Thank Gods

Boom!

There was the thunder again. This time it was so loud it was as if there had been an explosion in the air. The lighting stretched across the sky in hot white fingers, before vanishing just as quickly as it had come.

The rain was still pelting down, just like it had been for the past half hour. Tommy Hayes, age 11, sat by the side of the deserted highway under an overpass. Out here, it was pretty normal for him to walk the couple of miles between his house and where his grandmother lived. There were hardly ever any cars on this stretch of highway, especially during the summer. Storms popped up occasionally, but Tommy always remembered what his father had told him to do:

“If you’re ever walking along the road and a storm comes up on you, get under a bridge or an overpass and stay there until the storm stops or someone can come get you. Wouldn’t want you getting sucked up by a tornado, now would we?”

Tommy reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out the little pre-paid cellphone his parents had given him for his birthday a few months earlier, “for emergencies”. He turned it on. The bar at the top of the screen still read, “No Signal-Emergency Calls Only.” It had said the same thing when he had last checked 10 minutes earlier.

He knew what he was supposed to do: stay put. But this storm didn’t look like it was going let up anytime soon, and it was starting to get dark. Who was coming to get him? His grandmother definitely wasn’t: she didn’t have a car. His parents might be, but how would they know where he was? He was almost halfway home. If he ran, he could be there in 20 minutes. But then what if the storm got worse? What if a tornado popped up and he didn’t have anywhere to hide?

As he was running these things over in his mind, he heard a sound down at his feet.

Squawk!

Tommy was briefly startled by this sound and almost jumped up a little bit. Then, he looked down and saw a large black bird and hopping and scratching around in the dirt by his feet. It sort of looked like a crow, but not quite. Tommy wasn’t quite sure what it was.

Squawk!

The bird looked up at Tommy, as if it were trying to stare him in the face. That’s when he noticed something really odd about it.

It had three eyes.

“OK, this is officially too weird now.”, Tommy thought to himself. Maybe he had fallen asleep on his grandmother’s couch watching TV again? Any minute now, he was going to get woken up by the smell of her frying potatoes for dinner…

Squawk!

Nope, not a dream. No potatoes. This was real, and it was weird.

The bird just stared at him for a while. Tommy stared back, almost as if transfixed, like he wasn’t totally in control of what his body was doing.

After what felt like forever, the bird jerked its head to the right three times, then took off, half flying, half hopping, down the road and out into the storm.

At first, Tommy wasn’t sure what to do. Part of him felt like he should follow the mysterious bird, even if he knew that, rationally, that sounded crazy.

Tommy decided to be a little crazy today.

He ran after the bird, out from under the overpass and into the rain. By now, it was coming down so hard he could barely see. He was soaked to the bone in less than a minute, yet the bird just kept heading farther and farther down along the side of the highway.

“Well, since I’m already going that way, I might as well just try to make it home right away.”, Tommy thought to himself.

Suddenly, Tommy couldn’t see or hear the bird anymore. The rain was so heavy he was almost blinded, and thunder boomed through the air again. He had no idea where he was anymore, just spinning in a circle. In a panic, he tried to run back towards the overpass, but only got a few feet before he felt himself crash into something hard and fall onto the rain-soaked grass.

Tommy looked up, and could make out the hazy outline of a large man standing over him. Suddenly, two big strong hands reached down and pulled Tommy to his feet.

“Who, who, who are you?”, Tommy shouted in panic. “Where am I? What…”

“Calm yourself, boy”, a deep voice boomed as the man clapped a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. The rain slowed a bit, and Tommy rubbed his eyes and was finally able to get a good look at this man.

He seemed looked old, with a long, white beard and a wrinkly face, kind of like the guy on the box of fish sticks his mom sometimes bought from the supermarket when she wanted a break from cooking. He wore a beat-up old raincoat with a hood that completely covered his head, except for his face. In his other hand, the one that wasn’t on Tommy’s shoulder, he carried a gnarled old walking stick.

Now having a better look at his face. Tommy noticed that an eyepatch covered one of the old man’s eyes. Or what should have been one of his eyes.

“What’s the matter with you boy? You think I’m some sort of killer hobo or something?”, the old man laughed as he took his hand off Tommy’s shoulder.

“Well, I, um…”, Tommy stammered, embarrassed. “I, sir, I was under that overpass back there and I followed this weird bird and…”

“Yes, yes, I know. He’s one of mine.”

Tommy looked again and saw that the strange black three-eyed bird he had followed, along with another one just like it, were perched on the old man’s shoulders, one on each side.

“You, your birds?”, Tommy asked.

“Yes, my birds. See, since I only have one eye, I sometimes don’t see all that well. These two fly ahead of me and tell me what’s ahead and around."

“So your birds can…talk?”

“Of course they can, my boy! The one you saw was trying to speak to you! Trouble is, only I can understand what they say, but they don’t know that.”

“But how do they have three eyes?”, Tommy asked, more confused than ever.

“They were made that way. So they can see better, you understand.”

“Made by who?”

“That, my boy, even I don’t really know. They just showed up one day and said they were there to serve me, and I’ve had them ever since.”

By now, Tommy had calmed down enough to notice a few other odd things. For one thing, the old man was totally dry, even though it was still raining. Second, even though he looked older than just about anyone Tommy had ever seen, he also gave off this weird uncanny feeling, almost like an aura, if he were both extremely old and forever young simultaneously. Tommy had never felt anything quite like it before, but it was oddly comforting.

“Now, what in the Nine Worlds are you doing out here by yourself boy?”

“I was visiting my grandmother, sir. She lives about 3 miles down that way.”, Tommy answered, pointing down the highway in the direction he had been coming from before he met the old man.

The old man just looked at Tommy for a moment, as if sizing him up.

“And you decided to walk home in this? Very courageous my boy! If perhaps a little foolhardy.”, the old man chuckled. “I feel like I should apologize for the predicament you’re in. My own boy sometimes gets a little too excited when he goes troll hunting, you see, and then weather like this happens.”

Tommy just stared at the old man in confusion again.

“Eh, it’s a long story.”, the old man shrugged.

“Well, sir, if it’s not too much trouble, I was wondering if you could maybe give me a ride home?”, Tommy remembered the countless times he had been warned not to take rides from strangers, but this old man seemed pretty trustworthy, if maybe a little odd.

“Ride? My boy, I don’t have a car.”

“But then how did you get out here?”, Tommy asked.

“I walked. Just like you did. I walk everywhere I go.”, the old man answered, as if confused by the question.”

“Where did you come from? Where are you going?” Tommy was intrigued by the strangeness of the old man.

“I come from far away. I go wherever I need to.”, the old man replied cryptically.

“I’m, I’m sorry sir, I don’t think I understand.”

“Eh, don’t feel bad. Many people don’t understand. Now, no more questions. Shouldn’t your mother and father be looking for you, boy?”

“I mean, they probably are. But they don’t know exactly where I am, so it might take them a while to find me.”

“Hmm,” went the old man as he looked to the sky, “I think I may be able to help with that.”

The old man whispered something unintelligible to one of the birds sitting on his shoulders. It squawked obediently and then flew off into the storm. After about a minute or two, it returned, squawking excitedly in the old man’s ear.

“A-ha!”, said the old man. “Don’t worry my boy, your father will be here soon.”

“Really? When?”, Tommy replied. By now he knew not to ask how the old man could possibly know this.

“Right…about…now!”, the old man shouted as he wheeled around and stepped into the middle of the highway, his walking stick held aloft. Suddenly, an old white Toyota Corolla screeched to a halt in front of them. Tommy recognized his dad’s car.

“What the he-“, Tommy’s dad said as he exited the car, ready to yell at the strange old man who had jumped out in front of his car.

“Dad! Dad!”

“Tommy?”

Tommy’s dad turned towards the side of the highway just as Tommy sprinted towards him and hugged him tightly.

“Tommy, thank god I found you! I was so worried! I’ve been looking for you for almost half an hour now!”

Tommy’s dad then turned to the strange old man standing in the road in front of his car.

“Who’s this?”, he asked Tommy as he gestured towards the old man.

“Oh, he found me walking along the highway and stayed with me until you came and found me.”, Tommy answered.

“Well, sir”, Tommy’s dad said awkwardly as he reached out to shake the old man’s hand, “thanks for keeping an eye on my boy here. Can I maybe give you a ride somewhere?”

“No, no thank you, I’m perfectly fine.”, the old man said as he shook Tommy’s dad’s hand. “Good lad you’ve got here. Very brave, very respectful. He’ll do great things someday.”

“Well, thank you again, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day!”, Tommy’s dad said to the old man.

Tommy’s dad then got back into the car as Tommy clambered into the backseat.

“Alright, now let’s get you home and into some dry clothes. Thank god I finally found you.”, Tommy’s dad said to him as the car doors clunked closed and they drove off towards home.

“No, thank gods.”, the old man chuckled to himself as he continued walking off down the road through the rain, one black raven perched on each shoulder.