A Banquet in the Hay

By David Pemberton

Vultures are scavengers, eaters of the damned. I saw two or three of them spiraling off in the distance. They aren’t known to attack living animals, but will sometimes hunt down the wounded or sick, attracted by the smell of death, beaks salivating at the odor of ripe blood. Although I’m not sure if their beaks are able to salivate. They fly in a holding pattern above the carcass, or the soon-to-be carcass, waiting for it to become a carcass. This is called a kettle. They do this because they are mostly driven by the need to eat, like a raven or a hawk, staying in motion but constantly drawn to the same point. Vultures are very circular that way.

I read in one of my ornithology text books that vultures are immune to most poisons that dead bodies produce, like Botulinum toxin, one of the most poisonous naturally-occurring liquids. If any other animal were to ingest it, it would be paralyzed, suffer internal bleeding, convulse, lose vision and then die. It’s used commercially for rat poison because it has no taste, but sometimes it is also used for Botox treatments, ironically, to make old women look like they aren’t dying.

I could see out of the corner of my eye a large black vulture perched on the limb of a tree which was bending and bobbing with the weight of the fat bird. He shook his neck wildly, waving his head back and forth, squawking, setting his plate at dinner. But Vultures don’t eat living things.

Ornithologists once stated that Botulinum toxin did have some effect on vultures, because they eat so slowly, unlike a raptor or harrier. But recent studies show that the vultures don’t even notice it. To them, it’s just another liquid like blood or sweat or tears or whatever else it is that they might eat. They don’t even feel the poison. They just like to take their time eating.

I was flat on my back, breathing in deeply and with an annoying wheeze. My skin was paper-white, cut with steam rising from all the rips and tears and holes in my body, escaping to the evening glow of the blood-red sky. Pieces of my clothes were torn into my flesh, my ribs poking out of my blue cable knit sweater, my knee bleeding through my jeans, my wrist bending around my shattered leather watch which stood still at six fifteen. If you viewed everything from the top, my body made something of a swastika shape. Or maybe a cartoon running man. My head was pointed towards the sky, with fresh and dark red blood pooling to the upper right of my frame. Maybe I was lying on a slight hill, or maybe it was because most of the wounds were on that side of my body. Or maybe my blood just wanted to go that way.

My right eye was swollen shut, if it was there at all, I can’t really remember. My left eye remained open, looking around, darting back and forth from one vulture to the next. I was surrounded by leaves, a hollowed oak tree, a crooked fence made of rotten wood, and sun-light. But mostly, and I blame this on my position, I was watching clouds and vultures, or clouds of vultures, flying in a kettle.

They say it is rare for vultures to attack and eat anything that is still living. In a lecture once, Dr. Dreiberg explained that vultures have little discrimination when it comes to what they will and will not eat. Mostly, they tend to stay away from chickens, cats, mice, small things whose bones splinter when broken. On that note, vultures are especially drawn to broken bones; somehow they can smell marrow from miles away. Dreiberg suggested that it was a natural instinct, the smell of marrow meant broken bones, the broken bones meant nothing could escape, meant it was easy. But vultures don’t eat still living things, they say.

James had dragged me off the main road, into the middle of field of hay in an off corner portion of my parent’s farm. But I don’t think he knew it was my parent’s farm. In all fairness, he might not have known it was a farm at all. The bus stop was about a mile away from the first hay field and when I came to visit I usually just walked the remainder of the distance. It was an accident, he was just passing through.

The shadows of the kettle were split up by the harsh angle of the low sun, like a car driving by your window at night, or when light shines through a fan, or when the doctor passes the flashlight over your eyes, mysterious and dangerous, a feeling of knowing and at the same time not knowing. A couple of short-eared owls flew over head, paying no mind to the vultures as they cast two smaller shadows over me. I watched them pass, slowly, and formed my lips into a chapped smile, whispering a prayer. Owls are mostly solitary, living alone in the rotten trunks of trees, rarely even making contact with one another. On the rare occasion that Owls are seen together, they are called a parliament. What struck me as odd about this, however, was that short-eared owls are an exception to the Owl family. They aren’t even nocturnal.

The owls moved on, as if nothing were happening, flying eastward towards the main road. The fingers on my right hand twitched, waving good bye to my new friends. At least, I thought, I was able to see something a little more pleasant.

Once the shadows of the owls were gone, the large circling figures above me grew, decreasing the circumference of their circle. The ground shook with a thud of a fat birds landing. Gawking at one another, the vultures waddled closer, moving with uncertainty, moving carefully, too cowardly to attack something so almost-dead. The bald and wrinkled head of a vulture draw into view, staring down at me as I stared up at him. I was still smiling, thinking of the owls. Vultures aren’t known to eat still living things, but I figured that maybe there was no real difference. I closed my eye and felt the warmth of leaving my body, giving up my ghost as the birds began to dine. My name was Jonas.


The owls flew on, past the fence and over the main road, casting their shadows over a powder blue hatch-back that was traveling below. James drove the car just over the speed limit, with the windows up, breathing out a strong bouquet of alcohol. Though it was dark, the blood on the hood of his car was still noticeable, and the crack in the windshield split his view of the road into several different fragments.

A cigarette hung limply in the side of his mouth, lit but un-smoked, while strands of velvet heat lifted and mingled with his tangled and grease-soaked hair, seeping deeper and deeper, engraving a smell of nicotine that couldn’t be washed out. His knuckles were white; his yellowed fingers gripping the brown leather steering wheel of his car. His green eyes remained still, looking but not looking, reflecting the street lights that were lit as he drove, as day turned to night. James took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it between his index finger and thumb and in a flicking motion, tossed it at the driver’s side window.

The hot red bud bounced back off the glass and landed squarely back into James’ lap. The fire-hot ash burned past the worn denim and into his white and pasty skin. He blinked into realization. Staring down in horror, he patted himself, hopelessly attempting to smother the heat in the palm of one hand. He stayed attached to the steering wheel, pulling slowly to the right, swerving the car between the empty lanes of the lonely dusk time road.

The hatch-back drove straight into a ditch that ran parallel to the road, just off of the road’s shoulder. The car shook as it came to a forced park, rattling with the cold, hard earth. He sat for a moment, in shock at his current situation, moving his hands over himself, making sure that everything was where everything was supposed to be. He looked in the rear view mirror, reflecting back at himself a flash of green and black and white, staring at his bloodless face and specks of beard and lifeless skin. He turned the key over and over and over, attempting to start the car again, hoping to back out and continue on his way. With every grind of the starter, James closed his eyes and prayed “Oh God, Oh God, please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

***

My father woke to the sound of birds, coming from just outside. There sat a parliament of owls, resting in a tree whose branches came almost within touching distance of the old glass and wood-framed window that looked down on the farm from Charles’ room. He sat up in bed and twisted his body towards the owls; letting his feet touch the hard-wood floor. He yawned and stretched, revealing the deep set wrinkles in his face that were clearly visible, only in certain lighting, such as morning. The sun-light gave his silver hair a platinum glow, and the early angled shadows defined his high cheekbones, showing off the one sixteenth Cherokee he always bragged about.

At the window, he peered out at the twisting branches of the old oak tree. He tapped on the glass and murmured, “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Charles opened the window and leaned out a bit, straining his eyes, trying to see the brown birds against the brown branches. They were hooting just a few feet from the window, sitting close together. Charles backed himself into his room again and began to look around, glancing from the book shelf to the bed to the floor, back to the book shelf, to the painting easel to the bed to his slippers, trying to find something heavy but not too valuable. Finally his pale blue eyes rested on a copy of “The Once and Future King.” He opened the book and read the hand-written inscriptions on the inside cover: “Happy Birthday Dad, Love- Jonas.” For a moment he hesitated with a slight frown, staring at the writing.

The pages of the book shook through the limbs of the tree, ejecting the two owls from their roost and forcing them into exile, towards the sky. Charles smiled and said “Good riddance.” He yawned and scratched his belly as he walked out his bedroom door, leaving the room with the window still open. Dad had always detested birds.

Charles’ golden brown Sedan pulled out of the long and narrow driveway and turned left at the main road, driving along the same path that my mother used to run every morning before day break, before she broke. As Charles headed east towards the hay field, he noticed a large congregation of black flapping wings. He pulled to the edge of the road and rolled down the passenger side window and leaned over the passenger’s, trying to see what was going on. He only saw the flutter of black feathers, drifting from the ground like the ash of a dying fire. The sound of beaks slapping against dead flesh echoed in the field, the polite dinner conversation of a banquet in the hay.

The black wings fluttered around in commotion, distinctly outlined by the bright autumn leaves. Charles honked long-then-short-then-longer on his car horn, scaring the buzzards enough to send them into flight. Blood fell from their feathers as the large vultures flew off in several different directions, taking bits and pieces of their meal to entirely random graves.

Charles rolled up the passenger window. “Good Riddance,” he said, still watching a few of the large birds flying in the same direction as he was beginning to drive. Made slow and sluggish by their meal, the vultures weren’t able to glide far past the road. They landed on trees and broken fences, telephone poles and turned over trash cans, an abandoned blue hatch-back and shot-gun scattered road signs, and other pieces of southern Americana.

***

James stumbled down the side walk, taking time to steady his hand against the abandoned brick buildings that lined the streets like tall and overbearing tomb stones. He walked slowly, bearing the weight of his body and bones and thoughts and memories. Cars drove by, large black wings flapped and landed, couples talked loudly on benches waiting on buses, waiting to take them somewhere else. But James was un-wavering, and he kept looking on to the corner store that was inside a gas station that was two blocks away.

The bell above the inside of the large glass door rang, signaling the apathetic cashier that a customer had entered. The young boy remained behind the front counter, barely nudging from his magazine, bored by his summer job that had bled into fall, grown deaf and numb to the sound of the door bell. James walked in, past the counter, paying the cashier a reciprocal amount of notice. The store was run down, comprised of three aisles filled with candy and condoms and beer, walls lined with adult magazines and coolers filled with energy drinks and more beer, weighing down the air with moisture and mold, pressing down on James’ lungs as he breathed in the odors of this uncirculated linoleum hell.

As James slumped about, the cashier read an entire article on 20-guage shotguns specially designed for hunting doves. Of course, pigeons and doves are the same class of birds and in ornithology the names can be used interchangeably. Basically, a dove is just an albino pigeon. But, thanks to religion, white-pigeons are better respected and then, ironically, hunted, though they are just as filthy.

James cleared his throat, signifying that he wanted to pay for something. Sitting on the counter was a small blue box or rate poison and a tall cup of coffee. The cashier peered over his copy of “Guns and Birds”, eyes dull and dim, and said “Will that be all for you today sir?”

“Yeah, just the coffee and this, that’s it.”

“Gotta infestation? That’ll be six fifty, sir.”

James handed the boy ten dollars, “Something like that.” He placed the box in his pocket and took the cup of coffee in hand. He turned from the counter and walked deeper into the convenience store, towards the Formica tables and plastic booths that were littered in a claustrophobically small area crammed in a corner wall between a slushy machine and a rotating hotdog grill, designated by a hanging sign just over head which read “Dining Room.”

The boy leaned over the counter, yelling back at James, “Sir, you forgot your change sir, it’s like almost five dollars, sir?”

James slid into the closest booth with his back towards the front counter and his front towards the large window that looked out onto one of the town’s two main roads, taking the blue box out of his pocket and placing it on the table in front of him while the coffee remained in his grasp .“Keep the change. You mind if I sit here with my coffee for a, for a bit?”

“Sure, I guess, I mean if-“

“-thanks, I appreciate it, I won’t be long.”

***

Dad sat in the hospital room with my mother, staring at her in a daze, listening to the drone of the machines that hooked into her body to keep her alive. He used to talk to her when we would visit, but now he was alone, without reason to speak, if no one would listen. His eyes moved up and down her body, looking for something moving, but there was only stillness. Charles stood up and placed his hand on the sidebar of my mother’s hospital bed. He usually would say “See you around kiddo” before leaving, but instead he was only silent.

Charles’ cheap black loafers squeaked as they bent with the curves of his feet as he walked over the rolled plastic of the hospital floor. He was heading for the elevator, passing windows that let in unnatural amounts of natural light in an attempt, by the designer, to brighten up the interior of the building. Instead, the sunlight only made the water mold stains that lined the floor more obvious, the illusion of the fake plastic potted trees all the more unbelievable, the eye level paintings of doves and children and angels all the more grotesque, the feeling of hope all the more illusory. Charles pressed the down arrow button. A painting of an angel leading two small children over a bridge stared at him from across the hall. The metal doors of the elevator slid open, and as he entered, Charles said, “Good Riddance” to the painting, stepping into the lonesome metal box.

He emerged into to the lobby as a large black woman behind the admittance counter waved good bye to him, and he returned the gesture warmly with one arm, using the other to open the door that would take him out of the hospital and on to the street. He stepped into the sunlight and glanced at his parked sedan, sitting neatly where he had left it. Charles then walked into the middle of the road, towards the gas-station store that sat across from the hospital.

The hanging door bell rang, the young cashier remained listless, Charles waved hello and asked him how his studies where going. The boy responded curtly and Charles walked to the self serve coffee pot, pouring gulps of scalding caffeine into his non-degradable Styrofoam cup. He walked into the small and almost comically named “Dining Room,” sitting at the second booth, facing the cashier’s counter. Across from him, one booth over, sat a younger man with his head on the table, buried in folded arms, his long greasy hair resting dark across his sleeves, leading Charles’ to see a half-drunk cup of coffee and an opened blue box stationed near his motionless head. Charles sat for a moment, watching the boy, sipping his own cheap, stale, tar-like coffee.

After a few moments, the young man gave a twitch, lifting his head with a sneeze. Running down from his nose was a long crimson streak of blood. Charles chuckled, causing James to finally notice that he was in company, having no idea who Charles was.

“Long night, huh?” said Charles, as he stood from his booth and walked over to James, pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket. He slid the brown cotton of his khakis across the plastic seat and positioned himself across the table from James. Charles’ extended the handkerchief to James with a smile, “Here boy, take this. My name’s Charles.”

James remained slumped over, but took the handkerchief and cleaned his face of the blood. “James.”

“Well, nice to meet you. Haven’t seen you before, new to town?”

James paused for a moment, looking out the window at a shadow cast by another building upon another building. “I’m just passing through,” more blood ran from James’ nose “I won’t be long; I’m not long for this place.” The blood fell to the table, pooled a little bit and began to run towards Charles. Maybe the table was at an angle, or maybe the floor was crooked, or maybe his blood just wanted to go that way.

“You go ahead and keep that handkerchief,” Charles said, “Looks like you might be needing it for awhile. I keep one with me, usually, round here my nose dries out too, when the seasons change.” James stuffed an end of the handkerchief into the side of his nose that was bleeding. “Sometimes out in the field I’ll be baling hay or tilling some kinda dirt and my nose will just start gushing. Doc says it’s something to do with the low humidity or something.” James pulled the end out, examining the blood stain apathetically. “ I find though, during this time of year, that if I drink a glass of salt water, its an ol’ Cherokee trick you know, that if I drink a glass of salt water in the morning then I generally don’t get a bloody nose, which don’t make no sense to me-”

“-Yeah, humidity.” James continued, glaring out the window behind Charles, his eyes now beginning to glaze, reflecting colors and shapes and suggestions of things, but nothing well defined.

“Course, I didn’t go to the doc just for a bloody nose, I was just passing through the hospital and asked him about it-”

“-Course,” said James. Across the street, on one of the old brick edges of the hospital had landed two large vultures. They both peered down onto the street, free of emotion. “Just a bloody nose I guess.”

Charles turned, the kind of turn old men make when nothing moves like it used to, not twisting his neck but moving to see what was behind him. The street, the side walk, a trash can, buildings, shadows, shadows of shadows, weeds, vines, vultures, nothing in particular. Charles twisted his waist back around, facing James, “What’s a matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost…”

James mouth grew wide and long and lean, lips stretched tight and twitching, holding back gasps of air. “A friend of mine,” James adjusted his eyes, focused on Charles, their glaze now reflecting him in a more definite shape “…well this guy I knew, he d-died recently.”

Charles burrowed his eyes slightly. Now that he sat at the same table as James, the image of the prostrate rat was clear on the blue box, drawn with large black crosses over his eyes. “Oh I know death,” said Charles, “I know what its like to see friends die and have ta deal with that sorta thing and find the strength to go on. Death can be hard; I know that, yeah sure, death ain’t something none of us want to see. My wife,” Charles sipped his coffee, now moving his eyes back to James, “she’s been dying for six months now. Been in some kinda coma, Doc says it’s just a matter of time.”

The glaze over James’ eyes now resembled clouds, casting an opaque white over his pupils. A vision of Charles was almost mirror reflected in James’ eyes.

“My son was supposed to come up this weekend to see her. Hasn’t seen her in a month or so, says we should pull the plug. Says Tiffany would want it that way. He and I got in a fight over it, yelled at each other; I said to him, I said that if there was any hope we had to take it, you know? He said she was in pain, trapped, and it was selfish of me to keep her around like that…”

James began to shake slightly, like someone who was cold. “I’m just s-so sorry…”

“Well damn, I’m sorry too, I haven’t talked to my son much since he left, the last time I saw him, when we fought. I guess we both got so mad at each other cause we both love Tiffany so much, I know that and Jonas knows that too, hell, we both know it,” Charles glanced back at the blue box.“We both have accepted that she’s gone, just not ‘when,’ you know? I guess it’s a fool’s errand to cling to the dead, to worry about what we’ve already lost. We gotta go on livin, you know? No matter how much it hurts. We can’t carry the weight of the dead around with us; they wouldn’t want it like that. No matter how much it hur-“

Charles was cut off by a vast explosion of noise directly behind him. He looked around himself and through the large glass window. The street, the sidewalk, a trash can, buildings, shadows, a vulture, all bisected by a long opaque strip of midnight red running from the bottom of the windowsill and reaching to the upper end of the glass, punctuated by a collision splatter with extending glass cracks at it’s beginning. Charles remained turned from James, sliding from the booth and approaching the window with quick and breathless steps. His eyes where wide and un-blinking, his mouth gapped, his eyebrows angled. Charles placed a furtive hand on the window, and leaned in to peer outside. There, on the side walk lining the store, rested a long pink neck, bending in too many directions, poking into a ruffled mass of black silk feathers, swimming in a sea of fresh crimson, twitching slightly with the movement of a body that hasn’t yet figured out it is dead.

“My God,” Charles said “…the damn thing flew straight into the window, musta been at full force, killed it right here on the sidewalk. Broke its neck. Bad Omen, the Cherokee might say…”

James was silent.

“Did you see it; did you see it flying at the window? Musta come from up there where that other buzzard was sitting.” Charles twisted back towards James “I aint never seen anything like this-“ The plastic booth was now empty, the Formica table left bare save the blue box and two cooled cups of coffee. He stepped forward, shifting where objects in the room sat in his perception. James convulsed on the floor next to the table, his eyes rattling with the violent contortion of his body moving in fluid pain, choking on blood and sweat and tears, crying. Charles took two quick steps and collapsed at James’ side, sliding on the plastic floor, bumping into James’ body. He grabbed hold of James’ hand and held down James’ chest with his free arm, hoping to stop the shaking.

The cashier stumbled for the phone, frantically dialing the same three numbers over and over again.

“I-I’m sorry,” James choked through foam, trying hard to speak, babbling to Charles, “Please f-forgive me y-you have to f-f-forgive me. S-someone has to f-f-f-orgive m-me.”

Charles embraced James, tightly constricting him. “Please get an ambulance! For Chrissake get an ambulance! The hospital is right there! He’s just a kid!”

James’ hand squeezed tightly on Charles’ “P-p-please…F-f-orgive me…”

“What did you do? Oh Lord it can’t be this bad…”

Charles lifted the upper part of James’ body off the floor, dripping tears on to James’ slowing frame, mouthing something of a prayer, squeezing and squeezing until James stopped convulsing and, with a choking gasp, fell silent. The door bell of the store rang as the cashier boy ran out, abandoning the phone for the sound of his own voice, screaming at the hospital as he ran towards it.

Charles sat there, clinging to James’ body, thinking of Tiffany in her hospital bed and wondering if she would shake when the cord to her life support were removed, if her death would be so violent. He stayed with James, repeating, “I forgive you” over and over but without knowing why, waiting for an ambulance or a doctor or someone to take the weight of the dead body away.

Published in the 2009 issue of the Lee Review.