The Stillness of Flight

When Greg found the dead sparrow on the sidewalk in front of his house he stopped, knelt on both knees and paused, waiting for it to spring to life. Setting his backpack down, he closed his eyes, shut them tight, and pressed the heels of his palms hard against his thighs. He moved as slowly and as little as possible. He willed the bird to move; he opened his eyes and watched the small breast for breath. He poked it gently with his forefinger, nudging it with his knuckle. Nothing.

After a few moments, resigned, he cupped the bird with his two hands, raised it up as if it were a delicate flower, and carried it behind his garage. With his fingers and then a pen from his backpack he scratched at the cold November topsoil, dug the grave a little more than a fistful deep, and pressed the soil over the bird with his palms. When he returned to pick up his backpack, he noticed his mother watching him from the kitchen window as he approached the house. She was expecting him home, after school. He didn’t acknowledge her, looked away, and shuffled to the back door, rubbing the dirt from his hands.

Greg slid, fully clothed, under the covers of his bed, and lay as flat as possible on his stomach. He lay very still. He shut his eyes tight and tried very hard not to think of anything. This was always impossible, of course; honking horns from the street, or his mother’s insistent call to supper, always these intrusions. But in recent months he had been making a serious attempt, anyway, each day after school. Many times since last spring he had not gone to school, huddling under the sheets in his bed, behind his tightly closed door.

He ached to stop up his eyes, his ears, the nerve endings lying close under his skin, and to slow the steady pounding of the blood in his brain. If he lay very still he could imagine the shrinking going on: The lump of himself under the blanket, like dough set to rise, seemed to be gradually deflating, as if it had been disrupted by a sudden jolt, losing shape and form, no longer to rise. He had the will-power to do it, he was confident of that. Even now, he could almost shut it all out.

It was his mother who had encouraged him to explore birds, seeing his initial interest. She helped him identify different birds in the neighborhood. She helped him choose books from the library on birds of the midwest. He began to study their various songs, their flight patterns, their differences.

The floating of wings on air, seemingly so effortless, was really stillness, Greg thought; it was the illusion of motion to mere humans craning their necks from the ground. Inside, the birds were still, Greg knew. He watched them rise and dive, he admired their quick, darting escapes and their tremendous explosive power, and yet, he knew, they were somehow still.

From the gradual slope of his roof he had often watched the birds resting in the great dark oak tree in the side yard next to his house. From the edge of the roof he felt he could almost touch them. Sometimes he stretched out a hand as if to measure the distance that separated him from the nearest tip of the nearest branch. Less than fifteen feet away, a branch sturdy enough to bear his weight reached out to him.

The drop between the room and the branch was over two stories to the concrete driveway that separated the house from the yard. Imagining that leap nearly froze him with fear and delight. The skittish birds sometimes watched him warily, hopping from branch to branch. He sat as quietly as possible, motionless, so they might trust him. Each day he felt closer to them. When the birds flew, dark flecks against the blue sky, darting explosions of fluttering motion, Greg would watch them, imagine himself soaring with them as far as he could see them fly.

He opened the door to the back porch and noticed it was getting late. It must be nearly nine, he thought. He observed the light of the pale moon rising, and the fainter, surrounding stars. He took a deep breath, steadied his feet on the ladder, gripped the rungs firmly and hoisted himself up on the roof. How could any–merely human–beings, know what it meant to fly?

Greg stood firmly on the roof and tested his weight on the edge, to determine how much it would give if he thrust out from it. He paced a few feet back from the edge, bending his knees several times, bouncing on his toes, flexing his arms, twisting his shoulders, arching his back, an acrobat poised for the swing. He found it difficult to steady himself. He trembled a little, feeling sweat crawl down the back of his neck.

He tried to shut it all out. All of it. He shut his eyes tight and used all the will-power he could summon. But then he thought of the bird, the sparrow he had buried. He sat down and hugged his knees. He thought how it was that the bird may have died. The horrifying crash, the end of it all. And he opened his eyes. He went inside, trying to decide what to do.

And then he saw the bird seed package his mother must have left out for him. He sat on his bed, considering. He got up and walked out to the roof again. He opened the package and began to scatter seeds all around him, as far as he could reach, with both hands, and sat down, putting some seed in both hands, his arms outstretched, closing his eyes. Maybe this was better. He heard a goldfinch to his left come close to the roof and fly to a tree nearby. He sat as still as he could and waited.

David Schaafsma is a Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he directs the Program in English Education. He teaches courses in English teaching methods, and literature. He’s the author or co-editor of six books and is in the process of writing more.