Owls in the Trees

Dan woke up feeling bad. The worst he’d felt yet, as if there was a knife in his gut or some small animal in there eating him from the inside out. He dragged himself out to the porch to sink into his rocking chair and closed his eyes for a while, feeling the warm sun on his face. He knew he should eat something but he’d had no appetite for days.

Dan looked out over his small world. Some barrels and the Ford truck sat in the clearing in front of the cabin. The woods that rose beyond it were backed by low mountain ridges that changed from green to purple as they stretched into the distance. Birdsong filled the morning. This had been his home forever, a quiet and safe place he had never wanted to leave. He had not wanted to share it with anyone else, either, and he was beginning to think that was not such a smart idea. He was more and more aware that he was going to die here, all alone, and soon.

He shifted in his chair. It hurt to do anything--to walk or sit or lie still in the dark in his bed. He didn’t have any painkilling medicine, and he didn’t think he could buy any.   The truck had two flat tires and Dan was pretty sure there wasn’t any gas in the tank, anyway. Even if he managed somehow to get her rolling, he didn’t have the strength to cut the barbed wire he had strung across the road down by the creek last year to keep hunters from wandering onto the property asking for water and expecting conversation. Dan was having second thoughts about that decision, too.

He would have reached down to get his jug but he knew it was empty. Moonshine helped. It dulled the pain and if he drank enough of it, it put him right out. There was no moonshine left in the cabin, but he knew there were still a half-dozen jugs at the still by the creek. To try to walk there would hurt him, but Dan figured it would hurt just as much if he didn’t, so he pushed himself up out of the chair and hobbled through the cabin to the kitchen’s back door. 

Passing through the door, he tore a hole in the sleeve of his flannel shirt on that damn nail that was always catching on things. He’d been telling himself to hammer the damn thing flat for years, but he’d never taken the time to do it. Yet another of his life’s decisions to regret.

He took a hoe that was leaning against the cabin’s back wall to use as a walking stick of sorts and started out past the privy and the empty chicken coop, into the woods. The path was mighty overgrown with black raspberry canes that clawed at his pants legs like tiny, greedy hands. He pushed on through them, trying to keep his mind on the sweet oblivion waiting for him in the still.

To get to the still, he had to pass a place he realized he had been avoiding ever since he got so sick--the little cemetery in the deep wood where Maw and Paw were buried. Paw had died when Dan was forty. Maw had died when Dan was only ten. He tried not to look in the direction of the graves as he passed. 

Dan reached the still and found four filled jugs waiting. They were mighty heavy, but he knew he should bring all that he could carry, as he might not be able to make another trip. 

He draped a pair of jugs around his neck, their handles looped together with twine and began to struggle back to the cabin. He soon found he needed to rest, and the only place was the tree-stump near the graves.  He dropped the jugs to the soft, loamy earth and sat.

After a moment, he looked at the two graves. It was apparent that some animal had been nosing around them again, disturbing the layer of dead leaves that covered them. Foxes, or maybe a black bear. He felt guilty for not taking better care of the sacred space.     

The plain wooden crosses also needed attention. He used to paint them every spring to keep the moss from overtaking them and wood beetles from turning them to dust. He felt bad about that, also, but realized sadly that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. In a week or a few days, he’d be dead too. He realized that he was the last person on earth who cared about or even knew about these graves. 

He also realized that he wouldn’t be joining his parents here in this chapel of nature. He’d die in the cabin. Probably on the front porch. Maybe some trespassing hiker or land surveyor would find him there, but most likely wild animals would discover him first and disperse his bones to various parts of the woods. He’d have no gentle care, like Maw got. 

He remembered when Maw died. She’d been sick and sweating a lot in her bed. His old aunties came and fussed over her. One night he heard her moaning through the bedroom wall and in the morning, he found that Paw had taken the bedroom door off its hinges and set it across the backs of the kitchen chairs. Maw was lying there on set of new sheets, dead, and the aunties were washing her with cloths.

Later they dressed her in her favorite dress—the one with the pattern of little owls in the trees. It was an orangey-brown colored cotton with a high neck and long sleeves. It had been her favorite dress forever. Even now Dan could remember pulling on her skirt hem, demanding attention, or lying on her lap with his head pressed against her warm breast as she rocked him.  He remembered counting the little black owls out loud with his pudgy baby finger.

He realized how often he’d been thinking about that orangey-brown dress. He’d had such vivid dreams of late. Dreams of his mother caring for him like she did when he had a fever when he was little. He dreamed of her sitting by his bed and wiping his brow with a cloth. The dream had been so real, he could almost smell the clean, cotton smell of that dress.  

He felt tears coming but decided to fight them, decided to lug the whiskey jugs back to the porch and drink until he couldn’t drink any more.

It was even more difficult to walk back to the cabin. As the kitchen door came into view, he feared he might never reach it. Every step was a battle, but he made it. He leaned the hoe against the wall, lowered the jugs from around his neck and pushed open the door. But he didn’t walk in. He stood staring at the scrap of torn fabric caught on the nail in the door frame. More brown now than orange, the little black owls still sat on their black branches. And in the kitchen he saw Maw waiting for him as her sisters had waited for her, holding a bowl of clean water and a cloth.