Carry on, carrion

And when the runaway ferret finally slinks from the cold house out into the backyard, it only takes two minutes of fruitless chasing before the frantic boy witnesses a dozen swooping barn owls dive for his pet.

One is faster than the others, and it plucks its prey like a pebble from the frozen, ashen ground. The boy falls from the speed and velocity of the nearby attack nearly faints as he watches the rodent writhe between the talons of the brown-flecked bird.

Its cry is faint as it disappears into the line of bare trees.

The owls that failed to snatch the snack return to the dead trees surrounding the row of houses to observe their domain with amber eyes.

The soil below the boy's trembling hands is frozen. Sharpness overcomes his untested palms. Yet his throat is hot, eyes red, stinging from rising tears.

It is, perhaps, the first time that he notices the rawness that befalls his town. All green has gone. All warmth has gone. All life in the yards that parallel his and the woods they open to and even in the sky. A stagnant, complacent rotted-meat gray now dominates. If he would follow the tree-line, the desolation would stretch down to the general store, St. Sebastian's, Edom Town Hall, and Burger Stop. Even the buildings and their materials seem to weaken and decay in the cold and gray. And above all these places, the owls fly and scour for what prey they can find.

The boy remembers when the trees still budded green, and there were robins in the morning. He remembers when the sky shined blue for a time, not only a lidless gray that stretched over everything. He remembers when his father was beaming and carried him on his shoulders as his mother walked alongside them.

"Why are there so many owls now? What happened?" the boy says to his mother, buried in the crook of her arm.

Her calloused hands glide through his young hair.

"They came when the town died," she says. "They're here to pick the stray prey."

"I don't understand what you mean," the boy says. "How can a town die?"

She sits up and pulls out a rosary from her pink cardigan.

"The town is being punished," she says. "The people here are too arrogant."

The mother cups her quivering son's cheek with tears in her own eyes. She embraces him in the now as tight as can be before his innocence evaporates.

The father doesn't stumble in until dark. The day's traumas at the foundry weigh heavy on him, as does the smell of drink.

"What is a son of mine crying for?" he says. "Boys don't cry, dammit."

The mother hesitates as he tells the father about the ferret. He grabs the boy by the scruff of his shirt, forces him to put his boots on, grab his .22 pistol, and follow him outside.

"Stop," the mother begs.

The father looks at her, but he might as well be looking at a painting.

"Don't kill them. We'll be cursed," the mother says, making the sign of the cross.

The father scoffs. "We're already cursed."

"The owls think they own this place," the father says to the boy as they walk toward the woods in the backyard. "They don't own it. We do!"

He trips and almost tumbles into the frozen ground. The son is trembling, but the cold is the least of his worries.

"Won't we become cursed if we hurt them?"

The father murmurs something incoherent about the mother under his breath and looks upward.

The boy sees owls fly through starlight. The stars had become much more visible once nearly everyone abandoned their homes in Edom.

"Isn't the town being punished?" the boy asks. "That's why the owls are here because the town is dying?"

"Town's not dying," the father says. "It's the socialists."

The father begins scoping the trees as if he's a sniper in a war. His teeth squeeze his tongue into a swollen ball.

"Zeke and his family left town," the boy says.

"Zeke and his family are cowards. Edom is our home," he says. "We'll be damned before we let some curse take it over."

The father grabs the boy's trembling hand and forces him to aim the gun up to the trees. The heaviness and coldness of the weapon make the boy want to scream, but he knows what the consequences of that will be.

He commands him to fire.

The boy squeezes the trigger.

The gun goes off before the boy realizes it would, and he lets out a yelp as fire from the gun sends out a brief blaze of light. He misses, but he does see owls glide off branches into another tree a few houses down. One seems to circle in a daze.

The father takes the gun and shoots it straight out of the sky. He stumbles toward where the bird landed. He orders the boy to come here, to help him finish the job.

The boy then shifts into another place. He goes into a place where the trees are still green, and the air is still warm. Where the light of day still shines in his town, and his father comes home with a worn smile. It's better than the current place. Yet still, he feels a squirming pressure under his foot, the crunching of bones, the wail of his father comes through.

Gray meat and potatoes are at the dinner table. The family of three eats in silence.

"You're a good killer," the father says.

The mother wipes her eyes. The boy can't stop an inner shaking, a tumultuous swirling pulsing from his heart. Yet through mourning for both ferret and owl and self, he watches everything his father does.

The next night the father takes him to what he calls a hunting party. That is, thirty of the remaining men in town with guns bigger than their arms, with mouths bigger than their brains. A caravan of trucks embarks from the parking lot of the foundry down the empty, frozen-over streets of Edom.

They shoot anything that flies. Owls drop to the ground by the dozens. With each kill, they bellow like banshees.

The boy is in a truck bed with a classmate named Neb, who screams and laughs at the killings, wide-eyed and spastic. He manages to land one himself with his revolver. The men roar in victory.

The father looks at the boy in disgust. An embarrassment washes over the drunkard and makes his face even redder.

"Shoot something, dammit," he says. "I didn't bring you here just to watch like some cheerleader."

The men and the boys alike look at the boy in disgust. They avert his gaze. They shake their heads. The thought of the gun makes the boy sick, but he can't take the pressure.

He grabs his gun, and in furious focus, he shoots one an owl above their heads. It manages to land right behind the truck, and the boy sees its wide, yellow eyes as the truck behind them runs it over with its left tire, annihilating it.

He forces down a scream as his father smacks him on the back.

A wave of heat comes over him, and he loses his place in reality. He knows it's the curse scalding his soul. Only shame remains as his father proclaims that his son is a hell of a shot.

The boy tries to escape to the days when there was warmth and green and life once again. But now, he seems to have forgotten those days. The memories are inaccessible.

And the boy tries to remember those days even now as he drives down the ruined roads of Edom in the truck his parents left him. They are a distant dream. All he knows is a town that has frozen over and infested. There is nothing else.

The man is leaving his shift at the foundry forty minutes early, but what are they going to do? Fire one of the few people left? The sun barely shines through the thick bruised fog that smothers Edom. At the stop sign, he takes a swig of something with a bite and looks out at the tree line as what little light does get through leaves a bloody streak. He sees more birds than trees now. Not just owls, but buzzards and ravens and hawks and vultures now call Edom home. Some are so big that people stopped bothering keeping dogs. They just get taken in broad daylight.

He wonders about Zeke and if he has a better life than this cursed one.

And the friend who left after him.

And the friend who left after him.

And the friend who left after him.

The man takes a left and sees a group of ravens circle a red, pulpy mess on the ground. He knows he sees traces of clothes in there. He even makes out the stained remains of denim jeans, but he tells himself it's a deer and drives around the mess.

The curse evolved over the years. Smoke now rises from far below the ground, through the cracked, neglected asphalt. Once solid and sturdy, the town buildings' materials have shifted to some crumbling, dissolving stone. The old post office collapses as he passes.

The water has sharp shard-like splinters in it. A rattlesnake-like rattle echoes through the town at night. Stillbirths are rampant.

And, still, many like Neb, who is now mayor, stand strong and tall. This is their town. No curse is going to force them away.

The man's head begins to spin too much to keep driving. He pulls over, half on the sidewalk, in front of where Burger Stop was before it disintegrated a year prior and watches a barn owl peck at what is undeniably the remains of a human hand. He grabs the gun that rests on his passenger seat. It would be so easy to blow the bird away. It's been easier and easier throughout the years. But for some reason, today, he resists the temptation and drives away.

Clumps of feathers and fingernails roll in the street as he gets out of the truck and sways toward his front door. Screams echo from a street away.

He walks in and sees his wife holding his son. Tears track down his soot-covered face. He cowers at the man while the wife stands up and faces him, gulping.

"What're you crying for?" he says. He hears the slur in his voice, but he ignores it. "Don't you know boys don't cry?"

"Your son," his wife says, staring at him without blinking. "Had three of those damn birds come after him today."

The boy lifts his shirt and turns his back—blood pools under an array of bandages.

The man feels a new, raw rage. He feels the cold weight of that first gun still in his hand. The pressure of the squirming owl before it died under his foot.

Here it is, he thinks. Here's where it all comes to a point.

There is a path ahead where he goes and gets his gun, forces his son out into the yard, and helps him point it at the birds. He pulls the trigger, and a mess of blood and beak falls before him. The son grows to know this cold world, and great pride for Edom blossoms inside, and he becomes the third generation of proud, cursed Americans looking to the sky and wondering where the light went.

"Hazel. Connor," Adam says, calling his family by their names, looking at them in the eyes. "Tomorrow, we're leaving this town."

And Adam realizes there is another path to choose. And now he knows he won't remember the past's green and warmth and his father's worn smile ever again. And there is a tomorrow. And that's something.