The End of FUN (51 page)

“Come in!”

But no one came, so I got up to see who it was.

There she was, Katie, standing in the snow by the shed in a puffy blue coat, looking up at the roof.

“There was a bird,” she said.

“A bird?”

“Yeah.”

“Like an actual bird?”

“I think so? A yellow one. I thought it flew up there, but now I don't see it….”

I looked around. No bird that I could see, just sagebrush and sky. The wind had picked up. It was blowing Katie's hair all around her face.

“I came for the rest of my stuff,” she said.

“Right. Well, come on in.”

I hadn't lit a fire yet, so I brought some wood in and loaded up the wood stove. When I first started using it, I didn't really know how to stack the wood inside—I always got ahead of myself, put too many big logs on, but over time I'd learned how to do it right. You put a big log on either side, and then you crumple your paper in the middle, and put a couple small logs over that, then some medium logs, and a big one on top. Then you light it up with a $100 bill and close the door, but not all the way. You need to give it some air at first.

Katie watched me crumple up the paper. “Holy wow,” she said. “Is that real money?”

Funny, but I'd gotten so used to it, I didn't even think about it anymore. Turns out the old US dollar is pretty great for starting fires. In a matter of weeks I'd burned up twenty grand, easy, with dead presidents smiling out from the flames.

“I was too late to exchange it for amero. You want some coffee?”

I poured her a cup, and we sat down on the sofa.

“I'm so sorry about the treasure,” she said. “Would you like to keep any of my furniture? You can have whatever you want. The chair…the desk…the other chair…”

“I've been using the tiny lamp.”

“That's fine,” she said. “You should have the tiny lamp.”

“So are you moving to Tahoe, then?”

“Right—I didn't tell you. That job I interviewed for? I got it. Teaching sixth grade.”

“In Tahoe?”

“Yeah. It starts in two weeks.”

“Oh.” I tried to sound upbeat. “Well, congratulations.”

“We can keep in touch,” she said. “I'd like that. You can mindtalk
™
me sometime.”

“Actually, I'm getting off.”

“Off?!” she said. “Why?”

“I don't know. I guess I'm just done having FUN
®
—I mean if I can complete all my yays and they accept my Application for Termination.”

said the Homie
™
.

“But I thought you were all
about
FUN
®
,” said Katie.

“Yeah, I was. But I think it's time for the next thing.”

“Well,” she said, “you were right about one thing. FUN
®
is fun, but it's also addicting. Have you ever played
Tickle, Tickle, Boom!
? Oh my God! It's like a drug! One good thing, though: I
did
quit smoking. I only smoke smókz
™
now.” She lit one up and blew a cloud of bonuses. “Yay for me, right?”

“Yay for you, Katie. But listen—are you
sure
you want to move to Lake Tahoe? What with all the trees and beautiful houses and delicious restaurants and crystal clear water? I mean, besides all those things and your cool new job, what could possibly make you want to—”

She was smiling now. God, her eyes. Even with the lenses they were just—I don't know. Like looking at Earth from outer space. I won't ever forget them. And it occurred to me I'd never really told her about her eyes, how beautiful they were—“beautiful” isn't even the word for it—and I wanted to say something, just to let her know, you know? And then suddenly there was this loud
SMACK
.

Right behind us, like someone had run up from the yard and slapped the pane. Just this loud—
SMACK!

We went outside and found it, eight feet out from the house: a little yellow bird lying motionless on the snow. I'm not kidding, that thing had bounced back eight feet from the house. Talk about the elasticity of glass.

“That's it!” she said. “That's the bird!”

Its eyes were closed, and its wings and feet were tucked against its body. I watched the tiny yellow feathers tremble in the breeze. It was so
real
. And yet it could have been a Christmas tree ornament; the only thing missing was a loop of thread coming out of its back.

We knelt there for a long time, not saying anything, just looking for a sign of life. The bird didn't move.

I scooped my hands under the bird, trying my best to keep the snow off. It was warm and soft, but the tiny eyes were closed and the head lolled as I cupped it in my palm.

We brought it inside and I got a paper lunch sack—the same one that held Evie's snickerdoodles. I poured out the crumbs and we slid the bird into the bag, folding the top neatly the way my sister used to when she packed my lunches.

There. Now the bird was in a bag. I set it on the table.

“And why did we just do that?” Katie asked.

“I don't know. Aren't you supposed to put them in a bag?”

“Are you? And then what?”

“I don't know—we wait, I guess. Maybe it gets better?”

We waited.

Katie got up and opened the bag and looked inside. She closed it again.

“It isn't moving,” she said.

“We could bury it with the others.”

“The others?” she said.

“Yeah. We buried them by the tree.”

“OK,” she said. “Fine. Let's do that.”

Snow lay in patches between the sagebrush, and as we neared the Russian olive the patches joined into an uninterrupted carpet of white. The tree threw its branches up toward the heavens like a call to prayer. Sunlight fell from the blue sky, but it was bitter cold out there. The wind came in icy blasts. Katie held her hair from her eyes.

I'd remembered to bring a shovel along, but I'd forgotten gloves. As I dug, Homie
™
told me about all the reasons for having FUN
®
. By the time I got done chipping out what you might call a hole, I couldn't feel my fingers. I leaned against the shovel and looked down at the frozen ground. The little hole.

“Hey!” Katie was grabbing my arm. “Look! The bag! It's moving!”

She was holding it away from her body, like it might explode in her hands. There was definitely something moving, all right. Knocking around at the paper walls.

“What do I do?”

“I don't know!”

“Here! Take it!”

And then
I
was holding the bag, doing no better than she had done. My fingers were frozen and I couldn't get it unfolded, so finally I just tore open the bag and gave it a shake. The bird flopped onto a sagebrush, landing upside down in the snowy branches. As it struggled to right itself, all these questions flashed through my mind.

Should I help it? Or would I just hurt it more? Does it have a concussion? Broken bones? Internal bleeding? Should we bring it back inside? What now? What next?

But there wasn't time. In a sudden flash of wings, the bird threw itself into the air. I'm serious. Just. Like. THAT. One second it was resting on the sagebrush, and the next it was airborne. Like magic. A resurrection. It was like,
Go, little bird! Go!

And then came the wind. This gust like you wouldn't believe. Howling across the hills like a parade of demons, bending the sagebrush and blowing up clouds of dust. It slammed the bird and flung it eastward across the sky—I mean FLUNG it—but the bird battled back. I'm telling you, this thing was a
fighter
. But where was it going? And how was it going to get there? What's the life expectancy of a little yellow bird in the high desert with winter coming on?

“Wow,” said Katie.

said Homie
™
.

And this voice in my head, I don't know where it came from—just out of the blue, I guess—it was like,
Hey, man. This is holy.
And I gave the questions a rest. I stood next to Katie and just watched the bird go. And let me tell you, that thing
went
. Angling this way and that, fighting the gusts, climbing higher and higher, growing smaller and smaller, the little bird pressed itself against the very edge of the sky until it was only a speck—yellow on blue—nothing at all and everything all at once. And then it disappeared.

Tara, Cedar, Alison, Mom, Dad, Mark Baechtel, Jamie Baker, Eric Bassier, Jen Bedet, Marvin Bell, Laura Bergner, Ben Caldwell, Ethan Canin, Jen Carlson, Sarah Charukesnant, Jerritt Collord, Benji Conrad, Frank Conroy, Petrina Crockford, Everyone at DCL, Gloria Derado, Elizabeth Dobbs, Eric Eanes, Earth Mountain, ECN, ENG 121, Jason Enlow, Danielle Miles Forest, Justice Evans Forest, Travis George, Arrel Gray, Bobby Hogg, Everyone at Hyperion, Iowa, Michael Johnson, Mike Kath, Tracey Keevan, the kid with the white hair, Lori Klaus, Catherine Knepper, Dave Kosanke, Latuda Hall, Judy Lee, Lillian, Amy Maffei, Jesse McCaughey, Skyler McCaughey, Shaelan McDonough, Marilyn McGuire, Melissa Meiris, Ricardo Mejías, Everyone at MHCC, Justin Miles, Tracy Miles, Tamera Morton, John Paniagua, Puff, Chris & AJ Roe, Matt Roeser, the Rossolos, Tyler Sage, Kimberly Slagle, Cynthia Smith, Paula Smith, Edward Rowe Snow, Johnny & Joey Sousa, Trinidad, TSJC, TWSL, Zach Weinman, and everyone else.

SEAN McGINTY
is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, farmer, and English instructor. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches reading and writing.
The End of Fun
is his debut novel. To learn more, visit
supermagicfuntrip.com
.