Opal Sees An Owl 

Opal sits day watch on the front porch, a dried up old sentinel waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever did of course, but she'd be there to witness it; good or bad. It was the middle of god forsaken nowhere and goings were slow. If the city wasn't rife with hobos and rapists, she'd have the boy fix her up in a little flat with an adequate balcony to sit and observe the real action of urban streets. Cities were the devil's business, though, and Opal wanted no part. Her and the boy — actually a grown son of 53 — would keep watch together sometimes; she in a wooden rocker and he on the opposite end of the porch in an old leather recliner. 

The recliner had seen better days indoors when daddy was still alive but it was ratty enough to allow the elements to touch it slowly. Opal took subconscious pleasure in watching the thing rot; remembering daddy stuck to it in the wet August heat, swallowing rum-and-cokes and chain smoking Pall Malls down to the filter. The leather was worn and cracked where that lump of a man sat each night being just about good for nothing; a fitting throne for an equally useless offspring. Taking no responsibility for his creation and upbringing, Opal had only contempt for the boy and she’d often remark that he’d surely arrived by way of stork.

He don't even look like me, she'd think, glancing over at his hulking, misshapen frame.  

Never married and maybe never even kissed a girl before, they were saddled with one another until some bitter end. Her unfortunate gift for continuously waking up and breathing, gave Opal cause to believe she'd outlive her only child, thereby depriving him of ever existing in the free world without her.

She knew he was hoping to get his greasy hands on her estate. Or, what was left of it.  The house, the contents therein, her old Cordoba (less than 50,000 kilometers), a small sum of cash left from that alcoholic prick of a husband, and her precious chair — the wooden rocker upon which nobody but Opal herself could sit.

A day like any other in late July, the two followed the shade back as the sun set westerly.  They sipped beers as usual; Opal methodically picking hers up and setting it down on a little metal side table. Habitual rust rings had formed beneath the sweating bottles.

"Alcoholics drink liquor," she'd say. "Your daddy was a sick man, boy. Rum? Yeesh. I never touch the stuff." The brown spout of the bottle rose and fell from her wrinkled hole, like a glass thumb being pushed into a large prune. "Nothing untoward about a lady enjoyin’ a cold beer boy. Time was all a person drank was ale."

That final bit of knowledge was lifted from M for “Medieval” in an encyclopedia set daddy had bought without asking first. She read them in spite after deciding to be at least smarter than that worthless man, gleaning useful tidbits to throw out at opportune moments.

The boy would nod agreeably in silence, as if every word was God's. He'd been told all his life that he wasn't intelligent and would have to make up for it in some other way (which he didn't, said Opal, driving the knife in as deep as it could go) in order to catch a woman's heart.

There was that giddy Arlene girl from the next lot over who used to call on the boy. He seemed to be in love, but Opal put the hammer down after she saw them swing dancing on the porch to a radio they had pressed up against the window screen, like a pair of idiots.

"Dancing is for harlots boy,” she scolded, “I'll not have that on my watch. I'll not have my son marryin’ a harlot and dragging the family name through the muck, no sir."

It turns to twilight on another dull day and Opal stares bleary-eyed into the half-lit woods.

She suddenly fixes her eyes upon a white blur in the tree tops, a stone's throw from the house. She blinks to clear any imaginations and concentrates on the spot. Still there and coming into focus, she makes out the shape of a large white owl.

"Boy," she whispers out of the side of her mouth, careful not to move a muscle. "You see what I'm seein' eleven o'clock and up, 'bout twenty paces? Don't move, ya fool!"  

The boy freezes and his eyes dart around the cut-out black on purple treetops to find whatever it is.

"There's a huge old owl sittin' up there watching me, you see?" she asks.

"I think I see," whispers the boy, louder than his regular speaking voice.

"Oh I don't like this one bit, not one bit." Opal, never scared of anything, waves her hand around for her beer bottle without removing her gaze from the owl.

The creature hovered in the shadows like a white specter. Never moving, never blinking.

"Can tear a man limb by limb if it chose, boy," Opal says, remembering a thing she saw as a child. A hawk or some kind of large bird, or what was a bird shred to pieces in a bloody mess at the side of the road. Just blood and white feathers and more blood. A horrible end it was, to be reduced to nothing and forgotten at the side of the road in a heap.

"It's those claws, boy.  Like a mess of butcher knives just grabbin' and takin' at will. Some people say them owls are ancient souls or liken them to spirits what have you. Not to me. No, those eyes are windows into bad things. Can you see the eyes? I can and they're looking right at me."

The boy, now stirring uncomfortably in the leather recliner pipes up in a loud shaky voice, "Let's go in, Ma."

"Hssst!  You move and you'll attract attention. No, we sit and we wait for it to leave and hope it never returns."

Opal and the boy sat stalemate across the owl, moving only their arms in steady motions for the beers and when those were done, they continued waiting. The navy sky turned to black and Opal dozed off despite herself as sometimes happens to the old.

She awoke with a start and remembered with horror the staring contest with the bird from hell, casting about feverishly in the shadows for her ghost.

"Hmph, the old crone has flown the coop!" she smirked triumphantly. "Saves me a trip to the shed for daddy's shotgun. It ain't my time. No sir." Opal realized then that she was talking to nobody, as the boy had gone off and left her defenseless as she slept.  

"Boy!"  she screeched. "You fool! You left me out sleeping like a slab o' meat while that harpy was circlin' the woods!?" She assumed he could hear her through the window screen but when she pressed her gnarled hand up against it, she felt cool glass.

What the devil?  On a warm night like this …

She went for the door, ready to burst in like a storm and rain fire all over that good-for-absolutely-nothing son, but it was locked tight.

"Boy! Boy! Open the goddamn door and let me in right this goddamn minute, you fool."

But there was no answer, no footsteps. Opal pounded and screamed, occasionally looking back fearfully to the woods. She ran around as fast as her withered legs could take her to the rear door but it too was locked.

The shed, she thought. I'll have to wait in there ‘til morning and when I get hold of that idiot tomorrow, there will be hell to pay and he'll be out on the street for all I care and I'll write him outta the will. Ain't nobody ever gonna be sorrier than that waste of flesh.

The shed was a rickety structure set a ways back from the house and you had to follow a time-worn dirt path to it which would have been difficult to navigate in the dark. Opal, being unusually spooked, walked swiftly but carefully along the path towards the safety of the shed.

…………………………………………...

Morning broke through the front windows of the house, pooling heat on the floor of the kitchen where the boy sat calmly sipping coffee. He got up like it was any other day and stretched the restfulness from his limbs. He opened all the windows and doors to let the fresh early air in. There were no deep thoughts or worries concerning his simple mind. For once, there were no bad feelings. He sat for a while in Opal's wooden rocker, savoring the stillness of the moment.

Out on the back lawn, about halfway between the house and the shed, there was an unnoticed wet mound by the side of the earthen path. Over time, and after it had been picked through by scavengers, the rain would dissolve what was left of the pile into the ground. A forgotten mess of a life, an unmarked grave.