The Day Carter Killed Harvey in Bellevue Square

By Vern Smith.

It was mid-afternoon, somewhere around two on a sticky Tuesday, late July. Carter's transistor had been calling for rain since breakfast, humidity thickening the air. The sun beat down hard, radiation intake up, and everyone was going on like winter was a long-lost relative.
There would be no relief for months.
Out in Bellevue Square, Carter sat on his green bench, as he would, refusing on principle to fight the heat. He'd been cold and sick all winter, so he wasn't going to complain. Besides, the square was the closest thing he ever had to a backyard, something of a miniature park - a parkette, they called it - with a circular wading pool in the middle.
Adjusting the brown and tan satchel slung across his chest like a newspaper bag, he sat alone on the pool’s north bank, facing the sun. Across the water, about a hundred feet away, sat Fitzgerald on the southern extreme. The pond's geyser shot up in between them, keeping the water cool.
Shithawks circled like the poor man's buzzards, waiting for Fitzgerald's afternoon ritual of breaking stale bread into tiny bits, then tossing the bits onto a concrete shore near the water's edge. The pigeons would come soon, and they'd come up close, always too close.
In the beginning, there were no angles, no agendas, and no vendettas. It was just about killing seconds and minutes and hours within the neighbourhood's confines back then.
Carter and Fitzgerald, the two of them never spoke - going about their ways in detached manners, developing a deep, mutual, brooding hate based entirely on the nonverbal.
Carter thought it gave them purpose and reason, the intangibles needed when they were alone, always in the heat when it was too much, shivering in their rooms in the winter, which was most of the time.
Somewhere inside, even he silently acknowledged Fitzgerald's feeding ritual, why it needed to be done. And why they needed to be there, together, in a space getting tighter.
Fitzgerald had been feeding the birds that whole time, drawing them in. With a steady sustenance supply, the shithawks and pigeons made nearby nests. It only made sense. The square was a source of people food, and Fitzgerald was among the most dependable of his species.
All of that was fine by Carter, to a point. He understood hunger, and he understood middle-age crazy. He knew what it was to be declining in the middle of the day - the fear of nothing to do and a limited supply of discretionary dollars to do it with. So yes, a man had to do something. But the filthy birds had become too much, and Carter was not alone in his distress.
In the late eighties the city put up signs aimed at discouraging Fitzgerald and his kind. When they refused to cease and desist, city workers took a run of their own at the birds, feeding them drug-laced nuts and seeds. It was a touchy-feely bureaucratic compromise that satisfied no one. The feed was supposed to agitate the birds and drive them away, without killing them. But they picked the narcotic crumbs clean, looking back at the city workers, and, in their own way, asking for more.
They were always asking for more, fighting over hard bread, expired produce, and whatever else people threw at them. Seemed like a lot of people weren't finishing their hotdogs, so Carter thought they were distressed by their diets, bunged up. That what they were eating was responsible - all that yeast rising inside - for the tousling and fraying. He figured some kind of self-produced paste held their feathers together, their poor little systems working overtime to stem the disfigurement.
Whenever Fitzgerald's supplies began looking grim, they'd swoop down on Carter like vampire children on a man who didn't trick or treat.
Carter never asked for that, any of it, and he never brought anything for the birds. He wasn't going to encourage them when excrement speckled the square like contaminated dabs of oil paint.
Carter knew, he just knew pigeon droppings were among the most toxic animal-produced substances - heard it on the transistor - not to mention displeasing from an aesthetic point of view. Carter felt he'd reached and surpassed the point of being reasonable. He had been dive-bombed too many times, including three or four hits that summer. It had gone on for too long, and now there were too many shithawks and too many pigeons.
It wouldn't have been a federal case, certainly not the silent war it had become, except that afternoons in Bellevue Square were among Carter's last pilgrimages. He needed to be in the square. It was his refuge, his sanctuary, a place to go and get on, listening to his radio and trading stories with friends that only his mind brought to life. A place to simply be.
Carter's transistor reported a bad score from the ballpark. At this, he accidentally burned himself with a cigarette. Sucking on the sore spot, he was somewhat sure he was also sun-tanning a cancer burn - a dark blotch about the size of a dime on his receding forehead.
Turning brown, just like last July, and every other one for the past twenty summers, he remembered that item about the ozone. Rumour had it right over the goddamn city right now. At least, he thought that's what the transistor said.
Whether or not this was true, he knew it wasn't safe to be out in the sun. Then again, it wasn't safe to drink the water, eat the food, or even fuck, and he didn't want to live in a place where doing those things was like living on the edge of a free-fire zone. So he did all that, when he could, enjoying a little bit of control over something that couldn't end well.
Over on the pool's southern end, Fitzgerald kept tossing mouldy feed. Pigeons materialized, joining the shithawks and turning the square into a rent-controlled Jack Miner's of sorts.
Back to the North, Carter felt like he was melting inside. Glaring across the way at Fitzgerald who smiled a smug fuck-you back at him.
The birds were still cooing and squawking and eating when Scagleoni showed at his regular time. Claiming his bench on the wading pool's west bank, he buried his face in his arms.
Fitzgerald thought he was laughing to show disrespect, but couldn't say who it was aimed at.
Carter thought Scagleoni was weeping because he was wearing impractical clothing - long polyester sleeves, heavy navy pants, and desert boots.
"Get the fuck outta here," Scagleoni snapped, shoo-shooing the birds away with the back of his left hand. "There's nothing for you... I've got nothing for you."
From the north and south polars, Carter and Fitzgerald faced each other, twitching every so often inside walking shorts and T-shirts turned drab and from too many cycles.
Scagleoni considered himself a failure, Fitzgerald a deadbeat. Carter fancied himself an ambiguous blend of the two. All of which meant they had more in common than not, except for the fact that Scagleoni often spoke out loud. In their minds, both Carter and Fitzgerald knew that this particular flaw would lead to Scagleoni's demise. He’d do well to make it through another summer shooting his mouth off like that. And there he was, oblivious to it all. Jabbering, trying to entice the birds now without the benefit of bait.
"Sing, little eater men. S-I-N-G… Peter Peter Peter..."
Scagleoni was thinking about his wife, wondering where she'd been, why she had to go. Trying to stop, his voice drifted off, fading.
North, Carter picked himself up off the bench. With a limp, he was walking and stumbling and balancing enroute to the fountain. Pressing the button, he let the water flow, working it down from lukewarm to cold. After thirty-three seconds he held the satchel to his side, lowering his mouth toward the spout. White droppings fermenting on the device like digested white lightning stopped him halfway. Ended up he mumbled something about salmonella, encephalitis, bottled water, and conspiracies.
Shuffling back to his bench, he saw Fitzgerald's offerings picked clean of anything substantial. Only the smallest crumbs remained. The birds would be dispersing soon. But before the pigeons and shithawks had an opportunity to fly free, Carter reached into his satchel, producing a bulk-bag of croutons, sprinkled with something that looked like parsley. Throwing garlic croutons, croutons mass-produced to complement Caesar salads, or to be stuffed into the rectal cavities of rapidly decomposing fowl.
With the first handful hitting the concrete, Fitzgerald's fair-weathered flock scattered in a stormy blur of city-snow-white-and-X-mas-green-and-Easter-purple - swooping down and squawking north. Pecking with abandon as he doled out the pungent feed.
Carter smiled, glowing as if post-coital while the transistor sent out a warning to the investors of junior mines. Once the business report was complete, a hard-driving dance tune that seemed to be called Hobo Humpin' Slowbo Babe tested the cheap speakers with a deep bass. Carter did not know what a Hobo Humpin' Slowbo Babe was, exactly, but it made him think about a fashion program on TV - smoke machines and amazon go-go dancers wearing thigh-high boots, black leather.
What with Carter embracing his ways, Fitzgerald knew something was wrong. His mouth was open, eyes pinched as he processed the situation. Croutons were too expensive for this type of thing and Carter had too many, considering he too had to be on a fixed income of some sort.
Fitzgerald wondered if his stale bread would be good enough for the vermin next time. Ego-bruising aside, he was twisting and turning on the outside now. He knew Carter hated his birds, and, over time, the more Carter had hated them, the more Fitzgerald had fed them.
That was just the way it worked, and whenever Carter became obviously animated and affected, Fitzgerald would leave the square, only to return minutes later with a new supply. But Fitzgerald's own cheque would not arrive for another day. And he was right out of cheap, day-old product when Scagleoni grimaced like it was opening day, chanting, "GO BIRDS GO... GO BIRDS GO..."
On the east bench, McLaren arrived, kicking off sandals with thick rubber straps. She reached into her baggy jean shorts, checking to see if something was there. Feeling it, she sat back wiggling in a burnt-orange tank top, ener-chi embroidered in the middle of her chest. She stopped when the left strap fell, exposing a vanilla line.
Carter knew she was younger than the others - somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties - but he never could tell about these things. Whatever, without bothering to understand the situation, she joined in, shrieking, drowning out Scagleoni. "GO BIRDS GO... GO BIRDS GO..."
Fitzgerald felt the first signs of coming undone. Walking in circles, ulcer burning, he wanted his birds back. In search of spoiled food, he ran into a Thai restaurant across Augusta. Back on the sidewalk seconds later, he was ejected once again over yet another long-running feud. Next time, the guy in the apron was calling 911. Fitzgerald was tearing apart the garbage out on the curb by then, rummaging for something, anything.
"GO BIRDS GO," Scagleoni and McLaren screamed in foggy unison, voices dueling to be heard.
Jackhammers tapped in repetition from the job site three or four blocks away. Dickie Dee jingled. And the continuous smell of decomposing flesh wafted into the square from chicken-blood alley.
In front of Fitzgerald, a flat-black Chevy Malibu turned over, backfiring, belching a cloud the colour of its paint.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
Kids played on the swings and the pollywog teeter-totters. They played on the jungle gym and the monkey bars and slid down the yellow tongue of the lizard slide. They made makeshift castles in the sandbox, yelling the things kids yell, making that collective noise that they make without actually forming words.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
Dickie Dee and his bells crept closer. Carter waded into the pool - that being what it was for, after all - washing the dust of crouton crumbs from his hands, then washing some more.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
Good and clean, he pushed his gimpy legs back towards shore, almost falling when he motioned Dickie Dee over.
Some old guy bummed a cigarette off some other old guy.
A young couple made out under an evergreen tree.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
Crushed with anxiety, Fitzgerald forgot to look both ways, trapped in the centre of the street by blaring horn when the Malibu clipped him just enough to knock him down.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
Fitzgerald regained some semblance of his surroundings, picking himself, gathering soggy tomatoes. As best he could, he came running like a three-legged dog across Augusta, holding the crate, screaming. Just like the children, no actual words were formed.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
An elderly widow decked-out in black walked by the pool on her way out of the market. Groceries in tow on one of those contraptions with wheels, Carter watched her passing a brown-skinned man holding a red-and-green umbrella, the flag of somewhere or another.
"GO BIRDS GO..."
It seemed like any other day in the neighbourhood.
Out the in the middle of the water, Harvey was floating facedown - all city-snow-white-and-X-mas-green-and-Easter-purple - as Fitzgerald splashed to him in hurried want, crying and calling the bird by the name he had given it.
Harvey was floating facedown with some of the others. On shore, two dozen or so convulsed on the cement. A few more - mostly hearty shithawks - managed to fly away in wounded flight, determined to die in a place of their choosing. And Christ, those two near Carter's feet - he was satisfied they all had the fever the way those two were pecking at each.
Scagleoni started screaming about something else - he was going to take off all his clothes and run around naked if someone didn't turn down the heat - and McLaren was quick to promise the same.
On the North side, Carter sat on his bench, sucking on a cherry popsicle in the sun, watching Harvey bobbing in the water. The first angry clouds started rolling behind his back when his transistor called off the storm-watch.