The Sound of Birds Calling

     	I like walking at night because you can do stuff you can’t normally. You can walk in the middle of the road and no one honks at you or tries to hit you or anything. One time a guy did that to me, tried to hit me I mean. I was thinking and I didn’t hear him, so he came up next to me and tapped me with his bumper, and I fell down. Now I walk at night. The only things out other than me are the Bird People.
     	The first time I saw one it was right before the first big snow. All the lights from the town were bouncing off the sky like it was a big ceiling, and I saw someone standing out in the old vacant lot where a burned-out store used to be. He was looking around and then scratching the dirt with one finger. I thought maybe he was drawing something, but it was pretty peculiar to be drawing out in the middle of the night. Then all of a sudden he leaned his head back and he made a bird call. It sounded just like one of those little dusty-looking birds that hang out with a million other ones in bushes. He looked like he was waiting for something, and then he went off toward Maple. Just then a raccoon knocked over some cans and someone stuck their head out their window and saw me, so I had to run home before they recognized who I was.
     	The next night I got up to leave for a walk because Ma and Pop were fighting again. My little sister, Annie-Lou, wanted to go with me but I said no. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go so I went down toward the park. I sat on the swings but they were creaky, so I sat on the grass instead and just listened. I heard a little bird somewhere calling. I remembered that guy from the night before, and I saw a lady come up the road, walking in the middle of it like I do. She was making that little bitty bird call and kind of hopping along, like her shoes were tied together. Then a man, not the same one from the other night, came out from behind the city hall building and he called back the same way. I got up real quiet and hid in a bush. They met up by the monkey bars and they stood real close together, and the lady was nodding her head all the time, like she was agreeing with what the man was saying. They were talking in bird language to each other.
     	After a while they left in different directions. After they were gone I got up and went to the place where they were standing. I stayed there just touching the grass and thinking until it started to get light out and then I went home.
Annie-Lou started having bad nightmares, so I’d go and sit with her instead of walking. I opened the window in her room and listened instead. You can hear them if you listen. I think most people just ignore them, or maybe they don’t hear them, because no one ever says anything about it. They’re always real quiet, the Bird People, but they move around all strange. The hopping lady I saw a lot, almost every night. There’s a little fella with a missing arm who shakes his head real fast, like he’s saying ‘no no no’, and another lady who bends in half but sideways, like an 'r’. I’ve seen a few up by the church under the angel statues. You hear them chirping and then one by one they come to wherever the first one was, and they stand around in a big group and talk in bird language.
     	I found an old bird call in Pop’s junk box but it sounded like a duck, and the Bird People don’t sound like that. I asked him once after work if he could show me how to do a little sparrow call but he just told me 'go on, son, I’m busy’, even though all he was doing was sitting on the porch and looking at nothing. Davey next door can do a whistle with his fingers, so I got him to teach me how to do it and it sounded pretty good. One night after that I got out and went down to where the Bird People were, and I hid behind a big bush and I made that call to see what they would do. They stopped talking and looked all around like they were nervous. I did it again, and one of the men made a call back but it was different, it was kind of more drawn out. I called back but he started doing it over and over, and soon all of them were doing it, and my heart starting beating real fast. I saw a big woodpecker trapped in our sun porch one summer. It was beating itself to death on the windows and making that same sound. Pop caught him and put him in a tree, but when I went back later he was dead. I turned and ran back home. After that I didn’t talk to them anymore, I just watched.
     	After about a month I started naming them. The lady who hopped I called Baby because she sounded real little. There was a big man I called Buster because he flailed around a lot and I wondered if maybe sometime he’d bust someone a good one. Then there was a tiny little gimpy man with something wrong with his legs, so I called him Stump. I don’t think they knew I was hanging around, or maybe they just got used to me. What I liked was, they seemed happy to be around each other. I stopped going to school much. Sometimes I’d have dreams about them. They’d see me and they’d let me in to the circle. I couldn’t understand them, but it was nice being with them that way, even if in real life they’d never let me do it.
     	Then one morning Pop caught me coming home. He must have gone in my room for some reason and seen that I wasn’t there. He hollered at me and cussed and Ma got real mad at him for yelling, so she hurried us into my room. Annie-Lou was crying when she fell asleep, and she didn’t wake up until Pop came in later to nail my window shut. After he left, Annie-Lou asked if my friends were going to come visit me tonight. I asked what she meant and she said sometimes when I was asleep she’d hear birds outside the window, and she’d see people standing in the yard. She said they were always looking in my window and that they just stood around and took turns watching me sleep. I went and put my ear to the window, and the glass was cool and nice. I stayed there for a long time and listened for the sound of birds calling.