Big City Lit: the rivers of it, abridged

Fiction

A Tornado of Birds
Terrence Dunn

I've been listening to old Neil Young albums a lot recently. I've found myself in my Midtown office, bouncing, gingerly testing the floor under my feet, imagining the smoke pouring in, the heat swelling up around me, the cell phone call to my wife.
          My eight-year-old son, Tom, asked me whether September 11 would be the most famous day of his life. He wanted to know how somebody could hate us so much that they would kill themselves to hurt us. He wanted to know: How much does it hurt if a building falls on you? If you jumped out of the window, could you make yourself go to sleep before you hit the ground? Wasn't it strange that it all happened on the prettiest day of the year? He has asked me a hundred questions, will ask me a thousand more, and I do not know the answer to any of them.
          One of his friends told him it was good that all those people were made dead in the tallest place on the earth, because they were that much closer to heaven. The father of one of his classmates is missing. Tom asks me how much of a chance there is that the man will still come home. Is there a ten percent chance? A five percent chance? How much of a chance? It's been a month now, and I don't have the heart to say there is no chance at all.
          We took Tom and our daughter Olivia to my parents' beach house on Long Beach Island for Columbus Day weekend. Everyone had gone home at the end of the summer and the place was deserted. It was nice to be alone with Elizabeth and the kids, away from everything. It was easy to imagine staying there until everything became normal again.…
          On the drive down, Olivia fell asleep. We had a long conversation with Tom, his voice behind us, high-timbred and sweet in the dark. Some boys in his class weren't letting him play kickball at lunch time because he wasn't good enough. He said that he asked them every day and they always said no. He said he walked around the schoolyard until lunch ended, watching the game, and being…by himself. He's no crybaby, but he broke down as he told us.

It was cool and sunny all weekend. Tom and I settled into a permanent kickball game in the backyard. We played for three hours Saturday morning and two more hours that evening, until it got so dark that the ball hit me in the face. We played Sunday and Monday. Between game sessions, the four of us walked the beach together.
          My parents' house is unremarkable, their street nondescript, but just a hundred yards away from the loveliest beachfront I have ever seen anywhere, a huge expanse of dunes and tidal flats. The place is actually a barrier island and the ocean pounds the beach with a constant rumbling thunder, seven-foot waves rolling down as far as the eye can see. I carried Olivia on my shoulders and Tom and Elizabeth went on ahead, hand in hand, as we walked to the lighthouse. Olivia sang America, the Beautiful in my ear, over and over. It was very soothing to hear her "smacious skies and yamber waves of frain."
          As we approached the far end of the island, Tom suddenly came running back to us and urged me to follow him. I lowered Olivia to the smooth sand. As we ran, he chattered excitedly, inaudible over the surf. There ahead, just off the water, an odd, dark cloud swirled up and down in a quickly shifting motion. I stopped and squinted, trying to make out what it was, as he pointed, breathless.
          At 9:15 on September 11, I stepped out of Grand Central onto Lexington Avenue. The entire street had stopped, traffic halted and people frozen in their tracks. Everyone was looking downtown. A radio announcer blared in scratchy, incoherent panic from a car window. I followed the gaze of all and saw a huge column of smoke rising over the city. 'Huge,' just a word, does not convey it: a tornado that was going to consume the Earth. The young Black man standing next to me said, over and over, "Oh my fucking God, what is that?"
          "It looks like a tornado! Daddy! It looks like a tornado!"
          "What?" My thoughts had carried me from the spot where I stood, and from this strange little cloud. Returned, I looked at it more closely: It was birds, thousands of tiny little birds, all moving as one. Up and down and around in swirling circles. I turned to say something to Elizabeth, but she and Olivia had settled down to dig in the sand. I've noticed that Tom's gaze, when it wanders, tends toward the sky; Olivia's toward the earth beneath her.

I sat down in the sand and he climbed onto my lap. We watched the birds for a while.
          "What's the score, Dad?"
          "What score?"
          "Our kickball game."
          "You're ahead, 112-84."
          "How many home runs do I have?"
          "Eighty-five."
          "Is that the most home runs anyone has ever hit anywhere in a game?"
          "Oh, definitely, Tom. Definitely."
          "I bet those guys let me play tomorrow. I'm much better now."
          "You're going to get better and better, Tom. No question about it.…You still sad about it?"
          "A little. No, not really. Maybe a little." He snuggled in closer. "What floor is your office on, Daddy?"
          "Nineteen."
          "Could you jump that far down if you had to?"
          A long pause. "No, Tom, I couldn't."
          "But you could see out of the window if anything was coming, right?"
          "Right."
          "Can they put a helicopter on your roof, Daddy?"
          "Maybe.…"
          "What kind of birds are those? Do you think they're all related? Don't they get tired flying all the time? Oh, wait, wait, wait!"
          He jumped up and ran into the surf. Alarmed, I jumped up and ran after him.
          "Tom! You're getting wet!" So was I, the surf splashing my shins, ice cold.
          "Listen!" he yelled. "Listen, Daddy! They're singing!"
          I stopped. They were singing, in unison, a sound so light and sweet you could barely hear it, unless you stopped and didn't move, didn't think, didn't even breathe.

(Terrence Dunn was born in New York City and has his law practice there, but he lives in Pelham with his wife and family. He is at work on a novel and on several pieces about children. This is his first contribution to the magazine.)