﻿Parable of the Uncoordinated Pigeon By Lowell Uda Published by Rice Universe Publishing at Smashwords Text Copyright Lowell Uda 2012 Smashwords Edition, License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Table of Contents Parable of the Uncoordinated Pigeon Brief Bio of the Author Also by Lowell Uda at Smashwords Where to Find Lowell Uda Online The Parable of the Uncoordinated Pigeon One pigeon in the coop always had a red nose and bloody eyes. None of the other birds liked him, and they pecked at his big nose—which the boy who owned the pigeons called a “popcorn”—and tugged mercilessly at his lids, causing them to bleed. “What a dummy,” said the boy. “King! Fight back! Hit!” Encouraged, King snapped his wing, strangely, awkwardly, and pulled and tugged away from his assailants, who pulled and tugged him back. “He’s good for nothing,” said the boy. “He won’t fight back.” “Well, there’s something wrong with that bird, Bing,” laughed the boy’s father. “Maybe we should have him for supper.” “All he does is gobble up the grain,” said the boy, “and slam around the coop.” Tilting his head, King eyed the perch in the corner: he saw the perch clearly. But when King flapped his wings, he flew in the opposite direction than he had intended. Instead of hitting the perch with his feet, he smacked the floor with his head. “Gosh!” the boy’s father winced. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Flying was always an experience for King, and he had to be launched. Otherwise he would sit where he was put. And when he was launched, he made a confounding spectacle of himself. Not only the high tension wires got in the way, but houses, people, the good earth itself. But the saddest time of all was when the young hens came of age. King cooed all right, manfully, filling his bright crop with air, his bloody yellow eyes wide and menacing; his tail swept admirably as he rushed “O-O-O-rooo! O-O-O-rooo!” across the floor, dancing the dance of war and love. But if King did not have to fight for the favor of the young hen (he always lost), and if by chance the young hen became enamored of King, and nestled herself down close to the floor, King, poor King, saw her broad back before him, but he leapt in the wrong direction. Instead of leaping onto the proffered back, he jumped into the water trough or the angry feedbox. King was a lonely bird, never mated. One day there was a great flutter in the coop. The boy had climbed in, and he grabbed all the pigeons who weren’t nesting or tending squabs or uncoordinated and stuffed them into a cardboard box. The boy replenished the feed trough and went out. King walked quickly to the feed trough. His head down in the grain, King flicked the round hard peas and the flat hard corn deftly and rapidly into his gullet. The boy climbed suddenly back into the coop. With his hands outstretched the boy went after King, and King scampered away—right into the boy’s hands. The ride was long and hot, and in the cardboard box all the birds were irritable. In the light from the small holes, King saw an eye or a beak, or the bars or checks on a wing, and every once in a while he saw a shadow move close by, and somebody reached over and stabbed him with a beak. At first King wasn’t sure whether it was genuine irritability or simple meanness; but King was not one who wanted to think ill of his fellows, and he decided that it must be irritability. The birds pecked at him and banged him about. He tried to move away; he tried to remain inconspicuous. But when he lifted a foot or breathed, it was impossible not to nudge somebody, and King was pecked and shoved till finally he found himself in a corner where he more or less hid his head. Finally the car stopped. King heard the car doors open, he felt the box being carried. Huge things rumbled and whizzed by, and he scrambled further into the darkness of his corner. And suddenly a blinding light flashed and filled the box. Dazed, King felt frantic fluttering wings all around him, and much scrambling, jostling, and clapping, and more wings. King thought that all the birds had suddenly gotten very angry with him and were attacking. But then he was all alone and heard the boy and his father. “He was eating all the grain I put out,” said the boy. “And he’s not nesting, he’s not feeding any babies.” “Well, Bing…. You should have known better. He’ll never make it back. We’ll just have to bring him along.” The boy folded the box shut, and it became dim and shadowy again, except for the thin stalks of light coming through the holes. The ride began again—just as long, just as hot. The floor of the box tipped suddenly one way, then another, and King was propelled against the walls. He wished the other birds had not gone. With them packed all around him, he hadn’t been able to move, but now he couldn’t stand still. And he preferred a sudden peck to a strange wall in the face. Suddenly light filled the box again, and the boy’s hand appeared large and quick. King saw suddenly the father’s angry face and the flowing trees and houses, and then he was outside the car window. Something hit him, hard, momentarily muffling his eardrums, and he felt himself shooting away from the car, broken. He flapped his wings frantically and shot upwards, then sideways, then downwards. He bounced off the roof of a house. He saw the car he had come from turn a corner and disappear. And he flew again, blindly, and everything went by crazily and so frighteningly close—TV antennas, telephone poles, cars, trees, grass. Back and forth, hither and thither, he zigzagged through the maze of veering objects, hitting some, missing some, bursting through the leaves of a tree. He knew from what little flying experience he had that there was a direction of least resistance. And he began to take it. Back and forth, back and forth, upward, upward, back and forth. Slowly, very slowly, King attained a good altitude, and he began to relax and look about himself. Down below King saw cars moving like so many ants with various colored wheat grains on their backs, a familiar sight when he was finally safe in the sky. He flew higher, and out on the horizon certain shapes and objects—a farmhouse, a river, a hill—began to appear, tiny but vaguely familiar, and he began to work toward them. But when he looked at them again they seemed farther away. King flapped harder, more frantically, and soon he lost sight of the things he was aiming at. It was growing dark. King had been flying a long time, and all he could see now were new familiar objects of unfamiliar territory. Realizing how hungry and tired he was, he dropped downward, quickly, till he was down at tree-level. Then began the frightening zigzagging again, back and forth, hither and thither. And-Twang! King hit a wire—clung—and sat still. In the morning, still on the wire, King saw a flock of pigeons clattering up over some trees, and he went after the pigeons. He missed the road, he missed the trees, he missed the silver storage tank, but he hit the rust-and-white colored flock. The pigeons exploded around him, and several followed him, but the flock came together again. For a half an hour King zigged into it, and zagged out, causing much commotion. Then suddenly the colorful pigeons moved over the houses nearby and descended on a strange coop. And King crashed down among them. His throat beat rapidly. All around him there were strangers, and they made strange and different sounds—“RO-rooo! RO-rooo!” not “O-O-rooo!” or “O-O-O-rooo!” It was a different dialect, with different idioms and only a vaguely familiar rhythm. King watched the strangers dropping through the trap door and scrambling in the feed trough and fluttering around the water pan. And hunger and thirst got the best of fear. Back and forth, back and forth, King ran, trying to squeeze his head into the hexagonal holes in the chicken wire. Finally he came upon the trap and tumbled into the coop. He scampered to the water pan, drank, and then ran to the feed trough. But Rusty, one of the strange birds, knocked King away, and King stood back and caught up, as best he could, the few kernels that bounded away from all the hungry beaks. In the morning and in the evening, a strange boy filled the feed trough and the water pan. He left the door open and all the pigeons went out flapping loudly. But King remained inside, in a corner. And the boy did not notice King. At least King was not alone any more, and there were several young hens about. But all the strangeness around him, and a surprising homesickness, made King unwilling to try his luck. One day King decided to fly up to an unoccupied perch and claim it for his own. Fluttering about pathetically, he finally got hold of a ledge. It was a nice ledge. But it belonged to the strongest bird in the coop—Rusty who always knocked him away from the feed trough. Angrily Rusty shot upward, and the impact was so hard and so sudden it took King a moment to realize that he was hanging practically upside down, his clutching nails making the most god-awful sound. And he realized then, hanging there, that there would always be a good part of him wanting to get home. King let go and fell to the floor. He had no desire to fight. But Rusty was incensed that anybody should even think of using his ledge. And to touch it was unforgiveable. He chased King all around the coop. And his anger turned to madness when King suddenly charged him, and poor King was bitten, stabbed, and slammed for a whole hour—from one end of the coop to the other; up the chicken wire, and down, and over. His lids grew bloodier than ever, and his popcorn nose looked like a maraschino cherry. The strange boy noticed King then, and he threw King out. And King was glad. Away he flew—zigzag, zigzag—more determined than ever to reach home. Several days later King was again sitting on a wire. He had caught hold of it while flying at full speed. Bobbing back and forth, he was tired, hungry and thirsty, and afraid. He had been working long and hard to get home. Suddenly King heard a strange noise. Pock! A little boy with a long black stick was crouched behind a car. Pock! King tilted his head. High above him he saw a lone pigeon circling and down below the boy cranking the stick. Pock! TING-Ing-ing…! In his attempt to fly to safety, King nearly collided with the stick and found himself flapping up the boy’s face. The boy ran, crying. King fluttered upward. The lone pigeon King had seen from below began to follow King. She was a hen. And she was playful. The more King zigged and zagged and changed his course the more she zipped and dived about him. But King grew sad. More and more new territory rolled into view beneath him. The sun was directly above them, King and the hen, when the huge bird fell out of the steaming glare. He was a hawk, and he descended quickly, and King and the hen went suddenly in opposite directions, like a clump of feathers bursting apart. King’s zigzagging became frantic, and the hawk chose King. The hawk plunged, talons foremost. Quickly King darted away, flapping hard. He felt sure that he was a goner. Banging his wings even harder, he suddenly crashed into something. It was sharp, solid, and feathery. It was the hawk. Downward King went, as if stuck to the hooked beak. But the hawk was as stunned as King was. The whole landscape turned, round and round, and King started away again, lunging, lunging into the hawk. Again and again, in panic and confusion, a small, soft mad thing, King plunged and hit and knocked. And suddenly the hawk rose and winged away. Downward and downward King fell, spinning like a windmill or a leaf. Then he began to flutter his wings and vaguely he moved back and forth and around; but still he fell downward. The hen shot past. King struggled, but it was no use. He plopped down onto the soft plowed ground. He lay there a long time without moving. He saw the hen pecking and eating, pecking and eating a few feet off. He knew that there was something to be learned from what just happened. But he didn’t know what it was. The hen came closer. She pecked at his head, and began drawing the lice and dirt from his down. It felt good, no other hen had ever done that to him, but it disturbed his thinking. He got up and wobbled away. He pecked and ate, pecked and ate, thinking. Every time he flew homeward, he knew that he ended up farther away from home. When he wanted to escape the hawk, he in fact plunged right in among the talons. And King halted. It came to him suddenly—that supreme insight—like the flash of a most beautiful light. He must think the other..he must think the opposite…he must desire what he did not want! King steadied himself. His body ached. He tilted his head. High above him he saw the huge blue sky beckoning and beneath him the earth, impassive, like death and broken bones. Shutting his eyes tightly, King dived into the dirt. It was working. He was in the air. And quickly he aimed for the trees, he aimed for the houses, he aimed for the wire—and he flew straight! He floated upward and upward! He felt like a great adventurer! He felt like Columbus Popcorn or Magellan Fantail or Vasco de Gama de Pouter! And damn it, if the hen wasn’t following! It was getting dark. They had flown a long way, but still King saw no familiar landmarks; they were all the new ones he had learned. He felt, though, that he and the hen were getting closer to home. Aiming away from the ledge of a tall building King hit it, perfectly, and lighted. And the hen settled beside him. “O-O-O-rooo!” King surprised himself. “O-O-O-rooo!” The hen fluffed herself up. King towered over her for a moment, large and menacing. But King remembered that he must remember that he was now a thinking pigeon, and that he must think in order to avoid all the old embarrassments. “Rooo! Rooo! Rooo!” he called. And she came. He bit her all over the face and head, up and down, all around, the soft little feathers. Then he gave her what food he had left in his crop. Then he raised himself above her, and she nestled and squatted lower. Tall, puffed up, he walked all around her, as far as he could without falling off the ledge. And again he walked all around her. He was looking over the ledge and down. He had to think, “Over the ledge and down.” And he leapt, awaiting the void, and felt the feathery cushion of her broad back. He wiggled. He flapped. But when he scooted, as all pigeons do after coupling, he rammed into the wall. He had forgotten. Thinking, thinking, he moved back to her side, and she nestled low again. “Over the ledge, and on to her back….” He balanced. He wiggled. He wiggled and wiggled and wiggled and wiggled. He flapped and flapped and flapped. And he scooted right off the ledge. Smack! Smack! Smack! his wings went as he shot over the street lamps. Smack! Smack! Smack! came the hen close behind. It was the happiest moment of King’s life and he didn’t care what he hit! The next day King got up bright and early. He was thinking again, and he wanted to go home. But the hen wanted to stay on the ledge and build a nest. They wiggled and flapped some more, then flew down into the street to find something to eat. It was slim pickings, but soon they saw other pigeons and found from them where to go. For a while King forgot about home, but then he remembered again. What was he thinking for if not to get home? But then he remembered the boy who had flung him out the car window, Rusty in the strange coop who beat him relentlessly, the huge bird with the hooked beak, and all the terrible zigzagging he had done. And he began to realize something about home. Home was not somewhere that kept fading in the distance. Home was here, with the hen: where he himself was. Yes, he was a pigeon, and like all pigeons, coupled for life. With his hen, he would build a nest, sit on eggs, and feed the squabs. The hen shot upward with several twigs in her beak. King tilted his head. He saw some twigs a few feet away. And he went after them, jab-jab-jabbing—not at the twigs but into the air. He forgot, sometimes, he was forever a thinking bird. o O o Brief Bio of the Author A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lowell Uda has taught English at the U. of Hawaii and the U. of Montana, and worked in Montana state government. After that he became a United Methodist minister, pastoring churches in Colorado and Montana. His short story, “The Cherry Tree,” won first prize in the 2011 Common Review Short Story Prize contest. Stories, poems, and creative nonfiction of his have appeared in literary and other magazines, including The North American Review, the Hawaii Review, the Chariton Review, and, most recently, A River and Sound Review, Written River, The Whirlwind Review, 5x5, Assisi, In Our Own Voice, Divide: Journal of Literature, Arts and Ideas, Poems Across the Big Sky, Moonrabbit Review, and The Other Side. Also by Lowell Uda at Smashwords Under the Hala Tree    by Lowell Uda Price: $2.99 USD. 19090 words. Published on November 10, 2012. Fiction. In ancient Polynesia the people used their own body parts to grow life sustaining plants. Under the Hala Tree, a retelling of their stories about their origins, sparkles with wit and slightly bawdy humor. Author Lowell Uda comes by his love of these tales from his mother, who was reared as Hawaiian in a Hawaiian family. Parable of the Promise    by Lowell Uda Price: $1.99 USD. 1820 words. Published on November 28, 2012. Fiction. A childless couple, the Man of the Forest and the Woman of the Forest, spend many happy years caring for God's creation but nurture one sadness in their life together. God makes them a promise: "Some day you will care not only for the trees, waterways and creatures of the forest, but also for your own children." But the years go by and the old couple remain barren. Where to find Lowell Uda online Website: http://www.riceuniversepublishing.com Twitter: UdaLowell Facebook: Facebook profile LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lowell-uda/50/282/506