Death and the Bird
Lamb ♣ 06 | LGBTQ+ Serial Fiction
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We Regret to Inform You | Lamb ♣ 01
Death and the Bird
♣ ♣ ♣ 06 ♣ ♣ ♣
There was nothing I could do about people calling him “Lamb”—he had picked it up freshman year, so it was already in effect by the time I started as a sophomore.
It didn’t help that he spoke perfect Dutch and French—Lamb’s grandfather was Dutch, his grandmother was French Belgian—so even though he had spent most of his childhood in the U.S., summers with his grandparents and bouncing back and forth between New York and Europe with his diplomat father had produced a non-Republican stink about him that the Aryan youth of Wolcott definitely picked up on. He made it through his freshman year pretty much a loner, this gangling beanpole standing a head above everyone else and spending most of his time in his room or the library.
The thing is: I fucking hate bullies. My brother was a huge dick to me when I was a kid, and we only sort of bonded later on after he left for college and decided corrupting his kid brother with weed and booze on Christmas and summer breaks was funny. It didn’t take long for me to get a lay of the land at Wolcott and figure out this big weirdo needed a friend. I could see all the tricks these guys got up to with their posturing and one-upmanship, and I really wasn’t too interested in being friends with dudes who would walk into your room and say, “I’m hungry, whaddya got to eat?” and then turn around and loudly declare that you were trying to buy friends with Pop-Tarts.
And here was another thing: freshman year, Lamb fell prey to the school prank that made the rounds whenever a crop of new students arrived.
It went like this: someone, usually a sophomore or junior trying to climb the ranks would pretend to cultivate a friendship with a kid who seemed like he might be queer. He’d pop around the mark’s room a few times, ask him for help with something stupid (in Lamb’s case, French homework) and then one night, after lights out—with two or three henchmen in on the gag nearby—the guy would sneak into the noob’s room and ask his new “friend” to give him a blowjob, as friends do. It was pretty stupid, usually ending in a riot of laughs, and the mark would end up falling in line with the second-tier jostling for the alpha’s approval.
But with Lamb, the gag went sideways. First of all, the guy who tried it on him, Alex, WAS queer, it turned out—years later we ran into him in SF and he was gay as a goose. Also, Alex was never going to be an alpha, and he didn’t have a posse backing him up to hear what Lamb actually said to him, so it was all hearsay afterward, with some saying “no way” and others saying “look at the source” meaning Alex was a dipshit and maybe he actually DID want a blowjob, who the hell knows.
The problem was that Lamb, lonely and outcast from day one, had fallen for Alex’s friendly overtures, and even though he was too scared to do anything when Alex made the proposal, he told me he was thinking maybe it could have happened later? Anyway, he said no, but like an idiot then told Alex about the time he and this other kid jerked each other off at a beach in Spain, and Alex told a couple people before realizing that without the cohort of witnesses, he was implicating himself as much as Lamb.
So. This was the lost cause I adopted on that sunny September day running laps together on the old track. It was pretty loose and casual at first, I didn’t know yet about the prank the year before, or the backstory behind “Lamb” and all that. I was dealing with my own shit.
Like I said, early days still, but around Thanksgiving on a Saturday half-day after I just got my cast off, Lamb came into my room all agitated.
“You gotta come,” he said, super serious, and I was like “What’s going on?” but he wouldn’t tell me. “Please.” OK, fine.
Campus was pretty much deserted, most of the guys took the shuttle into town after classes on Saturdays, or headed home for the weekend, so we were alone as we headed into the new science building, up to the Biology Lab.
They went all out with the new labs, all sorts of gadgets and instruments and stuff. There was a whole wall of shelves with freaky things pickled in formaldehyde, bugs and frogs, a cow’s heart, even a human fetus. Totally gross and creepy. But Lamb led me into a side room where there was a refrigerator full of samples, and a big metal box sitting on the counter. He opened up the box, and pointed. There were a bunch of little eggs, it was an incubator.
“So? What?”
“They’re too dry, the shells are too hard and I don’t think they can get out.”
“What are they?”
“Baby quails.”
And then I see on a paper towel to one side, a shell that’s broken open and an itty little chick half hanging out of it, bug-eyed and covered with goo, sort of shivering even though the inside of the incubator was warm.
“What’s wrong with it?”
By this time, Lamb starts to go all red in the face and I can see he’s freaking out.
“I was supposed to keep the tray of water filled up, Mrs. Powell said I could get extra credit if I took care of the incubation and wrote a paper about the reproductive process—California Quail—Callipepla californica—state bird.”
“What happened?”
“The water tray dried out—it provides humidity in the heat of the incubator or the eggshells dry out and the babies can’t peck their way out. This one had a little hole in its shell, but it just wasn’t getting through so I tried to help it, and…” By this time, his nose was running and there were tears in his eyes. “It’s suffering!”
“Circle of life, dude, happens all the time…” I said.
“But it’s my fault! I shouldn’t have picked at the shell, and now I don’t know if it wasn’t ready to hatch, if it was just a crack and I helped it out too soon, or… Look at it! There’s something wrong with it.”
Well, fuck. By this time, Lamb was dancing around, tears streaming down his face, and honestly, I was more worried about him than the bird.
“Do you want me to put it out of its misery?”
His eyes got wide, but I think that was the reason he came to find me in the first place, and he nodded. He was in full waterworks mode by then, and I figured we better get it over with quick before someone walked in and found him crying in the biology lab. I picked up the quivering, gawping little chick and brought it out into the lab.
“I need something heavy, like a brick or something.”
“No!” he almost screamed.
“Well then some scissors—quick snip and—”
That really got him going, he actually started blubbering, but it seemed like that was the way to go only we couldn’t find any scissors.
“We could drop it off a balcony,” I said, “the impact should be enough to kill it, it’s half-dead as it is.”
“Should?” he said, doubtful, sniffling.
“How about this—I’ll throw it up as high as I can in the air, and then it will have enough momentum on the way down to definitely do the trick. I promise. It will be like the little guy had his chance to fly and be free, and then done.”
Lamb nodded, almost hopeful at the prospect of doing right by this baby chick, poor sap. “Let’s hurry—it’s suffering.” So we walk out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard between the science and math building, all bricked over, and I figured that was as good a place as any.
“Ready?” He whimpered, which I guess meant yes. But I couldn’t use my throwing arm because I just got the cast off, so I had to use my left and, well, let’s just say my aim was a little off. I wanted it to go as close to straight up and back down to hit the bricks, and it did go up in a nice imitation of flight for a second, but then it went screwy, and ended up coming down on the lip of the math building’s roof, bounced off and then down to the bricks.
“No…” Lamb moaned, and went racing down the stairs. I followed, and when we got down, well, let’s just say it was definitely dead. Lamb sat cross legged on the ground next to it and bawled his head off, while I was nervously looking around to see if anyone was coming, but in the end, I just sat down next to him and the dead bird and let him get it all out.
Anyway, we were already friends by then, but that afternoon with the bird? That was when that big dumb cry baby wormed his way into my heart for real.
♣ ♣ ♣
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Echos of Lenny in "Of Mice and Men." You've really captured the voice of the narrator at this point in the story. I have a clear picture of him. His tough veneer, his weakness for Lamb's vulnerability. Oh, and your title might be copyright infringement of a certain person we know who writes about the death and the birds! ;-) I'm truly invested in the story. Bravo!
Oh goodness, what a heartrending chapter! Lamb really unraveled himself. Happy anniversary month, my dear! I hope you're celebrating all month long! What a kind thing you're doing in giving away such lovely books. <3