REGRET

The boy’s father gripped his son’s shoulder. “They can’t wait much longer. They may already be gone.”

The boy wanted to ask his father to stop them. To tell Uncle Albin that Adunya would not be better off in Ethiopia. He wanted to tell his father that Adunya was the best friend he ever had. And that if he went back to Africa, they may never see him again. He wanted kick the wall. He wanted to cry. Instead, without looking up, he handed his father the rabbit’s foot he had cut and dried.

“You should be the one to give him this.”
The boy did not answer. He stared down at his fingers.

“You'll regret it. Maybe for the rest of your life.”

The boy finally looked up, his eyes glossy with the tears he fought. “Can you give it to him, Dad? I want you to give it to him.”

His father knelt to one knee to look his son in the eye. “If you want Adunya to have this. If you want him to know how you feel. To know that you value his friendship, then it has to come from you.”

“I can’t.” The boy did not remember ever saying that before and it burned his belly. He turned away, no longer able to look at his father, knowing the old man's eyes would be filled with disappointment.

The boy stared at the floor, his fingers, the wall, anything but his father. He only looked up after his father had left the room. He heard the front door close. He heard Jon Jon ask why he wasn't coming, he heard the truck doors slam. When the engine turned over, he hurried to his window. He saw his father stare at the front door before shifting into drive and pulling away.

He closed his eyes and saw an image of Adunya's face.

“No,” he said and sprinted out his room, for the front door. He jumped off the porch waving his hands, yelling. “Wait! Wait!”

He stared at the settling dust cloud and he wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. Then he ran.

FOR LUCK

The boy dropped to one knee and lifted the limp cottontail from the gray, thirsty earth. Its soft body hung over either side of his palm as if it had no bones. It was better when they died before he walked up to them, but it did not always happen that way. Sometimes their eyes glazed over and filled with something he pretended not to see. It burned his soul. Sometimes, when he had to finish it, he looked away. And that churned his belly with a shame he did not understand.

This rabbit, shot with his father's .22, served a purpose beyond sustenance or sport. His newest friend, his best friend, was leaving. Uncle Albin had decided to take Adunya back to Ethiopia. He may never come back. He may choose Ethiopia. The boy wanted Adunya to remember the deer they had stalked, the frogs they had caught, the rabbits they had hunted. The boy wanted Adunya to remember him.

He field dressed the rabbit, but before skinning it, he cut off the back right foot. He would soak it in the borax, let it dry, and then he would give it to his friend. Adunya had many strange beliefs--most of which the boy did not understand. There was much they failed to comprehend about one another, the two hunters from different sides of the world. But Adunya would appreciate the rabbit's foot. He knew hunting and he knew tradition.

As the boy wrapped the rabbit in a dry cloth and packed it in his knapsack, he glanced up. A single turkey vulture soared above him. Those birds could smell death from a hundred miles away, he thought. A shudder slithered down his back.

Adunya had spoken about the vultures of his home, how they swarmed to death like ants on a grasshopper, snapping and hissing for a taste of blood. Adunya told the boy of the time they found the remains of a village child who had died from a snakebite. They had to chase the vultures away with sticks and rocks.

Adunya was returning to that place.

The boy hiked home holding tight to the rabbit's foot, holding tight to the hope that some superstitions were based on truth.

To Hear The Lion

The door hissed when Uncle Albin pushed it with his fingertips. A flash of lightning lit the room and he noticed the empty bed. Though the vacant mattress was not unusual, the missing blanket was. Adunya often slept on the floor, his head propped on a shoe box or shoe for a pillow. But Adunya never covered himself with the wool blanket. Even on the rare occasion when he used the bed, he slept on top of it.

A roar of thunder, long and close, shook the cabin. Uncle Albin thought he heard a whine. He wrapped his free hand around the front of the flashlight he carried. Just as his thumb touched the switch, an extended flow of lightning filled the shadows with a metallic blue haze. A lump in one corner trembled.

"Adunya," he called out softly. "It's Uncle."

No answer.

Uncle Albin's palm blocked most of the flashlight's brightness. He followed the subdued light toward the boy he had adopted from Ethiopia.

"Adunya, he said again. "It's Uncle." He sat on the bed and eased the blanket away.

Adunya's eyes, wide and glossy with tears, glistened with fear. The fingers of his right hand trembled as they tightened around the wooden handle of his real father's machete.

Uncle Albin did not reach for the blade. "The storm will end soon, my boy."

Adunya stared out the window. Neither of them spoke or moved for a moment. The boy seemed to be bracing himself for the next strike. He jumped when it came.

"I miss Father," he said after the thunder echoed away.

"I miss him too."

"Father hunt the lion with you."

Uncle Albin nodded, remembering the unsurpassed skills of his head tracker--his friend. "Your father was a great lion hunter."

"He tell me the lion voice at night could chase the thunder away."

"Your father was a wise man."

Another bolt of lightning. Another rumble of thunder. Adunya cowered in the corner, unable to look at Uncle. Unable to accept his shame.

He waited for the quiet, keeping his eyes to the floor. "I miss the lion," he said.

Through the window, the dark outline of a leafless tree looked like the claw of a banished demon reaching for its next victim.

Adunya's father had a brother who lived half the year in Addis Ababa. Uncle Albin and Adunya would travel back together and he would allow the boy to choose.

Uncle Albin turned away. He did not want the boy to see his glossy eyes glistening with fear.

PRIDE

"Look, Steve. Look." Jon Jon poked his finger forward like he was ringing an invisible doorbell. "They're making rings out in the middle. Ain't no fish on this side--nothing big anyhow. They're over along the brush or in the deep. We need a boat."

"Where we gonna get a boat?"

Jon Jon shrugged, the tip of his fishing pole bouncing. "How else we gonna get over there?"

"We can't," the boy said. The brush is too thick. We can't get through. You know that."

"Maybe we could cut a path with Adunya's machete."

Adunya slowly worked away from them, searching the ground as if tracking a deer.

"What do you think he's doing anyhow?" Jon Jon said.

This time the boy shrugged. Adunya sometimes chanted. He sometimes bounced around. He often tracked game. He always ran screaming during a storm. The boy had come to expect odd behavior from his adopted Ethiopian cousin. He had just recently come to accept him as a cousin--Jon Jon had not.

"What're you doing," Jon Jon yelled.

The boy leaned away from his younger brother as if the volume hurt his ears.

Without acknowledging them, Adunya began hacking at a tree's low branch. It came down after two swings. Cutting at an angle he severed the bushy end of the branch, leaving him a four-foot stick.

The brothers pressed in close.

"You making another spear?" Jon Jon asked.

Adunya looked up and pointed at his ear, signaling them to listen.

The boy closed his eyes. Birds--at least three different calls. The wind...

"I don't hear anything," Jon Jon said.

Neither the boy nor Adunya answered him.

Leaves scratching in the trees. A splash. Frogs croaking. Lots of them.

"You gonna try to get some frogs?"

Adunya looked at the boy and smiled.

"I thought we was fishing." Jon Jon lifted his pole.

"Can you help me make a spear?" the boy knelt beside Adunya.

"What about cutting the brush?" Jon Jon looked back toward the water. He saw a rare raven glide over the pond and perch on a fallen cottonwood as if settling to watch a show. The water rolled as a bass or catfish or carp rose to surface feed.

"I bet we can get a hundred frogs. Listen to that," Steve said.

"What you gonna do with all them frogs?"

"The frog is very good. My father, he bring home many before rainy season."

"Eew. I ain't eating no frog."

"Just go fishing if you don't want to catch frogs." The boy shook his head.

Jon Jon stared at their backs for a moment. Spearing frogs might be fun. But he promised Mom he'd bring her a big fat catfish to fry. Steve had hooked into a monster once--before Adunya came. They had seen its wide, powerful mouth just as the line snapped. Jon Jon would go catch that fish. He'd find a way to the other side and he'd tell Dad how he caught it all by himself and Mom would fry it and everyone would say how delicious it was. And they would all know he caught it because his Dad would tell them he had.

They had searched for a way to the other side before, but impatience or trepidation always hindered their progress. On this day, Steve and Adunya were too busy to discourage or distract him and their voices, close and confident, would fuel his courage.

He ducked into the brush, his pole in one hand, a small box of worms in the other. After ten yards he had to crawl to fit through. A branch caught his collar and tightened it around his neck. He yanked it away. Through a small opening, he could see the raven. It seemed to stare at him, to consider him--as if waiting for him.

Pushing forward, Jon Jon scratched the corner of his eye on a twig. He rubbed it with dusty fingers. It stung. Like fire. He couldn't open it. He rubbed harder. More fire. Forcing his good eye open, he searched for the raven. Had it moved closer? Didn't Steve once say that if you saw a raven someone was going to die?

Jon Jon's breath felt like his eye. The raven, the water, the bushes all blurred together under the tears in his open eye. Had to get out. Had to get back to Steve and Adunya. He lost the worms and turned, reaching ahead for a passage with his free hand. Branches and thorns and grass grabbed at his legs and shoulders. The raven called.

Jon Jon heard himself whimpering and hoped Steve and Adunya could not hear it. He almost called out for their help. He almost stopped himself from crying. The line at the tip of his pole tangled in a bush. He jerked at it. The tangle worsened. Wiping tears off his cheek, he bit at the line near the reel and felt it give. He saw the edge of the brush and scurried out.

He scanned for Steve and Adunya, his face tingling with shame and wet with tears. They had not moved. They had not seen. He snapped his eye toward the raven. Gone.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist as he eased toward Steve and Adunya. The raven called again. He quickened his step and did not look back until beside his older brother. The brush looked like the barbed wire above a prison fence. The raven swooped down and landed on a log beside the bushes. It cocked its head and stared.

Jon Jon moved around his brother and set his pole against a tree. He wiped his cheek one last time. "Ain't no big fish on this side anyhow."


Painting: Eye of the Raven by John Banovich
http://www.johnbanovich.com/