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Every Tuesday, the bakery on Beckman by the harbor made fresh rye bread. Kid Blink hated rye bread. But as it were, Mush loved the stuff. He was how Blink came to know the succinct schedule of bread-making all over lower Manhattan, after all. On Sundays, when the rye bread dried out and became too old to turn a profit, the bakers threw it out and started on a new batch for the next Tuesday.
Blink didn’t do anything special with this information. It wasn’t his bread. Mush scored a loaf for "free" in exchange for a newspaper, because Mush knew the baker, Mr. Babel. Mush knew everybody, and everybody that knew him liked him. Some gave him better things than old rye bread, the worst kind of bread, but it wasn’t like Mush was eating it, anyway.
They would head over to the park after the transaction was done. Blink had long since tired of grumbling about the fresh cent that Mush had given away for nothing, but it wasn’t always that way.
The first time Mush had goaded Blink into coming to the park with him, Blink blithely stood back and watched as Mush tore pieces off the loaf and tossed them to the ducks gathered around the pond’s edges.
The second time, they went to the docks instead. Mush split the loaf in half and extended it grandly to Blink. Mush smiled at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling as they often did. Blink grumbled to nobody in particular and took his half, standing close to Mush and watching the gulls flock in. They circled overhead and cried out like sirens, creating more of a racket than Blink admittedly cared for, not on a good and honest Sunday afternoon.
“What keeps you doin’ this, Mush?” Blink asked him once. Not to disturb the peaceful silence that settled between them–that was, a wordless one, seeing as there was still the river and the birds and the steamships to contend with in the way of nonexistent quiet–Blink really did want to know. It felt like he’d known Mush all his life. Which wasn’t true, of course, but they’d been together for all of the parts that mattered. Truthfully, Blink couldn’t remember a time that did matter before he’d met Mush. His friend had just always been there. That didn’t mean Blink knew everything about him, though. Mush was a very interesting person. The reasons he did things were fascinating. Something so simple as routinely feeding birds around the city made Blink want to know the purpose behind it. Not knowing felt like a loss, an irritating one. One that Blink couldn’t go without knowing.
Mush had looked over at him. He gestured to the water, “What’s that, Kid? You mean this?”
“Week after week,” Blink affirmed. To show he was only curious, he tore off another piece from his half and tossed it into the water. Gulls floated on its surface and scarfed down the sodden chunks, wings flapping with urgency. “Dontcha think those lousy birds’ll tell all their friends about you? They’ll start going around thinking you owe ‘em something. You don’t owe ‘em a red cent, Mush.”
Mush looked back to the birds, then at Blink, then at the sky. It was blue and cloudless, a perfect spring day. A smile sat on Mush’s lips, it never seemed to leave for very long. Blink liked that about Mush. He always effortlessly found something to be happy about, even if it was a bunch of greedy birds brawling in the East for scraps of crummy rye bread.
“Well, Kid, birds is the same as us, really, when you think about it.”
“I ain’t nothing like them,” Blink countered, trying to sound disinterested. He could already tell where Mush was going with this, but that didn’t stop Blink from wanting to hear the rest of his answer anyway.
“You don’t look like ‘em,” Mush assured apologetically. “But in the end, we all want the same thing. We wanna be happy, and fed, with a roof over our heads.”
“Never knowed no bird paying on four walls.”
“It don’t matter, I think. Even if something ain’t exactly like us, so long as it's alive, we’re equal. Even plants and things.” Blink didn’t interrupt this time. He’d run out of bread. “Everything alive’s got a purpose.”
Blink grimly thought back to the occasion in which Mush was almost flattened by an oncoming trolley when they were younger, all because he saw a caterpillar in the road and shrieked that it was going to get crushed if he didn’t do something quick. Blink dreaded to think about what would’ve happened if he weren’t there to hold Mush back from rushing right out onto the track without thinking twice about it. He also dreaded the thought of admitting to Mush that for a whole month afterward, Blink was single-handedly responsible for more than half of all caterpillar deaths in lower Manhattan out of vengeance, and admittedly a little spite, too.
“Sure, I don’t owe ‘em nothing. But if I don’t feed the birds,” Mush continued reverently, “Who else will?”
Mush turned his eyes back to Blink. He nodded to show he’d been listening, stuffing his hands in his pockets since he’d already put down his papers and didn’t have anything else to hold.
Whenever Mush said stuff like that, Blink was beguiled by a rampant emotion he couldn’t even begin to describe. It started in his chest and bloomed outward like a budding flower, except instead of light and airy it made him feel seasick. Blink had never been on any boat except the Staten Island Ferry, which didn't account for a very turbulent ride.
When Mush talked, he meant every word he said. Some fellows get worked up and shout, they start saying things they don’t really mean. But not Mush. Blink could count on one hand the number of times Mush had gotten truly, uncontrollably angry in the near decade they’d known each other, and even on those scarce occasions, Mush had never said anything out of line. He defended his friends and did what he had to do to make it on the streets, same as everyone else. Blink didn’t blame him for that. In fact, it made his outlook on life all the more impressive. How somebody like Mush could thrive in humanity’s dingy rat-infested basement and wake up every morning like it was his very first one alive, Blink would never know. There wasn’t a nicer guy in the world than Mush, and Blink was absolutely certain that there never would be again.
Blink cleared his throat, speaking only when Mush had tossed his last piece down into the water. The rising cries of the gulls began to die down. A train whistle hollered in the distance.
“That’s real nice,” Blink said. He slung an arm around Mush’s shoulders, leading him back to where they’d put down their papers. “That’s real nice of you, Mush.”