Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner Read Free Book Online Page A

scholars in New York City. It was a tedious discourse comparing the five quartos of Romeo and Juliet with the first folio and pointing out the differences between Shakespeare’s handling of time in his play and that of Arthur Brooke in his long-winded poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet , on which Shakespeare built his play.
    It was not Eliot’s best writing, and we both knew it. But as Eliot said, neither was Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare’s best writing, some of the lines so falsely poetic as to verge on the absurd. “A writer cannot produce his best and brightest with each new work,” Eliot said. “The quality of a writer’s output follows the same ebb and flow of the tides, the same rise and fall of the seasons. Sometimes there is lush new growth and other times only bare branches.” At times Eliot could also wax poetic verging on absurdity.
    Eliot was shot by his son with a gun two days before the Shakespeare conference and thus did not read his paper to the other scholars. I found it locked inside his rolltop desk after what was referred to as “the accident,” though it was no accident. I found other things in his desk, also. Juliet claimed to be “past hope, past cure, past help” because of her thwarted love, and in the end she fell upon Romeo’s dagger gratefully. I understand such despair.
    Now everyone in the Walton family is saying good-night to one another on the television, signaling the end of today’s episode. I wonder if John-Boy was ever in love with a girl, someone from a neighboring farm or some merchant’s pretty daughter in the nearby town. I did not watch the program regularly when it first appeared on television, but no doubt the writers at some point included a romantic interest in the life of good-hearted John-Boy Walton. No screenwriter would overlook an opportunity for romance.
    Perry Mason and Hawaii Five-O come on in the afternoon, after Judge Jack . Then Gomer Pyle, Happy Days , and The Mary Tyler Moore Show . Leave It to Beaver and The Beverly Hillbillies come on around suppertime. In the evenings, instead of watching The Brady Bunch and The Munsters , I often change to a nature program. Sometimes I turn to the History Channel, where I may watch the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk or the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald or resistance fighters in Germany during World War II.
    “DIED. DOWAGER VISCOUNTESS DILHORNE, 93, who trained pigeons to carry secret communications during World War II; in Northamptonshire, England. Lady Dilhorne’s carrier pigeons returned to her home west of London with coded messages strapped to their legs that had been sent by secret agents and resistance fighters in Germany.” By watching television and reading Time magazine, I am reminded of the many connections between life and death. That the lives of men could ride on the wings of pigeons—this is something to think about.
    If it’s a long night, I know that Sanford and Son comes on at three in the morning, followed by All in the Family , then Bob Newhart . At times I turn the television off and listen to the radio. Sometimes I have them both on at the same time. One night Mister Ed was on television while a radio talk-show host was taking calls about something referred to as “road rage.” Mister Ed performed better than the talk-show host. He also had a more pleasing voice.
    I hear Rachel’s doorbell, the short back-door chime instead of the longer one for the front door. A commercial about no-questions-asked life insurance is on, demonstrating that the network knows its morning audience. I turn down the volume of the television. Perhaps the white electrician has returned for something he left. I hear a voice at the door, the words rapid and high-pitched. I hear low words from Rachel; then the door closes, and all is silent.
    I hear Rachel open and close a kitchen cupboard. She says something, yet there is no reply. She says something else. It is not like Rachel to talk to herself.
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