Carrier

by Cameron Weston

On the third morning, a Sunday, the bird is there again.

It’s a pigeon, he thinks, identical to the others, except for the indecipherable number on its green plastic leg-band. Except for its quizzical look. Except for the fact that it is there, again, on the poured concrete rail of his balcony.

Today he doesn’t remain inside to study the bird through the sliding glass doors. He doesn’t wait for his wife to come home with the pastries and the newspaper so he can point it out. He doesn’t move slowly so the bird won’t startle. Instead he opens the sliding doors and sits down in his reading chair, an outdoor wicker thing.

The bird seems unperturbed.

He draws his coat against the morning chill and as he examines the bird he decides that perhaps, after all, it is an ordinary pigeon. Like yesterday, like the day before, it traces its route along the two-inch-wide rail. Up and back, left and right, and he searches for a word to describe the way it moves. March comes close but it doesn’t quite capture the motion of the head, the regal bearing. Eventually he decides on strut. An expression, he decides, of defiance.

The man knows what he’s done there is called anthropomorphism and he feels a little awkward about it, but there are deeper and more unsettling questions. Questions like; why my balcony? What does it see here? What guides the bird? Seventeen stories up, the third balcony from the left, an anonymous rectangular protrusion within a wide repeating grid. Not even a potted plant to mark it from the others. No food on offer. No seed scattered. Yet here it is again. The same bird. Three days running, the same bird…

*

When he rises on the fourth morning the pigeon is at it again, up and back on the balcony rail. He watches it through the glass as he sips his coffee. In his mind he constructs sentences: A pigeon struts on my balcony rail. On my balcony rail, a pigeon struts. Look how he struts!

After a time, he slides open the balcony door, just so he can hear it cluck and coo.

His wife rushes into the lounge room behind him and gathers her satchel, her laptop, her keys. He points out the bird. She tells him the morning pastries are on the bench with the newspaper. She tells him she doesn’t have time to eat. She has a late lecture tonight. A fill-in for a colleague, she says.

Finally, she looks at the bird.

‘Oh yes,’ she says, smiling. ‘The little fellow must be lost.’

She plants a kiss on his cheek and hurries into her coat. He listens for the click of the lock, the phased echo of her heels down the hall. Time then passes slowly and in near-perfect stillness—a man watching a bird—until the pigeon turns suddenly toward the sky and explodes into flight, a rush of beaten air and feathers. He hurries to the balcony rail but the sky is empty, the bird is gone.

That afternoon he leaves an article he’s writing, a piece about Jordan, a place he’s never been. On the internet he reads about homing pigeons, selectively bred from the rock pigeon for their ability to find their way home. He reads about proteins called cryptochromes, about naturally occurring oxides of iron known as magnetite. The scientists think these compounds must be involved, but no one is sure how the birds do it. Hard to fathom but they just don’t know. He learns about magnetoreception, the divining of invisible fields, and he wonders, briefly, if there is something special about his balcony, or maybe, by extension…

He makes a mental note to mention this idea to his wife.

A thought like that; she’ll find it funny too.

Before he logs off, he reads about a famous pigeon called Cher Ami, a war hero bird, stuffed and viewable in a famous museum. He stares at the picture for a long time, a pigeon in a glass box, and it seems absurd, somehow, to witness a bird so utterly still.

*

On the fifth morning he sets his alarm and rises in the dark. At this hour, against the silence, he can hear the building hum. He dresses quickly, quietly, his wife’s sleeping form unstirring as he pulls on his heavy coat. He makes his coffee by microwave light then takes his binoculars to the balcony to watch. It’s the launch he wants to see, the moment of release.

He trains his glasses on the rooftops, seeking out the lofts. From his balcony, there are two he can see. A dilapidated structure on an old deco tower to the east, the birds there tended haphazardly by an old man. He turns his attention to a nearer building, maybe five hundred metres north, where he’s seen a boy and an older man, his father perhaps. With its green leg-tag, its pristine plumage, he’s sure his bird comes from there.

As he sits down with his second cup he sees two figures emerge through the stairwell door. The light has risen enough to make out details; a boy in school uniform, an older man in coveralls. Yes, he thinks, it’s them. They go to the coop, a sturdy steel box perhaps ten feet wide. They’ve spent money here; they want the best for their birds.

With paternal care they go about their work, coaxing the flyers onto the rooftop, talking to the birds, until finally the boy waves his arms and shouts something at the sky and all around him the air turns grey and comes alive.

On his balcony the man finds himself standing.

He’s up on the balls of his feet as he watches the flock take flight, as he watches them form exotic ephemeral shapes in the spaces between buildings, drawn together, coming apart, their every movement the expression of some constant and secret code which he, though perfectly motionless on his balcony, is sure he is a part.

Through the glasses he follows individual birds that separate from the group, flashing pink and silver in morning light, alone and momentarily suspended before they merge back into the whole. He’s struck by a strange sense of inversion; the structures and trees and cars and people are nothing, they exist only to define the sky. For those few seconds the sky is all.

When the flock disappears he returns his vision to the rooftop, to the coop, and his heart flips when he sees the boy looking back through binoculars of his own. A sudden heat wells up in the man’s chest, his ears, and he thinks about waving, smiling and waving, but instead he retreats inside.

But before he can disappear he sees that the bird has returned to his balcony rail. Up and back, left and right. A pigeon struts on my balcony rail. He chances a look to see if the boy is still watching—he is—so he slinks deeper into the flat, away from the balcony, the bird, the boy, the sky.

In the bedroom he gathers himself, lets the heat run from his body, but when he returns to the living room a few minutes later he finds the bird strutting across the tiled floor a metre or so inside the balcony door. It seems impossible; the bird is inside.

He goes down on his haunches and the bird becomes still, watchful, fixes him with its orange eye. City sounds diminish and there comes a slow, open moment in which they examine each other. He sees the iridescent green and purple through the plumage at the neck, the many gradations of grey through the chest, the symmetrical black banding over the wings, the will to flight in that wild orange eye. But what, he wonders, does it see?

His knees begin to ache and there’s pain in his hip, but he remains still. Only the bird moves. Again, he makes sentences.

A pigeon struts on my living room floor.

A good man kneels before it.

Finally, with the pain in his joints unbearable, the man rises slowly, as slowly as he can, but the movement seems to alarm the bird. It rushes to the balcony and takes flight.

That evening the man and his wife host a small gathering. It’s her idea. A publisher friend and his wife. An historian of note from the university. Dinner and drinks. Dried fruits and cheese. As often happens on these occasions, he drifts into shallow silence during the main course, finds himself a beat or two behind the conversation. At times like this he’s usually content to watch and nod and listen. He likes to remind himself that he’s a writer; it’s his role to observe. Remember, he tells himself, truth hides in plain sight. Everything is research.

This night though, he begins to talk about the bird.

He speaks about the courage of the creature, he points to the place it stood on the kitchen floor. All that way inside the door. He tells them about his investigations, his ideas, about Cher Ami and magnetite, about the iron crystals and magnetic fields. He’s flush with wine so he asks them if they think it’s lost.

‘But how,’ he asks, ‘can a creature be identically lost five days in a row? Is something in it broken?’

At first the guests seem unsure how to respond. They exchange glances and purse their lips in contemplation. But these are smart people, thinking people, so there comes conjecture, almost from habit it seems, and they speak in polite circles until his wife lays her warm hand over his and squeezes gently.

‘So this is what you do all day,’ she says and everyone laughs. Friendly, amiable, a little drunk.

‘Anyway…’ he says, and pours another glass.

*

On the sixth morning, a Wednesday, the bird is there again. He thinks it’s getting bolder; it’s on the kitchen tiles when there comes a knock at the door. With a dreadful certainty, he knows it will be the boy from the rooftop and when he opens the door, there he is in his school uniform, maroon and blue with a matching backpack, shoes shined and hair neat. His fingers are twitching.

‘You’ve got my bird,’ he says by way of introduction.

It’s a statement, certainly, but it seems also to contain a question and a request. The man waits for the boy to continue but now he seems unwilling to speak. He steps away so the boy can see the sliding doors are open. He needs him to know that the bird is free to leave.

‘I don’t actually have him,’ he says. ‘It’s no trouble, really.’

The boy considers this.

‘But I saw you. You talked to him. You spoke to the bird.’

Heat rises again through the man’s chest. ‘Yes… well… I asked him if he was lost.’

The boy squints a little. ‘Lost? You asked him that?’

‘That’s all I said.’

The boy bites his lip. ‘My dad reckons maybe you could get spikes.’

‘Spikes?’

‘Yeah, for your balcony. Like at train stations or whatever. On lights. So the birds can’t land.’

‘Oh… yes. I’ve seen those.’

The boy peers past him again.

A pigeon struts on my kitchen floor.

‘Dad says they’re not that expensive.’

‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’

‘You just put them on, keep the balcony door closed.’

‘Ok. Good. Yes. Good idea.’

A pigeon struts on my kitchen floor.

‘Dad says you could probably take them off in a couple of weeks or something. Once the bird stops coming.’

 ‘Would you like to come in?’ the man asks in a way he hopes is friendly but the boy steps back into the hall and perhaps it is this movement, or the presence of its keeper, or the mingling energies of the boy and the man, but there comes the singular sound of wings in motion and they peer back through the flat as the bird takes off through the open balcony door.

The man turns back to the boy and a feeling of helplessness settles.

‘See,’ he offers. ‘It really just comes and goes as it pleases.’

The boy looks at the place where the bird had been.

‘Marco,’ he says firmly.

The man smiles and shakes his head. He extends his hand to the boy.

‘Excuse me, I’m sorry. How rude. Hi Marco, nice to meet you. I’m…’

‘No,’ the boy cuts in. ‘Not me. Marco is the name of the bird.’

And, with that, he is gone.

That afternoon the man breaks abruptly from his writing to look at anti-pigeon spikes. The boy was right; they’re not expensive or difficult to install. He measures his balcony rail and for an hour or two he thinks about doing it himself, considers the tools and the time he’ll need. He’s sure he could do it, he’s capable enough. He visualises himself out there in his old flannel shirt, drilling the holes with care and precision. Then he calls an installer.

‘For your balcony, is it?’ the installer asks, though he’s sure he mentioned this.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s only one bird, actually. He keeps coming back…’

‘Take it from me mate,’ the installer chuckles. ‘One pigeon can cause you a world of grief. They punch well above their weight when it comes to… er… faeces.’

The man is silent for a while. He wasn’t expecting this.

‘I could get out there in about a week…’ the installer offers. ‘You want me to book it in?’

Another silence and then the man agrees. He looks out across the city, out towards the coop and then beyond it to the empty sky. He lowers his voice as they confirm the details.

*

On the seventh morning Marco does not return.

*

The eighth morning and then the ninth; no sign of the bird.

As he stands there alone behind the doors the man wonders if somehow Marco has perceived a shift in energy, that the balcony rail—seventeen up, three from the left—has become somehow negatively charged. Is it possible, he wonders again, that the bird is responding to me?

*

On the last morning he finds himself awake in the dark. He checks the clock; dawn is an hour away. He spoons up to his wife and tells her he loves her. He knows she’s not really awake, she can’t really hear, but he tells her again. ‘You stay right there,’ he whispers. ‘I’ll get the pastries and the news.’

He dresses quickly and takes the lift to ground.

The sky is clear but there’s been rain overnight and surfaces glisten and glow. The pleasing hiss of tyres over wet bitumen. As is his habit when encountering the street, he fixes on a spot on the footpath a few metres ahead and follows it, as if being led to his destination by that empty space. But a few blocks from his building he finds himself gazing skyward as he walks. From street level the great blue dome seems somehow diminished; there’s so much less of it down here.

He heads north towards the bakery, the newsstand, but as he reaches one then the other he quickens his pace and draws his head down into his coat’s high collar. He walks on until he is perhaps a hundred metres from Marco’s building and then he slows and crosses the street. He stands in a doorway alcove and pulls his binoculars from inside his coat and trains them on the dark line where the structure meets the sky.

He waits.

For a long time there is no movement, nothing, but then a curious charge moves through him like the turning of some great engine and he knows it’s about to happen. The Release. He draws breath and holds it. He rises onto the balls of his feet and at that precise moment the birds erupt into space, a furious storm of wings and bodies. The sky is teeming, alive, and Marco is among them.

He trains his glasses along the concrete canyon toward his building, his balcony—seventeen up, three from the left—and he waits for a lone bird to peel away and make for his balcony rail. But none do, none that he can see, though there is one bird that draws his attention, indistinguishable in its wheeling flight and yet extraordinary, somehow… but it moves so fast he can’t track it, it changes direction so quickly it keeps escaping the binoculars’ narrow field.

He lowers the glasses and gazes up at the sky through his own two eyes and as he watches the flock turn and wheel between the buildings he finds the bird he’s looking for.

Yes. There he is.

Northward past buildings and people and cars he tracks the flock, he tracks Marco. The morning rush breaks like a slow grey wave through the streets but the man doesn’t notice the crush. He moves among them with speed and purpose, his vision pinned to the bird in the sky. Into and out of the flock it moves yet still he finds him, again and again.

Yes, there he is.

Marco the Flyer, a pigeon apart.

Through alien streets he continues north, through strange neighbourhoods, past places he’s never been. He moves fast, he treads lightly on the earth until, at last, the flock turns sharply westward and vanishes over the fractured horizon.

How far has he travelled? He truly cannot say.

He notices how his calves ache and comes down gently on his heels.