In Phoenix, the pigeons have gotten complacent. They strut about in the street outside the shelter, unafraid of people or the odd car that passes by, its passengers looking to score. The pigeons are fat, well fed on the scraps of bread that people throw as they leave the soupline.
A sedan heads east on Jackson, then slows as the driver notices the roadblock of pigeons. He decelerates but does not stop, and as he nears the flock they leisurely begin to move out of his way, stubbornly, indolently, as if to assert dominance.
Thinking he is through this gridlock of birds, and in his impatience to return to wherever he can dose himself, the driver steps on the gas and speeds on. A cloud of dust and feathers swirls behind the car. One pigeon was too slow.
One of the bird’s wings is crushed completely and it is franticly flopping and trying to drag itself someplace quiet. It makes no cries for help, no panicked calls. We are at the height of dinner and there is a long line against the building, people queued up for Chili Night. Everyone is watching the plight of this pigeon, the agonizingly slow death drag. A man walking down Jackson with a forty of St. Ides hanging loosely in his hand has watched the scene unfold. He stops before the frightened creature, picks it up gently with his free hand, and brings it inside the wall of our parking lot. The man stumbles on down Jackson.
I am sitting in the parking lot with Army Bart. We call him Army Bart to distinguish him from regular Bart, who also works at the shelter—with his long hair, his overalls, his gentle eyes—and I secretly find it amusing that the two Barts seem to be photograph and negative, war and peace, steel and hemp, yin and yang.
Army Bart volunteers at the shelter once a week, on Monday nights, always in the parking lot to help with crowd control, always a welcome presence. He is an ex-Marine, in his fifties, silver hair in a tight crew cut. His skin seems to be made from the same material as my belt. Every Monday he and his wife come tearing down the street on his Harley, raising a cloud of dust behind them like the Apocalypse. He parks the bike prominently by the main gate, where it gleams under the desert sunset, on display. Army Bart wears his sunglasses throughout dinner, sleek against his face, the lenses mirrored and opaque.
Army Bart and I watch the dying pigeon. It has hunkered down now in the shade and begins cooing softly to itself. I wonder if it can understand what has happened. I wonder if it knows it is dying, or if it is only aware of overwhelming pain and fear, aware that something has gone drastically wrong.
“You don’t think the Animal Shelter would come down here, do you?”
Army Bart snorts. “To Crack Alley? For a pigeon?” He shakes his head.
We walk over to the wall where the pigeon is now shaking. I ask him how long he thinks it will take to die.
“Could take all night. If it’s only the wing that’s hurt, maybe days before it starves to death.”
We stand there for a moment, pondering the wounded pigeon.
Then, swiftly, Army Bart crushes the pigeon’s skull under the heel of his steel-toed boots, without discussion. His movement is like the flow of water, efficient and detached and inexorable.
The bird shudders for a moment and is still.
“Go get a shovel and clean that up.”
Army Bart seems disgusted with my inaction, disgusted that I—like perhaps so many other people—have made him do the necessary thing.
I find a shovel. I scoop up the dead bird, leaving behind a tiny pool of blood like a nickel. As I walk toward the dumpster, the pigeon’s head lolls brokenly, like a doll. I look up at the sky as I walk, to see how brilliantly orange it is.
***
Several months later, after I’ve left Phoenix, I get a phone call. Army Bart is dead, suddenly, of a heart attack. He was leading exercises in the desert outside of Tucson in 115° heat. As I listen on the other end of the line, I wonder what was behind those impenetrable sunglasses, behind those unyielding boots.
All I can think of is that dying pigeon, and how smoothly he moved.
