A shoe kicked at a pigeon. The bird moved away as it pecked at the sidewalk.
“Sally would insist that’s Julius Caesar or Cleopatra,” mocked James, standing under the awning at lunchtime.
“Napoleon,” Liz suggested.
Sally, the office manager, actually believed in reincarnation. She was obsessed with the concept and spoke about it constantly as if she were an authority. Which was ridiculous. She asserted hamsters, lizards, cockroaches, even slugs might have once been human souls.
“You know, that could be a Greek philsopher,” James laughed, kicking harder at the bird. It spooked momentarily then resumed its circular walk. The pigeon’s tiny eyes looked right, left, down at the sidewalk, left, right, up at the two, back down. Its ridiculous head never stopped pumping. “Didn’t the great Plato call us featherless bipeds?”
Liz laughed. She nibbled at her bagel.
The bird did walk like an ordinary person. It strutted purposefully forward, one leg following another. It’s two eyes never stopped searching the small space in front of them.
The pigeon was simply going about its daily business, looking for crumbs, guided by animal instinct. Propelled by hunger.
The little bird was the embodiment of persistence.
A broken feather in one wing dangled as it walked.
Just a pigeon. Perhaps more ruffled than most.
“Poor thing.” Liz tore off a chunk of her bagel and tossed it onto the sidewalk.
The pigeon batted its gift about, the way all pigeons do.
Short Stories by Richard 