Robert F. Bradford
WildCare
When I visit Skyler, he cheerfully pulls out photo albums
and shows me who he's been seeing, where he's been,
what he's been doing. Then we go for lunch to a Thai
restaurant. He has a 2-for-1 coupon. Then we go for a ride.
"Me go...birds...me and you...okay?"
Skyler is a big man, 55, with a little drool stain in his gray
goatee under the right corner of his mouth. He is
hemiplegic, though he can walk with a stick, and has
expressive aphasia. Not receptive aphasia, though; he
understands perfectly, or at least as perfectly as most
people. The chunk of his brain that got whacked just
happens to be the talking part. Still, he's regrooved another
chunk, enough to speak perhaps a few hundred slurred
words and phrases. I dig the way he always uses "me"
instead of "I" as a subject, like Tarzan or an Indian in a
grade B movie.
I drive.
"Me...show."
I just nod, to make sure I don't unconsciously mimic him,
like I can't help but do when I talk to Brits and Southerners
and Yorkers. Anyway, we're comfortable with the silences,
which quit being awkward a few thousand smokes ago.
Skyler doesn't seem strange to me; it's not like chunks of
my brain have never been scrambled.
He directs me with gestures and fragmentary commands
to the WildCare Center in Albert Park, where wounded
birds are nursed back to health. Those too permanently
injured to be freed in the wild—even three eagles, bigger
than I imagined up close—live in large gracious cages.
I remember the story—I don't even know if it's true, and I've
certainly never asked him—that one of his long line of
lovely homecare attendants once told me.
It occurred more than 20 years ago, and more than 10
years after the Marine days in 'Nam, when he fought with
his wife and knocked her down and cracked her skull. She
was unconscious, and her head wound, as head wounds
are wont to do, was bleeding profusely. Thinking he had
killed her, Skyler put a bullet in his brain. As it turned out, he
failed to kill either of them.
Now, with great difficulty (and little help from me, since I
hadn't even known where he was taking me, much less
why), Skyler communicates to the WildCare director that he
wishes to join the band of volunteers that helps care for the
birds. The director sadly explains that the main thing the
volunteers do is feed the birds, which sometimes try to
peck and claw their benefactors, who must scramble out of
their way. Nimbleness is a prerequisite for the task.
It's the first time in 30 years that Skyler has tried to join
something, do something, give something. I wonder if it will
be the last time.
As he shambles towards the gate, head down, Skyler is
suddenly surrounded by a dozen 10- or 12-year-old boys
and girls, mostly Hispanic, who are mesmerized by the
patch museum that festoons his ammo vest: Zig-Zag Man,
artillery, Grateful Dead skull, stars'n'bars, mermaid,
Corvette, amanita muscaria.
"Did you win all those?" they ask, dancing around him in a
circle. He is a giant, a magical being. One points to the
mermaid: "Did you catch her?"
"Oh yes," beams Skyler, back straightening. "Oh yes," and
hands me his camera.
©2005 by Robert F. Bradford
