Robins Tapping on Glass in Springtime: a short story by Michael Fine

By Michael Fine, contributing writer

© 2024 by Michael Fine

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, Businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Was it one bird, or two?  Or ten?  It was impossible to know.  What Philippe Andrade knew was that these birds go crazy in spring, that’s all.  They come back from wherever.  They flutter up onto the window.  And then they attack. Tap tap tap.  Tap tap. Tap tap.  Again and again, on the same two or three windows, all on the same side of the house.  They peck at the windows with their beaks.  Then flutter away again, only to return five or ten minutes later.  They seem obsessed, like they have nothing else better to do.  Like they can’t learn, like they keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results.

Who knows why they do this?  Is it that they see their own reflections and think they are being threatened by another bird?  Is there something about the way the sun hits the glass that makes them think food is there?  Or does reflected light just drive them crazy?  A kind of call of the wild that stimulates something in their brains that pulls them in, pulls them toward what they think is the sun, to the extent that they think at all.

–

Nothing could be further from Philippe’s life.  There was nothing wild in that life.  Nothing disordered.  Nothing crazy.  The tap-tap-tap of the bird on the window was an interruption to what was otherwise a pretty well thought out and well-organized life, small as it was.  And Philippe didn’t really have time for interruptions.

He was off to the statehouse to do what he did best: community outreach.  He had a little desk and a little job in the Governor’s office.  His job was to field the incoming, the constituent needs and complaints, and he did it really well: assisting all sorts of people, from all sorts of communities had ideas or issues – Cape Verdeans who couldn’t get a parade permit here;  Dominicans who wanted the Governor to come to a flag raising there;  Italians who were furious about what someone had written about the Bridge and the mob someplace else;  the Jewish thinking that anyone who said anything about Israel was antisemitic over there.  The annual dinner of the Yoruba Elders.  And so on. There were dinners and ribbon cuttings, parades and cookouts and fundraisers.  Philippe’s job was to keep everybody happy, or at least keep everybody not mad.  In politics the trick is to do as little as you possibly can, so you don’t tick anyone off, while you find a way to speak that is so carefully phrased, so carefully finessed, that everyone on every side of an issue thinks you agree with them, while you make damn sure that you never commit yourself to anything.  They’ll find out soon enough what is going to be at budget time, in the late spring.  The beauty is that the budget gets released and passed in about a week, and then it’s all over.  The legislature adjourns and everyone goes home for the summer, which is enough time for everyone to forget if they won or lost – and then the cycle of hustling for dollars and jockeying for position begins all over again.

–

I’m a young guy, Philippe’s thought.  From the community.  I show up and press the flesh.  I go along to get along.  Float like a butterfly.   Just my broad grin which is what people will remember about me. But no sting.  Just smiles. 

Get appointed to stuff.  Go to fundraisers.  Maybe even go to law school at night.  Get appointed as somebody’s chief of staff or somebody’s deputy.  Make decent money.  Drive a good car.  Get to know everybody.  Get a deep contact list.  Understand how the smart money thinks and then become the smart money myself.  Make things happen.  If I don’t get run over by the bus.  And don’t throw anybody under that bus.  But don’t get caught holding the bag.  Pass the buck.  Grease the wheels.  Climb the ladder, slowly, carefully, one day after the next, and make sure the retirement account grows.  Chance favors the prepared mind.

Spring had come at last, and the air was cool without being cold.  The grass around the statehouse had become green.  There were yellow and red tulips in the flowerbeds.

            It was raining that day in Providence.  A light rain, more like a fine mist, so Philippe crossed the street and headed for the main entrance to the statehouse instead of using the legislator’s entrance, which is at the back of the legislator’s parking lot and a longer walk in the rain.

The white marble paving stones glistened in the rain and reflected the brake lights of the cars driving down Smith Street.  The stones get slippery in the rain, so Philippe walked on the cobbled drive.

There were ten or fifteen demonstrators gathered in front of the statehouse, as usual.  Same stuff, different day.  Palestine now.  Sometimes homeless.  Sometimes guns, for and against.  Sometimes immigrants, for and against.  Philippe treated everybody equal.  He smiled at everyone when he walked by, and he shook their hands.  He listened to them.  He nodded like he understood.  Sometimes he even said some of their words back to them.  It didn’t matter.  Words are just words.  The art is to listen but not hear.   To not let any of it sink in. He closed himself off and concentrated on walking.

So, Philippe was completely unprepared for what happened next.

–

Suddenly everything went black.

Something over Philippe’s mouth prevented him from speaking. Something was over Philippe’s head. A rope tightened around Philippe’s neck, tight but not choking.  A strong arm circled around Philippe’s chest.  Hands, strong hands, grabbed Philippe’s arms and legs.  He was lifted off the ground.

There was a sensation of movement, but it was impossible to tell in which direction.  He bucked once or twice but the strong hands on his arms and legs held him, controlling the bucking.  No one said a word.

            Then he felt himself swinging, and then everything let go.

 Philippe was weightless for a moment, falling, pitched through the air. He landed with a thud on his side and back, landing on what felt like a mattress.  Then doors were slammed shut, a motor started and roared, and he pitched backward.

 He felt movement again, quick movement.  He rolled.  He was in the back of a vehicle.  His legs were bound together. His arms were tied behind his back. 

–          

 The truck or van bounced over a rise in the road and then swung to the right and then left and then hard left again.  The truck or van slowed and stopped, started again and then accelerated.    Philippe tried to visualize where he was.  They’d made the right turn next to the Department of Administration and then the left turn on Orms, drove over the highway overpass just beyond the Department of Health and were about to get on the highway, on the entrance ramp next to the Foxy Lady.  Perhaps.  Or not.

Don’t they know, he told himself?  That I am a community person myself?  That I am a person of color?  Or that was his first thought.  Then he realized that he had no idea where he was, why he was there, who had taken him or why. 

It made no sense.  He was a two-bit player in the statehouse of a tiny state with no importance and no influence, except in its own mind.  What could anyone possibly want with him?

–

            The vehicle stopped.  Doors opened and closed.  Hands grabbed his legs and dragged him on his side.  Philippe felt metal on one leg, a pop, and his legs were free.  Hands pulled his body to standing.  Hands held his upper arms and shoulders.  Hands pushed him from behind.  Doors opened and closed again.  He walked where he was pushed.  Then his foot struck something solid, and he raised it.  He found a step and stepped up.  Then another and another.  There was an echo, a staircase.  In a building with many flights of stairs.  Which he climbed.

Who are these people? He wondered. Why am I here?  What could they possibly want with me? 

They pushed him to the side and stopped him.  A door opened.  Different echoes.  The corridor in an apartment building perhaps.  A hard floor, which made the footsteps echo.  The sound of a key in a lock and the tumblers of the lock clicking open.  The sound of a door opening.  They pushed him inside.  There was carpet or a rug on the floor.  The sound changed.  They were in a bigger room.  They pushed him to walk, shoved him forward and then pushed him down.  There was a chair behind his knees.  He sat.

–

Later they returned.  They yanked him to his feet. Then they tied his legs together. One put their fingers under the rope around his neck, tightening it.  He gagged.  Then the rope loosened, and they took the hood off his head.

There were two of them.  They were both wearing dark green hoods open at the eyes only and dark green baggy clothing.  Fatigues. The room had no furniture.  Just a disjointed baseboard heater that had copper pipe visible on one side.  One tiny high up window. Papers on the floor.

            They shoved him forward. He shuffled.  His feet were bound. They pushed him through a door.  Into a corridor.  This was an office of some kind.  There was a desk and file cabinets, one with a drawer open at an odd angle.

So he was in an empty office that had been abandoned. If he cried out, there was no one to hear him.

–

            They opened a door and turned on a light.  A bathroom.

They cut the ties on his wrists with a knife and pushed him inside.  He stumbled.  He fell to his knees.  Then he stood and turned.  They backed away but left the door open.  He dropped his trousers and sat and relieved himself. 

Then he stood and they reappeared.

They put the hood back on his head.

 Then they each took an arm.  They had strong grips.  They pushed him, making him shuffle but also holding him up so he didn’t fall. 

–

Then they took the hood off his head.

            There was a pizza box and a bottle of orange Gatorade on the desk in the ante room.  They opened it.  There were two cold slices – pizza with pineapple and chicken.  They released his arms, and he ate both pieces, one after the next.  Then he drank the Gatorade. 

Then the hood went back on, and they pushed him to walk, then stopped him, then turned him around.

            He heard wood dragging on the floor.  Then they pushed him down, back onto the chair.  They zip-tied his hands together behind his back.

–

Then silence.  The rumble of a truck from time to time.  Once in a while, footsteps.  Distant voices from the street, but only once in a long while.  An airplane flying high overhead.  A door closed.  That was all.

What is the purpose of my life? Philippe wondered.  I have learned how to go along and get along.  I have learned to be useful to some and harmful to nobody.  And now this?  Am I a hostage?  Does anyone know I am missing?  Does anyone care?

–

Philippe imagined the news conference in which the Governor announced his kidnapping, a news conference with the Governor at a lectern which had the Great Seal of the State of Rhode Island on its front, flanked by the Superintendent of State Police, the Attorney General, and someone from the FBI.  How many of those news conferences had Philippe himself helped arrange?  The Governor would talk about house-to-house searches.  And use the usual language.  We’ll leave no stone unturned.  We are using every avenue at our disposal.  We will not stop until Philippe is returned. People in our communities should rest assured that we will stop these heinous criminals.  But also:  that we will never negotiate with terrorists.

And then he thought, that’s not what will happen at all.  They won’t go public with this unless it gets into the media.  They will want to keep it quiet.  That a member of the Governor’s staff was kidnapped, that makes the Governor look weak.  Don’t give the kidnappers a platform by acknowledging their existence.  That was what the communications folks would say.  Negotiate quietly to secure his release if you can.  But truth be told, Philippe is very junior.  And expendable.   He’s a bit player.  The communities, they really don’t matter.  We can find someone else from one of those communities, able and willing to take our money, enjoy a little of the spotlight, and be just as damned proud of having a little desk at the statehouse.

It was also possible that no one had missed him yet, because almost no one knew or cared about what he did or whether he showed up to work or not. He worked from home two days a week, like most people.  So it might take a week before anyone missed him.

But the kidnappers, they’ll go to the press if this is a political thing.  They want the attention.  They want to call attention to something.  What?  It could be anything.  Israel and Gaza.  The environment.  Guns and gun control.  Or maybe someone more obscure, like that revolutionary group in Colombia, or maybe these are narco-terrorists, one of the Mexican cartels.  The only way the kidnappers will want to keep it quiet is if this were a kidnapping just for money.  But truth be told, Philippe wasn’t worth very much, and if money was what the kidnappers were after, then kidnapping Philippe meant they were not very good kidnappers at all.

–

There is no time when you are hooded and tied.  You just are. 

Philippe slipped in and out of consciousness.  He hallucinated.  At some point they came again and repeated the toilet routine.  Then take-out Chinese instead of pizza.

The sky was light outside the windows, so, daylight.  But which day? And what time?

“What’s going on here?”  Philippe said.  “What do you want?”  Neither person answered.  Philippe realized he hadn’t even heard them speak to one another.

“WHAT IS THE STORY?” Philippe shouted, his voice echoing in the empty rooms, muffled by what seemed like an empty building.  “Don’t I have rights?  Why do I not have equal access to my freedom?” he said, loudly but not quite at a shout. 

The two people didn’t even turn to him while he was talking, as if they were dead or as if he wasn’t in the room and wasn’t speaking.

–

No, I don’t have rights after all, Philippe said to himself, after he had been hooded again and tied back down to the chair.  Equal access to freedom??  What did that mean?  There was no one else present, no one else in this predicament.  It was just how he was used to thinking and talking to others.  I am alone, Philippe thought.  I have no way to know if anyone knows I am here, if anyone knows if I am alive or dead.

–

“Take me to your leader!” he said, the next time they toileted him and fed him, his idea of a joke.  No one laughed.  The sky was black then.

–

Sometime later, hooded, he heard it again.

Tapping.

Everything was dark and his hands and feet were tired.

 Could it be?  Was it real or imagined?  He was slipping in and out of consciousness again, so it was hard to be sure.

            But there it was again.  The tapping.  A robin tapping on a window.  It was hard to know which window.  But the sound was unmistakable.  Some dumb bird, crazed by light or instinct, was tapping away, exhausting itself over nothing.  It might give itself a concussion. It might break its beak.  It might die.  It had no idea what it was doing or why.  It was just tapping.

“Stop it!” Philippe yelled. 

But the tapping continued.   Until at some point the tapping stopped.  It must be dark, Philippe thought.  Robins don’t tap on the glass at midnight.

Then they toileted him and fed him and watered him one more time, this time with tacos from Taco Bell.

–

Philippe was back in his chair when the tapping began again.

“Stop it!” he yelled again, and he began to struggle in his chair.  To try to stand.  To find his way to whatever window the robin or robins were tapping on.  That is my whole life, Philippe thought at once.  I am a robin, tapping on a window.  I don’t know why. 

“Stop it!”  He yelled again.  And this time he was able to stand, bent over, the chair held to his bottom by the ties that held his arms behind him.

–

He tried to walk.  Blindly.  Toward the tapping. 

“Stop it!” he yelled.

 And then he tripped over his own feet and fell on the floor on his side. 

He heard only the tapping, which he could not control.

–

Many thanks to Carol Levitt for proofreading and to Brianna Benjamin for all-around help and support.

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Michael Fine, MD is currently Health Policy Advisor in Central Falls, Rhode Island and Senior Population Health and Clinical Services Officer at Blackstone Valley Health Care, Inc. He is facilitating a partnership between the City and Blackstone to create the Central Falls Neighborhood Health Station, the US first attempt to build a population based primary care and public Health collaboration that serves the entire population of a place.He has also recently been named Health Liaison to the City of Pawtucket. Dr. Fine served in the Cabinet of Governor Lincoln Chafee as Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health from February of 2011 until March of 2015, overseeing a broad range of public Health programs and services, overseeing 450 public Health professionals and managing a budget of $110 million a year.

Dr. Fine’s career as both a family physician and manager in the field of healthcare has been devoted to healthcare reform and the care of under-served populations. Before his confirmation as Director of Health, Dr. Fine was the Medical Program Director at the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, overseeing a healthcare unit servicing nearly 20,000 people a year, with a staff of over 85 physicians, psychiatrists, mental health workers, nurses, and other health professionals.He was a founder and Managing Director of HealthAccessRI, the nation’s first statewide organization making prepaid, reduced fee-for-service primary care available to people without employer-provided health insurance. Dr. Fine practiced for 16 years in urban Pawtucket, Rhode Island and rural Scituate, Rhode Island. He is the former Physician Operating Officer of Hillside Avenue Family and Community Medicine, the largest family practice in Rhode Island, and the former Physician-in-Chief of the Rhode Island and Miriam Hospitals’ Departments of Family and Community Medicine. He was co-chair of the Allied Advocacy Group for Integrated Primary Care.

He convened and facilitated the Primary Care Leadership Council, a statewide organization that represented 75 percent of Rhode Island’s primary care physicians and practices. He currently serves on the Boards of Crossroads Rhode Island, the state’s largest service organization for the homeless, the Lown Institute, the George Wiley Center, and RICARES. Dr. Fine founded the Scituate Health Alliance, a community-based, population-focused non-profit organization, which made Scituate the first community in the United States to provide primary medical and dental care to all town residents.Dr. Fine is a past President of the Rhode Island Academy of Family Physicians and was an Open Society Institute/George Soros Fellow in Medicine as a Profession from 2000 to2002. He has served on a number of legislative committees for the Rhode Island General Assembly, has chaired the Primary Care Advisory Committee for the Rhode Island Department of Health, and sat on both the Urban Family Medicine Task Force of the American Academy of Family Physicians and the National Advisory Council to the National Health Services Corps.