Note: Some names have been changed.

I don’t remember much about my childhood. I don’t even remember what I did yesterday. I do, however, remember the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone, word for word. I also remember the title of every episode of Seinfeld, ordered chronologically. This should give you a good idea of my situation.
The years of my life devoted to developing basic human skills were uneventful. Or maybe they were eventful. All I remember is that once I ate Cap’n Crunch in a high chair and noted the abrasiveness of the berry pieces with a high pitched squeal. Another time I mixed every component in an edible chemistry set, assuming erroneously that the result would be edible. I also remember that, at one point, I raised a pair of geese.

The barn across the street from my house on Warren Street was an eyesore. Everyone said so. Far from emanating a rustic charm, the decrepit old shack appeared to be on the brink of collapse. Though Warren county and the surrounding areas are host to many a rural panorama, I lived in the heart of Hackettstown, a bustling blend of quaint colonials and ornate Victorians that thrived with small industry without threatening to expand. Warren Street was busy enough to be considered an important vein, branching directly from the aortic route 46, sometimes called Main Street by the nostalgic. So what, in the name of all that is bay windows and porch swings, was this little barn doing so far from the nearest farm?
The Whitt family, in the decades before my birth, was a prominent one in Hackettstown, having established, by way of business, public appearance, and numerous progeny, what can best be described as a small town dynasty. Like all empires, theirs eventually collapsed; the Whitts in their various posts pulled up their roots and migrated to other parts of the state. The more ambitious among them may have even moved to Pennsylvania. This diaspora left in its wake a patriarch whose roots were deep enough to keep him in place. Charles Whitt Senior, unable to cope with his shifting surroundings, was squeezed back to his property on the edge of the town. Sandwiched between a highway and a nudist colony, the Whitt property, with its farmhouse and murky pond, was an oasis of things that had once been; The vestigial remains of Farmingville, USA.
As for Charles Whitt Senior, he was reduced to an oddity, making occasional appearances in town in his antique car. He was nearing the end of his nineties, and his son, Charles Whitt Junior, was dead. The one fingerprint that he had left in the entire town was a dilapidated barn on Warren Street. And so, it came to embody his stark refusal to embrace the changing times.
My parents were friends of Whitts’, so I heard them mention one day that Charlie Whitt was in town. In the coming days, I became increasingly confused as they addressed a forty-something man in the street as Charlie. I inquired, and was informed that this was Charles Whitt III, the estranged grandson of Charles Whitt Senior. Under circumstances not made clear to the kids’ table, Charlie had left his family in Florida and returned to the town where his life had begun.

One December day, I spotted Charlie in front of the barn with a canvas and charcoals, tracing the angles of its roof. From early childhood, I had developed a passion for art, and was excited to have found one of my kind.
“You’re an artist?” I asked.
“You betcha. I’m just laying out a sketch that I’m going to fill in with watercolors later.”
“Wow, you mean you’re a real painter?”
He chuckled. “Well, I use real paints.” I watched him, mesmerized by his strokes, rigid but fluid, structureless and free. In all of my art classes, I had been taught to grasp the pencil tightly and to wipe away the charcoal dust to prevent smudges. He held the pencil loosely, swooping and smudging wherever he pleased. The effect was a sort of ragged, chaotic set of overlapping lines, more bold than any single straight one.
After a few minutes, he became aware of my captivation.
“Hey, Ben, want to see my studio?”
“Really?” I said, excitedly. Then I remembered, I had parents who would be upset if I went off with a man that I didn’t really know to someplace that I had never been. My smile fell. “Well, I can’t go today, because I have to stay close to home.”
“Where do you think we’re going?” he said, and slid open the door to the barn. I followed him inside, and rubbed my eyes as they adjusted to the absence of the winter sunlight.
Junk. Everywhere I looked, there was junk. Rusted tins full of equally rusted bolts and screws, a box of rolling pins, mannequins, a tent, rotting shelves covered in yellowed books, stacks of flaky newspapers. License plate shingles adorned the walls like a parody of their rooftop counterparts. And up in the rafters, I saw something stir.
“There’s a bird in your studio!” I told him, pleased with my observational skills.
“This part isn’t my studio,” he said, “this is all the garbage my grandfather left in here. My studio’s upstairs. And that bird is Pidgie. She’s a homing pigeon.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that no matter how far I let her fly away, she always comes back to this barn. She’s got a special part of her brain that gives her a perfect sense of direction.”
As I digested this incredible fact, he led me up the splintering wooden planks that acted as stairs to the loft of the barn.

Something touched my hair as I emerged into the darkness of the second floor. It jingled playfully and slid off of my head as I moved further up. A few strips of light streamed through cracks in the boards, lighting up the swirling particles of dust that filled the room. These dazzling beams would have rendered everything else black by comparison, had it not been for the art. Because the thing that had dangled on my head a moment ago was a piece of a mirror, suspended by a length of fishing line. It hung, along with countless other shards, from a metal faucet, from which rays of straight metal wire burst, each supporting a cluster of reflective fragments.
As my eyes adjusted, yet again, I saw that the room was full of these glittering mobiles, throwing strips of light in every direction. There was one, centered around a Styrofoam head, made from pieces from a broken stained-glass window. It twirled around, flinging flighty, colored stains on the slanted walls. The peeling wood was aglow with sparks and patches of color. Then I noticed the sculptures. There were figures of pondering men, ballerinas, pianos, elephants, all constructed of twisted wire and metal scraps. These were illuminated by the mobiles, and they sparkled as the light slid over them.
There were canvases, too. Propped up on stands made out of stolen firewood and stale two by fours. There were sketches of lean, graceful dancers, of peasants working in fields, and, most of all, birds. There were large sketches of swans, pheasants, and sparrows, and one that was unmistakably Pidgie. I walked up to a wall to examine a piece of paper that was tacked up. It was a sketch of a man hauling a load of hay on his back. He bore a definite resemblance to Charlie.
“You like that one?” He asked.
“I like them all,” I said, still awestruck, “but yeah, this one’s really cool.”
“Take it,” he said, “I have hundreds.”
“Really? Thanks, Charlie!” I exclaimed, and removed it from the wall. I looked around for a desk or shelf to put the tack on, but there wasn’t any. What I saw was a mattress, laid over an arrangement of crates. Next to that was another crate with a gas lamp on it. Around it was strewn a small amount of clothing, a tiny space heater, and a bucket. Charlie followed my gaze.
“I don’t have much, but this is what I’ve got,” he said, motioning to the corner with the bed in it. Something began to rustle outside, and Charlie walked past the bed and pushed against the wall. The loft door swung open and light streamed in. Pidgie swooped inside and landed softly on Charlie’s hat. The gleaming of the mobiles intensified, and the wind from outside set them to swiveling and tinkling. I watched the cloud of my breath in front of me, then looked back to the space heater, then back to Charlie. Charlie, in his fingerless gloves and his stubble and his fedora. His eyes, in this light, were the uncertain, blue-grey color of a lake, right before sunrise. I stared at them for a long time.

In the following months, I visited the barn across the street daily. I became well acquainted with the cluttered, tangled mess of the barn. I also became acquainted with its other inhabitants. In addition to Pidgie, it was home to a dozen sparrows, two pheasants, a rooster, and a brood of panicky hens. Most of them spent their time milling around the first floor, or in the basement, which I was told was both dangerous and uninteresting. I occupied myself with sifting through the goldmine of garbage as I listened to Charlie’s stories. He told me what Hackettstown used to be like, and how different things were in the other places he had lived. He had hitchhiked through five states, met Arlo Guthrie at a bar, and shared a truck with someone who he was sure, he said, was a murderer. When I held up an item, he’d explain where it had come from; a sombrero that had been won in a poker game with a bullfighter, an ashtray from the White House. Upon retrospect, it’s very likely that he made those stories up to entertain me. Most of the things had belonged to his father and his grandfather. But I didn’t question them for a moment.

On the first day of spring weather, with my parents’ permission, he took my brother Sam and I to visit his grandfather’s property. He said the old man wouldn’t even notice, let alone mind, and, sure enough, we never once saw his face. We walked around the perimeter of the pond for a while, occasionally jumping out at a nesting goose to elicit an angry hiss. There were about a dozen nests, stuffed with stumbling goslings, guarded by a more aggressive adult. They were too young to swim in the pond just yet, but the water was placid, and we decided to glide around in the little rowboat for a while.
The surface was speckled with tiny leaves, and I watched the blurry seaweed slide beneath our oars. When we came close to a bank, though, I noticed something moving in a tangle of vines near the water’s edge. It was the tiniest gosling I had ever seen, trapped in the weeds and struggling not to drown.
“Charlie, get it out!” my brother and I yelled.
“Alright, alright,” he said, extending his oar and poking at the tendrils of the plant. They did not break, and the little bird continued to writhe and flap.
I repeated over and over, “Charlie, it’s going to die!” He considered it for a moment, looked down at what he was wearing, shrugged, and, without warning, jumped out of the boat.
The splash nearly soaked us. When he surfaced, he sloshed over to the bank and pulled out a knife. He sawed through the weeds and cupped the wet little gosling in his hand. Then he waded back to the boat and dropped it into my lap. Then he took off his hat, turned it upside down, and emptied out a stream of water into the pond.
When we had brought the boat back to the shore, Charlie took us around the pond in search of the bird’s nest.
“Geese are very protective of their young,” he said, “If this one got away from the nest, chances are its parents are dead.”
Sure enough, we reached a nest that was empty. We heard a loud hiss, and looked over to the neighboring nest, where another little gosling was trying to force its way past an angry mother. The goose began to peck at the little thing, and struck it with its wings.
“This one must be from the same nest,” came Charlie’s voice. “It’s trying to join another one, but it won’t succeed. The parents know which ones are theirs.”
“Then why don’t we take that one too?” my brother asked. Charlie thought for a moment.
“Well, they are siblings. And I guess a couple of extra birds around my place wouldn’t hurt.”
Sam and I had a good time distracting the adult goose as Charlie grabbed the gosling. We retreated to the side of the house, and he examined the pair.
“Well this one’s a girl, I think,” he said, examining the one from the nest. “And this one is definitely a boy,” he said, laughing as he held up the one from the water. “So what should we call ‘em?”
“How about Bruce?” suggested Sam. “Bruce the goose!”
“I like it,” Charlie said. “And how about her?”
“Papoose?” I offered, struggling to come up with a female name that rhymed.
“Maybe,” laughed Charlie. “How about…Lucy? Brucey and Lucy Goosey?”
“Yeah!” we said in unison, as he handed one to each of us.
When we brought them back to the barn, they began to explore. They didn’t get far before they ran into the pheasants, who circled them, sizing them up. The other birds followed suit for the next few days, and eventually, they were accepted.
I visited them after school, and then into the summer. The months passed quickly, and Brucey and Lucy grew surprisingly fast. They were the size of small ducks by June. However Charlie’s existence in the barn, by now, was drawing attention. People weren’t exactly happy with the thought of this unkempt, unemployed squatter becoming a permanent resident. His door was usually open, exposing the wealth of refuse in the barn, which had been deemed an eyesore, and the people who lived next to the barn weren’t happy with him emptying the bucket from his room in the grass outside. I heard rumors from other kids that Charles Whitt Senior had hidden a small fortune somewhere in the basement, buried beneath the floor or behind a brick. They said that Charlie was trying to find it so he could steal it. Even my parents, who had invited him for Easter dinner and even occasionally given him money, began to grow weary of his presence. I was told I shouldn’t spend so much time in the barn.
“It’s dusty.”
“There’s rusty metal.”
“You’ll get hurt.” It struck me as suspicious that these concerns were only surfacing now.

One day, when I arrived at the barn and called up to Charlie to come down. Pidgie flew down and landed on my arm. I waiting for a few minutes, and then noticed the opening in the floor that lead to the basement. I succumbed to curiosity, and I lowered my head into the opening. It was pitch dark, except for a small, rectangular window near the ceiling. I withdrew my head and lowered my feet down until they made contact with a ladder. I stepped down cautiously and looked around. There were bricks all over the floor, along with piles of dirt. Most of the floorboards had been torn up and rested against the walls. Half of the bricks that remained in the walls had marks on them. Suddenly, something shuffled past me and out of the opening. I almost fell off of the ladder, and had to hold back a cry of surprise. It was just one of the birds. So the rumors were true, then. Charlie was looking for his grandfather’s money.
“What are you doing down here?”
My head jerked upward and I nearly fell down again. Charlie stood above the opening, looking down, Pidgie on his shoulder.
I groped for an excuse, “I…well, I was waiting, and I saw–”
“I told you not to come down here. It’s dangerous,” said Charlie, sharply. He extended his arm down for me to grab, and I hoisted myself out of the basement.
“Sorry,” I said, looking at my feet.
“It’s alright,” he said, “Here, I have something for you.” He picked something up from a nearby bureau and handed it to me. It was an old record sleeve that I had absentmindedly covered in black and white checkers with Charlie’s paint.
“But…what–”
“Look,” he said, handing me a plastic bag. I peered inside and saw an assortment of nuts, bolts, gears, clothespins, and other small knickknacks. “It’s a chess set,” he said. “The kings are the big bolts, the queens are the clothespins–I painted them so you know which is which–the pawns are the bus tokens, and the… well, you can figure it out.”
I was ecstatic. I had a chess set of my own at home, and we played often. But this one was so much better. It was so…Charlie.
“This is great!” I said. “Thanks a lot, Charlie.”
He hi-fived me and said, “It was nothing.” Then he told me he had to go out for a while, and that I probably shouldn’t be in the barn alone. “In case you get hurt. You know, the people around here.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s okay.” I thanked him again for the chess set and walked back to my house. When I got in, my mother was on the phone.
“Well, the pool hasn’t been cleaned for a while. We haven’t been using it. But when we got home from church, we found footprints in the algae on the bottom, and a bar of soap in the grass. We were just wondering if you saw– what? Oh my god. Yes. Yes, that’s what I thought, too. No, we’re going to deal with it right now. Well, thank you Rhonda.” She hung up the phone. “Do you know what that was about?” she asked.
“No, what?”
“Charlie has been using our pool when we’re at church. Not only that, he was swimming in it with the geese!” I imagined Charlie doing a leisurely backstroke as Brucey and Lucy circled him. I laughed. “It’s not funny, Ben,” she snapped. “We’re going to have to talk to him about this.”
“Well he doesn’t have a bathtub; at least he’s keeping clean!” I said, defensively.
“It doesn’t matter. Swimming or bathing or whatever in our pool, when we’re not home, is going too far.” I didn’t want to admit it, but I could see her point.
“Well, I’m sure if you ask him to stop, he will,” I said, casually.
“I sure hope so,” she said.
It started to rain later in the day, and by about six o’clock it was a downpour. I was organizing the bag of chess pieces when I heard an argument from outside. I left my room, went downstairs, and looked outside. My father and Charlie were yelling at each other across the street.
“That doesn’t give you the right to come anywhere near our house!” yelled my dad.
“Oh, okay!” Charlie retorted. “Mr. Christian. Mr. Generous, Righteous, Good Samaritan! What happened to…the…high and mighty…charitable heart? Huh?” He was clutching a bottle, and he had clearly been drinking. He staggered forward a few steps and shouted something too slurred to understand. I didn’t like seeing him like this. His long hair was soaked and stringy, and his eyes were half-closed.
The door to the barn was open, and one of the geese peeked its head out. It was the size of a small swan, and its yellow fuzz was now brown, with real feathers here and there. Inside, I could see water dripping from several places. I guessed that the roof was leaking. Charlie had probably asked to stay in the house until the rain stopped, but my father just having found out about the pool, it was the wrong time to ask. My father stood on our side of the street, yelling back at him to go away, and somehow, I knew it was Lucy that was peeking out.

During the last few weeks of summer, I only visited the barn about once a week. Charlie seemed a little distant, and I noticed that he had begun packing some of his things. I asked him if he was planning on going somewhere, but I never got a straight answer.
Before I knew it, it was late autumn. Brucey and Lucy were now full-fledged Canada geese, covered in brown and white feathers. They were black from their bills all down their necks, except for a white patch on their faces.
“Are you going to take them with you?” I asked Charlie one day.
“No, they’ll be migrating soon. They can’t stick around here forever.”
“So we’ll never see them again?” I asked, upset.
“Well, the interesting this about geese is, they always come back…at least once.”
“What do you mean?” I said, puzzled. “They’ll remember us?”
“No, but they’re sort of like Pidgie,” Charlie explained, stroking the bird on his finger. “They have an amazing sense of direction.”
“But why do they leave and come back, instead of just staying?” I asked him.
“Well, they’ve got to go and see other places. But even if it’s only for a while, they’ll always find their way back to the place they were born, before they leave for good.”
The next time I visited the barn, Charlie was gone. His canvases were all gone, and most of the junk had been sold or thrown out. The basement was mostly empty as well. I wondered if he had found the money, or if he had just given up.

About a month ago, I ran into Charlie in town. I almost didn’t recognize him, because his hair was shorter and he was almost clean-shaven. He had a briefcase and he was wearing a white shirt and a green tie. It looked strange on him; it clashed with his blue-grey eyes. He told me about how he got a job and an apartment, and we talked about the barn and his art. I asked if Pidgie was still around, and he told me she had died the previous year. I told him I was sorry, and he said “Me too.” Then I said I had to go, but it was nice to see him. He said he had to go, too. But he told me something interesting before we parted.
He asked me, “Do you know what the difference is between a pigeon and a dove?”
I told him I didn’t.
He told me, and then said goodbye and walked the other way down the street. I thought about it for a long while afterward.
I walked home, yelled “Mom, I’m home!” and walked into the kitchen, where my little sister was making a sandwich.
“Hey Maddie, do you know what the difference is between a pigeon and a dove?”
“Yeah,” she said, “pigeons are dirty, and they go to the bathroom on statues and all over the city. And doves are used in magic tricks and weddings and stuff. And they’re pure white.”
“No,” I told her, “They’re the same bird. The only difference is the name.”

This was posted on May 11th, 2009 at 8:49 pm in the category Memoir.
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