The Bird w/c 291

w/c 291

Harry drives through the crumbling hippie commune.
No one greets him.

Cloud Warrior doesn’t greet him either.
Her ashes are in a plastic bag sitting beside him; soon to be spread under her beloved cactus.

His aunt was the resident rain-maker here, although her real name was Annette Barrington. So English.

Not so her falling-down gate. Made of bamboo, bound together by what she called Macramé, and adorned with colorful plastic trinkets, fading under the desert sun, this gate has always talked to him.

Harry stops to pet his favorite adornment. The Bird. Harry was there the day it died and Cloud Warrior dunked the carcass into a bucket of artist’s plaster.

Shocked, six-year-old-Harry watched her arrange the bird on the gate, wings spread wide, as she chanted a prayer to send the bird’s spirit soaring.

It stank for a while, but she covered the smell with several layers of paint and eventually the organic matter became gasses and the rest was eaten by ants.

Harry got left with this crazy, hippie aunt whenever his parents wanted a ‘drinking’ weekend. And he loved her.

She had big boobies and went topless and wore lots of beads.

He always tried to touch the boobies while fiddling with the beads. Cloud Warrior would just smile and stroke his hair. “Your time will come little warrior. Choose a woman who has a river of life flowing from her breasts.”

As he pets the bird again for the last time, one of the bird’s gaudy, green-jeweled eyes falls into his hand.

“How many years you been stuck on that gate buddy?” he teases.
He drops the eye into his pocket.

“Let’s soar in a jet. My river wife awaits.”