Free Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories by Terry Bisson Page A

from his birth and show them to him when he is older. Let him have the pleasure and amusement of a famous birth, but not the bitterness of an estranged life.”
    * * *
    All this made sense. I could make George’s birth only a curious incident in a happy, normal life. I had only one more hesitation—the operation itself. Would it be difficult or dangerous?
    “Nothing to it,” said the doctor. “Nothing to it. The wings can be removed as simply as any other growth. We must only wait another month until the child is old enough to take anesthesia.”
    “It may take me longer than that to convince Katie,” I said.
    “We can’t wait too long. The wings must be removed as soon as possible, before the cartilage and muscle begin to harden. As it is now, the boy will be barely scarred. He will be left with only two small stumps, like handles, for a remembrance.”
    “Okay!” I thought. “Fine!” All that was left now was to persuade Katie; I must be firm. I went home decided, full of resolution, but it was soon gone. Katie was quiet and surly; she seemed to know that I was up to something. And I couldn’t take my eyes off George’s wings. They lit up the whole room, like a snowbank at night.
    The next morning I went back to see the minister again. “It all boils down to this,” I said. “Why did God give George wings only to have them cut off?”
    The minister told me that the ways of God were strange. “Why does He give man life,” he said, “only to take it away again? Why did he create the sky and not allow the fish to see it?” He continued in this vein for several minutes, and then concluded: “You know in your heart that the doctor and I are right—the child’s wings must be removed.”
    “Maybe he’s right,” I thought. “Maybe they’re both right.” I was dizzy from thinking. It was time to tell Katie; I left the minister and started for home, determined to go ahead, to do something, Katie and I would have to sit down and talk this thing out.
    I tried to get my arguments straight. It was just a simple choice: was George to have a normal, happy life, or was he to be a strange, lonely boy with wings? I saw George as a real boy, with a crowd of others, playing; there he was with his wife and his own children; then a boy again running unencumbered across a short grass field. But there were two Georges: the other was thin, delicate, dark in color. His slight body was all but hidden by huge wings; his fingers were so thin that I could see the blood run through them. His great, dark eyes were marked with the light from his shining wings . . . Suddenly, I stopped and walked back to the doctor’s office. This was no good; my thoughts were clouded with vision.
    “Doctor,” I said, “what will happen to the wings after they are removed? Will you take them off separately, or together? Will they stay bright and clean, or will they shrivel up and die?”
    “Why,” said the doctor, “we can do whatever you like with them. They will come off separately, and can easily be preserved. I had thought that you might want to give them to a museum or something. Or perhaps you might want to keep them; George could hang them on the wall of his room as a sort of trophy.”
    * * *
    Well, I had beat around the bush too long. I went home. “Katie,” I said, “the doctor says we should cut off George’s wings—have them removed.” She didn’t say anything. “The minister says so too, and so do I.” I told her about how he would be an outcast, an emotional cripple. “He won’t always be a baby,” I said. “Look at the future.”
    She was holding him and watching me curiously as I spoke. I was watching him, older, still running in the field of short grass. But there was the other, the thin boy with dark eyes and great white wings. “Don’t you see, Katie, he is alone!” It was hard for me to think; he was looking back at me, out of his dream. “He is a cripple. He can’t run, can’t dance, can’t