Incident in the Backyard on Sunday

It was strange, how it happened that day, with the clouds becoming increasingly darker and the boys playing in the yard.  It was surreal, and I couldn’t imagine myself ever in a predicament as such.  Yet there I was, and there they were, and no one else around. 
         The boys were playing with a bird they had found.  Well, not actually playing with it but rather, torturing it.  Yes, they were torturing a baby Robin they had found.  It had fallen out of its nest, and was hobbling along in the yard.  Prior to this, the boys had been jumping on the trampoline, arguing about who would jump first and about who could spell “yellow” faster or some such argument, when the bird fell out of the tree and they both noticed it at the same time because of the way it had fallen.  It sort of jumped, helter skelter, from one low branch to the next until it landed on the ground, like in those action films you see where the man falls out of a four story building and bounces, rather luckily, from the third floor awning to the second floor awning, to the first floor awning, and finally the ground, where he gets up and runs, unscathed, away from his predator.  It was like that.  Totally unbelievable.
         It was fun; I mean to say, they were having fun, and I was watching it all from the kitchen window.  I was washing dishes.  Or maybe I was just standing there thinking what to make for dinner.  I don’t remember.  Either way, I was kind of lost in the moment, standing there and thinking, wondering what it would be like to be a boy again, to be young and running around and chasing a bird. 
         And then, all of a sudden, I began to think that perhaps this thing they were doing, this chasing the baby bird around and yelling at it and making fun of it, that it couldn’t yet fly, was not fun anymore.  At least not for the bird.  And I didn’t think it was all that great, but I stood there still.  Watching. 
         They had trapped it in a corner, up against the fence, and were standing there and laughing, pointing at it and slapping each other on the back.  I couldn’t understand the slapping each other on the back, for I had never had this type of a relationship – some male bonding type of thing, some ritual rite of passage into male friendship, boyhood – but either way, they were having the time of their lives there in the back yard, as the baby bird, a Robin as I have said before, hopped back and forth and couldn’t find a good chance to break free, to break past them.  And I wondered if it knew what was happening then; I began to wonder what it could possibly be thinking and if it could think at all, and if it knew the potential danger it was probably in. 
         The boys closed in on the bird then, and the sky was beginning to turn a metallic, shark gray.  A clap of thunder rolled along the outer edges of the horizon, and this made them jump and the bird jumped a little as well.  Something behind me made me turn, I don’t quite remember what it was now, maybe a click from the oven that I had pre-heating at the time, or a sound coming from behind the wall – a mouse, perhaps – and I took my eyes off of the display of evil transpiring in the backyard. 
         That must be when it happened.  That must be when the baby bird took it’s last breath and my son came running toward the house screaming my name and sounding quite hysterical, quite unlike anything I had ever heard, or ever want to hear again, for that matter.
         His friend, Matthew Sharp, a friend from kindergarten who lived down the street from us, was standing in the back still, by the fence, near the gate that leads out to the pasture, with his back to me, his back to the house, and I wondered what he had done.  That was the first thing I wondered.  What had he done?
I remember when I was about ten or eleven, and standing in the Snowwhite’s driveway, hanging out.  Maybe it was a Saturday, maybe it was summer, but either way, it was a tenuous feeling, my being there, as these were my enemies one week, my friends the next, something which was in short supply during the years I was growing up. 
Anyway, there was AC/DC on the stereo and motorcycles up on stands in the garage, and cuss words flying out of the mouths of every boy there except mine, a raised catholic.  A frog had jumped from the grass onto the drive and Ben Snowwhite had taken his boot-covered foot and stomped the life out of it, blood squirting out from beneath the tread of the boot.  And they all laughed.  Like crazed hyenas, they all laughed like it was the funniest damn thing they had ever seen, and Johnny, Ben’s older brother, made some crack about how he’d like to see my brother’s head under that boot, and I laughed too at that because if I didn’t, I likely would have gotten the tar kicked out of me right then and there. 
         And this is Matt.  In the backyard, this is what Matt is doing, laughing hysterically as he turns around with the twisted bird in his hand and a wicked grin upon his face.  There is something like guts or blood running down his forearm and up underneath the sleeve of his t-shirt.  I am still unclear as to what happened exactly, but I think it makes pretty good sense to me now, and I quickly check the hands of my son, who has found his way up the back porch steps and into my arms.  I check his hands for blood.  This is the first thing I do.  He is still crying hysterically and I know that this is not how he had intended for the game to end up. 
         I am afraid, suddenly.  I am afraid of approaching Matt and trying to speak to him.  I am afraid that all of my childhood fears about the Snowwhite’s and about growing up without friends, and without a father to show me what it was like to be a man, will come spilling from me - blood from a slit throat, a twisted neck. 
      I am afraid that I will take my anger out on this boy of five. 
      I fear that everything I say to him will sound wrong. 
      I fear what he will think of me as his friend’s dad, and that he will go home today and tell his father that his friend cried and that only babies cry and that I was upset about a stupid bird that was probably going to die anyway.
      I hold my son and let him know that everything will be okay, that the bird didn’t feel any pain, that Matt made a mistake today by killing that bird, and that God will punish him one day for being cruel to animals.  This I don’t know if I believe, and a whole flood of memories rushes back just then, memories of the catholic church and of Father Harlan, and of Sunday mornings as an altar boy, and of my ruined family, the one that did not stay together even though they were catholic, and of the priest who touched me inappropriately even though he was a catholic, and all of this and more that has happened to me, all of this stuff that should never have happened because it wasn’t the Catholic Way.
        So I don’t know right now, as a father of three, a married man of thirteen years, if I really believe that everything is going to be all right; I don’t know if I really believe that there is a god who will punish people for their earthly wrong-doings, for the crimes they somehow get away with while enjoying their time here on earth.  And I lump five-year old Matt into this category, into this category of evil because of what he has done to the bird and for laughing and thinking it funny; but even more so because of how he made my son feel. 
        I clean Matt up, drive him home, leave him with his father.  We don’t say a word to each other, where usually there is at least light conversation about the weather, our jobs, our kids, religion.  It is awkward, but all I want to do is get out of there.  For he is a catholic, I remember suddenly, and for once in my life I am glad that I am not.  For once in my life, I know something for sure.