White Feathers

Jack wins his last fight

Jack Cornaghey lays on layers of flattened-out cardboard boxes. His breath comes in short rasping gasps. Nearby an empty bottle has rolled - discarded on its side as the wind whistles through a cracked window pane.
Outside the street is deserted. Litter colours the drab scene and at the foot of the steps to the house the pages of a newspaper lift and fall, lift and fall and lift again; a stronger gust takes the whole paper and flips it over.
Of the houses in the row that are still standing this was the one that Jack had chosen, for the glass in all the other houses in the street was missing and he had chosen well.

The old man's breathing has quietened. Around the walls are the remains of pink wall paper. In the far corner small torn pieces cover excrement. The wall paper has made inadequate toilet paper.

Something moves by the door: a rat, fat-bellied with a long black tail. Sniffing the air before cautiously circling the cardboard.

The old man still retains enough strength to clutch a photograph. It is a photograph of a man in shorts - a thick leather belt sports a wide shield, and the pose is that of a pround young boxer - hands clenched.
His breathing has become frail and thin and the wind whistles fiercer now through the cracked window. The rat is sniffing the neck of the bottle, and above Jack Cornaghey something akin to a mist is forming. The window rattles and something surely is beginning to happen - the light is changing: the air is becoming charged. A feint glow fills the room - and then something else ... a humming. No - it is singing ... the singing of a young mother for her baby.
With a loud grunt the prostrate figure of the old man rises suddenly to a sitting position, arms outstretched. The photograph falls to the floor smashing the glass against the bottle. The rat scurries away.
The bare room resounds to the cry:
'Morrr..ther!'

The sun reaches above the opposite row of derelict houses now and half of the street is bathed and cleansed and the dirty soot-red bricks have taken on a warm hue. The slates too have turned from grey to blue and on the ridge doves are coo-ing and shuffling, welcoming the new day. As a bulldozer crashes into a wall somewhere at the end of the next street they take to the air, their wings sounding like the applause of a small audience. Curving upwards they are soon out of sight.

Beside the steps a small shrub grows from between the bricks with forcing tiny buds of bright green.

And there, now, in the street - see the young woman walking. Proudly carrying her baby - swadled in a thousand white feathers. See how she moves, with such ease and grace... and listen as she softly coos and how her footsteps make no sound. No sound at all.