Pigeon's New Job

With all his failed attempts at finding a job Pigeon's thoughts stretched like parched roots until they reached the dank recesses of his mind and there they began to drink and take hold of him. When he found himself entertaining the possibility of taking up his in laws on their offer of work the regret pierced his heart so that he had to look down at the oily feathers that covered his chest to be sure he had not been physically impaled by some hard cold thing. All euphemisms aside he couldn't think of a convincing enough lie to appease his own conscious. He knew exactly what kind of work it would be. Knowing well enough that those who choose to live by the sword will die by the sword. At least that's what his father had told him. Two days later his father was dead. They said it was an accident, that he didn't see the glass or that the reflection made him think he was flying into the open sky when his head cracked into the glass. Things could be made to look like accidents. Had his father known the end was coming? Was that why he had offered him that weak branch of sage advice, the first and last attempt at being a father he would ever make. Now here he was giving serious consideration to a job that could easily be his first and last. If he went down this path he might not ever come back. If he did come back, who would he be? Would he be something he could live with, he doubted it. When he had made his decision he felt, for the first time, that he was his fathers son which only made him feel more lost. He wondered if he ever really had a choice or if these things were decided by his hollow bones or the blood that coursed through his veins. Probably the blood, he guessed. He had been told he looked like his father long before he had ever laid eyes on him. The hours he spent staring into puddles with those words in his head, trying to make sense of his own face. That beak, those eyes. The face that looked just like a father's he had yet to see. He was sure now. Definitely the blood. The more he thought about it, the more he could feel it, boiling in his heart, running mad through his body. It was almost funny to him that the only thing he had left of the bird who had given him life might be the very thing that would lead him to an untimely death. It surprised him to realize that sometimes defeat was like sleep, it comes on slow and speaking of the sweetness of dreams. You never know the point when it overtakes you, only later, in the fog, when everything is dark and nothing makes sense that you realize you are in it's embrace with the sweetness of dreams far from you and if not the dream, then what? He didn't want to know. What he did know, maybe what he always known and his father had always known long before he did was that he was going to take the dam job. He had come up with the best lie he could. It was in his blood. He was going to work for the mob.