The following passage was intended to introduce an unfinished memoir entitled
Bird-Watching in America.
New York, 2/16/2025
~ I have a rare opportunity to record, first hand, a climactic point in history
as it unfolds. In addition, I am uniquely advantaged in having known this was
coming for a long time, not because I anticipated it like some dreamy observer
with twenty-twenty hind sight and a gratuitous nod to my own fallibility, but
because I had a hand in bending history’s course to meet me here, at this
point. The shapers of history such as exceptionally influential artists, when
they live into old age occasionally catch a glimpse from this vantage, but never
with a perspective so immediate. History’s instruments and vessels, soldiers
and politicians often attain the vantage, but the extreme proximity of their
perspective overwhelms their sight. People in my profession of accountancy have
never had a chance like this, before me.
~ This is the whole point of everything that we have done over the past fifteen
years. I realized this just now, when I paused to consider how I would treat
this introduction, pacing under a row of portraits that trace the Bird dynasty’s
singularly direct father to son succession chronologically along the left-hand
wall from the CEO desk at which I currently record these reflections. I ceased
pacing before the one at the end, the portrait of the man you all know as Morgan
Theodore Bird, my boss, partner, co-conspirator, my friend, Ted. His entire
life so far was leading up to this point, and he is not even here.
~ I am in his plush, black rolling chair, behind his enormously imposing, flat
mahogany desk which diagonally sections off the furthest corner from the entrance
to his office. The darkly polished rectangular desktop is three feet wide and
must be eight or nine feet long, but it is completely unpopulated by clutter
except for a simple brown leather blotter, two matching pens on chains in their
holder, and my laptop. In all the years I worked for him, even when his father
Baldric was alive, this office has been for situations requiring ceremony or
business formality that, for one reason or another, were not located in one
of the many comfortably appointed boardrooms. As I prepared for my upcoming
meeting with my friend’s twin sons, I kidded myself that I had outfoxed
his manipulations in the seating arrangements. I imagined that Morgan had predicted
by his sons' dispositions and mine that I would absentmindedly gravitate toward
the individual seat behind the desk, while his sons would likewise gravitate
to the chairs across the desk on either side of a small round endtable with
business cards fanned across it, like they were applying for a loan. I can see
him grinning at the awkwardness as it dawned on us in his absence. Ted has a
huge grin, huge white teeth, huge fat lips, and his mouth has always appeared
a little disproportionately huge on a head that was large for a body of better
than average size to begin with. I persuaded myself I had outsmarted the influence
of his long forgotten flicker of concentration only by considering this appointment
on location throughout the night and into the early hours of the morning for
which it is scheduled. Yet I still feel clever if I did, in fact, successfully
second guess him.
~ For the interim remaining until it is offered to his twin sons, I occupy his
abdicated throne. Morgan’s empire is on the brink of ruin, just as he
planned. It falls to his sons to salvage what is left and resolve the crisis
we have cultivated. He has left me executer of his will. Today that meant commissioning
a portrait of the twins to be painted from a posed family photo taken earlier
this year. Tomorrow my duties entail dividing his assets between the twins,
or administering any decision they reach in agreement. We are meeting to discuss
this tomorrow, but Morgan will be absent.
~ I suspect that he has retired somewhere in Mexico, but I shouldn’t say
much more about that. He did not say where he was going. There was no need to
leave final instructions. Everything was arranged years ago, with my help. I
just never thought he would go through with it. Maybe I never believed that
everything would really turn out like we planned. Now it makes perfect sense
to me. I aid him in his decade-long endeavor to exert influence on the world;
then at the end of ten years he removes himself from the word entirely, leaving
me in his stead. The only other witness left of the endeavor bears sole witness
to the results. As he saw it, he could not be here. So in a way, all of this,
the irrevocable impact on media and the changes we have effected in national
and world culture, the devastation of the Bird fortune, even Harry’s death,
all of it was for me, the bookkeeper. Maybe, Harry could have kept a record
of this if he was alive, but I’m the only guy who knows our system well
enough to file it.
~ I sit in the crux of history, typing away through the night in Morgan Bird’s
office under the commanding gazes of his ancestry’s portraits. Beside
Morgan’s is a portrait of Andrew M. Bird, his great-grandfather who established
the family empire. An hour ago, while I sat at this desk and opened the empty
drawers nostalgically, Andrew Bird’s stare fell on me with all the weight
of history and everything we have done. In the bottom drawer I found an envelope
addressed to me in Morgan’s familiar script.
~ Andrew M. Bird should be well known to cursory students of American history
but, as I am writing this for posterity and cannot know what future historians
will choose to preserve, I have included the following excerpts from his son,
Phineas’ biography of his father, which he wrote in 1937.
* Roger Bird left his
wife Penelope and young Andrew in Alabama during the spring of eighteen forty-nine.
With no more than a pick and shovel on his shoulder, he set out for the hills
of California. Penelope and Andrew would not hear from him again for eight years.
Then, one day when Papa was sixteen an attorney came to speak with his mother.
I asked him about that day once. He said, Grandma shooed him out of the house,
but he could tell by the visitor’s suit that he must have come about something
important. So he tried to keep an eye on them through the window. Grandma maintained
her customarily severe expression throughout. It did not change when the man
took her hand and apologetically informed her of Roger’s death, nor when
he showed her the will that bequeathed her some of the richest gold mines in
the country; and thus the Bird Dynasty – since that is what others have
named it – was founded…
… In eighteen-seventy five, Papa was only seeking someone to fill the
position of head scribe when he first met his thenceforth constant advisor and
companion, Mr. Angus Christian Gorse. Though seven years his junior, Mr. Gorse’s
stature, sunken chest and pince-nez make him appear much older in even the earliest
pictures taken of him beside Papa’s sturdy six-foot frame. Together this
mismatched pair conceived a strategy based on a single principle of investment,
; absolute control of production from acquisition of raw material up through
final marketing, extending to the customers’ very finger tips at the moment
of purchase. They proceeded to stake Grandma’s fortune on it.
. Papa took his interests out of the railroads, because the competition in that
industry interfered with his omnipotent approach, but he kept the timberlands
he had purchased for railroad ties. Wood was a start. It was raw, and did not
require his reliance on anything he did not own. He held on to those forests
while scouting out a new industry to dominate like a poker player holds his
Ace and draws four. Of course there was not much luck involved in dealing Papa
his hand in the newspaper business. When he saw papermills buying his wood he
bought them. When he saw the orders his papermills were getting for newsprint
he bought Newspapers; disposable, growing, and potentially infinite product
of an industry ultimately dependent on trees...
… As early as nineteen-seventeen I could tell Papa’s health was
fading. He never left Bird Ranch at San Sapien in those final years. He would
call me and the editors of his other papers to the ranch once a year, brief
us all together and then meet with us individually over the weekend. At first,
it was only during these private meetings that Gorse occasionally spoke for
my father when his voice grew weak. Angus was indispensable in those days, because
he knew Papa’s mind so readily that he could answer on his friend’s
behalf regarding many matters rather than bother the boss with details. By nineteen-twenty,
Angus briefed us all and met with each of us while Papa lay in bed all weekend.
Of course I went up to see him that weekend, but we never discussed business
affairs directly. That all went through Angus…
… After he died, Angus continued acting as aide-de-camp to Papa’s
headstrong and inept successor (myself), and fought to save his late friend’s
organization from capsizing on several occasions after I took the helm. Still
today, at the age of eighty-seven, Angus Christian Gorse looks after his old
friend’s interests by looking after mine. In all the years I’ve
known him the man has remained a mystery behind his drawn features and soft
spoken manner. He never shows what he is thinking, and carefully protects his
personal life from professional concerns. His son, Theodore Cyrus Gorse has
been working summers for us the past two years, but I have never met Angus’
wife. However, any hesitance I might have once had about placing my trust in
Papa’s enigmatic associate could never stand up to his infallibility in
business. I never argue with him anymore because I do not enjoy being wrong
well enough…
~ Any proper historians reading
this will appreciate my acknowledgment that this biography is generally considered
biased and riddled with inaccuracy. First of all, several people who knew both
men intimately have publicly commented that, when he was alive, Andrew never
allowed his son to call him anything but ‘father’ or ‘sir.’
More disappointingly, Phineas ignored every scandal public and private; Andrew’s
one embarrassing foray into national politics, ruthless response when workers
at his presses and paper mills tried to unionize, philandering with starlets
even into old age, and the accusation that, early on in his career, ‘Papa’
bought cotton from Confederate states and may have traded muskets to the South.
Just after he died, a document was discovered bearing the signature of Andrew
Morgan Bird. It was a receipt for a thousand dollars he paid another man to
substitute for him in the draft.
~ An obscure footnote in some history book might tell the name of that man was
Adam Patrick. I first read the name in Morgan’s letter, which included
a brief lineage that linked Adam directly to me, James Paul Patrick. The letter
did not say when Morgan found out.
©DCSmith 2005