The Dogs: Ask Now the Beasts
Are not these woodsMore free from peril than the
envious court? _________
William
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II,
Scene i
The first time Bligh Lynch
realized something about him was a little strange and that he was more than
what he thought he was, he was alone - he did not have his best friend Drew
Lightfoot with him, his loyal retainer, or his dog, Duke, his steadfast squire.
Duke was due to be taken to
Dr. Barnes' vet clinic to re-up his rabies shots, but his grandfather - the
whole town called him Pappy, even men and women older than he was - had been
adamant that Bligh hunt for a dinner to be tomorrow's dinner, since he himself
had hunted dinner to be served that day. So Drew, in the pattern of
almost-marriage they had years before either of them were ever brave enough to
admit that's precisely what it was, had volunteered to take the dog to the vet
himself - Dr. Barnes' daughter Betsy was his girlfriend.
So Bligh was alone. No cell
phone, that was another rule of Pappy's - hunting takes concentration, no intrusions
by the frivolity of text messaging allowed.
Pappy expected him to grow up
and be a man and really at all of seventeen Bligh was a man already, the itchy
clouds of black beard starting to coalesce around his face, conscious imitation
of his grandfather - thick blue flannel, squirrel gun, poke over his shoulder.
He was the image of coalfield youth - the ruggedness inherited so soon, so
quick, being young was too good to last here in the mountains, a small town
nobody had ever heard of where weird things went on in whispers and legends.
It was December, the first
week, when the spooky pumpkins of Halloween and Samhain were all carved up and
eaten, spiced and baked, for Thanksgiving pies - now all that was left was the
desolation, the reckoning, the trees barren and naked, branches clawing at the
overcast skies in supplicating prayers never to be heard. The smell of distant
woodsmoke admixed with the clean, fresh wintry mountain air.
It was a quick walk down the
little hill that ridged up neatly and then leveled off where his house was - if
Bligh had gone the opposite way he'd end up going up the mountain next to his
house, where proud turkeybirds used to strut and a rare kind of herb that was
useful for slaughtering hogs when Bligh had been a youngster grew...but now it
was a dangerous place, a family of mountain lions lived up there even though
the State of West Virginia was absolutely certain no mountain lions lived in
West Virginia at all. But that was a lie - Bligh had to kill one, the very
first animal he'd ever shot, many years ago, because Drew and he had blundered
their way into its home.
His grandfather said there weren't
no mountain lions up yonder, but great big cattywampus
- whatever they were, he didn't elaborate and Bligh and Andrew were too scared
to ask why he'd said that...they hadn't been up there since. He had warned them
with something Bligh had kept close to his heart - Ain't tellin what yew find in em woods, and that was the final say,
the sagest advice you could either give or receive in their town.
So Bligh went the other way -
his grandfather was strict about him keeping up his shooting skills and being
self-sufficient enough to catch and kill your own food. Bligh would get the
meat, and his grandfather would cook it in the big electric crockpot they had
just inherited from Cousin Bobby, Pappy's nephew, in Huntington...God rest his
soul, his heart finally did what the diabetes couldn't and killed the poor man
dead.
It was very cold and Bligh was
hungry and frustrated - he missed Duke and he missed Drew, he had been hunting
alone only a few times in his life and now he felt awkward, like he didn't know
what he was doing...maybe that was Pappy's plan all along, to show him how to do
things by himself, and be self-reliant. At
the thought, Bligh rolled his eyes - Pappy was convinced of the rightness of
his positions and it was really hard
to argue with him because, incidentally, he was almost never wrong...but goddam,
couldn't they just order a pizza?
But he was like his grandfather in many ways and each year
it became more and more obvious he was his grandfather's grandson, an
undeniable Lynch. Looking at Pappy was like looking a much-aged Bligh, and
looking at Bligh was like peering into the past of what Gustavus - his real
name - had looked like, all those decades ago...
...it should have warmed his heart, but the air was too cold
for that, and his irritation too fresh.
At least he was not chilled:
Bligh was used to this time of year being right airish and he liked it when the
breeze blew his too-long hair gently into his ears under his new Baltimore
Ravens cap he had bought at the Greenbrier Valley Mall on Black Friday.
The chill on the air is lovely if you expect it, if you
know where you are.
Bligh had been keeping time with his steps as he was taught
to stalk squirrels he could faintly make out in the distance by a big walnut
tree on the closer side of Dog's Creek- slow, quiet movements, letting him
pause for some minutes when he saw the squirrels tense and look his way. He
knew this area well, but if he got lost, he could tell where he was by the owl,
louder and louder as the town got further behind him, calling from the forest
past the border of the languid flow of the creekwater.
The creek's flow was lazy and slow these days, soon enough
it would cease altogether, choked by fine splinters of ice, and set apart on
its banks by ermine shawls of the first snows. December even in its morbidity was
not without its beauty.
On the breeze you can hear him, the barred owl, lonely misshapen
creature of feathers, forced to call out: Who
cooks for you? Who cooks for all! It is not a full question that seeks to
know, it is also a taunt, a demand, a conversation that begins and ends by
offending and abusing who it is asked to. He would love to say something else,
his brothers in the wood with their long feathery eyebrows merely ask Who? Who? and you can gather from this
something perennial, the philosopher's troubling wrestle with how life is drawn
into existence in the universe - he has relatives that utter no human-like
words at all, but mere tremolo, long and low and mournful, not as sad as the
wolf's howl or the fox's wail beneath them as they are perched on their
branches but a little more striking: on the breeze, a plea to listen.
These owls are the wisest creatures in the forest because
they have things to say. Listen to them: they will ask you things because the
chill on the air is never, ever sufficient to itself, it must have
accompaniment, a fiddler at your banquet table as the food is served and the moonshine
poured.
A meal fit for a king.
The forest is a monarchy, after all, it is an empire that
stretches and reigns forever, a world without end. The people here when Bligh's
grandfather was very young used to get married outside under trees, and they'd
say they were married in the big church,
their ancestors' genetic memory curdling in their blood and released as an
unconscious homage in their words with the phrase: knowing and understanding
that no structure built by humans, large or small, can contain the majesty of
nature, the big church is where one
worships because one is compelled to, there is nothing to replace it, long live
the king.
The colors in the forest this time of year are a reminder
that the world is dying and that misery comes with the cold - in some months
there will be ripples of pink and white, there will be bloom, the bare branches
will be decorated delicate with the promises of life's return, Sumer is icumen in, Summer is a-comin on, and then a titanic green that will sway
drunkenly in the heated wind, before giving way to a death-afore-death, the
phoenix self-immolates, and so will the leaves, embers of gold and crimson.
And then - the end.
December in West Virginia is an empress-queen with a
baritone roar - the femininity of her beauty so crushingly powerful to the eye
that it made one's soul hurt, the demand for obeisance for merely looking upon
her evoking a terrible goddess from the first, pure days of humanity when one
could still read by starlight...
...stark, savage pulchritude. Up north from here they called
a place the New Canaan Valley, a
sequel to the paradise from the Bible that Bligh's grandfather would preach
from - for, surely, they had found what must have been a newfound Earthly
paradise, a Heaven for the Appalachian Age. There are many places in America
that are called God's Country and so
it was here, but which god was never
specified: whoever it was, it was ancient, it was feral.
Bligh took a breath, billowing out faint vapor - the air
was cleaner over here, away from town, a single paved road going out, out,
stretching until it picks up 63, then 219, Lewisburg, bigger cities and bigger
places far away from the creek, the forest, the owls.
The creek had, by its occupation of geology, drained the
area around it and turned it into grassy, shrubby flatland - its waters formed
a drawn border between the meadow plain, marred by the occasional bare spot of
rock, and the hilly woods. Next to the meadow, the road plunged out toward the
shifting hills on the horizon, on a clear day you really could see forever. After
the road and the meadow the woods appeared and the hills resumed their climb,
inhabited in the uneven transition by squat shrubs, cruel briars, and, in
happier times of the year, billowing, fragrant herbs and wildflowers that bees
would excitably buzz about. Great jagged boulders jutted out like the bones of
the prehistoric ground sloth who was once emperor here, and tangles of dead
vines would crawl and creep, up and over the exposed rock. Way on up ahead the
creek broadened, and on its banks sat the ruins of an old mill, sometimes a
beaver dam, alongside a rabbit-bitten plain that dipped into a holler as Dog's
Creek disappeared into the Earth.
Bligh stopped where he was, listening for the owl - Who cooks for you? Who cooks for all! -
to tell him where to go. He could measure by the owl how far away he was from
town, and where the squirrels were. Head away
from where you hear the owl, his grandfather had told him, for when he goes
quiet, that is when he has found prey - where is he noisiest there are no
animals for him to catch...
...in the woods. The entrance to the woods was a doorway to
somewhere else, one false step across the creek and into another realm, you'd
stumble. He heard from Pappy once that a boy who courted his mama had taken
sick and the night he was supposed to have died a whole big passel of squirrels
sat by his window, and then his mama had seen him, healthy but changed into a
half-squirrel hisself, watching her sadly from a bush or a tree. His mama used
to tell that story as a funny thing about a dream she had, because there
weren't any way it could've been real - but Pappy absolutely believed her.
That was the kind of weirdness and strangeness and blurring
of lines that took place here, this town, Tempest, West Virginia - that was
what you had to watch for in these woods. Was it real or was it all just
imagination? You'd never know - you'd never know.
The woods surround you and hug you and clutch you tight, a
bereaved mother deranged from watching her child age - the woods grant wishes,
but they are terrible wishes, and the woods listen to your heartbeat and watch
you as you pass through.
Best to stick to the creek, best to stick to the road.
Most of the animals now in December are gone - some spare
crows, a lonely cardinal to complete a bucolic scene of Appalachian Christmas -
and the owl. This time of day, when dusk was creeping and the clouds conspired
with the darkness, the squirrels weren't as active, and the larger creatures -
the mighty bear, the slender fox - had hid themselves in their yearly ritual of
hibernation.
But the owl still calls: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for all!
It breaks into a stillness that is at once preternatural
and yet expected: the chorus becomes not one of birdsong and katydid as it is
in Summertime but rather of silence itself, each voice is muted but still
singing, it will fade back in, it will return - montani semper liberi, montani
semper spem, for others may see a dying world but the mountaineer sees a
world merely asleep, for now, for now.
Bligh was out past that old abandoned church where he had
found Duke, that the woods rose up behind and the creek ran through underneath
its wormy, decaying floorboards - floorboards with old and rusty nails, Drew
had stepped on one after Bligh had goaded him and goaded him to come along with
him exploring, and boy Pappy got mad as a hornet, really jerked a knot in his
tail...
...tail.
Almost involuntarily, Bligh found himself frowning - he
wanted a tail, he wanted to be a werewolf, get on all fours like Duke and hunt
his food with his nose and his mouth. That was the old - oldest thing about him, what he retreated to when he first came to
live with his grandfather after his daddy and mama crashed their car in a
rainstorm with him in the backseat. He was five, then - from then on it was
just him and Pappy against the world.
And Drew - Drew too. But Drew didn't know - Pappy didn't
know - none of his guys on the team would know, either. It was his own interior
world, his private place - howling at the moon, staying out late with Duke and
sneaking back in. Someday he'd tell Drew, he'd tell him all about how Pappy
thought wolves were the Devil's creatures and there'd be no place in Heaven for
werewolves, never knowing his own grandson badly wanted to be one, and that's
why Bligh would get sad every Sunday, that's why, secretly, he weren't
Christian no more...
Not that he didn't believe. Drew didn't believe, he didn't
believe in nothing, that's what made telling him so hard - Bligh pretending he
was a werewolf like he'd always done, that part of him, that stayed religious and inflexibly spiritual even after he'd lost
his faith in whoever Jesus Christ was - Bligh was sure that the world around
him was hardly all the world he got, and he never doubted werewolves were out
there somewhere, that animals had souls...and the woods took care of their own.
He just never figured it all out
yet - maybe he never would.
The ramshackle church passed behind him, and Bligh sucked
in a breath through his nose, stopping where he was - the crunch of leaves
ceasing beneath his boots, deep up to his ankles - to look about him.
His eyes were of a different color than everyone else's in
town, different than anybody else he'd ever really met, but they were the same
color as his grandfather's and his daddy's too, who Bligh remembered only
faintly before he died - they gave the impression of seeing everything by
seeing past it, into it, X-ray eyes, strange magic, blue the color of icebergs,
blue the color of the cold itself.
And his eyesight was, actually, more excellent than most
anyone he knew - it's what made him a good quarterback, it's what made him a
crack shot.
Like his grandfather, he could see what others couldn't.
He smirked at that - he never really smiled, Drew's wily
little brother Stevie said that all the time and he was right, he smiled like
his grandfather smiled, crooked, a little proud, a little bashful...a smirk.
Now he stopped to squint and try to sharpen his focus - the
squirrels he'd thought he'd seen were becoming clearer, a rare passel of them,
there, not far, the edge of the woods, but on the nearer side of the creek,
two, three, four squirrels. How
lucky! He'd have to tell Pappy: one climbing the base of a great big walnut
tree, one on the branch that made it shake as it moved - two on the ground.
This would be easier than he'd thought - maybe he did know what he was doing.
He approached them stealthily - Drew always said he was
good at sneaking up on people, an unconscious skill he never remembered
learning, but which he put to adept use out here on the hunt - he raised his
gun, he took his shot.
The noise erupted into the stillness and startled a murder
of crows that flew off, cawing raucously, from a tall beech tree near the
walnut where he had felled one squirrel, then another - only two, felled with
one shot each: "New record," Bligh muttered to himself.
Their compatriots fled for their lives into the forest, the
peace of them twitching their tails and squawking at each other ruined in
bloodshed.
Bligh took his time walking to reach them, inhaling deep
again, another airish breeze coming up and grazing his skin - it was getting
colder, because it was quickly getting darker.
He reached down to pick up the pair of small, furry,
lifeless bodies - he murmured the prayer that Pappy had taught him, thanking
them for their lives and now for their death, that he could live on because
they had given themselves up. That was the way of the woods...Pappy talked all
the time about salvation and the Good Lord and what the Bible said, but
sometimes Bligh would wonder - putting the squirrels in his poke to carry home
- if Pappy didn't put his own take on the Good Book, something like the Indians
that intermarried with the first settlers out here used to practice, about
being with nature and being in balance.
Bligh was supposed to have some Indian in him - that explained the black hair.
As he rose from the grass, adjusting the poke over his
shoulder, he thought he heard the owl again, louder, somewhere near him - Who cooks for you? Who cooks for all!
Loud - louder - close.
He whipped around him - where was it coming from?
He gripped his gun, hearing, yet again, it rising in volume
- nearer, nearer...
Who cooks for you? Who
cooks for all! Then - a chaos, a rushing whoosh, stronger and stiffer than
the breeze.
Bligh spun on his heel to see it, pouring over the grass
and the leaves, a noxious, spreading shadow that darkened the ground - above
him came a flapping of wings, deep and ominous, the sound shuddering into the
Winter air.
And then, attacking the tallest branch to make a perch, there
it was: a gigantic, ghoulish, owl-like
thing he had never seen before.
Its wings were enormous, so large that had they been fully
outstretched Bligh in his panicked fear wondered if they could have blotted out
the feeble Winter's Sun - its talons were sharpened to a point, scaled legs and
feet digging into the branch it held deeply enough that it would surely leave
holes.
Everything about it was as though it
had been crafted out of the very forest itself, as though it had been spat out
of every fitful nightmare every scurrying creature on the ground once had:
Tall, antler-like bundled feathers gave the impression of
horns jutting off of what should have been his eyebrows, above eyes that,
themselves, were ablaze with a psychedelic, ever-changing opalescence, never
looking the same way twice, like lava captured in glass.
But the worst part was its face - no beak, no feathers,
just skin, too smooth and healthy to be like a vulture's but too uniform to
have been plucked off.
Taking it all in, his mind racing, Bligh's own eyes widened
in horror as he realized - the face looked vaguely, passably, human.
The owl he had been
hearing was no owl at all.
This was a monster, a creature of the woods from the
fantasies of the first settlers and from the nightmares of the Cherokee -
primeval, prehistoric, awful. Its feathers were shaggy, unkempt, bristling with
poorly-molted plumage, the color of the leafless branches, perfectly
camouflaged in the wild tangles of the treetops it leered down from.
Bligh raised his gun, finding to his fleeting relief that
even in his state of total bewilderment, even looking into those fiendish,
hypnotic, fiery eyes of the creature, he was not scared - all the preparedness
his grandfather had instilled in him had worked. The thing seemed to threaten
him, and Bligh meant to defend himself.
Again the question came, from the branches clenched in its
talons, down to Bligh, through eyes of relentless fury that threw off fiery
sparks of molten orange-yellow wherever they turned:
Who cooks for you? Who
cooks for all!
Bligh's breathing steadied, and he lowered his gun -
slowly, very slowly, never taking his eyes off the monstrous feathered thing.
The words - and they
were words - echoed, hard, in Bligh's ears. He could understand them, he
could make them make sense in his own head, the voice with a far more rich
timbre than any owl's should be.
His eyes were still wide with bewilderment but the fear was
being replaced with something - something he would never think to feel out
here, alone, confronted with a giant owl that leered at him from a walnut tree,
with a gun in his hand.
He felt - guilty.
He felt that he should be able to understand this creature
and that not being able to was making it sad and desperate, like he wasn't
keeping a promise, like Bligh had been entrusted with something important,
dire, and had carelessly forgotten it.
Yet again the owl-thing hooted at him - again it leered at
him.
Who cooks for you? Who
cooks for all!
In the woods you are always trespassing, in the woods you
are always being watched - the owl hooted and hooted its outrage, the only
words it knew, transmuted, translated,
into human-like words that Bligh understood as an inchoate, unanswerable
question: the portcullis was lowered, and now Bligh, whose people were meant to
be kings of this land even when Drew's people were the ones who bought and sold
and enslaved it, was an exile, heavy is the head whose crown has fallen.
He felt foolish, foolish enough to answer an owl - or what
looked like an owl - or something that was half-owl, half-boy...
He gritted his teeth, he cocked an eyebrow, he shrugged his
shoulders:
"I dun - I dunno?" A silence passed, tense and
chastened, between he and the plumed beast above him. He repeated: "I
dunno! I dun - I dunno!'
The owl-thing withdrew - it did not take its great, staring
eyes off of him, but held him in a gaze that was accusatory, angry - sad.
That was not the answer it wanted.
It hooted out the same thing - again now, distraught,
defeated, in disbelief, as though trying to make sense of what the human
beneath had just said:
Who cooks for you? Who
cooks for all! And then Bligh knew.
The mournful siren of the owl, the same phrase - Who cooks for you? Who cooks for all! -
over and over and over, had an inescapable meaning: he was too inexperienced,
he was irresponsible with his duties - he was not worthy.
In the silence that was not stirred by any caw, tweet,
cricket, rustle - in this silence, this perfect silence of West Virginia's
December, at the border of the real and the unreal, the known places where
humans lived and the unknown places of tree, wood, and leaf, he understood,
looking into the eyes of the owl that he was sure was no owl at all...he
understood, ashamedly, perfectly, what had happened. What
are you, puny human! Intruder and interloper, barbarian at the gate, creature
of plastic, glass, steel, and chemicals - begone, unnatural creation, for yours
is the lot of the naked ape, disgraceful in his rebellion against the balanced
world of life, away with thee and begone, begone, begone! Bligh had wanted this, something like
this, to be close to this, be a part of this - he had wanted to be a beast
himself, a werewolf to roam the forest, and yet here he was, at the very gate
to the forest, with the wood itself so full of shining eyes and creeping feet,
beckoning him with long clawed fingers...and
he had no idea what to do. The owl-thing flew off, off into the
distance, spread its wings so wide its shadows could have killed the Sun and
bore itself aloft, far, far from where Bligh stood, his gun, and his defenses, his
confidence, all down - the predatory shape the owl-thing took melted into the
treetops, its bushy plumage indistinguishable from the branches and the leaves. The encounter had lasted now more than
three, four minutes - and yet it seemed so much longer, it had seemed like
forever, several forevers, it seemed like time and its dimensions had simply
ceased to be, and that the friendly world of logic and understanding, Planet
Earth, had let open a small pocket of weirdness so potent it undid reality
itself.
Worst of all was how, staring after it, trying to put
everything together, how Bligh felt - different.
He felt, somehow, and for no rational reason, that this would not have happened
to anyone else, that this was destined, doomed, for him to find and for him to
experience, alone. Not Drew, not Pappy, not Duke - only him, for whatever
reason.
He started back for home, quickening his pace as he went -
that owl-thing's awful face, awful voice, refusing to leave his tortured mind's
eye.
When he got home he was still shook up, and as he opened
the door to come in, doffing his boots and hanging his Ravens cap on the wooden
rack nailed to the wall, putting up his gun, he tried to right himself once
more, steadying his face and his emotions.
Pappy was waiting for him in the
kitchen, the whole house alive with lusty smells of seasoned cookery stewing in
the crockpot. He came to meet Bligh in the little hallway that led to the
dining room with its big window next to the kitchen, salt-and-peppered eyebrows
arched and together as he nodded his greeting - dressed in his usual flannel,
like Bligh, and workaday jeans with house slippers, he looked nearly like Bligh
in the face, a full chinstrap beard to accompany the same rugged handsomeness,
but creased and aged.
"Ya shoot us some dinner fer tomorrow night?" He
had a powerful voice, honed for decades in the preacher's pulpit.
"Yessir," Bligh answered. "Squirrels - pair
of em, whole passel out down past the ol church."
"Well bring em over, lemme clean em - ya done yer
homework?"
"Yessir," Bligh repeated, bringing his poke to
the counter to leave for his grandfather. "Done it afore I went out."
"Aight," Pappy answered with another nod.
"Drew came by n'dropped off Duke - I gave em some o'them preacher cookies
fer his trouble, weren't much but yanno he loves em." He motioned with his
head to a closed door where their living room was. "That dawg o'yers is
sleepin in ere, he waitin fer ya."
"Thank ya, Pappy," Bligh said, forcing a grin,
hoping he wouldn't notice the worried expression that had riddled into his face
all the way home.
As he turned to move on, Pappy removed the squirrels from
the poke and called out after him: "Clean kill, son! I'm impressed!"
Bligh sniffed in spite of himself - his grandfather's
praise always made him elated, even this close to actual manhood.
As he opened the door into his cozy, wood-paneled living
room he could feel, and see, a fire burning in the fireplace, and Duke, a huge,
lupine thing who looked ferocious but had an expression that parlayed an inner
sweetness, rose from his spot aside it to greet him - a little logy from his
shots at Dr. Barnes', his pointed, furry ears parted to let Bligh scratch the
top of his head, he made a rough O
with his snout and growled out a long hello.
"Hey, boy--" Bligh murmured back, embracing Duke
tightly.
Hearing his grandfather hum an old gospel song not far from
him in the kitchen, and feeling Duke, feeling his fireplace-warmed fur against
his own hand, brought Bligh back to reality, to a groundedness that the open
spaces by the road, the gates that led to the forests and up into the hills and
then even further up into the mountain that loomed above his house, had all,
momentarily, taken away. Here in his home nothing could hurt him, the gleaming
eyes or stealthy paws or the big, billowing wings of bird-creatures that spoke
near to a human's words - he let himself sigh, an outrush of air to release the
day, into the protection of the wooden walls.
Duke did the customary face-licking, a laving of Bligh's
lips and budding beard, and he responded with one of his strange, delighted
laughs that Drew's brother Stevie - again - would make fun of. He scritched
Duke's thick, fluffy neck.
He sat down by one of the armchairs and Duke, enormous
though he was, sat in Bligh's lap, near as big as Bligh was - Bligh hugged him
close and buried his face in the dog's fur, remaining like this for several
minutes, Duke waiting patiently, letting his human hold him as close as he
needed to.
At some length he relinquished his hold on his dog and with
a muffled growl-bark - mruf! - he
rolled over, signaling to Bligh he was demanding a bellyrub, and Bligh obliged,
and wanted to smile down at him, ask him how his day was in the day he always
talked to dogs, pretending that they had the full command of the English
language and could hold a witty conversation.
But he couldn't smile - because he could have used someone to talk to. No matter how
cute Duke was being, tucking his head down and looking at Bligh with those
heterochromatic eyes, one mud-brown and the other a crystal blue similar to
his, he still couldn't shake being so bothered, being so puzzled.
Pappy called him to dinner in the next room, and he
signaled for Duke to roll back over and join him - as Bligh left the living
room Duke trotted past him, assuming his usual position under the table between
Bligh on one end, Pappy at the other.
The dinner was squirrel, killed by Pappy the day before, in
the crockpot - he'd been so tickled to have a new kitchen appliance and he had
been putting just about everything in the crockpot for a whole week - seasoned
with all the smells Bligh had encountered when he first walked in: ramp, vinegar,
pepper, salted just a little, with some buttered biscuits and, as a special
treat, some muggins that Pappy had been saving. He was hungry - he felt his
mouth water just looking at his plate.
He knelt his head and joined hands across the table in the
prayer his grandfather led: "Dear Lord we jest wanna thank yew fer the
bounty afore us, and thank ya Lord fer keepin Bligh safe, keep us in yer grace,
Lord, we ask this in Jesus' name--"
Bligh let bloom the last little flower in his dead garden
of Christianity by joining in:
"Amen."
His first few bites were enthusiastic, the taste of the
squirrel-meat so well cooked, the muggins perfect with a little butter - but as
he ate the face of the owl-thing, bitter and mean and near-human, reappeared in
his mind's eye...the bewilderment at what he had seen returned in force, and he
slowed his eating, bit by bit, enough that Pappy took notice:
"What's ailin yew, son?"
Bligh shook his head. "Ain't nuthin..."
"I know when I'm bein told a falsehood - n'yew know that's
a sin."
Bligh sighed. "I - I saw sumthin real weird in the
woods. Right after I got them squirrels. It - got me scared."
Pappy nodded. "What yew see?"
Bligh told his story and Pappy listened, nodding along,
letting Bligh speak. When he was finished he took a deep breath, the images
reemerging, and he shifted uncomfortably - the painful memory of being accused,
of being scolded, still made him feel dirty and ashamed.
His grandfather laid down his knife and fork, seeming to
escape into his own deep thought and contemplation. Some seconds went by before
he turned his head back to Bligh and answered:
"Yew say a big ol owl?"
"Yessir, big
ol son of a gun," Bligh affirmed, his throat suddenly dry - he took the
glass of water Pappy and poured him and downed half of it. "Kept - hootin
at me, n'hootin at me, making all
this noise like I...like I weren't s'posed t've been there."
"Hmm..." Pappy said, folding his arms - and then
again: "Hmm."
"What is it?"
"Well...I jest hafta say, that's mighty
interestin."
"It - it is?"
Pappy did not answer at first - his face took on an unusual
aspect, the eyes that saw everything suddenly seemed to encapsulate the entire
universe and reduce it into his icy eyes. Bligh nudged the glass back to the
center of the table, laid his fork down across his plate - Duke, perhaps sensing
his human was upset, appeared beneath him, leaning his head back to get Bligh
to scratch him more.
"I wanna - tell ya a
story." Pappy began to
murmur, sighing some. His voice became commanding, lilting with his accent, the
sound of a polished raconteur, a master storyteller. "Long time gone...when I was li'l boy, I never knew my granddaddy, reckon I told ya--"
"Yessir yew did."
"He ah - went crazy - ran off one night and ain't
nobody seen em ever again." Bligh nodded - Pappy's face did not change, as
though his gaze was now peering directly into the past. "Well..." he
began again, "come ta find out, right bout the time Ol Patrick Lynch - my granddaddy's granddaddy - came over here
from Ireland, he met a young man, not yet two-and-twenty, by the name o'William
- William, ah..." He shut his eyes now, as though trying to remember - a
bemused look came to him as he chuckled to himself. "Naw - I can't
remember, I wrote it down somewheres but - anyhoo, ah..." He grunted in
self-affirmation. "William come up to Ol Patrick's one day, sayin he was
witched."
"Witched?" Bligh repeated.
"Yessir - witched.
Said a lady he was tryin ta court cast a spell on em and he was right sick -
wudn't say how. Asked Ol Patrick fer help, said he wanted em to cook up sumthin
that'd make em not witched n'more, seein as he was Irish so surely ta
goodness--" Pappy smirked, knowingly. "Surely ta goodness he'd know how ta take care of em. Well -
what's Ol Patrick gonna do? Little racist, weren't it? Ol Patrick believed in
witches jest like everybody else but - what kinda sumthin he gonna fix gonna
cure all that? He mighta been Irish
but he weren't no wizard, he was a
big ol Catholic, a God-fearin man."
"Can't ya fight witchcraft and all that with Godly
stuff?" Bligh ventured.
Pappy shot him a warning glance. "Ain't no stuff, boy--"
Bligh looked away, knowing he had spoken out of turn.
"Sorry - sir."
His grandfather made a small sigh before continuing:
"Anyhoo, evidently this weren't that
kinda witchin, cuz he had tried everythin, understand. Priest n'preacher and
Lord knew what else - guess Ol Patrick was his last chance."
"S-so he--" Bligh hesitated. "He - he wanted
him to - cook for him..."
Pappy nodded. "Sumthin like that. Thought Ol Patrick
could know a thing or too, give em sumthin or other ta help out, like I say.
But seein as he weren't that way - he tell William to g'on and go - get on bout
hisself." At this he motioned with his head, again, as though he were Ol
Patrick and he was shooing off poor William - he paused now, as though for
effect. "Well - here's where it gets a little queer, now. Come ta find
out, there's a big ol owl livin down ere by the creek - this about a month
later - and folk say it weren't no owl t'all, but William hisself up ere, in
the trees, all feathered and with big claws - waitin, waitin fer sumthin."
He paused again. "Whether it be that girl that witched em ta take the
curse off, or - sumthin else, I..." Now he shook his head, slowly. "They, rather - they never say."
Bligh was bewildered - he stared at Pappy, mouth agape,
both hands on the table, speechless.
"I heard that story growin up - passed down through
the years - fer the longest time, thought it was - yanno, ol folks jest tellin
tales..." He grinned. "Nuthin wrong with that now, but--" The grin
faded. "I done heard a whole lot over the years about folk seein an owl -
weird-lookin, big ol thang, up ere in them trees, hootin and hootin loud as can
be." He seemed to ponder the idea a moment, and then: "When I tell ya
ta listen fer the owl - that ain't the
owl I'm talkin bout."
At this, Bligh was beset with a feeling he had never
experienced before - the story that his grandfather had told him, the tale of
some unlucky sap being spurned and cursed by a witch and turned into a
half-man, half-owl, doomed to haunt the countryside forever, seemed familiar to him, so much so he
was near-spinning with something like déjà-vu, like a disused vault in his head
had been thrown open in his head, and there, long-forgotten, was the complementary
facts to accompany his grandfather's narration.
He had never, not once, ever experienced anything like this
- a regression, a joining, from nowhere to nowhere, pieces falling together
that were all blank, collecting together to form some indecipherable picture.
The owl-thing had asked him questions and it had been like
being in school and being called on by a teacher, expected to know the answer
when you hadn't even read the book. This was similar: it was like he had known
about this the entire time and had it, somehow, completely obliterated from his
memory.
But where had it come from, and where had it gone? And why?
Who was William?
His abrupt, unwelcome introspection was cut into by his
grandfather's voice:
"Boy - boy."
Bligh jerked his up from staring at the table to stammer
out his new revelation: "I know - I know all about that."
His grandfather was nonplussed. "Zat so, now?"
Bligh nodded - Pappy took a drink of water himself. He set
down his glass, and gave his grandson's remark a judicious look.
"Ain't like much ever happens round here, and people
talk - n'talk n'talk - I ain't sayin
what yew saw was that William feller up ere in em trees." His voice had
grown soft, almost comforting. "But sometimes..." Pappy began, seeming
to choose his words carefully. "What we see - ain't what really is."
He raised his eyebrows to end the sentence.
Bligh stared at him, unsure - he glanced away, past his
grandfather to the window behind him, where the darkness of the wooded mountain
was pouring through, shimmering dimly with reflected firelight.
"I ain't--" He cleared his throat, he took a drink
of water. "I ain't sure what yew mean, Pappy."
"What yew reckon I mean?"
Bligh considered the thought before shrugging. "Reckon
yew mean - reckon yew mean my mind saw
sumthin, but my eyes didn't--"
"T'ain't what I'm sayin t'all, boy." Pappy leaned
back in his chair, his eyebrows still up.
There was a twinkle in the corner of his eye that Bligh
knew meant he was withholding something, that he knew something Bligh didn't
and that he'd have to figure it out himself - this was how his grandfather
taught him critical thinking.
Bligh sighed through his nose, drawing his lips together in
a deep frown - he shook his head.
"I dunno - I--" He tried powering through the
congealed mass of questions, confusions, frustrations, but he failed, he shook
his head once again. For the second time that day, he had to admit: "I dun
- I dunno."
"Yew thought yew'd seen an owl, zat so?"
Bligh nodded - Pappy's eyebrows finally went down.
"Well mebbe it weren't no owl t'all - maybe it was
sumthin else." He seemed to read Bligh's tormented confusion, and gave one
of his own crooked smiles back. "Ya gotta think, boy - were it that tale I told ya bout Old William - come ta
life now? Ya said ya heard it from somewheres, n'yew could be right." He
cocked his head some, challenging his grandson. "Or ya could be wrong.
Mebbe - it was jest a reg'lar ol owl, nuthin more, nuthin less."
"Why--" Bligh frowned, this time sadly, feeling as
though his grandfather was, for the first time in his entire life, letting him
down. "Why ain't yew tell me the answer?"
Pappy leaned back in. "I dunno the answer, son. I ain't gonna tell ya what yew seen cuz I
ain't the one that seen it - yew gotta
be the one." He leaned back as though to survey his grandson, whose head
came down slightly to contemplate what the old man had told him. "All I
know is this town has some nutty stuff goin on round it - n'yew deserve ta know
it. Yanno I love yew, boy, I'm here ta help ya--" For a moment, just a
moment, his eyes seemed melancholy, his face turned helpless, and the
confidence and certitude he projected melted back to reveal something actually
worried. "But sometimes - a man has ta decide on his own. I wanna tell ya
what ya saw ain't nuthin ta be afeared of, but - I can't rightly tell ya that,
honestly. Jest be careful - what I been tellin yew all these years?"
Bligh cleared his throat. "Ain't - uh - ain't no telling what yew find in em woods."
Pappy smirked. "I mean it, too. Be careful, Bligh -
yew tell if'n yew see that bird again." He sniffed, reaching for his
grandson's hand - Bligh slid it to him and he squeezed it gently. "I'd
never let nuthin happen ta my boy -
monster or no monster."
Bligh nodded, sensing the conversation had come to an end.
"Y-yessir - I - I understand." He smirked, embarrassed at the
attention. "I love ya too, Pappy."
He tried to cheer up, because he could his grandfather
searching him, wanting him to reach a conclusion, even if the conclusion was
not a conclusion at all, but a question mark. In the instant, he realized the
method behind the disjointedness of Pappy's reply - the story that seemed to
confirm something but only added to the confusion, so that the question would
be left forever open.
They returned to their dinner - savory squirrel, the meat
tasty, well-seasoned, Pappy was an excellent cook as he was, probably,
everything else. Duke curled underneath the table to watch for scraps, and for
the moment Bligh tried to push seeing the owl-thing - William - out of his head, to enjoy the December evening with his
grandfather.
When the dinner was over and Bligh told Pappy how much he
enjoyed it, he offered to clear the table and wash the dishes - Pappy retired
to the living room to read his Bible and wait for him, so that they could watch
Law & Order together, their
nightly ritual, guessing whodunit, trying to take their minds off whatever
happened that day. Duke would join them, laying by the fire, rolling over with
all four paws in the air, snoring.
Bligh had plenty to think about as
he scrubbed the plates and silverware and set them aside on the waiting towel
to dry. Next week they
would go out and find a Christmas tree together, still alive and not cut down,
so that they could, when the season was over, plant it on the slope of their
mountain. Pappy would light candles in the house and he and Bligh would clean
together for Baby Jesus' birthday - you know all the farm animals face east on
Christmas Eve? It's true, Pappy would say, like he said every year, adding that
anyone around here will tell you that - all the animals know, better than the
humans they live with, that it's time to wait for Christ to come.
Pappy would see to it that Bligh, living in a town with
such savage strangeness pulsing beneath it, without parents and facing down a
world which would not understand the way he was raised and the way he spoke,
was still, at least for a time, safe - and loved.
Bligh thought about that the whole time they watched
television together - he hid a grin as he cuddled closed to Duke, he and his
grandfather's favorite show flickering on the screen.
Then the hour grew late he and Pappy said good night to
each other after they watched the news - Bligh lay awake in his bed, Duke on the
floor, curled on his rug like he always was, still exhausted from his day at
Dr. Barnes'.
When he heard Pappy's bedroom door shut, Bligh's eyes went
open, his face creased with perplexity - and a little fear.
He had tried to sleep, but couldn't - he always slept real
good when it was cold out like this, and cold in his house, but he couldn't, he
couldn't sleep at all.
He'd always known his town was a strange one, he'd always
heard that weird things went on, he'd even seen that big mountain lion - cattywampus - but he had never expected
something like this, something he couldn't deny, something he couldn't
explain...right in front of him...
Right then, he'd been all alone. No Drew - who would tell
him it was just an unusually big owl he'd seen, nothing more, no need to worry
about it too much, people don't turn into owls and there is definitely no such
thing as a forest-guardian. No Duke - who would growl and charge and
courageously defend him, not leave him vulnerable to be questioned by whatever the Hell had roosted in that walnut
tree. And no cell phone, not that his own cell phone was all fancy and had a
camera like Drew's but even so, it would have helped to know he wasn't so
isolated out yonder...
...like he felt isolated now.
Just as he felt out near the woods, he felt different, he felt apart from his bed
and his bedroom and his house and his town, like he had experienced something
nobody else was supposed to, just him, only for him, the woods, the mountain,
the whole town, the universe staring
at him, waiting for him to speak, waiting for him to answer that owl-thing's
question...a question that, deep inside him, he was sure he knew the answer to,
somewhere, somehow.
It made him important, that way - to know the answer, to be
entrusted, to be the one who kept the promise but maybe wasn't ready yet, maybe
wasn't old enough. But being important isn't always a good thing - having all
this weird attention on him, or feeling like he did, wasn't a good thing.
Drew had told him once: eventually everybody looks at
themselves and wonders who they really are. That's the point of being human, he
said - and he was coming from a place of his science books and all his smarts
which Bligh didn't have, and not knowing Bligh winced at the idea that he, too,
was a human being.,
So then who was Bligh?
The guy that talked to monsters in the woods? All his people except his daddy
had been woodsmen - was that it? Something about his family, way back when...?
Bligh shut his eyes, the day finally catching up to him at
long last, a welcome feeling of tiredness coming to him - what had happened,
what he had seen, the riddles left all unsolved, not yet, not today.
As sleep finally shrouded his mind he thought he could hear
it, one last time, the hooting, the call from beyond, close to his ears, inside
his head, nearer to his heart - a secret, a door to which he had a key but did
not know how to turn the lock, not yet, not just yet...
Who cooks for you? Who
cooks for all!