Perceptions On a Summer's Day (may vary)

He watched the path down where the it came out from under the buckbrush. Something just out of sight was coming towards him. It was much louder than he would have thought anything that would fit under there could be. True, the sound of it's passage, more ambling than charging, seemed louder because of the many seasons' worth of fallen oak leaves there.

Little Head-Bob the owl sat on the black oak branch some thirty feet up from the ground. He listened with unease, even though he knew the odds of anything down there being a threat to him up here were pretty slim. He was learning gradually to not make rash moves over hasty conclusions about what were often, really, non-threats. 

More than once he had leapt from the safe comfortable nest into the roaring campfire, so to speak, just to get away from nothing. When he told this observation to his mate she responded that he had gotten awfully wordy, no doubt from spending too much time around humans. 




The old turtle paid attention to everything as he moved through the woods. He felt the brittle crackling of the dry leaves under his feet and the small sticks scraping along the sides of his shell. He heard the wind in the trees. He smelled the prickly pear fruit, just ripe, up there next to the sandstone place. 

He might enjoy that if he got up there, perhaps even this afternoon if he kept a steady pace. He couldn't see that far with his near sighted turtle-vision, but he could certainly almost taste the cactus fruit. Were prickly pears worth traipsing around out in the open up on the sandstone? He knew sometimes hungry coyotes howled there in the night.

He stopped and thought about that and about the great horned owl sitting in the tree on the edge of the little clearing just ahead. He drew into his shell then, closing the door in front of his eyes. 

It had been many seasons since he had, as a tiny shelled hatch-ling, crossed paths with a great horned owl. He had survived that then and he was pretty sure it was no real threat to him now. Still, it made him anxious. 

Turtles' long memories gave them plenty of things to think about, plenty of things to stay in about. At least Bobby's memories did. There in his cozy shell, insulated from outside concerns, he fell into a half dosing kind of sleep as the morning turned to noon.



Bob dreamt of walking the path through the woods on the hill, up towards the old sandstone. His perspective seemed curiously skewed. He was seeing the woods from a bit above what he thought of as his normal perspective. Still he was not up as high as say, a bird gliding through the trees searching for poor slow little things to pounce upon. He saw himself wondering why he had thought of it that way. Walking along in his dream he hummed an old tune about a broken arrow and a bottle of rain to make himself feel calmer, but then he couldn't remember why.

He bolted upright in his bed wide-eyed at the sound of one word, one syllable spoken loudly, somewhere in the room right there next to him. He looked over at his wife. Sound asleep, she had her head buried under the pillow. She had surely not made that sound. The room was silent now. All he could hear was the ringing in his ears. The Ring said nearly nothing. Just *

He got out of bed and walked into his son's room. Nothing. He walked down the stairway, through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing. He blinked once, slowly, there in the kitchen, in the dark.



Bobby shook himself awake inside his shell and opened his eyes. It felt as though something had been reset in his mind, in his... feelings. Never mind, he saw himself think. He could feel it was warming up out there now and he opened his shell and started off through the underbrush.

He vaguely recalled being anxious about something that had startled him. Some sound, some sharp intake of information, unsought and unprepared for.  He stepped out of the concealing brush.

Owls didn't need to concern him now he thought, though every now and then one might come down to rasp stark warnings about the nature of crows and clack it's sharp beak at him. They tended to vocalize their opinions too much he thought. Most things did. The old turtle walked resolutely past the big owl's perch as it watched him now, in stony silence.

Bobby liked the mourning doves though. Their soft murmurings as they tucked each other in, to keep safe through the night, comforted him greatly sometimes. The sound meant something tender, and hopeful, and brave.

It reminded him of the promise of spring, heard and tasted even in the chill fall air as he would be going into some dark den to hibernate, perhaps never to come out again.

He smelled the sweet prickly pears again as he stepped out of the trees, up onto the warm sandstone, and into the full open sunlight. 
He heard the mourning doves cooing softly, somewhere, just behind him.







For your listening pleasure:
"Broken Arrow" Robbie Robertson, Acoustic cover by Mr. Brad Cole

 

Things Found While Cleaning Out the Garage

Bob hadn't intended this to be the day he cleaned the garage, but looking at the heavy rain falling outside the open overhead door, he supposed it was as good as any. Uncommonly heavy rain for here, for this season, it reminded him of the fall downpours back home.

Gradually he passed through the stacks of boxes and upon shifting the layers of flat materials leaning up against the wall he was surprised to find the deer skull hanging there. It seemed undamaged by all that stuff he had just moved, but he felt guilty, for not having been more careful.

He reached out and took it from the wall and…

Little Head-Bob watched in awe as the rain came down in nearly solid sheets, the trees lit up by the lightning that flashed over and over. He had never seen a storm like this in his young life and he instinctively backed up to the far wall of the nest hole, against the warm living part of the old tree. It had shielded his family from the weather all his life, perhaps it would still do.

Over the rain and the roaring of the creek, now a surging smashing thing he did not recognize, his keen owl ears picked up the sound of something running down the hill. It crashed through the brush toward him as though in flight or panic.  He could hear it coming, leaping and darting, changing direction every time the lightning flashed or the thunder struck.

Terrified, the doe came so fast it never had a chance to stop before it got to the raging creek. Now twenty feet wide and over twelve feet deep, the once tiny creek was carrying everything in its path downstream with it. 

Watching from his nest, Little Head-Bob's eyes flashed wide, shocked, as the deer's reflexive leap carried it high up, out over the creek and almost to the bank on his side. Then plunging into the roaring water the deer tumbled out of sight and was just - gone.

Lightning flashed and across the creek he saw a shadowy thing standing as though looking his way. He shivered and blinked but then the shadow was gone, obscured by darkness, as the lightning faded.

Another flash of lightning and Bob looked up from the skull in his hands and there out through the rain across the street, where the water ran swift through the ditch, he thought he saw a shadow. Something with four legs, something there… and then gone.

Little Head-Bob blinked in the sun, drying his feathers as he dozed, dreaming of a man who walked along the creek bank. The man stopped, looked at the pile of dead brush stuck under the tree fallen across the creek, and caught the glint of light off something there.

Bob waded into the knee-deep creek, careful of the slick moss that covered rock bottom, trying to watch where he was going while still keeping an eye on that spot in the brush.  Hedge thorns raked the back of his hand as he tunneled it into the pile, back almost to his full arm's-length, before finally catching hold of the thing. Carefully bringing it out he was surprised to be holding a perfectly intact deer skull, too small for a buck, staring back at him.

Little Head-Bob watched as the man climbed backed up out of the creek, the skull of the storm-killed doe in his hand.

Standing in his garage Bob jumped, startled out of his reverie, when his wife poked her head in to call him to dinner. He looked down absently at the skull in his hand.

"Are you still hanging on to that thing?" she asked.

"Uh-huh. Be there in just a minute, Hon" he replied.

She cocked her head and looked at him kind of side-ways like she did sometimes. Then half grinning, she turned back to the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

Bob found a push pin there in the tray and reaching up high on the wall stuck it in.  He hung the skull and his memories far up this time, out of everyday life's range, not quite so easily covered.

It just seemed to matter somehow.

"My World", Bob said, "Not Thurber's, and Welcome To It"

Bob was somewhere in a dream, moving, no — driving, in a car, somehow having just come down from some great height with a jolt yet surprisingly still intact, sort of, and into a landscape — no a road, no not a road — sand and dunes, others all racing around him, and

*FLASH!*

Little Head-Bob awoke.  Something felt, no — something WAS wrong. He couldn’t focus his eyes. There was something, sand perhaps, in the wind—in a wind that was blowing into his eyes and — there was no wind.  Maybe not even his eyes, but still, something was not right. Something was wrong. The young owl could not get his eyes to focus, his. . . smell wasn’t working, the leaves of the tree, his tree, an ancient black oak, a black jack, they wouldn’t come right. They just weren’t right.

Something seemed to strike him in the head — on the inside of his head. He tilted his head, and tilted it some more and one of his feet, he couldn’t tell which one, let go of the branch. It lifted of its own accord. He couldn’t make it come back down, couldn’t make his strong talons grip again the branch. He listed farther to one side, the leg kept lifting. In a panic he shook and fell, down and down and, so fast the ground came up, he knew he was dying and

*FLASH!*

Bob woke, something felt, no — something WAS — wrong. He couldn’t get his mind to focus. Someone was talking, he could hear words, coming across the room — he was in a room, and he could hear her speaking. He knew he should be able to understand the sounds she was making. . . words. She was speaking words. He could tell. And she was upset. He knew this, but still he could not make the words come into focus.
Reality was. . . not right. Time was moving wrong. It wasn’t moving backwards, but wasn’t flowing right, either. It was like sitting in a meadow, when the warm spring breeze that was drifting from behind was suddenly a stiff wind in your face, full of sand. And screwing your eyes shut tight, you suddenly couldn’t tell where you were and

*FLASH!*

It wasn’t that time, that reality, was moving backwards, it was more like reality was a cat. Reality was a cat being petted, but the wrong way, against the lay of its fur, and the woman, she was upset. She was speaking, weeping, and he could not understand her words and. . . 

He was walking, outside. He had just passed one of Claire’s vineyards, was coming up on Maeve’s orchard, he could smell the peaches, ripe and almost overripe. The thing was there again, just over his shoulder, his. . . left shoulder, he could feel it there, keeping pace with him, not pouncing, but just, almost, ready to.  He was alone. No, I — I was alone. I am alone. Where am I? What day is this? 

 “Friday,” the thing, keeping pace with me, just over my left shoulder, says.

*FLASH!*

Bob blinked. Something had just happened. He wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t get a bead on where he was, when he was. Time, it wasn’t moving backward, exactly. It was more that time, that reality, was a stream flowing around him, and he was spinning out of control, moving, no the stream, the river of time, it was moving, at break-neck speed, and Bob was staying in one place, but spinning. 

“It’s all right,” she said, there, just over his left shoulder.

He was walking past Maeve’s Orchard, coming up on one of Claire’s vineyards. There, sitting on a branch in one of the peach trees, no – in a black jack tree, a young owl blinked, was looking at him and… just fell off its branch.

*flash*

This piece originally appeared on Amwriting.org

The Face in the Woods

Little Head-Bob woke up. He could hear the wind through the oaks and the cedar trees. He could feel a draft coming in the hole to the nest. Spring here, his first, was still a little chill in the mornings. He was warm though,  huddled up with all his brothers and sisters so close. His mother’s silent appearance with a still warm squirrel was met with enthusiastic  hoots and rasps from four different adolescent beaks.

Just out the hole in the oak, where where they all sat digesting, was the remains of another oak, worn by weather and eaten by termites.  There was little left but a ring of bare trunk about as tall as an owl, and one almost flat side rising to about the height of a buck’s shoulder. The outer surface of this side, bark long gone, showed something else that fascinated Head-Bob, something he had never seen anywhere else. 


 It was the face of a man, prominent nose, eyes set deep under heavy brow and staring up, directly at the entrance to the nest. Little Head-Bob had never seen a man. All he knew was that this face, so different to him, was of something strong and fierce. Perhaps it was a spirit, some guardian  of the woods , perhaps one of those he heard sighing and whispering in the night.

On the far side of the small woods, other beaks were raising more raucous  voices, grating and challenging. They changed the feeling of the woods and indeed the air itself.  The Murder of Crows was awake and casting about for whom, as they say, it might devour.

Though it was normally his family’s habit to stay in the nest most of the day, they did  sometimes go out into the limbs of  their tree to watch and to listen to their woods. 


With his keen ears he could hear the distant sound of  the crows. He had never seen a crow either, but he had heard them calling through the woods. He somehow  knew their strident voices, heard first from this way and then that, meant nothing good. Still, he wondered just what all that  noise was really about.

Perhaps today was a good day to go for a  little flight. As he hopped to the edge of the limb and pushed off into the air he heard his brother and sisters rasping and calling in dismay at his abrupt departure. he stopped in a nearby persimmon tree to watch the remarkable progress of a tortoise crashing loudly through the remnants of last year’s dead leaves. He wondered how something so like a rock moving at such a slow pace could make so much noise.

He continued on across the wood, thinking about the tortoise, he had forgotten about the crows.  As he flew on, suddenly there was a crow, another entirely new thing to him, flapping from limb to limb, all the time cawing more and more loudly and alarmingly.  Another crow, then another, and another until  Little Head-Bob was surrounded by many crows, diving at him, hopping along the nearest branches as though in mock attack. 


He hissed. He flapped and spread his wings in warning display. The crows were not impressed or frightened. He dove out of the tree, right at two crows nearest, but they were too fast, to agile for him to touch. And still as he tried to get away from them, away from their noise, the crows pursued.

Little did he know, but would soon discover, he had just met his second greatest enemy and possible nemesis.  It was not uncommon for an owl to be continually and relentlessly harassed and pursued, both day and night, until unable to sleep or to hunt the owl would weaken, succumb and die. The crows had a system. They had numbers. They could, by working is shifts, keep up their siege well beyond the strength of any one bird to match. As the day wore on Head-Bob learned, bit by bit, of the nature of crows.

As he perched, his back up against the trunk of the tree, hissing and snapping at the crows, he began to pick up another sound. Some other unknown creature, was making its way into the woods. Though most of his attention was on the jeering crows, he could still track the sounds of the new thing enough to realize it was coming directly towards him. Was this, he wondered some new foe, taking advantage of his vulnerability to end his short life?

But when the creature emerged from a copse of cedars The young Great Horned Owl saw something he never would have expected, even more remarkable the murder of crows. It was a large thing, walking on two legs, covered in something not fur, not feather, nor even scales. It carried in its upper limbs something even more remarkable, a long shiny thing that smelled of fire,  some mineral, and somehow, some new definition of death.

As Little Head-Bob perched, his back against the trunk of the tree, transfixed by the shear strangeness of the thing below, it did a new thing.  It turned its head and, staring him straight in the eye,  showed him its face, showed him the face in the woods. It was the face he had seen all his life, carved in the stump by his nest.

The thing looked at Head-Bob. It looked at the crows. It looked at Head-Bob, and again at the crows, and then at the thing it carried.  Its face, as it watched the crows, took on a harder even more intimidating cast. It  raised the thing and pointed it at the crow nearest to Head-Bob. He saw it  hopping towards him on the limb above his. The world exploded. It ended with the sound and the fury of a thousand thunder claps. 


The young owl sat up in the grass below,  the crow lay dead a small way in front of him. The rest of the crows had taken off, but hadn’t gone far.  They were mumbling now in the next tree, to themselves, or the owl,  perhaps to the man. 


The man spoke, another new thing. He spoke to the crows. He spoke to the owl.

“You no-good sons a bitches are gonna learn to leave my owls alone!  And you, young feller, better get back to Mommy and Daddy while I instruct these miscreants and your gettin’ is good.”

Little Head-Bob stayed crouched where he was, unable to move.

The man, the Spirit of the Woods, waited one – two – three breaths. 

 “I mean leave! Now! And do try to pay attention to who’s around next time, would you?”

Little Head-Bob  jumped into the air and flew faster than he had ever flown. Behind him the sound of a thousand thunders came again, and again, and once more.  He went straight back to his own tree, back to his nest. He buried his face under his wing, overcome by too much fear and too much amazement, over the crows, over the man, the face in the woods.

Bob woke up. He looked around him at the cold dead remnants of last night’s camp fire. He looked at the sandstone before him there on top of the hill at the edge of the woods. Everything seemed different, more serious, and more miraculous than he had ever seemed to feel before. He had no idea why. There was something, some feeling … he just couldn’t remember.


 He got up, rolled his sleeping bag and started off towards the house. He wanted coffee, that first, best cup of the day.  He thought he might get his tools, go back up into woods today, work on that carving of his father’s face. The one he hadn’t seen in too long.