A Bird in the Face

Mike Todd

Elena Lupanova

Iwas driving my pick-up. Bobby rode shotgun. The deejay was telling us that the latest hit from the Monkees would be coming up right after this commercial break so don’t go away. And Paul sat in the middle when he turned off the radio, cleared his throat, and said, “Gentlemen, I have a major announcement to make.” He followed it by passing an excessive amount of gas which had apparently been building up for hours.

It rumbled like heavy furniture scooting across the floor. The vinyl bench seat vibrated beneath us. Then we smelled it.

“And I mean that from the heart of my bottom,” Paul said, smiling with satisfaction.

“Oh, man! Why did you have to—” Bobby said as he frantically rolled down his window.

“Damn, Paul! What crawled up you?” I asked, rolling my own down. Then I stopped inhaling as I continued driving, the cold December air stinging my face but offering the best alternative under the circumstances. Knowing I could hold my breath longer than Bobby, I glanced at him occasionally as a miner might his canary.

He finally exhaled, then inhaled deeply. “Oh, man!” He slapped his right hand over his mouth and nose and used his left hand to push up on the seat so he could hang his head out the window.

I mimicked him as I continued driving, while Paul laughed at our predicament. Not satisfied he was out of harm’s way, Bobby stood up and stretched as far out the window as he could. Assuming he could still smell it, I tried to do the same. But as I did, I stood on the accelerator and turned the steering wheel slightly. The truck’s right tires went onto the shoulder and dust stirred. Something black flew up from the shoulder and I heard Bobby scream.

I fell back into my seat and pulled the truck over while Paul dragged Bobby back in. As Bobby plopped down onto his own seat, he was still screaming. And he was holding a live crow to his face. The crow was flapping and panicking as Bobby screamed and held it, and I wondered why he didn’t just simply throw the bird out the window. Then Bobby let go and froze, shocked into a momentary state of stillness which resembled calmness but was anything but. The crow, however, remained on Bobby’s face flapping wildly, his beak deeply impaled into Bobby’s forehead.

Paul and I both gasped. Like Bobby, I was momentarily shocked into a state of inaction. But Paul, as always, overcame the inertia quickly, his active intellect switching on almost immediately. Unfortunately for Bobby, it was wit and not aid that Paul first offered. “Something seems different about you, Bobby,” he said. “Did you get a haircut?”

Bobby turned his face to Paul. He was probably giving him a look of disbelief, but we couldn’t tell for sure because of the crow.

“Wait,” Paul said, snapping his fingers. “It’s the bird stuck to your face. That’s new, isn’t it?”

“Stuck? What do you mean?” Bobby asked from behind the crow in a whining, worried voice. “How can it be?”

“Its beak,” I answered. Then realizing that Bobby still wasn’t quite getting it, I added, “it kinda stabbed you and stuck in there.”

Bobby took the briefest of moments to process my explanation, then began screaming and flailing anew.

Paul immediately slipped into that different gear he possessed, the gear only he possessed. He was now the leader, the take-charge problem-solver. He twisted around in his seat so he was on his knees and put his hands on Bobby’s shoulders. “Calm down and take both your hands and hold the bird. Make sure you’re holding its wings into its body.” Bobby did so. “Now just sit there and we’re going to get this fixed.” Then turning to me, he said, “Take us to the hospital.”

Some time after we had taken seats in the emergency room’s waiting area, the bird must have died. Paul and I were thankful for that because we had found its struggling and noises disconcerting; there’s probably no word to describe how Bobby had found it. He continued to hold the bird’s body with his hands, though, because the weight of it hanging from a wound in his forehead was painful.

“Well,” Paul said, and I knew he was going to broach the subject both of us had been avoiding, dreading. “I guess one of us is going to have to call Bobby’s mother.” “Not it,” I said. “But it was your driving that did this.” “No. It was your ass gas.” Paul sighed. “Well, let’s just flip for it.” “Or,” I said, “we could just have Bobby call her.”

Bobby turned his bird face in the direction of my voice and said, “And just how the heck am I supposed to do that?”

I found it humorous that even with everything he’d been through within the last hour, Bobby wouldn’t use the mildest of curse words. I laughed as I said, “You’ll hold the dead bird up and we’ll hold the phone for you to talk into.”

Bobby didn’t find it funny at all, but Paul chuckled at the image. Then Paul and I looked at each other and realized one of us would have to make the call for another reason: Bobby wouldn’t tell the best version of the story, he’d simply tell the truth. Paul dug a dime out of his pocket.

“Heads,” I said.

Paul flipped the coin, looked at it, cursed at it under his breath, then took it to the pay phone hanging on the wall a few chairs away, and fed it into the slot.

I was relieved I hadn’t lost the flip. Mrs. Joseph adored her perfect little family. Her son, her husband, and she could do no wrong. The rest of the world, however, was far from perfect, and her overbearing and insulting diatribe against it was never-ending. As Bobby’s best friends, Paul and I always felt we should be cut a little slack by her. Instead, she seemed to hold us to even higher standards. And she seemed to hold us completely responsible for anything that went the least bit wrong in her son’s life. Thinking about her unfairness was getting me a little agitated, then I realized in this particular instance, Bobby’s predicament really was attributable to his two best friends. The fact that she might have a point today made me like her even less.

Meanwhile, she seemed to be making that point to Paul on the phone as I was lost in my thoughts. I came back to the moment because Paul thrust the handset out at arm’s length, pointing it in my direction to show what he was enduring. I couldn’t make out her words, but Bobby’s mother was angry and was letting Paul know it. Paul brought the handset back to his head and interrupted her by saying, “We’ve got to go, Mrs. Joseph. They are calling us in to see the doctor. We’ll see you when you get here.” He hung up and walked back over to us.

As Paul sat back down, Bobby stood up. Paul and I looked at each other, then I asked Bobby, “What are you doing?”

“Paul said they were calling us in.”

“Oh,” Paul said and chuckled. “Sorry. My mistake. They were calling in a different Bobby Joseph.”

“Oh,” Bobby said, sitting back down. “There’s another Bobby Joseph here? That’s weird.”

Just as I picked up a six-year-old copy of Life, a nurse with a clipboard entered and announced to the waiting room, “Bobby Joseph?”

“Which one?” Bobby asked loudly.

“Right here,” I said. The three of us stood up and followed her, Paul guiding Bobby. She led us to an examination room, seated

Bobby on the table, and exited without once indicating she noticed one of us had a bird stuck on his face. She was older and I reasoned she’d probably spent years in the ER and had seen it all by now.

The three of us, for some reason, adopted our library manners. We spoke very little, then only in half-whispers.

The young doctor joined us after a few minutes. He entered the room while staring at the clipboard and said, “So we have a young man here with something impaled in his forehead.” He looked at Bobby and said, “Oh.” He sat on a rolling stool in front of Bobby and asked, “So, how did this happen?”

I started telling the tale. Almost immediately, the doctor looked at Paul as if he were the most disgustingly irresponsible person he had ever had the displeasure of meeting. Noticing this and feeling defensive of my friend, I decided to include all of Paul’s witty remarks and the fact that Paul was ultimately the one who took charge of the situation and led us here. As I finished the explanation, the doctor was now looking at Paul and nodding in approval.

He pivoted back around to face Bobby and said, “So, my expert medical opinion is that this bird is not merely dead—”

“He’s really most sincerely dead?” asked Paul. The doctor turned his head and smiled with approval. “Exactly. So first we’re going to cut the body away from the head—”

“He’s talking about the bird, not you, Bobby,” Paul said. “Then the bird can rest in pieces.”

“Correct again,” the doctor said with a chuckle. He didn’t mind Paul’s playfulness at all. Rather, he seemed to embrace it. He retrieved a small electric saw from a cabinet, scooted the trash can between his stool and the exam table, and had Bobby hold a piece of cardboard over his face from his eyebrows downward as a makeshift visor for eye protection. He lifted the bird’s body a little and quickly cut it away from its head. Then he dropped the decapitated body into the trashcan and said, “Nevermore.”

Paul laughed and said, “That was a good one.” I didn’t get it.

“Oh, man. That’s a lot better,” Bobby said, enjoying an unobstructed view and freed from the weight of a bird’s carcass. “Thank you.”

“So,” Paul said, staring at nothing with a pensive look. For a moment, I thought he might be working up some more gas. But then he said, “I guess I never thought about it before, but is a crow and a raven the same thing?”

The doctor stopped and stared at his own nothing for a moment, then said, “I think so. But I’m not really sure. That’s a good question.” The doctor smiled at Paul as if he’d found a kindred spirit. Then, remembering he had a patient, he turned his attention back to Bobby.

“I don’t understand,” said Bobby. “Why is that a good question? What does—”

The door opened and a young nurse said, “Doctor, I was told you might need some assistance. How can I—” Her eyes had found the patient sitting on the exam table. “What is that?” she asked with a look which might have been alarm, confusion, disgust, or a combination of the three. “Bird head,” said the doctor without looking at her. She looked at the doctor, then back at the patient. “Bird head?” “Yes.” Then he turned to her and said, “And, yes, I do need your help, as a matter of fact. I need you to go to my office. I have an encyclopedia set on the book shelf along with all my medical volumes.” He held up a finger to signal the importance of the next sentence. “I need to know if a crow and a raven are the same thing.”

She looked at him for a moment trying to figure out how this would help matters. Then, apparently deciding hers was not to reason why, she said, “Yes, doctor,” and exited.

The doctor continued looking at Bobby and the crow’s head from different angles and occasionally saying, “Hmmm.” Then he straightened up, turned to Paul and asked, “Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland?”

“I saw the movie,” I said, hoping it would help. “Years ago. When I was a kid.”

“Yes, I’ve read it,” Paul said.

“Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” the doctor quoted. “I believe they included the line in the Disney movie as well,” the doctor said as he glanced at me, politely throwing a bone to the less literate in the room.

“Yes,” Paul said with more excitement than Bobby and I were ever able to elicit. “But the book never answered the riddle. That always bugged me.”

“Ah,” the doctor said, holding up a finger and suddenly becoming an English teacher instead of a man of science. “But Lewis Carroll did give a possible answer to the riddle later on when asked about it: because both can produce notes, though they tend to be flat.”

Paul laughed and said, “That’s great.” I didn’t get it.

“But there’s an even better answer, I believe,” said the doctor with a smile. “Why is a raven like a writing-desk? Because Poe wrote on both!”

Paul laughed louder.

I almost got it, but not quite. “Are you talking about the guy who wrote the story about the killer who thought he heard the dead guy’s heart beating under his floor?”

“Yes,” Paul said. “That was ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe. He also wrote that cool poem we did a couple of years ago in English called “The Raven.” Which is the raven that said ‘nevermore,’ And ravens and crows might be the same thing, we just haven’t figured that one out yet.”

“Oh, okay. Got it,” I said, genuinely happy he had caught me up.

“Have you heard the new Beatles song about the walrus yet?” the doctor asked Paul, ignoring me because he probably just assumed I was going to fall behind again. “It mentions Edgar Allan Poe.”

“I’ve heard it, but I didn’t catch that part,” Paul answered.

“Listen to all the lyrics when you get a chance. Just don’t try to analyze it, don’t try to figure out what John is meaning. It’s just for fun, just entertainment without any deep message,” he said as he winked and nodded. “Pure nonsense. Lewis Carroll would approve. I’m pretty sure he’s the one that inspired the walrus references in the first place.”

“Oh, I get it,” Paul said, enlightened. I didn’t get it.

“Fascinating,” Bobby said flatly. We all turned to see he was giving us a my-patience-is-wearing-thin look. It might have been intimidating had he not had a bird’s head stuck in his face.

The doctor said, “Oh, yes, let’s see what we can—”

He was interrupted by the nurse re-entering the room, looking down at the large book open in her hands. “Okay, doctor. If I’m understanding this right: the raven is part of the crow family.”

“So,” he said, “a raven is a crow. But a crow isn’t necessarily a raven.”

“I believe so,” said the nurse.

The doctor looked at Paul and said, “Okay, then.” They nodded at each other as if they had solved a mystery and now their work was done.

“Fascinating,” Bobby said again. We all looked back at him and I realized for the first time he’d been saying the word a lot recently. I thought about this another second or two then realized he’d picked it up from his favorite character in his favorite television show, Star Trek. As if in confirmation, he attempted to raise one eyebrow Spocklike, but immediately grimaced in pain because of the bird’s head.

“So, is there anything else I can do, doctor?” the nurse asked, inching toward the door.

“Absolutely,” he answered. “Glove up.” She did, as did he. “Now bring a basin over here,” he said.

As she made the two or three steps toward the exam table, the doctor turned around, grabbed the crow’s head, and yanked it from Bobby’s.

“Ow,” Bobby whispered wide-eyed, too shocked to respond with any real volume.

“Well, shoot,” the doctor said as he examined the bird’s head. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

He turned to show Paul, the nurse, and me the head. “I was hoping it would come out cleanly, but much of the beak is still in there.” The index finger of his free hand pointed to the jagged stub of a beak. Then he placed the head in the basin, clasped his hands, and said, “So, we’re going to have to do some minor surgery.”

“Surgery?” Bobby asked. We looked back at him and saw a slow stream of blood trickle from his wound and down his nose. The nurse wiped it gently as Bobby repeated, “Surgery?” His face paled and he looked like he might fall face-forward onto the floor below. The doctor and the nurse quickly, instinctively acting as one each moved to different sides of him and lowered him gently backwards until his head rested on the table’s built-in pillow.

“Minor surgery,” the doctor said down to Bobby. “We’re just going to get those little pieces of beak out, get your wound all nice and clean, and give you some stitches.”

“And then I can go home?”

“Well, I’m thinking you’ve probably got a pretty good headache right now. Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“Does it just hurt in the front where you were injured? Or all over your head?”

“It hurts there from getting hit and poked. But my whole head hurts all around like when you get a regular old headache.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said the doctor. “We’re going to see if you have a concussion. After all, your head was hit pretty hard by an object, even if the object was an unusual one. Then the object stuck in your forehead where there’s not any real fat or muscle. It actually impaled the bone a bit, so we will have to x-ray you, then determine what treatment we’ll pursue. You’re going to be here for a little while and there’s a good chance you’ll be staying with us overnight. We have to make sure we’ve got everything figured out and treated before we send you home.”

“Oh, okay,” said Bobby. “I guess that’s a good idea.”

The doctor smiled down at him, patted his shoulder, looked at the nurse and said, “Let’s prep.” Then he turned to us and said, “Gentlemen, you’ve done a good job and you’ve been good friends to this young man. Now I’ll have to ask you to head back out while we take care of your friend.”

Paul and I walked slowly back to the waiting room. While we surveyed the area, taking in the other unfortunate sick and injured, I heard Paul sigh with relief and even with a little bit of satisfaction. We looked at each other and smiled and nodded because someone we didn’t even know had just told us we were good friends to Bobby. And though we might be hard-pressed to say what we had actually done that was so wonderful, we took pride in the fact that this young doctor had just told us we’d done a good job. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves and things in general.

Then she stormed in through the glass doors. She froze and loudly said, “Where is my boy?” to the room, to herself, to nobody in particular. “Where is my boy?” she said again as her head jerked quickly from one side to the other and her crazy, wide eyes scanned the room.

She saw Paul and me, and we braced ourselves. “What have you two white-trash hoodlums done with my boy!”

Mike Todd’s literary/mainstream material has appeared most recently in River Poets Journal, Page & Spine, New Reader Magazine, Books ‘N Pieces, Still Point Arts Quarterly (for which he received a Pushcart Prize nomination), and Embark Literary Journal. His first novel, A SPARROW ON THE HOUSETOP, is currently being presented to publishers by his agent. He can (and should) be followed at facebook.com/ByMikeTodd.