers through my hair and swished some water through my teeth. When I tiptoed past my mother's and father's bedroom I didn't notice that the door was somewhat ajar until my mother called out softly to me. I'd been as quiet as I knew how, yet she'd heard me. I never could understand how she, and father to a lesser degree, could awaken from the deepest sleep when I got up in the night to use the toilet or get a glass of water. Instinct of some kind, I supposed, much like the kind of stirring I felt if there was a weasel or fox skulking about the pigeon loft or one of the birds was about to come down with some sickness that hadn't yet shown itself.
        I went down the dark stairs to the kitchen where I turned on the light. She followed me, all tousled with the funny, soft, bruised look around her eyes and mouth which she had when she first woke up-or when she'd been crying about something. I wondered if women commonly cried silently in their sleep. Da once said if I remember correctly that mothers and abandoned wives wept in the night so to wash and freshen their smiles for the day. My grandfather was sometimes given to excessively poetic and extravagant expression, had once hungered to be a man of letters. A Poet.
        My mother's eyes glittered with the remains of such weightless tears as she smiled sleepily at me and brushed my hair away from my eyes.
        "You should let me comb it," she said.
        "It's Saturday," I reminded her and she nodded.
        That was the agreement between us. I allowed her to polish my appearance every morning but Saturday and that was my own to be as rough and uncaring as I pleased.
        "Big day," she whispered softly.
        She shivered and made a noise with her lips.
        "I never will understand why grown men will get up long before the crack of dawn in the very middle of the night in fact just to fool around with a bunch of birds," she said and smiled at me.
        I knew she was making me proud of myself for being only ten but included in the activities of my grandfather and his friends, calling me a grown man among grown men; boasting of me for having the grit to follow my pastime with devotion despite the hardships of it. Of course there were other children and some women who raced pigeons, but even so she was proud of me.
        She made me a bowl of hot farina, dressed with a pat of butter and a sprinkling of salt. She pointed to the chair beside the kitchen table and, when I didn't sit in it, put her hand on my shoulder and sat me down before I could protest that I had no time.
        Will you feed the birds this morning?" she asked.
        "Yes," I said.
        "Then I'll feed you," she smiled.
        She poured a glass of milk for me and stood watching me as I drank it. She wore the robe I'd helped my father pick out for her birthday two years before, faded now with many washings, the little tufts depleted and some nearly worn away. It was rose colored; reflected on her face, the slope of her cheeks, beneath her chin, making her look flushed and too young to have a child. I do believe that consideration came to me that morning when I was ten.
        "Keep warm," she said to me at the door, pulled the collar of my jacket up around my ears and kissed me on the corner of my mouth. "It's May but chilly all the same."
        I went off to Da's house, the little salt box about half a mile down the road. An owl spoke in the dark. Its screech identified it to me as a common barn owl, a bird that lived comfortably in the habitations of men. It lived on woodland rodents, rats, and mice. It was no danger to pigeons and other birds. I called back, but the owl was seeking no further conversation and remained silent.
        I could then as I can now rarely do identify the calls of nearly all the avifauna for miles around. I'd learned it bit by bit, without struggle, without reluctance, as naturally as I'd learned my name, Hugh Baudoum. I have never learned anything else quite so painlessly. Perhaps because I've never since relished learning for the pure joy of it. I remember Da saying, "Knowledge made tasty creates an appetite for more. Force feeding, on the other hand, turns the stomach."
        I saw a patch of violets gleaming beside the road and picked a small bunch of them. I gave them to my grandfather without embarrassment. There was no restriction on the giving of beauty as far as he was concerned, no set of actions suitable for girls and another suitable for boys.
        He thanked me, put them in a glass of water and placed it on the kitchen windowsill above the sink where another water glass held his teeth.
        I never liked to see him without them, though I never told him so. His mouth looked all pursed and shrunken, his cheeks without shape or fire, so old that it frightened me. He was sometimes thoughtless about his teeth in the house, but I never saw him elsewhere without them.
        "Are we ready for the big day?" he lisped.
        "As ready as we'll ever be," I said in ritual answer.
        He popped in his teeth, nodded, grinned and said, "Then there's not a thing that can shame us. "
        We had a cup of herb tea, which I never drank at home, and went down to the lofts. There was light in the eastern sky. We went through the back of the house among the nest boxes and took up Jenny, Moonbeam, and Dickens, and placed them in a wicker basket partitioned into three parts.
        The loft doors in front were opened then, the birds let free for the morning fly. Together, Da and I cleaned out the pans and refreshed them with new water as the pigeons flung themselves about the sky. We set out the grain mix in the hopper and I called the pigeons back to feed by snapping a metal cricket. In fifteen minutes or so they began, one by one, to leave the feed and go to drink. When everyone had enough, but not too much, we cleared out the hoppers. That day we left the doors open, allowing the birds the freedom of the air, the roof, the several porches, and went off in Da's pickup truck with the birds that were to race.
        The fanciers were gathering in the clubhouse of the Rochester American Racing Pigeon Union. It was half past six and already the room was growing thick with the heat of so many bodies. The smell of tobacco, coffee, and the peculiarly dusty, acrid odor of bird droppings laced the air. The men and a few women who tended to be the sturdy, hardy sort jostled each other in friendly companionship, talking pigeons and bragging on one bird or another. There were some children my own age among us. Most were bigger than I, for I was undersized for a ten year old. Harry Pinnat waved to me, showing the gap in his smile where he'd lost a tooth in a fight with his best friend Roger Drinier over some matter concerning pigeon bloodlines.
        We young ones were a serious lot I suppose. I've noticed since that youngsters brought up around creatures tend to be a trifle more mature and dependable than others. Anyway we'd much rather listen to the talk of our elders, and even join in the conversation when asked, than gabble among ourselves or play the fool at childish games. The talk was always plainspoken but somehow quite exotic.
        "She was my pet. Wry tailed, roach backed, and foul marked. I should have culled her from the flock when I brought the young birds to conclusion that first September she wasn't steady and liked to bum around the countryside instead of making straight for the loft but, somehow, I had hopes for her. She proved herself the very next year in two and three hundred mile races.
        I understood that the fancier was speaking of a bird with a tail held off to one side, round shouldered, with off colored feathers, who'd shown very bad habits in the first year of training and had nearly been chopped from the flock. Now she was a winner and a favorite. The fancier felt affectionate toward her, as many did toward a wayward or gadling who'd given up their wastrel ways and made something of themselves. It proved out the instinctive wisdom and bird sense enjoyed by the fancier.
        Bad habits, like wandering about instead of flying straight home, weren't to be allowed. Such birds were good for neither racing nor breeding and were killed some hearts would say ruthlessly in order to protect the quality of the bloodline. No breeder enjoyed the task, but they felt it necessary. They wouldn't otherwise take the life of a bird. There were stories, however, that aroused the anger of good pigeon fanciers.
        Like the one my grandfather told that was said to have happened in 1930.
        There was no need to establish any background to the tale as far as most of those who listened were concerned, but my grandfather sketched it all the same, just in case someone who didn't know a thing about pigeon racing might fail to get the message.
        "You know," he'd begin in his light Walloon accent, "that the speed of each bird is measured from the time of its release to the time its leg band is removed and placed in the automatic clock given to each trainer. That number is divided into the true, surveyed air line distance from start to loft and the speed in yards per minute computed."
        "Do we need instructiona?" old Mr. Fouquet, himself a man of Flanders, murmured under his breath. He was Da's best friend in all the world next to me and therefor had the privilege to complain.
        "In a racing club in Pennsylvania "
        "What club?" Fouquet demanded.
        My grandfather placed a finger beneath his eye and closed the lid of it, a lock upon a secret.
        " there was a man named Deegan, Deighton, Dugan, or such like," Da said without pause, "who owned a bird named Skeeter, Tweeter, Jeeter, or such like."
        "You have a remarkable memory, Baudoum," Fouquet said ironically.
        "I am a man of discretion, "Da said. "This bird was entered into a five hundred mile race. There was a first prize of one hundred dollars. Skeeter "
        "Jeeter, Tweeter, or such like. "
        " came to Deegan's "
        " Dugan's or Deighton's "
        " loft in plenty of time to win. But it would not trap."
        Collective sighing often greeted this information. Who among us hadn't suffered the suspense of waiting for a bird to enter the little one way door into the loft where it could be taken in hand, the countermark on the band removed and placed in the clock to mark the finish of its race? Who hadn't lost one or two races because of a stubborn, nervous, or badly trained bird?
        "The bird wouldn't enter the loft. It dawdled about on the roof, sashayed around the porch, but nimbly eluded every attempt its owner made to take it in hand."
        The listeners nodded. They'd all been irked by birds that played coy and would not allow themselves to be taken up and held.
        "Now the year was 1930, the depression at its height, the fancier without work or money to pay his bills, and the damn bird was teasing him with a hundred dollars just out of arm's reach. If he made a grab the bird might fly, and it seemed to him that every second lost was losing him the race and the prize."
        Da would light his pipe then, letting the suspense grow in little bubbles of pent breath.
        "What finally happened" Fouquet would finally insist, though he'd heard the story many times.
        "The fancier went to his house where he kept a shotgun, came back, shot the bird, removed the countermark, placed it in the clock and collected the prize money."
        "Why'd you keep quiet about the crime?" Fouquet would demand.
        "Who am I to judge the harshness of a man's need?" Da would say and look at me. "He had his own road to walk. It wasn't for me to say how wrongly he'd placed his feet."
        In this way of parable and metaphor I gathered much instruction from my grandfather in a simple and lasting way. He liked to tell stories and I liked to listen. We went together well.
        The talk of pigeons filled the clubhouse. Music to me.
        "I start training youngsters as soon as they've thrown their second flight. The first toss is at two miles, then four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty four. Then twice at forty and twice at sixty," one fancier said.
        "My birds, three years and over, get the same training as my yearlings except before long races. Then I toss them later in the day about fifteen miles out from the loft so they'll be homing in about eight twenty, just as it starts growing dark," another offered.
        I'd heard all of this many times before, yet I listened quietly and with interest. Some things aren't learned really well until they've been repeated so often that they seep into the bones. I knew that was so. My grandfather had told me.
        "I mate my birds on February tenth to the day, at noon to the hour. I allow them to raise one pair of youngsters for three weeks."
        Da moved away from the gossip and was stopped almost at once by another pocket of men. I stayed by his side.
        "What do you say, Baudoum?" John Purley, who had a wooden leg, asked.
        "About what? You know my grandson, do you, John?"
        The big man looked down at me and reached forth his hand. It was big and gentle. We shook man to man. I felt good for it.
        "I do," John said. "Are you entered, Hugh?"
        "I'm flying Dickens," I said.
        John nodded and gave back his attention to my grandfather.
        "What do you say about using the Widower method over short distances?"
        "Don't hold with it," Da said. "There's something cruel and foolish about getting a bird all het up and then whisking him away from his lady. How'd you like it, John, if you were plucked away from Harriet on a cold night out of a warm bed"
        Everyone laughed softly.
        It's a curious fact about children brought up around animals, whether farm or sporting stock, that they are soon sophisticated in matters of creature sexuality long before they can easily apply the information to human affairs. Such jokes often pass over their heads with a rather bewildering flutter of laughter. It's then they know that, for all the fact of adult treatment in most matters, they are children still. At least those who hold great store by child innocence would hope so. I recall wondering about the cause of the laughter. There was nothing funny about being taken from a warm bed.
        I was well aware of the details of the method referred to as the "Widower" which was used to key up male birds just before a race. The customary procedure was to remove the cock from his mate three or four days before the flight and confine him out of sight of his nest box. Just before he was to be taken off for shipment to the starting site, he was allowed a brief visit with his wife, to dance and murmur before her in seductive invitation only to be whisked away before consummation and deposited in the shipping basket. His anxiety to return to his hen often produced flashing performances on the flight home.
        "Too many of those segregated birds fall into unnatural habits," Da said, "and such practices will spread through an entire loft."
        "What about jealousy?" John asked.
        Da looked at me.
        "Hugh tried it with one of his birds not long ago. What did you think, son?"
        I considered the question carefully, as some old cracker barrel philosopher ten times my age might do.
        The jealousy plan was similar in effect but somewhat different in execution. While the cock was confined within sight of his nest, an aggressive male was put in with his mate. The dispossessed bird was made unhappy, fearful, and enraged. Such driving emotions were intended to, and did, produce flights of great speed as the bird exerted itself to return to the loft quickly enough to save his home and marriage.
        "Don't hold with it, neither," I finally said in miniature expression of my grandfather's manner. "It makes for nervous birds who go easily off their feed."
        Da nodded and smiled, pleased with my response.
        "Best things for cocks, short races or long, is to fly them back toyoungsters in the nest three weeks or eggs a few days old," he said.
        "Hens do better flying to eggs ten days old," I offered.
        "Some return best to youngsters five or ten days old, " Da added. He glanced at me and smiled, squinting up his eyes as though to say, "When these fellas want to know about pigeons, they come to the Baudoums."
        I've been sitting in the dry grass, resting my back against the loft, facing the house. I'm looking toward the hills beyond it. At least I imagine they are still there. My view of those hills, which I recall with such affection, is obscured by another apartment building, monolithic and prisonlike.
        I examine the name Baudoum, my own name, and my father's, but more my grandfather's than any other's. That's to say that my father, like myself, was an American who happened to bear a foreign, exotic, and euphonious last name. Da, however, was a Belgian and, though English came to be his language far more than the Walloon of his youth, the accents of the town of Havelange in the plateau country of Condroz had been as rich as cream on his tongue. His was a curious speech; accented but fashioned in a Yankee way, product of his long years as a traveling man selling foundry type to newspapers and printing shops in New England and along the eastern seaboard.
        I, in common with most of us who find ourselves growing old, especially those of us who find ourselves alone, without progeny or heirs, have suddenly become most interested in my heritage. I've no intention of trying to trace my line back to some bastard beggar of the fourteenth century or even to some ancient noble; it's enough that I should know something more of my grandfather and his grandfather. No more than that.
        I know that my great grandfather was born in Havelange in the year 1840. He was baptized Etienne. At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker of the town and married the master's daughter when he was twenty and she sixteen. Her name was Sophie. She was delivered of seven children; Henri, the second of them, born in 1862, the only one to break with his background and reach out for opportunity on foreign shores, was my grandfather.
        He sometimes spoke to me of his life in Belgium in a way that wasn't meant to instruct or even entertain, detached and somehow wondering as though he vaguely perceived that he'd cut himself adrift from his past and suffered for it. I feel now, looking back on those times and analyzing his feelings as he expressed them, and mine as I listened but understood imperfectly, that he wanted me to value the time we spent together because it would serve me well when I was grown in special ways that words could not describe. When he spoke of his own grandfathers it was with a sense of loss; he hadn't been at home when either of them had died.
        My mother's father and mother had moved to the Midwest before I was born. I'd seen them from time to time, but they were remote to me. I could understand what Da felt. My grandmother, Jenny, Da's wife, was already dead before I was old enough to know, and that loss was distanced as well. I understood that talking of his forebears didn't really make them live again for him because he'd not been there to "weave cloth with them."
        But if Da had no people to remember fully from his past, I am less fortunate because I have none at all to journey with into the future. The thought brings a terrible melancholy to my heart. I seek refuge in that racing day.