By Jen­nifer Lee

GI Joe

1945 

The trucks parade down Con­sti­tu­tion Avenue. I have prac­ticed the steely glint in my eye, holding my beak par­al­lel to the horizon regard­less of the rum­bling engine. On my right rises the august sand­stone of the Smith­son­ian, an insti­tu­tion one might take pride in, except I know the base­ments are filled with the feath­ers of van­ished birds. All the Ever­glades plucked to death. That story isn’t told in the halls of Natural History. There, you are asked to believe Man is the pro­tec­tor, not the per­pe­tra­tor. But things are not always as they seem.

On my left the great obelisk stares into heaven with a marble eye. A cock I knew in the war said he once perched on the point and let loose a dribble, his guano blend­ing with the white stone so that only he knew of his des­e­cra­tion. Prob­a­bly he lied. We were in combat, lis­ten­ing to the rattle of machine guns as we ate our gov­ern­ment-issue corn. Bravado helped to sooth the feath­ers, and it was poor form to chal­lenge a tall tale.

Our route to the Capitol is lined with well wishers and patri­ots, men with chil­dren on their shoul­ders, women waving flags and blowing kisses, urchins cling­ing to the light posts above it all. One hundred sol­diers will be dec­o­rat­ed today – Purple Hearts, Medals of Honor, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, all the ribbons and the crosses. A hundred sol­diers and one pigeon. I puff up my chest. Where once I carried a camera, now the down is smooth, green-gray and mauve. I miss the camera, the weight of it drag­ging against my wings, digging into the scapula. Every flap pinched, but any less effort and the weight of the con­trap­tion would have pulled me down behind enemy lines.

All through the war I dreamed of coming home. I dreamed of that rooftop shack in Ana­cos­tia, the rusted wire, the green paint on the door, the wood soft with rot. Oh, how I missed the sound of rain on tarpa­per, the warm funk of the nests, the hens and cocks so proud of their pedi­grees, every one a carrier pigeon. I thought I could flap right back to it. I’d reclaim my nest, win some races, flirt with the hens and tell war stories to the squabs. I never imag­ined that the war hap­pened to the birds back home too. 

That old rooftop cote is gone. The build­ing was torn down while I was away and now all the birds of my child­hood are scat­tered around the city. I have a hard time finding my way to the new nest. Every time, I fly first to the van­ished rooftop, search­ing for the green door. I circle the empti­ness once, twice, until I remem­ber with a sinking wing that home is now that unfa­mil­iar batch of plywood boxes west of the river, each nest occu­pied by a trau­ma­tized war bird like myself. At night the cease­less rustling and the gurgled coos of terror keep me awake until dawn. 

The band is playing Stars and Stripes Forever as we wend our way toward the Capitol. I enjoy the fanfare, look forward to the medal I have justly earned. I imagine its weight on my breast, rem­i­nis­cent of my dear old camera. But I know the day will end in that wretched pigeon cote filled with broken birds, and my heart aches. It is hard to believe, after all that has hap­pened, that I miss the war. I miss how real every­thing was, how imme­di­ate. The world is dull now, every­thing impor­tant already past. I used to fan­ta­size about raising a nest full of squabs, loving some pretty, dun colored hen with eyes only for me. None of that matters now. I long for the rat­tatat of machine guns and the breeze of bullets zipping past my wings. 

The truck has come to a stop in front of a grand­stand fes­tooned with bunting. There are speech­es, salutes, men in uniform shaking hands with men in black. At last I am brought forth and placed on a velvet cushion. It is an embar­rass­ing frill, but the Amer­i­can people will have their pageantry. Plus, the talons I lost in Nor­mandy make it dif­fi­cult to stand.  I settle on the cushion and try to look gallant as the name GI Joe rumbles over the crowd.

It’s not the Dickin, it’s not the Croix de Guerre; it’s prob­a­bly the medal some lackey’s teenage son won in a track and field event. No matter; the crowd won’t know the dif­fer­ence. And for me it is only the reas­sur­ing weight of the orna­ment I crave. A fiction, but it is all I have.

Cleta

2012

Slim told me it was good work, it was safe work. Pluck my feath­ers, but I believed him. He kept the strangest hours, flying to the CDF morn­ings before dawn or in the evenings after the sun had gone down. It chokes me up, think­ing about it. I can still see his flap­ping wings, his mus­cu­lar breast, sil­hou­et­ted against the twi­light sky. God, he was a good pigeon! He loved his squabs, my Slim did. And we had a nest full of them, which was why he took a job flying cell phones and pills over to the deten­tion center. All Slim had to do was perch on a win­dowsill on the north­east wall and wait for a man to untie the band. No one told Slim about the guns, and he didn’t tell me about them either, not until he got a hole blown through one of his tail feathers. 

He came flying up to our perch all crooked and I com­menced to squawk. “Hush,” Slim cooed, “Hush your­self, Cleta. It ain’t nothing but a bent tail feather.”

“Don’t you bent feather me, Slim Pickins. There’s many a way to get a feather bent and ain’t none of them good.”

Slim knew better than to try to talk me out of my pique, and that’s how he came to confess all about the guards in the towers with the guns. They took shots at Slim every time he deliv­ered. It was due to the shoot­ing that Slim only ran goods during twi­light; had he flown to the prison in the full light of day he’d have been done for. The ones who hired Slim would have had him running con­tra­band in the middle of the night, but show me a pigeon what flies in the dark and I’ll show you a dead pigeon.

Shortly before his demise Slim con­fessed to me that he enjoyed the danger of getting shot at. My cock always was a thrill seeker, but pluck­ing a French fry from a tourist at the War Memo­r­i­al is another thing all togeth­er from getting shot at by prison guards. Sure as you’re hatched, Slim’s number finally came up. It was an evening flight, and Slim lit off a little earlier than usual. It was spring and the days were getting longer and maybe he mis­judged. Our squabs were all hopping about on the ledge, getting up their nerve to fly. Slim Junior stood at the edge and bobbed up and down, trying to steel his feath­ers for the big jump. I kept looking south for Slim. I didn’t want him to miss Junior’s first flight. But the sun was in my eyes and Slim was nowhere in sight, and finally I turned my atten­tion to Junior and encour­aged him to spread his wings and do what he was born to do. Junior swooped down toward the pave­ment and landed on a trash­can, pretty as you please. My baby puffed up his chest and shook his feath­ers, proud as could be. Oh, if only his father was there to see him! 

But Slim never made it home that night. It took me forever to settle the chil­dren, what with the excite­ment of Junior’s flight and now their daddy gone. I cooed to them squabs until my throat was dry and pecked little Myrtle on the head to keep her in the nest. Truth, I had figured Myrtle would be the first to fly, she being such an adven­tur­ous thing. She was fit to be tied that Slim Junior had beat her to it, and she could barely wait for the sun to rise so she could spread her wings.

Now all my squabs have flown the coop; nothing is left of them but bits of down pressed among the twigs and the candy wrap­pers. Without Slim I won’t be able to hold on to this nest much longer. The eaves of the Smith­son­ian are among the most coveted roosts in the city. There’s a long line of hens eyeing my patch. By the time all the leaves have fallen from the trees I’ll be on the streets. I’ll be lucky if I can find a place down in the Foggy Bottom metro tunnel. It’ll be warm down there at least, but the thought of them rat­tling trains sure ruffles my feath­ers. It’d be best I moved on now and not wait until I’m pecked off the ledge. But I just can’t bring myself to leave the last place I ever snug­gled under Slim’s wing. Wring my neck, but some­times I can still hear his deep-throat­ed coo, I can still feel the beat of his fear­less heart. Lord, how I miss my hand­some cock.

Buttons

2032

It is very nice. A bit bright, now the trees are gone, but I am grate­ful – we are grate­ful – for this second chance. There are a few hundred of us now, more hatch­ing from the proto-eggs each day. I have no idea how many of us are being brought back, or if any of the others remem­ber the Before Times. 

It is early autumn and the itch of migra­tion is in my wings. I don’t know exactly where we are. I know we hatched in a lab in the base­ment of the Smith­son­ian and then Marines loaded us onto trucks, chicks in wire cages barely able to stand. The trucks left us here.  A trem­bling cock told me we are in a corn­field near Quan­ti­co, Vir­ginia. My bones tell me we should be far, far away, but I don’t trust what we will find in this strange new world, and I dare not take flight. 

I don’t wish to com­plain. The light is too bright, but perhaps that has more to do with a century spent with buttons for eyes than the lack of forest. I am not the only bird brought back because of taxi­dermy, but I wonder if others are as haunted as I am by the years spent as an orna­ment. It is very nice here. I am grate­ful – we are grate­ful – for this pleas­ant field of corn. There is no one around but the returned pas­sen­gers, but I know who left the corn, I know who brought us back: The same ones who burned the trees and replaced my eyes with buttons.

I remem­ber the great flocks of our migra­tions, how we moved like a moun­tain range across the sky, plum­met­ing like meteors to our evening roost. Dark wings all around, safe as an egg, no one ever thought there could be an end. Perhaps that is why the light is so dis­turb­ing; it is not the lack of trees or the memory of buttons that unset­tles, but the absence of wings. Or perhaps it is the corn, trig­ger­ing one of my darkest mem­o­ries, that leaves me trem­bling in this strange new world.

I was barely out of the nest, full of the drive to fly and fol­low­ing my kin on my first migra­tion when we came upon a corn­field just like this one. Oh, the hunger of migra­tion! Hun­dreds of miles flown without rest and sud­den­ly in the amber light of dusk a field of ripened corn. We fell upon it as a wave, rav­en­ous. It was my youth and inex­pe­ri­ence that saved me. The grown birds, hens and cocks twice my size, got to the corn first. I barely got a kernel of what had been put out for us, all of it soaked in whiskey and meant to kill. Rav­en­ous as I was, I saw what the corn did to the others and I shut my beak. All around me cousins stag­gered and shook with sick, their beaks ajar, their throats atrem­ble. The shoot­ing, which I had lis­tened to all my life and barely noticed any more, reached a crescen­do. Poi­soned birds explod­ed all around me, their blood and bones and guts splat­ter­ing my wings. I did the only thing there was to do – I took flight. I and a million sur­vivors of the carnage rose into the air, hoping the mass of our beating hearts and wings would save us from the hunters. We were a young flock, all our seniors dying in the field below, and we barely knew where to go.

But it is very nice here, and I am grate­ful – we are grate­ful – to be back. Hours have passed, lost to rem­i­nis­cence. I cannot stop the mem­o­ries. Around me the other pas­sen­gers bob and coo, lost to their tragic pasts. If only we can hold on, pretend to do the things that pigeons do: eat, mate, fly, roost. In a year new squabs will come, and these from proper eggs in nests, not the incu­ba­tor that brought me back. If we can hold on, perhaps the next gen­er­a­tion will bear the bless­ing of for­get­ting. They will accept this bright, silent world as all nature intend­ed. They will look upon their shat­tered parents and shake their heads at our weak­ness. And I will be so grate­ful – we will all be so grate­ful – that they do not know the truth.

Coda 

2034

Martha stared at the slant­i­ng rays cast through the panes of the ceiling. The shadows of the spars were evoca­tive of some­thing, but she didn’t know what. She said to her friends, “Those pat­terns are very nice, the way they criss­cross on the floor.”

“What they look like is prison bars, you silly hen.” Perky fluffed her feath­ers and gave Martha a peck – not a mean one, but not a nice one either – on her neck. 

Perky was small for a rock pigeon. She grew up fight­ing for her spot in the nest, but no matter what she did, no one ever seemed to see her. Foggy Bottom was a rough neigh­bor­hood, and Perky was on her own down there. Once, a couple of boys trapped her by throw­ing a jacket over her head. They tied a string to her leg and dragged her around like a kite, pre­tend­ing they were pigeon train­ers. It took Perky half the morning to snap the string. She flew straight out of the Foggy Bottom tunnel after that and never looked back. She found shelter in Union Station. High in the beams, not far from where they perched right now, she found Wallace staring into space without one flicker of joy in his eye.

Wallace didn’t say what he thought about the shadows on the floor, but it didn’t matter; every­thing remind­ed him of the war. Trauma sealed his voice, but so did the damage to his vocal chords caused by the sarin gas. He had served in one of the wars – Wallace never knew which – as a canary. Wallace hated that the sol­diers called him that, like he was some little yellow tweetie bird, but his job was to enter aban­doned build­ings and deter­mine if they were free of chem­i­cal agents, just like a canary in a coal mine. Most of the build­ings were clean, but not all. Hence his mangled voice box and the bald patches on his head and neck.

Martha was used to Wallace’s silence. In fact, it remind­ed her of her child­hood. All the first gen birds were prac­ti­cal­ly mute. No matter how many times Martha had squawked at her parents, “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me what hap­pened!” They just shook and gurgled and tried to pretend that every­thing was normal. Those warped and stunted birds hadn’t an ounce of guid­ance for their chicks, and Martha’s entire gen­er­a­tion grew up bad. She had no friends and she didn’t trust the birds her age. She left for good the day she saw a gang of juve­niles pluck the feath­ers from an old cock, one of those ter­ri­fied stut­ter­ers the young birds loved to tease. They pulled so many of his feath­ers that the old pigeon couldn’t fly, and Martha felt the morning’s corn rising up in her crop. She didn’t know where she was going. She flew north because the posi­tion of the sun and the tem­per­a­ture of the air told her to, but it was awful flying alone. A deep-seated instinct screamed in her brain that there ought to be ten million pigeons flying with her, wing to wing, tight as a hay bale. She didn’t get far. Martha was flying over the US Capitol when she real­ized the sun was going down and she needed to find a place to roost. The train station was just ahead. Light beat down on its glass ceiling, just as it did now, and the glint caught her eye. She found her way in and then she found Wallace and Perky. They had scorned her at first because she was so tall, because her breast was red, and because her tail feath­ers were so long. But they let Martha roost between them, which made her feel safe. Life was mar­gin­al­ly better in their company, even if Perky some­times lashed out and called her extinct.

The three birds watched the shift­ing shadows in silence. Martha saw a poignant reminder of the wings that should have sur­round­ed her with every flight, wings so many they dark­ened the sky. It would never happen and Martha knew it. No amount of regret and tech­no­log­i­cal apti­tude would ever bring the pas­sen­gers back. Her parents never cooed a word about the holo­caust, but Martha didn’t need to be told about the geno­cide; she was born with the truth of it deep in her bones. Perky and Wallace were right; she was freak­ish, and she had no place here. Not any more.

Perky watched the last trav­el­ers enter and exit the station. Unwit­ting­ly they stepped over the shadows, unaware they were the bars of a cage. Perky was expert at spot­ting guns, and in the last hour she had observed more than a dozen hand­guns con­cealed in suit coats and hand­bags and the waist­bands of baggy jeans. Firearms had fas­ci­nat­ed Perky all her life. So many people carried them, and Perky won­dered if that was why they seemed so obliv­i­ous. Did they not realize they were in a prison? At least Perky knew her life was a cage. She knew she would never be safe.

Wallace watched the shadows stretch across the floor, and he was far, far away. The check­ered tiles became scorched brown fields, evenly inter­rupt­ed by roads. Humvees like the com­muters Perky studied trav­eled upon them. Over­head, planes droned past, car­ry­ing their bombs and their poison gas. Their bodies and their wings cast shadows on the ground, and it was this that Wallace saw as light came through the windows of Union Station. The planes were the real war birds. Wallace knew that no matter what he did, what sac­ri­fices he made, all his courage and devo­tion meant nothing. At the end of the day he was no war bird; he was just another dove dressed in tatters. 

The hollow horn of a train leaving the station echoed through the chamber. Think­ing their private thoughts, Wallace and Perky and Martha watched the shadows stretch across the floor and climb the eastern wall until sud­den­ly, in the blink of an eye, all the light was gone.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Andraz Lazic