| I saw what
he wanted. I went to the phone and called my father at the
newspaper but was told that he was gone for the midday meal. I
called Radner's Department store then and got my mother in
the accounting department. She listened to what I told her of the
accident that had befallen Da and, in her calm, soothing way,
told me to wait until she arrived. "Put a pillow under Grandpa's head and make him as comfortable as you can, Hugh. Throw a light blanket over him if he seems cold. Don't be afraid. I'm going to call for an ambulance and it may get there before I do." Her calm soothed my racing heart somewhat. I went into Da's bedroom and took the neatly folded blanket and a pillow from the big bed. I glanced at a photograph of my grandma smiling sweetly from a silver frame. I'd never known her. Still I said, "He'll be all right." When I returned to the kitchen, Da's eyes were closed, his breathing loud and labored. I placed the pillow beneath the heavy head, brushing back the thin white hair that fell across his brow, and placed the coverlet over him. I picked up his worn old hand again and held it to my chest. I thought of Dickens and the other pigeons traveling to the beginning of the race. Somehow in the moment I saw the trial my grandfather and Dickens faced as much the same. Both had a long way to home. I could imagine Dickens on the way. The wicker baskets would have been distributed along the sides of the transport in order to insure good circulation of clean air on the long journey to Hillsboro, Illinois. The wicker baskets would be creaking gently with the movement of the express truck, rocking and swaying smoothly. Not many of the birds would be affrighted, for nearly all were seasoned flyers with a great number of training flights and competitions behind them. Those who were not would find comfort in the company of older, wiser birds. Dickens was wise and steady and calm. He'd had nearly four years of racing experience. I held my grandfather and found comfort in thoughts about the birth of a pigeon. Lady Valiant had brooded the first egg lightly. Angel took the nest, hovering the egg, from time to time. But when the second egg was laid, both cock and hen sat to incubate the clutch, Lady Valiant during the night until about nine o'clock in the morning, Angel relieving her until about three or four in the afternoon. I spent every waking hour of the day after school was over, and many that were half asleep early in the morning or fairly late in the night, watching the birds at the birthing. Da remarked to my mother that Lady's cIutch had three sitters, herself, Angel, and me. On the seventeenth day the first signs of pipping appeared, a small crack, a pushing upward in the middle of each shell. Both eggs showed the signs at very nearly the same moment, a rare and strange phenomenon which I chose to take coupled with the approach of my own sixth birthday as an incredibly favorable sign. Surely my bird, hurrying to be born, to come into the world on the birthdate of its master, was destined to be an exceptional pigeon in all regards. On the very day when I was to be six I hurried around to the front of Da's house where my grandfather was dozing in the rocking chair upon the porch. I roused him with cries and tugs. Da stirred reluctantly from his comfort at first, then quickly roused himself to a pitch that matched my own enthusiasm. We went back together to the nest of marvels. We watched together as the eggs trembled and shook. Da lifted my egg and held it to my ear so that I might hear it ticking away intermittently; a mysterious and priceless living timepiece. "This is what's going on that we can't see," Da said. "Your chick, and the other, has turned itself and is pipping away at the large end of the egg. In a few hours it'll work its way around, pipping away and pushing with its shoulders against the sides until the end of the egg falls away and the egg is opened. Da returned the egg to the nest. The eggs hatched just before noon, just minutes before I'd been born six years before. I gave all my attention to the bird that was my own. The squab, nearly bald but spiny with damp, threadlike down, uncoiled its neck and stretched. "Good Lord, Da," I breathed. "Indeed," Da smiled. "Now what will you call him?" I thought awhile, giving such an important matter my most careful consideration. Of late my grandfather had been reading to me before bedtime from the works of Charles Dickens. Such adventures as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and The Cricket on the Hearth, excerpted, revised, and condensed here and there. "Dickens," I finally said. "It'll do fine, just fine," Da agreed. That evening my mother and father took me to Da's house for a small party in my honor. When Da toasted my birthday, he toasted the birth of Dickens as well. There was a cake and ice cream, apple cider and presents. Da gave me a red wagon with wooden sides that could be removed if one was of a mind. The body and the spinners on the rubber tired wheels were bright red enamel and the trademark was a representation of wings in yellow upon the red. "This wagon is practical as well as the means for some good fun," Da said. "When pigeons are taken in their baskets some distance from the loft on training flights, a trainer needs transport to get them there calm and rested. " "It's big enough for a boy twice his age, Pa," my father said. "Can you pull it, Hugh?" Da asked and fixed me with his sky blue eyes. I considered the question. "With you to help me, Da." I said. As I held my stricken grandfather and found what comfort I could in such memories, a light breeze was riffling the surface of the water of Lake Winnepeg in Manitou. As the minutes passed, it blew harder, the wavelets showing black as the rising wind reached from shore to shore. The leaves of the trees along the banks rustled and whirled about on their stems until many were torn off. They sailed, small green kites, until they came to rest on the lake. The were swept along, small boats under full sail. The racing clouds in the upper layers of the air proved that the winds aloft were moving at a greater speed than those below, a sign of storm in birth. The visibility was abnormally clear, promising rain. The sun heated the water, evaporation created convection currents, damp air from the lake rose several thousand feet. Large cumulus clouds formed. The atmosphere began to tumble upon itself. The wind was blowing southeast.  But, recalling all that happened means imagining that to which I wasn't witness, the winds of Lake Winnepeg, the travels and trials of my bird Dickens, even the thoughts that may have occupied my grandfather's mind as he lay helpless in the strictures of the paralysis. |
