All day long, the swifts circled us as we used long poles to scrape out and dismantle their nests of twigs and saliva. Some of the birds swooped down upon us. They were more aggressive than usual, and when we pulled out the last nest, we saw why.
“We could fry ’em.” Elohim held up one of the five small eggs.
“But I thought you were the type of vegetarian that don’t eat eggs.”
He met my eyes for just a moment. “I didn’t mean me specifically. I meant you.”
I looked up at the swifts anxiously circling above. “But … the eggs are their babies.”
He sighed as he looked up too. “I gather you won’t be eatin’ ’em then?” He laid the egg he held back down into the nest with the other four before gently picking the whole nest up. “You’re too sensitive, boy.”
He tossed the nest off the roof, the eggs coming out in the fall to hit the ground before the lighter nest of twigs. They broke on impact, their yolks spilling out like yellow blood.
“Why’d you do that?” I watched the swifts coming down to land on the branches of the tree overlooking the fallen nest.
“You said you weren’t gonna eat ’em. And I couldn’t have, so there was no other choice but to break ’em open. What’d ya think I was gonna do? Give ’em back to ’em?”
He threw his arms up toward the swifts, a few of which had flown down from the branches to inspect the nest and eggs as if there were some sort of saving to be had.
“It would’ve just been more good-for-nothin’ birds, cloggin’ up my chimneys and bein’ a pain in my ass, Fielding. Now, come on, help me finish this up.”
We continued on in silence, fitting metal screens over the top of each of his chimneys to keep the swifts from building any future nests. By the time we finished cleaning and screening, it was evening.
“Take in the stars with me.” He lay down on the roof and patted the shingles beside him. “You’re not still angry about earlier, are you? They were just eggs, Fielding. Like the ones your momma fries come breakfast.”
As I lay down beside him, he grabbed his pack of cigarettes from the toolbox. I didn’t know him to smoke often, but he was on his third cigarette by the time he spoke again.
“You know why I love the sky, Fielding? Because it makes everyone short. There ain’t a man tall enough to ever look down on the sky. The sky makes everyone look up, and in that, it makes everyone me.”
“Do ya ever wish you were taller, Mr. Elohim?” It was one of those things you ask without thinking. I hadn’t meant to be cruel, but when I looked over at him and saw the tear already halfway down his cheek, I knew I had nudged old shadows.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Elohim. I didn’t mean—”
“My father was a tall man,” he interrupted my apology, never taking his eyes off the sky above him. “My mother was a tall woman. By measurement alone, they were greatly disappointed in me. They were not people who were well prepared to be disappointed, as they so often weren’t in their comfortable lives. They didn’t much know what to do with it, with me, this letdown and disruption to their comfort.
“They weren’t vicious parents, they never screamed in my face that I had failed them in my inability to grow beyond the height of the common armchair. They never struck me, tryin’ to get me to swell taller, one bruise at a time. No, they were not violent. And yet, I don’t remember my mother ever lookin’ at me.
“I like to think she at least did every once in a while when I was still in the cradle, but when I was old enough to recognize whether someone saw me or whether they didn’t, I realized she never did. She would speak to me, of course, she was present in my life. I don’t want it ever said she was cruel or bad tempered or absent. She was there, she was always there in her absolute lady way. She just never looked at me.
“When she would speak to me, she would do so by lookin’ at the things ’round me, but only the short things like the table lamp, the silverware, the string on the shade. It was as if she looked at those short things, she could at least say, my son is taller than that there lamp, that there spoon, than that there four-inch string. There must’ve been comfort in that.
“As for my father, he only ever spent time with me at night and only in the dark woods. He would say it was to collect fireflies, but I knew the real reason was ’cause my father couldn’t bear to be in a room where the light reminded him of his midget son. He had to escape to the dark woods, where in the absence of light I could be as tall as he ever imagined me to be. I was six foot, I was seven foot—hell, I was thirty feet tall, a giant in them woods at night with my father.
“Most people are afraid of the dark, but the dark was the only time I ever heard my father laughin’. There he’d be, my tall, banker father rollin’ up his sleeves, and gallopin’ through the woods, giddy as a hoodlum, chasin’ after the fireflies, all the while yellin’, ‘I can’t see ya, Grayson. It’s so dark. I can’t see you, son.’
“You had never heard a father exclaim he couldn’t see his son the way my father did with such joy.”