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For years that old dark wooden bird house had swung from the crabapple, which for years was slowly dying, its limbs dropping like autumn leaves until the tree was just an amputee trunk and one remaining branch that sprouted leaves in the spring and sturdy pink flowers in mid-May as once the entire grand old tree had filled the back yard with its glory when survival was something serious. But its final gasp of reproductive desperation last spring had become not a thing of beauty, not another one of God’s minor miracles, but a death rattle, a last grasp at life like a dying cape buffalo that lifts its head from the mud and darts at the lions that have already had their fill of its hindquarters. And then the buffalo sinks into the mud one final time as the lions chew into its bowels, as the insects and fungi return the crabapple to the mud from which it sprouted.

Jimmy said last winter that he would move the bird house. But as winter again approached with icy fangs laying in wait for the robins and cardinals and blue jays, the bird house remained perched on that dead branch hanging over the lawn.

Jimmy’s son Pete  could have moved the bird house himself. In spring and summer, when he visited on weekends and the family sat out on the porch sipping gin and tonics, rather than grumble about the neighbor’s fetish for loud opera, rather than bickering over whether or not it was true that Sadie could remember five cent hot dogs-Jimmy said his wife could not possibly remember a hot dog that cost less than a dime-rather than dozing with the Sunday Times across his face, Pete could have walked the ten feet to the dying tree, untwisted the cord that held the bird house onto that one last branch, and he could have moved it to the cherry tree, or to the apple tree.

He could have done this rather than ask countless times, “So dad, when are you going to move that old bird house?”

Jimmy had promised that he would move the bird house the next time he filled it with seed. But he filled it, over and over again he filled it with sunflower seeds and generic bird seed mix he bought at A & P and Waldbaums and Major’s and at Reiman’s Hardware, he filled the bird house with seed almost as often as he made the promise to move it. He liked to have the birds in the backyard, he said, and Pete said, yes, well, they’ll still be there after the bird house is moved.

“Yeah, I guess,” Jimmy would answer.

“So dad,” Pete would say, “when are you going to move it?”

“I don’t know. When the time comes, that’s when. Now stop nagging.”

His father never said, “So go ahead and move it yourself.” In the summer, if Pete came home for the weekend after work on a Friday, Jimmy would say, “Hi there boy. Lawn needs a cut.” Sadie would nag Jimmy about the roof, and Jimmy would send Pete up to look for the leak. But he didn’t want Pete to touch that bird house. He thought the tree would live forever.

It was dark last night when Pete arrived at his parents’ house and very cold for early October. Pete was wearing his dark suit from the law firm and he hugged his mother and shook my hand and undid his tie and unbuttoned his collar and then we sat in the living room and talked about how we couldn’t believe it and it hadn’t sunk in and all that and then things got quiet and I tried to think of something to say. I asked about Jimmy’s cousin Marty, and yes, he was fine, Sadie said. Semi-retired.

Sadie said a good friend, Mrs. Bauman, would be over the next day to help out.

And then Pete asked, “Was the bird house ever moved?”

He told me later that it was an innocent question, but I don’t know, maybe it was , maybe it wasn’t. I think he wanted to unleash whatever it was he unleashed.

“If you want that damn bird house moved, why don’t you move it yourself!” his mother snapped back, and Pete answered,

“It’s not my bird house mom. I didn’t put it up and I won’t miss it when that fucking tree comes down.”

And his mother burst into tears.

I stood and walked behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.

“It’s all right Sadie, he didn’t mean anything. It’s just nerves. Pete, get your mother a drink.”

Pete poured her a glass of sweet vermouth over ice and she sipped it and stopped crying. He poured himself a glass of scotch and his mother walked to the bathroom in her bedroom.

“Take it easy Pete,” I said. “It’s not easy for anybody.”

“I know Uncle Joe. It’s just…”

“Now now,” I said. “Never mind. It’s over.”

Pete sipped his scotch and I grabbed the newspaper off the floor and asked,

“When’s your brother getting in?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Pete said.

“That’s good,” I said. “That’s good that he’s coming in so soon. You talked to him today?”

“No,” Pete said. “Mom did.”

Sadie came back into the living room and we sat in the silent house listening to the wind kick up the leaves outside. I tried to read the newspaper but it was pretty damn hard all things considered, plus Pete swirling the ice in his glass and Sadie just staring at the ceiling and Pete swirling the ice faster and staring at the empty fireplace and then at our reflection in the picture window and finally I guess he couldn’t take it any more.

“I’m going back to my apartment,” he said. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning.”

“Are you sure?” his mother asked. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?”

“No,” he said. “I’d rather spend the night in my apartment.”

Doctor Stein had given Sadie a sleeping pill and she took it with a glass of water and Pete and I helped her into bed.

“Thanks Uncle Joe,” she said.

“Now never mind,” I said. “You just get some sleep.” And then I drove Pete to the ferry terminal.

“Terrible news,” I said. “Makes you count your lucky stars.”

“Uh huh,” Pete said.

“I remember walking down to the ferry with your father from the house over on Oxford Place. He was a young fella when he moved here, and his sister, oh you should have seen your aunt Jesse when she was a kid. She was some beautiful kid. That was 1948 when they moved here. Right after their father died. Long time before Jimmy ever gave a thought to you or Frank. I was working with uncle Ben back then.”

But Pete wasn’t in a talking mood. We pulled into the ferry terminal and he unlocked the door.

“You need a ride tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes,” Pete said, “That would be nice.”

“Okay, then, call me from Manhattan. See you tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

Pete slammed the door of my Buick and he walked down into the terminal. His briefcase was at his side and he looked like he’d just finished a long day of difficult work at the office.

I headed back home and had a scoop of ice milk before turning in, and as I drifted away I thought I heard the chirp of a bird singing to me just like the cardinals that sang to Pete and his dad from the perch on that old bird house.

I remember the day Jimmy put up that bird house. They’d just moved into the house and Sadie was pregnant with Pete.

I slept like a log and woke early, just as the sun was coming up and shining its light through the windows in my living room and the sky was clear and I stepped out and it was cool, but I could tell the air was going to warm, and it felt like a spring day and the trees were ready to show their leaves any moment and the azaleas were going to bloom that day and get on with it, it didn’t feel like October when all the leaves were down and the trees were hardened off for winter and there were no flowers and spring was far far away.

I ate a piece of toast and had a cup of coffee and read the newspaper and waited for Pete’s call. I figured he’d get in about nine, but he called just after seven and said he’d be on Staten Island at eight. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to wait around forever.

I picked him up and we headed straight to his mother’s house.

“You eat?” I asked in the car.

“No.”

“That’s good,” I said. “I’m sure there’s plenty of food. People do that, you know. They send coffee and cake and cold cuts.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“No, I guess you’re not. Me neither, but I’m never hungry. When you get my age, you don’t eat. You get any sleep?”

“No.”

I didn’t think so. He looked like hell and I said so.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I’m just telling you because you don’t want to upset your mother. It’s okay. You don’t look that bad.”

When we pulled into the driveway Pete said,

“I think I’m going to move that old bird house.”

I looked at him and said

“Guess it’s about time.”

Pete said he was going to move the bird house to the cherry tree because it was closer to the porch than the apple tree and I agreed that made sense because his father liked that bird house near the porch so he could see it. The lower branches of the cherry were more shaded than the lone crabapple branch, but the birds, especially the cardinals, they loved the cherry. Each year as the crabapple lost another limb that cherry grew taller and wider and showered the lawn with more pink snow in a private April display of thanks that it was living while that old crabapple was dying. And the cardinals spent less time in what was left of the crabapple and more time in the stretching, puffing cherry branches.

I told Pete I didn’t think the cardinals would like the move. Over the years I’d watched them pretty hard and those birds were meticulous creatures of habit. If they wanted some seed, if they wanted a peak at that cool wooden rest stop, they wanted the bird house in the crabapple, not the cherry. The robins wouldn’t care. They would still stop in for seed and a perch, but the cardinals, they would squawk and cockle and launch a boycott of the new location. Maybe in a couple of months, when food was scarce and they were hurting, maybe then they would give in. By spring maybe they’d forget that the bird house had ever been anywhere else. Right then I didn’t think the cardinals would be too happy about the move, but I agreed it made sense to move the bird house to the cherry.

Sadie was sitting in the living room reading the paper. Mrs. Bauman was busy arranging coffee cakes on serving platters.

“Lot of food,” Pete said.

“People will come,” Sadie said. “Have some cake.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Did you have breakfast?”

“No.”

“Have something. You’ll get hungry.”

“I’m not hungry mom.”

Sadie was dressed in old jeans and an old yellow t-shirt. They were the sort of clothes she would wear when she worked in the garden, or on a Sunday evening curled up on the couch when the family just sat around tired and dreading the end of the weekend.

“I’m going to move the bird house,” Pete said, and Sadie went pale and looked up at him.

“It’s too late,” she said.

“No it’s not,” Pete said. “It’s not too late.”

“Sure Sadie, it’s not too late,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It’s too late. The tree came down last night.”

Pete and I walked out back and saw the skeleton of the old crabapple tree stretched across the lawn, a few brown leaves still hanging onto the one branch that had held on for a final year. And beneath the branch, now resting under the cherry tree, was a small pile of splinters that just the day before had been the bird house that Pete had watched since he was a boy and his father was a young man and I was just the old uncle that came over for supper on Wednesdays and Sundays and who shouted see Pete, did you see Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal? Did you see them Pete? And Jimmy, my brother’s kid, he’d chime in, did you see them Pete? See the red?

Pete stepped up to the logs now filling the small back yard and he kicked at the bird house and he put his hands on the tree, he ran his hands around the stump and I knew what he was looking for. He was looking for the bark his father had clawed as he fell to the ground and died the day before.

Pete bent over and ran his hands along the rough bark and he fell to his knees and picked up a small plank from the bird house that had been snapped into a hundred pieces.

“I should have moved it,” Pete said, sobbing. “I should have moved it to the cherry.”

I guess he figured it was all his fault that the cardinals were darting around near the ground, on and off that mass of rotting wood that his father, my own little brother’s kid,  had clutched as he sank down into the mud and realized that he wasn’t going to move that birdhouse after all, it was going to stay just where it was on that crabapple, that crabapple that once promised like my brother and my brother’s kid to live forever.  I’d watched Pete and his dad in that back yard since Pete was an infant and I knew that tree, I knew that bird house as well as anyone in the family. And I was sorry to see it go. Never thought I’d live to see it go.

I walked up to Pete and touched him on the shoulder.

“Come on in,” I said, and I handed him a handkerchief and he wiped his face and stood and we walked back into the living room. Pete sat beside his mother on the couch and I sat down in a chair across from them. It was time to plan the funeral.