QUESTIONING “Joey was a falconer, or falcuner, whichever way it was, he liked playing with birds. He would always be in the middle of that big park downtown with a stiff, ugly oven mitt covering his right hand, playing fetch with his little hawk. Or, I guess it was a falcon. Anyway, at that time we all thought birds were gay, and so Joey was gay for liking em.” Simon Haney shifts in the chair, moving all his weight into his right side. “We never did let him hang around us on account of that. Well, one day he brings one of his birds to school, this real runty one, with a puff of grey feathers on its neck. He’s just letting it ride along on top of his backpack like Curious George. We’re all laughing at him. Kids could be cruel, I could be. And a teacher noticed all the laughing,and he starts making his way to the field where we were all sat waiting for school to start. And he’s madder than hell marching on us and stomping holes in the ground where he stepped, his face all pinched together and damn near smoke coming out of his ears.” “Then Joey put that big oven mitt on his hand, whistled at the hawk until it perched itself right up on his covered wrist; I think it knew what he wanted before he even asked, cus he had his chest all stuck out, them ratty little feathers just a blowin in the wind. And he shot off at Mr. Finley.” Haney holds one hand over the other before making a quick cutting motion “Faster than sight. Lands on Mr. Finley’ ahead and rips his damn hair off. Whole flap of black hair just comes off his scalp into the falcon’s beak. And Finley’s screaming like a damn sissy -sorry-, waving his hands over his head like an elephant in them old cartoons when a mouse gets on him.” Haney slowly waves his arms in front of his face “So, the falcon come back to Joey, sets the hairpiece down in his other hand, and stares dead at Mr. Finley, who was only just recovering from his fit. And we’re all just quiet, waiting. I mean, we all had a laugh froze in our our throats but we were scared, and then Joey takes the fucking thing and sets it right down on the little bird’s head. Everybody was laughing then.” Haney fidgets in his seat. He settles after a minute, looking me dead on, unblinking, stroking his knees. “I mean, it’s harmless ain’t it?” “Not to Mr. Finley, I’m sure he was embarrassed.” I say “But that ain’t no sensible thing, to get mad like he got. It ain’t reasonable. Sometimes, and it don’t matter where I am or what I’m doing or the time of day, I get that picture of Joey, forehead cut up six ways, just kneeling over that bird, bleeding all over it and just sobbing, wheezing like his throat’d been cut and slobbering everywhere. And come to see the bird, not even dead yet, and it’s trying to spread its wings and all the while just breaking em more.” Haney’s squeezing his knees and bringing them together, then letting them go when he saw what he was doing, then repeating. “I think that’s the first time something just didn’t make sense. I just couldn’t see how cause came to effect.” “Anger can make a man irrational and prone to fits of uncharacteristic violence. Mr Finley was forced into a position of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, even, made to reveal a shame he’d taken great pains to hide. His reaction is within the normal parameters for human behavior.” “Yeah. Like when I tell my boy to go take the trash to the road and instead he breaks up the handle with a hammer, and when I ask what exactly’s gotten into him he starts swinging the thing at me.” “Right” “Like when a woman who walks the same way to work every day for 20 years gets killed by a piece of scaffolding for a building that didn’t even need repairs? And when I ask a hundred people why it was there, not a one of them knows who put in the order?” “Right” “Is that all you say? If I told you a tornado came down from the clear blue sky and took my house away would you just nod your head and say how much sense it made?” “Did that happen, Mr. Haney?” “Godammit Of Course it didn’t. It wouldn’t matter if it did. You ain’t sitting there waiting to be convinced. Just me being here means not a damn thing I say is gettin heard. I tell you four things that don’t follow from nothing, a bolt out of the blue, and you tell me it’s well within parameters, whatever the hell that means, however the hell you went about setting them.`` He stares without blinking at me; his hands grip the armrests, his arms are trembling and his eyes are shot red. I look at the mints on the table between us, sitting in a heavy glass bowl, and notice him doing the same. “Can’t shake your faith that everything’s ordered, that something always follows from something else with a clear line of connect. You need it. Bet you don’t think nothin’ll surprise you.” His arms slacken. He folds his hands in his lap, smiles pleasantly. “Will I be seeing you next week?” Haney asks. I say, breathless, “yes sir, whatever it says on your calendar.” He moves to leave, and grabs the glass bowl; he takes one mint, he takes all of the mints.