Bald Eagle Taxes
Tim Bass
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The new guy showed up in a coat of black feathers and a giant hat with a long, fuzzy eagle’s beak sticking out of it. He wore yellow pants.
“Weird,” Eric said.
“Looks like something on Sesame Street,” Stevie P. said.
Eric and Stevie P. stood with Tommy at Sycamore Road and 24th Street, the busiest intersection in town. The eagle worked the opposite corner.
“He ain’t going to draw no business on that side,” Stevie P. said.
“Too many right turns,” Tommy said. “People don’t even hardly slow down.”
They were the veterans, these three—Eric for Liberty Tax Service, Stevie P. for Freedom Personal Finance, Inc., and Tommy for Star-Spangled Tax Preparation & Guaranteed Advance Refund Loan. The holidays had ended, and January had brought them off hiatus and back onto
the street for tax season: three months of waving at drivers, spinning signs, shimmying, shaking the booty. You’re our best advertising, the managers tell them. Go full on. Balls to the wall, nuts to the gut. Do anything and everything to get those commuters to pull off Sycamore and into the parking lot of Westside Plaza to file their returns through Liberty or Freedom or Star-Spangled.
Or the new place, Bald Eagle Taxes.
They’ve just opened, and now they’ve got this bird boy out here in his feather suit. A fourth human sign meant a pay cut. The first three guys knew that. Times were plenty tight already, what with online returns and banks getting into the act and the senior center giving free help to anybody who walked in the door. Now they had to compete with this eagle. Any driver who wheeled into Westside Plaza for a take-home pizza or dry cleaning found not three but four tax places to choose from.
“Hey, Big Bird!” Stevie P. shouted.
He gave the eagle the finger.
Eric cranked up his boom box, raised his plastic Statue of Liberty torch, and swayed to the national anthem. Stevie P. took off marching up the shoulder of the road, his Uncle Sam hat dipping toward the windshields of the approaching cars. Tommy clipped headphones to his red and blue ears, then thrust his flag sign toward the shopping plaza.
The eagle appeared to work without music. He crouched and balanced on one foot. He spread his wings and spun.
“You Indian or something?” Tommy yelled.
The eagle spread his wings and flapped at passing traffic.
Eric flailed his arms. Stevie P. struck an airplane pose. Tommy did jumping jacks.
The eagle leaped and landed in a split.
Eric tried to do the same but fell over. Stevie P. tried but nearly crushed his nuts on the curb. Tommy just knelt and gave the touchdown sign.
***
It went on all day. The eagle saluted each driver. Stevie P. scowled and pointed like a disapproving Uncle Sam. Eric wriggled his torch. The eagle nested on make-believe eggs. Tommy undulated like a human flag. The eagle pretended to dive through the crisp American air and retrieve a rainbow trout from the sparkling waters of the Columbia River, still unspoiled by the white man. Stevie P. acted like he was hitchhiking. The eagle did a back flip. Tommy climbed a stop sign.
At rush hour, when the eagle launched an Olympian handstand and received an ovation of horn honks, Eric reached his limit. He tossed the torch aside. He squatted and grabbed his shins, then leapfrogged onto Sycamore against a green light. A sedan clipped him on the hip and propelled him into the Westside Plaza parking lot.
***
“He died for his country,” Stevie P. said.
Eric was stretched out on an ambulance gurney.
“I ain’t dead,” he said.
“That’s affirmative,” the cop said. “You’re just banged up. And you don’t have good sense.”
“He came out of nowhere,” the sedan driver said. “When I saw him, it was already too late.”
“He had no business out there,” the cop said. “That’s a public thoroughfare. Any fool can see that.”
“Hey, he was working,” Tommy said. “All of us was working.”
“He was working out there in traffic?” the cop said. “I’d advise against that. The way he went rolling into the parking lot, that robe could’ve caught him by the throat and choked him.”
“He’s the Statue of freakin’ Liberty,” Stevie P. said. “That robe is work attire. He wouldn’t be much of a Statue of Liberty if he wasn’t wearing a robe.”
“I didn’t have time to hit the brakes,” the driver said. “He just went flying.”
“Like a bird?” Tommy said.
“Maybe,” the driver said.
“What kind?” Stevie P. said.
“What kind of what?” the driver said.
“Bird,” Tommy said. “What kind of bird?”
“What difference does it make what kind of bird?” the cop said.
“Like an eagle?” Stevie P. said.
“I don’t know,” the driver said. “Never seen an eagle in real life. More like a seagull. I’ve seen a seagull.”
“Close enough,” Tommy said.
He raised his flag, and he and Stevie P. headed back to the intersection.
Eric raised a defiant, asphalt-scarred fist off the gurney.
“Balls to the wall!” he called out.
“Nuts to the gut,” Tommy and Stevie P. said back.
Across Sycamore Road, the eagle stood tall and fierce, silent. He appeared to grow with each breath, his proud American chest pushing the cars out of homebound traffic and onto the client list of Bald Eagle Taxes.
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Tim Bass retired in June 2024 from the creative writing faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He was the undergraduate program coordinator and taught grammar, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
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