Day 4—The Bird Man

The gentleman of Baker Street they called him, sometimes. He’s not your typical mad prophet. Most of the time there is a colorful parrot resting upon his shoulder. People love to make jokes about pirates to him, but he always responds with a deep, intense stare. His brain is fragmented, his life is fragmented. He seems like he who never encounters another human soul on his path but has met with all living beings. Our Vietnamese neighbor, Tim, mentioned one day that there is a Boddhisatva in his culture who is said to act very much like The Bird Man. Urban legend abounds. One day we saw the police harassing him and everybody was ready to fight. I got sick to my stomach that day with anxiety. Oh, his bird mad world.

One day we caught him lying on the sidewalk, as if there were supposed to be a chalk outline around his body. On that day a cockatiel was perched on his knee, and the animal didn’t seem concerned in the least. “How goes, holy fool?” I asked. “Not good, not good. The rain is coming. The end times are coming. And all the groovy jazz of this world will be taken awayyy!” Yeah, have I mentioned that The Bird Man was probably an acid casualty? We loved our treasure so. “No way, bird man!” I put seventy-five cents in his begging bowl. Last week I’d seen him reading a library book on nuclear physics. Some people spun the rumor mill that he had come from incredible amounts of money, or was a PhD who’d been unable to find a job and had lost his mind. He wore a Northwestern sweatshirt, usually pretty clean and jeans that were also in pretty good condition.

Two weeks later there was a huge police presence around his usual corner. The night before I’d had a dream that The Bird Man had tried to punch me in the face and I started running away from him. At about 1:30am I was coming home and even saw a fire truck on his corner. I pulled over to the side of the road and got out. I couldn’t see The Bird Man or his bird. I grabbed a police officer. “What happened?” “The Bird Man got stabbed tonight.” Even her voice sounded heavy. Many of the cops had gotten friendly with him. I turned back towards my car, heartbroken. In the distance, all around, I heard trees full of birds, sleeping.




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