Bad Things

It was hard to avoid the first one lying in her path, as she hiked down to her horse stable. A slight breeze ruffled the brown and grey striated feathers, which looked so familiar to her. They were the ones she’d collected over the years, found in random spots around the property and stuck in the crown of her cowboy hat. But she’d never seen a whole bird of prey up this close. A red-tailed hawk, strewn in her path with its neck snapped.

Now she tried to do what she’d always done with perished smaller birds—find a tree limb and carefully place the carcass on it, secured by the smaller branches. But the hawk was too heavy for that, so she went with wedging it into the crook of two branches. One more glance and an urge to say a prayer for it, then she turned toward her morning tasks.

Forty minutes later, she was on foot with the dogs, taking her usual two-mile walk down the tree-lined lane that led to their small acreage. The smaller dog, a heeler-mix off the Navajo Reservation, saw something lying on the road and sped toward it. From a distance, she caught sight of wind-ruffled feathers, cloud white this time. When she got to it, the head shape told her at once: owl. A young one from its size. As she gently lifted it above the dog’s inquisitive snout, the head flopped loosely. Broken neck... again.

A large cottonwood beckoned her to place the bird in the hollow created by a departed branch. She tucked the bundle there, noting how the downy white starkly contrasted the dark gnarl of the trunk. So, that was the second bird of prey she’d found this morning, neck broken but otherwise intact. Was it—was this an omen? A sign? And if so, of what? What should she be looking out for?

In the late morning, she succumbed to a nagging urge to get out of the house and drive the thirty miles to the big town where everyone shopped. That was unusual for her, more what her husband liked to do—take a trip to the music store to see his bros, followed by a stop at the supermarket. But he was in the workshop today, building something for his home studio. Something was telling her to get on the road, and she had to scratch that itch.

Once past her own small town, the road climbed for twenty miles, alternating hairpin turns with longer straight stretches. For that reason, the posted speed limit was only forty-five. Although it seemed too fast for the curves, many of her neighbors felt it was too slow for the straightaways. Some days she agreed, but not today. She’d already pulled over to let five cars whip past her in the first five minutes. She noticed one of them had been the kid who was staying with his grandparents in the house next door. He held up a hand in a wave as he ripped by her in his white pickup, disappearing around the first bend. Her neighbor had said he was staying with them while he attended AA meetings and tried to stay sober. And out of jail was the quiet part that the locals gossiped about. She hoped it all went well for that family, who’d already seen their share of tragedy over the past thirty years.

The grandson was a friendly kid, who always smiled and waved at her from the fence whenever he saw her at the stable. He appeared to keep regular hours, most days leaving in the early morning and returning around five. She figured he was doing landscape work as his truck was laden with brush clearing tools, along with an old mattress and several full contractor bags.

She was about halfway up the mountain and just entering the cell phone dead zone that spanned a good five miles, when she saw it. The familiar white truck lay upside down on the shoulder of the opposite lane. Its contents—the mattress, bags and a half dozen yard tools—were spread over the road, along with the body of a deer.

Even as her brain told her it wouldn’t go through, she pulled off on the shoulder and dialed 911. Hadn't she heard somewhere that the signal for the emergency response number could transmit via GPS, even if you hung up or were in a dead zone? Dropping her phone on the passenger seat, she got out and began to approach the overturned truck. A slight movement from the road caught her eye and she turned to see the deer kick and shudder before it went still, liquid now seeping from both ends.

Approaching the driver’s door of the truck, she ducked down and reached through the open window. The kid hung upside down, having worn his seat belt, which had kept him from smashing into the windshield. When she touched his shoulder, he stirred.

“I hit... a deer. Dead?” he murmured, his eyes still closed.

“Yes,” she returned softly, sensing she might be witnessing his dying words, hoping she wasn’t.

Now she heard a siren, far in the distance, coming from the small town’s direction. That meant another fifteen before they got there. The kid started coughing and she reached her hand to his back, hoping to soothe.

A groan came from deep within him. “I don’t want to die this way.”

“I don’t think you’re gonna,” she replied, not knowing why until it dawned on her.

It was the two birds. Then the deer on the road. It made her think of bad things that happened in threes. Hadn’t she heard someone say that? And death was the ultimate bad thing. He seemed to be listening to what she was saying. So, while the siren got closer, she told him of her day so far. She spoke of the birds she’d found.

“Then the deer. It—" more spasmodic coughing as she patted his back to keep him with her. "It has to have filled the need for the third bad thing. So, Jimmy, I think you’re gonna make it. Jimmy!”

He’d told her his name when they first started talking, and she took his hand now, just before the long silence that followed. Ten minutes later, still crouching to hold his hand, she took deep, calming breaths and watched the flashing lights approach.

Bad things only came in threes, right? God, she hoped so.