The Blue Bird

When I was six years old the trees were giants, my mother was unbreakable, and anything green tasted like poison. The acreage at the farm was expansive… at least it felt like that when I was waddling inside with scraped knees and bruised elbows. My brother Johnny was two years older than me, and before I could even walk, he’d hold me face down in the dirt and then sit on me so I couldn’t cry for our mother to tattle on him. We’d argue for all of five minutes before I forgot about what felt like a brush with death, and then he’d lift me up on his unsteady shoulders to pick apples in the orchard or to reach a branch in a climbing tree. Back in those days, he was my best friend and my mortal enemy in the way that only an older brother could manage.

It was gray and cold outside, and winter had come knocking on fall’s door at the beginning of November that year. That wouldn’t deter us though, and Johnny tossed me a baseball a little harder than I knew how to catch. I thought he was impressive, but now I have a sneaking suspicion he threw the ball too hard on purpose sometimes. On one particularly hard throw, the ball slipped through my fingers and tumbled down the hill, bouncing behind a bush. It was a bush of twigs mostly, intertwined and knotted together like a skeleton of what it was when it was warmer. The branches weren’t the first thing to catch my eye though, as Johnny and I raced each other down the hill to the ball.

A small, trembling bird, blue in color, lay under those branches, seeking some kind of shelter from the cold. I had never seen a bird so up close before. Neither had Johnny. Johnny’s usually rambunctious demeanor softened as he approached it. He knelt down beside the bird, which cocked its head to the side, studying him. It burrowed into the dirt. My brother reached out a gentle hand, and the bird recoiled slightly, but it didn’t go far. It was then that I could see a twisted wing sticking up funny at its side: broken. It couldn’t fly.

“We can’t just leave it here,” Johnny’s eyebrows pinched together as he looked at me with worry. I nodded my head in agreement.

“Papa will know what to do,” I said. Papa always knew what to do no matter the situation. Momma always said that was how God made fathers. Johnny reached toward the bird again, slower this time but still with that tentative gentleness that wasn’t in his nature. The bird flinched when Johnny scooped it up. He held it close to his chest whispering to it softly.

“It’s okay little bird,” he said. “Papa’s gonna help you. It’s okay.”

We took our time walking back to the house, being as careful with that little blue bird as a couple of kids possibly could. The steps to the front porch creaked slightly as we padded up them, wiping our shoes on the welcome mat before crossing the threshold into the warmth of the farmhouse that had been in my family for five generations.

“Papa!” Johnny called out.

“In here!” Papa answered from the living room. My father was a big man, at least it felt like that when I was younger. He was stern but loving at the same time. He commanded a respect from us that I had only ever faltered in once. It had only taken half a beating for me to never “forget” to feed the goats again. We found him reclined in an armchair, nose buried in a book.

“We found a bird,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to mask my excitement and gesturing to the creature swaddled in my brother’s arms.

“It’s hurt,” Johnny said. “Can you help him?” My father looked down at the bird, pulling down his reading glasses to see it better. He bit his lip slightly.

“Ah,” he said. “That’s too bad. Can you take him outside for me? That’s where little birds are most comfortable… outside. We’ll see what we can do for him.”

“Yes sir,” Johnny nodded eagerly. We scurried outside with that bird, back down the porch steps and waited in the front yard for Papa. He came around the side of the house, shovel in hand.

“Lay him on the ground now, Johnny,” he said. Johnny did as he was told and gently placed the bird down, being careful to find an extra soft patch of grass for his new little friend.

“What are you…” Johnny began to say as my father raised that shovel up in the air and brought it down on the bird’s neck. Its head popped off and blood flowed from the stump of flesh. Johnny screamed and crumpled to the ground, gathering the bird up and holding it once again to his chest, bloodying his shirt. I had only ever heard him make a sound like that wail once before, a year ago when he fell out of that big old oak tree and bit clean through his lip. Momma had to rush him forty-five minutes down the road to the hospital. Even then he had come back smiling and laughing and showing off his brand-new stitches.

“Why?” he sobbed. For a moment I was convinced he was going to throw up.

“Because, Johnny,” my father knelt and placed a hand on my brother’s shoulder. “Birds were made to fly. There’s no use for a broken bird that can’t do what it was made for.”

I thought about all those times Johnny came barreling through the kitchen in his favorite pair of socks. They had turtles on them, and a hole from wear so his pinky toe on his left foot would peek out. He’d slide across the room like the floor was made of ice, and more then once he’d wiped out in a glorious display of clumsy limbs. One time he had ripped his knee open pretty badly, and I watched him try desperately to hold back tears at the sight of the blood as he cried out for our mother.

“It’s okay,” she’d say as she scooped him up in her arms. “A little blood never hurt anyone.” And then she’d wiggle her fingers under his arms, and he’d cackle and ask for a Mickey Mouse band aid.

A little blood never hurt, unless it wasn’t yours.

“How could you hurt it?” he said quieter now, voice hushed as if the air had been stolen from his lungs. Johnny’s body shook, and he wheezed.

“Oh Johnny… There will be more birds, blue ones even,” Papa said and patted his head.

“But I loved this one,” Johnny said, eyes wide and staring at the monster with the shovel.

That was it. I didn’t see him smile for two weeks, but even still I grew accustomed to watching that scar on his lip stretch into a smile only once in a blue moon. Momma managed to get the blood out of his shirt, but he didn’t wear it after that. We never talked about the blue bird, but he didn’t overthrow the baseball anymore, and his shoulders were steadier when he lifted me up onto them. Although, I suppose he still looks at our mother as if she was made of granite, and never took a liking for green foods.