The Bird Eater (6 page)

“Husband?” Aaron asked after Miles was out of earshot. He crouched, plucked his keys from the mess, and continued to help Cheri clean the floor.

“Word travels fast,” Cheri murmured. “Or did you just guess?”

“Eric mentioned wedding bells. Congrats.”

She smiled somewhat sheepishly and offered up a demure sort of shrug. “It wasn’t that big a deal. You know how it is, one shotgun shy of a hillbilly hoedown. What about you? Where’s teen dream Barbie?”

Aaron’s smile wavered, then faded completely.

“Sore subject?” she asked, then shook her head as if to stop him from responding. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. Are you out at your old place? Jesus, what
happened
to you, Aaron? We didn’t know…we thought…”

He didn’t want to know what she and Eric had thought, didn’t want to consider the confusion, the worry, the hurt of losing a friend. The three of them had been like musketeers, always together, be it at one another’s houses or pounding the pavement in their dusty sneakers. They spent entire summers outside, wandering from street to street, their shoulders burning in the sun as they trudged from the community pool to the Dairy Queen and back again. Eric’s dad had helped them build a tree house in Eric’s backyard, and Cheri would sneak her mom’s chocolate chip cookies up there in her backpack. The boys would taunt her with earthworms on the banks of Bull Shoals Lake, the three of them spending more time untangling their fishing line than catching carp and catfish. As they got older, they replaced fishing trips with tape decks and portable radios. They would gather around Aaron’s boom box and listen to FM radio while playing Crazy Eights with a set of bent-cornered cards, ready to hit
RECORD
as soon as the DJ played one of their favorite songs.

A few weeks after they had both begun their freshman year as Warriors, Aaron found her sitting on the front porch steps of Holbrook House, waiting for him to arrive home from school. She had missed class that day, and when Aaron finally saw her he knew something had happened, something that had left her big eyes red and her cheeks swollen with too many tears. Aaron dropped his backpack onto the steps before they wandered into the trees surrounding the house, and in the sun-dappled shade Cheri told him that Pepper, her old chocolate Lab, had finally passed away. He watched her bottom lip quiver and her chin pucker with emotion as she fought to keep her composure, but it was no use. Cheri burst into a fresh fit of tears and Aaron held her as she wept. When she was finally able to pull herself together, he brushed strands of hair from her wet face, a new sensation stirring at the pit of his stomach. She moved to step away from him, to put some distance between them, but Aaron failed to release one of her hands from his grasp. Cheri’s eyes glistened wet and dazzling in the sun, her sorrow replaced by a look of nervous fascination as he pulled her back toward him, his heart drumming so hard inside his chest the ground tilted dangerously beneath his feet. Aaron cupped Cheri’s face between his hands and pressed his mouth against hers, and everything changed.

Cheri exhaled a breath and sprayed the floor with cleaner. “We waited for years,” she said softly. “We gathered up all the photographs we could find with you in them and we’d lay them out on the boards of the old tree house every few days. You know how Eric is, always superstitious. He thought we could summon you somehow, or at least summon an answer about where you had gone.”

Aaron swallowed against the slow-growing lump in his throat. He stared down at his hands, feeling guilty. He supposed he could have demanded to go home, could have insisted on seeing his friends one last time, but he hadn’t wanted to. After seeing Edie that way, the idea of being given a whole other life had been as appealing as it had been terrifying; getting as far away from that house as possible had too alluring a pull.

“He’s still like that, you know: superstitious.”

“Some things never change,” Aaron murmured.

“But you have,” she said. “A lot. I didn’t even recognize you. If you hadn’t said something, I wouldn’t have had a clue.”

Again, Aaron found himself silent. His feet were cold and wet, his thighs were starting to cramp from crouching on the floor for so long; his chest felt tight.

“I want to say you look good, Aaron. I want to tell you that you look
great
, but—”

“But I don’t.” He cut her off. “I know.”

“Why?” she asked. “What happened?”

He shook his head, not ready to reveal that much, at least not in the lobby of her husband’s shop. “I’m fixing up the house,” he said, changing the subject. “Going to try to sell the place.”

Cheri didn’t respond. She looked down to the wet linoleum and sprayed more cleaner instead. She was holding back, but he couldn’t blame her. It was the wrong place, the wrong time. Finally, she cleared her throat and glanced to the bags of fast food sitting on one of the folding chairs. “I should go,” she told him. “The guys are probably starving back there.”

Aaron nodded.

“But I’ll see you around, right?” she asked. She looked uneasy, as though if she let him walk out of that shop, it would be the last time she’d ever see him. He supposed it was a legitimate fear.

“Please,” he replied, a single word summing up his hope. He wanted to see her again. It was a feeling of unexpected comfort; if he stayed in Ironwood for long enough, his life would patch itself back together, things would somehow be okay.

Cheri smiled softly before gathering up the bags of food in her arms. “Okay,” she said, “after all, I know where you live.”

Aaron wanted to hug her again, but he resisted the urge. He stood, managed to drum up a ghost of a grin. “Come by anytime.”

“
Any
time?”

“Anytime.”

She gave the linoleum a bashful glance and nodded. “I’ll see you later, Aaron.”

“See you later, Scary.”

Shaking her head one last time, she stepped across the lobby and ducked behind the counter, disappearing into the back.

The moment Cheri stepped into her cramped little office, she felt like she was going to cry. Allowing the bags of fast food to drop to her desk, she flung herself into her chair and covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t process it. She had convinced herself that Aaron would never return, that she’d never see him again because somehow, somewhere, he had died. It had been the only explanation, the only way she knew how to let him go. And now, as if by magic, Aaron Holbrook had reappeared.

Cheri took a steadying breath and let her hands fall from her eyes, but her heart jumped into her throat. Miles was standing in the doorway of the office, his square shoulders filling the frame. He was watching her, catching her at her most vulnerable.

Miles approached Cheri’s desk without a word, pulling open one of the crumpled fast-food bags to peer inside. He sat down in the chair across from her, casually unwrapped a burger, and took a bite. Cheri kept her eyes diverted, not sure what to say. He was radiating disapproval, mute as he let it deepen into a typical slow burn. Forcing herself into action, she grabbed one of the bags and pulled it into her lap, fished out a paper sleeve of fries and shoved a few in her mouth, determined to ride out Miles’s unnerving silence with her own brand of quiet.

This sort of standoff had become commonplace. They’d break each other down with silence until one of them cracked; then they’d bicker back and forth until their verbal jousting reaching its zenith with one of them speaking a little too loudly, saying something a bit too harsh. That was when the real screaming would begin.

At first, these altercations had been limited to the privacy of their own home, but that was no longer the case. The guys in the garage had been privy to more than a couple of barn burners during the past few months.

Cheri pushed another fry into her mouth, breathing a quiet sigh as she chewed. Something about her exhale spurred Miles to speak.

“Why were you crying?” he asked flatly, staring at her from across the desk.

Cheri momentarily clenched her teeth, then tried to relax.

“I was just surprised,” she told him. “I haven’t seen him in forever.”

Glancing up at her husband, she waited for him to let it go.

“I thought he was dead,” she added, as though Aaron’s dreamed-up passing would make Miles feel better about what he had seen—Cheri crying on another guy’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around a stranger in a way they hadn’t wrapped around Miles in over six months.

“Why would you think that?” Miles asked.

She grimaced at his question. He was fishing for ammunition, ready to use her own words against her.

“Because he disappeared.” She dared to look him in the eyes. “He was my best friend and he literally vanished overnight. It was a little traumatic.”

“I get it,” he said.

Cheri tensed, sensing the onslaught.

“You had to lie to yourself to get over it. To get over
him
.”

“I was fourteen,” she countered.

“And I lost my virginity a year before that. What’s your point?”

Cheri rolled her eyes and stood up, stepping around her desk.

“Where are you going?” Miles’s annoyance was inching into his tone.

“To get myself a soda.”

“There’s soda right here.” He pushed the drink carrier toward her.

“Those are for the guys. I spilled mine.” Rifling through her bag, she fished out a small coin purse and headed toward the door. There was a soda machine along the side of the shop, one that Miles stocked full of generic brands rather than buying the kind that were displayed behind the clear plastic of the machine’s buttons.

“Cheri.”

She stopped just beyond the door, closing her eyes for a moment before turning to face him. “What?”

He watched her for a long moment, as though carefully choosing what he was going to say. Eventually, he leaned back in his seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Tell the guys lunch is here.”

Cheri chewed on the inside of her cheek before turning away again. “Sure,” she muttered, then stepped out of the office and ducked into the garage.

Six

Aaron could see the kid from the driveway. Sitting inside his Tercel, he considered slamming his foot onto the gas, barreling past Uncle Fletcher’s tool shed, and chasing that little bastard off. Whoever this brat was, he had already cost Aaron nearly two hundred bucks. But the more he considered waging a full-out war, the worse the idea seemed. Engaging in battle would mean retaliation, and payback would inevitably result in more vandalism. A truce would be better. After all, the house had been standing vacant for so many years; it could have been said that Aaron was the intruder. In a town where there was nothing to do, he was effectively taking away a local haunt.

He slid out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open between him and the boy, but before Aaron could motion the kid over, the trespasser turned tail and ducked into the trees. Aaron considered following, but he thought better of it. He’d wasted the entire morning at Vaughn’s. The window replacement guy was due any minute, and he’d hardly put a dent in the catastrophe that awaited him inside.

Climbing up the porch steps, he frowned at the skeletal bushes that he’d either need to dig up or cut down, made a note in his phone to buy porch netting the next time he visited the hardware store, and unlocked the door. He was only half aware of what he was doing when he stepped inside, his attention fixed on the cell phone held fast in the palm of his hand. Walking blind, he stopped short when the tip of his sneaker made contact with something soft on the floor. When he realized what it was, his stomach dropped to his feet.

A mound of dead birds were heaped in the center of the room.

Aaron took a reflexive backward step, shielding his nose and mouth with his forearm; the smell was faint but distinct, and the fast-rising heat of the day wouldn’t be doing those birds any favors.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

It was too much of a coincidence. That bastard kid had watched Aaron leave with the tow guy, then helped himself inside through the busted kitchen window.

Aaron pivoted on the soles of his shoes and marched outside, sidestepped the front yard, and came to a stop along the side of the house. The garbage bag he used to dump the birds he’d originally found in the front room was gone. His eyes darted to the tree line, searching for the little shit despite the glare of the sun. If Aaron saw that pint-sized prick again he’d have to hold himself back. But before he could dwell on what he wanted to do to the kid—bend his arm behind his back, jab toothpicks beneath his fingernails, stuff his mouth full of feathers freshly plucked from putrefying starlings—a white pickup came into view. Aaron’s fresh kitchen window momentarily blinded him as the truck slowly turned up the drive.

Aaron tossed out the birds for a second time and worked between the living room and kitchen while the window guy installed the glass. By the time the install was complete, Aaron had managed to clear the dust and cobwebs from the walls. After paying the guy, Aaron continued to chisel away the bird crap that had dried on the fireplace mantel and various windowsills, dusted the furniture in the front room, and both swept and mopped the ground-level floors. And by then, thoughts of Eric and Cheri coupled with a dose of early nineties Pearl Jam had all but diffused his desire for revenge.

He ended up standing in the kitchen, staring into the stale-smelling refrigerator that whined and groaned as it tried to cool down. He
had been too overwhelmed by memories and filth to dare look inside it until now. Thankfully, someone had been kind enough to empty it of its contents before leaving the house to fend for itself—probably someone from the church, if what Eric had said about everyone banding together had been true. Aaron had just barely scratched the surface of the cleaning that needed to be done, but he decided then and there that if he was going to sweat his ass off throughout the summer, he’d be doing it in the company of cold beer.

Just as he was about to head back out to Banner’s for brews and a few pints of ice cream, his cell buzzed against his hip. It was Eric.

“Meet me at Stonehenge at nine,” Eric said. “You remember how to get there?”

“Not in the slightest,” Aaron said. He remembered the place, but finding his way there was a whole other matter.

After finding the street he needed to take, thanks to the GPS on his phone, Aaron guided his car along the wooded road, his alignment off as he rolled on three old tires and one new one. He grumbled when the road turned to dirt, the washboard surface shaking the Tercel so violently it was a wonder he didn’t lose his muffler along the way. A quarter of a mile down the road, he spotted the glow of an unseen bonfire bleaching the deep indigo sky to a paler shade of blue.

He pulled up next to a beat-up Ford, leaned back in his seat, and took a deep breath. Something about this meeting felt finite, as though showing his face to the ghosts of his childhood would seal his fate and brand him as a bona fide Ironwood resident. But he’d already told Eric he’d come, and it wasn’t Aaron’s style to bail.

Tucked into the Ozarks like some ancient burial ground, Stonehenge was nothing more than a clearing a dozen miles outside of Ironwood proper along one of the fingers of Bull Shoals Lake. They called it Stonehenge because the oaks and maples had been cut down in a near perfect circle, and a handful of odd-shaped rocks jutted out of the ground every few feet. It was where the high school kids would congregate on weekends, thinking that nobody but them knew about the place—but in truth, even Aunt Edie and Uncle Fletcher had swilled cheap whiskey among those rocks.

With a six-pack of microbrew in tow, Aaron followed a beaten path through the trees and bushes to where the fire blazed, a faint spark of excitement igniting in the pit of his stomach. Pushing through that bracken made him feel young again; it reminded him of the times he and Cooper would meet friends on Rockaway Beach, when the only thing they had to worry about was how to score booze. Rockaway had become a haven—the perfect place to sit with Evangeline beneath his arm, a blanket wrapped around them both, Evangeline’s head on his shoulder as they watched the breakers crash onto the shore. Stonehenge was the Rockaway of Ironwood, the place where the youth of a forgotten corner of the world would sit, drink, and watch the moon’s reflection travel across the lake.

As soon as Aaron stepped into the clearing, a unified cheer rose up around the fire, awakening a newfound excitement to reconnect with the friends of his past. Eric met Aaron next to the tree line and patted him on the back with a wide smile. His button-down manager’s polo had been replaced by an old Silverchair T-shirt, and his jeans sagged a few inches below his hips, crumpling at the base of a pair of worn-out Converse kicks. There were a few girls on the opposite side of the clearing, but they kept their distance despite glancing Aaron and Eric’s way. They looked young, stealthily passing a square bottle between themselves as they glanced over their shoulders, probably whispering to one another about the guy they didn’t recognize—someone new, because everyone in Ironwood knew everyone else.

“We were worried you had changed your mind,” Eric said, still slapping Aaron on the back.

“I stopped off at your place for beer.” Aaron surrendered the six-pack to Eric while a guy stepped forward from across the fire, a Bud Light in one hand, his free hand extended toward Aaron to shake.

“Aaron,” he said. “How the fuck are ya?” His sandy blond hair framed his face like a shoulder-length curtain, the silver half-inch gauges that were shoved through his earlobes glinting in the firelight.

Aaron grabbed the guy’s hand, not sure who he was regarding, and the guy laughed at Aaron’s blank expression.

“You don’t remember me? Mike, man. Mike Faust.”

Aaron cracked a grin. If there had been a fourth musketeer, Mike Faust would have been it. He was Eric’s cousin, three years older and two grades above them both. Aaron and Eric had always regarded Mike as the “cool” one, the guy who heard all the new music first, who played the best video games and made out with his girlfriend in front of them like it was no big deal. A junior when Aaron had left, Mike had been the one to introduce Aaron and Eric to the likes of Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The button-down flannel Mike wore over his T-shirt did little to hide his slow-growing paunch. He looked rough, tired, like the past two decades had bounced him from one hardship to another. Silently, Aaron appreciated Mike’s worse-for-wear appearance. It made him feel a little less out of place, a little more connected.

“Jesus, dude, where the fuck did you go?” Mike asked. “We thought you were dead. Nearly held a funeral and everything.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Funds, man. Caskets are fucking expensive. We thought about using a shoe box, but that didn’t feel right. I mean, we didn’t even have a body.”

Aaron forced a smile. The subject of caskets left a bad taste in his mouth.

There was a third member of their party sitting in the shadows of the bonfire. He rose from where he sat, adjusted a too-large motorcycle jacket, and slowly approached the others. “Hey, man,” he said, offering Aaron a nod of acknowledgment.

“You remember Craig…,” Eric said.

Aaron and Craig Lawrence had never been close. Aaron had always found Craig to be a louse, even though he was Mike’s best friend. The guy was a pathological liar. He spent his time weaving elaborate tales about how his family was filthy rich despite living in a trailer, how his pop had bought him a brand-new Mustang even though Craig didn’t have a license. Aaron didn’t get why Mike continued to let Craig hang around, but he put on a smile and gave him a quick embrace anyway.

“Good to see you, man,” Aaron told him. “Cool jacket. You ride?”

Craig looked down at his leather as though only then realizing what he was wearing, but his reply came without a hitch of hesitation. “Hell, yeah, dude. I’ve been on the Harley waiting list for years.”

“So, what the hell?” Mike asked, motioning toward a cooler in the dancing shadows of the fire, encouraging the group to follow him back to where he and Craig had been sitting moments before. “What happened to you? You just went MIA?”

Aaron gave the group a shrug before taking a seat on a rotting log. It was like explaining an alien abduction; one minute he was here, the next minute he was somewhere else.

“I got taken into custody,” he said.

Mike and Craig both wore matching expressions of disbelief. Eric examined a bottle of the beer Aaron had brought, popped the cap, and held it out to Aaron.

“What does that mean?” Eric asked.

“Turns out you can’t be a minor and live on your own,” Aaron said, taking the bottle.

“Shit, sorry about your aunt, man,” Mike said. “I went to the funeral with my folks. Sad as hell. Seemed like the entire town was there.”

“My parents didn’t let me go,” Eric confessed. “Something about funerals being for adults, not kids.”

Aaron’s stomach twisted.

“So they just took you?” Craig asked. “Like, kidnapping?”

“I don’t know if you could call it kidnapping,” Aaron said. “There wasn’t anyone to take care of me, I guess. My uncle’s folks had passed a few years before, and I’d never met anyone on my aunt’s side. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead or what.”

“And your mom?” Mike asked.

Aaron shrugged. “They looked for her, but then they found out she passed away when I was a kid. They didn’t tell me much and I didn’t really ask. I guess I don’t really want to know. I didn’t know her anyway, you know? Edie was my mom.”

“Shit, that’s rough. So where did you end up?” Mike asked.

“Portland.”

“Seriously? Always wanted to go there,” he said, “never got the chance. Maybe someday.”

“It was just weird,” Eric said, distracted. “I mean, we at least expected you to be at the funeral. I sent a letter with Mike, but he just brought it back to me, like, ‘Sorry, man, Aaron wasn’t there.’ And Cheri…”

“I ran into her,” Aaron said. “Ended up at the shop, needed a new tire, and there she was.”

“What was
that
like?” Eric asked.

Aaron didn’t say anything for a moment, taking a swig of beer instead. How was it? Strange and transcendent, awkwardly perfect, electric enough to make him feel guilty for the way his heart had clenched and released when her mouth had drifted across his neck.

“It was okay,” Aaron said. “I don’t think her husband likes me too much.”

Eric made a face. “Miles.”

“Miles is cool,” Mike protested. “You knew him, right?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Aaron.

“No,” Eric answered for him. “He moved here the middle of sophomore year. Either way, I don’t know why they got married. She was fine without him.”

“Okay, Dear Abby.” Mike chuckled, trying to make light of Eric’s distrust.

Aaron didn’t want to be too quick to judge. If Evangeline had reacted to an old friend the way Cheri had, he would have been reeling with insecurity, too. Every couple had their share of problems. For all he knew, he had compounded one by walking into that shop.

The group fell into momentary silence, listening to the firewood pop, watching it throw sparks into the air. Eventually, Mike spoke again, changing the subject entirely.

“When’d you start on that ink?”

“Seventeen, on a fake ID,” Aaron said with a reminiscent smile.

“And what happened there?” he asked, motioning to Aaron’s left arm, the scar shining in the firelight like a glossy lick of moisture.

“Accident.”

“You got pins in there?”

“Proud owner.”

“What happened?”

Aaron looked down at his beer, reflexively peeling away the label. “A drunk guy ran a red. Sixty-mile-per-hour impact.”

“Goddamn,” Eric murmured. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

Aaron didn’t respond, failed to make eye contact, waited for the sudden roil of anguish within his chest to subside. The memory was still raw, burning like salt ground in an open wound, like a staple shoved beneath a fingernail.

“So you get a second chance at life,” Mike said, “and what do you do? Come back to Ironwood. What the hell is up with that?”