Pickin' Blaine's Brain: Pick o' the Day: The Grackle Catcher

(The Complete Story with Conclusion and Interactive Soundtrack)

One more step up, and he would be able to reach a grackle. He had climbed the electrical pole slowly, almost sloth-like, so as not to startle the birds, and he made no sound at all except for the short, raspy breaths emanating from his mouth (breathing through his nose was nearly impossible thanks to a frustratingly deviated septum and its inseparable BFF, chronic sinusitis). As he took the final step up, he inhaled deeply and then grabbed for the nearest bird in a quick, darting movement, snagging one of its panicked legs with the thumb and index finger of his right hand as it exploded in a black flurry of flailing and flapping wings. Pulling the bird to his chest, he tucked its tail into his armpit, hushing it into a calmed, almost catatonic state as he began making his way back down the pole.

After reaching the weedy ground of the parking lot island, Hank Wendt turned and scanned the area thoroughly before stepping onto the pavement. He was extremely cautious when walking through parking lots or crossing streets, relying on his eyes to alert him to approaching dangers since his ears could not. He was almost totally deaf in his right ear, due to an unfortunate incident that had occurred when he was a child, though he rarely spoke of it. And after years of working as a carpenter’s helper, enduring without protection the screaming screeches of power saws and the blunt-force sonic trauma of pounding hammers, he had probably lost about half the hearing in his “good” ear. But it was an invisible disability, and as long as he was able to position himself to the right of someone who was speaking to him, he could generally hear the bulk of a conversation. And if, due to heavy background noise, he could not, he would simply smile and nod his head as the other person spoke. It usually didn’t matter much, for the conversations were, as a rule, one-sided, for there weren’t many who were much interested in anything he had to say. There were even some acquaintances who thought of him as a “good listener”, and they would walk away with a warm and therapeutic feeling after talking to him, as if they had confessed to a priest, though, unbeknownst to them, he had only pretended to hear.

Hank began to walk, or rather, limp, with his tenth grackle of the afternoon still tucked under his arm like an avian football, into the cold, easterly breeze blowing up Blessing Street. After coming to the end of the second block, he stopped. The chill wind and the frigid humidity made his left leg, held together with screws and plates due to a life-shattering break a few years back, ache unmercifully, so two blocks was about as far as he could go. Taking the bird out of the snug nest made by the crook of his arm, and holding it carefully with both hands, he whispered these words into its ears; that is, where he assumed the bird’s ears should be, though he couldn’t see them: “Fly to the woodlands, away from the city! You’ll be much happier there!” He then released the bird into the gusty headwind, and it flapped noisily away. “Catch and release,” chuckled Hank. “Catch and release.”

Since that was just about all he could take for one day, he decided to head for home. Catching grackles in the grocery store parking lot and humanely releasing them in another location gave him a good feeling inside, for, to him, he was doing an important act of “public service”. He had long been disturbed by the immense flocks of grackles that, at certain times of the year, would invade the neighborhood airspace and roost on the power lines and in the trees that encircled the local shopping centers. The sheer numbers of birds, and the accompanying cacophony of cries and caws, were horrifying to many of the residents, especially the women and children, who would hurry to the store entrances, hands clasped over their heads or ears, hoping against hope they would not get pooped on. And good luck finding a shopping cart that had not been sullied, at least a little, by the drippy droppings of these otherwise friendly and good-natured animals. The store owners did nothing about the problem because they thought there was nothing they could do. But Hank Wendt did not think that way. He did not like to hear anyone say, “Someone should do something about that.” He believed with all his heart that problems were meant to be solved, and if he could do something about a problem, then, by golly, he would do it.

For the last five years since his beloved mother, brother, and sister moved away, he had regularly dedicated a significant portion of each week to this humble and largely unrecognized volunteer service for his community. And doing so went a long way towards easing the silent, but nevertheless raging, river of loneliness that relentlessly ate away at the aging infrastructure of his optimism towards life. He had known heartbreak literally as long as he could remember, for his father left home when Hank was only three, just one month after his awakening from babyhood, and had yet to return. His memories of the man were dim, but certain features of his father stayed with him to this day: his jet black hair, his scratchy face (straight out of Hank’s favorite book of all time, Pat the Bunny), the smoke of his Lucky Strike cigarettes wrapped around his head like a Sikh’s turban. Precious memories. Where his father had gone, he did not know. His mother, if she knew, never told him, and whenever she spoke of the man she would close every sentence with the words “da bum!” as if they were a new type of end punctuation mark she had invented because neither periods nor exclamation points felt quite right. And it was his father’s absence that had made it impossible for Hank to accompany his mother and siblings when they moved away. “Somebody’s got to be here when Dad comes back. Otherwise, he won’t know what happened to us!” he tearfully explained to them as they packed up the family Rambler with all their belongings. His mother just shook her head and said, “Hank, you’re an idiot,” jammed the stick into first, and roared away into the night. “Be sure to write!” Hank yelled, and then fell into a coughing fit from the acrid smoke left behind.

So Hank stayed behind to wait for his father, but not in the old family home, with its torn screens and peeling paint and leaky roof. His mother had sold it just before she left to an immigrant Indian family, but because she felt a little bad for him, she told him he could have the old pop-up tent trailer that had been buried for years under dusty piles of garage junk, which she had no intention of taking with her, and Hank thought that it would be just fine. He asked his next door neighbor, an elderly Mexican widow and “crazy cat-lady” named Julia, who, for some reason unknown to Hank, pronounced her name as “Hoolia”, if he could park the small trailer in her back yard and live there until his father came back, when the both of them would then join up with the rest of the family, wherever they might be. She said she didn’t mind, and she would even let him plug an electrical extension cord to the outlet outside her back door. All he had to do for her, she said, was catch her some more cats. She couldn’t be happy unless she had at least 50 of them lying around, and due to natural attrition, she would need at least one or two new ones a month. “Hoolia” also kept a perpetual yard-sale going on in her weedy front lawn in order to raise money to feed her flock of felines, selling old clothes, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, cracker jacks, gimcracks, baubles, trinkets, and gewgaws to a local mix of neighborhood riffraff, transients, hobos, winos, and blue-haired flea-market queens who would never pay the asking price for anything and who, if they actually had to spend more than a quarter for any one item, would walk away with a disgusted look on their sour, wrinkled faces muttering, “Too rich for my blood… too rich for my blood.” And Hank could never figure out where “Hoolia” kept getting more things to sell; if the merchandise seemed to be dwindling, she would just go into her house and bring out another box or two to replenish the stock. She must have hoarded literally tons of stuff over the years, and she was now slowly getting rid of it, piece by piece, for the benefit of her beloved cats.

Now Hank had never been on his own, and though he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live alone; to come home at the end of a long workday to a room devoid of human life, to eat his dinner in utter silence, to go to bed without being able to say “Good night!” to anyone, to wake up the next day without being able to say “Good morning!” to anyone… if he would have spent any amount of time really thinking about this, he would have been absolutely terrified. But his naturally optimistic nature would not allow him to think such negative thoughts, and instead he began to think of his new situation as an “adventure”, and that, for the foreseeable future, everyday was going to be a “camp-out”. He remembered fondly the summer of his tenth year, when he and his friend Roger would camp-out in his backyard: the two of them working all afternoon to create a tent made out of an old, paint-spattered visqueen dropcloth, using straightened wire coat hangers to roast wienies and marshmallows over a small campfire, drinking warm grape Kool-Aid out of a dented Army surplus canteen, lying on their backs in the dark, gazing at the starry night, and feeling lucky when they witnessed a meteor flashing across the sky. That was a great summer. But Roger drowned the next year while on a school picnic at Lake Travis, and Hank had never felt much like camping again after that.

“Hoolia” wouldn’t grant him permission to have a campfire in her backyard, but she did give him an old microwave oven that she had planned to sell at her yard sale so that he could heat up his food. That pretty much limited what Hank could cook on his “camp-out”, making roasted-wienies-on-a-stick out of the question. He once tried an experiment to see if he could brown a marshmallow in it, but the Jet-Puff just turned into a sticky, white goo that stuck permanently to the oven’s bottom. So he resigned himself to a diet that consisted primarily of Cups-O-Noodle, Pizza Pockets, and Orville Redenbacher’s “Gourmet” popcorn. Ah, to Hank, there was nothing like Orville’s beautiful popcorn. Light, fluffy, and buttery. Perfect everytime. He usually had at least five cases of the stuff stacked up in his tent trailer, for he was worried that the local grocery store would run out of it. He thought this because he had read in the paper a while back that Orville had died tragically by drowning in his Jacuzzi, and for many, many days after reading this, Hank felt devastated. He had come to think that Orville was a friend, and now he was drowned, just like Roger. And soon, his popcorn would run out and be gone forever, too.

And so it had been five years now, living on his own in a pop-up tent trailer under a spreading oak tree in “Hoolia’s” back yard, working as a carpenter’s helper for minimum wage, catching and releasing grackles for the benefit of his community, occasionally catching stray cats, expecting his father to show up any day now, and still waiting for his mother to write and tell him where she and his brother and sister had all ended up.

“Hello? Anybody home?” Hank’s dream was, as usual, taking a weird twist. The pack of tigers that were chasing him around the inside of his old elementary school had cornered him in the boy’s bathroom, and he was making a last stand by barricading himself in one of the stalls. Since the flimsy aluminum door did not go all the way to the floor, he could see the immense paws of the tiger chieftain as it stood there, in front of his stall, peeking at him through the half-inch crack, and he could hear it snuffling at the lock. And then it spoke again, this time much louder. “I said, hello? Anyone home?” The tone of the tiger’s voice was so disturbingly nasty that it actually woke Hank up, and he realized, despite his mental fogginess, that it was coming from outside his pop-up tent trailer and not from inside his head. He tried to raise his body to a sitting position, but he found he was weighed-down by three very chubby cats, and one kitten, who were dozing on top of him. “Come on, get off me, guys!” he rasped, his throat parched by a long night of sonorous mouth-breathing. The cats reluctantly moseyed off to another corner of the tent and immediately went back to sleep. Whoever was outside was now pounding on the flimsy aluminum door of the tent trailer, causing the whole rickety contraption to shake. “Who is it?” Hank shouted as he hurriedly pulled on a faded Mighty Mouse t-shirt and a pair of hopelessly wrinkled khaki cargo shorts.

“It’s me, Merle! Is that you, Wendt?” said the rather unattractive and obnoxious voice outside the door. “I gotta talk to you, man! Open the door!” It was Merle! Merle Zitzky! Hank’s nemesis since the third grade! What in the world was he doing here?

Hank opened the door and stepped out into the blazingly bright Saturday morning sunlight. There stood Merle, in all his 400 pound, clip-on-tie glory, leering at him from behind a cheap pair of sunglasses and puffing on a Pall Mall, his huge man-boobs and doughy muffin-top waist puffing out his overly-tight short-sleeve shirt. Merle was an assistant manager at the neighborhood B-U-T-T-S Superstore (affectionately called “Big BUTTS” by the grocery-shopping locals), a position that had taken him three times longer to attain than most other employees who had similar aspirations, but it was a position that he, nevertheless, had finally attained. And standing next to him was one of the store’s crack security guards, Lester Guy, a skinny, pimply-faced toad, who was trying to look mean and tough, even though, as usual, his zipper was down.

For a moment, Hank felt dizzy as a series of long-repressed memories flashed through his cerebral cortex: encountering Merle for the first time in 3^rd grade when they were both approximately the same size; Merle challenging him to a fight after school; Merle wanting to box not knowing that Hank was a skilled rassler; Hank showing Merle that rassling always trumps boxing by putting Merle in an unescapable headlock and causing his nose to bleed; Hank finding that Merle left him alone for a long time after that; Merle then proceeding to grow at twice the rate of a typical elementary school student; Merle using his gargantuan size to gleefully terrorize everyone in the school, including the teachers; Merle dropping out of school in 9^th grade (thankfully) and then disappearing for a long time, only to return to the neighborhood years later as a semi-sobered-up night stocker at B-U-T-T-S. Hank shook his head to stop the flashbacks, then looked up again at his two unwelcome visitors and asked, “What do you want?”

Merle was definitely there for a reason, but he was in no hurry to reveal it. “So this is where you live, huh Hank?” he sneered. “I heard rumors you lived in a tent, but I didn’t believe it ‘til now.” Hank did not respond, but he knew then this encounter wasn’t going to end well. Merle looked disappointed that he didn’t get the response he was looking for, so he decided to get to the point. “Look man, it’s about the birds. You need to stop messin’ with ‘em.” He took another drag on his cigarette, looked at Lester, and smiled. Lester did his best to maintain his scary face.

“I’m just helping you guys out by encouraging the birds to leave. Your customers are happier, and the birds are happier, too,” said Hank, calmly, though he felt his blood pressure rising fast. “It’s better than doing nothing, ain’t it?” Merle and Lester started snickering, and then they both broke out into full-fledged laughter. “You ain’t doin’ nothin’ catchin’ them things,” chortled Lester, breaking his silence. “I take care of three times more of ‘em than you every night.” He patted the pellet gun holstered to his belt and grinned. “Whaddya think of that?”

Hank felt his hands turning into fists, but he kept his arms at his sides. “I think you need to leave.” Merle took another drag, blew the smoke on Hank, and said, “You stop messin’ with them birds. We see you messin’ with ‘em again, we’re goin’ to kick your ass.” He flicked his cigarette butt toward the tent trailer. “Let’s go, Lester.” The two of them walked away, laughing. Hank watched them exit the backyard and then looked towards the house. He saw “Hoolia” looking out her back screen door with a frown on her face. Evidently, she had witnessed the unpleasant encounter, and Hank hoped he hadn’t caused her any worries. What he didn’t see was “Hoolia” silently uncocking her Glock 19 semi-automatic as she returned to her kitchen.

He turned and wearily sat down on a weathered lawn chair. He put his hands over his face, feeling as if life had just sucker-punched him in the gut again. His attempt at meaningful public service was important to him, and he didn’t want to stop doing it. And to think what would happen to the birds if he wasn’t there to convince them to leave for a better place than the B-U-T-T-S parking lot. Unbearable. Tears began forming under his closed eyelids. And then the first whiff of smoke hit his nostrils. It smelled like burning canvas! Jumping to his feet, he turned to his pop-up tent trailer and gasped! It was on fire!

“FIRE!” yelled Hank. “OH, NO!” The ancient, dried-out canvas that formed the sides and ends of his humble shelter was ablaze! The first things that came to his mind were “THE CATS!”, and then “THE POPCORN!” He grabbed at the trailer’s door and yanked it open. Immediately, the three full-grown cats flew out, hitting him in rapid-fire succession as if they were shot out of a semi-automatic cat-gun, and knocking him down to the ground in the process. Hank immediately picked himself back up and dove into the trailer, keeping low to avoid the dark cloud of choking smoke that was quickly filling the upper half of the small living space. He heard the frantic mewing of the kitten in a far corner of his bed, and he crawled to it, ignoring the hot ashes falling like blazing snowflakes onto his head. He then cradled the tiny, terrified tabby in the crook of his right arm, in much the same way he would a grackle, and because of this, he had to crawl back out using a sort of side-stroke swimming technique to pull himself along the floor using only his left arm. Reaching the doorway again, he slid out headfirst straight to the ground, gave the kitten a gentle toss into a tuft of green grass, and started rolling in the dirt, thinking for sure he was on fire himself. Finding that not to be the case, Hank sat back up, wiped his eyes, and started back to the trailer. He had to get the popcorn out of there before it blew! There were at least five cases of Orville Redenbachers’s stacked on a small counter next to the little microwave, and if the intense heat of the out-of-control fire made it all go off at once… a horribly vivid mental picture formed in his mind of a gigantic, Jiffy-Pop-like mushroom cloud erupting tens of thousands of feet into the sky out of “Hoolia’s” back yard, followed by a devastating shock wave leveling the entire impoverished neighborhood, followed by a light, buttery fallout raining down upon the smoking ruins! Hank could not, would not, let this happen!

Just as he was about to throw himself back into the burning trailer, a sudden blast of ice-cold water hit him in the back, just below the shoulder blades, and the unexpected shock of it made him let out a girlish shriek as he jumped about three feet into the air! Upon landing, he turned around and immediately got it right in the face. “Stop it!” he spluttered, waving his hands blindly in the air, not knowing what was going on. The assault on his face ceased, and Hank, wiping and blinking the water out of his eyes, discovered it was “Hoolia” doing the shooting. She was standing there wide-eyed, with garden hose and high-pressure nozzle in hand, and she was now spraying down his legs. He understood then what she was doing. She knew he had to go back into the burning trailer, and that there would be no talking him out of it, so she was wetting him down first. This could buy him a few more seconds, maybe. He was soon completely sopping, and she looked satisfied with her work, so she lowered the hose, made the Sign of the Cross, and said, “Vaya con Dios, Hank Wendt!” Then she turned her attention and the full force of the hose onto the raging fire.

Back into the mini-inferno he went! He would have to try to hold his breath, for there was no air left in the smoke-filled trailer, and he certainly could not see anything. But he knew where the popcorn was stacked, and before you could say “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”, all five cases, one after the other, were quickly heaved out. And right behind the last one came Hank, coughing uncontrollably, carrying the microwave oven under his left arm and his treasure box under his right. After taking three wobbly steps away from the trailer, he collapsed. And then everything went dark…

…and he found himself back in junior high school. Seventh grade, to be exact. That was a pretty good year, if he remembered it correctly. He was 12 years old and almost a teen-ager. He had finally reached 100 pounds on the bathroom scale. He had a new, metallic-green Schwinn Sting-Ray with a banana seat as his cool new ride, purchased with the $62.50 he had earned and saved doing odd jobs around the neighborhood for an entire summer. And it was the year he got married to Evangeline.

He could never forget the first time he laid eyes on her. It was the middle of April, and he was sitting in 1^st period English class, fourth row, fifth chair back, feeling himself drifting in and out, as the teacher droned on and on and on about the finer points of the (ultimately futile) parsing of sentences. And then there was a sharp knock at the classroom door, rousing Hank from his dazed and confused state. As he and the rest of the class turned their heads to look, in walked the frumpy school counselor followed by what many might say was a rather thin, almost skinny, girl with a mouth full of braces, who seemed, at first, to be extremely shy. But to Hank, who instinctively sat up straight in his desk, she was, to put it simply, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen: a girl with long, silky brunette hair, gorgeous brown eyes, and a devastatingly lovely face. She was looking down at the floor, her crossed arms holding her notebook to her chest, as the counselor introduced her to the teacher, who seemed a bit peeved to have to add another student to the roll so late in the school year. The counselor soon left, and the teacher, still obviously irked by the unforeseen interruption of her cherished grammar lesson, rather hastily introduced the girl to the class as Evangeline Martinez and directed her to take the empty seat directly behind Hank.

To the rest of the class, it was definitely no big deal. The other boys seemed disinterested at best, and the other girls were not going to be in any big hurry to make friends with the pretty new girl, especially this late in the school year. But Hank could feel his heart rate rising as Evangeline made her way down the aisle, and to his totally unexpected delight, she smiled so very sweetly at him as she walked by on her way to her seat, and he almost fainted because of it! Beads of sweat formed on his clammy forehead as he stared straight ahead, and he neither saw nor heard anything else for a few minutes until his heart rate started slowing down. And when it finally did, he realized that no other girl he had ever known had made him feel the way she did. And all it took was a smile!

More than three school days passed before Hank finally worked up the courage to introduce himself properly to Evangeline, and they hit it off right away after that. He was thrilled that she let him show her around the school and escort her to her classes (even though she was perfectly capable of finding her way around on her own). They enjoyed lunch together every day, and they marveled at how similar their tastes were in agreeing that the Sloppy Joes were, in regards to school lunches, the absolute best. Hank once even refused to eat his meager helping of Apple Crisp, which was the highlight of Thursday lunches; instead offering it to Evangeline so that she could have twice the enjoyment of the sweet apple-y delight. And he gave her the deluxe tour of the school’s small library, guiding her through the fascinating reference section, with its huge atlases and gigantic globe, the non-fiction area with its fact books of nearly every country in the world, and, finally, his favorite, the young adult fiction area. He had pretty much read everything in this part of the library, many of the books at least twice, so she asked him to pick out a good one for her to check-out. After giving it some thought, he selected Misty of Chincoteague, reasoning that most girls liked ponies, and this wild pony story was extremely well-written, especially in its vivid descriptions of things such as the white spot on Misty’s side that was shaped like the United States.

Evangeline had actually read this book before, in third grade, but she didn’t tell Hank this for fear that it would hurt his feelings. She had noticed that Hank was often teased and made fun of by the other students in class. She would cringe when, at least once a day, she heard other kids loudly call out, “Where’s Hank Wendt?” right in front of him, and to which he would reply, “I ain’t went nowhere! I’m right here!”, never getting why they would always laugh at his earnest answer. She could tell he was not from a well-to-do family, and she didn’t care. He was the only person at her new school who had made an effort to make her feel welcome, and he treated her, day in and day out, like she was the most important person in the world. When he looked at her, it was always with a smile, and she couldn’t help but be touched by that.

They soon began to regard each other as best friends, which seemed a bit strange to both of them since neither one had even had a single friend of the opposite gender before. They were basically inseparable during the school day, but they parted ways every afternoon when Evangeline took the school bus home. Hank had no idea where she lived, and even if he did, he would not have been allowed to visit her, for his mother forbade him from leaving their neighborhood on his own. So for the last two months of the academic year, Hank’s interest in going to school was magically revived; so much, in fact, that his mother was overheard more than once saying, “What the hell’s up with him?” as he peeled rubber down the driveway after inexplicably forsaking his bowl of lumpy oatmeal to get an early start on his school day. And as for Evangeline, there was no way her parents would have permitted her to have a “boyfriend” at her age, nor would any boy have been allowed to visit her at their home for any reason whatsoever. So everything Hank and Evangeline had together, they had at school, so they simply made the best of it.

Time just flew by, and the second-to-last day of school, the day that was universally regarded by all of the seventh graders as the very best day of the school year, verily the day of the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated social event of all social events, soon arrived. It was the day in which they celebrated the end of the academic year with a day-long field trip to the fabulous Roll-A-Rama roller skating rink. Talk about the makings of a perfect day! Roller skating, popcorn, Cherry Cokes, and more roller skating! The school bus was absolutely atwitter with excitement as it rolled away from the ancient, brown brick junior high, full of chattering and near-hysterical 12 year olds, and even the adult chaperones were in a rare good mood. Boys and girls were not allowed to sit together on the bus, so Hank sat with the other boys and Evangeline sat with the other girls, but they both snuck surreptitious glances at each other when they thought no one else was looking. Upon arrival at the rink, everybody piled off, and after the initial chaos of paying admission fees and obtaining their skates, the skate-a-palooza began! And it was wonderful! Loud rock music, strobe lights, nachos, extreme wipeouts… there were not enough superlatives in the English language, at that time, to adequately describe the joyous thrills experienced by the tickled teenyboppers.

But even this day had a special highlight all its own, and that was the romantic skate/song for couples, the one that gave the girls the opportunity to ask the boys to skate with them for the duration of a hit song, and it was considered a high honor for a boy to be even asked. The deejay gave the girls less than one minute to find a partner, so it was a crazy bit of pandemonium while most everyone paired up. In the middle of this exciting chaos, Hank’s eyes searched anxiously for Evangeline. And finally he saw her. Their eyes locked as she rolled straight up to him with her right hand outstretched. She came to a squeaky, but expertly executed, stop right in front of him, took his hand in hers, and sweetly asked him if he would skate with her. Though his heart was beating like a tom-tom, he somehow managed to remember his manners, and he whispered in her ear that he would be honored. So off they went, hand-in-hand, and began gliding around the floor to the tune of Chicago’s “Colour My World”. Hank marveled at how dead-on the lyrics described the way he was feeling:

As time goes on I realize just what you mean to me. And now, now that you’re near, promise the love that I’ve waited to share, and dreams of our moment together. Colour my world with hope of loving you. Listen to "Colour My World".

Holding her hand as they went round and round, neither of them minding the sweat building up between their clasped palms, was the closest thing to heaven Hank had ever experienced, and for exactly two minutes and fifty-nine seconds he knew true happiness.

And then that special moment they had together was gone, and the deejay began playing a loud and scratchy version of “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe. Listen to "Dizzy". The skating floor immediately filled up again, and the sudden influx of annoying knuckleheads going way too fast made it unsafe for the two of them to continue skating together. So they veered off the floor and made their unsteady way to an open bench where they could sit together and catch their breath. Hank was so caught up in the moment, so overcome with a feeling of love towards Evangeline, that he turned to her and asked, rather impulsively, if they could be married. And she immediately said they could. And so, in both of their minds, they were. And that was that.

After about its hundredth key change, “Dizzy” faded away, and the deejay announced that that had been the final song, and he thanked everyone for coming, and now everyone would have to leave. The lights came up, the skates came off, and the satisfied seventh-graders filed out of the building and back onto the school bus. Now that the best day of his life was over, Hank felt a strange sadness all the way back to school, though by all rights he knew he should have been very happy. After seeing Evangeline safely off on the late bus, he rode his Sting-Ray home. He didn’t mention to his mom or his siblings that he had gotten married, fearing they would laugh at him, so he quietly ate his supper of potato pie and went to bed.

The next day was the last day of school. Hank didn’t even bother pretending to eat his breakfast, and instead he ran out the back door and pedaled to school as fast as he could, hoping to be there when Evangeline’s bus pulled-up. Knowing this would be their last day together before summer vacation, and not knowing exactly how they were going to get to see each other during the next three months, he had spent all night planning in his mind how he was going to make the day extra special for her. The first thing on the agenda would be escorting her from the bus to their first period class. Luckily, he got there just as her bus was arriving, so he didn’t even bother to lock his bike in the rack. Instead, he ran to the bus loading area, took his place next to the open bus door, and waited expectantly for her to get off. As a motley assortment of bleary-eyed middle- schoolers straggled off, Hank was mildly shocked to discover that Evangeline was not among them. He then thought that maybe he had the wrong bus, so he stuck his head in the doorway and asked the bus driver if this was the bus that Evangeline Martinez rode. The bus driver, a grizzled and grumpy-looking old man, said that yes, this was her bus. He asked Hank what his name was, and when Hank told him, the old man handed him a curiously folded piece of college-ruled notebook paper that had Hank’s name written on it in Evangeline’s beautiful cursive handwriting. The old man told Hank that he was asked to deliver the note to him, and that now that he had, Hank could get the hell off the bus.

Hank was mystified as the bus rumbled away. Why hadn’t Evangeline come to school? What was this note? He hurriedly undid the intricately-folded note with shaking hands and read the following message:

Dear Hank,

Oh, Hank. I’m so sorry! My father told us last night that we are moving away today. He said we are going to California, but he didn’t say where. He won’t let me come to school today because he says we have to leave right away. Oh Hank! I don’t think I will ever get to see you again! We will have to get a divorce! Check YES or NO if you agree or not. Oh Hank, it doesn’t matter what you check! I’m so sorry! Goodbye. I love you!

Evangeline

Hank stood there on the sidewalk with his mouth agape, unable to move, and unable to comprehend what had just happened to him. The tardy bell rang, and Hank didn’t hear it. It was close to an hour before he could move again, and when he could, he silently walked to the bike rack, slowly mounted his Sting-Ray, and pedaled himself home. When he got there, he went straight to his bed and cried himself to sleep.

And when he woke up, he was lying face down in the mud in “Hoolia’s” backyard and he was weeping. Not for the loss of his pop-up tent trailer home, nor for the loss of almost everything he owned. He was weeping for the loss of his beloved Evangeline. He missed her so.

Hank had no choice but to try to salvage what he could, which was very little, from the burned-out and water-soaked hulk of the pop-up tent trailer he had called home for the last five years so that he could start the rebuilding process, for there was nowhere else he could go. To his dismay, he found that the flames and water had destroyed his foam mattress and, worse, his cherished, though heavily drool-stained, pillow on which his head had rested for the last 15 years (which could hardly even be called a pillow since it was so flat that he had to fold it over twice in order for his head to be slightly raised). His less-than-extensive wardrobe of irregular jeans, cargo shorts, and old-favorite t-shirts was ruined, effectively leaving him with nothing more than what he was currently wearing. His single pair of solid white, extra-wide Adidas tennies, his only pair of shoes, was melted to the floor, but Hank considered it a bit of luck that his classic and virtually indestructible Mexican huaraches, made of thick, braided leather, with soles cut from a rubber automobile tire, had been left outside. His tiny, 13-inch black and white TV was a total loss, but that didn’t really matter because it had mysteriously stopped receiving a useful television signal about two years before.

As was noted earlier, he had made a point of saving his microwave from the calamitous conflagration (since being able to eat was important to him), as well as his precious treasure box. This small, intricately carved, walnut-stained box, which he had designed and built himself in high school shop class, contained everything that meant something to him, including (among a myriad of other small artifacts of his childhood) a fire agate he had found on a hike, some of his baby teeth the tooth fairy apparently didn’t want, a Lincoln penny from the year of his birth, a two-dollar bill, a curiously striped feather, an arrowhead he had dug-up from the dirt while playing cars and trucks on the side of his house, a wrinkled wallet-sized picture of his mother, and the intricately-folded, tear-stained, and yellowed-with-age note from Evangeline. He had literally walked through fire to save this box, for there was no way he would have left it behind. To him, it was the record of his life, the only real proof to himself of his existence on this planet. He was heartened by the fact that it was safe, and for this reason, he believed he could go on.

Because he had so few real friends, which was understandable since he was not on Facebook or anything, no one but “Hoolia” knew what had happened to him, and she offered what humble help she could. She gave him a blue tarp and some rope so that he could improvise a crude shelter over his head. She also gave him an ancient air mattress to sleep on. Unfortunately, it had a slow, almost imperceptible leak so that it gradually deflated during the night, and Hank awoke each morning flat on his aching back on the cold, hard floor. She also offered a box of her deceased husband’s clothes for him to wear until he could get to Goodwill to buy some newer, more up-to-date replacements. Hank was a bit mystified when he opened the box, which consisted of two pairs of more-than-fifty-year-old, pin-striped, train-engineer-style bib overalls, four musty-smelling plaid long-sleeved shirts, and an obviously well-worn red union suit. But he was plenty warm when he put them on, so he was grateful for the gift. To show his appreciation to “Hoolia” for helping him rebuild his home and wardrobe, Hank spent the next two evenings after work catching her some extra stray cats from the vacant lots in the neighborhood. “Hoolia” seemed genuinely touched by his efforts and, with teary eyes, accepted the cats saying, “Gracias..., gracias!” She even gave Hank a hug.

And now that he was set back up in relative comfort, Hank made a momentous decision. Despite the fact he was threatened with bodily harm by Merle and Lester if he did so, he resolved to continue his efforts to relocate the thousands of grackles that still overran the B-U-T-T-S parking lot. He could not imagine ending his efforts to do this public service, for this was his way to give back for all the wonderful things his country had done for him. And he also did this for the grackles, too. He was disappointed in them hanging around the local grocery stores and fast-food outlets, scrounging and fighting for dropped French fries, Cheetoes, and ice-cream cones, and terrorizing the shoppers as if they were overly-aggressive transients or hoboes. It hurt him to think that such magnificent creatures would stoop so low, like sea gulls at the local landfill, as to behave in this unnatural manner. And he shuddered to think what Lester, with Merle’s blessing, was doing to them every night with his pellet gun. He had to convince the birds to leave, one way or another, even if the best he could do was help only one bird at a time.

So that evening, Hank returned to the B-U-T-T-S parking lot with his step ladder, resolved to catch as many grackles as he could and order them to fly to the woodlands outside of the city where he believed they truly belonged. As long as there were store customers around, he reasoned, he would be safe from any attack by Merle or Lester. And he was right. Lester, who was cruising the parking lot in his rather dirty and beat-up looking Segway while simultaneously picking his nose, spotted Hank right away. He immediately scooted over to the store entrance and ran in to find Merle. A few moments later, they both walked out together and watched Hank from behind the display of cheap charcoal grills. And as they watched, they spoke to each other in low, evil-sounding tones that were interspersed with cackling laughs. Together they formulated an ingenious plan that, if it worked, would ensure that Hank would get it good, and there would be no pesky witnesses around to complicate things for them. All they had to do was wait for the sun to go down, and if Hank was still there, they would do it then. “This is gonna be great!” snorted Merle. He turned, spat something green and disgusting onto the wall, wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve, and casually strolled back into the store. Lester just grinned and patted his gun.

The strange feeling of urgency that had come over him kept Hank going longer than usual with his public service, and he hadn’t even noticed that almost four hours had passed since the sun had set. He had never before caught and released so many grackles in one evening, and though he hadn’t kept a running tally, he figured it was more than 20 birds for sure. The darkness was making his job even more treacherous than usual, and the parking lot was emptying rapidly, so he decided to wrap it up for the night. As he struggled to fold-up his stepladder, he heard a zombie-like shuffling sound coming up behind him. Quickly turning around, Hank was relieved to find himself face-to-face with Homeless Bob, a long-time acquaintance. Homeless Bob, a lowly and disheveled old man with one tooth and a severe limp, who looked to be about 99 years old but who was probably, in reality, only pushing 60, was a harmless scrounge. He scrounged the trashcans for aluminum cans and edible food. He scrounged occasional free meals from kind-hearted neighborhood widows like “Hoolia”. And, when he had to, he scrounged the parking lots asking people for their spare change. Hank felt sorry for him and always gave Homeless Bob whatever he had in his pocket. Seeing how bad off the poor man was never failed to make Hank thankful to God for how good he had it. Once, about three years before, Hank, overcome by feelings of empathy, had even invited Homeless Bob to spend Christmas Eve night with him in his cramped pop-up tent trailer. After they shared a meal of pizza pockets and popcorn, he let Homeless Bob sleep on the cushy foam mattress while he slept on the floor. But when he woke up in the morning, Homeless Bob was gone. Hank tracked him down later that day and asked him why he had left so soon, and Homeless Bob told him that he had to leave because he wasn’t used to sleeping in such luxurious digs.

“Hey, Homeless Bob!” said Hank in as energetic a greeting as he could muster. “How you doin’?” But Homeless Bob didn’t answer him, and Hank saw that he looked sad and worried. “What’s the matter?” Homeless Bob’s face went from sad and worried to really, really, pathetically sad and worried, and his eyes were red and welling-up with tears. Then the old man spoke. “Hank! Listen, Hank… I…,” and then he grabbed Hank by his bib-overall straps. “I gotta tell you something!” “What?” demanded Hank, alarmed at the desperate look in Homeless Bob’s eyes. He had never seen the old man in such an agitated state before, and he again demanded to know what the matter was.

“There’s… there’s a bird, Hank. A bird that’s hurt. Back behind the store,” stammered Homeless Bob. “You need to go and help that bird, Hank!” He let go of Hank’s overall straps, crumpled to the ground, and started weeping. He then abruptly stood up and began shuffling away. “Hey, wait a minute,” shouted Hank. “Where you goin’?” Homeless Bob said nothing else. And he kept moving at a surprisingly fast pace until he was well out of sight. What Homeless Bob had neglected to say, what he couldn’t bring himself to say, indeed, what he was ordered not to say, was that Merle and Lester had threatened to knock out his only remaining tooth if he didn’t give Hank the message about the bird. And Homeless Bob was so ashamed of himself for having to do what he did that he shuffled himself out of the neighborhood that night and was never seen again.

“Now that’s weird,” said Hank to himself. He turned back and surveyed the almost-totally abandoned grocery store parking lot. He was exhausted and hungry, and he wanted to go home. But then he thought about the injured bird that Homeless Bob said was back behind the store. He had never dealt with an injured grackle before, and he wasn’t sure what he would even do with it when he found it, but he knew he had no choice but to go back there and try to help it in some way. If he didn’t, either Lester or a cat would find it for sure, and Hank didn’t want either of those things to happen. So he picked-up his stepladder and made his way around the store to the poorly-lit and eerily-empty loading docks. Figuring the bird would be cowering behind something in an attempt to protect itself, Hank began poking around the ubiquitous stacks of empty milk crates that towered ominously over him. And as he did, he listened intently with his “good” ear for any sounds that might give away the bird’s location. But then he heard something that he didn’t expect to hear, something that sounded like a sad, ghostly, whining, sighing sound that would start, then stop, then start again. It reminded Hank of flatulent gas escaping from a person who was desperately, but unsuccessfully, trying to hold it in… someone… like… Merle! Hank’s head jerked up just as he heard Merle’s voice, along with the thunderous reverberations of the violent release of the rest of the pent-up fart, shouting “NOW!”, and then the entire stack of milk crates, in a cascading avalanche of plastic cubes, came crashing down upon him. And once again, Hank’s world faded to black.

And though Merle and Lester thought no one had seen what they had done to Hank, there was, unbeknownst to them, one witness to their violent and cowardly assault. A witness that was silently perched high above them on top of the one floodlight that bathed the area in a pale yellow gloom. And this witness watched as Merle and Lester snuck back into the grocery store through the back door without checking on Hank’s welfare, without knowing or even caring if he was still alive. And this witness, after taking in the entire scene, leapt off the light and flapped into the darkness. And that very night, the B-U-T-T-S parking lot was quietly abandoned by the thousands of grackles that had invaded and overwhelmed it for the last two months.

When morning finally came, it came cloaked in sadness and gloom, for though the sun rose as usual, its warming rays could barely penetrate the roiling thunderclouds that threatened to unleash an angry torrent upon the city. But for the time being, they only threatened, as if some unknown, yet more powerful, force was holding them back. And they held back, grudgingly, though not quietly, with grumbles and growls of low thunder signaling their growing impatience.

And it was in this dismal early morning gloom that a milk truck driver was forced to stop ten feet from the loading dock as he was backing up because of the enormous pile of jumbled milk crates that blocked his way. After letting go with a few choice curses, he climbed down from the cab and started restacking the crates. As the pile began to shrink, he heard a faint moaning coming from its base, and he realized, to his shock, that someone was trapped underneath! He immediately called for help, and with the assistance of a couple of B-U-T-T-S night stockers, he quickly uncovered the body of an unconscious man who was curiously dressed in old-fashioned bib overalls, over a red union suit, with brown leather huaraches covering his otherwise bare feet. They called for an ambulance, and in a matter of minutes, the man was being hauled away by paramedics in search of a hospital that was willing to take on yet another, painfully obvious, charity case. One after the other declined to accept the patient, saying they were “full up” or giving some other lame excuse. Finally, the paramedics, close to panicking due to the fact that the man’s vital signs were rapidly deteriorating, decided to take him to the only place from which they had never been turned away, an obscure facility called The Blessing Street Shelter for the Chronically Hopeless that tended to the poorest of the poor, the most forlorn derelicts and outcasts of the city, where most came in such serious shape that they were beyond hope for a cure, but who were given, at least, the chance to die with a bit of dignity under the care of a gentle and sympathetic volunteer staff.

By noon, the B-U-T-T-S parking lot was again beginning to fill up with shoppers, but the eeriness caused by the ominous and oppressive storm clouds, compounded by the mysterious absence of the grackles, caused many to decide to turn around and leave before even getting out of their cars. Lester Guy, late as usual, began his afternoon shift by cruising around the lot on his Segway. Because he thought they made him look cool, he refused to take off his sunglasses, but the gloom caused by the impending storm made it difficult for him to see and caused him to run into more than one stray shopping cart. Merle Zitsky arrived shortly after Lester, went directly into the store, and shut himself up in his office.

At the same time, more than twenty miles away, in a lush, green forest of ancient Loblolly Pines, there arose into the sky a different sort of dark cloud than the type that currently blanketed the region. And this cloud, immense by any standards, began to move in a flowing, undulating, but nevertheless deliberate manner towards the city. As it moved, it stretched itself into a thinner, and eventually miles-long, line of black, flapping wings. When it began crossing over a highway, hundreds of people pulled over and got out of their cars to watch the unprecedented movement of more than a million grackles, and many of the people wept and crossed themselves as it took more than an hour to pass over them, like a biblical plague heading directly for the heart of the city.

After crashing into his fifth shopping cart, Lester finally resigned himself to taking off his sunglasses. And when he did so, he noticed that the few shoppers in the parking lot were standing, looking, and pointing at the eastern sky. He looked to where they were pointing, and it was then that he saw the strange, fast-moving black cloud that was rapidly approaching. As he stood there, mouth agape, the plague of grackles arrived with a roar of flapping wings and ear-deafening screeches. The lead birds began to circle high above the parking lot as the rest poured in, eventually creating a great and terrible tornado-like vortex that terrified the shoppers and caused them to run for cover. Lester was frozen with fear, and in his terror, he did not realize, until it was too late, that he had become the very center of the whirlwind. Despite his growing panic, he remembered that he was carrying a sidearm. He drew it and pointed it at the sky, but before he could pull the trigger, a grackle dove and knocked it from his shaking hands. And then a devastating downpour of hot and sticky-white bird droppings descended upon him from above, coating him from head to toe, as he futilely attempted to fend it off with flailing arms. He screamed and then began to run, but he slipped and fell before he went ten feet and was immediately covered by hundreds of vicious and angrily pecking birds. Within a minute, his screams were silenced, but the pecking went on for at least fifteen more. And when the feathered mass rose back up and joined the swirling vortex, nothing was left of Lester but a skeleton inside of a uniform, and it had been picked as clean as a whistle.

The few customers inside the B-U-T-T-S store, along with every employee on the premises, were watching in horror as Lester met his doom. But none were as shocked, as terror-stricken, or as filled with dread as Merle, who had run out of his office to join the near-hysterical crowd of onlookers when he began hearing their screams. As he, along with the rest, witnessed the demise of Lester, he alone knew and understood what was really happening, and why. And he knew the birds would be after him, too. After all, one does not keep a million grackles, swarming and swirling in a stupendously powerful whirlwind, waiting outside for long. Already, the wind and vibrations generated by the birds were shaking, and cracking, the glass storefront. Suddenly, one of the largest panes of glass shattered to pieces, and in flew a slew of grackle scouts, swooping and diving above the fleeing crowd, looking for one human in particular. And that human was high-tailing to the back of the store, knocking others to the floor as he did so, including any little old lady who had the audacity to get in his way. One large woman he knocked over was carrying an umbrella, so he grabbed it, along with her overcoat, that he had to yank off her body, before ducking through the double doors that were marked with an “employees only” sign. He hurriedly pulled on the woman’s overcoat as he ran to the back door of the building. Panting, he cracked the door open and peeked outside. Seeing no birds, he opened the umbrella and, holding it close over his head, stepped out onto the loading dock with the intent of trying to make it to his car, which was parked in the employees’ lot approximately 50 yards from the back door.

He fought the urge to run so as to avoid drawing the birds’ attention, and he was more than half way to his car when he sensed a sudden and drastic atmospheric change. Turning back to look, Merle watched in horrified amazement as the great and terrible grackle tornado moved with a roar over the top of the big-box store, blowing dust and debris everywhere as it came directly at him. It moved with a speed he could not match, and in an instant, he found himself, like Lester before him, trapped in the eye of the storm. But, unlike Lester, who had received his justice there on the ground, Merle discovered that the grackles had a different punishment planned for him. The umbrella was jerked from his hands, and he felt his arms pulled up and out as they were tugged on by countless birds. In a moment there were flapping grackles clinging to every square inch of his body, with more grackles on top of those, and more on top of those, until he felt his body lifting off the pavement. He was utterly helpless as he was taken up into the air, and in seconds he found he was hundreds of feet above the tree tops. And then they let him go. And for the few seconds of his screaming freefall, he futilely flapped his arms in a comically bird-like fashion. And after he came to his horrific end, they picked his broken and bloody body up in the same manner as before and dropped it from a thousand feet one more time, just for good measure.

Then it was over. The raging whirlwind of grackles quickly dissipated in less than a minute as the birds flew away in all directions. And soon after they were gone, the skies flashed with lightning and crackled with thunder, and the long-threatened, but ultimately earth-cleansing, deluge of rain began to fall.

The Blessing Street Shelter for the Chronically Hopeless had only one bed available when the paramedics brought in the semi-conscious (and curiously dressed) man, and it was located next to the janitorial supply closet at the far end of the nursing ward. After the doctors stabilized him, he was left in the care of the nurses, who checked on him as often as they could. The only piece of identification they could find on him was a generic I.D. card that must have come with his cheap leather wallet when it was purchased. It had the name “Hank Wendt” written on it in a shaky, child-like, cursive script under the printed words “If found, please return to”. There was no address on the card. The thin wallet also contained three dollars, a B-U-T-T-S discount card, and an old and worn fortune cookie message that said, “Your father still loves you and is always with you. Remember that!” So they put his name down as “Hank Wendt” on his charts, hoping to maybe get some more information about him when or if he ever regained consciousness.

The ward held a total of ten beds, and they were usually occupied by anonymous indigents so seriously ill that even they knew they were beyond help, but who were nevertheless grateful to have a bit of comfort and compassion as they went through the agonizing process of dying. They typically had no family or friends to be with them in their final hours, but they never died alone at this shelter, for it was staffed by a few loving volunteers who would sit by their bedsides and talk softly to them and hold their hands and pat their foreheads with cool washcloths. One of the volunteers, a very sweet woman with a touch of gray in her long, brown hair, and who everyone called “Evie”, arrived for her shift a little before 11:00 pm. Unlike the others, Evie preferred to work the night shift, feeling it was the time when her humble efforts could best be put to use, for it was often in the wee hours of the night that the patients suffered the most, whether from pain or from fear or from loneliness. Since Evie lived alone, there was no one pressuring her to be home at night, and she could keep herself occupied by being there for those who needed her help the most. She was also bilingual, and she had studied hard over the years studying medical terminology in two languages in order to be able to interpret for both the English-speaking doctors and the patients at the shelter who only spoke Spanish. For this she received no pay and no recognition, but that didn’t matter to her. It was her way of giving back to her community, and it was important to her, and she didn’t want to stop doing it.

She always checked-in with the nurses before going into the ward so she could find out who was who and what was what. The nurses briefed her on the events of the day and the conditions of the patients, and the big news today was that a (probably homeless) man, dressed as an old-time train engineer, was brought in with a serious head injury. Though his condition was stable, he was drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes ranting about an “injured grackle”, but never waking-up fully. Evie asked them what his name was, and they told her that they thought it was “Hank” something. Upon hearing this, Evie’s eyes widened a bit as the name triggered an old memory in the back of her mind. “Hank who?” she asked timidly. The nurse checked the chart again and said, “Hank Wendt.”

Evie’s jaw dropped from the shock! “Where is he?” she demanded to know. “Where’s Hank Wendt?” The nurse, a bit taken aback by Evie’s manner, pointed to the the ward and said, “Bed 10.” But Evie didn’t hear her because she had already run out of the station and into the ward, and she could be heard by all as she shouted “Where’s Hank Wendt?” at least three more times as she hurriedly scanned the faces of all the patients. She stopped suddenly when she came to the last bed, and she became very quiet. She stood there, taking in the sight of the poor man with his head wrapped in bandages, and though she hadn’t seen him for years and years, she knew it was her Hank. And as she stood there, unable to speak, Hank’s eyes fluttered and opened ever so slightly. He moaned a little, and then he rasped in a weak voice, “I ain’t went nowhere. I’m right here!”

Quickly she knelt by his side, and with a gentle hand began lovingly caressing his cheek. “Oh, Hank,” she said, ever so sweetly, as tears fell from her eyes. “It’s me. Evangeline.” Hank’s eyes opened slowly, and he turned to gaze upon her face. And once more he saw a beautiful girl with long, silky brunette hair, gorgeous brown eyes, and a devastatingly lovely face. He smiled and slowly raised his hand to caress her cheek in return. And, somewhere deep within him, a tiny little ember of life that had been so close to fading out suddenly began glowing with a new energy. “Evangeline. Is it really you?” he asked in a whisper. “Yes, Hank. It’s me,” she gently replied. “I’ve been looking for you for so long.” She bent and kissed him. “Thank you for finding me,” whispered Hank as his eyes closed again. His hand dropped. Picking it up in hers, she said, “Hank! I’m not going to let you go again!” And then she felt his hand give hers a soft and almost imperceptible squeeze.

The Grackle Catcher

Soundtrack

Crazy

Patsy Cline

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Elvis Presley

Light My Fire

The Doors

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Roberta Flack

Misty

Johnny Mathis