An awful memory bloomed there in the dark: his mother had taken him to the Boston Zoo, and
he had been looking at a great big bird. It had the most beautiful feathers — red and purple and
royal blue — that he had ever seen . . . and the saddest eyes. He had asked his mother where the
bird came from and when she said Africa he had understood it was doomed to die in the cage
where it lived, far away from wherever God had meant it to be, and he cried and his mother
bought him an ice-cream cone and for awhile he had stopped crying and then he remembered and
started again and so she had taken him home, telling him as they rode the trolley back to Lynn that
he was a bawl-baby and a sissy.
Its feathers. Its EYES.