The Man Who Flew

I worked at McDonald's when I met Percy. It wasn't much of a job, but it fit in with my not-much-of-a-life. I was twenty-six and it was my first job. Eleven years of my so-called existence had been spent high on drugs in various strangers' basements, and McD's was kind enough to hire me after rehab, see.

I guess, actually, that's why I was drawn to Percy. Like, most people who work at McDonald's are teenagers or super-foreign, and maybe they're a little put off by a super-pasty thirty-something who works a minimum wage job with a smile on his face. I liked him for being... that. Being weird. Like, when he went on break he'd put a suit jacket and loafers on and stare up at the sky, looking kind of smug. Like he knew something the sky didn't know. Behaviours like that, they're definitely less-than-normative.

He wasn't very normal-looking either. Like a real-life cartoon. Huge brown eyes, dark wavy hair, pale beyond belief. He kind of looked like a Tim Burton movie character. A girl who worked cash, she said he was hot.

One time I'd had a bad shift and I went outside on my break for a cigarette. At that point I'd go through about a pack a month and I was really proud.

Percy was out there in suit and tie because his shift was over, leaning against McDonald's, staring up at the sky. I stood next to him, leaning too even though it's illegal to smoke that close to the building. I ripped the pack out of my bag. I yanked the cigarette out. I shoved it in my mouth. I snapped my lighter open. Tried to light it - once, twice. I breathed in that sweet, murderous smoke. I peeked over at Percy. He amused me, just by being himself and going about his business. He calmed me down.

"How you doing, Percy?" I asked him, breathing out smoke.

"The sky is mine, Jack." He pointed at the sky.

"Gonna buy a cloud, man?"

Percy giggled, like that was the single silliest thing he'd ever heard. "One day I'll go to the sky, Jack."

I thought about how to respond to this. My cigarette smoke disappeared into Percy's sky.

"You should come with me, Jack."

"How do we get there though?" Something about the way Percy said this stuff, he was so genuine. I was half-serious.

"I'll build us wings out of household items."

"Don't fly too close to the sun." I may have been a deadbeat most of my life, but I knew the classics.

"You should grow your hair out," he told me suddenly. There wasn't a second between topic changes. That's just Percy for you.

I ran my hand over my buzz cut. I had it like that since 8th grade. People told me I looked like brad Pitt in Fight Club.

"Why?" I asked him.

"To be more free."

I smiled at this. I didn't know if this man had his own logic, or if he just made choices willy-nilly. "I'm free to wear my hair how I like. That's free."

"But you wear it like that because others tell you that they like it."

I took a final drag of my cigarette and stomped it out. "Well, why do you wear suits?"

"Suit. There's only one suit. And I like it."

"Suits are what businessmen wear. Those are people who spend their whole lives rotting in offices. And grooms. And butlers. Guys who are tied down. Servants. What's even a little free about suits?"

"I work at McDonald's. No one's asking me to wear a suit. I choose to wear it, for me."

"Why do you work at McDonald's?"

"I don't know." He turned his head back to the sky and smiled again. I assumed our conversation was over, so I figured I'd go back to my shift.

"When are you done tonight?" he asked me.

"Seven."

I waited almost a minute for a follow-up response, but now it seemed the conversation was, in fact, over. I went back inside, a little awkwardly. Percy smiled at the sky.



At seven fifteen that night, I left McDonald's with a burger in my hand. Most people end up hating the food they make all day. I don't.

The sun was setting, and at first I didn't recognise Percy's silhouette against his orange-and-yellow sky. He was perched on a black bike, one leg on the ground for balance.

Walk home with me," he said.

"Where do you live?"

"In my car," he told me. "I meant more, walk to your place with me."

Maybe I should have found that suspicious or weird. But I didn't even think twice. I just nodded, bit into my burger and led the way.

On our way to my (mother's) house, Percy told me his plans for making wings. He said if we went up high enough, we could just fly forever, and our bodies would adapt and we would survive.

"Who are you?" I asked him. "Some rich ex-drug addict?" A lot of junkies I knew said the shit he said, but they weren't as wistful. Or believable.

"I am literally no one." He sounded so passionate.

"Just a man who wants to live in the sky?

"We're all just men until we live in the sky."

"So you think everyone should live in the sky?" A world full of people who did nothing but enjoy floating around all day. No hunger or thirst, therefore no jobs. No schedule. No public transit. Or lawyers. I could totally go for that.

"They should," he told me. "But not everyone can."

"And you think I could?" I was sceptical. There was nothing special about me at all. In fact, I thought of myself as particularly weak-willed.

"I don't know, Jack. I hardly know you at all."

"Then why'd you ask me to come with you?"

"You seemed interested. Most people leave when I talk about the sky."

"Ah, so I'm not your first choice."

Percy gave me a look. It's hard to describe any other way. The look made me feel stupid, though. "I don't rate people. How silly. Everyone's no one as long as they're here anyway."

Clearly this man had a firm opinion of our earthly realm.

We came to my place. I told him I'd see him around because if I brought someone like him home with me my mom would think I was using again.

"I saw that you have tomorrow off. I'll pick you up at nine to start on our wings."

"You mean business, huh?"

"I'm tired of this world. Aren't you?" He peddled off without another word.



I don't really know what I was expecting. Maybe we'd smoke weed until we felt like we could fly. Or maybe Wings was the name of his cult.

I wasn't expecting what maybe could have been obvious, in a more realistic situation. And that's that we made ourselves wings, Percy and I. We went to a secluded farmer's field, we climbed to the top of a hill with an apple tree on it, and we built wings.

Percy had measurements and sketches and supplies. He brought materials for us to share. Hollow pipes that had to be this long but no longer than that. Feathers from Christ-knows-where. Craft glue. Sticks. Weird rubber stuff. I hardly remember the first day of building. The whole thing was a pretty bad trip for me. I just couldn't really grasp that I was out in a farmer's field, building wings so I could live in the sky forever with a man I met working at McDonald's. Putting it that way, I think you could see how I'd feel a little stumped.

And yet there we were. We worked until it rained that day, and we kept the wings in Percy's car until the day after. They really started to look like wings on the second day in that field. We both had work, so we put in a couple hours before the sun set. The day after that, our wings definitely looked like wings. And then they actually were wings, and we stayed up most of the night learning to make our pipe-and-pillow-feather wings into parts of our bodies.

See, there were handles we'd put our arms into. On each wing there was one for your forearm and one for your hand. For lift-off and speed. Otherwise there wasn't much flapping involved. "We're men, not birds," Percy said about that. The rest was all tilting your body and looking where you wanted to go. In theory, at least. It was a leap of faith. We couldn't really test it first. Once we were in the sky, there would be no coming down.

Percy quit his job, but I didn't bother.

"What'll you tell them?" I asked him on our break. I was getting excited. I was sick of the earthly realm. "Say... say, 'your burger paddies have no place in the sky'."

"No, no," he told me. "They're not ready to learn about it. I'm just going to quit."

I went home after work -- Percy drove me -- so I could leave my mom a note. Then we went to the farmer's field and fixed each other's wings to our backs. The sun and the sky and the fields before us were so vivid in the summer light, so blue and so green. Soon there would be only the sun and the sky for us.

Percy went first. He ran for fifteen seconds, pumped his wings three times, and he was flying. He wasn't higher than my head but he was flying. I let out a whoop and threw my hands up in the air, towards our sky. He laughed in that way only truly happy people do. It's usually just babies and crazy people you hear laughing like that. Percy was definitely happy, though.

He yelled out, "Join me, join me!" as he gained altitude in slow circles around the tree and I.

I put my hands in the handles and took a big breath. I was ready to fly. And I would have, too. Would have left this earth and its hatred and fear and injustice. But I couldn't.

Maybe you thought this story would end with Percy's wings breaking, or both of us realising we're still humans who need to eat to live, and we'd land. We'd have to fail somehow, right?

Percy's plan worked though. At least, I'd assume it did. Because I never saw or made contact with him again.

What happened was that my mom called me, screaming and crying, begging me, "Don't do it, Jacky! Don't kill yourself! Please!" The last little while had been hard, but it was getting better, and she loved me, and I was all she had. Please.

She thought I had written a suicide letter. She thought I had given up. I had - on the world, but not on myself.

She'd seen everything while I recovered, and I had come so far, and she had still failed to help me. Or so she thought.

So I told her that call saved me. And it was just hard to see things were looking up sometimes. And then I hung up, I took my wings off, and I told Percy it just wasn't my time.

"Some day," he told me. "Perhaps after her passing." He was high now, above the tree, and conversation was getting pointless.

"Probably, Percy. I'll see you then." I wouldn't. My mom was young for a parent. I'd have a girlfriend by the time she died. Kids. A real job. Maybe I'd do it when I started to lose my health. Maybe not.

I packed my wings into his car and prepared to drive off. I hollered, "Enjoy!" but I doubt he heard me. He was starting to look like a bird, he was so far away. That was the last I saw of Percy.

I hope he's happy up there.

Because I know I'm happy down here.