Perhaps a cat had gotten to the pigeon. It lay in the sunlight on a sidewalk behind the campus church, several gashes across its head. Other students passed it. He almost did the same. It looked dead, except for the slight rising and falling of its back as it breathed. He was sorry to have been the one to notice or, at least, to acknowledge what he saw. He squatted beside the bird and stared at it. Blood ran into the pigeon's upturned eye, and it could not blink out the pool that had formed there, though it tried. The tip of its gray tongue poked from its beak and moved slightly. It was a hot day and he considered bringing the bird water, but it probably couldn't drink. It was dying, anyway; the question was how slowly. It could take all day, or longer, maybe. How was one to know, and what was one to do? He could stand least of all the blood-covered eye and the blackness that shone through and the question of whether it was looking at him or not. After a while, he rose, making a deal with himself. He went to the library, which was kept soothingly cool. There, he took time locating and checking out a book he would need to accomplish research on a class project. Then he went back to see if the pigeon had died. It hadn't. Apparently, though, it had had some fit of movement, for one of its wings was now folded at an odd angle beneath it. Jesus, he said. He looked around again for anybody, but he and the pigeon were alone. The windows on the brick buildings that stood all around reflected the sun. "I made a deal," he said outloud. He looked around for an object -- a large stone, some wooden debris -- with which to kill the bird. It seemed an odd and perhaps impossible thing to accomplish; he remembered that as a boy he'd killed several birds with his pellet rifle, and that each of these killings had been followed by a secret burial. He had no weapon so simple now. It was a pretty, well-kept campus, and nothing solid was immediately available. He walked past the church and across the lawn, so that the pigeon was out of view. He went along slowly, peering beneath trees and into the shadows cast by buildings, still finding nothing. Eventually, he returned to the pigeon, saying out loud as he went, "Let it be dead." It wasn't. Again, it had moved around. Now its head was tucked down against its body. One of the wings lifted and fell and lifted again. It struck him that his car was in the nearby lot, and there would be something of substance. The realization was both frightening and relieving. As he started toward the car, he had a sudden and further relieving inspiration. He went back and picked up the pigeon, which struggled against his hand until he squeezed his fingers over its wings so that it could not really move. Its head lolled and it did not resist any longer. He felt its heart going so fast that one beat was almost indistinguishable from the next. "I'm sorry, sorry, sorry . . ." he repeated. He set it down close to the front tire. It flapped one wing and moved in a half circle and then stilled. Turning away from the pigeon, he had the feeling that the most difficult part was already behind him, as if in holding the bird tightly he had faced the responsibility of his choice, and in so doing had set something in motion he no longer had to force himself to finish because the momentum of it would see him through. He did not look at the pigeon again, but got in his car and backed up and drove forward so that the tire was directly over the bird. "Jesus," he said, and then tapped on the gas. The car jerked and he tapped harder, and he felt the slight lift of the car going over the pigeon's body. Dazed, he got out of the car and started back toward the library. He'd misplaced his book, but he couldn't remember if he'd put it down when he picked up the bird, or sometime earlier. It was in the grass by the church, and he took it, planning to go back to the library and read there. But he couldn't. The thing between him and the pigeon wasn't over. He had to see how the bird looked dead. When he got back to his car, he could only find a smear of blood and feathers. As he rose from his crouch, a cry startled him. Though half of its body appeared to be crushed, the pigeon was now standing, several feet away, on the other side of the concrete barrier. The pigeon looked larger than it had before -- being run over had elongated its body, but there was also a puffiness to the head, so that it appeared the size of a fist. It cried out again, and this time hopped toward him. He stumbled back, and the pigeon, moving in a broken way, lost its balance trying to jump over the concrete barrier. It tumbled and stilled, except for one foot which kicked out. The claw uncurled and the crushed talons appeared to try to separate themselves. The crying began again. Jesus, he said. Jesus. He got in the car and pulled backward. He drove forward more carefully this time, and, opening his door and leaning out, he confirmed that the pigeon's head was in the shadow of the tire. He accelerated before the bird could move. The explosion of the skull was much louder than he expected. It was like a gunshot, echoing throughout the campus which, otherwise, was perfectly silent. He half-fell out of the car and started at almost a run away from the parking lot. The book was missing again, but he didn't care. Back inside the library, he sank onto a couch and tried to feel the coolness of the room and smell the smell of books which made the place seem familiar, but he could not calm himself. His heart was beating hard and there was something wrong in his stomach. He wanted to make contact with some passing face, but he could not raise his eyes to any of them. He realized, with an incredible sense of weariness, that he had to go back. He had to see the bird, and to understand the explosion that even still echoed in his ears. Now the size of a small dog, it stood on the front bumper of his car. Its head was a flattened mat of blood and bone and stiffened feathers, its burst eyes merely black smears, its beak only a jagged stub, and yet the pigeon appeared more vigilant than it had been before. It leapt from the front bumper onto the hood of the car and struggled grotesquely there for balance. "You can't be," he said. The pigeon turned toward him. Puffing itself up, it let out a loud squawk, louder maybe than the explosion of its head had been. He almost ran. The broken wing rose awkwardly and shook. He looked up into the windows of a brick building for a witness, but there were none. When he looked again, he saw the bird shit, a large, bloody goop, on the hood of the car. Then it turned and took several steps, jerking its head in an imitation of the bobbing fashion with which pigeons move, as if it meant to be now what it once was. You can't, he said. You can't. It ran itself into the windshield, making a dull splattering sound, and tumbled backwards. Crying out again, it rose and repeated the process, this time leaving a small knick in the glass and a stain of black-looking blood and some kind of viscera. Moving more quickly each time, it repeated the process again, and then again. He went as if by instinct to the car. He opened the back door and dug under the seat for the tire iron. Now he himself was moving more quickly. When he approached the pigeon, it stopped, stared up at him, and then let out a cry that he could feel in the bones of his chest. He swung the tire iron and knocked the pigeon off the car, over the edge of the parking lot, and onto the lawn. He ran to it and beat it past the time when his arms were tired and the pigeon had been torn into so many pieces there appeared to be barely anything left of it . . . He lost himself in the beating and only came fully conscious again when he was walking back toward the library. He could not remember what he had done with the tire iron or exactly when or why he'd stopped hitting what was left of the pigeon. He felt numb and oddly at ease. Inside, he rested again on the couch. His stomach felt not sick, but hard, as if it was made entirely of muscle. People walked by, but he did not know their faces, or care. He sat in a daze that was like a dreamless, motionless sleep. When finally he had a thought again, it was simply that his day was over. The classes he was supposed to attend in the afternoon did not exist. It was time to go home. The windshield of his car had been shattered. The hood was deeply scraped and dented, as if it had been beaten by a baseball bat. The windshield wipers had been twisted out at odd angles. He looked for the pigeon. It stood watching him from the top of the nearest brick building. It appeared as big as a five-year-old child, and everything on it was mangled. For a moment, it was perfectly still, and he believed that none of what had happened since he found the pigeon the first time had happened. Then a tremble-like motion ran through it. He meant to move in some type of response, but could not. It reeled down, like a huge, wind-broken kite finally falling. The weight of the blow knocked him to the ground, and he felt the talons sink into his chest and grip. "Off," he tried to scream at the bird, but the words only came in a moan, "get off." It shit again, the stink of it overwhelming, and its heat against his belly and groin almost unbearable. He tried to roll from beneath the pigeon, but he could not. "I'll kill you," he said, but he knew, even as he spoke, he wouldn't. It raised its broken head on its broken neck and wailed, not like a bird, but like a human, as if his own voice was rising up through the talons that were embedded in his muscle, coming up through the twisted body of the pigeon and out its shattered beak.