Chuck's Last Sermon

Crickets . . .


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Dodging umbrellas and puddles Chuck walked along Morrison street taking long satisfying hits from his final cigarette. Fat drops of rain smacked against his hat. The light rail passed, the sullen faces of damp commuters pressed against glass. Another day endured Beyond Starbucks Pioneer Square beckoned. Chuck descended the steps, at the bottom of which stretched a city block of open wet pavement. Portland’s gloomy living room. It rained harder. No hacky sack games. No itinerant kooks. No security guards. Chuck smiled. But my flock has come. My loyal darlings. Chuck stopped at the square’s mid point. His hat soaked, his glasses beaded and dripping, the cosmos a grey blur. Great flapping all around. Cooing noises. Chuck spread his arms to his sides like wings. The pigeons were assembling. Hundreds swooped in from all directions. They pressed in close, purring and cooing a sympathetic song of welcome. They gave Chuck a diameter of six feet in which to navigate. Chuck basked in the moment even as his thin body got drenched. He meditated with eyes closed on all the pain and beauty of modern life as the last stragglers fluttered to attention.
Chuck opened his eyes. “This is no fucking way for us to live! Civilization is a prison. A prison!” While the pigeons listened attentively, a parade of women marched past, clutching bags marked Nordstrom’s or Victoria’s Secret. “Just keep on shoppin’ ladies, nothin’ to see here.” The pigeons fussed, flapped wildly, hopped blindly till Chuck got back on message. “My friends, brothers and sisters, we’ve lost our way.” One pigeon discovered a half-eaten cheese bagel. Immediately others swarmed and pecked at it. “We’re dogs at the master’s table.” More pecking at the bagel. “We’ve sacrificed our wild natures for handouts and trinkets.” One of the shoppers tossed a handful of Hershey’s kisses into the air. The pigeons pounced. Within seconds their frenzied beaks were lathered in chocolate. “No comrades! That’s how they enslave us! Resist their enticements!” Forgetting Chuck’s existence, the avian hordes massed around the chocolates and the bagel, fighting for position, pecking viciously, climbing over the bodies of cohorts till the last edible particle was gone.
Chuck sat down cross-legged in the middle of a puddle. The sky darkened as the hidden sun vanished, the air whipped and howled as the temperature dropped and the downpour intensified. Satiated, the pigeons waddled around him and waited. “Friends, we’re whores.” The pigeons bowed their heads humbly like penitents in church. “But we do what we must and there’s no shame in that. I just expected more for myself. My disappointment, not yours.” Chuck opened a bag of apple seeds, chewed one thoroughly and swallowed. He decided against telling the pigeons what he’d read last week, that a mere cup of raw apple seeds can release a lethal amount of hydrogen cyanide gas into your system. Chuck had brought two cups worth. One by one he chewed and swallowed. The pigeons perked up, eyeing Chuck with feathery heads cocked to the side, expectant. “Not for you, buddies,” he said. “Just my ticket to painlessness. Nirvana or bust.” The birds bowed with splayed wings. The city’s noise muted by the wind’s wailing dirge. Chuck swelled with gratitude as his hands and feet numbed. “Thankyou for understanding,” he said. Still bowing with necks of vibrant mauve and green, the grey-white wings trembling, not a single pigeon broke the silence welling in Chuck’s soul. “Thankyou friends for granting me a glimpse of the sacred,” he said, a tear rolling from his eye and merging with raindrops.
The bag of apple seeds was nearly empty. A general paralysis swept through Chuck’s body. His vocal chords froze. The pigeons held vigil, their red empathetic eyes fixed to his. The dark sky continued to unleash its deluge. There were no humans in sight, just Chuck with his thoughts, and his faithful flock who had never forsaken him. I’ll rise again Susan if you do. I’ll return if you return. Chuck fell backwards, his head smacking painlessly against cement. Overhead a hole had opened in the sky, and through the hole a single star was shining. Be good, Susan, keep fighting for misfits like me who’ve lost the mental health to help themselves. You are beautiful like this star.
His eyes now closed, Chuck felt a distant tickle. A pigeon brushed its head against his cheek stubble. Susan? You’ve come? The same pigeon hopped onto Chuck’s chest and leaned an ear to his heart. The others burst into a purring song of thanksgiving. The rain stopped, and the stars re-peopled the sky. Chuck smiled, his chest rose. Susan? His chest fell, and did not rise again. A flash overhead. Perched on and about the reposing body of their lord the pigeons looked up at the new star. Long and long they waited. For new wisdom, for crumbs to drop.