The bird didn’t disappoint me that morning. Like clockwork, I heard the familiar titter as he woke up. His song was hesitant at first, but then it got louder and stronger and angrier. I spied a flurry of wings within the branches of the tree and then he darted out, zipping to the ground as quick as he could, hoping to nab a worm or two and then buzz back to his nest, soaked and miserable.
“Howdy,” I croaked, my throat still dry from sleep. “Good to see you this morning. Want some coffee to go with your worms?”
He landed on the wet, spongy ground and began to peck through the mud. He glanced over at the window, and I swear he could hear me. Maybe he looked forward to seeing me as much as I did him. With a final tilt of his head, he got back to business. I smiled, watching in simple contentment as he hopped around, looking for breakfast. Furious chirps punctuated each tiny jump. I laughed out loud. He didn’t know how good he had it. At least he didn’t have to worry about nicotine withdrawal.
I stared closer at the bird. Something seemed wrong with his feathers. There were splotches of what looked like white fungus growing on his back and wings. I wondered what it was.
The pickings must have been slim that morning, because he strayed farther from the tree, almost halfway to the tool shed, looking for worms. The remaining grass in the yard and the thick, rolling mist almost obscured the robin. I pushed my glasses up on my nose and squinted, trying to track him. Suddenly, he gave a triumphant whistle and leaped at something I couldn’t see.
A moment later that chirp of victory turned into a frightened squawk, and the robin shot up into the air, his wings buzzing furiously. Something squirmed through the mud, and then burst upward after him.
I shouted from the window, wanting to warn the robin, even though he’d already seen it. The thing on the ground was hard to see amidst the rain and fog. I caught a glimpse of something long and brownishwhite. It was fast. It
The thing snapped back to the ground, like one of those Slinky toys my grandkids used to play with when they were little. A second later, it was gone as well, disappearing back down into the mud as if it had never been there at all.
Stunned, I closed the blinds and stood there, my hands and legs shaking in shock and disbelief. After a bit, I put my teeth in and made my way into the living room. Blue darkness had given way to the dim gray haze of dawn.
I stared at the cold and useless fireplace. I’d closed the chimney flue to keep the damp air out. It was built to keep the rain from coming in, but there was so much moisture in the air everything in the house ended up mildewed if I left it open. Above the fireplace was a mantle, made out of a wooden crossbeam taken from my daddy’s barn. It was old, like me. Also like me, it had survived numerous tornadoes and storms and hail and lightning and fires and droughts…and floods. Many, many floods.
On the mantle, my family stared back at me from their frames. I lost myself in them, trying not to contemplate what I’d just seen. Rose and I on our wedding day, and the portrait we’d gotten taken at the Wal-Mart in Lewisburg for our fiftieth wedding anniversary. She was even prettier in the second picture than in the first, taken a half-century before. Our kids: Tracy and Doug, when they were little. Next to that were snapshots of Tracy on her wedding day, her long, white veil spread out behind her on the grass, and another picture of her with her husband, Scott, taken on their honeymoon. Next to that was a photo of Doug taken in 1967, wearing his green beret, a First Cavalry patch emblazoned proudly upon his arm, just before he’d left for Vietnam.
There were no more pictures of Doug after that. That had been the last one, and I still remember the day Rose took it. I’d told Doug I loved him and that I was proud of him. He’d told me the same.
That was the last time we ever saw him. When he returned home, it was in a mostly empty coffin. The Viet Cong didn’t leave us much to bury.
There were more pictures of Tracy and Scott, Rose and myself, my best friend Carl Seaton and me with the sixteen-pound catfish we’d pulled out of the Greenbrier River eleven years ago, and the two of us standing next to the eighteen-point buck that Carl had shot one winter before old age stopped us from deer hunting altogether. Another showed me shaking the hand of our state senator while he gave me an award for being a World War Two veteran who’d lived long enough to tell about it. More numerous than any of these, though, were the pictures of my grandkids: Darla, Timothy, and Boyd.
All of them were probably dead by now, which was something that I’d been trying hard to avoid thinking about. Now it was starting to creep back in, because thinking about their likely deaths was better than thinking about what I’d just seen outside.
I got out a box of wooden matches and lit the kerosene heater. Its soft glow filled the room. I cracked the window just a hair—enough to let out the fumes, but not to let in the rain. Then I put the tin kettle on top of the heater and set the water to boiling, so I could have my instant coffee, which also was running low. My hands were trembling, partly from the arthritis and partly from the craving for some Skoal, but mostly from fear.
Although I didn’t want to, I thought about what I’d just witnessed.
Rose had died of pneumonia three winters ago, quietly fading away in her hospital room in Beckley while I was down in the commissary getting a cup of coffee. Although I’d loved her with all my heart, for some time after she died, I was angry with her. Angered that she hadn’t said good-bye. That she went before me, leaving me here to fend for myself without her by my side. Rose had always done the cooking and cleaning and laundry, not because I’m some kind of male chauvinist, but because she’d truly enjoyed it. I was clueless—helpless—after her death. I didn’t clean the house for over a month. Tried to fry up some bacon and set off every smoke alarm in the house. The first time I tried to do laundry, I poured in half a bottle of detergent and flooded the basement with bubbles. Then I leaned against the dryer and cried for a good twenty minutes while the bubbles disintegrated all around me.
After that, Tracy and Scott pleaded with me to move up to Pennsylvania and live with them. Their own kids had moved out by then, leaving enough room for an old man like me. Darla was going to Penn State, studying pharmaceuticals. Timothy had moved to Rochester, New York, and was working with computers. And Boyd—well, he had joined the Air Force, just like his grandpa.
Just like me. Boy, that made me proud. He wanted to fly.
The teakettle whistled, startling me. I poured hot water into my mug and spooned in some coffee crystals. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
Instinctively, I knew my family was dead. I can’t explain it to you, other than to say that if you’ve ever felt that too, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I just knew they were gone—a horrible, gutwrenching feeling. With Boyd, it was more than just intuition, though. Early on, before the storms hit America, I saw the coverage of the tidal waves that took out Japan. He was based there.
Now he was stationed at the bottom of the newly enlarged Pacific Ocean, and there’d be no more Japanese radios or cars or televisions or cartoon programs for a long while.
With the other members of my family, it was just a sense of
It’s a terrible thing to outlive your spouse. But it’s even more horrible to outlive your children and your grandchildren. A parent should never live longer than their child. The pain is indescribable. As I said earlier, I tried not to think about it. And yet, on the morning of Day Forty-one, I kept it fresh in my mind, picking off the scabs and letting the wounds bleed. I had to.
It was the only way I could stop thinking about what happened to the robin…
And the other thing. The thing that ate the bird. It had looked like a worm, except that no worm could ever grow that big. That was impossible.
Of course, so was the weather we were having. And I was too old not to suspend disbelief, especially when I’d seen it with my own eyes.
Could I trust those eyes? I wondered about that. What if the worm wasn’t real, that I’d hallucinated it? Maybe my mind was slipping. That scared me. For someone my age, dementia is much more terrifying than giant worms.
