02.11.08
Posted in The Mission at 10:19 pm by Dan Jensen
The scent of rotting meat accented the aroma of honey suckle. An open jar of hamburger sat slowly browning in the Valley heat.
The tilting wingspans of the three vultures cycled ‘round like the blades of a ceiling fan against a high, blue ceiling. Around and around, as though they were chained together like ponies at the county fair.
Her skin, anointed with meat, glistened in the sun where it wasn’t shaded by the deer skin.
Cindy lay atop the flat roof, enclosed by its 18-inch perimeter wall, with her right hand shading her eyes, still as possible, hoping to use her body as a lure, hoping to bring the great scavengers in a little lower. She grew drowsy in the warm sun, and let her mind drift off to sleep.
As she slipped under the conscious surface, he appeared to her once again, soaring twenty feet or so above her in the swimming subconscious air, breaking the rays of the sun with mighty wings as he drifted left and right on the heavy air.
She was jolting into consciousness as her sleeping body tipped slightly, and she woke to a wild flapping of wings, ten or twenty feet overhead, as the startled vultures strove to escape the sudden resurrection. In a moment, the sky was empty and silent. A moment later, Cindy pulled her clothes on, grabbed her bow and quiver, clambered over the perimeter wall, and eased herself down until her feet touched the top of the fence.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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Posted in The Mission at 9:13 pm by Dan Jensen
The scrolling text on the TV screen announced yet another closure for their school.
After breakfast, Cindy returned to her room and grabbed her bow and quiver. She waded quickly through the fog to the back lot, and stepped and stumbled across the lumps and furrows of the recently ploughed soil. Once she’d arrived at the far back of the lot, she turned to face the fence that enclosed the family lot. She couldn’t see the fence, but she had seen enough of it to know it was there, and she knew exactly where ‘there’ was. She began pulling arrows from her quiver, setting them, and releasing them into the fog, one after another in rhythmic succession. Knowing how many arrows she had, she never reached back into an empty quiver, but began across the fog to a veiled plywood target board. She heard her brother shout “coming through!” for his own safety as he cut blindly across the lot. Collecting her arrows, she turned back into the fog to repeat her assault on the dissolving board, over and over, as the fog began to burn off, and the target emerged from the milky veil. Armen would, without fail, return home from lake football before she ever completed the bombardment.
One sunny February day, more than a week after the last recent rain, the fog had thinned out and burned off. Armen and Cindy walked home from school. They walked together more circumstantially than intentionally. One would often lag behind the other. One might have more urgent business at home than the other. Chances were they’d both need to relieve their bladders after school. It was easier to withstand the torments of the bladder than the teasing in the restrooms. This day, Cindy took the lead.
He saw several turkey vultures soaring high above their neighborhood. Maybe something had been hit. Maybe something had died, and had been thrown out onto one of the vacant lots.
The thought occurred to Armen that Cindy either had to pee or she was in a hurry to get back to her archery. It wasn’t more than a passing thought. He was more interested in the vultures.
He didn’t see Cindy when he got home, but he thought nothing of it. He was not accustomed to keeping an eye on her, as much time as she spent on the back lot. She would be back for dinner as ever before.
One day not long after, Armen went to play some post-season football in the field beyond the lot. Cindy was not there. He thought that she must be in here room. She didn’t really have any friends to go visit after school, or did she?
Again, she was back in time for dinner.
Armen would find himself checking for her more often. Most days he would find her with her bow on the back lot, but some days he would not; then one day he decided he’d tail her. He covertly tailed her right to their back door, followed her into the house, and watched her leave with her bow and quiver. He continued to tail her when her could, and it seemed that she always did the same thing. He determined that she must be taking her bow and quiver elsewhere, so he began to tail her from the house. He found her heading straight to the lot, day after day. Finally, one day in April, she altered her routine. She stopped outside the back porch and looked up into the sky. Armen couldn’t see what she was looking at from inside. As soon as she continued walking, he slipped out the back door. He crept quietly toward the back fence. As he got past the garage, he heard a creaking sound behind the garage. As he peeked around the ivy barrier, he spied his sister standing atop the six-foot wood fence, and from thence lifting herself up onto the flat roof of the garage. “Yreka!”, he whispered, but he found himself uncertain as to what he ought to do. After a moment’s silent deliberation, he chose to leave her be for the time being. It had suddenly occurred to him that such a private place was just right for his little sister. Knowing she was there was all that he really needed. He turned and walked back to the house.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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