The speaker and the crowd first react to the bird in amazement; it draws a crowd of all ages and genders and, for a brief moment, there is no commotion from everyday life. The bird, described as being from a time before human industrialization, relates to the desire of the boy to visit the abandoned house.
The house breathed death and freedom. I went there whenever I could. I heaved my interdicted knife end-over-end at the lintels and peeling cupboards. I lit cigarettes and hung them from my lower lip, I studied scraps of pornographic magazines with a fever beating through my body.
The house is the boy’s escape into solitude, hidden from the judgmental eyes of his father and the church, as he discovers his blooming sexuality. He feels no shame looking at the pornographic magazines alone, but when looking at the sexualized playing cards of Wayne’s, he feels a stinging of guilt.
The presence of the bird causes him to dance through the crowd with an excitement similar to the fever he felt looking at the magazines. Once the wind picks up and reveals the wound on the bird, it too represents death and freedom just as the house did. He sees the impact he has on the bird, which causes its stillness.
I threw the first stone.