Viral Video by Eleanor Gallagher
“…the cowboy looking down at his feet, lifting one boot at a time as if he can't believe he put the useless things on…”
Fiction by Eleanor Gallagher
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There's a palpable thrill in the crowd in the parking lot— we've been diverted from our mundane chores by the strange: a neon green tennis ball and a bird who's flown down close, who hops closer, who leans in. Poke. Roll. It twitches its head in that bird way that makes us believe it's looking around for answers, black feathers catching blue in the sun here, now there, now there. It hops over to the ball. Poke. Roll. Hop hop. Poke at a different angle. Roll a different way. Study from a distance. Hop hop, hop hop. Again. Again.
“She's gonna lose it if it hits that decline,” a woman says, her bleached-orange hair doing the same thing in the sun as the bird's feathers: glowing red here, now there, now there. She's got her phone out like the rest of us. Point. Click click. Whir. We think we're taking this spectacle viral this afternoon —Bird Plays Tennis — but what we don't know is that the only video that will make it online is the one the man in the wheelchair's making.
When the bird flies up to perch on the lamppost and caws, there's audible disappointment from the crowd, let down by this ordinary behavior after such a show. Now we must go into the store and buy toothbrushes, insoles, condoms, a plastic-flowered basket for the kid's bike. We are walking away, our eyes are on our screens, when the bird caws again, very loudly. As one, we turn.
A small girl, eyes fixed on the bird, has stepped up to the neon green tennis ball and now she swings her leg back. The bird's attention is rapt and it caws again as if to ask her something or warn her, but she doesn't waver and lets fly her foot, encased in its fat toddler shoe covered in pink glitter with the face of a princess on the toe. The shoe connects and the tennis ball is gone fast, catching the foretold decline and rolling straight for the highway that borders the parking lot.
With an ear-piercing caw, the bird launches itself off the lamppost, swooping low over the child's head. It looks huge, especially its claws, like it could lift her, carry her away to its nest like in the old tales. The girl squeals and throws her arms up as if she'd like to be that fairy tale child, but instead the two fly after the ball, one on the ground and one in the air keeping perfect time.
A jolt of fear hits the crowd as it dawns on us that the morning could turn tragic. The orange-haired woman and I look at each other like we know that we should try to help, but she's too big to make any time and I've got a bum knee. Everyone in the crowd is murmuring around for the girl's parents or emphasizing the disability which prevents us from making a difference in the situation, like the cowboy looking down at his feet, lifting one boot at a time as if he can't believe he put the useless things on this morning. Two mothers are clenching their children by the shoulders, one has her arm all the way across her boy's chest. The man in the wheelchair's video captures each of us in turn, including those whose eyes widen, but never leave their screens.
A couple blooms from the crowd and we can tell by the confusion and horror on their faces they are the girl's parents. They are young, they are proud of the family they've made and the way they've kept their girl safe so far in this frightening world. But birds, they had never worried about birds! Or tennis balls! How could they ever tell such a story without sounding like the worst parents ever? The bird chased her into traffic, she was enthralled, we couldn't penetrate the spell.
They wrench themselves after her, heads whipping, scanning for moving vehicles. They scream her name. The father drops the mother's hand and bolts ahead on his long legs. Despite her short stride, the girl has a head start and pure joy to fuel her and it is clear that even he cannot catch her in time.
The bird caws very loudly and drops low in front of the girl and then caws again in such a way that pierces her pursuit of the ball and she stops dead in her sparkling shoes. The bird lands on the pavement close to her, wings wide between the child and the ball, which is now bumping over the curb into the rushing wheels. The girl reaches her chubby arms out and the bird gives a hop toward her just as her parents catch up.
They hold their girl in a round family moment. We clap and cheer our relief, loud enough to be heard across the distance they have traveled, and it is clear by the way the parents look up that they have forgotten all about the witnesses. The mother leans over her daughter to speak to the father, and he rises and waves as he walks our way. He begs for a copy of the video, he hands his card out to everyone with a phone. Some of us say we will oblige, forgoing our own posts, but others do not like his entitled attitude.
While we negotiate and grumble, the man in the wheelchair is already uploading Bird Saves Girl, and when we see it in our feeds, we are no longer so keen to claim our part in the story— for we, not the bird, are the spectacle, standing stock still filming, not even yelling even though there is so much time for us to intervene, several of us even seem close enough in those seconds before the girl started running to grab her little arm. We see why the girl was free to begin with: her parents in the background with their fingers in each other's faces and some of us console ourselves that it is really all their fault. The only person not traumatized by the events is the little girl herself, who in the final shot, clutched to her mother's chest, waves both hands up at the bird who caws from its perch on the lamppost.
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Header image courtesy of Francisco Osorio. To view his Photographer Feature, go here.
Eleanor Gallagher lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her stories can be found in Jersey Devil Press, Jellyfish Review, Crack the Spine and Gravel. By day she writes texts and questions for K-12 English tests. In her spare time, she serves as Assistant Fiction Editor at Atticus Review.
