Craig M. Foster

Vultures, American Vultures

I thought for a time that my dad was a murderer. It was that first summer of vultures: red- headed drones, their wings pouring shadows onto our heads. Mobs of them shitting in parking lots and roosting in the alleyways downtown. Mobs of them, black and sinister. We first noticed them after the chicken farm opened, with its vast metal barns that stretched from the Sabine River clear out to Dad’s fence line. With its prodigious rot and stench.

The stench would wake me at night. It would bundle up in the wind and drift through the woods to Dad’s trailer, a single-wide where I shared a bed with my little brother every other weekend. Where holes in the walls left us exposed to everything outside; the locusts loud enough to have been sleeping with us. The smell had no trouble getting in.

One night I woke up, already sick from it. I crawled over Kinsler, careful not to wake him. Being twice my brother’s size, the mattress gave way under him and he nearly rolled off onto the floor. But he slept through it, and I sometimes remember that, him laying there below me, me a giant over him willing him back into his dreams. The vultures weren’t there—not in his dreams I mean—and I wonder how things would have been different if he could have just slept straight through that whole summer and all that unending heat.

The trailer was dark except for the glow of Dad’s cigarette at the kitchen table. He lifted the orange orb to his face and, for a few seconds, he didn’t know I was watching. He had long hair then, greasy because Mom wasn’t around to care anymore. He would smoke like that, alone in the dark.

“Why the hell you up?” His voice startled me.

“That smell again.”

“I told you there’s nothing I can do about it, son. The county don’t give a shit.”

“I know.”

“But here you are, still whining about it.”

I shrugged, hoping he’d let it go. But that wasn’t like him. He told me that I was being soft. A fat ass he would say, waiting impatiently for me to carry a bag of feed to the truck. Hurry up your fat ass, when I had to stop and catch my breath.

“The smell? Fuck that.” The cigarette glowed bright on his face as he took another drag. “Did you manage to get yourself in the game tonight?”

It wasn’t really a question. I ran the bases like a goat, but he still forced me to play. Then he wouldn’t show up to the games because he was embarrassed.

“No. I didn’t figure so.”

He asked if my mom had come to the game.

“Yes, sir. She came with Lyle.”

“Lyle? That little meatball man? That little deli fucker?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jesus. She getting serious with the deli man?”

“I don’t know. She asked us the other day if we liked him. Said we might move into his house this summer.”

The air was muddy with the stench and the crickets. He snuffed his cigarette and moved the hair from his eyes.

“Jesus. She’s scraping the barrel with that guy. Little meatball man.”

* * * *

We moved in with Lyle a few weeks later, which honestly felt desperate on Mom’s part. I watched him unloading our boxes and thought that Dad was right, he looked like a clump of meatballs, with his beefy stomach under a pearl-snap shirt; his face round and warm.

We lived in the left side of this brick duplex he owned that backed up to the nature preserve. Our first night there, he grilled pork chops, and we ate on the back porch. The front of his apron said, “Get your fat pants ready.” Mom was wearing makeup, nervous. She kept looking at us, trying to see if Kinsler and I approved. I knew even then that, regardless of how happy she was—and I could tell she was on the verge—she would have left Lyle right then and there if we didn’t approve.

Lyle told us the story of how they met. Some trainee at Brookshire’s had sliced her hand open on the cold-cut machine, so he called 9-1-1. Mom was the dispatcher and talked him through it. Pressure. Lots of pressure, mainly. Gotta stop the bleeding, she had told him. Blood was spurting all over. It got all in the shrimps.

“You know. Those fresh shrimps that we put on ice behind the glass?”

We nodded.

“Anyways. It was probably just the adrenaline, but I felt your mom and me really had a moment there on the phone, and I could tell she was something pretty special. So, before we hung up I told her that I’d love to boil her some shrimp sometime. Once we got it all cleaned up, of course. And if she was interested, she knew where to find me.” He smiled at Mom. “I’ll be damned if she wasn’t in the store the next day buying a pound of that low-sodium bologna.”

There was a large barn behind the duplex surrounded by heaps of metal garbage–bike wheels, license plates, rusted gas cans. After dinner Lyle grabbed some of the pork scraps and told us to follow him to the barn. He unlocked the padlock and slid the wide doors apart. Chains crisscrossed the gaping interior like cobwebs strung from the high ceiling. Caught in the webs were countless metal figures in a patina of rust. Large and small crude forms that didn’t quite look like anything real. Guardrails splayed like wings. Heavy-gauge wiring wound up into the eyes of beasts. After everything happened that summer, my dad asked me about Lyle’s art, and I wanted to use the word beautiful. But I just told him that it was weird.

Kinsler stood looking up, mom’s hands on his shoulders.

“What are they?”

“Oh, they’re just my figments,” said Lyle.

He led us through the barn to a dark corner, set up with a blue kiddie pool. “Step quiet. We don’t want to scare her. They throw up on you when they get scared.”

My eyes adjusted to a little white bird in the pool. Standing still with its wings outstretched; tips feathered in all shades of gray. Its black head and beak stark against the fluffed ivory down of its body. It shook, but was otherwise still, growling something hateful. Not a bird noise. Kinsler stepped back quickly into my belly.

“It’s alright. She’s just a chick,” said Lyle. He knelt slowly and offered it a bit of pork fat from his naked palm. “I found her out front of my house a few days ago. I think hit by a car.” He spoke gently. Telling the bird it was okay. Come on girl, it’s alright. I know you’re hungry, girl.

I felt Kinsler separate from me. In a whisper he asked what her name was and then stooped down toward the pool.

Lyle whispered back that he hadn’t named her. That he thought it might not be legal for him to keep a turkey vulture at his house.

“She sure is something, though, huh?” She had stopped growling and was pressing her closed beak against the pork chunk. Lyle gingerly wedged her beak open, and she took the meat into her mouth.

“Luna” said Kinsler. “I think that’s what we should call her.”

“I like that,” said Lyle. “Luna. Like the moon.”

* * * *

The right side of the duplex was a problem. Lyle rented it out to this old lady and her grandson, Bryce, who I knew from school. He was the kind of guy you avoided eye contact with because he’d ask you the capital of Thailand then smack your crotch even if you didn’t answer. He’d dropped out after eighth grade, and I didn’t see him again until we moved in with Lyle.

I came home from baseball practice one night and Kinsler was in the front yard with Bryce. They were under the hood of an old truck. Bryce had a beer which, measuring from the empties on the ground, was his fourth. But I was surprised at how attentive he was with Kinsler. It was shocking, really, how patient he was. Letting him try the tools. Explaining what a spark plug does. Kinsler dropped a nut down into the bowels of the truck and got a worried look on his face. But Bryce just said no prob, we’ll find it. He said he thought Kinsler might be a natural with this stuff. That he might be a real help in getting this piece of shit running again.

It made me think that maybe Bryce wasn’t as bad as I remembered. Or maybe that’s just what happens when people get older. Still, I told Kinsler to be careful with him. Which, looking back, was a stupid thing to say. A kid doesn’t know how to worry about things like that.

* * * *

Every time we were together, Dad brought up Lyle. I had never seen him show an actual interest in anything. Asking me questions like he cared about what I had to say. What’s she see in that guy? There’s something off about that little guy, he’d say, waiting for me to answer. I’d say he’s really nice; he buys her things; he cooks dinner.

“He has this baby vulture.”

We were fixing a stretch of barbed-wire fence behind his trailer. Clearing the limbs that had broken through.

“What do you mean? In the house?”

“No, out in his barn. It got hit by a car, and he’s taking care of it.”

“Well, he can have it. They keep shitting all over my yard. A hundred just sitting in that tree, then one will just fall out dead. Get all bloated, and I gotta dump it in the woods. I’d be glad if they dropped dead all over meatball man’s lawn.” He unrolled a new length of wire and snipped it, looped it.

“Luna acts more like a dog. She follows us all around the yard and chews on dog toys. Kinsler really loves her.”

“Who the hell is Luna?”

“The vulture. Kinsler named her that. He loves that thing like a pet or something.”

“Yeah. You said that already.” Dad pulled the wire tight with a wire stretcher and told me to quit talking. Shut the hell up and get those fucking limbs onto the burn pile.

* * * *

Kinsler started spending a lot of time at Bryce’s. They weren’t just working on the truck anymore. Bryce’s friends would come over, his council of morons with pit stains on their t-shirts. We’d hear them hollering outside, and I’d constantly check to make sure I could see them through the blinds. I didn’t like it and let Mom know it, but she thought it was good for Kinsler to make some friends. Even if they are a little older, Nolan, she said. Maybe you can just go out there with him?

So I’d go, too. After sundown, they’d light the fire pit and we’d bake our asses off, empty cans sizzling in the flames. They talked about girls mainly, Kinsler soaking it all in, giggling every time they said tits or pussy. One night they got onto the topic of their own genitals, and this really opened Bryce up like a philosopher.

“Real men have big dicks.”

The morons agreed and he grabbed his crotch for emphasis. “Case in point.” He lifted his chin toward one of his friends, a snaggle-toothed teen who laughed through his nose. “Come on, Virgil. Whip your little one out, you woman.”

“Screw you,” said Virgil. “I bet you wanna see it, you queer.”

Bryce paused for a moment, looking at the fire with a vague grin. Then he leapt up and tackled Virgil. He straddled his chest and leaned forward violently, both hands shoving his face into the dirt. Bring the dog over here, he shouted to the others. The two remaining friends had already stood and gave each other confused looks. Bryce kept shouting about the damn dog, bring the damn dog.

I was up, too, and pulled Kinsler backward, away from the fight, toward our porch. We watched the other two morons stumble through the dark to a chain-link kennel that housed Bryce’s dog. They loosed the thing—a mutt who spent his days sitting in his own filth, splotches of hair missing across his back—and dragged it across the yard by its collar. Bryce screamed for them to hold Virgil down, put your boot on his face, sit on his knees, keep his head still, I’ll show you who’s a queer you little bitch, take this dog dick you bitch. He was straddling the dog, sitting on it over Virgil’s face, forcing its backside down onto Virgil’s mouth, laughing, they were all three laughing, and Virgil was struggling and crying and spitting, and the dog was trying to lunge away.

Then Lyle burst through the door, angry, and yelled for them to shut the hell up and let the kid go. Let the dog go. Bryce relented and laid back in the dirt, his chest heaving to catch a breath but mostly from forced, black howls.

And Lyle grabbed me and Kinsler—who wasn’t laughing—and pushed us into the house.

* * * *

Later that night Kinsler asked to sleep in my bed. We laid there for a while, then he asked me if I thought he had a big dick. I told him that I wasn’t an expert and I didn’t think mine was very big so maybe I was biased, but he shouldn’t listen to everything Bryce said. I told him maybe he needed to cool it with Bryce for a while.

“What about Dad and Lyle?” he asked. “Are theirs big?”

I could only shrug and say I didn’t know. I didn’t tell him that, truthfully, I didn’t really know how to measure a man and feared that maybe Bryce’s metric was the best we had, given the lack of other good options.

* * * *

August arrived, overheating, and with it the dread of school. Mom and Lyle woke us early that last Saturday morning, dressed in matching camo overalls. Let’s go, he said. Truck’s all packed up. Let’s go to the river. What river? I asked. Yeah, what river? said Kinsler, who saw Mom’s excitement and raced to the closet to grab his clothes and shoes.

We all crammed into his extended cab, the bed filled with fishing poles and suitcases and a cooler with deli meat and beer. We unwrapped our breakfast burritos from the foil and sang loudly to Reba and Vince, and then Mom put in Elvis and we boys groaned but secretly loved it and sang those, too.

Lyle’s boss had lent us his musty river cabin for the weekend. We could basically cast our poles right out the back door. He mashed worms onto our hooks and we fished barefoot, alongside a long-legged heron and, for a time, a doe who watched us closely from an upriver thicket. He had brought one of his metal figures, one of the larger pieces that resembled an old man, hunched. He planted it on the bank. Drove its feet into the silt where the river licked up around it. In the twilight it threw uneven shapes into the flow that, once full night came, washed out into black phantoms slinking over the river rocks.

Mom stood smoking with her toes in the water as we chased fireflies. Her own long shadow mixing with the phantoms. She looked tall again. Elegant like I’d never seen, even under all that camouflage: hair splayed up in a rich crown, self-assured. Being married to Dad had reduced her to burnt muck in a pan. On her last Christmas with him, she spent the whole day crying in bed. She laid there with the sheets up to her eyes and apologized to me, saying that Kinsler and I should have been joy enough, but it felt like there was some giant that wouldn’t stop pounding on the doors and walls.

Yet somehow Lyle—squidgy, goofy Lyle—had unstuck her. He had lowered the heat and lifted her plumb out to where she was upright again and could see over the trees; could just see something out over the treeline if she stood on her long legs and then her tiptoes.

There was a splash and Kinsler was crying. He had fallen and was struggling to stand on the slippery rocks. He yelled again, and I saw a trickle of blood down his nose, then he saw the blood and cried for Mom. Lyle was close and scooped him up, a flailing deep-sea fish soaking and hysterical. You’re okay, Lyle said, calm and gentle. Shh, you’re okay. His strong eyes caught and held Kinsler’s as he carried him up the bank and into the cabin. On the couch Mom kissed his head, a large knot already forming between his eyes. Just sniffles then from Kinslerm and Mom the 9-1-1 dispatcher asked him what his name was. Kinsler Wyatt, he said. She asked

him how many fingers she was holding up and where they lived and who was his third grade teacher. Three, Texas, Miss Logan. Good, she said. We’ll just watch you real close tonight.

So, we slept the four of us in that sticky cabin, the moon full in the window. One last good night, the warmth not a burden but nurturing like a lamp on a clutch of eggs. I swirled in the warmth, in the eddies, in fever dreams without the sickness, the moonlight waking me now and then. In those half-wakings, I saw white vultures, no, they were black but covered in snow; mottled nuns leaning against a blizzard. Lyle was in the hypnosis, too, pressing a cool rag to Kinsler’s face, whispering him awake, whispering are you okay, buddy, you feeling okay, yes, just get some rest, now. You’ll be right as rain in the morning.

* * * *

I smelled the storm before I saw it. One of those yawning storms that sucked the air out of the whole county. Everything was still and pink then sunless in an early nightfall. The treeline beyond Lyle’s property was dancing violently, draped in a thick downpour. Mom yelled at us to get back inside. Kinsler was huddled in the corner of the barn with Luna, all-but fully grown with her crinkled red head. She was grunting and shaking from the thunder so Kinsler drew her into himself, and she didn’t put up any fight.

Dad called, angry. A tree had fallen through one side of his trailer and he needed my help moving it off. He said get over here now or the whole damn house will be flooded.

“That’s a bad deal,” Lyle said to me and mom. “I’ll take Nolan over with some chains and tarps. We can help him out in no time.”

Mom was nervous and said she wasn’t sure that was a good idea, the storm’s only getting worse. But she was mostly worried about whether Dad could play nice. Lyle assured her it would be fine.

“I’m going, too,” said Kinsler, running out the door behind us as he slipped on his boots and ballcap.

A big, dead oak tree had smashed clear through Dad’s kitchen. When we pulled up he was soaked to the marrow in the front yard. For a moment he was a silhouette in the high-beams and then he motioned for me to get out of the truck. He hesitated when he realized it was Lyle and Kinsler, too, but Lyle didn’t let that hover for long. He gave Dad a howdy and told him he had plenty of chain if it’d help. Dad said it would and that he had gotten his truck stuck in the mud so they’d need to use Lyle’s.

There wasn’t much talking after that. They secured the chain around the tree. They laid wood scraps under the tires on Lyle’s truck. They cut back some of the branches that had punctured the roof like a tin can. Kinsler and I just watched, mainly, the sky flaring as though it was searching for someone in the dark. The neverending rain warm and sweet as it ran down our faces and into our mouths. We watched the two men struggle against a large branch, yanking it to the ground then dragging it across the yard, the small man out in front cutting his straight line through the muck.

Lyle tossed me the keys and told me to drive the truck forward. Go slow, he said, it’s hard to tell which way it might fall.

“Just watch me in the mirror. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

I pressed the gas, but the truck only wobbled forward a bit. It was going to take a heavier foot than I expected. I pressed it harder, felt the truck slipping as the chain stiffened, so I pressed harder still, Lyle and Dad both in the mirror waving me on. The truck lurched, and I felt the tires engage the wood underneath and then it flung forward, and I heard a crash behind me and saw a wall of branches fall from the canopy above where Lyle stood.

Dad and Kinsler raced toward Lyle. I jumped from the truck and met them at the heap of branches and was relieved to see Lyle emerge, covered in mud, his shirt torn from his body. But then I saw Dad’s face, furrowed, as he looked at the other man who was shirtless.

Lyle stood looking back at Dad, his arms folded across his chest, a chest round like a woman’s, an ace bandage hanging loosely where it had previously been wound tight. He turned and showed his back to us, hunched with his feet in the silt. I pulled hard to unstick my own wet shirt and offered it to him. Dad told me and Kinsler to get inside the house as Lyle clumsily wound the bandage back around his chest and put the shirt on.

Lyle offered me and Kinsler a meek smile as we crept by. Then he moved awkwardly toward his truck and told Dad that they really needed to get the tarps on the roof. Dad told him that, no, he appreciated the help, but we could get the tarps on our own. Lyle said it’ll just take a few minutes, but Dad stopped him.

“It’s best that you just leave. Me and my boys will get the rest.”

Inside the trailer Kinsler asked a million questions, but it was really just one question asked in a million ways. I snapped at him. Told him to shut up. Why are you always asking so many questions, why can’t you just shut up for once. Just go to fucking bed and shut up, I don’t know what to tell you. And then Dad, later, saying that he knew there was something wrong with that guy.

“I told you there was something off there. I told you that, didn’t I?”

* * * *

The rest is a drawing in charcoal. Dark blotches on a white page, smothering every bit of the white until no matter how much you smudge, the best you can get is the darkest grays.

Imagine the grays: Kinsler and I exit the bus after the first day of school, unlock the front door to an empty house. The lights off and the house’s shadows absorb our shadows, smearing the floors and the walls as we pass through. It’s quiet—it has been mainly quiet since Lyle stood there exposed, the adults unsure how to put words to the situation. I had asked Mom if everything was okay and she could only turn and cry, and I took that as her answer.

Kinsler out the back door to feed Luna. Me taking a piss in the unlit bathroom, muted light from the hallway spread across my feet. Then the barn doors slam too hard, and Kinsler’s body fills the bathroom door, frantic and heaving. I smell rot and see his eyes wide but he is not taking in any breath. He vomits in the sink and is pointing toward the barn and I am frozen then unfrozen and saying what, what, what. He tells me something is wrong with Lyle in the barn. Something is wrong with Luna, Kinsler says, she’s sick or something, and then I see that his shirt is covered in vomit, but I know it’s not his. It’s not from a human. I tried to stop her, he said, but she won’t stop. She won’t stop.

“Nolan, I tried to stop her, but she won’t stop.”

And I slide the doors open and the chains are tangled in front of me and Lyle’s figments are swaying up in the rafters like rusty palm leaves and then I see that Lyle is swaying, too, caught up in the chains. Caught up by his neck and Luna is black and wild, plucking at his mouth, his mouth a cavern, and she is feeding on his tongue, his eyes already gone. I’m doubling back and telling Kinsler to stay out, call 9-1-1 I tell him, stay out of here. And I’m trying to grab Luna but Kinsler was right, she won’t relent, and then I’ve got Lyle’s legs in a full bearhug, lifting him but I know it’s for nothing. Then on the wall I see the dark letters, no grays in the scrawled letters, just the absence of light:

T-R-A-N-N-Y

* * * *

And later we are at Dad’s and I’m shoving him backwards over his coffee table, seeing him eye-to-eye, seeing him for a murderer, for someone who kills both what he loves and what he hates. The glass of the table smashed. My fists grabbing his collar, my fist landing a blow to his cheek; he only looks at me confused, asking me what the hell is wrong with me but refusing to fight back like a guilty person might. Then I hear Kinsler.

“Stop. It wasn’t Dad,” he screams. And now I’m the confused one until Kinsler says the name.

“I think it was Bryce,” he says through sobs. “I think it’s my fault. I told him what we saw the other night and he started acting funny and angry and calling Lyle a tranny and saying it wasn’t natural and that they all deserved to go to hell where they belonged.”

Dad is breathing heavy in a heap under me, and I hear him say goddamned meatball man. I hear Kinsler’s sobs, and Dad is just breathing, breathing, as the tarp on his roof flaps against the wind, streaks of sun chasing in as it goes.

* * * *

I’m in the barn with the spent casings on the ground and the gunshot wounds on Lyle’s stomach as I try to lift his body back into the world. Kinsler’s voice drifts in, weak, and he’s talking to the 9-1-1 dispatcher and then he calls her mommy and I rush to grab the phone from him and I don’t know how to speak to her about what has happened; about what her children have seen; about what she has lost. Mom is frantic, and I know she’ll leave us again, sunk back down to that place below the treeline where her horizon is gone. So it’s just me and Kinsler, collapsed on the grass, listening to the sound of Luna’s thrashing wings, and the sound of approaching sirens, and the sound of sirens in the driveway, and the sound of a Glock firing, and the thrashing stops.