I looked up and saw that she was standing with her hand on her hip, giving me a look like she couldn’t understand anything I was saying.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She stopped herself from speaking, looking annoyed, then turned and went back into the kitchen, which made me want a hit from the pipe. I did not feel guilty or ashamed of this, of course, because the way I saw it, getting high could make me feel better the same way antidepressants helped people, even though it wasn’t doing anything anymore except making me feel worse. I understood, too, that I needed to get better so I could be a better boyfriend to Rae. I’d worked on a ranch with my friend Eddie for a while, which was good for me, but at the end of summer the work ran out and I had to get a job I hated at a hardware store. They let me go after missing too many days. Now I couldn’t get motivated to find more work. Rae worked at an art gallery and was able to handle the bills, and I felt guilty about not being more interested in helping out.
While Rae was in the kitchen I stepped into the bedroom, quickly pulled off my T-shirt, and got the pipe from my dresser. A hit or two from the pipe always revived me. When Rae came into the bedroom, I was already smoking.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she said.
I was hunched over my pipe, taking another hit.
“What the fuck, Edgar?”
I finished one more hit, and when I turned to her, she was already gone. I set the pipe down carefully on my dresser, then went to the screen door and saw her pulling out of the drive in her Mazda, talking on her phone. She was always talking on her cell phone. I didn’t have a cell phone anymore. Or maybe I did and never used it. At the screen door, just then, I suddenly felt the urge to go after her.
Here’s what I did: I rushed out of the house into the cold air, shirtless. Across the street, a teenage girl was kicking a soccer ball in the yard, and she stopped to look at me. Rae glanced at me and sped away. I stood in the middle of the street and scratched at my arm. The girl turned away when I looked at her. Then she picked up the soccer ball and went into her house. My arm was itching terribly. I saw that it was bleeding from where I had scratched so hard. When I walked back into the house, Ornette’s trumpet was blowing like wild laughter.
I went into my room and put on a hoodie and sat on the edge of the bed. I thought of Rae and me in the beginning, when we stayed in bed all day. We spent many days like that, too lazy to get out of bed, which was one of the reasons we felt so attached to each other: we saw it as connecting spiritually, emotionally. I fed her soup, carried the dishes to the kitchen. I brushed her hair, then hugged her waist in bed and fell asleep with my head in her lap. We smoked weed and listened to music. Those were good days, and I knew it would never be like that again.
Now, sitting in the house alone, I was fidgety and agitated. How many nights had I sat there in the past, waiting for her to return? I pulled my hood over my head and walked back out the front door. I figured I would go meet my friend Jessie, who often sold jewelry in the park nearby, and maybe hang out with him so that I wouldn’t sit around the house being depressed or angry about Rae. I walked quickly down our street, hurrying past the corner gas station with the green roof, past the small Assembly of God church with its motto JESUS IS HERE on the sign out front. Then I broke into a run down the street, crossing over to the park. My heart was racing when I arrived, and I felt immeasurably sad.
It was near sunset, and the park was mostly empty. There was no sign of Jessie. I walked to a bench and sat. I felt like a goddamn loser, wanting to get high. Someone would show up, this was what I thought, but nobody showed and I couldn’t sit around.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bird, a red fowl, strutting like a rooster. I stared at it a moment. Spreading its wings, it saw me and started to charge, as some will do. I turned and ran away through the park. I ran until I couldn’t see it anymore. It was almost dark now, and when I crossed the street, I heard motorcycles coming. I kept walking in a hurry, and the cycles got louder, and when I stopped to catch my breath I turned and saw people riding past me, like a blaring windstorm, a whole line of loud motorcycles with rumbling pipes and red taillights.
* * *
Several months earlier, Jessie had given me a small red fowl in the park. It was harmless and small enough to hold in my hands. The fowl was partially red with spots of orange, a rounded chest, and a sharp beak. I lifted it and said, “What’s your name? I’ll name you Red Fowl,” and Jessie and his girlfriend Shawnee laughed.
They had their own fowl. The people around the park kept fowls and brought them to the park for exercise, feedings, sharing them with anyone who wanted to see them. Right there, I made the decision: the fowl was mine. I would feed it and watch it grow into something bigger, a rooster or larger fowl, whatever it was. The fowl cocked its head and looked around. I could see its little chest breathing. I put my hand on its chest and felt the tiny heart, the pulsing beat, rhythmic. The fowl was alive. I put it in my jacket pocket to keep it warm and safe. The fowl kept still then, never moving. When I put my finger in the pocket I felt the bird nibble, which tickled a little, but it was never painful. It never scratched at me or tried to get out of my pocket all night. I felt an overall sense of acceptance with it, as if it needed me and I needed it. It’s strange to articulate the feeling for me, but the others in the park felt the same way about theirs. Fowl, fowl, fowl.
Jessie, Shawnee, and I walked past the park and along the road that runs beside the highway until we got to Jessie’s house, where music was blaring and a party was going on.
“It’s a party to celebrate nothing and everything,” I said. “It’s a party to celebrate my new fowl, this bird.”
“We were already here,” Jessie said. “We just went outside to give you the fowl. Be careful with it, though. Someone brought it here to my house. My own fowl’s so big now I can’t even carry it around like I used to. It scratches my skin. Claws at my mouth. I’ve heard it will knock out teeth if I’m not careful, so I have to keep my eye on it.”
“I have to watch it for him,” Shawnee said. “I’m the one who keeps it tame.”
“Mine won’t be that cruel,” I said. “I won’t feed it so much. I’ll let it nibble at my finger and peck on me as it grows, but I won’t let it get out of control. Not this fowl.”
“That’s what everyone says,” Shawnee told me. “That’s why I never took a fowl. Jessie offers one to me, but I haven’t ever taken it. Just look at Jessie’s fowl. The thing is so big it lives out back in a coop and shrieks in the morning and at night. It wakes him up shrieking. You have to feed it or it’ll attack you. I googled that shit once. Those fowls become aggressive and will charge you, and if you walk away or turn your back, it’ll attack. Fucking all around Albuquerque.”
Jessie was chewing on a straw. “You have to raise your arms and flap them so that it thinks you’re a bigger creature than it, and you gotta hope it goes passive.”
“My fowl won’t attack me,” I told them.
“Be careful with it. If you’re not careful with the fowl, it will want to be fed all the time and become angry.”
I took the fowl out and looked at it. Its beak was tiny, and it seemed to almost smile at me. What kind of fowl smiles? But mine did—or at least that was the way I saw it.