The bird was tiny, even to six year old me, it must have
been a baby bird. I don’t know how it came to be in our rose garden, lying
there with its neck bent the wrong way entirely. Maybe it had fallen out of its
nest while its mother was away looking for worms. Or, maybe a cat had found it
and had run off with it, and someone must have seen the cat and yelled at it
and chased it off, but by then the cat would have already broken the poor thing’s
neck. Or, maybe the baby bird’s mother had been killed somehow and it was an
orphan and it wandered off and had come to some unknown strife. It was tiny and
mostly brown with some blue feathers, still fluffy as only baby bird’s feathers
are. I don’t really remember now why I did what I did next, and up until
recently I had forgotten that I did it at all.
I took the tiny corpse in my chubby six year old hands,
cradling it gently; I took the bird to my dad’s shed in our back yard. He was
at work, only my mum was home and she was busy inside so she wouldn’t have
noticed me slipping into my dad’s shed, even though it was right opposite the
kitchen window. I laid the little body down on my dad’s work bench and opened
his tool box. I rustled around in it for a minute, taking various tools out,
examining their potential usefulness and replacing them, until I found a small
chisel and some pointy nosed pliers. I placed them on the bench next to the
bird and then I thought very hard. I was reasoning with myself, even then at
six I knew that it was a good idea to weigh my desires against the possible
consequences of acquiring the object of my desire. Although I doubt the process
would have been quite as eloquent as the words I now use to describe it. Probably
it followed the lines of: How hard will
it be? Will mum and dad be angry? Well the bird is already dead…
With that process out of the way I steeled myself and took
the chisel in my left hand, it had a yellow resin handle, and even though it
wasn’t a big chisel it still seemed huge in my six year old hands, and even
bigger compared to the tiny bird on the bench. I took the pliers in my other
hand, realised that they were a bit stiff from lack of recent usage and
too difficult to open and close with just one little hand. So I placed the
chisel down and used both hands to pry open the pliers, I angled them against
the bird’s head, until the pointy ends rested at either side of the bird’s tiny
beak, and I squeezed the pliers shut. I held the pliers tight in my right hand,
and once again picked up the chisel with my left. I positioned the chisel at
the place where the tiny creature’s beak met its head. I lowered the chisel and
pushed down hard on that place.
I realised quickly that the process would be gorier than I
had initially expected, and more than once I considered stopping, but I wanted
that tiny beak. I think at the time I expected that it would come away simply
and cleanly and I would string it onto a necklace or something, I hadn’t taken
the time to consider the second part of the process. When I had almost severed
the beak from the bird’s head I put the chisel down and took the bird’s limp body in
my left hand, while still holding the beak with the pliers in my right. I
wiggled the pliers around and pulled gently with my left, the last sinews
holding the bird’s beak to its face broke.
I had the beak, and I was disappointed.
I found there were pieces of feather and muscle still attached to it; I had
neither the finesse nor the tools to clean it as I had hoped. It didn’t look
the same as it had on the bird, it had looked marvelous to me, like a little
jewel, and that is why I wanted it. But now it was flawed, it was scored with
chisel marks and bloodied by the mutilation I had rendered it. It was ruined
and I understood then that I had ruined it.
I was only six when this happened. I don’t think I told my
parents, in fact I don’t think I told anyone, I was ashamed. I went into the
house and washed my hands. My mum called out to me “Bubby, what are you doing?”
“Just playing, mum.” I went to my room and found the little wooden box that I
kept my doll’s shoes in. It was a little wooden thing with a sliding lid, I
didn’t know much about coffins except what I had seen in cartoons; if I had, I
would have been able to better appreciate the appropriateness of that box. I
tucked it under my jumper, in case my mum saw me with it and asked what it was
for, and returned to dad’s shed. I put the tiny mutilated body into the box and
nestled its beak next to its face and closed the box. I picked up the shovel, which always lent against the shed wall just inside the door, and went around to
the derelict flower bed on the side of the house where no one ever went.
There was about a
metre and a half between the house and the high white wall that separated it from
the road beyond. I put down the little coffin, and handled the overly-large
shovel with both hands. Afraid of discovery, I dug the shallow grave as quickly
as I could. When I was satisfied I lent the shovel against the white wall and
knelt in front of the hole I’d dug. I picked up the little coffin and placed it
reverently in the grave. I knew that people said things at funerals and prayed
for the dead person, and I wanted to do it right. So I said “Dear God, thank
you for this bird, it was very pretty, and I am sorry I tried to take its beak.”
I covered the grave and replaced the soil. I return the shovel to the shed and
cleaned the mess off dad’s bench with a bucket of water and a rag, which I
threw in the street bin afterward. I think I left a stain on the bench, but my dad never asked me about it. I went back into the house and washed my
hands and my arms all the way up to my shoulders, I changed out of my dirty
clothes. I sat on my bed and I cried. And after a while I forgot.
No comments:
Post a Comment