Killing Fields

A yellow-throated vireo falls to the ground without our knowledge.

Each year, on a Saturday morning in early October, an airplane would fly over our town and drop pastel-colored leaflets - pink, yellow, pale blue, pale green. This was part of the "Fire Prevention Week" festivities, held on the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The leaflets had a drawing of a fireman looking at a sheet of paper he held in his hand. He had this expression of shock and determination. Something on the front of the paper disturbed him, but it was out of view. I always wondered what the fireman saw on the front; I imagined it was some fire-crime in progress, maybe a picture of a child playing with matches. The backside of the paper was usually blank but a few of the leaflets had the word "Candy" stamped on it. If you found one of these, you could turn it in for free candy at the fire station. So, on this morning, hundreds of schoolchildren would fan out in the neighborhood, rummaging through hedges, fields, backyards, treetops, looking for a winning leaflet. I found thousands of leaflets, but I never found one with the word "Candy". Nor can I find one today.
One hundred years earlier, two men had played with matches in a barn near the alley behind 137 DeKoven Street. Three hundred people died. Four square miles of city burned to the ground. In the aftermath, people wandered about, stumbling through the ruins of their homes, stunned, despairing, helpless, picking through the bricks and mounds of blackened studs and plaster and paneling in search of something valuable - a child's toy, a kettle, a pocket watch. I do not know if they ever found anything either.
So, six weeks ago I stood in a market in southern Africa, looking at animal hides and carved soapstone and ebony elephants and wooden masks and East Indian spices and bone necklaces and something to shade my iridescent head. As I paid for my items, the shopkeeper, in gratitude for my patronage, gave me a gift. It was a bank note from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. I have it here in front of me right now. The note says "Special Agro-Cheque" on both sides. It is signed by a Dr. G. Gono, Governor. Dr. Gono is the head of the Reserve Bank. The note is valued at 100 billion dollars. Or so it says. The result is this: a box of tissue paper is smaller than the stack of paper money required to buy it. The note actually has an expiration date on it, "Pay to the bearer on demand...on or before 31st December 2008." It occurred to me that if I looked, I might find them scattered across the veld, caught in acacia trees, floating in rivers, drifts of them behind granaries.
This is what is called hyperinflation, when the winds of the economy become hurricane force. There are those that say that this hyperinflation was the result of a rapid expansion of the money supply in Zimbabwe. Some say that there is a direct connection between prices and money supply; others contend that there is no direct connection. Others take a middle ground. Others say it depends. Theories abound - Quantity Theory, Fiscal Theory, Real Bills Doctrine. These go back hundreds of years. Self liquidating paper with forthcoming productions on monetary aggregate real values and net national product or structural deficit on the equilibrium price level. Sixteen men playing with matches. Meanwhile, Zimbabweans rummage through the ruins of their lives searching for bits of aluminum to sell for scrap. Eventually, they will start using bits of aluminum as currency - and eureka! somewhere, in some laboratory, an economic theory is born. Make that seventeen men. Another idea blows around in the wind.
And another vireo falls. There could be millions of them falling for all we know. Vireos and northern parulas and Acadian flycatchers and hooded warblers and wood thrushes and scarlet tanagers. Now let me theorize: I suppose that this could be a function of the total supply of birds multiplied by their velocity or a function of the demand for birds reduced by a constant aggregate supply or projected reproduction, while some always remain in reserves and besides, if we are wealthy, the birds can be traded for bird credits and divided by their demand on the exotic pet market. It might be the function of seventeen men talking.
I have spent years chasing down valuables in hedges, fields, backyards, treetops, looking for something, anything - and what do I find - another man with a shocked expression holding a blank piece of paper. Tonight I hear thumping on the roof of my house. What is it? Is that the sound of embers - or is it birds?