Acre Under a Green Sky

Late that next morning, Garry and I were on my front porch planning our Death House break-in.

"Tomorrow morning," I was saying, "Soon as it gets light –– 'bout six o'clock."

"Right! It's summer. We got no school, and I'm gonna get up at six in the morning. You gotta be crazy."

"Okay, nine o'clock."

"I don't know. That's early, too."

"Don't you want to find the knife?! Don't you want to hold the knife in your hand?!"

"I guess."

"I can't believe you don't want to hold the knife in your own hand that killed four people!"

"Why don't we do it now? Here we are! There's the house! Let's go now!"

"Look around, dummy. This place stinks with witnesses! There's Old Lady Eagle sitting over there on her porch," I said, waving to Old Lady Eagle across the street.

Garry turned to see Old Lady Eagle waving back at us. Just then, he was struck with a thought:

"Oh! I forgot to tell you. Old Lady Eagle heard a scream that night –– the night of the murders –– and she knows what time it happened."

"What?!"

"I heard my Dad talking to Uncle Will last night."

"I can't believe you! 'Oh!' –– 'By the way...' ––'I forgot to tell you'. Only the biggest news yet!"

"I forgot. Is that okay?!"

"So tell me! What did they say?"

"I told you. She heard a scream in the night! It woke her up!"

His words struck me to my very soul, and I had no idea why.

"Go on," I said.

"Let me see," he was trying to remember what they had said the night before, "She heard this scream and it 'established a time for the murders' and 'it didn't support Luka's story at all'. There!"

"What is Luka's story?"

"Damned if I know, and you want to know what –– I don't give a monkey's shit!"

I looked over to Old Lady Eagle sitting there on her porch.

"You want to know something else..." Garry was saying, "I don't think I want to break in Luka's house with you, asshole!"

I wasn't listening. I was watching Old Lady Eagle and trying to figure out what was gnawing at my gut –– something about that scream. It was then Mrs. Eagle joined her mother on the porch, and she had the hatchet.

"Chicken killing time," I announced to Garry.

He was halfway across the street before he noticed I wasn't with him. He turned back and said, "Aren't you coming?"

"I got to think," I said, "You go."

Mrs. Eagle was just rounding the house and heading back to the chicken coop when Garry caught up to her. The handle of the hatchet was like an extension of her arm as she strode out back. She was a squat bulldog of a woman, and at that moment she looked to me like a gunslinger walking down a deserted Western street with her six-shooter already drawn and at her side.

I looked back to the house, and I think I saw Old Lady Eagle smiling at me. She was Mrs. Eagle's mother, so of course her name wasn't 'Eagle' at all. Still, that's what we called her.

And everyone called the house, 'the Eagle house'. It was next door to Luka's and was large enough to house three families. Upstairs, there was Mrs. Eagle and her son, Rod, who was a bank teller in town. Downstairs, Old Lady Eagle had an apartment, and Mrs. Eagle's sister and brother-in-law lived in the attached side house with their son, Angel.

Angel was an obese man of perhaps forty years with an ageless face and the mind of a child. He was a kid like us, and he had the most extensive collection of comic books in the world. He sat cross-legged on their small side porch floor and read comic books from morning until his mother turned the porch light out at night. There was always a large cardboard box next to him full of comic books. He was not the least bit proprietary about his comic books. We might join him for an hour in the morning or afternoon; always without conversation, or we might borrow a comic book for a day or two. That porch was the local lending and reading library, and there were times when it was so littered with young readers that Angel's mother could not get the screen door open.

Angel's best friend was his cousin, Rod, the bank teller. Rod was ridiculously tall and thin –– Ichabod Crane in a dark business suit which we wore everyday; morning, noon and night. I don't remember ever hearing Angel speak to anyone other than Rod –– not even his own mother. These two men; bound together since childhood, shared something exclusive and rare. They seemed to have a language all their own that embraced them like a cocoon, sheltered them, elevated them above all others present.

And Rod spoke beautifully. This bean pole of a man had a voice that could melt steel. Down at the bank, he was called upon to soothe tempers with a simple, "Now, what's the problem?" If it ever occurred to him to be seductive; and I don't believe it ever did, he would have scored every time, in spite of his looks.

The story goes that Rod liberated Angel from near-total isolation by way of the adding machine. He was sensitive to Angel's attraction to the machine, and he encouraged Angel to play with it. In time, believe it or not, he taught Angel all the functions of the machine. They say Rod taught him to read using comic books. I don't believe that. I don't think Angel could read words, but he could read numbers and math symbols. I know, because I've seen Angel add, subtract, multiply and divide at the adding machine. He was fast. He was expert. He was a whiz.

The larger front porch was Old Lady Eagle's domain. She was an ancient woman with bright blue eyes and a magical smile. Small, circular steel-rimmed glasses perched daintily halfway down her perfectly straight nose. Her face with its high cheekbones and hollow cheeks might have been chiseled in white marble. She must have been an exceedingly beautiful young woman. But her most attractive feature was her high-backed wicker wheelchair with its large umbrella spoked wooden wheels. With very little prodding at all, she would allow us to help her move the few steps she could manage to one of the porch chairs so we could ride the thing up and down the long porch sometimes at speeds that frightened her. She might have been a very lonely lady if not for that chair. As it was, she was thrilled to see us and actually solicited some conversation during these marathon races.

And it was she who was awakened by a scream in the night. And despite a hundred oaths to secrecy, the word got out. But sitting on my porch that day while Garry was up watching the killing of chickens, I wasn't concerned with that particular secret. I had my own, or so it seemed to me. At least, it felt like a secret. I didn't know what it was, but I thought I knew what a scream in the night was, and it raised a terrifying question for me. Was it my mother's scream she heard that night?