Bluebirds on Sunday

As Jeff struggled out of his makeshift bunker the lightening ignited the sky with a blinding, but revealing flash.  The rain beat down hard upon his head and skin, burning them with an scalding acidic sensation.  All around him lay the carnage that he had once called home.  The remains of the buildings stood like the broken teeth of a high school geek.  Crawling, his legs went numb at the stench of cesspools mixed with the scent of barbecuing human flesh that lingered in the air. "Why," he screamed to himself, "why me, why this town, why now?"

He could remember only a month ago how happy this town had been, not the gloomy twilight noon that now covered the happiness.  That was before the war came and the planes and the bombs.  Day after day, the reports of neighboring areas bombed to oblivion, slowly drained the life out of the people.  But even then people smiled and boys and girls played in the parks, churches held mass and people lived in a moderate peace.  Then the bomb hit and in a sudden instant it all changed.  All the smiling people and children in the parks were vaporized, the churches collapsed and burned.  As he crawled he saw a cross still burning, even in the downpour, like a herald to the end of the world.  

"Did anyone but me survive the blast," he crowed to the burning sky, "am I cursed to live for eternity alone?  God, why have you forsaken me?!"  Nothing but thunder answered his broken cries.  Morale shattered, he stumbled and fell face first into the coagulating muck.  Rolling over he cried, eyes burning with sulfurous acid.  Shedding his soaked and torn coat he continued on crawling almost more than walking.  Birds cried above as they flew over the desolate city ruins.  Looking up, he smiled, a single bluebird flew over head.  Bluebirds had been Eva's favorite bird, but now she lay dead.  "Its all my fault!" He screamed at the bird.  

That day had seemed normal.  Eva had arrived at his condo at about 9:00 in the morning to go to church.  As he drove to church that morning, he thought about his plans for the afternoon.  Go out to lunch, go shopping with Eva, propose.  He smiled at the last thought, finally he would have the courage to ask her to marry him.  She really had never trusted anyone, her mother had died when she was only an infant and her trash father had sold her off to his friends.  At 16 she went into foster care, where she met Jeff.  He was her family's neighbor, and her first real friend.  When they arrived at church the sun was shining, the air smelled of cut roses.  All of this was to change, for at 10:50 a.m. the bombs began to fall.  Jeff dove for cover under one of the benches.  When the barrage finished he crawled out to find Eva with shrapnel buried deep into her pretty face.  With a convulsion of shock and horror Jeff froze, his very existence wanted to expel his eyes and the image of his love mutilated.  Around him someone yelled to take cover, but he couldn't move, he wouldn't move and leave his love behind. He felt an arm dragging him into a makeshift shelter.  He tried to protest and tell them he would not move, but he had nothing left to fight with.  As he was shoved roughly into the shelter, the next wave of bombings hit and his savior was obliterated by the falling ceiling.

"How many deaths will be on my head today?" He thought with a cynical, deranged humor as he stood shaking off the terrible memories of yesterday.  "What now?" he wondered. "So, I guess this is how it feels to be the last man alive."  With no goal, no will power, he set off walking aimlessly.  For hours he traversed the landscape of the broken city.  Everywhere he went was the same, bodies burned, buildings fallen to rubble.  "Who did this to us?  What did we do to deserve this?!"

Coming upon the playground where the town's children all played, he fought to stay standing.  The air smelled of putrefied flesh.  Stumbling toward the play structures, he wept.  Some of the childrens' mangled bodies were fused into the metal.  Others were so desiccated that their mangled muscles more resembled beef jerky than human flesh.  Still others were just light stains on the concrete.  "These were innocent children.  God how could you allow them to die so horribly," Jeff crowed, anger and doubt filling his heart. "I thought you cared for your children, not blew them to pieces."   Angry and hurt, he stalked onward toward nowhere.  As he slowly shuffled his feet, he found himself heading toward downtown.  As he neared it he saw that it no longer looked like the downtown he had lived near, it was a lot shorter. All the odd sculptures, typical of modern cities, ravaged, the blasts had flattened everything.  "Why so much carnage?" he asked again, losing track of how many times he had said that. Cars with no drivers, abandoned after the first the first hailing of bombs.  That didn't save them, the bombs still hurled their deadly rays and debris of the very things that the poor fools fled from.  Jeff wondered in fear if that would be his fate, to be killed by the very thing he fled from, his past.

It was at that moment he decided he would no long run away.  He was no longer going to look back, but look forward.  And that meant walking all the way home to gather what he could, if anything still existed, but he would still try.  As he walked the rain stopped, a relief to Jeff who had become sick of the drizzle.  After an hour of walking, he heard a uneven crackle behind him.  Inside him a hope rose that he wasn't alone in this desolate city.  Whirling around, he found nothing and his hopes died. Onward he continued, blocking out sound and sight.  Nearly tripping over a charred hand, he decided to open his eyes.  Laughing morbidly to himself he continued, thinking about the hand just laying in his path.  Once again he heard the uneven crackle behind him, then a crunch as if someone had fallen.  Spinning around, he found a homeless man sprawled out on the ground, the very hand that had almost tripped Jeff had foundered his stalker.

"So you're the one who's been following me," Jeff laughed; he had been in a much better mood since he had gained a plan.

"Oooooh, yeah.  I was trying to figure out if you were real or my imagination," the beggar responded with a wince of pain, "Could you help me up, kind sir.  My bones aren't as young as they used to be."

"No, problem."

Once they were both standing upward, Jeff finally got a good look at his sloppy companion.  He was dressed in rags and his shoes looked to be as old as he was, but even through the rags and mess there seemed to be an air of regality in the way he held himself.  

"What's your name, sir?" Jeff asked him politely.

"I dunno," the beggar said earnestly, "but most people call me Earnest, if they call me anything other than 'hey you, move'. "

Jeff smiled at the unintended joke.  Looking up at the darkening sky knowing it would rain again soon he asked Earnest, "Hey, Earnest, I'm  Jeff, umm.... Do know anywhere that I can take shelter.  I think it's going to rain very soon."

Earnest began hopping, "Yes, place to hide from bad rains.  Follow me, I'll show you."  Jeff cocked his eye at the sudden change in his guide's mental processing, but who was he to judge others.  Earnest hobbled off in the direction of an alleyway, Jeff decided it was best to follow him wherever he led was better than standing around doing nothing and being caught in the rain.  As they walked the rain began to sprinkle down its acidic spit.

"How long till we get there?  It's starting to rain and my clothes can't take anymore of this acid rain."

"Not far," Earnest responded, and pointed to a large dumpster ahead, "just slide under that and inside you'll find where I live."

Jeff rushed ahead.  Rolling under the dumpster, he found that the bottom had been cut out.  Sitting up and pinching his nose to block out the smell of rotting fruit, he waited patiently for his host to show up.  As he waited his exhaustion  took over and he drifted off to sleep.  As he slept he dreamed, dreamed of that day, the day of the bombs.

The air in the car was balmy.  Jeff's air conditioner was broken and Eva's hair was too nicely done up to open the windows.  Thoughts of his plans broke the silence in head.  He had the ring safely stored at home.  When he drove home he would rush inside to "get her something cool to see" and he would bring her the ring and propose, but that wasn't the most important thing at the moment.

"Jeff, darling, can we turn on the news?  I really want to find out what is going on," Eva interrupted his thoughts.

"What ever floats your boat."

The news was never good anymore, always filled with the morbid news of how miserably the war was going and which towns were obliterated.  "Why can't they ever say something happy, like Hawaii sunk into the ocean or something" Jeff thought with a mildly sadistic smile. But, alas, that would never happen, they were too busy warning people that they would be next to be bombed about a day after they had been bombed.  Luckily nothing of importance was on the news, just local business men whining about how the war was loosing them money.

When they arrived at church the sky was a beautiful blue and the grass looked greener than  usual, but there was a single black flower growing in the front yard of the church.  Quickly they hurried inside.  As they took their seats, the service was just starting.  The choir began droning out a hymn and the whole congregation stood to join them in the cacophony.  Jeff smiled, singing the loudest.  After a couple minutes of noise, joyful noise, the penguin in a suit waddled onto the stage and motioned for the congregation to be seated.  Everyone collapsed back onto the pew.  The penguin decided that was the best time for him to ramble off his sermon.  Jeff loved this part, he felt so close to God, at that moment.  "Amen," Jeff said at all the right moments.  Suddenly the fat man's speech was interrupted by a deafening blast.  Jeff and most people rolled under their pews for some protection, but Eva stood in shock till the next blast brought her down. A piece of the cross, that had broken loose during the explosion, lodged into her head.  Jeff crawled out from under the pew, weeping upon seeing his beautiful Eva's face distorted by a piece of wood.  "God," he swore, "if only I had pulled her down she'd be alive."  Holding Eva's bloody carcass to his, Jeff began to cry.  Why hadn't he saved her? Why hadn't God knocked that one wood piece away?  Were they not faithful enough to be allowed to be happy?

Jeff awoke with a start.  Earnest was shaking him.  "Wake up, wake up.  It's stopped raining."

Sitting up, Jeff noticed his shoes were missing.  Frantically he looked around. "What happened to my shoes?"

"I dunno, Jeff,"

Jeff noticed an odd newness to Earnest's shoes.  "Hey, those are my shoes.  Give them back."

"No, no they're not. I found them in a dumpster, they're mine"

"You found them in this dumpster, on my feet.  Give them back," Jeff said grabbing for the shoes.

"No you can't have them. I need shoes." Earnest grabbed a banana and pointed it at Jeff, "don't move or I stab you," he said jumping up.

Jeff couldn't help but laugh, "You do realize that you are pointing a banana at me?"

Looking down Earnest smiled too, "It does appear that I am, doesn't it."  Taking off the shoes he said, "Here are your shoes back, you had better get going before it rains again."

Putting on his shoes, Jeff left for his home this time with a much more brisk step for he had slept well, despite his disturbing dream.  This time, as he past the carnage of his world he did not look or worry.  The past was behind him and he was not looking back.  So onward he would walk until he got home.  From there he would gather all he needed to set up a new life in another city.  Suddenly behind him he heard a lopsided crunch.  "Crap, that creepy bum is following me" he thought.

"Hey, Jeff, where are you going?"

"Earnest," Jeff said with a start, "I'm just going home."
"Can I go with you?  I have nowhere to go."  Earnest looked depressingly desperate.

"No, you filthy bum," Jeff almost said, but a thought rung in his head, "I was a stranger and you took me in.  He did take me in, and he didn't even know me.  How can I turn him down?"  So instead he said, "Sure, just follow me."

"I'm good at that one," Earnest chuckled.  Jeff just shook his head and smiled and kept walking.  Every so often Earnest would ask a question just to break the silence, but other than that that they walked in complete silence.  When they finally reached the rubble that had once been Jeff's condo, Jeff dove into it searching through the planks and plaster.

"What are you looking for?" Earnest asked innocently.

"Anything of use.  Anything at all."

Earnest knelt down nearby and began to dig. "May I have these?" Earnest said pointing to a pair of beaten up sneakers.

"I was naked and you clothed me," rang in his head. "Sure, take them."

After a while of gathering things he needed for his trek to a nearby city, he remembered one last thing, the ring that he had been going to give to Eva.  Looking around he couldn't tell where it would be.  When your house is flattened, things look different.  He noticed a bluebird sitting atop a pile of rubble.  "Shoo, bird," he said shaking his fist at the bird.

"Don't shoo the bird.  He might be trying to tell you something."

"Old man, you are kind, but logic isn't your strong suit.  Nor is sanity," Jeff only whispered the last part.  Earnest crawled over to the bird lifting it to his ear.

"Ahh, little birdie, how are you today?" he whispered, "good you say.  Well that's good."

Becoming irritated Jeff growled, "You're nuts."

Obviously not hearing him Earnest continued, "My name is Earnest.  What's yours?  Eva, you say.  That's a pretty name."

At the name Jeff froze.  Eva's favorite bird was a bluebird.  Choking back tears at the name, he began to wonder if maybe this beggar was more than he appeared.  "What else does this bird say?"

"I thought you thought I was nuts?" Earnest inquired with a smirk.

"I did, but Eva was my girlfriend's name and her favorite bird was the bluebird and she always had longed to be able to sing like a bluebird.  And that's too much coincidence for me to still think its only mere chance"
"Ahh, Eva, it looks like we have a believer. Oh what's that, look under the pile for what you seek.  Thank you little bird.  Now fly away and sing." And with that the bluebird took off singing "truly, truly."

Jeff scrambled, digging through the pile until he found a dusty, dirty, broken case, but inside it held a treasure that could brighten someone's day.  Smiling, he realized that the same could be said of Earnest.