“Flocks of Birds in a Frigid Sky”
by
Gene Stewart
Flocks of birds flew in tight circles over fields by the road. They flew over fast food places, car dealerships, and mall parking lots, too. All the birds spotted were whirling in a pantomime of controlled alarm. They would land, then sweep up again at once, as if agitated. Their movement combined the coordinated with the random and it was unsettling to see. Driving alone, I wondered if something had gone wrong, or was about to.
My car’s radio played only the left channel, so I could hear the bass, and Jim Morrison groaning, but none of the keyboards or guitars on “L. A. Woman”. It felt lopsided, hearing a familiar song by halves that way.
The car itself rattled now and then when it rolled over a particularly deep pot hole. The roads felt like debris fields, providing a constant hammering to the suspension and tires. Grit from the last salting snaked in sine waves between patches of black ice and compressed snow. Slush lay along the sides, kept semi-liquid by chemicals or pollution or perhaps by the heat of so many passing internal combustion engines.
The heater did its best to keep me warm but chill drafts shivered slices of my back and sides. My hands alternately froze and warmed depending where I held them on the wheel. The air blowing from the vents smelled faintly of burnt plastic.
I wanted to get home and cuddle under a sheet and fleece blanket. I wanted to be cozy in a cocoon watching a quality TV crime show, relaxing and dozing and still able to spot the villain before the credits. Instead I had to drive across town.
At least I’d eaten recently. A BK veggie burger, fries, and a coffee warmed my belly. My belches seemed to leave a coating of stale grease on my tongue but the second coffee I sipped as I drove helped cut the sensation.
As dusk fell I switched on my low beams. Sure enough, the driver’s side headlight was out again. I suspected water was getting in somehow and shorting them but could find no crack or hole. I’d replaced three of the things so far that year. Having a garage mechanic look it over would cost more than it was worth, so I kept buying and installing new head lamps.
When the DJ started fast-talking a series of mindless promotions and commercials I switched off the radio. Chatter and walking the ramp, which meant talking over the beginnings and endings of songs, were annoyances I could stand less and less as I aged. I envied those Blue Tooth links newer cars had that let you play an iPod’s songs over your car stereo system.
Not that I had an iPod yet. That would have to wait until the head lights stopped fizzling out; until supper stopped meaning fast food; and until gas and food and all other prices came down within reachable levels again. As if they ever would. I’d noticed how prices tended to stay up once they went up. Even if they came down some, they never returned to where they started the surge from. Greed and the excuse of “the economy” would never allow it. The fact was, people wanted every penny you had.
As I waited at a light, watching cross traffic run red lights, I thought of some other items I was still waiting to get for myself. Things like a digital camera or a recliner or a big screen TV. None of those life perks seemed likely to get much closer to me than singsong radio ads or insistent TV images, not until my finances improved.
“In this economy?” I mimicked someone, anyone sneering.
There was a lot of talk about a changing economy. People spoke about a new outlook and mentioned ways how we would have to change from corporate-driven consumerism to… something else.
No one knew what, as far as I could tell.
All I knew, from experience, was how callous any new system was likely to be. Promises to notice, finally, the individual, or to take care of the poor, well, I heard them the way I heard radio and TV advertisements: As lies. As obvious, shallow, facile sucker bets being offered to anyone still gullible enough to fall for it one more damned time.
Lucy pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown every god damned fall season, that was politics.
That was corporate promises.
That was ads.
When the light changed again, finally, I had to wait for three cars, moving through bumper-to-bumper, before I could roll forward. The guy behind me honked. I waved, resisting the urge to give him the finger. Too many guns and too many short tempers kept me on the polite side, most days.
Fear was another problem. Everyone juked now at loud noises, or cringed when shouting began, or got nervous when planes went over low. People seemed meaner now, less helpful. Less polite. Ruder and more willing to cross into violence.
What had once been national news — someone being shot for a parking space during a blizzard — was now news if it didn’t happen, it seemed. Another school shooting, another disgruntled worker, another loner on a rampage; another, always another.
So most of us muddled along not fearful, exactly, but damned wary, and quick to withdraw. We’d become reluctant to be curious now, and far less likely to help out, pitch in, or otherwise get involved. Oh, sure, charities and community events still got pretty good turnouts, but the mere rumor of a shooter on the prowl, the mere mention of a weapon maybe being sighted, emptied malls now more efficiently than fire.
Just under the skin we were all jittery. Our nervousness made us jumpy. We startled easily and felt backed into a corner almost at once now, should anything arise.
On my drive I got behind no fewer than three obvious drunks who varied speed illogically and unexpectedly. They swerved and drifted into other lanes and sometimes drove off the road or up onto curbs. They were easier to avoid than the ones who swooped their vehicles into any space that opened up, as if desperate to get to the next red light, where slow and steady drivers like me would inevitably catch up anyhow. Being cut off, hemmed in, and blocked was so basic an experience every time I drove that most of the time I ignored it. It was as expected as the weather and terrain.
That so many obviously incompetent, dangerous drivers were trusted with big, fast, dangerous vehicles, even licensed to drive them loose and unsupervised on the roads, amazed me anew every few minutes every time I drove.
This did not include the smokers, cell phone users, and people texting as they drove. Some watched TV screens mounted on their dash or down by their knees. Driving was not so much second nature to them as of secondary importance. They seemed to take transportation as a given; get into a car and magically it took you where you wanted to go. No need to pay attention.
In a nation of 350,000,000 people we managed to kill only about 50,000 each year on our streets, roads, and highways. You want a reason to believe in a god?
It was dark by the time I got to where I was going. After filtering through a neighborhood laid out like a schizophrenic’s random scrawl, and having had to escape no fewer than four cul-de-sacs, loops, and unmarked dead ends, I pulled into the driveway and debated whether I should honk my horn.
Instead I waited and in about ten minutes my rider came out, only he didn’t walk to the passenger side to get in. He came around to the driver’s side.
I rolled down the window. “What’s up?”
“When you gonna get a cell phone?”
“I keep meaning to. Why?”
“I woulda called ya, saved you a trip. Look, I couldn’t drop my car off tonight. Garage was overbooked ‘til Monday, Tuesday maybe. So I won’t need a ride ‘til then.”
At work that afternoon he’d asked me if I’d come over at this time to ride him back from the garage after he dropped off his car to get worked on. Save him cab fare.
Him being the boss, I’d said sure, no problem.
“Damn. And you don’t want to drop it off anyway?”
“Well, I hate to think of it sitting in the lot all weekend, you know? I’m sorry, wish I could’ve called and told you.”
“Well, that’s all right. I got some errands I can run while I’m on this side of town, anyway.”
Yeah, pick up my sack of diamonds and maybe a slab or two of gold while I was at it.
He looked at me for a second, glanced at the house. His face was closed as he rubbed his hands on his upper arms. “Look, you want to come in for some coffee or something? Hot chocolate maybe? Something to warm you up?”
“Naw, I’ll just get going. You get inside, stay warm, huh?”
“You sure? No trouble.”
His eyes were flat and I knew he just wanted me gone so I wouldn’t continue to embarrass him by reminding him what a high-handed prick he could be.
I asked, “You want me to pick you up Monday morning?”
He smiled then. “Aw, no, I can grab a cab or maybe I’ll get a rental…”
My cue to say: “Why spend the money? I’ll see you here, what, around eight?”
“Seven-thirty, traffic’s a bitch that time uh day.”
“Seven-thirty, then.” I rolled up my window and, as he passed in front of my car, I had to resist a strong urge to floor it and run him down. He stopped by the passenger side front corner and slapped my car, then came to the passenger side window and rapped on it.
I had to lay across the seat to put the window down a few inches, so I could hear him; the driver’s side control hadn’t worked since Spring of last year. “What’s up?” I asked.
“You got a headlight out.”
“Yeah, it blew on the way over.”
“Better take care of it, the cops around here will ticket you for stuff like that. Got nothin’ else to do.” He waved and backed off, trotting into his warm, very big, very nice house, having reminded me which of us lived where the cops had more to do than hand out tickets for broken headlights.
I got home around eight forty-five and had a bowl of cereal, Lucky Charms I think it was. Cut the edge off my late evening hunger and let me go to bed more or less comfortable, if not really satisfied. Bed was my favorite place in the otherwise empty house. It was cold there because I kept the thermostat set to 50, so the bills wouldn’t tip over my wobbly financial boat.
So I put on flannel pajamas and went to bed, where a flannel sheet left over from my marriage, a soft fleece blanket, and a comforter my great grandmother had quilted ages ago kept me warm while the TV gabbled out a lot of ads and a couple of shows about crimes, cops, and culprits.
I fell asleep hugging a pillow, as usual, and resented like hell the god damned alarm when it shrilled at me next morning. I’d forgotten to turn it off for the weekend.
Not that I had much planned beyond what grocery shopping I could swing, it being a short week between paychecks. I made a note to get more gas in the car, too. Those trips across town would end up costing me an extra tank that week, and that meant nearly a hundred bucks less to spend on food.
The guy at the second day bread store sold cereal past its expiration date, though, and I kept milk powder around, and, well, I knew a few tricks to get me by.
As I made my grocery rounds on foot, to save gas — I’d fill up the tank on Monday morning on the way out at the 24-hour station — I saw the birds swooping in spirals again. As I huffed and puffed along, my breath white wisps, I adjusted my backpack so I carried the weight higher and wondered why birds, which I knew were warm blooded, didn’t make clouds as they breathed up in that cold air.
Or did they hold their collective breath, the way whales did when they dived so deep?
The way divorced guys in their fifties did when jobs got scarce and companies liked to rid themselves of upcoming liabilities like pensions and healthcare payments.
Not only did I not get a cell phone, I also did not keep a home phone active. I figured they would have to fire me to my face, or in writing by mail at least, and those ways both seemed so much harder to me that maybe they’d choose not to bother.
You’d be surprised at how superstitious aging makes you, unless you already know.
When I got home I warmed up with a cup of tea and watched the birds from my window, my fleece blanket draped around my shoulders and my warm breath clouding the glass a little. The birds moved together so gracefully, even as they imparted a sense of impending panic. If they scattered they would perfectly illustrate chaos, yet they never did as they landed and flew, as they swirled and swept and spun in the frigid sky.
At first, I thought I was predicting their movements when they swooped, but then I realized I was influencing them. This quickened my pulse more than the caffeine and theobromine in the tea, and I started concentrating, an idea tickling the back of my head.
It took me months to learn to control the flocks completely, and to teach them how to swoop down on specific targets, to peck and claw with needle-sharp talons at eyes, faces, and flesh.
My first kill was a hobo who was probably better off. I recall how the newspaper he lined his clothes with fluttered in shreds in the air when my flock took off, splattering blood.
By Spring I had my boss convinced he and I would enjoy a fishing trip. “And maybe we can catch sight of the cranes when they return, I hear they flock in the thousands, all these huge birds, it’s incredible.”
He agreed that would be a sight to see before dying.
/// /// /// – supposedly appeared in SHROUD in 2011; unconfirmed
