Leland Bryant

The Little Bird, The Little Boy and the Big Gun

As I work at this table on the deck, a bird flies into our patio door breaking her little neck. Was she fooled by the reflection of the open sky? Did death take her, as it so often does, in the midst of her thoughts of tomorrow?

I pick her up and wrapped her in a paper towel to take into the woods to bury. Holding the dear little creature in my hand I notice that her eyes are still open and moist. I can feel her last warmth seeping through the paper. A long forgotten memory begins to form in my mind.

I’m little and toeheaded and find a bird, a robin I think, in the yard. It is injured. Maybe it fell from its nest, I cannot tell I just know that it is dying. Carrying the little thing in both hands I run crying to my father. He tells me that she should not be allowed to suffer and that we should end her pain.

My dad, big, powerful and correct beyond question, puts the fuzzy little guy in a shoebox, walks to his nightstand and from the top drawer takes his .45 caliber service weapon, a huge hunk of blue-black steel that smells of oil and something that my little nose can not identify. I can taste that scent to this very day.
Together, we walk out to the back yard. Dad puts the box on the ground and with two hands, arms straight, lifts that horrible weapon. I watch in slow motion as his finger squeezes the trigger ever so slowly.

The sound of that huge gun paralyzes me with fear and shock but I cannot take my eyes from his finger on the trigger! He holds it down and the massive gun kicks with each shot, again and again and again. My little brain is reeling with the horror of the scene. I cannot believe that my father could be so cruel, so callous and harsh to have completely destroyed the shoebox with that little bird inside.

As I stand here with this little bird in my hand, insight floods my mind. My dad was dealing with that situation in the only way he knew. I believe that he had killed people with that same gun. He was so moved by the moment that he pumped a lot of lead into that box rather than a single shot. What was going through his mind? Is it my imagination or did I really see him wipe an eye with his sleeve? Has a new insight into the sensitivity of my dad come to me across the void of 50 years?

This country at war robbed me of a father! He went to war as a beautiful young man and came home wounded beyond repair. He drank himself to death to avoid the dreams that many nights awoke him screaming as he reached for that loaded gun. He drank to dampen the pain of impotence and physical disability. He died when I was 13 years old, but was really gone from me for many years before that.

When political conservatives talk patriotism and the righteousness of fighting and dying "for freedom" I sometimes wish I had a metaphorical service revolver. I gave up my father for this country. War is no glorious game and patriotism is not just a flag waving on the back of some huge gas guzzling SUV.
My flag, the one that was draped across my father’s coffin, will not fly until this great nation embraces peace.
I am off to bury this sweet little creature in the peaceful shade of the woods. Humanity would do well to have just a morsel of her integrity and sincerity.

Leland Bryant
June 28, 2007