What started making me nervous was how the illustrations showed both of us eating precisely what we had ordered: pancakes, sausage, and a large chocolate milk for Carson; a western omelet and coffee for myself.
I knew from his monthly status reports that many of the specialists at the group home believed Carson possessed a gift for artwork. I wondered how he’d managed to draw these panels without my seeing him do it.
Carson was twenty-six, having outlived doctors’ estimates for his life by more than a decade. He was getting sneaky in his old age. Or I was becoming obtuse in mine.
For the first time in ages, the two of us ate in silence. We then paid our bill and left.
As we were driving out of the parking lot and getting back onto the road, Carson turned to the next page. So far, only one frame was there. In it, our car was making a right onto Arboretum Road-a good twelve miles away.
“Well, at least Long-Lost is giving us a little time,” I said.
Carson turned on the radio. It was still tuned to the local NPR station. This time the subject was “Foot-and-Mouth Disease: Is It Coming Back Again?”
I slowed the car as we neared the turnoff to Arboretum Road.
“We could just keep driving,” I said. “Nothing’s forcing us to do what’s drawn there.”
“Long-Lost says we gotta. He says it’ll cause all kinds of trouble if we don’t.”
“Tell Long-Lost for me that he and I need to have a talk.”
“He knows. He’s planning on having a special talk with you. About me. An’ stuff.”
And with that, I turned onto Arboretum Road.
This time we didn’t consult the comic book. About half a mile down the road there was a large fallen tree blocking the way. We would have to turn around and go back the way we came, and the only way to do that was to turn onto another, much narrower, unpaved side road-which was really more of a glorified footpath-then back out slowly as I worked the wheel.
As soon as we turned onto the path I looked up and realized where we were.
“Audubon’s Graveyard,” I whispered to myself.
“What?” said Carson.
“Nothing.” Which, of course, wasn’t the truth. Having lived in Cedar Hill all of my life, I’d heard of Audubon’s Graveyard-it was something of a local legend-but had never actually seen it, knew only that it was located somewhere in the vicinity of Arboretum Road.
I killed the engine and stared out at the small rise a few dozen yards ahead. A couple of pigeons lay there, dead, stiff, wings splayed, eyes glassy and staring up toward the sky they would never know again.
Carson reached over and gently touched my shoulder. “Where are we?”
“It’s, um… well…” How could I explain this place to him?
There was a five-acre plat on the other side of that rise which some smartass reporter had long ago dubbed “Audubon’s Graveyard,” actually thinking the name displayed wit and irony. There were still some locals who referred to this area simply as “The Nest,” but it was “Audubon’s Graveyard” that stuck.
Since the spring of 1957, those five acres of county-owned land had been the focus of several official investigations (conducted by everyone from the State Department of Health to Federal Haz-Mat teams), and for good reason: twice a year, for a period lasting about three weeks, every bird that flew over the area dropped from the sky, dead before it hit the ground. The soil had been tested countless times for contaminants, as had the air, the small creek that ran through the plat, and even the other forms of wildlife that inhabited the woods surrounding it. Nothing was infected, and only birds were dying. In every case, their hearts exploded. No tests, no dissections, no theories were able to explain why this happened. There weren’t even good legends from ancient Hopewell Indian mythology to shed any light on the cause. It was simply what it was: a huge and eerie question mark.
Carson nudged me with his elbow and showed me the next page: there we were, on the other side of the rise, on foot, walking toward the body of a dead hawk whose right eye took up a full half of the panel, while Carson and I were little more than minute, hazy ghosts in the background.
“Carson, I need you to be honest with me, all right? It’s really important that you understand that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“ Is this some kind of a joke? I know from your supervisors that you have drawing talent. Are you drawing those pages in when I’m not looking?”
“Oh, no! No. I ain’t very good at drawing. Sure can’t draw like this.”
“Swear?”
“Swear.”
I looked at the comic book in his hand and nodded my head. “Well, then; let’s go see what Long-Lost has in mind for us.”
We climbed up the rise, Carson taking care not to step on the bodies of the pigeons.
The sight below made my breath catch in my throat.
Scattered across the field were hundreds of dead birds; purple grackles and blackbirds, flickers, brown thrashers, loggerhead shrikes, bohemian waxwings, multi-colored kestrels, kingfishers, starlings, bluegrays, and a magnificent marsh hawk. I had no idea how any of these birds had died; there were no broken necks, no gunshot wounds, no animal bites. Only their eyes held a clue.
Every set was a deep, disturbing red.
There were not only the bodies of birds, but bones, as well. Neither Carson nor myself could walk more than a few paces without hearing the tiny crunch and snap of birds’ bones under our shoes. Carson looked once again at his comic, then unzipped a pocket of his knapsack, moved its contents to the pockets of his coat, and began gathering up as many bones as he could stuff in there.
“Carson, you can’t be-”
“I gotta,” he replied, thrusting the comic into my hand.
In the new set of panels (Jesus H. Christ, how was he doing this so quickly?), Carson was moving through the field, gathering up bones. In the final panel on the page an old barn suddenly entered the picture, albeit far in the background.
I looked up, and there it was; deserted, neglected, falling only slightly to decay.
“Carson, stop, we’re going home.” I was now seriously creeped out. Unless the fantasy before me is up on a movie or television screen I really have no use for it, nor it for me.
“I can’t! ” Carson yelled back at me. “Long-Lost says I gotta.”
“Long-Lost is not driving the car, and Long-Lost sure as hell isn’t the one taking care of you, so Long-Lost can go fuck himself!” Even I was shocked to hear that word come out of my mouth, which should have given me some indication of how panicked I was becoming, but at that moment I was too caught up in wanting to get the hell away from there so I could start denying any of this had happened to care about my language.
Carson whirled around and pleaded. “Please, UncGil? I just gotta do this.”
“I said no.”
Now he glared at me. For a few moments we stood there like two half-assed cowboys in some showdown from a Sergio Leone Western epic, then I stormed across to Carson and grabbed his arm, which was stupid, because my nephew, though not very tall, is nonetheless a beefy and very compact man, one whose physical strength is easy to overlook.
He jerked away and I made to grab him again, but this time he was ready and met my movements with a swinging elbow that caught me in the center of the chest, knocking the wind and about three years of life out of me. I dropped to my knees and began to fall forward, stopping myself with my hands. I stayed that way for several moments, my vision blurry and lungs screaming for air. I looked down at the soil under my hands. I remember thinking how very much like clay the soil felt. I wondered if I could possibly dig up several handfuls and fashion them into clay crutches, because there was no way in hell I was going to able to get up under my own power.
Carson helped me up. He was crying. He hugged me tight, saying, “I’m sorry, UncGil, I’m sorry, I love you, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t! ”