Hear That Damn Owl?

by M. K. Theodoratus



  Hear That Damn Owl?

  An Andor Story

  By

  M. K. Theodoratus

  Copyright © 2014, M. K. Theodoratus

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use in reviews or critical analysis.

  Hear That Damn Owl is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  For more information about M. K. Theodoratus’ fiction, visit https://www.mktheodoratus.com or read the comments at the end of this novella.

  Hear that Damn Owl?

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  After hours of driving the two-lane highway bordered by sagebrush, red dirt, and hill after barren hill, the mountain scarps loomed to the east. His anger roiled to a boil. On the other side, Crayton’s brother lay at death’s door in the Cottonwood hospital, his goal. His mother had managed to yank his strings once again.

  His fingers gripped the wheel. No. Not my goal. Ma’s goal. She’s the one threatening to give the trust to a conservancy, again, if I didn’t return

  Crayton Itched to turn around. Above him on the peaks, he noted the afternoon sun flashing off the solar-paneled skirts of the metal com-poles, poles that’d give him the reception to call the old bat and tell her to stick her head up her arse. The wheels of his Mercedes hummed along the furrowed road surface, keeping time with his churning thoughts. He gritted his teeth.

  Not my fault my drunk asshole of a brother drove himself over an embankment into the river. No reason why I should clean up another of his messes. I’ve got my own job to take care of.

  Crayton was accustomed to being the boss of his life. He called the shots at work…made his own decisions…except when his mother put her foot down. He scratched the thinning hair on the back of his head. Years of early conditioning had conquered again. His mother had him running the length of the country and more. Crayton didn’t have to like it. Just endure it.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  Still, a sense of homecoming wrapped around him, as comforting as his childhood eiderdown. Crayton remembered the mountain roads well. He and his friends had driven over the narrow pass as kids to buy bootleg booze in the hamlets hidden in the hills on this side of the range.

  Crayton frowned as he pulled into the last gas stop before Mad Man’s Pass. His bladder had filled as his gas tank emptied, forcing him to stop at the Old Tyme Country Store. The place was more dismal than he remembered. The tall pines surrounding the store offered little shade, but their scent filled the summer-heated air. The gray siding contrasted with the solar shingles promising the comforts of air conditioning inside.

  Not for the first time, Crayton questioned his decision to take the old road home rather than going the long way around using the four-lane, cross-country highway. He unbent from the seat and stepped onto the rutted dirt-and-gravel lot. His stiff legs shook. Leaning against the car, he steadied himself and stared up at the two-lane road that slithered in and out of the trees, climbing the steep mountains side like a tortured snake.

  Stretching his fingers, he cursed before donning a cap to protect his bald spot.

  The restroom signs pointed around to the back. Great. The place’s still doesn’t have flush toilets. How backward can you get?

  Crayton muttered more curses under his breath. Nothing had changed for the better. He’d have to walk around the building, in the muggy heat, to the row of smelly one-holers.

  Years had passed since he’d taken the little-traveled short cut over the mountains. Most people preferred to take a hundred-mile detour than come straight down the diagonal from the north. Crayton wished he had the backbone to ignore his mother’s commands to come home, but her fears drove her to burn his ear four, five times a day with her demands. Crayton snorted, wishing he had lied and said he had no vacation time left. But he knew his mother didn’t care if he annoyed corporate or anyone else.

  Coming around the corner from the privies, Crayton saw he was no longer the only traveler in the lot. A wide RV, trailing a sports car on a tow dolly, sat near a gurgling pump. A bald codger in shorts leaned against it, watching the numbers spin. Crayton wondered where they’d come from. He hadn’t seen another car on the road in miles.

  Crayton paused, shaking his head. They can’t mean to take that dinosaur over the pass.

  Licking dry lips, Crayton strode back to his car. The rig faced away from the pass. A faint respect grew as he wondered if maybe the rig had come down the pass. Mastering the legendary pass’s hairpin turns had tested generations of boys from his high school. The rite of passage had chalked up a long tally filled with hurt.

  Tank filled, the elderly couple scampered toward the steps of the porch to pay inside. The freckled-faced guy, with knobby knees sticking out from under his plaid shorts, and his wife, in mauve polyester pants pulled tight across her butt, could have modeled for a cartoon. The pair paused before the display of antiques on the porch. The wife glanced back across the lot at Crayton as if afraid he might buy some treasure before they could pass judgment on it.

  The woman tugged on the old man’s arm, saying something Crayton couldn’t hear. They rushed past the old coot in overalls rocking on the porch, whittling. Ignoring his wave, they disappeared into the store. The screen door slammed behind them.

  The old guy must’ve been a truck driver when young. Only way he could’ve made it down...if he did.

  Unwilling to pay for a bottle of water, Crayton dug into the cooler in his back seat. As he stepped back, his foot twisted in the gravel. Crayton grabbed the luggage rack to steady himself. His ankle felt tender when he stepped on it. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He rolled the bottle around his face, lifting the bill of his cap away from his eyes.

  Somewhere in the surrounding trees, Crayton heard a series of hoots. Surprised, he looked around but saw nothing. Then an owl swooped low near his car in a flurry of feathers, the wide spread of its wings whooshing overhead. Its legs hung so low, its talons almost touched the roof of his sedan. Crayton waved his arms to shoo the bird off. Watching the critter’s flight, he blinked. He’d never seen an owl in the afternoon sun before; had always thought the raptors only flew at night. He followed the predator’s flight across the road to where it landed in a massive oak set apart from the pines, wondering what it hunted.

  When the owl rose to fly back towards the parking lot, Crayton ducked to pick up a rock by his feet. After the bird dropped a pile on his car’s roof, he threw the rock, hitting the critter in the leg. The owl landed on the peak of the store roof away from the solar panels and shrieked as if it were cussing him out.

  Glancing around, Crayton spied a bigger rock and strode forwards to grab it. When the critter began its flight across the lot, he was ready. The rock landed square in the middle of the owl’s breast.

  Screeching, the bird angled off to the trees and disappeared behind the store.

  Crayton strutted to the porch in spite of his sore ankle. Still got my fastball.

  The haggard old man sitting in a rocking chair on the porch stopped whittling and cackled. “You should know better’n annoy an owl. Bring you bad luck, they do.”

  Tired of the car’s motion, Crayton debated whether he wanted to sit next to a yapping geezer or walk around the lot. His aching ankle changed his mind, and the dismal scenery didn’t appeal. He’d learned to prefer city lights to bucolic landscapes long ago. He sat down in the straig
ht-backed rocker next to the old coot, out of the sun if not the heat.

  Old habits surfaced. Best let the engine cool down before tackling the pass.

  “Gotta step careful when an owl hollers like that. You can git yourself into a passel of bad luck. If’n the damn owl gets mad enough, it might come get you. I know.”

  Can’t give me any more trouble than I got already.

  The geezer’s open mouth revealed his missing teeth as he waited for encouragement to continue.

  Just what I need. Crayton took a deep breath. Canned folklore from a codger.

  The old whittler pointed his knife at the huge camper. “Don’t think the owl’ll bother with the driver of that rig, though. For one, don’t think he’d hear the trumpet calling the Second Coming. But his time is close. That pale skin and those red blotches on his head and face’ll turn into the cancer for sure if’n he don’t got it already.”

  The codger redirected his knife to Crayton. “Now you look a sensible sort, wearing long pants and shirt, even in the summer heat. They‘ll protect you from the sun, they will.”

  Not wanting to encourage him, Crayton looked away and tightened his lips to hide his smirk. Got to practice deference if I’m to survive Ma’s ranting.

  “Smile if you want. Here I set, an old man from the hills, but old Jeb’s son pays me good money to add some local color to this tourist trap. Not that that many stop here nowadays, with the new highway and all. But, I kin tell you a thing or two about owls. Lived with the damn things haunting me fer most of my life.”

  As if hearing its name, the huge owl swooped down from the trees to the gas pumps and left another calling card on the tourists’ sports car. A blood-curdling screech filled the air as it flew away. The old man ducked even though the porch protected him. Crayton hunched his shoulders in spite of himself. Shivers washed down his spine.

  That owl’s positively uncanny.

  “You hear that owl’s shriek? Most time owls just hoot to warn people and other critters away from their territory. But there’s other times. They shriek like a banshee like this one. That’s when you gotta be careful.”

  As the old man repeated himself, Crayton’s thoughts drifted to his mother again, knowing she expected him to call. Since he could see the com-towers, Crayton figured he’d have reception. But his defiance burned hot. He took a deep drag from his water instead. With a nod, he encouraged the old-timer to continue with his superstitious tale.

  “Remember my first up close brush with an owl as a young’un.”

  Crayton lifted his eyebrows, gave up. The smirk spread across his face before

  he took another swig of water.

  “You wipe thet smirk off your face. ‘Twas climbing a tree looking for suckers to make me some arrows for my bow.” The old man’s grin turned as sly as a cream-stealing cat’s. “Easier to poach a rabbit or sage hen using a bow, if’n you’ve a mind to.

  “Anyways, there I was high in the tree, when I looked over and found myself staring right down into this owl nest with three white, fluffy owlets twittering among themselves. All three looked up at me at the same time with their mouths open. A lot of good it did them. No dinner was coming from me. In fact, I kicked the stupid things’ nest off’n the branch. Dumb thing to do in anybody’s book, but young’uns don’t think. Owls had most of their feathers so they didn’t take much harm.

  “Still, I swear the act brought me bad luck for the rest of my life. Nothin’ ever went right with me after that. Schoolwork got harder. Weather always took more than its tithe of my crops. Not that we starved or anything. But life was a hard scratch until I landed this job, whittling on young Jeb’s porch.”

  Crayton watched the gnarled fingers smooth over the rough bird shape in the codger’s hands, wondering when the coot’d shut up. Wished he were back at the office where he had the power to muzzle such yammering. A battered truck pulled up at the pumps, distracting Crayton’s attention.

  The old-timer pursed his lips around toothless gums, and then, began to speak faster. “No wonder I had such a time getting me a woman. Was always broke. Were several I took a fancy to, good lookers a couple of them, but ended up with the wrong one. Had a tongue like a rasp, she did, and her nose was in everybody’s business but her own. Not that I couldn’t of cooked and cleaned for myself, but it’s the companionship I was looking for.” He shook his head. “Didn’t get it, though.”

  The old man rubbed high on his belly and gave a rumbling belch. “Wouldn’t have minded it so much if she’d given me a son, but she only gave me the sickly girl that died. Knew it was doomed when an owl screeched as the wife was having trouble birthin’ her. A cousin ended up with the farm, after it’d been in the direct line for over a hundred years.” The old man stared into the far distance. “At least, he paid me a decent sum for it.”

  Water done, Crayton stood to return to his car, somewhat amused by the coot’s superstitious tale. Just knew the crazy coot was pulling his leg with his pile of malarkey. Time to fill up and get going if I want to get to the ranch by dark.

  The screen door opened behind him, and the couple emerged, carrying two bottles of water, and disappeared into the camper as fast as they had left it.

  A local in overalls, who had arrived in the truck, came up the steps from the parking lot. “Hey Nick, you scaring the tourists again with your tales of malignant owls?” The newcomer nodded to Crayton while he waited for the elderly tourists to climb down the stairs. “Don’t pay no mind to his hot air, stranger. Nick’ll talk your ears off, given half a chance.”

  “Shut your trap. He ain’t given me my tip yet.”

  “You don’t have to pay attention to that old moocher. Jeb pays him good money to sit on his ass.”

  The old man stood up, rubbing his stomach as he belched again. “Et too many hush puppies for lunch. Jeb keeps them sitting in their grease too long. Don’t recommend them. But they sure taste good, even if’n they give you the heartburn.”

  “Nice talking with you, but I need to fill up and get going.” After digging into his pocket to give the codger the biggest coins he had, Crayton tapped the bill of his cap with his empty bottle. “Don’t shave too much off that owl you’re whittling. Might not like having no tail.”

  Crayton’s expression soured when the double negative popped naturally from his mouth. After paying for the gas he pumped, Crayton followed the couple up the highway. Crayton smiled, glad he spent the time listening to the old man’s tale.

  Good to’ve done something half pleasant before Ma tackles me.

  Crayton had rolled down the window to enjoy the scent of pines as the road twisted and turned, climbing the steep pass out of the river valley. It had changed less than the store. On the curves, there wasn’t enough room for two cars to pass each other in comfort. Turnouts were nonexistent.

  The Mercedes handled the curves with ease. Crayton gunned the engine a bit to feel the tension of the curves pulling on his wrists.

  Now, this is more like it. Memories of pushing the curves as a youth returned, and he grinned. For a moment, he thought of racking up his speed. Don’t be an ass like your brother.

  Soon he saw the old couple’s rig lumbering ahead. Watching the rig sway back and forth across the line, Crayton slowed down. Near the top of a sharp curve, the old couple’s rig swung wide and crashed through the railing. Crayton slowed down farther. The RV rested against a tree trunk without much damage. The old coot stuck his bald head and shoulder out the window. He waved.

  Tired of listening to geezers, Crayton drove on by.

  Immediately, he felt guilty. No telling when another car’ll come by.

  Without waiting for the road to straighten, Crayton reached for his cell phone to call 9-1-1. His fingers fumbled on the buttons as he focused on the road. He glanced down at the keyboard.

  The curve tightened into a sharper hairpin in the opposite direction. Phone in one hand, his foot lifted off the gas. An owl swooped down at his windshield, its wingspan as
huge as the one from the parking lot. His hands lifted to protect his eyes. His foot slipped from the brake to the gas. The car shot forward while the owl’s shrieks filled Crayton’s ears.

  ~~Fin~~