The Bird Airport

I opened the window back up and just started swingin’, shoutin’ at the drops comin’ in and shoutin’ at everything, just swingin’ away with my bat, and I stood there swingin’ for hours till the storm stopped, till I felt good about myself and made it all retreat but not before most of the wall where the window had been wasn’t there anymore. My fiancée came by in the morning.

“We string a wire across some of these posts, then those little sparrows can just line up here between trips to the bird feeders,” I told her. “We can even add a little bird bath over there on the milk crates for ‘em, just like—a Tupperware filled with water,” I said.

“What about the jets?” Jenny asked.

“No, baby,” I said. “Birds fly with their wings.”

“For the tub,” Jenny said. “The birds need little jets for their wave pool. And they’ll need electricity.”

“No way, baby,” I said. “We electrify that line and those birds are gonna light up.” Just to be genteel I added, “Now, we could maybe build out a little bird movie theater over here, a little aviary cinema, mostly just play documentaries and Alfred Hitchcocks, just so they don’t get to thinkin’ that we’re onto ‘em.”

“That’s a great idea,” Jenny said, “but how will they pay for the tickets?”

“They pay with their seed, baby,” I told her. “They hear it’s movie time, they fly in with all their concessions clutched in their little bird mouths thinkin’ they’re gonna have a great bird time—that’s when we frisk ‘em. No outside food, admission’s five sunflower seeds.”

“BOOM,” Jenny said. “You did it.”

“Of course I did, baby,” I said. “Birds are dumb. You think I could be outsmarted by a bird?”

“I never said that,” she said.

“You didn’t have to,” I said, and I stormed off to the Home Depot. What you need to understand about my fiancée is, she’s not so smart when it comes to birds. Like, in her mind birds fly around in little bird-sized airplanes. And I’m like, “How would they ever grab the throttle, baby?”

At the Home Depot I packed my cart full with wood and nail guns and this guy in
orange asked what I was buildin’.

“Birdhouse,” I told him.

“We have kits for that,” he said. “Don’t need all that lumber for a little bird house.”

I said, “Mine’s more like a multiplex.”

He walked off and I dumped a few more nail guns into my cart and picked up
another palette of lumber and stuffed my pants with nails which I feel like nails should
be complimentary with that many nail guns.

Soon as I showed up home Jenny was on me right as rain about how I never take her shopping so I said what my daddy always said in times like these, which is, “Baby, first you get the turkey, then you get the hambone, then you get a six pack and then you’ve earned the new shoes.”

“Your daddy never bowled a day in his life,” she said, which I still don’t see how
that’s relevant but it is true. The man was in love with sandwiches and beer.

“Three strikes, you’re out,” I told her. “First you’re callin’ me dumb, then you’re on me about my shoppin’, now you’re makin’ fun of Daddy while I’m bleedin’ through my jeans.”

She left in a huff which I thought was to get some towels but she disappeared for a good six hours. I shook what was left of the nails out of my pants because a lot already shook out from when I was runnin’ out the store. Then I took the biggest board and nailed the first nail gun to it, then the next and another and another and tied a wire to all the nail-gun triggers so I could just pull the wire and have ‘em all fire at once, to build faster, to build smart.

The funny thing is the thing didn’t work. The trigger wasn’t triggering and there I was with a board of nail guns all nailed together and me not being able to fire ‘em. So I snipped the wire off and turned the board nail-gun-side down and leveled it and nailed that board to the ground and painted a little runway on it, so I could tell my fiancée I changed my mind and built a little airport for the birds instead.

Well—she gets back and tries to tell me I don’t love her and I’m no good to her and she doesn’t want to be my fiancée anymore and all the usual stuff, and she wished I had asked before building out the bird-patio and then she sees the little bird-airport and she just starts crying, like, full waterworks. Like her face is a sheet of water come down washing away all the bloodstains.

I asked if she was drunk and she said she wasn’t drunk but obviously she was drunk because she only cries anymore when she drinks, and I’m the same way, but then she just said the sweetest thing, she said, “Baby, you built me an airport so I could land right home just when I thought I wanted to fly away.”

And I said, “No, baby, it’s for the birds. This airstrip is too small for you. You should not stand on this. You will break it.”

She punched me, hard, right in the solar plexus, which knocked me over not because I’m weak or nothin’ but probably because of all the blood I lost, and I grabbed the bat again that was settin’ under the bed. But I didn’t do anything with it. I just held onto it. I held onto it for a good long time. Just thinkin’ my thoughts.

And finally Jenny thought: “No, baby, no. This is not the storm I choose.”

---

Robert John Miller‘s work has appeared in places like HAD, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Maudlin House, Hawkeye, Scaffold, The Bulb Region and elsewhere, online at robertjohnmiller.com.