by Etta Faire
Gloria talked to me in her head again. “It was the Fourth of July. We had to meet up with our families at the barbecue so we could all watch the fireworks together.”
Nettie’s pace was fast and efficient, like she already had everything mapped out and memorized. “They say the best spot is right by the Knobby Creek Boating Company. It’s where the local kids hang out.”
“I don’t know the local kids…” Gloria began with a stammer. “I mean, can’t we just hang out by ourselves and watch the show?”
Nettie pulled out two sets of binoculars from her bag and handed one to me. “For the show. And the boys. I think you know which ones I really want you to point out.”
An announcer’s voice echoed through a loud speaker somewhere. “Welcome to Landover Lake’s eighth annual Independence Day Water Ski Show.” A smattering of applause and whistles came from the crowd around us. Nettie pulled me up a dirt hill, away from the gas pumps lined up along the water, and up toward the large white service buildings where a group of teenagers stood around, leaning on a couple benches set up there. Some were smoking. Some were drinking from a shared flask.
The Knobby Creek rusty baby-leg anchor logo sat proudly atop the shed, making me realize it was supposed to look that way.
Nettie smiled at one of the boys. He looked at his friends and they laughed a little, elbowing him forward. The boy was tall with slicked-back short hair, jeans, and braces. I didn’t recognize him or one other kid. I tried to recognize all the boys in the group. Clyde was there. Myles Donovan and Mayor Wittle too. They had to be the Linders.
They looked us up and down. Nettie puffed her chest out while Gloria fiddled with the top button of her cover-up.
“You girls wanna see something?” the boy asked Nettie.
“No,” Gloria said.
Nettie elbowed her. “She’s kidding. What is it?”
He cupped his hand over Nettie’s ear and whispered into it.
She nodded. “No kidding?”
“Let’s just watch the show,” Gloria chimed in. “We don’t need to see anything. Thanks for the offer, though.”
About twenty crows swooped down by our faces and over to the bench by the front door of the Knobby Creek just as a thin, tall man in a gray uniform with a matching hat stormed out of the building. He waved a rolled up magazine around at the birds sitting on the bench until they flew away.
“Go on, go!” he yelled over and over. He turned toward the kids and swatted the magazine in the air around them too. “You all are as bad as the birds. Go on, get, unless you’re buying something.” When he saw Myles, he stopped himself and uncurled the magazine in his hand. It was Popular Mechanics, just like I thought. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you kids were with Myles, Freddie, and Eric. How are your parents, boys?”
Gloria turned to the boys and I got a better look at the Linders, two thin kids of varying heights with freckles and side parts.
The man continued. “Sorry, if I scared you all. These birds have been driving me crazy since May. I told my wife I’m gettin’ a scarecrow, even though she hates those things, thinks they’re uglier than the birds. But I’m getting one anyway.” He winked. “Or two. I talked to a man in Fremont, and I think I’ve got just the kind of scarecrow this town is gonna love. I’m putting ‘em right here on this bench so those mangy birds won’t sit here.”
Myles turned his head toward his friends, but I could tell they were laughing and making fun of the man.
The man tipped his old-style gasoline hat with the KC logo on it before walking back inside. “Tell your father my retirement thanks him for getting me in on that investment. Your father is a fine man. Yours too, Freddie.”
I wondered what investment he was talking about. I needed to know more. I made a mental note to go back to the Knobby Creek because I’d seen firsthand what kind of retirement that man was having. Unless being propped in front of a window with a magnifying glass and a magazine was what he’d been saving for.
A motorboat buzzed by and the crowd by the lake cheered. Gloria moved her attention over to the water skiers gracefully zooming by.
“The Landover Ladies Team,” the announcer said, allowing his voice to linger at the end like he knew they were a crowd favorite. All the men and most of the women stood on tiptoes to see the action, oohing and ah-ing.
Ten ladies wearing red, white, and blue swimsuits and tutus zoomed by with American flags mounted on their skis. As soon as the lively band music picked up, they pulled their flags out one by one and waved. I immediately recognized two of the ladies, Mrs. Nebitt and Mildred, only because Mildred told me she always wore a pink ribbon in her hair and Mrs. Nebitt wore a blue one.
“I don’t think your friend wants to come with us,” the boy said, shaking his head at Nettie like she shouldn’t even bother to ask. “She’s really into the show.” He laughed.
They walked up the hill toward the surrounding patch of woods and Gloria took a deep breath and followed them. I could tell it was more to talk her cousin out of going than it was to see if she could come. Nettie touched the boy’s arm and went back down to her cousin.
“Just stay here, Gloria.”
Gloria kicked her foot into the dirt like June had at the dock. “Why don’t boys ever like me?”
“Oh please,” Nettie replied. “Stop being such a dud and they will.”
I felt the punch in Gloria's gut. She knew her cousin was leaving her, again.
She ran her hand through Gloria’s hair to fix her headband. “They can tell you’re too much work,” she began. “And boys don’t like hard-to-get girls. Not in the summer, they don’t. Maybe at school, they’ll like the girl who sits off in the corner reading a book and wearing her mom’s humungous, awful swimsuit.”
“Nobody wears swimsuits to school.”
“You know what I’m saying.” Nettie bit at her cuticle. “That’s fine for long term, when they have more time to get to know a girl. But we’re summer girls. We have to be fun.”
“I don’t want to be fun.”
“Then I’ll see you later,” she turned to go with the boys, but then turned back around. “Whatever you do, don’t go home. My parents might be there, and they’ll ask where I’m at. But they also could be here. Just… if you see my parents somewhere in the crowd, tell them I went to find a bathroom, okay?”
Gloria nodded. “What’s in the woods anyway?”
She rolled her eyes. “Supposedly, a dead body.”
Chapter 21
Coordinated Attacks
The smell of fuel surrounded Gloria as she searched the beach bag she was carrying for some money or a soda. The sun beat down on her exposed shoulders and her heart raced as she debated what to do next: follow her cousin, go home, or stand around like a weirdo by herself and watch the ski show.
A couple of skiers came by the main pier, and Gloria put the binoculars back over her eyes, apparently choosing the weirdo option.
This time, a woman skier climbed onto the shoulders of the man skiing by her side. I could tell by her pink flower, it was Horace and Mildred, her muscular legs wrapped firmly around his neck. It was hard to believe the little old couple from the lake used to ski like that. Strange how time changed people.
After a second, Gloria threw the binoculars into the bag and stomped up toward the woods where Nettie had gone.
“I should’ve gone home,” she said to me in her head. “It would’ve been a long walk, but I should’ve done it. Who knew this was just the beginning of Nettie’s stunts?”
She turned back around to scan the crowd for their parents as she walked. I could tell she was half-hoping she’d see them.
It grew darker the deeper she walked into the woods. The sound of music and boats slowly faded into the sounds of cicadas and frogs. Gloria listened for the kids, but didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, except a low growling sound. She gasped, turning her head this way and that, not knowing what was going on. She spun around to head back, stepping on a large, dry tw
ig that caused a cracking sound to interrupt the otherwise calm woods. Loud flapping followed, whooshing past leaves, piercing branches.
“Go away!” A girl screamed, her voice shrill and frightened. Gloria at first thought it was Nettie being attacked by the boys.
“I knew it,” she said, running toward the voice, even though every part of her wanted to run in the opposite direction. She put her binoculars on and scanned the area.
A young brunette in a multi-colored pleated skirt darted frantically through the forest, birds diving for her head like she was an unfortunate extra in a Hitchcock movie. She swung her book bag around in windmill fashion, smacking some of the humungous black birds, but none looked even slightly deterred by her efforts. I knew exactly who it was from the article. Bertha somebody-or-rather. I would see the hero dog soon. I couldn’t wait.
The hero dog was the one that looked just like my dog. It was a crazy thought, but my dog didn’t seem to be aging, so I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been around, not-aging, in the 1950s as well.
Gloria was almost to the girl now, but stopped short when a large black bird flew straight into her face as if it were daring us to go any farther. It swooped up at the last second. Gloria stumbled back, narrowly escaping its thick beak, the smell of rot and mildew swooping up with it.
Tripping over a rock, Gloria landed hard on the ground. A sharp pain shot up our back. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed a large stick on her way up, and swung it above her head like a baseball bat.
The girl I knew to be Bertha was on the ground now too, screaming with the book bag covering her head as the birds pecked her legs and arms. I already knew the girl would survive. The newspaper article said minor injuries.
“Get away!” Gloria screamed. But they weren’t like other birds. They didn’t respond to loud noises. They seemed laser-focused on their attack.
Gloria’s attention turned toward a blur of gold bolting through the bushes and trees beside us. Without stopping or hesitating, the dog snatched one bird after another from off Bertha’s legs, easily snapping through bones even though most the birds were about as big as rabbits. He swung the animals around in his jaw, spitting them out as soon as they’d broken into two or gone limp in its clutch. He didn’t pause, never looked up. He was equally as focused. The sound of cracking bones and whimpering birds filled the woods. Most the birds gave up and flew off with only a few larger ones remaining.
“Get off my dog,” I screamed, but it didn’t come out. Gloria’s ghost was the only one who could hear me in the channeling.
“How on Earth is that your dog?” she asked me in her head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I see now how Rex got the scar on his nose.”
The dog bled profusely from the tip of its nose. And even though Bertha was covered in cuts and bruises herself, she grabbed the dog into her arms after the birds left and held him close as the other kids finally arrived.
“That was crazy,” said the boy I recognized as Clyde. “You okay?”
Bertha checked her legs and arms. They were dotted with blood but she nodded.
“My aunt owns the newspaper. They’re covering the ski show right now, but wait’ll I tell them about this. You all stay here,” he said, running off through the woods. “I’ll get help.”
Jackson’s aunt was on the scene in less than 15 minutes with her photographer. She was a graying stick of a woman around 60 with a sleeveless shirt, a very dark tan, and so much extra skin hanging off her bony arms and legs she looked like she was wearing a Silence-of-the-Lambs skin suit in need of an iron. A dark brown cigarette dangled from the side of her mouth as she finger swept her thin bangs from her forehead. “This the victim?” she asked, pointing to Bertha.
A paramedic also pushed his way through the crowd that was forming and began assessing Bertha’s injuries. “Stay still,” he told her, opening up his bag.
Gloria stepped back, still trembling from the experience. She turned around and saw Nettie standing there with the boys, and Gloria’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh Nettie,” she said, wrapping her arms around her cousin and hugging her. Nettie smelled like pot and cologne.
“It was awful,” Gloria whispered into her cousin’s ear. “Those birds wanted to kill that girl, and I swear, they wanted to kill me, too, for trying to stop them.”
“Were you coming into the woods to spy on me?” Nettie asked.
While Gloria tried to convince her cousin she was just following Bertha’s screams, I listened in on the other conversations around me.
“People are already afraid of these damn birds. And we can’t afford to lose any more tourists,” Aunt Ethel said in a cigarette-induced low voice, probably to her photographer. “Focus on the dog, the hero perspective. Comb the girl’s hair and get a close-up of her and the dog. Don’t show any of that blood. Not a drop.”
Gloria was still trying to placate her cousin, reassure her she wasn’t going to say anything. Her attention was nowhere near the dog and the girl, so I couldn’t get a close look at the Lab like I wanted to.
“Did the boys really show you a dead body?” Gloria asked.
Nettie’s cute hairdo was a disheveled mess and her swimsuit was turned to the side, all wrong. She twisted it right and giggled. “There wasn’t a dead body anymore, no. Just the spot where the boys found one a couple weeks ago or something. They’re not supposed to say anything about it. You know, so the police can keep some details secret. But they told me because I’m an out-of-towner, so it didn’t matter.”
“Congratulations,” Gloria said.
Nettie continued, oblivious to the sarcasm. “The paper said the man had been split in two, right down the middle, but the boys said the man had actually been decapitated. His head was on one side of a log, body on the other. Can you believe it? Someone sliced his head off.”
“I want to leave right now, go back to California,” Gloria said. “And never, ever come here again.”
“The man was a transient…”
“So?”
“So, that doesn’t happen to normal people. Besides, one of the boys said the bum came into some money, some sort of great investment, and a jealous relative did him in. So, it’s not like there’s a crazy person on the loose.”
“This whole place is crazy,” Gloria said, looking all around. Her gaze stopped on the police officer who was grilling Bertha on the incident.
“If you don’t mind, we’d like you to come down to the station to make an official report, Miss…” the police officer said. His voice was familiar, but I knew there was no way I could possibly have known the man.
“Hawthorne. Bertha Hawthorne. Call me Bertie,” she said, still holding onto the dog.
“This is about the same spot ole Richard was found in last week,” the police officer said, and I realized it was the same voice my ex-husband used.
“Mason, you’re not suggesting birds did that to Richard, right?” Aunt Ethel said. “Any fool knows a bird couldn’t split a man in two. And the last thing we need is for that to get around.” She turned to her photographer. “Don’t put that connection in there and don’t get any of these mangled, dead birds in the shot either.”
“But they’re huge.”
“Exactly. Everybody knows Richie died from one of his drug deals gone wrong. Being split down the middle is what happens when you lose your moral compass,” Ethel said loud enough for the crowd around her to hear. A couple people nodded. A few others winked at her.
Ethel had called the sheriff Mason, which I knew was Jackson’s father’s name. Fortunately, Gloria’s attention went to him so I could get a better look at the man I’d never met and didn’t know very much about.
Even though I’d seen him in many pictures, he wasn’t nearly as tall as I thought he’d be or as thin, and he seemed to have a perpetual hunch in his shoulders and a faraway look. Other than his full beard and mustache, he didn’t look very much like my ex-husband at all. And I couldn’t help but wond
er why Jackson never mentioned his dad had been the sheriff of Landover before.
But the biggest question running through my brain was who was Richard? And what in the hell had split him in two? Was it a drug deal, a jealous relative, or a wild animal? That was definitely one for the research pile.
The paramedic had a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he bandaged Bertha’s leg.
Bertha pointed all around as she told Jackson’s dad what had happened. “I normally don’t cut through the woods,” she began. Her brown hair was cut short like Elizabeth Taylor’s, her make-up almost as perfect. And after a bird attack. Was I the only one who could never look polished? She continued. “I only took the shortcut because I was coming from school…”
“What kind of school is that?” Ethel asked, looking up from her pen and paper.
“Secretarial,” the girl said proudly. “Mrs. Hetterman’s, the best in the county.”
“They have school on the Fourth of July?”
“I get a discount on tuition if I come in and correct papers. It took longer than I thought, and I wanted to catch the whole ski show, so I took the shortcut. I don’t know what would’ve happened if it weren’t for this dog,” she said, pointing to the Lab still by her side. “He’s my hero. I’m calling him Normandy on account of the way he stormed in and saved the day. Like the allies in Normandy.”
The dog barked at her and she laughed.
“Sounds like he likes his name,” the photographer said, clicking photos.
“And you said crows did this to you?” Jackson’s dad asked.
The girl looked up at the trees like they might come back.
“No,” Gloria interrupted. She marched over to the sheriff. “They were birds, and some were crows, but some were different, larger and with weird beaks. I saw the whole thing and my aunt’s an amateur ornithologist.”
“A what?”
“A bird watcher. She says she’s never seen anything like them before. We just got in yesterday, but they’re all over the lake. They growl.”
The wrinkles around Aunt Ethel’s eyes grew thicker as her face contorted from a scowl to a smirk. “Growling birds? Ain’t that something, sheriff? These kids pulling your leg?” The cigarette fell from her lips, and she stomped it out with her sandal. “I’m not putting any of that crap in my story and I suggest you keep it out of yours too. No sense scaring the town over a kid’s joke.” She stared at him long and hard, drawing large x’s over some of her notes.