It was a mild and overcast Friday afternoon in March. The boy closed the garage door behind him and headed down the path leading into the woods. He was carrying his new Daisy Model 111 BB gun and had his Boy Scout hatchet strapped to his belt. He walked along the path by the big bunker he and his friends had dug for playing Army and down the hill to the creek. He stopped by the creek and listened to the Blue Jays calling in the woods. The woods were full of Blue Jays.
The boy walked along the creek and heard a loud call above him. He looked up and a jay was sitting on a limb calling out. The boy slowly cocked his Daisy and raised it to his shoulder. He lined up the bird in the sight and pulled the trigger. The BB hit the bird with a thump and the jay let out a loud cry and fell to the ground. The boy walked over to where the bird lay, crying out and writhing in pain. A lump welled up in his throat. He dropped the gun on the ground, reached down and tried to set the jay back on its feet. The bird fell over on its right side and called out helplessly. Other jays began answering the call. The boy looked into the trees surrounding them and tears began to well up in his eyes. He knew what he had to do. He picked up his gun, cocked it and shot the bird again. The bird jerked and cried out loudly. The boy began sobbing, cocked his gun and shot. The bird let out a wail and shuddered. The boy shot the bird again and again, until he saw the life go out of its eyes and the beautiful blue, white and black songbird rolled over, dead.
The boy dropped the gun and looked at the lifeless creature at his feet. He felt sick to his stomach. The other jays were calling out in the surrounding woods. He let out a yell, picked up the gun by the barrel and pulled it back to smash it against the tree. But he couldn’t swing through. He stood for what seemed like an eternity with the blue gun barrel in his fists and the stock behind his head. Finally he dropped his arms, threw the gun to one side and sat down beside the Blue Jay, crying uncontrollably.
After a while the emotion subsided and the boy stood up. He unsnapped his Boy Scout hatchet from the sheath on his belt, dropped to his knees and began chopping at the earth. He began crying again, hacking angrily with his hatchet until he had dug a hole about a foot long, a half-foot wide and a foot deep. He picked the bird up and placed it carefully in the hole. He looked at the Blue Jay for a minute and realized that half an hour earlier it was singing and calling in the tree until he had walked up and senselessly taken its life. He began to cry again and covered the bird up.
The boy walked down toward the creek to find a nice smooth stone, but on his way he saw a big piece of quartz buried halfway in the ground. The boy dug the quartz out of the ground with his Swiss Army knife, took it back up the hill and placed it on top of the little grave. He sat next to the Blue Jay for a long time before he finally stood up, took a long look at the quartz rock, picked up his BB gun and headed down the hill to the creek and back up to the path toward his house.
That evening he couldn’t eat his supper. He sat and stared at the plate of fish, English peas and mashed potatoes but couldn’t take a bite. His parents wanted to know what was wrong. He couldn’t tell them. All he knew was he felt sick, miserable and hollow inside. The boy went to bed early that night and as he said his prayers he asked for forgiveness and for a special blessing on the Blue Jay. He couldn’t go to sleep. All he could think of was the Blue Jay crying out in pain and the slow, agonizing death it endured. He thought the gun was stronger than it was and that one shot would have put the bird out of its misery. He then began berating himself for not bringing the bird home, taking it to the vet and nursing it back to health. The boy began to cry again. He rolled over, sobbing quietly until he finally fell into a light and fitful sleep.
The next morning he got up and rode his bike to the 7-Eleven store. Instead of his usual cola Slurpee, he got a banana Popsicle and ate it sitting on the curb outside the store. When he was finished, he put the sticks in his pocket and rode his bike home. He went down to his father’s workshop in the basement, then took some wood glue and made a cross out of the two Popsicle sticks. He put the little cross into a cigar box and let the glue dry. He did not want his parents or anyone else to see the cross. After the glue had dried he took model airplane varnish, put a coat on the cross and placed it behind the crawl space wall to dry. He put three more coats of varnish on the cross, letting them dry each time before applying the next.
That evening before supper he went down into the workshop and took the cross out from behind the wall. He went out the basement door and down the path to the woods. He crossed over the creek and walked up the hill to the little grave with the quartz rock beside the tree. He looked around the tree and found another piece of quartz and two granite rocks. Using his Swiss Army knife, the boy dug a hole behind the big piece of quartz at the top of the grave. He placed the foot of the cross in the hole, made it fast with dirt and secured it with the second piece of quartz and the two granite rocks. Then he went down to the creek and found a large smooth stone under the flowing water. Two big crawfish scurried out from under the rock when he moved it, but the boy wasn’t interested in them right then. He took the creek stone up the hill and laid it on top of the little grave. The boy looked at the creek stone and the cross and began to cry again. He told the Blue Jay he was sorry and then headed back down the hill, across the creek and up the path toward his house.
That night he sat at his desk and drew a picture of a Blue Jay on half a sheet of notebook paper. He copied the picture out of the World Book Encyclopedia and drew it as best as he possibly could. Over the top of the picture of the Blue Jay he wrote, “Please Forgive Me.” The boy folded the picture three times and put a piece of Scotch tape over the last fold to seal it. At church the next day, he dropped his quarter into the offering plate along with the folded and sealed picture of the Blue Jay. The boy hoped that the Blue Jay would see it.
The boy and his parents moved from the house when he was eighteen years old. Not long before they left, he went into the woods and walked along the creek. The woods were very quiet, when all of a sudden a familiar “Jay! Jay!” call rang out. The boy stopped, looked around the treetops but did not see a bird. The woods were quiet again. He walked up the hill away from the creek and stopped beside the tree. There with the smooth creek stone, the two pieces of quartz and the two pieces of granite rock, was the wooden cross. The boy sat down next to the little grave. He looked at it and thought about what had happened that afternoon eight years earlier. He sat there for a long time before he finally stood up. He took a long look at the creek stone, the cross and the quartz rock. He choked up and again told the Blue Jay that he was sorry. Then he headed down the hill to the creek and back up to the path toward his house. The boy never went in the woods again.
The man sat on his back porch and heard the familiar call of a Blue Jay. He smiled because the calls of the jays made him very happy and filled him with an inner peace. But the calls also tugged at his heart with sadness and regret. He had never forgotten that day a lifetime ago in the woods by his house when he took the life of one of the birds. The older the man became, the more remorse he felt. He had learned a hard lesson that day, a lesson that had stuck with him like none read from a book or vocalized by an instructor could have ever taught. He had senselessly and for no reason taken the life of a magnificent creature of God. That was something the man had carried with him his entire life. He hoped that the Blue Jay knew his regret. He hoped that the beautiful blue, white and black bird was waiting for him on The Bridge. The man hoped he would be able to look into the Blue Jay’s eyes once again and ask him, “Please Forgive Me.”