Richie moved in close to listen and smell her hair. Heard the mom say, “Well, where are you?” Tough old broad. Carmen told her she was sorry but she couldn’t make it. Richie poked her with the nickelplate. She said, “I’m sick.” Her mom asked what was wrong. Carmen said she didn’t know, she just didn’t feel good. The mom said it must’ve been something she ate on the road and that’s why she didn’t travel, the food being terrible out there. The mom said, “Well, you don’t sound too bad.” The mom wanted her to come anyway on account of she was in awful pain and had called the doctor three times and he still hadn’t called back, he let her sit by the phone for hours while he was busy making money. Richie agreed with her. Doctors he had known in the joint all had a superior attitude. He got a surprise then when Carmen said all of a sudden, “Can’t you stop thinking of yourself for one minute and listen?” Uh-oh. “I’m sick. Do you understand that? You’ve had your turn, now it’s mine.” Her mom didn’t like that one bit. She said, “Well, thank you very much—after all I’ve done for you,” and hung up.
Taking her back to the table Richie said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking to your mom like that.”
Armand had the container of lasagna in front of him now eating from it, taking his time; it was pretty good, still warm. Richie had gone to the toilet and Carmen in that undershirt was looking at Richie’s Model 27 Smith & Wesson lying on the table. He said to her, “You ever shot one of those?”
It caught her by surprise. She looked at him a moment before shaking her head.
“Good,” Armand said. Their eyes held for another moment and he was sorry he had spoken to her.
Richie came in from the hall zipping up his pants, a magazine under his arm. He said, “Jesus Christ, Bird, you still eating?” The punk chewing his gum. “Man, I already showed you what you’re gonna look like.”
Armand stopped eating, pushed the lasagna away from him and leaned on the table, his arms flat along the edge, one hand hanging, feeling his belly through his tie. He watched Richie, seated now, the magazine open, showing Carmen the picture of the twelve-hundred-pound man lying in bed, his little head peeking out from that tremendous body.
“Bird,” Richie said, never shutting up, “listen to what the guy eats. For breakfast, two pounds of bacon, a dozen eggs and some rolls. Lunch, four Big Macs, four double cheeseburgers, eight boxes of fries, six little pies and six quarts of soda. Am I making you hungry?”
Keep talking, Armand thought, watching Richie blow a bubble and pop it.
“For supper he’ll have three ham steaks, six sweet potatoes, six or seven regular potatoes and stuffing. Bird, can you imagine this guy taking a dump? Jesus Christ.” Richie shook his head, studying the picture in the magazine. When he looked up he was starting to smile. “You know who could cook for this guy? Old Donna. Be like cooking for a whole fucking cellblock.”
Armand watched Richie turn to Carmen.
“Donna Mulry’s the Bird’s sweetheart.”
And was surprised when Carmen looked at him and said, “Why does he call you the Bird?”
Armand liked her asking him that. It reminded him of who he was. Or who he had been. He said, “I’m called the Blackbird,” and almost smiled at her.
“Him and Donna are going to Memphis,” Richie said, cracking his gum, “so they can visit Graceland, hold hands looking at all that Elvis Presley shit. Isn’t that right, Bird?”
Look at the punk chewing away. “I think so,” Armand said.
“Donna’s this dried-up old broad use to be a corrections officer,” Richie said to Carmen. “Man, did she love corrections. I can tell you why, too, if you want to know.” Richie paused, he had plenty of time, and got a bubble going. A big one.
Armand’s right hand came out of his coat holding the Browning auto. Richie wasn’t looking. Armand racked the slide to put one in the chamber. Now he was looking, his eyes big peeking over that bubble. Armand the Blackbird said, “You get one, Richie, like everybody else,” extended the Browning and shot him in the center of that pink bubble. The sound of it so loud—as Richie’s head snapped back and came forward to hit the magazine lying on the table—always louder than Armand expected.
***
Carmen heard him say, “There,” and heard him blow out his breath even as she felt her head ringing, the room filled with the sound. She was holding herself rigid, but didn’t realize it until the sound faded to silence and she watched Armand get up and move to the end of the table, watched him lay his gun next to Richie’s, lift Wayne’s jacket from the back of Richie’s chair and use it to cover Richie’s head and shoulders. Carmen thought of stopping him. Don’t, that’s my husband’s. But kept quiet, trying to feel Wayne close by, the way she had felt him before and used him to get mad and hold on. If he was with her now, he wasn’t saying a word. She stared at his jacket, at ironworkers build america, blue on silver, and beyond it a splash of color on the wall, deep red.
“You know what he did?” Armand said.
Carmen looked up. He was going toward the kitchen.
“He called me Bird for the last time, that’s what he did.” Armand walked into the kitchen and Carmen waited. She looked at the dull-metal automatic and the nickel-plated revolver on the table next to the covered shape. Armand came out of the kitchen with his bottle of whiskey saying, “I’m no bird. All I know about that stuff was from my grandmother. It was so long ago I don’t even remember most of it.”
Carmen watched him sit down at his place and pour whiskey into his glass. He raised the glass to her and took a sip.
“I’ll tell you something else. I never saw her get seagulls to shit on a car. Oh, they said she could do it, but I never saw it. She was gonna turn me into an owl one time. I said, ‘I don’t want to be no owl, I want to be a blackbird.’ She said okay. So I went in the sweat lodge, I was in there hours. I come out naked holding a blanket around me. She beats on this little drum she’s got and chants in Ojibway awhile. She stops, she tells me to throw off the blanket and fly away. I throw it off, raise my arms up. Nothing happened. I feel my body, I said to her, ‘I’m no blackbird, I’m still me.’ She says, ‘When was the last time you bathed?’ I said, ‘You mean washed myself? I took a bath yesterday.’ She says, ‘Oh, you not suppose to bathe for a month.’ So I didn’t become a blackbird.” He raised his glass to her, said, “That’s my life story, whether you understand it or not,” and took a drink.
Carmen said, “Who wants to be a blackbird?”
He seemed to like that and came close to smiling. “If you could be any kind of bird there is, what kind would you be?”
Carmen thought of birds and saw the bird prints covering the walls of her mother’s house. She said, “I wouldn’t be a bird. I’d be something else.”
He seemed to like that, too. “All right, what would you be?”
Carmen took a moment, breathed in, hesitated and breathed out through her mouth. She said, “Maybe a deer.” She watched him nod, thinking about it. She said, “Although . . .” pulled the neck of the tank top away from her, lowered her head slightly and sniffed. “They smell awful.”
He said, “We all smell at times.”
She fanned the air in front of her. “Not this bad.” She said, “That buck lure really smells.” She said, “Could I get dressed?”