“All these hours you watch me paint, you admire my painting, no? And now you choose this moment and tout á coup you are angry?”

“Cause I wanted you to see that bird fly. You painted it but it could still fly!”

“But that was because of your talking to the bird,” said Jean-Jacques. “How can I know such a boy as you exist? I am oughting to wait for some boy to come along and make the bird pose? Until then I draw trees?”

“Who asked you to paint birds?”

“Is this the question you wanted to ask me?” said Jean-Jacques.

Arthur stopped short. “No. Yes. The way you stuffed them birds back in the shop, that showed me you know the birds, you really see them, but then how can you kill them? You ain’t hungry.”

“I am often hungry. I am hungry right now. But it is not the bird I want to eat. Not goose today. What beautiful gooses. You love them flying, and I love them flying, but in France nobody ever sees these birds. Other birds they see, not the birds of America. Scientists write and talk about birds but they see only sketches, bad printing of them. I am not very good painter of people. Most of the people I do not like, and this makes my paintings not pretty to them. My people look like they are dead—etouffé—avec little glass eyes. But birds. I can paint them to be alive. I can find the colors, I see them there, and put them on the paper. We print, and now the scientist know, they open my book, voilà the American bird they never see. Now they can think about bird and they see them. God lets you to talk to birds, angry boy. He lets me to paint them. I should throw away this gift of God except today, when you are here to help me?”

“It ain’t your gift when it’s the bird as dies for it,” said Arthur Stuart.

“All creatures die,” said Jean-Jacques. “Birds live the lives of birds. All the same. It is a beautiful life, but they live in the shadow of death, afraid, watching, and then, boom! The gun. The talon of the hawk! The paws of the cat. But the bird I kill, I make it into the picture, it will live forever.”

“Paint on paper ain’t a bird,” said Arthur Stuart sullenly.

Jean-Jacques’s hand flashed out and gripped Arthur’s arm. “Come here and say that to my picture!” He forced Arthur to stand over the open sketchbook. “You make me look at flying gooses. Now you look!”

Arthur looked.

“You see this is beautiful,” said Jean-Jacques. “And it teaches. Knowing is good. I show this bird to the world. In every eye, there is my bird. My goose is Plato’s goose. Perfect goose. True goose. Real goose.”

Alvin chuckled. “We aren’t too clear on Plato.”

Arthur turned scornfully to Alvin. “Miz Larner taught us all about Plato, lessen you was asleep that day.”