It was a hard wait. I wanted to be doing something about Shirley but couldn’t until dawn. This feeling of anticipation was always the hardest part of any bird rescue adventure, when I don’t know yet how it will turn out. Usually when I see a wounded bird, there’s a chance I won’t be able to capture it, so I’m very tense. This is how I felt now. Once, a sparrow flew into our glass sliding back door, fell to the ground, and started having seizures. I ran out to get it, but somehow, it got up and flew. It didn’t fly straight, but up into the air in circle eights, falling to the ground, then getting back into the air again. It was like a small plane with a drunk pilot. I chased it around for a good hour before I finally caught it, but I felt panicked all the while that I wouldn’t. Another time, a pigeon who flew into a Central Park bathroom seemed to think that the overhead fluorescent light was an open window to the bright blue skies. Over and over again, it flew straight up and slammed its head into the hard plastic light cover. I climbed up on the tall, slippery ceramic urinals and holding a baseball cap, leaped into the bathroom air, trying to catch the pigeon in the cap. I tried it again and again, and feared I’d never get it. I was starting to feel nauseous but after about twenty jumps, I finally snagged the pigeon in my cap, and landed halfway in the urinals on the opposite side. The pigeon was screaming like a human being and a muscle in my inner thigh was tearing. A man who was urinating beside us was also screaming. I took the pigeon to a water fountain, and rinsed the blood off its head. The blood had covered the entire face and eyes, but the water cleaned it all up. When I released it, the pigeon shot right up onto a branch. It turned and looked down at me, as if wondering what the hell I just did all that for. As I walked in pain toward the park exit, it flew branch to branch above me, with the same look on its face. It took a while for me to calm down, but it was all a big relief.

I had lots of adventures, but I’d never done this, lost a bird I already had. I was very angry at myself. Even though the idea was to give them both a happier life with flying space in their outdoor aviary, I had put Shirley in this position. I tempted her with freedom. Soon I became ashamed for having bought her at the store in the first place, contributing to what I knew is a very abusive, cruel industry of bird trafficking. Sherwood needed a mate so I felt I had to do it, but now the creature was lost and doomed.

It turned out to be the windiest night of the summer. At dawn, I headed out and the first thing I saw was everyone’s garbage cans blown all over the street. I knew that since most domesticated birds don’t fly too high in their daily lives, they get very frightened if they get loose outside, and instead of descending, keep flapping and go higher and higher. Shirley could be in Delaware at this point, I thought, or drowned in the Atlantic.

I repeated my search routes, by foot and car, most of the day. The next morning I did the same. That night there were 50 mile-an-hour winds. The tarp over our grill ended up on our roof. Leaves and branches were everywhere. I heard a report on the news that said over a hundred city trees were fallen. I had to face it. Shirley was gone.

I was miserable. I couldn’t imagine spending every night of the weeks and months ahead wondering where she was, and never finding out. Maybe it was higher testosterone that helped me cope, but after a few days I decided I had to move on emotionally. Be a man about it, I told myself. This is the life you have chosen. “If you love birds,” I said to the mirror in our bathroom. “You’ll learn some hard lessons.” Then I cried on the toilet.

The next day I drove to the pet store and bought a new female. It looked exactly like Shirley. I put her in Sherwood’s cage and by the second night together, they were sharing a coconut. I was happy to see this, not only for the birds, but because I hadn’t told my family that Shirley was lost. They hadn’t noticed and I guess I didn’t want to upset them, to put them through the same feelings I had, or disturb my reputation as the great bird whisperer.

A few days later the four of us were walking together back from the grocery store up the street. We don’t all go into a store together these days, but it was a nice mild Sunday. We each carried a bag of groceries or two. I was thinking about my busy Monday ahead, all its Zoom meetings and Zoom classes, and how I had lots of reading and grading to do all night. This was much better than thinking about Shirley.

Then I heard a chirp.

I knew it was a lovebird chirp right away. I knew the sounds of lovebirds as well as anyone, especially after all the YouTube noises I’d recently been playing. I turned my head toward the source and there was Shirley, puffed up, dirty and agitated, on the roof of a ranch house a block from our home. I wanted to shout, “It’s Shirley!” but I didn’t, because for all my family knew, Shirley was home with Sherwood in the coconut. Instead I said, “Look! A lovebird!” My heart was going wild and I sprung into my usual rescue action.

I dropped the bags of groceries to the sidewalk, pulled out my cell phone and played the lovebird sounds again, to keep her from flying off. This probably wasn’t necessary because Shirley clearly recognized us and was screaming what was probably, “Get me the hell home and give me some seeds!” in lovebird language but I didn’t want to take chances. I ordered my daughters to run home with the bags and bring back the lovebird cage. I knew that if Shirley saw the cage, where she knew her food and now bigamist husband was, she’d want to fly right in.

My wife took the bags I’d dropped and followed the girls from a distance. I stood there, yelling at the girls to go faster as I held my cell phone in the air. A Chinese man came out of the ranch house looking at me.

“Hi. What are you doing?” he said, with a thick accent.

“That’s my pet bird on your roof,” I said, smiling pathetically.

“Oh,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. “Nice bird. My name is Johnny. My brother has birds. Used to. They’re dead now. Poison accident.”

He called out something in Chinese at the house. Another man came out with a cigarette in his mouth. They exchanged some words, which I assumed was Johnny letting him know what was going on here in Chinese.

“He had birds,” Johnny said, pointing to the man, whom I logically concluded was his brother. The man looked at me and smiled, then said something in his language.

“He said you should lock the cage from now on,” Johnny translated.

“I will,” I said.

I thought about saying, “Please thank your brother for the advice and tell him maybe he should keep the poison in a safe place.”

Then I saw my girls. The younger was carrying the cage, clearly trying to walk fast while not dropping it. I wanted her to go faster. Suddenly Shirley flew across the street, alighting on the tip of the gutter of a three-story house, which was the nicest house on the block.

“Hurry up!” I yelled at the girls. Johnny’s brother lit another cigarette.

I slowly crossed the street, not wanting to make any sudden moves. Johnny and his brother followed. It felt like a long time but my daughter finally got the cage to where I was standing, in front of the three-story house, right beneath Shirley on the tip of the gutter. Almost immediately, she was chirping even more than before. Sherwood responded, and I thought we were at the finish line. I thought for sure Shirley would descend, land on the cage and stay there as I’d walk it steadily back to our house. The nightmare would be over.

“Come on, Shirley,” I said softly.

“Come on birdy,” Johnny said.

I held the cage as high as I could, like the guy in the movie “Say Anything” who held the boombox outside the girl’s window. I wondered if anyone from the late 80s was inside the house looking at me, thinking the same thing.

Then Shirley did something I didn’t expect. She hopped back from the edge of the gutter and  stood inside it, so all I could see was the top of her head. She turned and walked to where the gutter connected to a pipe that ran down the side of the house, and hopped in. It was like she decided to take the elevator down instead of flying. I heard her tumbling inside the metal pipe. My eyes followed the sound down three whole floors. Just when I thought she’d slip right out onto the ground like a fun slide at a water park, I saw that unlike most gutter pipes, this one didn’t curve out at the bottom and away from the house. It shot straight underground, into the earth. I heard Shirley land somewhere deep, and then her faint chirps, like a literal canary in a coal mine.

I ran and inspected the place where the pipe met the ground. The material was not the usual thin aluminum most houses in our area have, but was some kind of stronger, sturdier metal. Steel, maybe. It was wider too, more like a small tunnel than a rain pipe. I pushed and pulled on it to see if it had any wiggle room, if it could be pulled up from the ground but it was stuck in there solid, like a tall, strong flagpole. Johnny walked up.

“Bird’s deep under now,” he said. “New house, own sewer system. No way out.”

Another chirp from far beneath. I couldn’t believe this. To have spotted Shirley days after losing her over the windiest days of the year, only to have this happen.

“Pipe runs deep underground, then curves,” Johnny went on, demonstrating the curve with his hand. “I was right here and when they built. Very expensive.”

This house was, at most, two years old. Whatever charming, old fashioned Queens colonial stood there for nearly a hundred years was probably wiped out in half a day, and up went this one. Everything about it looked tasteful, and solid. Brick with black metal railings, sandstone trim, a cobblestone driveway and short, neat, manicured grass. And security cameras.

I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. Nobody home. Another chirp.

There was nothing to do, I thought, but suffer. There was no way for Shirley to fly back up – with the circumference of the pipe, she couldn’t spread her wings enough, and there was no way she could climb on her talons, since the pipe was smooth metal. Shirley was down there helpless in complete darkness. It would be a lonely, lengthy process of dehydration, starvation, and maybe hypothermia. The local bird whisperer would be standing a few feet away, powerless and ashamed. I looked up at one of the cameras attached to the shiny bricks of the house façade. It seemed to be saying, “Now what are you gonna’ do? Nothing!”

Johnny and his brother went home. It was like they wanted to give me privacy in my failure. Shirley’s chirps became more and more intermittent. I don’t know why, but when she’d go silent for what seemed a long time, I’d tap on the metal and whistle until I heard her again. I was doing this when the next door neighbor came out of his house.

“What’s up?” he said.

I knew his name was Luis. A year prior some packages he ordered were misdelivered to my house. I walked them over to the address on the box and met him and his family. It was a neighborly moment. Only a few months back, when the restaurants on Bell Boulevard couldn’t serve indoors and were selling beer to go, Luis saw me with my family waiting for food outside a Peruvian place. Luis came in, said something in Spanish to the bartender and soon a huge Modelo Negro was handed to me by a waiter. I protested, but Luis said, “Now we’re even!”

“Long story,” I said to Luis. “My bird is down there in the pipe.”

“Your what?”

I told him the long story.

“Ah man, that sucks,” he said. “And Al isn’t home.”

Luis told me Al was a contractor who built the house. He was about fifty, single, and spent a lot of time in the Hamptons in another house he built. That’s where he was right now, Luis said. He knew lots about Al because the house he rented was built by Al too.

“He built his house, then my house, so he can rent out my house and pay for his house. Al’s a serious guy.” I was pretty sure I’d seen Al once or twice while I was walking to or from the train. A classic Queens man’s man. Bald, muscular, sharply dressed…with a black BMW. “Well, good luck, bro. So sorry about your bird. Want me to call Al? Not sure what he could do.”

I wasn’t sure what Al could do about this either. I certainly couldn’t ask him to come back from the Hamptons and rip this expensive, handsome drainpipe off the front of his house and then excavate what was underground, all to rescue a stranger’s forty dollar lovebird. I said yes anyway, as at least I could explain why I was on the man’s security camera, standing beside his house, staring at it. Luis took out his cellphone, called, and left a message asking Al to call him back. Then Luis took off somewhere in his minivan.

I sent my daughters home with the birdcage so they could eat dinner and get on with their evening. Now I was alone. Every ten minutes or so, Shirley would give another chirp that echoed up the pipe, and I’d say something back, like, “Shirley. I’m sorry. I can’t believe this.”

After sunset, it started getting colder quickly. My cellphone was running out of battery. Shirley certainly wasn’t going anywhere, so I could have walked back to my house for a jacket and returned, but I just stood there.

“Shirley, what am I supposed to do?”

I wondered what the bird gods would say.

“Who the hell you talking to Palmieri?”

A woman’s voice. I turned around. It was Michelle. She was walking her dog. Michelle was the mother of my younger daughter’s middle school friend. I often saw her around the neighborhood on her long walks. She was a beautiful woman, and her husband was some kind of federal law enforcement agent. They were strong and smart people – she was a stained-glass artist, and a Buddhist. The dog was a huge German shepherd named “Bear.” We’d had them over for drinks not too long ago. Her husband brought me beer he said was “Viking beer,” and that he needed something strong, since earlier that very day he’d broken his forearm fighting off a drunk attacker while at a gas station. That drunk attacker sure chose the wrong guy.

I told Michelle what had happened.

“Oh, Marc. That’s gonna be one bad death,” she said. “Down there, just waiting. That is a bad death.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I’m still amazed at the whole thing.”

“Nobody’s home?”

“Nope. The guy who lives here’s in the Hamptons.”

“Well, you could cut it. I have a hacksaw. Pretty sure that would be a crime but… how are you gonna’ sleep?”

I looked up. The house was so perfect, so polished, new, and that security camera was staring at me.

“I can’t do it,” I said.

She walked over to the pipe and knocked on it.

“It’s thick. But I think you can get it. I’ll get the saw,” Michelle said.

Off she went with Bear to get a hacksaw. I looked up at the camera again. Now it seemed to be staring and saying, “You are not touching this fucking house.”

Shirley chirped.

In about twenty minutes, Michelle was back with the saw. I held it in my hand and realized I’d never used a hacksaw before. Really, I never used any kind of saw.

“Let’s see,” Michelle said. “Give it a go.”

I looked up at the camera again, then placed the thin blade across the pipe and gave it a push. It left a tiny, barely noticeable line across the surface, like a pencil would have left.

“It’ll take some time, but I think you can do it,” she said. “Put some elbow grease in there. I gotta get back home, but let me know how it goes. You’re a lunatic, Palmieri.”

I thought it was strange that she called me a lunatic because the saw was her idea. I was glad she took off, though, because I had no intention of proceeding. I dropped the hacksaw, wet my finger and ran it across the line I’d made in the metal, hoping it would disappear, like it was a blemish on a nice leather shoe.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but it got darker, colder, and more and more upsetting. All kinds of memories came to me about moments I stood somewhere, wishing I could do something, but ended up doing nothing. I thought about the crow and David back in New Jersey, but then other moments came to mind. In the last baseball game of my career, in a minor league stadium in South Carolina, I had a chance to turn a double play late in the game. A ball was hit right to me, and if I turned fast and threw to second base, we may have been out of the inning. Then I suddenly doubted I could beat the runner with the throw and held the ball. I froze. Another time I saw Stephen Sondheim in a diner, eating breakfast alone. I was in another booth with my wife, and when I was paying our bill, I thought about whispering to the waiter to please allow me to pay the gentleman’s tab at the other table. It would have been so easy, and great to be able to say I once bought Sondheim breakfast. But for some reason, I didn’t do it.

I remembered another time, maybe twenty years ago, when my roommate Carson was having sex with his girlfriend in broad daylight in our apartment. She was very beautiful, and I long had a crush on her. I was on the sofa and pretending I didn’t notice, when I heard them stop. After a moment I heard Carson’s girlfriend say, “Marc, would you like to join us?”

It was the most exciting thing I’d ever heard. But then I just lay silent, unable to move. Soon they went back at it again, like nobody was there.

Then I thought about the crow again, and I was very upset.

All those times, I thought to myself, all I had to do was take action, make my first move, and the rest would be glory. Instead, I did nothing. All those chances, and many others, like right now. This was a thing very wrong with me, I decided. When it comes down to it, I’ve mostly lived as a man of inaction.

But not when it comes to birds.

I took the hacksaw back into my hand.

Gripping that saw handle, I felt my heartrate triple. I felt my muscles pulsing. Maybe it was the pills, but for the first time in a long time I felt ready to do something rash. I felt I could throw a baseball ten miles, belt out Sweeney Todd, hunt down old David from the block, wherever he was, kick his ass, then find Carson’s girlfriend and put it all on the line. None of those were realistic options at that moment other than trying to sing, but instead I stepped up to the pipe.

This time I pressed hard against it and ripped the blade left and right with all my strength. The noise was shocking. Each push and pull brought a sound like two subway trains side swiping each other at full speed. It was the sound of violent friction, of metal skidding, and ripping. The pipe served as a kind of huge horn, sending the high-pitched noise up through its opening on the roof, and out over the neighborhood. Windows and doors flew open, and people stared. Johnny came jogging across the street, holding what looked like a pool skimmer.

“This is a good idea! This is the only way!” Johnny said. “This net is or you!”

I guess Johnny thought the bird would fly right out if I was able to cut all the way across, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Shirley was deep underground. I was pretty sure Johnny didn’t have a pool, and I wondered why he had a net on hand, but I didn’t inquire. I was glad to have his company, and I leaned the net against the house. I knew the camera was trained right on me, could see everything, and whoever might be watching must really be wondering what the hell was happening.

I thought that at any moment a police car would roll up, or maybe the feds, if Michelle went home and flipped on me, turning government witness and telling her husband where the hacksaw went. I imagined homeowner Al pulling up too, hopping out of his Beamer, ripping the saw out of my hands and beating the shit out of me. I kept going.

I tried not to think. I sawed back and forth a good hundred times, and my arms felt dead. My neck and back were straining. I was covered in sweat. The metal was even thicker than I thought, and each stroke got more and more painful to complete, but the gash in the pipe grew slightly larger with each back and forth. I wouldn’t have heard Shirley if she made any noise. I wondered how frightened she was. It must have sounded like the end of the world to her.

Just as I finally ripped the pipe completely through, Luis pulled up.

“Oh my god!” he cried, seeing what I’d done.

“I had to,” I said. “I’ll pay for everything. Whatever it is. Will this guy kill me?”

Luis smiled like he was worried.

“Shit. Maybe. I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. But the cameras…”

Just then his phone rang. It was Al, calling back.

“Hey Al,” Luis said. “How you doin’?…”

I signaled to Luis that I wanted to talk to Al. I wanted to beg for mercy, and swear to pay for whatever the damage would cost.

“So yeah I called earlier…” Luis continued. “I got a guy here, a neighbor…good guy. Nice church guy.”

Luis threw in that detail himself.

“His pet bird flew into your gutter and…it’s stuck in the downspout.”

This led me to believe Al had not yet seen any security footage.

“The leader pipe on the right side, down the edge…,” Luis continued.

“Please let me talk to him?” I said.

“Well Al, listen, that’s not why I’m calling…it gets worse,” Luis said.

I wished he hadn’t phrased it like that.

“Yeah,” Luis kind of laughed nervously. “He cut it. The guy cut the pipe.”

It sounded terrible hearing it aloud. I pictured Al, wherever he was. A powerhouse. A man of construction, a boss. Greek, I figured. Or Russian? Oh my god, I thought. Russian.

“No. I’m not kidding,” Luis said. “He’s standing right here.”

Luis looked up at me, then held the phone out. My heart stopped.

“He sounds upset,” Luis whispered.

I took the cell phone.

“Hi Al,” I said.

“It’s Alessandro,” he said. He had a foreign accent. Italian, it seemed.

“Oh excuse me. Alessandro,” I said.

“We call him Al,” Luis whispered. “But we know him. Sorry!”

“Alessandro, sir, I’m so sorry about this and I will pay for whatever this costs…”

“Listen to me, man…” Alessandro started, firmly.

“Alessandro, this is my pet bird and she escaped and I couldn’t believe she flew into…”

I could feel my eyes watering. I could see myself as if through the camera over me, holding this saw at my side, having made such a pointless mess.

“Listen to me,” Alessandro said again, louder.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thirteen years,” he began. “I built my business. I left my father’s company and went out on my own. He wanted me to fail, that bastard.”

I figured he was going to tell me that he killed his father, and would kill me too.

“For thirteen years in all that shit, I come home to my cat. In all that shit, I come home to her. She sleeps at my feet. That cat.” Alessandro took a deep breath. “I don’t…you know…talk about it. I can’t. You understand right?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t understand.

“Last week I had to put her down,” he said. “She had cancer. They asked me if I wanted to sit in the room with her. I said no way. I couldn’t watch that. I’d cry. I knew I’d cry if I stayed there. She was the first thing I cared about losin’ my whole life. And I said no way, I’m outta’ here! Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I shoulda’ stayed with her. Stupid. Stupid me. I can do so much stuff, I taught myself everything, but…I’m so stupid.”

He cleared his throat.

“No, I…I understand,” I said.

I looked over at Luis. Maybe he thought Alessandro was chewing me out.

“I hope you get your bird,” Alessandro continued. “Do whatever you gotta do. Don’t worry about the pipe.”

I waited a moment to see if Alessandro was going to say more. When he didn’t, I told him thank you, and that I was sorry about his cat. I asked what her name was.

“Athena,” he said.

So he’s Greek, I thought. Just like with gender, it can be hard to guess. Why even bother? Especially in Queens. It’s got as many kinds of people as it does birds. It’s one of the reasons I love it.

“I hope you get your bird,” Alessandro said again. “Good night.”

He hung up.

“What he say?” Luis said.

“Is he angry? He must be pissed.” Johnny said. I’d forgotten Johnny was still there.

The morning light was just emerging. Shirley hadn’t chirped for hours. I hoped she’d gone to sleep and now that in the day’s first light, she’d stir like all the other birds. My arms, neck and back were sore, but my stomach felt a little lighter. It had been four nights that I hadn’t had beer, I realized.

Luis had given me a flashlight, chair and a blanket for my night in Alessandro’s driveway. I’d been there the whole time watching the pipe. At about 3am I had the idea to drop in the long cloth lanyard from my key chain. I’d ripped it in half in order to lengthen it. I hoped Shirley would climb it like a rope ladder once some daylight poured in. It was all a longshot, and most of the time I figured she’d long wandered deep into the sewers, scared by the noise of my sawing, and got lost for good.

The morning was bright. Maybe I should see early morning like this more often, I thought. I could hear all kinds of birds – robins, sparrows, cardinals, starlings, blue jays…

I couldn’t know the exact time. My phone had died around midnight. I noticed the lanyard moving a little, and soon there was Shirley, standing there looking at me. I slowly grabbed Johnny’s net from the ground beside the chair. Without even standing, I lifted the net up and over her. She made no effort to fly away.

Back at home I kept her in a small box with holes next to a portable heater for three whole days. She slept and drank water most of the time. When she looked like herself again, and began to eat, I returned her to the lovebird cage. Now Sherwood lives like a fundamental Mormon. Shirley took back her spot in the coconut, and his second wife sleeps right outside of it every night, alone, waiting for morning.

The day of the rescue, I texted Alessandro and told him the good news. I sent a picture of Shirley standing on top of the severed pipe. He wrote back that he was glad I got my bird. I went back to his house that afternoon with a metal and rubber ring to wrap around the pipe where the slice was. I had described everything to the guy at the local plumbing store, and it was like he’d heard it a million times already. He knew exactly what I needed to seal the damage until Alessandro fixed it for real. I did my best with it. It took me a few hours. I got cuts on my fingers. I’m not handy at all. I texted Alessandro again, reminding him to let me know how much it costs to fix.

One day recently I walked by his house and noticed the pipe was replaced. I called Alessandro, then texted him again. It’s been months now. I’ve knocked on his door. I’ve left him notes in his mailbox, and texted over and over. In all those ways I’ve asked him to please let me pay for the pipe.

He’s never answered me.

 

Marc Palmieri has published prose in Fiction (Issues #59 and #64) and The Global City Review. His plays include the New York Times’ “Critic’s Pick” Levittown, The Groundling, Carl the Second, Poor Fellas, and most recently, Waiting for the Host.  All are published by Dramatists Play Service. His play for middle schoolers, S(cool) Days is published by Brooklyn Publishers. His screenplays include Miramax Films’ Telling You (1999). Marc’s short play Of Vanities is published in Smith & Kraus’ The Best 10-Minute Plays of 2020. He has numerous scenes and monologues published in anthologies by Limelight/Applause Books and Smith & Kraus/The Teaching Institute. Marc lives in Queens, New York City and is a member of the full-time core faculty at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry. www.marcpalmieri.com