A BIRD IN HAND
BY KEVIN ESSER

The following story was published in the magazine Fag Rag, issue 40, published in 1983 by The Fag Rag Collective in Boston, Massachusetts, page 4.

I sit, as every day, in a posture of feigned nonchalance, waiting for Willie to appear with his satchel of newspapers. Then (ask, and it shall be given unto you) he appears.

“Seen any good birds today?” he asks in his cheerfully piping voice, approaching from across the lawn.

With a tame smile, I hold up the binoculars strapped around my neck. “Not much today,” I reply, casting a token glance at the patch of woods across the road.

“You really like birds, hah?” the boy asks. He poses before me in yellow T-shirt, red shorts and dirty sneakers, a baseball cap turned backwards on his curly mop of blond hair.

“They’re beautiful, some of them,” I say, still smiling and letting the binoculars drop back against my chest. “I like beautiful things.”

“That’s neat,” Willie says. He moves closer—walking with a jaunty, slightly pigeon-toed strut—and hands me my newspaper. His nose, small and upturned and reddened by the sun, wrinkles in a smile. “That looks good,” he says, pointing to my lap—and, I realize after a fluttered moment, to the beer can resting there. “Wish I had some of that.”

“I’d say you're a bit young.” I point out.

“Almost thirteen,” he protests, raising his spunky little boy hackles.

“Well, you do look hot.” I stand up, trying to control my breath. (Don’t blow it, old boy, I think to myself—then, smiling, wish that I could) “I have some soda inside. You want some?”

“Sounds dynamite!” the boy says, his cheeks dimpling in an excited grin.

“Come on, then … come inside. See what kind you like.”

Willie nods, sets down his sack, and steps past me into the house. I follow him, my heart beating a tachycardic tom-tom in my chest. His T-shirt is wet with perspiration, and clinging to his back. I breathe in the sweet tang of his sweat, savoring every pungent whiff of young BOY. “Take your pick.” I say, pulling open the refrigerator door. “Cola, orange, ginger ale.”

Willie bends over as he makes his selection, presenting me (considerate lad!) with a fetching view of his shorts stretched tight over very firm little ... Then he straightens up, cola in hand. “This’ll be OK,” he says.

I watch him wander with a lazy grace to the table where he sits, slouches, sprawls out his legs. His knees are dirty, his left shin nicked with a tiny scratch. “My cat got me,” he remarks, and I realize I've been staring too intently. I look up at his face—still damp with sweat, ruddy with sunburn, lit by a gleeful smile. “Cats eat birds,” he says.

“True enough.”

“1 always wanted to be a cat,” he goes on, taking a sip of his soda, then setting down the can. “Cats are cool, man. They look so great!” He stands up—moving in some sort of odd feline rhythm—and begins a slow shimmy around the kitchen. I gaze, enthralled as he dances past me, gliding with languid undulations of his head, shoulders, hips. Then he stops, turns, looks at me with his dimpled grin. “I gotta go.” He says, eyes asparkle.

I try to speak, clear my throat, try again. “What about your soda?”

“Gotta go,” he repeats, not to be swayed, already bustling past me out the door. “I got more papers to deliver. See you!” He grabs his sack and rushes off, striding away across the lawn like a sprightly little colt.

I hoist my binoculars and watch him disappear through the maze of houses, then turn away with a sigh, feeling a bit—I suppose—like Napoleon after a hard day at Waterloo.

I content myself, as the afternoon dismally passes, with the recollected image of Willie performing his Cat Dance. I sit at the kitchen table with eyes closed, recalling the sight and sound and smell of him, conjuring him, it seems, by sheer power of imagination—for he stands suddenly outside the screen door, rapping it with his knuckles.

“Willie?” I murmur, not quite trusting the reality of this delightful apparition.

“I’m done with my route,” the boy announces, sounding very real indeed. “You got any more soda?”

“I suppose I do.”

Sweatier than before—but no less cheerful— Willie lets himself in and sits down in a charming sprawl of sun-browned arms and legs.

“What about your soda?”

“Maybe later,” he says.

“Later?”

“I’m too hot to drink anything right now.”

“You'll get cramps?” I offer vaguely.

He shrugs. “Somethin’ like that.” He kicks off one sneaker, then the other. “That’s better, he smiles, wiggling ten very pink toes.

“Mi casa es su casa,” I chuckle.

“Say what?”

“It means—roughly, mind you—‘make yourself comfortable.’”

“Thanks,” Willie says, and taking the Spanish proverb very much to heart, removes his baseball cap and tugs off the sweaty yellow T-shirt. Then he flips the cap back onto his curly head and stands up.

“Feels better.”

I pick up my binoculars in a supremely incongruous gesture.

“Gonna watch birds?” the boy inquires. A bead of sweat trickles down his glistening chest. “What kinda birds do you like best?”

“All kinds.”

“Little ones?”

“Little ones are nice—my favorites, in fact.”

“I figured,” Willie says, roaming about the kitchen. He slides a finger beneath the elastic band of his shorts and pulls in and out, in and out, giving himself air. The kitchen becomes fragrant with his rich, sweaty scent. Quickly, his manipulations produce an unexpected—and wholly delightful—side effect, which he unabashedly notes with a downward glance and a wrinkly-nosed grin. In my excitement, I raise the binoculars halfway to my eyes before stopping short.

“I’m still hot,” Willie says, the front of his snug red shorts poking out in eloquent confirmation.

“Su casa es mi casa,” I erroneously drone, remembering the proverb’s earlier effect, and chanting it as a sort of incantation.

“That means…?”

“Make yourself comfortable.”

“Yeah, right,” the boy smiles, facing me from the middle of the kitchen. “That's what I thought.” He hooks his thumbs into his shorts and peels them down to his knees, then lets them fall to the floor and steps free. “Now I’m raw!” he giggles, running his hands slowly up and down his ribs.

“… as a jaybird,” I interject, joyfully mixing our metaphors.

Wearing nothing but his baseball cap, his dimples and a devilish little grin, Willie saunters across the room and steps in front of me. “You won't need these anymore,” he informs me, taking the binoculars from around my neck. “You only gotta watch one little bird from now on."

“I think I can handle that,” I smile.

And—to Willie’s husky giggles of delight—I do…