About Birds: How They Fly and Why

..........I spent the next three months in home-schooling learning about wings, flying, birds, planes, aviation. When i wasn't studying flight, i made time to visit Luke and everyone and the Overhead Diner. Brian's stories became more interesting. He recounted the story of the first time he ran away from. Of the time he and his friends sneaked into the zoo after midnight. They opened the doors to the lions' cages and the big cats barely woke up. His mother had been drunk at his First Communion. His grandfather taught him how to ride a bike and how to fix a bike and how to crash a bike if you needed to.
.........."Have you ever needed to?" Luke asked.
.........."No."
..........Brian spent three years working on a tugboat. He had been a house painter. He did a stint as a construction worker, a janitor and a dock worker. It wasn't until he started trucking that he fell in love with what he did.
..........In the beginning, he had almost quit. He was driving down south, in the lowlands where flooding was frequent. Brian was from the (relatively) dry north. He had never seen anything like the rain storm that had caused him to question his new vocation. The raindrops were bigger than his head and landed so powerfully that they made several dents in his rig. His windshield wipers broke under the pressure. He slowed his car down almost to a stop and then to a full stop, but the force of the rain, the force of the water was carrying his rig down down down the highway. His visibility was zero and he no longer had any control over the 18-wheeler he was in charge of. He let go of the steering wheel and surrendered to the will of the water. It led him careening down a slippery slope and flipping over onto the passenger side. He hung suspended from his seat belt. He undid his strap and climbed out of his truck. He wasn't hurt.
..........Brian stood under the rain storm watching the bigger-than-his-head raindrops come down to his level They seemed to pause at a point three or four feet above his vision, holding a moment to gather power before they crashed down to land. From behind him, he saw a light moving toward him. A woman's voice called out, "Are you okay?"
.........."During the storm , I cursed the water. But when i saw her," he showed me a picture of the woman who belonged to that voice, "I knew gratitude for the first time."

.........."I didn't know Brian was married," i told Luke later when we were sitting together out back, eating french fries.
.........."I don't think he always remembers," Luke said.
..........I knew what he meant, but i didn't think i was supposed to. Figuring out whether i was supposed to like Brian or not was confusing.
..........Despite the fact that Brian’s stories had gotten much less boring, they never compared to the first story that Luke told me. During his breaks, Luke told me more stories about himself, none about flying and none as exciting. But they were stories about him and his life. As thrilling as a midsummer blockbuster to my 9-year-old ears.
..........Luke’s father had died 6 years ago and his mother 4. He told me they had been in accidents. Since that time, he lived with his grandparents, his mother’s mom and dad. A year ago, when he was 16, he dropped out of school to help out full time at the diner. His grandparents weren’t desperate enough to ask their only grandchild to give up his education to spend a few more hours at the Overhead, but Luke had no love for school or for the things school was supposed to get you. Luke wanted to get to know people, all kinds of people, to travel to places beyond Elephant Trunk, beyond the whole country, beyond the water, even. He wanted to figure out why people did the things they did. Why they told the stories they told. Why they told the lies they told.
..........“I want to know why people hide what they hide.”
..........I wished i could hide what i wanted to hide. I wondered what Luke was hiding. I was fascinated by his fascination with people, with his ease with the customers. He seemed to know what button to push to make them open their mouths and talk talk talk. Unsuspecting, they dropped hints at their biggest secrets, their biggest fears. But whenever a guy kept his mouth shut, the rest of him would open wide. Scratching the nose. Crumpled bills pulled from a trouser pocket. A face full of shaving nicks. The smell of body odor heavily covered by mouthwash and musk. Not talking just made Luke look deeper. He was like a private investigator for people's spirits.
..........Our conversations were one-sided in his favor, but i wasn’t trying to hide anything from him. I wanted to show him everything, but i didn’t really think i had anything to show. Was my reticence making Luke look deeper into me? That was exactly what i wanted, for Luke to think i was interesting enough to look at me more closely. But he only asked me gentle, safe questions. His safe line of questioning sometimes led into dangerous territory.
..........“Why aren’t you in school?”
..........“I got into a fight and since then, i’m home-schooled,” i was embarrassed. I wasn’t violent or dangerous.
..........“Who teaches you?”
..........“My mother.”
..........“What stuff do you learn?”
..........“Normal stuff,” i said slowly, trying not to give myself and hoping that i might. “Math, science, animals, birds...”
..........“What about birds?”
..........“About how they, um, fly,” i was barely speaking about a whisper.
..........“About how they?”
..........“Fly,” i said in a normal voice.
..........Luke paused. He often paused. It was another technique used to open people up. He learned to stand awkward silence because most people couldn’t; they would start talking to kill it. It wasn’t going to work on me in this case. He asked me, “And how do they fly?”
..........I was a good student, ready to recite what i had memorized. “A lot of it has to do with the weight of their skeleton. {FIND A REALLY DRY description of how birds fly.}
..........I had been staring at the ground during my entire answer and only looked up when i was done. He was looking away from me, shaking his head and smiling. “So that’s how it works,” he said. “Do you know why they fly?”
..........“‘Cause they had to,” i explained. “It was the best was to get away from danger.”
..........Luke nodded his head. “Exactly.”
..........I didn’t notice, but as we sat, a flock of birds above our heads practiced their migration to the South for the winter. I kept my little purple hoodie on during our visits out back and Luke wore a black and white scarf. The short order cook didn’t finish his cigarettes in one go anymore. When his fingertips began to lose feeling, he flicked the cherry off the cigarette and put the stump back in the pack. He smelled even worse now.
..........Cold weather meant my birthday was immanent.