Free Poorhouse Fair by John Updike

the rococo lower-class style, and Buddy instantly began to mother his innocence. The two young men were about the same height and complexion. An old man coming late to the confusion imagined at a distance that here was Buddy's twin, visiting. Buddy in fact was more highly colored, five years older, and educated. Consciously superior but distinctly tender--still elated with his outwitting the cat--Buddy helped the driver guide his truck backwards along the walk. Then the two rapidly unloaded the consignment of soft drink, rapidly because a few drops were falling, speckling the turquoise tailgate. At the thunderclap the old people scattered, gathering quilts and preserves and crude toys and canes and pieces of patient embroidery. As they hastened toward the porch, under strings of colored bulbs now swung in the air, the fourth noise of the half-hour summoned them, encouraging their flight, the ringing of the lunch signal, a tall hammered triangle used in the days of the Andrews estate to bring in the hands from the fields.
     
     
     
    II
     
    THEY ATE in groups of four at small square tables of synthetic white marble purchased cheaply from a cafeteria that was discarding them. The rain falling across the high windows, high from the floor, had the effect of sealing in light and noise, so the tabletops shone garishly and the voices of the old people shrilly mixed with the clash of china and steel. Mrs. Lucas was saying of her parakeet, calling really, though her companions at the table were only noses away, "Poor thing has to have some exercise, you can't ask it to sit there like a stuffed ornament, in my daughter's house it had great freedom. It can't have that freedom here, but it has to have some; its cage is too small for it, poor bird, its tail feathers stick out and it can't turn around. In my daughter's house the cat caught it and took off its tail feathers--that's the final result of all the freedom they gave it--and when they grew in, nobody thought they would, they grew too long, so the feathers stick between the bars and it can't even turn around. It can't have the freedom here it had in my daughter's house, but that's too much, not being able even to turn around. So out of simple mercy I let it out at least once in the day, in the forenoon usually. Oh she's cunning. I think it's a she, because the coloring is dull, and a male, you know, has all this brilliant plumage. I keep thinking I could clip the tail feathers with the sewing scissors but they say no, it's like taking a foot or hand off a human being, they lose their balance and don't feed and grow listless. So when I come back from baking the buns--and wasn't that futile, now that the fair's washed out?--I let her out to do her tricks on the window catch and the picture frames. She even swings on the geraniums, doing her little acrobatic tricks. Oh, she's clever. If you let her out when the faucet's running she'll try to fly through it like a waterfall. Who was I to know he'd"--she snapped her head toward her husband, who munched slowly, because each unmeditated bite accented the soreness in his ear--"barge in right when she was on the knob with a bottle of nasty stuff in a paper bag and let the pretty little thing flutter out the door into the hall?"
    "It won't go far," Lucas said.
    "And then he won't even chase it. How can I chase it, with my legs?"
    "We left our door open," he explained. "When it's got out before it's always come back. If you leave the door open."
    "There's always the first time," she said, speaking, like him, to the other two, who acted as the channel of their argument, "and how do we know this isn't the time it will get caught fast, with its toenails? You know their toenails have to be trimmed. I didn't know that. If I had known half the trouble the bird would be I wouldn't have let her wish it on me. Anything my daughter doesn't want--she's on the move day and night, never in the same place more than a week it seems--she thinks, Oh Mom up