Unusual

*mild adult humor / societal ignorance of mental illness (allegory)*

It was unusual.

That was the word my inner voice chose when I saw him. Weird, unsettling—perhaps even frightening—might've been better choices. In fact, I was surprised that my inner voice had served up a relatively moderate word from such a wide thesauric range: uncanny, creepy, disturbing... dangerous? But here we were with unusual... It was unusual that a man should be standing in the rain in the middle of the road at five-thirty in the morning, his head cocked back, mouthing words to a pigeon perched on a telegraph wire.

I was in the bus shelter on Artginon Street, which was a long, unbroken stretch of terraced houses, still quiet at this early hour; no curtains had yet been opened, and no hum of any car engines could yet be heard. This silence, and a freshly cut sward with a few feet of tarmac on either side of it, were all that stood between me and the man. At first, I stared down at my shoes, occasionally glancing at him to check for any changes. But he remained in his unusual behavior and paid me no attention, and after a while, I relaxed enough that I decided to try to lip-read what he was saying. This wasn't something I had ever been taught, nor ever attempted, but nevertheless I gave it a shot. My inner voice translated the movements of his mouth:

"Yellow bees... blow kisses to me... lend the moon my emblem... or give it back to me."

With that, I cut short the task, deciding there could be no outcome where I would feel any better about my proximity to him. Sun-rays were peeping round the chimneys on the other side of the road, and the faint swishes of a rainbow in the cyan sky promised the imminent waking of the rest of the world.

I looked at my watch. It was madness to have left for work so early, but it was my first day as a high school English teacher, and I had awoken with every ounce the anxiety I had expected sat in my stomach—sat unmoving in my stomach in the lotus position, like a smug, stone Buddha. Perhaps it was that that had mitigated my vocabulary when I saw the man: there could only be so many ways in me to mentally author my improbable doom.

As the rainbow embedded its colors into the lightening sky, I realized that the oddity (the anomaly—the divergence—the alien mise-en-scène) I was witnessing had offset—or at least surrogated—my anxiousness with a more immediate and material obstacle; that it had paradoxically alleviated much of the dread I had woken up with. It was then that I felt compelled to speak to the man. I took a deep breath to help muster the courage. I was about to stand up—but before I could, an elderly woman (who, for the ponderance of my inner voice, I had not seen approach) sat by me in the shelter and shouted, "Judy!" and extended a plump, pink hand as though some invisible host had just introduced us to one another.

"Jan," I said meekly.

"I saw you from way over there! I thought to myself, I haven't seen that young lady in town before! She must be new! I ought to go over and meet her!"

I was repulsed by her chaotic éclat: a bubble of molten lava whose fizzing discharge came uninvited to my moment of bravery—but that, of course, I immediately traded for civility, much to the chagrin of my inner voice, which stated in ongoing rephrase the opposite of:

"It's nice to meet you."

"Likewise!" said Judy, and continued to fizz.

I nodded. I ‘mmmm’d.’ After a while, I wondered why I was fighting the urge to look at the man. Judy must have noticed him. She must have. I started to glance at him, then quite flagrantly so... then I did that and squinted at him, cautiously at first, like a schoolgirl might do in assembly to direct her friend's attention to the handsome new boy. Then faster, and nodding as well as squinting, I squinted and nodded till I was nodding and squinting so fast and with so little effect on the person in front of me that my inner voice shouted, "You look like your husband when he's bonking you!" and I burst out laughing.

Then so did the man, although, he didn't seem to acknowledge our spontaneous alliance and continued to stare at the pigeon, which I felt put something of a damp cloth on the moment—and a stuttering stop to my laughter.

And STILL Judy went on. "Pla, la pla pla la, la troublesome foxes in the evenings but pla la pla laaa, la plala laa pla all over Mike the milkman and pla laaaaaa, pla pla plaaaaaa husband do?"

"What?" I said.

"Your husband! What does he do?"

(Don't say bonks me badly, don't say bonks me badly...) "Bobby? Sadly... we separated," I said. "He's teaching in Oxford, where I moved here from."

"Oh, I see," said Judy, and rolled a judgmental stare down the slope of her nose. "And yourself?"

"English teacher, starting today at the high school," I said.

"Oh, you don’t say!" And the fizz was back like a sparkler being waved in my face.

So I nodded and I ‘mmmm’d,’ but I made no further effort to usher her attention to the man; I simply watched him mouthing words to what I now realized was an exceptionally attentive pigeon that had, in kind, not taken its eyes off him either—not moved at all, in fact—and I wondered if it was a real bird and not some stuffed replica that had somehow found itself caught on the telegraph wire.

Peripheral to Judy's fizz, I heard a car engine start somewhere on the street and was jolted back to an awareness of my anxiety. It was natural, of course, for one to be nervous about one’s first day in a new job, but for me, although I was grateful, it felt a little like yet another stripe on top of a rainbow whose colors weren’t in the right order.

Judy had devolved into a big, square thing that my ears had habituated to, like a noisy washing machine; I hadn't heard a word she’d said in the last two minutes, which was just as well since my inner voice then went on a tangent—"God damn it, what is that man saying to that pigeon!—bird—winged vertebrate—grey, pastry-crumb pecking, irritating, cooing pie ingredient!"

This one wasn’t cooing. I must be fair. Whether a feat of taxidermy or simply an exceptional creature, there was no reason to forgo my manners, even internally. Manners are important, I thought. Manners are important and so is proper conduct. With that in mind I was about to assert a great effort to pretend the man wasn't there and listen to Judy, but then saw that the bus was coming.

The bus lumbered up the street, stopped in front of the man, and tooted to shoo him from its path. But the man didn't budge. He raised his arms slowly to his sides with his hands dangling from his wrists as though preparing to take flight. And call me crazy, but I could have sworn the pigeon—just before it shot straight up into the sky—nodded at the man.

Incidentally, I never saw him again. He watched the pigeon fly away, then walked off quietly. Judy and I got on the bus, where she was less fizzy in the company of the curious others, and we all talked with simple words about mundane things, like when the bin men come, and where in town the best cafes are. It made me feel less anxious. Less alone.

My inner voice tells me there is a happy ending for the man, too. "Godspeed, pigeon!" it says, when rainy days remind me. Though I do wonder how things might've gone had I spoken to him.