He got clearance from the police first, then the doctor, that it was okay for him to see his father now. So he stepped around the officer guarding his father’s hospital room, entered, and was about to shut the door when the police officer commanded, “Leave it open. He’s under arrest, you know.”
“Yeah I know,” muttered Bob Van Opdorp.
Bob Van Opdorp looked at his father, the only patient in the room, closed his eyes and shook his head side to side. Tubes in and out of him every which of way, machine flashing blips across screens while humming a numbing incessant sound, an IV dripping fluids into him, and miscellaneous other attached hospital equipment for what purpose he had no idea. His father was still alive, thank God, still alive even after two bullets had entered his seventy seven year old body.
“How ya feeling Dad?” was all he could think of to say. He felt sorry for his father while at the same time was thoroughly disgusted with him.
“Fine,” came a weak but defiant response.
“You want to tell me what happened here Dad?” He knew what had happened from what the police had told him but he wanted to hear it from his father himself. He knew that his father would have his own version. His own story that would justify his actions.’s “Are you up to it?”
“You damn well bet I am up to it Maurice.” Bob VanOpdorp went by his middle name Robert but his father always called him Maurice, his first name since he had been named for a grandfather who died in Belgium long before he was born. He hated the name Maurice.
“You want the truth. By God then I’ll tell you the truth. Those damn cops got it all wrong.
It was them damn kids again. I tell you the neighborhood’s going to hell with all these damn Mexicans moving in. Them Mexican kids next door were messing with my pigeons again.”
Bob Van Opdorp and his siblings had grown up there in that part of town when most of the residents in the neighborhood were Belgians like themselves just off the boat so to speak. Even back then it was a lower middle class neighborhood with shanties, tar paper shacks, no indoor plumbing, houses with lean to’s tacked on, none of the residences totally up to city code. It was all his father could afford back then having spent all his money on passage from Belgium to America. He was penniless when he got here, an unskilled laborer, but he got a menial labor job at a factory close by so that he could walk to work since he couldn’t afford a car. The family, all six of them, had to do the best they could in a one room house. Bob was the only one who stayed here, living now in a new subdivision on the edge of town. His siblings had all moved away first chance they got and when his mother died he was the only one left here and thus he became his father’s caretaker. The neighborhood had disintegrated from bad to worse over the years and became known as ‘Funky Town.’ But now the Mexicans had moved in and actually started fixing up some of the old places so that they became half way presentable. But as far as his father was concerned, the neighborhood was going to hell.
“This was the third time they broke into my coop. I never gave them permission to see my birds. It was just like the other two times when I called the cops and again the cops didn’t do anything and put those little a-holes in a juvenile detention center like I asked them to. No, they just scolded them politely and let them go with a warning. I knew they wouldn’t do anything this time either. But I still called the cops like you told me to.”
“They didn’t steal any of your pigeons, did they, Dad?”
“No but.”
“They didn’t kill or injure any of your birds did they?”
“No but they shouldn’t be in there in the first place. Besides, I know that they’ve been shooting my birds with their bb guns when they land on their house. I’m just sure of it. I’m missing some birds I tell you and they killed them.”
“Dad, you raise homing pigeons. They sometimes get lost during races, don’t come home for some reason or other. You know that. You’ve been around racing pigeons all your life ever since you were a kid in Belgium helping your father with his pigeons. These things happen. That’s probably what happened here.”
“I tell you I’ve seen my birds land on their garage next to my coop and seen the kids shoot at them. Those kids killed them I tell ya.”
These kids were ten years old or so, no common sense yet, dumb preteens with bb guns, having a good time with their new toys. They didn’t know any better. After all, to them all pigeons were the same whether they were his father’s racing pigeons or common ferals. They all looked alike to them.
“They still had no business in my coop.”
“I told you to put a padlock on the door. Why didn’t you do that?”
“Why should I? I’ve never had to all these years and I ain’t gonna start now. Besides, they broke in without my permission and had a gun with them.”
“It was just a bb gun Dad. Nobody is going to believe you were in danger. That you didn’t know that. For God’s sake you shot a kid with a twenty two rifle. There’s no excuse for that.”
“I had it loaded with shorts not longs. You know as well as I do that those shorts can’t kill anything. There are just a bunch of little pellets, just a bunch of little pellets smaller than bb’s. They can hardly pierce the skin.”
Bob Van Opdorp was grateful for that for if his father had used longs, those bullets aren’t any type of pellets but a single bullet, and they can kill.
“Besides I only shot him in his hand as he was grabbing for a bird. I knew what I was aiming at and hit it. I told him to keep his grubby little mitts off my birds but he wouldn’t listen and kept reaching. I wasn’t trying to kill him.”
“Well the way I understand it, his hand is pretty torn up and will require surgery to correct.”
His father looked away. He was unapologetic.
“What about the police officer?”
“What about the police officer?’
The police had responded to his father’s call when he reported a ‘break in’ as he called it. The police came with lights flashing, sirens blaring, guns drawn, and when they saw what had actually happened, they took him into custody. The veteran officer told the rookie officer to handle it so that she could get some experience with these kinds of neighborhood disturbances.
“Well she took my rifle from me, my rifle. My father taught me never to give up your weapon. My father never did. He was in the resistance when the Boches,” his father still used the old derogatory World War I word for the Germans, the Boche, “invaded our country back then. He kept his weapon, fought in the underground, and survived. Never give up your weapon he always told me.”
Bob Van Opdorp had heard that story more than a few times before. Had heard a lot of stories about the old country. Had heard a lot of pigeon stories too and knew that he was a disappointment to his father because he had no interest in pigeons. But there was nothing he could do about it except put up with his father’s snide remarks and go on.
“So that why you shot her? Because she took your rifle?”
“Yah damn right. But she didn’t get my pistol though, did she?”
For some reason or other after she took his father’s rifle, she never searched him for other weapons. Never patted him down that is. Maybe because he was an old man and she deemed him harmless. Maybe because she felt sorry for him and wanted to spare him from any further embarrassment. Maybe it was a rookie mistake. But it was a mistake nevertheless and when she backed away with his rifle, his father drew his twenty two pistol from his inside coat pocket and shot her. Shot her with a twenty two long. Shot her in the lungs. And that’s when the veteran officer, who still had his weapon out and pointed at him, put two shots in his father.
“From what I hear Dad she’s going to make it thank God.”
His father sat there and looked away from his son staring out the window at the rain. The ominous storm had still not passed and it looked like it was only going to get worse.
“What about my pigeons?”
“You’re not going home again Dad, you know that. You’re done with pigeons.”
The old man knew it. Knew he would probably go to prison or to a nursing home if he could hire an attorney and work out some kind of favorable, but expensive, plea deal. Either way he was resigned to the fact but he had to look out for his birds.
“Call Camiel. He’s president of our racing club. He’ll take them and find homes for them. You remember Camiel don’t you? You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
“Yes I remember Camiel and don’t worry I’ll see to your birds for you. Get some rest now and I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay, see you then Maurice.”
Bob Van Opdorp went home. In due course he took care of everything. Took care of it all pursuant to a power of attorney that his father had previously given him when his mother died about a year ago. He put the house up for sale. Some Mexicans bought it. All the proceeds went to hiring an attorney for the criminal charge and to settle the lawsuit brought by the parents of the injured little Mexican boy. He trashed most of his father’s furniture as it was junk and what was halfway usable he gave to the Salvation Army.
And as to the pigeons, well he rang each and everyone of their necks, bagged them up and put them out with the trash too.
Author is a retired attorney who used to raise pigeons. Every so often he writes a pigeon story.