snatched it up.
'You go down to Sister Ramona's; that's four blocks west of here. It's got a sign out front that says 'Handbill Passers Wanted.' The Gluebird's been working for the sister lately.'
I believed him. His pride and dignity carried authority. I took off in the direction he was pointing.
Sister Ramona was a psychic who preyed on Milwaukee's superstitious lower middle classes. This was explained to me by one 'Waldo,' an ancient bum lounging in front of the storefront where she recruited the winos and blood bank rejects who carried her message via handbill into Milwaukee's poorer enclaves. She paid off in half gallons of wine that she bought dirt cheap by the truckload from an immigrant Italian wine maker from Chicago. He jacked up the alcohol content with pure grain spirits, which weighed in his vino at a hefty one hundred proof.
Sister Ramona wanted to keep her boys happy. She provided them with free outdoor sleeping quarters in the parking lot of the movie theater she owned; she fed them three grilled cheese sandwiches a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year; and she bailed them out of jail if they promised to repay the money by donating their blood for free at the blood bank owned by her gynecologist brother, who recently lost his license from poking too many patients in the wrong hole.
This came out in a torrent of words, unsolicited. Waldo went on to explain that the only trouble with Sister Ramona's scam was that her boys kept kicking off of cirrhosis of the liver and freezing to death in the winter when her parking lot became covered over with snowdrifts that she never bothered to clear out. Ol' sister had a high turnover, yes, sir, Waldo said, but there were always plenty of recruits to be found: sister was a wine cono-sewer supreme and she made a mean grilled cheese sandwich. And she wasn't prejudiced, Waldo said, no sir, she hired white men and Negroes alike and fed them the same and provided them with the same flop-out space in her parking lot.
When I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my pocket and said the words 'George 'The Gluebird' Melveny,' Waldo's eyes popped out and he said, 'The Genius,' in a voice others reserved for Shakespeare and Beethoven.
'Why is he a genius, Waldo?' I asked as the old man deftly snatched the five-spot out of my hands.
He started jabbering, 'Because he's smart, that's why! Marquette University professor! Sister made him a crew chief until he couldn't drive no more. He don't sleep in her parking lot, he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the summertime on the beach by the lake, and in the wintertime he sleeps in the nice warm boiler room at Marquette. He so smart that sister don't pay him with no booze—he don't drink no more; sister pays him off with model airplanes 'cause he like to build them and sniff the glue! The Gluebird is a genius!'
I shook my head.
'Whassa matter, man?' Waldo asked.
'You think that's five dollars' worth of information?'
'I sure do!'
'So do I. You want to make another fin?'
'Yeah, man!'
'Then take me to the Gluebird, now.'
'Yeah, man!'
We went cruising, in the front seat of my sweltering Ford sedan, zigzagging the streets of Milwaukee's lower-class neighborhoods in a random pattern until we spotted pairs of ragged men tossing handbills onto lawns and front porches. Some venturesome winos even jammed them into mailboxes.
Waldo said, 'This is what sister call 'saturation bombing.' Bomb 'em right into her parlor, she says.'
'How much does she charge?'
'Three dollars!' Waldo bellowed.
I shook my head. 'Life's a kick in the brains, isn't it, Waldo?'
'Life's more like a kick in the ass,' he said.
We drove on for another half hour. The Gluebird was not to be found among his colleagues. Exhaustion was catching up with me, but I knew I couldn't sleep.
Finally Waldo exclaimed, 'The hobby shop!' and started jabbering directions. All I could pick out was 'Lake Michigan,' so I turned around and pointed the car toward a bright expanse of dark blue that was visible from our hilltop vantage point. Soon we were cruising down Lake Drive, and Waldo was craning his head out the window looking for the Gluebird.
'There!' he said, pointing to a row of shops in a modern shopping center. 'That's it.'
I pulled in, and finally spied a joint called Happy Harry's Hobby Haven. At last my exhausted, dumbfounded brain got the picture: Happy Harry was George Melveny's glue supplier.
'Stay here, Waldo,' I said. I parked and walked into the little store.
Happy Harry didn't look too happy. He was a fat, middle-aged man who looked like he hated kids. He was suspiciously eyeing a group of them, who were holding balsa wood airplanes over their heads and dive-bombing them at one another, exclaiming 'Zoom, karreww, buzz!' Suddenly, I felt very tired, and not up to sparring with the fat man, who looked like he would give a good part of his soul to converse with an adult.
I walked up to him and said, 'George 'The Gluebird' Melveny.'
He said in return, 'Oh, shit.'
'Why 'Oh, shit'?' I asked.
'No reason. I just figured you was a cop or something, and the Bird set himself on fire again.'
'Does he do that often?'
'Naw, just once or twice. He forgets and lights a cigarette when his beard is full of glue. He ain't got much of a face left because of that, but that's okay, he ain't got much of a brain left either, so what's the diff? Right, Officer?'
'I'm not a cop, I'm an insurance investigator. Mr. Melveny has just been awarded a large settlement. If you point me in his direction, I'm sure he will repay the favor by purchasing glue by the caseload here at your establishment.'
Happy Harry took it all in with a straight face: 'The Bird bought three models this morning. I think he crosses the drive and goes down to the beach to play with them.'
Before the man could say anything more, I walked out to the lot and told my tour guide we were going beachcombing.
We found him sitting in the middle of the sand, alternately staring at the white, churning tide of Lake Michigan and the pile of plastic model parts in his lap. I handed Waldo five dollars and told him to get lost. He did, thanking me effusively.
I stared at the Gluebird for several long moments. He was tall, and gaunt beyond gaunt, his angular face webbed with layers of white scar tissue burned to a bright red at the edges. His sandy hair was long and matted sideways over his head; his reddish-blond beard was sparkling with gooey crystalline matter that he picked at absently. It was a breezeless ninety degrees and he was still wearing wool slacks and a turtlenecked fisherman's sweater.
I walked up to him and checked out the contents of his lap as he stared slack-jawed at a group of children building sand castles. His bony, glue-encrusted hands held the plastic chassis of a 1940 Ford glued to the fuselage of a B-52 bomber. Tiny Indian braves with tomahawks and bows and arrows battled each other upside down along the plane's underbelly.
The Gluebird noticed me, and must have seen some sadness in my gaze, because he said in a soft voice: 'Don't be sad, sonny, the sister has a cozy drift for you and I was in the war, too. Don't be sad.'
'Which war, Mr. Melveny?'
'The one after the Korean War. I was with the Manhattan Project then. They gave me the job because I used to mix Manhattans for the fathers. By the pitcherful, with little maraschino cherries. The fathers were cherry themselves, but they could have told the sisters to kick loose, but they were cherry, too. Like Jesus. They could have got fired, like me, and left the sisters to work for the sister.' Melveny held his mound of plastic up for me to see. I took it, and held it for a moment, then handed it back to him. 'Do you like my boat?' he asked.
'It's very beautiful,' I said. 'Why did you get fired, George?'
'I used to be George, and it was George with me, but now I'm a bird. Caw! Caw! Caw! I used to be George,
