Where the Birds Play

Chapter 1- Seasick Sarah

Cello County knows me as Matt, or Matty, only my father can call me Matthew. My baby brother Trevor is a local phenomenon—everyone’s darling, the five-star football prospect playing quarterback for the Starlight Hill Ducks, our community high school utterly obsessed with the Friday night spectacle. Beyond the exhilarating sight of Trevor orchestrating plays and basking in the adoration of the crowd under bright lights, there’s little else to excite the senses in this sleepy Pennsylvania suburb.

Today, however, was a different story. The first game of Trevor’s senior year was here, looming large, and I should’ve been there, a dutiful brother taking his place in the stands, but duty it seems, well, duty and I were parting ways. Instead, I found myself crammed into a dilapidated Nissan Altima, a certified shit box, a vehicle stripped of hubcaps, my jittery feet wading in a graveyard of takeout boxes, crumpled CVS bags, discarded lighters, Medicaid mail, recovery pamphlets, and a flotsam of other trash scattered about to make sure the floor of the shit box stayed invisible. We were parked haphazardly on a side street in Kensington, the notorious skid row of Philadelphia. The air was heavy. It smelled of sour, stale aluminum. Around me sprawled an unbroken line of junkies, some tying off in the shadows, others in plain sight, all lost in the purgatory of their addictions, zombie bodies swaying like Danse Macabre to the rhythm of their own self-destruction, jonesing in the grim morning light. I was caught in a dim light myself, one of longing and confusion, the metaphorical bright lights of the traditional opening weekend game I was missing, a brother’s triumph I was absent from, all bearing down on me while the city churned relentlessly.

I rolled the passenger side window up by hand, opposed by a squeaking crank, and got old gum stuck between my fingers—gum that likely belonged to some junkie who must have been sitting in my same seat just weeks ago, saving it for later only to get high and forget all about it. Maybe he or she died in this seat. I peeled it off and stuck it back. The car wasn’t mine; it was hers—Seasick Sarah’s. We didn’t know each other before the morning. We linked up through a mutual middleman who figured we could help each other out in a pinch, bond through our similar sense of desperation, our shared hopelessness.

 The first thing you learn is that you always have to wait…

The Man is never on time.

Waiting. That’s all you do in this game. Wait. And The Man—the guy holding the keys to your next fix, the man playing God to your day—always ran on his own sense of time. You sit there a fool, shaking your knees and tapping your fingers, filling the air with noise like a street performer with a beggar’s cup because the waiting is unbearable otherwise.

I come from a family that’s afforded me the ability to avoid this part of the game for a long time—and, well, lately it’s mostly because of Trevor. The athlete, the hero. His talent has kept me clear of the city’s worst corners. Skirting the underbelly. His name and the Mago name at large hold a little weight around here. It’s not just his talent but our history—generations of our family have worked the Philly docks, including me now with Local 130, a longshoreman’s union that’s been threatening to strike recently. My father, his father before him, all of us a part of the hidden gears that keep this city running and our pockets just well-lined enough to buy the same distractions we unload. And then there’s Trevor, the athlete, the hero, bringing life back to us every Friday night under the lights—making all those long shifts on the docks worth it, dancing his gridiron ballet between those sacred white lines.

Beardless Harry, an old co-worker of mine who slipped a disc on the job and no longer takes his pain meds, is usually the Man. When it’s Harry, it’s all so mundane—just another minor transaction, like picking up a loaf of bread or stopping for a pack of smokes. Nothing about it screams degradation. Nothing about it screams junkie. It’s all routine, comfortable as can be, until the day it isn’t. The inevitable day comes when you’re scraping the bottom, stranded in the grime of the Philly badlands, synchronizing nervous fidgets with a stranger you’ve never before met. This was that day.

“He said twenty minutes an hour ago,” I said, restless.
“Shut up,” she snapped. “I can’t bother him again.”
“Why not? He’s a dealer, isn’t he?”
“So?”
“So, it’s his job to answer the damn phone.”
“It is, it is, Jesus...”
“Call him.”

She just kept looking out the window instead, squinting against the rising sun like she was trying to see something that wasn’t there. I kept quiet. If I wanted to get what I needed, I had to submit to her. I was at her mercy. The silence stretched on, heavy and uncomfortable, until a phone buzzed in the center cup holder. We jumped up enthused, but it wasn’t Sarah’s phone, unfortunately it wasn’t the Man; the phone was mine. Uncle Dave was blowing me up, asking of my whereabouts, sending me photos of all the Division 1 scouts that came from all over the country to see my brother. Sarah picked a Styrofoam cup off the ground, spat into it, tossed it into the backseat, and lit a Marlboro Red.

I should’ve been there watching Trevor warm up. God, I wanted to be. Nobody glides through pregame rituals like Trevor. He turns the football field into a magical place. Watching him go through the sweet motions of warming up are spellbinding, rivalled only by his ability to perform with the grace when the whistle blows. If he goes to Penn State, I’ll get clean. I hope he does. It’s close enough to visit and I’ll never miss a game. I’ll find a girl, settle down, we’ll even drive to the away games. Saturdays spent in a Happy Valley. That’s the dream.

I promise myself I will.

But the truth is, I’ve been lazy, lying to myself for some time now about how deep I’m in this. Longer than I like to admit. It’s been a year and I’m starting to feel it’s everlasting sore on the surface. Memories slipping through cracks and blending with facts, brain chemicals and artificial chemicals stirred in a stew of confusion and spilled into bloodstream until I couldn’t recall how it all started so it was always full steam ahead.

Something like one humid day last spring, after a brutal shift down on the docks, Beardless Harry—a guy famous for always being on the brink of disaster without ever quite toppling over—offered to buy me a beer and a burger at Tug & Haul. And me, well, I said, “Why not?” At the time, it seemed harmless. A friendly gesture from one lonely man recognizing loneliness in the eyes of another. I even romanticize it still, after all this, a bonding moment between the damned. I had no illusions—my friends had already scattered, mostly off to college to get degrees in meaningless things like business management and art history. Trevor, meanwhile, was becoming something, on his way, a star in the making and laser focused on nothing but greatness. And when he did have free time, he was busy doing what kids do—being a kid. Having friends. Having sex. I had no one, just the grind, the slab, and Harry, who, despite a wrinkled face that hinted at wisdom, didn’t know shit about dealing with the right hooks of reality. But I was so desperate. I didn’t see it. Loneliness will do that to a guy—it’ll starve you blindfolded and leave you crawling for crumbs, and you’ll take what you can find. Even crumbs covered in filth.

Harry sniffed out every crack in my foundation not that it took much looking. He knew about my father—knew he was doing time for smuggling forgeries through the docks. He knew Trevor and I didn’t know our mother. Harry, the grinning devil he is, saw a way in, saw that I was ripe for the taking. I’d been alone too long, toiling aimlessly on the docks, and people like him smell that weakness. The way he told it, it was like he had the answer—the cure for that gnawing emptiness he also claimed to have. Sick thing is, I’ve grown to love him. I have to. He has what I’ve come to need. That’s the trap. That’s the sickness. You love the thing that’s killing you because it’s the only thing that makes the day bearable.

Was it giving me life, preserving it, taking it away?

……………………..

Where the Birds Play is 97k words and manuscript editions are for sale in the shop for 19.99