Preface:
Renaissance
In Cyberspace

The Tip
of the Hook

Twisted

The Other,
Another
And I

The Prince,
As The King
His Father
Lies Dying

A Ghost
Among
The Ghosts

   When I visit Skyler, he cheerfully pulls out photo albums and shows me who he's been seeing, where he's been, what he's been doing. Then we go for lunch to a Thai, Japanese or Indian restaurant for which he has a 2-for-1 coupon. Then we go for a ride.
   "Me go... birds... me and you... okay?"
   Skyler is a big man, 55, with a little drool stain in his gray goatee under the right corner of his mouth. He is hemiplegic, though he can walk with a stick, and has expressive aphasia. Not receptive aphasia, though; he understands perfectly, or at least as perfectly as most people. The chunk of his brain that got whacked just happens to be the talking part. Still, he's regrooved another chunk, enough to speak perhaps a few hundred slurred words and phrases. I dig the way he always uses "me" instead of "I" as a subject, like Tarzan or an Indian in a grade B movie.
   I drive.
   "Me... show."
   I just nod, to make sure I don't unconsciously mimic him, like I can't help but do when I talk to English people and Southerners and Yorkers. Anyway, we're comfortable with the silences, which quit being awkward a few thousand smokes ago. Skyler doesn't seem strange to me; it's not like chunks of my brain have never been scrambled.
   He directs me with gestures and fragmentary commands to The Wildcare Center in Albert Park, where wounded birds are nursed back to health. Those too permanently injured to be freed in the wild -- even three eagles, bigger than I imagined up close -- live in large gracious cages.
   I remember a story -- I don't even know if it's true, and I've certainly never asked him -- that one of his long line of lovely homecare attendants once told me.
   It occurred more than 20 years ago, and more than 10 years after his Marine days in 'Nam, when he fought with his wife and knocked her down and cracked her skull. She was unconscious, and her head wound, as head wounds are wont to do, was bleeding profusely. Thinking he had killed her, Skyler put a bullet in his brain. As it turned out, he failed to kill either of them.
   Now, with great difficulty (and little help from me, since I hadn't even known where he was taking me, much less why), Skyler communicates to the Wildcare director that he wishes to join the band of volunteers that helps care for the birds. The director sadly explains that the main thing the volunteers do is feed the birds, which sometimes try to peck and claw their benefactors, who must scramble out of their way. Nimbleness is a prerequisite for the task.
   It's the first time in 30 years that Skyler has tried to join something, do something, give something. I wonder if it will be the last time.
   As he shambles towards the gate, head down, Skyler is suddenly surrounded by a dozen 10- or 12-year-old boys and girls, mostly Hispanic, who are mesmerized by the patch museum that festoons his ammo vest: Zig-Zag Man, artillery, Grateful Dead skull, stars'n'bars, mermaid, Corvette, amanita muscaria.
   "Did you win all those?" they ask, dancing around him in a circle. He is a giant, a magical being. One points to the mermaid: "Did you catch her?"
   "Oh yes," beams Skyler, back straightening, "oh yes," and hands me his camera.

Music from "You Want To Change Me" by Bobby Bradford, performed by Burnt Toast table of contents    next story: Twisted