As he captures the pigeon, he remembers his favorite children’s book in which a flock of city birds unites to help a homeless girl. Her father is without papers, like him, and cannot get a job.
The book’s illustrations portray hundreds of birds in the sky and perched on the eaves. In their beaks are hundreds of scraps of paper. Candy wrappers, shredded letters, napkins—every kind of paper a human might need.
He unsticks the lottery ticket from the pigeon’s feathers and sets the bird free. He’s hopeful. The girl in the book got lucky in the end.
