A twelve year-old boy on his way home from school and about to discover he has been orphaned is befriended by a stranger, an 80 year old man, who helps him through his trauma.

SYNOPSIS:

Brooklyn, N.Y.C. 1960: DAVID, age twelve, is on his way home from school. He meets a stranger, MR. GREENSTEIN, age eighty, a Hungarian immigrant, who befriends him. Mr. G teaches him that everything in nature is alive and can hear, feel and communicate in their own way. When David shows Mr. G the piece of wood his woodworking teacher gave him to take home to carve into something as homework, Mr. G suggests that he might want to study the piece of wood, the grain and shape, to sense what it wants to be.

We learn that Mr. G is in the USA to search for his grandchildren who were saved during WWII. David tries to convince Mr. G to come to home with him. We learn that David's mother died six months earlier. He shows Mr. G where he lives, but Mr G tells him he doesn't think it would be a good idea if he accepted the dinner invitation. They agree to meet the next day at the same time and place. Mr. G turns and goes.

EILEEN, David’s 14 year-old sister, is in their apartment where their neurotic uncle WALTER, his wife EVELYN, aunt BERNICE and various neighbors and friends are gathering to convey their condolences for the death that morning of David and Eileen’s father.

Walter and Benice are in front of David’s building waiting for him. The try to break the news gently but David breaks away from them and runs up the four flights of stair into his apartment and through the crowd calling “Papa, Papa, Papa” Eileen pushes through the crowd to hug David.

David and Eileen are now orphans. David is angry about at both his parents for dying, he feels alienated from the adults around him and he begins to have nightmares. In one of his nightmares he is chasing a blind bird through the woods. We learn that David has been unable to cry about the loss of his parents.

The next day, after the funeral, David and Eileen are forced to live with Walter and Evelyn. When he and Eileen are alone he tells her that the body of their father wasn't really their father because his life was missing from the body. He asks, “Where did his life go? Where are you Papa?"

While the funeral and burial are in progress, Mr. G is preparing to meet David. He buys David a book, “Diary of Ann Frank”, and goes to the agreed place. When David doesn’t show up Mr. G searches for and finds the apartment building where David lives. Mr. G confronts David’s eccentric neighbors who lean out of their windows to interrogate him. With some difficulty and confusion Mr. G learns that David’s father had died the day before and that David went to live with his rich uncle Walter Goldberg in Long Island.

At Walter's house, his sister Bernice, a ‘no nonsense’ loud-mouthed, but lovable old maid are always arguing, while David clashes with Walter and they have several confrontations. David begins to have nightmares including one in which he is running through the woods in search of a blind bird that bumps into trees. This inspires him to use his penknife to carve the piece of wood his teacher had given him into a blind bird, which frightens Eileen when she sees it.

Mr. G locates Walter’s telephone number, pretends to be one of David’s teachers and talks Walter and Evelyn into allowing him to visit David.

The meeting in the basement room that David and Eileen were sharing is dramatic: David screams at Mr. G, telling him that he hates him and that he should have died instead of his parents. Walter, Bernice and Evelyn come rushing and yelling to see what the screaming was about.

Mr. G tries to flee but Walter blocks his way and tries to wrestle him to the floor. David comes to the rescue with well-placed kicks to Walter’s shins. Walter chases after David and Mr. G escapes. That night David runs away and in his wanderings he meets eccentric street people.

Later that night when Mr. G reaches his apartment he receives a phone call from a private investigator in California with news that he believes he has located Mr. G's long lost grandchildren whom he last saw 20 years earlier when they were three and five years old. The investigator insists that he come to California immediately for the reunion. Mr. G is brought to tears by the news, but then sees the gift-wrapped book he bought for David and tells the investigator he needs another day to help another child first.

Unaware that David has run away, at three a.m. that morning, Mr. G. returns to Walter’s home and tries to attract David’s attention through the basement door. Instead, to his shock and surprise, Walter appears and chases him down the deserted street while Evelyn calls the police; they believe that Mr. G must have kidnapped David. The police arrive, the mix-up is cleared up, but David is still missing.

In the meantime David extricates himself from the clutches of a bag lady who, with religious fervor, who has told him that she is living outside so that God remembers how HE did her wrong, and that she invented Mexico and Texas, among other things.

At about five in the morning David goes back to his family flat in Brooklyn. He sits in the kitchen, his favorite room where his mother cooked, the family ate their meals, neighbors came and went, his father made everyone laugh, and David would do his homework each day. He talks to his parents and tells them his memories and his feelings about that room and about them and is finally able to cry.

There is a knock on the door. It is Mr. G. David apologizes for his behaviour. Mr. G tells him he understands and gives David the book. David wants Mr. G to adopt him. He tells David that if he were younger he would, but in any case Walter has custody. Mr. G tries to convince David to have one more meeting with his uncle and aunts. Finally David agrees on the condition that the meeting is in his parents' kitchen. It is arranged for later that morning.

When Eileen, Walter, Evelyn and Bernice show up and Walter and Bernice are still bickering David sees them differently, describes his new perspective to Mr. G, and he begins to give his wooden bird “wonderful” eyes. Mr. G tells him this is only the beginning. The dawn sun suddenly fills the kitchen window and the room, Mr. G walks into the light and disappears. David releases the bird and shields his eyes as he watches it fly into the dawn sunlight and vanish.

End