wizard-of-the-pigeons

bag of stale popcorn and fed them. They clustered at his feet, looking like small
gray pilgrims seeking out his wisdom. They perched on the bench beside him
and walked on his body, but soiled him not. One fat gray fellow with iridescent
neck feathers had stood before him and puffed himself out, to bob and coo his
ritual dance to his mate, which promised that life went on, always. He had fed
them, never speaking, but feeling a tiny warmth come from the feathered bodies
clustered so closely about him. A strange little hope was nourished by the sight
of such successful scavengers surviving.
Suddenly, Cassie had stood before him. The pigeons had billowed up, fanning
him with the cold air of their passage.
“They know I’d eat ‘em,” she laughed, and had sat down beside him. She had
been a stout lady, her feet laced up in white nurse’s shoes. Her nylon uniform
was too long for current styles; her nubbly black coat didn’t reach to the hem of
it. A sensible black kerchief imprisoned her steel wool hair. She had heaved the
sigh of a heavy woman glad to be off her feet.
“That’s a strange gift you have,” she’d said. It was her way, to start a
conversation in the middle. “Can’t say as I’ve ever seen it before. Must be based
on the old loaves and fishes routine.” She had laughed softly, showing yellowed
teeth. Wizard had not answered her. He remembered that about himself.
He had known that small survival trait. Talk makes openings, and openings
admit weapons. Given enough silence, anyone will go away. Unless she’s
Cassie.
“Been watching you,” she’d said, when her laugh was done.
“These last nine days. Every day you’re here. Every day is the same bag of
popcorn. Every day it holds enough to fill up these feathered pigs. But even
when they’re stuffed, they don’t leave you. They know that you won’t harm
them. Can’t harm them, without harming yourself. And if you know that much,
you’d better know me. Because there aren’t that many of us around. You either
have it, or you don’t. And if you have to be taught it, you can’t learn it.”
Ironically, that had been what she had taught him. That he had a gift, and that
gift meant survival. That was what he could not teach to others, unless they
already knew it. He was of the pigeons, and they were his flock. But it was a
non-transferable bond. He couldn’t teach anyone else to feed his pigeons, for he
had never learned it himself. Nor would he ever know why that particular gift
was the one bestowed on him. Cassie would only shrug and say, “Bound to be a
reason for it, sooner or later.”