Then one day his mother told my father that there was nothing to eat. My family was in the kitchen; my three sisters: Shirley, Roslyn and Gail and I. My sisters were older than I by many years.
My father asked, No bread? No potatoes?
She shook her head.
Can’t we borrow –
No, she said.
No, he agreed.
My mother took a deep breath and exhaled. The birds, she said.
My father said nothing.
The birds, she said again. I could make a thin soup that would last us for a couple of days.
My father’s light blue eyes went from child to child. Then, he pursed his lips, left the kitchen and went up to the roof.
I followed him.
My father walked slowly up the steps, pushed open the door to the roof and stepped out on to its black surface.
I did not go beyond the doorway. The coop was directly in front of him, near the low brick wall at the back edge of the building.
My father went up to the coop but did not open the door. He stood with his back toward Steven. He was hunched over, as if he were protecting himself from blows
too painful to bear. He seemed smaller than he was. His body shook with waves of emotion, of sadness. He sobbed softly.
I can’t do it, he suddenly shouted. I can’t do it. He opened the door to the coop and stepped back. The birds were in the air within moments.
My father used a handkerchief to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. Then he moved a way from the coop and watched his birds until they were specks in the sky.
#
My father never again owned pigeons, and though we continued to go to Kogel my father no longer took any part in racing the bird.
Years later Kogel died. One by one my sister’s married and left the house. World War Two came and went. I finished college, married and went off to the Korean War. By the time I returned both my parents were in their seventies..
When it wasn’t raining or snowing, I often found my father sitting on a bench close to the Parkside Avenue entrance to Prospect Park feeding the pigeons. More than once he told me, They’re happy when I come. I’m sure they know me.
Could I deny it?
#
The cabby pulls up to the corner of Eleventh Avenue and Fifty Seventh Street. The tab on the meter is four dollars and sixty cents.
I give him a ten-dollar bill. For bird food, I said.
The driver smiles at me. Yes, food for my friends.
Our friends, I say, correcting him and leave the cab.
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