Monday, January 3, 2011

Postscript, Part 3

That all happened in August.  When I told Keller Bigsby to take any offer on my mother’s house, he told me no one was offering anything close to what I wanted.  He said people complained about the location, the necessary updating, and “general weirdness” or feeling that “I can’t explain it, but…the walls want to hurt me.  Honey, do you know what I mean?  Yes?  See, exactly.  The walls want to hurt me.”  I told Keller though that I didn’t care.  Call the most interested person and see what kind of offer they will make.  He did, and he called me back the next day.  I took the offer.  I sold my mother’s house.

Thanks to my house having long since been paid off I could live on a part-time wage at the Sleep Center.  Now that I had sold the house, however, I was going to come in to a lot of money.  So that night when Sammy picked me up like I asked and we went over to Boyce’s house, I asked them both if they wanted to stay in town.  Boyce said they didn’t want to give up the farm house.  Sammy said he wasn’t sure.  He had itchy feet.  I informed Boyce that he didn’t need to sell his house because I could pay off nearly his entire mortgage.  He would eventually need to find a job still, but with the amount of money I was going to have he could get his own van and start his own locksmithing business. 

I’ll spare you all the I-won’t-let-you-do-that chatter that came from Boyce.  I told him I was going to do it, but I also told him I was going to move in with him and his family.  He said he didn’t care about that—that I could have done that years ago if I wanted.  So we worked it out that the sale of my mother’s home would be divided between helping pay Boyce’s mortgage, helping him get a van for a locksmith job, and buying me a car.  Sammy looked a bit jealous that he wasn’t involved in this new creation, so I told him this: (1) If you and Boyce need a kidney from me, you get to go first (Boyce agreed to this as well), (2) If Boyce, Charlotte, and Boyce Jr. are wiped out in a horrific car crash or a carbon monoxide poisoning, you get what would have been theirs, and (3) I’m going to buy all three of us a trip to Central America so we can see the Resplendent Quetzal.  Sammy was appeased, even feigning interest in the quetzal part of the trip, but still thought maybe he’d be looking for a farm house in the area.  In the end he didn’t really bother looking though, since he spends so many nights over here.  He told Arby’s he wasn’t looking to leave the area, and they actually gave him a promotion.  It seems no one wants to stay in the area, so they were happy to keep him here.  Luckily, Arby’s is not aware of the booming falcon population that may increase people desire to move to the area.

I told Sammy and Boyce about going to see Rachel, and that I knew they had gone to see her before.  They told me they weren’t trying to hide that from me.  The first few times they went they told me right to my face, but I responded with “heroic attempts at showing a lack of interest,” so they just stopped telling me.  I told them she said I could come visit her, but I didn’t think I ever would.  Especially with all the birds that come by Boyce’s house.  It’s not right for a person to ask for too much.  Not long after moving in I built a couple nesting boxes with Boyce Jr. to put in different trees on the property.  We won’t know until spring if any of them will be used.  I love the Eastern Screech Owl, but I sure hope a Great Horned Owl decides to come live near us.

The five of us shared a Christmas Eve dinner a couple weeks ago, and we all gave toasts.  Charlotte toasted me, and thanked me for helping them keep the house.  Boyce toasted me, and thanked me for moving in with them.  Sammy toasted all of us, and said he was glad we were all alive, and we raised a glass for everyone we had lost.  Boyce Jr. toasted something or other.  It may have been a Transformer.  I gave a toast, too.  I said that every once in a while a flock of birds will be struck by a sudden storm of hail and fall dead out of the sky.  Fifty to two hundred birds will come nose diving to the earth.  It generally happens with birds like starlings or grackles or red-winged blackbirds, ones that fly near one another.  I told them all that it must be sad for a bird by himself to see the hail coming, and know he has no flock to die with.  No bird should have to fall to the ground by itself.  I said we’re all going to die one day.  We see too much of it to know otherwise.  I hoped though, that if Sammy, Boyce, Charlotte, or Boyce Jr. should ever be caught in a hail storm, I was a part of their flock, and that to nose dive to the ground with them is better than making it by myself.