The Furious Story. Part Five: "He was Gone"

Things had become very difficult for the schoolteacher. 

He left his job at the school and came to this refuge in the woods to be free. 

He loved teaching, but as the years wore on his shoulders slumped from the constant pressures of working to serve too many masters and conforming to the expectations of those he worked for and with. He felt like a beast of burden, restrained by an invisible bridle made not of leather but of words – commands and criticisms.

In this hidden place, he hoped to be his own master, but now it appeared he was again enslaved. The story had become his master, with its own set of commands and criticisms. Only these demands were more burdensome, because he could find no argument against them. The critiques, he felt, were pushing him toward some unseen end – a destination he both welcomed and feared.

And so, when the story angrily shut him off, he turned to the same comfort sought by many writers and artists before him; a bottle of amber liquid – a fifth of a gallon, eighty proof.

The schoolteacher drank until he could no longer hear his own thoughts and then he slept deeply and late into the afternoon. When he awoke, he was greeted by the sound of hammering. He turned his head slowly to the noise and witnessed a most unusual sight. A large bird, mostly white and black with a flaming red crest, clung to the side of a kitchen shelf and hammered on the nearby window. And though his pecking was forceful and loud, he could not break the glass. 

"What brings you here?" The schoolteacher asked. "And how did you get in?" As far as the schoolteacher could tell, all the doors and windows were closed and had been so through the night.

Of course the bird did not answer, he just continued his work and paid no notice the man who sat just a few feet away. 

"So you seek your freedom?" Said the schoolteacher. "Then you shall have it." And with that, the schoolteacher reached past the bird and threw open the window. But the sudden movement alarmed the bird and he flew off into the next room. When he came to rest, he began hammering on a bookcase with the same persistence he applied to the window, but with seemingly no purpose, since the bookcase was situated near the center of the room and penetrating it would not aid the bird's escape. 

Observing this, the schoolteacher felt a wave of sorrow come over him and he determined to set the bird free. He began chasing it around the house in the hopes of guiding him toward the open window, but, instead of calmly surveying the situation and pursuing the path to escape that was set before him, the bird became frantic in his behavior, pounding harder and faster on whatever piece of furniture he happened upon, until finally, the trauma of his own panicked labors overcame him and he dropped to the floor. 

The schoolteacher ran to the bird, cradled his body and rushed him outside where he laid him on a stone, free to fly away. But the bird did not fly, or open his eyes, or move a muscle. He was gone. And now the schoolteacher sat and sobbed. His head pounding from last night's drink, and his thoughts, dark and stormy.