The world turned over and cried since I heard from you last. You may have felt a twinge? Heard a cry? Felt the wind shift. Made you wonder. An owl, or was it a hawk? the head shape was closer to an owl and it was midday when it flew low across the road and right in front of our truck yesterday as we drove out to town. Owl at this hour, or even a hawk....we said nothing but Susan thought of her father slowly dying in Albuquerque, but that may not have been right either. She didn't say anything and neither did I, but the image stuck for hours. In town we found some fine papers for my next little book and special papers for a booklet going to Norway. An arts council wants an immediate 25 and they want it by early next week, and we said certainly we would accommodate. The earnings pay for more real stuff. The ones on the point each and every day. The hawk, the owl. Amy's had a window seating and we took it and spoiled ourselves with my turkey sandwich with all the fixings, a lovely tomato soup for Susan, a fat bowl of NE clam chowder for the boy from Greylock. We still had enough time in the day to get back home, change duds, mow all the lawn and really sweat it up. Susan said we did the whole thing in 50 minutes. On the weather map it showed rain was coming from Utica, so that meant it would be here in 2 hours. It got here early, by an hour and a half. It must have been the lightning bolts and boosts of thunder that was aboard? We finished work just in time. I was cutting those fine papers from town as the rain thundered down upstairs on the steel back roof. If you were talking to me, I wouldn't have heard a word.
A week ago this same day I was at Camp Becket seeing my boyhood haunts and forests, and what was it that took me next door to Chimney Corners Camp, where my sister Sherry once upon a time went as a camper? Where I watched her ride a pony and my parents lifted me up into her lap on the saddle and around and around the corral we went. My sister always looked good in a cowboy hat. I played my first ping-pong here, outdoors, fresh green painted table tops with white frame out lines. Any time you want to play a game. Hundreds of girls in pigtails, glasses, white and green camp clothing, the cheeriest faces. My sister was one. I'm stopping for a moment to look around the campgrounds, easily a month before it opens, and so not one little girl is around. I can imagine them all coming out from under the trees and over the grasses and running running because they are young and they can. Yeah, that was my sister, too. 50 years ago.
That was exactly a week ago. Today it is the hawk or the owl flight, some omen. The moon will be full. The spring rain had lightning, quite unusual. We finished watching Last Chance Harvey and I was still taken by the concentration and sure handling by Emma Thompson about a single and mature woman just not wanting to be hurt by love. Not again. Not this time. Not ever again. Yeah, that was my sister, for a long time now.
The phone rings almost on cue. The hawk, the owl? Here's my Floridian mother with a voice I've never heard before. With a voice you don't want to hear. It isn't even a voice. It's a sound from the wilder depth or edge of civilization. Now you want to hear it more than your own heartbeat because it is your heartbeat. Your mother, of your sister, is telling you that her first born is dead and no one knows why. Someone had to cut her hair from the blood holding her to the kitchen floor. The mail had piled up. The trash cans were never brought back in all week. The neighbors thought she was away. Relatives were everywhere around. Someone's baby, sister, aunt, cousin, mother was dying right under their noses, right before their eyes, and she was doing it in the convenient bauble of modern life — where we talk a blue streak for miles on cell phones and forget who to touch
touch
touch
touch
The sheriff will say something
The autopsy will focus
The family will gather
The ashes will be buried
Some one will forever be recognizing this one missing for the rest of their lives, but she's not there
~ BA
