To read more from Shea Zellweger, check out his blog.
Grady walked slowly home from Trevor’s house, glancing
around at all the awesome things he saw. Being a six-year-old boy in a
relatively safe Orlando suburb, Grady still had that uncanny ability to see the
wonder in everything. That rock was really cool. The crack in the sidewalk made
him think of earthquakes, which were big and noisy- the greatest combination
ever. Discarded gum in the street reminded him that he liked gum, and he was
briefly tempted to pick it up and see if there was any flavor left in it, but
then he remembered what mommy had told him about going in the street
unsupervised, and common sense won out; he would just have to keep an eye out
for sidewalk gum. But then, Grady saw something even more awesome than all of
the other awesome things combined. Standing in the grass in Mrs. Ferguson’s
yard was that little bird he had seen earlier. He was certain it was the same
bird, because it still had the bite marks from where the funny-looking cat had
killed it earlier, and its head was all wobbly like it had been this morning.
This was very exciting for Grady, as he didn’t think things ever came back to
life, except in videogames, and daddy said those didn’t count. If he were a
witty person, he would have made a joke about the cat not eating crow, but instead Grady was six, and six-year-olds have
more important things to do than come up with clever turns of phrase. Tasting
mud, for instance.
The boy looked closely at the resurrected bird, torn about
what to do. On the one hand, this was the single greatest thing he had ever
seen, and he wanted very much to meet the raven that had risen. On the other
hand, the bird was on Mrs. Ferguson’s grass, and she was a meany-head. He
thought about it for a really, really long time- at least three seconds- and
came up with a brilliant solution.
“Psst! Bird!” he whispered in that childlike way which did
not qualify as a whisper by any standard definition, “come here!” The obvious
drawback to this plan was that the bird did not speak English very well, and
was not aware that its name was bird, so it went on wobbling its head, assuming
that Grady was talking to somebody else. “Come one! I’m not going to feed you
to the cat!” Grady promised, desperation creeping into his voice. The
possibility that he might be in cahoots with its murderer had not occurred to
the bird, but now that the subject had been raised, it found itself feeling
suspicious about Grady’s truthfulness. Or at least, it would have, except that
the bird was, in fact, a bird, and had no such categories in its mind.
They stood like that for a while, the one attempting to coax
a meeting, while the other was busy trying to get its head back in place in the
most morbid game of “ball in a cup” ever played. When the child was just about
to give up, he saw a figure appear in the screened-in porch of Mrs. Ferguson’s house.
“Hi Mrs. Ferguson there’s a bird in your lawn and it came back to life and I
like birds and I want to pet it can I go on your lawn!” he gushed in the
direction of the figure. The figure’s head tilted in his direction, but didn’t
respond. “Puhleeeease!” he insisted.
“Auuuugh!” responded the figure.
“But Mrs. Ferguson, I promise I won’t hurt your grass!”
“Auuugh!”
“Aw, man! I just wanted to meet the stupid bird!” he said by
way of a goodbye, and started down the sidewalk again, this time running. By
his estimation, he had been talking to the bird for at least twelve hours, and
would need to hurry home or his mommy might make him sit in a chair while she
talked about being worried and where have you been.