Free Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm

The Bakery with its good hot coffee was right inside the door. There was even a gas fireplace with wooden tables near it. Inside the Arcade it was warm. Outside, the bench people were cold. And not too bright, Wizard thought, not harshly but not pityingly.
    A tall, skinny black man wearing two pairs of pants moved in aimless despair from a shaded bench to one that soaked up the thin sunlight. Wizard shook his head. Now, any fool should have known that if you must wear two pants against the cold, you should wear the shorter ones on the inside where they didn’t show. No animal would have flaunted such vulnerability. If only the man had attended to that detail, he could have passed for a starving gradstudent from the university. Didn’t he know about the gas fireplace that burned by the wooden tables just beyond those tall doors? With an old text book salvaged from the dumpster behind the used book store, and the price of a cup of coffee, that man could have passed a warm morning. But if he had to be taught that, he’d never learn it.
    Cassie had told him that, the first time they’d met. Wizard had been sitting on one of the sunnier beaches here, but it hadn’t taken the chill off him. The cold had soaked him, saturated his flesh. He remembered little of himself on that day, other than how cold he was, and the terrible sadness that welled from him like water from an inexhaustible spring. He could almost see the sadness puddling out around him, filling the cobblestoned park with his melancholy. The pigeons had come to him, and he had reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled bag of stale popcorn and fed them. They clustered at his feet, looking like small grey pilgrims seeking out his wisdom. They perched on the bench beside him and walked on his body, but soiled him not. One fat grey fellow with iridescent neck feathers had stood before him and puffed himself out, to bob and coo his ritual dance to his mate, which promised that life went on, always. He had fed them, never speaking, but feeling a tiny warmth come from the feathered bodies clustered so closely about him. A strange little hope was nourished by the sight of such successful scavengers surviving.
    Suddenly, Cassie had stood before him. The pigeons had billowed up, fanning him with the cold air of their passage. ‘They know I’d eat ’em,’ she laughed, and had sat down beside him. She had been a stout lady, her feet laced up in white nurse’s shoes. Her nylon uniform was toolong for current styles; her nubbly black coat didn’t reach to the hem of it. A sensible black kerchief imprisoned her steel wool hair. She had heaved the sigh of a heavy woman glad to be off her feet.
    â€˜That’s a strange gift you have,’ she’d said. It was her way, to start a conversation in the middle. ‘Can’t say as I’ve ever seen it before. Must be based on the old loaves and fishes routine.’ She had laughed softly, showing yellowed teeth. Wizard had not answered her. He remembered that about himself. He had known that small survival trait. Talk makes openings, and openings admit weapons. Given enough silence, anyone will go away. Unless she’s Cassie.
    â€˜Been watching you,’ she’d said, when her laugh was done. ‘These last nine days. Every day you’re here. Every day is the same bag of popcorn. Every day it holds enough to fill up these feathered pigs. But even when they’re stuffed, they don’t leave you. They know that you won’t harm them. Can’t harm them, without harming yourself. And if you know that much, you’d better know me. Because there aren’t that many of us around. You either have it, or you don’t. And if you have to be taught it, you can’t learn it.’
    Ironically, that had been what she had taught him. That he had a gift, and that gift meant survival. That was what he could not teach to others, unless they already knew it.