Chrisonomicon

Wednesday, March 21, 2001

He had a pair of wings on his back that were slightly ruffled. He quietly dug his toes into the sand. Looking down as a car sped by, I thought, "This must look awfully strange," and I cursed his ackward stance, his nervous cough, and those damned, ridiculous wings. They were white from far away, but up close, the feathers had yellowed slightly and there were traces of brown on the calamii. The barbules were mussed.

The boy couldn?t have been more than 7 or 8 years old, although in the desert sun, traces of age seemed to blend into the sky and road that, ultimately, blended into each other if you looked far enough out on the horizon. Heat waves bathed the pavement in mirrored ice that melted and iced over, repeatedly. It reminded me of a particularly hot summer in ?84 when we drove through the Arizona desert. The thermostat in our Plymouth minivan read 111 degrees Fahrenheit, so we stopped for ice-cream, but it melted before we could bring the iced confectionaries to our sweat-soaked lips.

I crossed my arms. He seemed to take that gesture as an inquisition and looked up at me, squinting slightly, but continued to nervously dig his toes into the sand. He was the modest sort, after all. I looked up for an answer. The sky was silent and impossibly blue. A reluctant breeze ruffled the boys feathers, which barely touched the tops of his dusty Levi 501s. Out of impatience, I reached forward and grabbed the boy?s shoulders.

"I can?t help you if you don?t talk to me." Trembling, he struggled against my grip, and several feathers came lose in my hand. Startled, I released him suddenly, and his stumbled back, landing hard on the dusty, road shoulder. I offered my hand to help him up, but he ignored me and rose clumsily. Sniffling silently, he gave three powerful sweeps with his wings and disappeared into the sky, leaving a trail of dust and feathers.

I watched him fly away, and then turned back towards my pickup. Sticking a feather behind my ear, I walked around to the front to examine the damage. A shattered headlamp shouldn?t be too expensive to replace, I thought. The basketball-sized dent in my bumper, however, would be another story. It?s amazing how much damage such a little body can do to a pickup driving only 35 MPH.