A Sudden Appearance of Angels

The old man and the swarm in the storm

May 28, 2025

At seventy two, Bernard’s life had its quiet routine.

He awoke at first light, got dressed, and walked through the rising birdsong to the clinic. He was usually the first one there and said hello to Mary, the heavyset nurse with the kind face who worked the early shift. After checking him in, Mary would lead him to the small room on the side where she gave him a plastic cup containing the mixture. She made sure to watch him drink the whole thing. He understood why.

He ate breakfast at the diner four streets away. He avoided the nearby restaurant, since both times he went, he recognized faces from the clinic. He then walked back to his house, taking the long way for the exercise if he felt up for it. At home, he made a second cup of coffee, which he sipped while reading the local newspaper, focusing on obituaries and science news while generally avoiding the headlines. These days, they were mostly about the floods.

After a light lunch, Bernard would either rest or walk to the library. And then, around 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, his real day would start. He would put on his overcoat and hat and start the slow journey to his favorite park bench. It was slow not just because of the distance but because Bernard stopped at the bakery along the way. At this point, five years into the routine, the bakers knew him well enough to have a white paper bag ready when the entry chime announced the arrival of the old man in the tattered hat. Inside the bag were crumbs and crusts and old bagels — edible items that would otherwise get trashed.

And then, feed in hand, Bernard walked up the winding road past Meer Street until he reached the overlook. A few street lamps marked the spot. Under them were a trio of park benches, spaced apart. In front was a small break in the trees, giving a clear view of the far-off distance. Hills and fields and sky.

The birds were already there by the time Bernard showed up. Most were pigeons, but there were also robins and a few brave sparrows that occasionally fought the bigger birds for crumbs.

As soon as he sat on the bench, Bernard reached into the bag and deposited approximately a third of its contents on the ground. This caused light mayhem, which he loved, and once it settled, he spent the next hour or so slowly tossing them the rest of the food. He never spoke to the birds, believing that animals of different species have much more effective ways of connecting than human speech — food, for one. Sitting in quiet proximity, another. After the meal, once they’d all flown off, many into the branches of neighboring trees, Bernard would rise from the bench and start the trek home.

Some people feel lonely. Especially old people near the end of their life with no partner, children, or friends they see regularly. This was not the case with Bernard. In his eighth decade, all his meaning and company came from the small winged things that filled his afternoons.

Bernard’s house, a two-room bungalow, was on a street at the top of a small hill located in a tiny Appalachian town named for the sixth US president. The town was half-empty when he moved in, mostly on account of the pill-shaped poison, which grabbed deep on lots of the folks, but also because of shifting topographies in the mountains. These, when paired with heavy rainfall, created intense flooding in areas not located on high ascents. Bernard, who paid his rent with the last of his savings and scant government checks, had no idea when he moved in how lucky his home’s elevation would be over the years.

Although not many would call pre-formed celestiantism with elements of interventional transcendence luck. Goes back to something deeper, earned.

On a late spring afternoon, Bernard made his way down the hill after feeding the birds. The sky was grey and the air had that early summer punch. As he turned on Meer, there was a commotion from a yard. Two men shouting at each other, but Bernard couldn’t hear them over the sump pump one ran into his home. Until there was a pause in the vacuum, when he deciphered, “SKY’S FIXING TO SPLIT. FIGGER IT CAN’T HURT TO GET HER OFF GRID.”

This was news to Bernard. When he reached his home, he checked that day’s paper. No news of an approaching hurricane. The forecast called for rain, but it didn’t sound pernicious. But the next afternoon at the library, he checked two different papers, which cautioned residents of his town to prepare for an upcoming four-to-five day squall.

One article was especially scary. It quoted a professor of ecology who said, “If the rainfall exceeds eighteen inches, it can be damaging to the point of washing this whole town away.” Another article spoke about how a flood of water in town would do little to cleanse the stain left by “the previous flood, of hillbilly heroin and chemical compounds, whose ravages are still felt.”

On his walk back from the birds that day, Bernard drank deep the pre-rainfall stain of the weather. The sky was crackling, the heavens an opening menace.

He did all he could to prepare on short notice: he picked up enough food to last him a week, hoisted up the storm windows, which he’d only ever done once before, and then called the clinic to see if it was possible to get a few temporary take-home doses. They said they couldn’t do that, which he understood, but the emergency mobile clinic, a fancy term for the ambulance in the parking lot, was operating, and could he please confirm his home address? The voice on the telephone told him to expect a visit at 10 am.

The first day of the storm was just as brazen as predicted. Rain pounded his window and roof nonstop, with a sound so loud it was legitimately distracting. 10 am came and went, but the emergency mobile clinic never showed. He called the clinic, but he couldn’t reach a human; it seemed they had closed on account of the weather, which made sense, but also not really, since just the day before he was assured his dose would be delivered. Distraction became the thing on account of his growing nausea, and an ache in his muscles he knew well from previous times. He tried reading, then watching TV, then pacing, then napping, but none of it took. At 4 in the afternoon, he thought of the birds. He hoped they were okay and not waiting out the storm in hunger.

The second day was more of the same. No emergency mobile clinic, and an increase in nausea. There were still muscle pains, and goosebumps broke out on his arms and neck that wouldn’t leave for a few hours. Bernard spent most of that day indoors listening to the rain and watching it from the window. He made a box of macaroni and cheese and spooned it into his mouth as the world outside took a wildly runny turn. He turned on his TV. He thought of the birds.

That night, Bernard had a strange dream. He was in something resembling a supermarket, wandering the aisles. Past the produce, a purple-and-green faced being appeared to him. Its skin rippled in scales and small triangles took over much of its face. Large wings clanked off its back, beating occasionally, keeping it aloft. It didn’t speak, just hovered in the air, looking down at the small man. And even though it didn’t communicate in any way other than its presence, Bernard, in his dream, understood.

When he awoke, he decided, torrential weather or not, he would make it there that day. All morning, in between shudders and mostly dry heaves, he played out his plan. He would wear his slick raincoat and hat. He would be careful on the dirt steps up to the benches, since there was no handrail and it was all likely mud at this point. He would wear the old pair of workboots he still had from those two years he helped clear sites. The distraction was helpful against his pangs of withdrawal. A few times, he vomited, shocked the clinic would leave him like this. He telephoned them, but got no answer, and tried the bakery, but it was the same. Which made sense: it seemed like a great day to keep things closed. Luckily, he found some stale crackers in the back of the cupboard and a frozen loaf of bread in the freezer, which he took out to thaw. By 3 in the afternoon, he was both physically ready — with the right clothes, boots, and feed — and physically bothered — by the muscles pangs, nausea, and increasing lightheadedness. Thankfully the vomit had passed.

Bernard walked slowly, his feet tracing familiar steps, although the world was anything but recognizable. The ground was slop; even the road looked liquid. The trees banged and waved in the wind, broken limbs littered his path. He couldn’t see the sky or two feet in front of him, everything relegated to a grey-blue curtain of moving wet. His pants from the knee down were soaked within minutes, although his feet, torso, and head stayed toasty, as did the feed he had placed in three plastic bags, one in the other in the other.

Eventually, he reached the ascent that led to the lookout where he met with his birds. It took him nearly ten minutes to walk up the nine or so steps, which would usually take him all of thirty seconds. But he got up there eventually and saw the bench he sat on was still there. Sopping, but there. He couldn’t see the view, obviously, but it was clear that there was no bird anywhere in the vicinity. Of course not — was he an idiot? It was storming so bad, nothing was out, let alone the pigeons and sparrows he’d grown to rely on, even love.

Still, the old man took his seat on the bench, making sure to put the back of his raincoat under his butt so it wouldn’t get soaked. He sat there, feeling the rain pound his body until it gave way to the pounding of his skull and his being, wrung out in the harsh indifference of withdrawal. It was awful, hard, and the extremity of the outdoors offered little distraction. For a good few minutes, Bernard just sat there, suffering. It was such that he didn’t think he could make the return trip, not without tremendous effort. Maybe this was it. He put the bag of bird food on the bench beside him and lowered his stinging, cascading head into his hands.

For a few minutes he stayed like this, unsure of himself or how to chop through this pain.

And then, it was like there was a pause in the weather. Except that wasn’t true — the view from the bench was still obscured by the pouring, but it seemed like the rain had lessened around him. There was a fluttering to his right as a large thing settled. And then another to his left, and then a few more.

Bernard, head still lowered, turned, but only partially. The things beside him were not birds. This he could tell just by their presence, and even though in his dream he had seen a green-and-purple face, in this context, in the reality of the bizarre moment, he knew (how? how did he know?) that to look directly at the things near him would be like looking directly at the sun, but with a quicker snuff out.

Bernard sat on that bench, feeling the pause in the rain and the lightness (no, that wasn’t the word, but the real word for the feeling didn’t exist, nor could it be found in a phrase or description or any method of communication) as more and more of the winged things settled down all around him. They kept fluttering down — even though Bernard kept his head to the ground, it was impossible not to feel their arrival. Must have been a dozen of them, maybe more, all gathered silently near the old man who had made a habit of feeding the birds that tended to congregate here in better weather.

Time passed, slowly, but it was enough just to be near them. Plus, it was work to keep his focus on not looking, and the pain in his head was still a snare, the ache in his muscles going on like a runaway. Only… he opened his eyes after a long pause. He could feel the rain falling on him. He turned his head slightly. The thing to the right of him was gone. He turned to the left, and then looked behind him. They were all gone — which he knew because the pause in the rain was, too. But that wasn’t it — all the food in the plastic bags had vanished. This made Bernard smile more than anything.

Until he stood up. Because when he did, it was with a straighter back than he had in decades. His head felt surprisingly clear and his muscles felt spry like he was forty again. He walked back to his house through the rain in increasing steps of disbelief; not only were the pangs of withdrawal gone, gone entirely, but he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he felt better. It was uncanny, but no complaints.

The next morning, the fourth and supposed last day of the rainy ambush, the emergency mobile clinic showed up in front of his house just after 10 am.

Bernard went out to meet them. He smiled, waving broadly, and told them there was no need. They looked at him like he was nuts, but peeled off. By late afternoon, the rain had stopped, and although the world was drenched and turned to sloggy mud all over, he walked his boots back to the bench, holding a small bag of pretzels he picked up at the gas station’s On-the-Go Mart. He was glad to see it open again.

And when Bernard sat on that bench and a few birds came over to eat his offerings, he felt overjoyed, knowing something about them, something about himself that he doubted he could ever express, because how could you express that which you don’t understand? — but it was alright, it was enough just to feel.

Hours later, he walked home in the falling birdsong.

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