Avenging the Owl

by Melissa Hart

  We staggered up to the trailer’s porch, sweaty and panting. Dad lay on the couch with a washcloth over his face. Mom spent half an hour on the phone, looking for someone who’d deliver a pizza all the way out to the trailer. She finally found a place, but Dad didn’t eat a bite even though we’d ordered his favorite—pineapple and Canadian bacon. “Just this once.” Mom picked the ham off her slices and laid them on my pizza like a peace offering.

  That night in bed, I chowed on leftovers and worked on a new screenplay scene.

  FADE IN

  EXTERIOR. OLD TRAILER - NIGHT.

  SOLO HAHN sits cross-legged in the grass with a bug net beside him. He stares up at the sky.

  CLOSE-UP of a falling star. Eyes closed, Solo makes a wish.

  SOLO

  I wish I was home, back at the beach with my surfboard.

  Suddenly, headlights sweep across his face. A new black Corvette races up the gravel driveway, CD player blaring big band music. MOM and DAD step through a cloud of dust toward their son.

  SOLO

  You bought a new car?

  DAD

  This is more our style, don’t you think?

  Solo nods. Mom reaches to take his hand, pulls him up to stand beside her.

  MOM

  You were right, sweetie. Let’s go home.

  SOLO

  What about the trailer?

  DAD

  We’re leaving this sorry piece of tin behind.

  SOLO

  I …

  I couldn’t finish the scene that night. Maybe Dad’s writer’s block was contagious.

  I turned off the light and stared out the window. Overhead, billions of stars twinkled, each one glowing with the promise of its own separate wish. The moon shined the tops of the fir trees with silver. Deep within the forest, I heard the searching call of a great horned owl.

  It seemed to cry: what next?

  CHAPTER NINE

  EAT DESSERT FIRST

  The clack of typewriter keys woke me at seven. Then silence.

  “If you’re not going to write, you could at least get a job!” My mother’s voice yanked my head up off the pillow. “I woke up early to make breakfast so you could write. And now, you’re not even working!”

  My father made a sound—a syllable between a word and a whimper. More silence. Then, I heard glass shatter.

  I leapt out of bed.

  “These damn colleges want to pay me one-third of what I made in California. We’re living on our savings so you can write your novel, and now you’re not writing? Honestly, Michael, I don’t know what to do for you!”

  A door slammed. Footsteps pounded toward the kitchen.

  I tiptoed out of my room. My parents’ flimsy wooden door stayed shut. Down the hall, I saw Mom hunched over the stove. I crept silently back into my room, read a chapter of One Man’s Owl, and then decided to venture out to the kitchen.

  “G’morning.” I sat down at the table like everything was fine, like my guts weren’t writhing with fear.

  Mom’s eyes looked red and painful. She banged the jar of spiced apples on the table and slid a couple blackened buckwheat pancakes onto my plate. “It’s a hundred degrees in this stupid trailer.” She twisted her hair on top of her head and jabbed a barrette through the mess.

  “It never got hot in Redondo Beach.” I mentioned this casually, like I was just making conversation instead of trying desperately to find out whether were headed back down south. “The breeze kept stuff cool.”

  But my mother only shrugged and turned back to the stove with her shoulders hunched over the griddle.

  Now Dad shuffled out in his happy face T-shirt and boxers, topped by a gray silk kimono. His hair stuck up like a baby bird’s. He wandered toward the coffee pot and sloshed himself a cupful. Then he sprawled on the couch and turned on National Public Radio.

  “Can you listen to that later?” Mom snapped.

  He looked over, blinked. “I’m researching the human condition.”

  I knew better. Dad looked just like a sick bird slumped in a plastic pet carrier.

  How do you rehabilitate a suffering dad?

  I picked up the bottle of pills on his place mat. “Michael Hahn—Take one a day for anxiety.” Antidepressants.

  “They help to heal someone who’s clinically depressed,” Mom told me too loudly. “But they don’t work unless you actually take them.”

  My father called over from the couch, “I told you, I don’t feel like myself when I take that stuff.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Mom shot back.

  I closed my eyes. Again, I saw Dad’s limp body laid out on the stretcher.

  I put down the pill bottle and cut the burned parts off my pancakes.

  A truck rattled up the driveway. Mrs. Miller. I spied Eric hanging out the car’s window with his magnifying glass held to one eye.

  “What’re they doing here?” Mom reached into her shorts pocket for her lipstick.

  “I’m going hiking,” I mumbled.

  “With Eric?”

  I leapt up and rinsed my plate. This morning, I would’ve gone hiking with Sergeant Bird Nerd if it meant escaping the trailer and my sad father. Just looking at him made me want to cry.

  “You’re not hiking in sports sandals. It’s poison oak season,” Mom said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t have hiking boots.”

  Mom disappeared down the hall and came back with a pair of black Montrails.

  “I got these at Goodwill last week. They’re just your size.”

  I picked the boots up by their laces. Used. Scuff marks marred the toes. Flecks of mud spattered the bottom. “What if the guy these belonged to sees me and wants them back?”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Solo. Remember the three Rs? Reduce, reuse, recycle.”

  Ridiculous.

  I ducked her finger full of sunscreen, dropped the boots, and ran out to the truck. Eric opened the door. “Yay! Solo’s coming!”

  Mom followed me out, Montrails in hand. “It’s so beautiful out today … too gorgeous to stay inside.”

  Together, we looked back through the screen door to where Dad lay on the couch. The metal sides of the trailer held heat inside like an oven. He looked like he was being baked alive.

  Mrs. Miller waved to Mom from the driver’s seat. “Come with us, honey.”

  A smile flashed across my mother’s face. For a moment, her eyes shone. “Oh, I’d love to.”

  “Mom,” I whispered. “We can’t leave him alone. Who knows what he’ll do.”

  In an instant, her face clouded. “You’re right.”

  “I’d better stay here,” she called out to Mrs. Miller, too cheerfully. “I haven’t even checked the employment ads this morning.”

  “Another day, then.”

  Mrs. Miller started up the truck. I took the boots from my mother.

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  Out the window, I waved. With her red lipstick and her hair swept up to show off the diamond earrings my father had given her on their tenth anniversary, she didn’t look like she belonged in front of a decrepit trailer in the middle of Oregon.

  Slowly, she raised her hand and waved good-bye. Then she turned and went inside.

  Mrs. Miller gunned the truck up the hill and headed for Eyrie Road. “You’ll love the view from the top of Spencer Butte,” she told me. “It’s worth the climb.”

  Spencer Butte was the mountain that hovered above the raptor center. If people around here got lost, they used the butte for direction, like sailors use the North Star. Only the butte lay south of the city.

  “Why’s it called a butte?” I asked Mrs. Miller. “When I first moved here, I thought it was pronounced ‘butt.’”

  Eric giggled. His mom smiled and brushed her sweaty bangs off her forehead. “The way I learned it, if it’s got friends, then it’s a mountain. But if it’s a mountain with no other mountains around, it’s a by-itself butte. Get it?”

  Rajen’s last
email—all about his new best friend—flashed across my mind.

  “I get it.”

  Mrs. Miller parked in a lot across from the raptor center, near a sign warning hikers of rattlesnakes and cougars. “Never seen one yet.” She threw a backpack over her shoulders and led us across the road to a dirt path.

  “Ha ha ha ha!” Edgar’s voice rang out. Fifty feet up, I saw her mew half hidden by trees and ferns.

  Can she sense I’m here?

  Eric threw himself down on a wooden bridge across a barely trickling creek. “Wanna see water striders!” He peered through his magnifying glass.

  I studied the rink of long-legged bugs skating on top of the water. But Mrs. Miller had her heart set on summiting the butte. “C’mon, boys.” She fanned her face with her hat. “Let’s see what kind of insects live at the top.”

  We climbed, stopping at least once every minute so Eric could identify a new tree. “Douglas fir!” He grabbed a limb of one dangling branch and shook it like a hand. Then he ran to a tree with purple flowers. “Plum!” He smiled his wide happy smile. “Birds eat plums, then poop the seeds. They make a plum tree!”

  I pretended to gag. “Gross!”

  Mrs. Miller laughed. “I swear my son’s gonna be the next John Muir.”

  “John who?”

  “John Muir was a writer who helped protect Yosemite National Park in California. He’s my hero.”

  She stood up straight and sucked in a deep breath like she was about to give an oral report. “‘Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you … while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.’ John Muir wrote that. It’s pretty, don’tcha think?”

  I nodded. Eric stuck a piece of green plant to my shirt. “Bedstraw. Pioneer people stuffed their beds with it.”

  “Their mattresses,” his mother explained.

  “That’s cool.” I fell into step behind him. “You really do know a lot about nature, Eric.”

  “Yup.”

  The path veered right, straight up the face of the butte. My calf muscles burned as I climbed over boulders, and my heartbeat banged in my ears. Finally, Mrs. Miller stopped climbing and collapsed under a pine tree.

  “Welcome to Oregon!” she cried.

  There’s a scene in an old movie called Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams tells his students to stand on their desks. “The world looks very different from up here,” he says. “Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.”

  Mr. Davies showed us the movie in screenwriting class. Then he told us to stand on our desks. The only thing I saw differently was dust on the fluorescent bulb above my head. But here on Spencer Butte, I understood what Robin Williams and Mr. Davies were getting at. The sky glowed blue over forests stretched far as I could see. To the right, I glimpsed the glimmer of a lake. In the distance, three mountains huddled together.

  “The Three Sisters,” Mrs. Miller told me as I pointed to the trio of mountains. “Volcanoes, part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc. This is an amazing state, Solo. Mountains, forests, pristine lakes perfect for summer swimming, beaches full of sea stacks …”

  “Sea stacks?”

  “They’re these tall rock formations that jut up from the ocean. You can see them up and down the coast. Don’t you have them in Southern California?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I looked out at the Sisters and, for a moment, my parents and their moods and their problems didn’t matter. Nature’s peace flowed into me, and I smiled.

  “That’s our city.” Mrs. Miller pointed to a cluster of Monopoly-sized buildings plopped down among millions of trees. Somewhere, my father lay on the couch in the middle of all that green.

  The wind blew into the firs and pines around us. It made a sound I recognized, but couldn’t place. I closed my eyes.

  The ocean. The wind sounds like the ocean.

  I looked up. A dark-winged bird circled above our heads, dipping down, then soaring high.

  “That bird’s catching a thermal,” I told Eric. “That’s a column of warm air. Birds float on thermals like surfers ride waves.”

  I thought the bird was a vulture. But then it swooped closer, and the sun gleamed against its white head feathers.

  “It’s a bald eagle!” I shouted.

  Eric peered through his binoculars. Mrs. Miller clapped her hand over her heart. “Our national bird!”

  I watched the eagle float on the wind. “Did you guys know Ben Franklin wanted our national bird to be the turkey?”

  “Turkey?” Eric shrieked with laughter. “Good one, Solo!”

  I recalled what Sergeant Bird Nerd had told me. “Nature made the bald eagle’s feet without feathers, so it can fish. Otherwise, it’d be flying around in feathers that felt like wet socks.”

  The idea of a raptor in footwear got Eric giggling even harder.

  Mrs. Miller unzipped her backpack. “I had no idea you knew so much about birds, honey.” She pulled out peanut butter, bread, and bananas. Then she took out a big bag of chocolate chip cookies.

  When I saw those cookies, I almost cried. Eric grabbed one and chomped it down. Mrs. Miller caught me staring and handed me two. “Here, Solo. Life’s unpredictable—better eat dessert first.”

  I stuffed them both in my mouth at once and nodded my thanks. She laughed.

  Around us, lizards did push-ups on mossy rocks. Birds swooped from tree to tree. Eric swapped his binoculars for a magnifying glass and leaned down to study a beetle while his mother sliced bananas for our sandwiches. With my mouth full of cookies, I had to work hard to keep feeling like a lonely butte.

  Maybe Mrs. Miller understood a little about how I was feeling. “We’re gonna head down,” she said after lunch, packing up wrappers and banana peels.

  I picked up a napkin and stuffed it in my pocket. “Do you … do you mind if I stay a few minutes?” I asked her. “By myself? I just want to see what it’s like to be up here alone.”

  She studied me for a moment, then nodded. “You stay as long as you want. We’ll wait for you on the trail where it forks into two.”

  She climbed down the boulders with Eric and disappeared into the trees.

  I stood up and climbed to the highest point on the butte, a pinnacle on a pile of boulders.

  Above me, the eagle kept surfing thermals. I felt like flying, too. What if John Muir was right? What if my father could climb the mountain and get its good tidings? Spencer Butte might just cure him.

  I reached for my notebook and pencil.

  FADE IN

  EXTERIOR. MOUNTAINTOP - DAY.

  SOLO HAHN stands on top of a butte, arms stretched wide. A cool breeze ruffles his hair. In the distance, three snowcapped volcanic peaks rise into a blue sky.

  SOLO

  See what I mean, Dad? You can’t feel suicidal on the butte.

  CLOSE-UP of Solo’s father. DAD breathes deeply and smiles a wide, happy smile.

  DAD

  You’re right, son. Thank you for bringing me here. I feel positively exuberant. What say we grab your mother and go on a backpacking trip, maybe check out some of those sea stacks on the coast?

  PAN OUT to the eagle soaring over their heads.

  FADE OUT

  I slipped my notebook into my pocket and climbed down the boulders, then ran down the dirt path to catch up with Mrs. Miller and Eric. He’d stopped to examine a circle of white flowers through his magnifying glass. “Queen Anne’s Lace.”

  “Can I see?” I looked through the glass at the tiny petals, each one perfect, each doing its part to create a big intricate flower.

  I looked at the curly green moss hanging off the tree branches above us. “What’s that stuff?”

  “Usnea. Its common name is Old Man’s Beard.” Mrs. Miller pulled off a bit of the soft moss and handed it to me. I pulled on one tendril—it stretched between my fingers. “Makes good toilet paper
,” she added.

  “Ew!” Eric and I cried together.

  “What d’you think John Muir used when he lived out in the woods? Environmentalists have to live off the land.”

  “They poop on the land!” Eric high-fived me with his widest smile. Poop or no poop, I liked the idea of living off the land, surviving on blackberries and stream water. Solo Hahn—Environmentalist.

  The label sounded good in my head.

  •

  That afternoon, I couldn’t wait to get home, to tell Dad all about the butte. Maybe Mom and I could persuade him to hike it with a picnic the next day.

  “Where’s your mama?” Mrs. Miller stopped in The Big Grape’s spot to let me out.

  “Yoga?” I guessed. But I walked into the trailer to find my mother in shorts and a T-shirt, slumped at the table with her head buried in her hands.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  She raised her head and looked at me. Tears streaked her cheeks. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Finally, she spoke.

  “Your father’s gone.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALONE

  What d’you mean he’s gone?”

  I glared at my mother. She turned her palms up, helpless. “I went for a jog—just a couple of miles. Came back, and he was gone. There’s a note….” Her hand pointed limply toward the hallway.

  I ran to the doorway of my parents’ room, eyes panning the scene.

  INTERIOR. TRAY OF PANCAKES AND GLASS OF ORANGE JUICE ON THE DRESSER; RED ROSE IN A VASE - DAY.

  PAN OUT to a checked apron torn down the middle. Shards of shattered coffee mug. Cold coffee pooled on the floor.

  CLOSE-UP of a typewriter on the desk, holding a single sheet of paper. SOLO walks over and rips the paper out of the typewriter. He shivers as he reads the words out loud.

  SOLO

  “Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure.”

  FADE OUT

  I fled to my room.

  “Dad?” I whispered. I looked under my bed and in my closet just in case he was playing hide-and-seek with me like when I was little. But there was only a note, stuck under my Darth Vader bank. I slumped on the bed to read it.

  Dear Solo,

  A father should never abandon his son, I know.

  But if I don’t go now, temporarily, I’m afraid I might leave permanently. That would be even more unfair to you. Be well, and know that you’re in my heart every instant. You are not alone.