Ron has moved the old and cracked piece of drywall aside that serves as the door to his garage attic and now stands precariously on his ladder, peering in, trying to gauge the difficulty of the task at hand. When he was younger and had Karen or one of the kids to help, he would climb up into the attic, carefully stepping only on the rafters, then carry the boxes to the opening and directly into waiting hands below. Now the kids are grown and Karen has been gone for over five years, so he’s going to have to figure out a way to do this on his own.
Thankfully, there’s not much left up here. Five or six boxes at best, an old utility sink and a couple of rolls of supremely old shag carpet that he is pretty sure pre-dated even their ownership of this house. He gives his previous self kudos for strategically placing the boxes so they can all be reached without actually climbing up onto the rafters and thinks, I can do this.
He reaches for the first of the boxes, a cardboard number with “Mayflower Moving and Storage” printed on the side, the letters “XMAS” scrawled in black magic marker across the faded blue imprint. There is a silhouette of the ship itself, the Mayflower, printed below the words, the fabled boat having gone nowhere for the past forty years save for up and down this ladder twice a year to bring the Christmas decorations down and then back up. After the kids left, this happened less and less often, since mostly he and Karen would travel to see them instead, but now he couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had brought it down.
Ron gets his fingertips hooked under the flap on the top and pulls it toward him. Not as heavy as he thought it would be. So far, so good. He moves it right up to the edge, then over it a bit so he can get his arms under the sides to lift it out. He lifts, pivots gently around, fearful that the bottom seam will give away. A light breeze wafts through the open garage door, a couple of dried leaves tinkle in with it. He pauses, making sure his grip is secure. The aging cardboard smells like the underside of a rock, and when the wind comes in as a gust and the leaves dance brightly on his garage floor, he sneezes, causing the ladder to shake. He feels it vacillating side to side, the amplitude of the sway increasing each time.
Holy Shit! he thinks, This is it, I’m going down. In a nanosecond, he pictures himself in a full body cast, strung up to a hospital bed frame with ropes and pulleys. Then he sees an alternative, his skull cracked open, blood and brains spilling out onto the concrete floor, surrounded by an explosion of Hallmark collectable ornaments.
So he does the only thing he can do, and drops the box, his hands shooting out to grab the edge of the hole to the attic. The box bursts open on impact; snowmen and stockings fly.
He isn’t dead yet, that’s good, he thinks, but the ladder is still wobbling and he only has one foot planted, so he kicks the other foot back, trying to get purchase on the elusive rung.
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaims, since no one can hear him. He is not prone to swearing in the presence of others. Given that he still hasn’t been able to get footing, he adds, “Fuck me!”
“Whoa, there,” comes another human voice, and he looks down to see someone he is pretty sure he should know, but can’t immediately place. Who this is, however, isn’t important at the moment; the important thing is that he has grabbed ahold of the ladder and is stabilizing it in place. The man stands there, looking up at Ron, a tiny terrier circling his feet.
Now Ron recognizes him. It is Gil, his neighbor. Actually, he recognizes the dog first, but then remembers the man as well. He doesn’t know Gil well, but they have made small talk over the years and he seems to be a nice enough guy. Never had kids, he and his wife. Just quiet people with yappy dogs. Ron’s own dog, Buster, an aging tan and white beagle, is snoozing inside of the house, oblivious.
So Gil helps him with the rest of the boxes, playing surrogate for his absent family and accepting the boxes as Ron passes them out of the attic.
“I saw the sign in the yard,” Gil says as they work. “Shame to see you go.”
“Yeah, well,” says Ron, “It’s really more than I need myself.”
Back safely on the ground, he unfolds the flaps of a box marked “MATT’S STUFF.” A creaky baseball glove with a baseball mummified inside sits on top. Ron moves things around in the box, uncovering an archery practice target, a bow, a small quiver of arrows, as well as a flat basketball and a pair of rollerblades. He closes the box and scribbles “GOODWILL” across the top, moves to the next one.
“I know what you mean,” Gil says. “A lot of work, keeping up. And sometimes I feel like I have to fight for control of my own property with those goddamn geese.”
Ron, looks up. “The geese?” he asks.
“Yeah, you know, the Canadian geese.” Gil says.
Canada geese, Ron thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud because he doesn’t want to be an asshole. They’re called Canada Geese, not Canadian. But he knows full well the geese that Gil is referring too, because Buster goes ballistic when he sees or hears them, and Ron, well, he hates them with all of his being.
“They crap all over everything,” Gil continues.
“I know!” Ron says. “I’ve tried just about everything to get rid of them. You’ve seen Wiley?”
“Wiley?” Gil asks.
“My coyote.”
“Wiley, your coyote?” Then Gil gets it, remembering the first time he saw the canine in Ron’s backyard, back arched, hackles up and teeth bared. It took him a good few minutes to realize it was fake.
“Didn’t work,” Ron said. “Didn’t scare a single goose as far as I could tell, but he grew on me, so I kept him. I tried spraying the yard with repellant, too. And squirting them with water. That works, but they come right back just a few minutes later.”
“Yeah,” Gil says, “shame you can’t shoot them. Anyway, can I help you with anything else?”
Ron says no, thanks, and Gil and his yappy terrier go home. Ron leaves the boxes in the garage, ready to load them up for the trip to Goodwill in the morning. He feeds Buster, makes himself a fried egg sandwich and sits out on the back deck to eat it. It’s a little cool with the sun dropping in the sky, but not so much as to chase him inside. He looks out over his half-acre backyard sprawled out in front of him. Buster drops down by his feet and is immediately on the verge of sleep as he seems to be more often than not these days.
Ron likes his yard. He likes the pond that borders it straight ahead and he likes that the hill on the other side is covered in trees. It’s part of the wildlife preserve, so no one has ever been allowed to build there. A row of shrubs separates his property from Gil’s on the right and a fence from the young family that moved in last year on the left. It’s peaceful. He will miss it.
“Honk, honk, honk.”
There they are again, those god-damned geese. As soon as the first one hits the ground, Buster is up and howling, running across the lawn at full speed.
“Buster!” he calls, “get back here!” but he knows it is futile. Buster will run and bark until he gets tired, which fortunately doesn’t take as long now that he is older.
Ron sees a goose hop up into the air just ahead of Buster, but rather than fly away, it comes further into the yard and lands again. Buster circles back, and the same bird takes flight again, only to return to the ground even closer to the house.
This bird is pretty ballsy, Ron thinks, and Buster circles around once more. The bird takes flight again, this time landing even closer still.
Screw this. Ron runs though the house to the garage and rapidly finds the box labeled “MATT’S STUFF.” A quick brush of his hands and he finds the bow and the practice arrows left over from his son’s Boy Scout days and snaps them up. He darts back to the deck, drops the quiver on the picnic table and snatches out an arrow. The goose has wandered to within twenty feet of Ron, and is standing stock still between him and the row of shrubs that separate his yard from Gil’s.
Ron pulls an arrow out of the quiver and fumbles with the bow. He hasn’t held one of these since Matt was twelve and they shot together at the troop campout. Does it matter which end goes up? He decides it doesn’t matter to him. He’s not out to win any archery competition, he just wants to kill that god-damned goose. He is sure now that this goose is the ringleader - the one that has been terrorizing his house for the past five years, bringing his gaggle back year after year to shit in his yard.
“I am not leaving this house until you are dead,” Ron mumbles to himself as he pulls on the bow, arrow locked in. Shocked that the bow doesn’t snap from dead rot, he releases, but the arrow sails wildly, bouncing off the ground at least ten feet from the goose, who doesn’t flinch. Instead, it takes a couple of waddling steps towards Ron, digging its bill into the ground for some unseen treasure.
“Bastard,” Ron exhales, and pulls another arrow from the quiver. This time he aims more carefully, closing one eye like he thinks he is supposed to, pointing the tip of the arrow right at the bird’s black beady eye.
The arrow hits just behind its tail feathers, but the damn thing still seems unfazed. Buster has chased off nearly every other goose by now, and is lumbering back toward the house. Ron catches him out of the corner of his eye, but he can tell that Buster is tired, so he reaches down for the last arrow in the quiver, not paying much attention to Buster’s movements.
This is his mistake, however, because just as Ron has the arrow aimed perfectly, this time right for the bird’s heart (or at least where he imagines it to be), Buster catches sight of the creature, too, and gets a second wind.
“Woof!” Buster bellows, and Ron releases the arrow. Startled by his dog’s lunge toward his prey, his bow jerks and the arrow flies upward, no longer aiming toward the large Canada goose on the ground, but right into the shrubs between his yard and Gil’s.
He hears the arrow hit. Something about the sound of the arrow striking doesn’t sit right with Ron. Then there is another sound, a human voice, the same one that he heard as he was on the verge of falling from his ladder just a few hours ago.
“Shit.” It is Gil’s voice, from the other side of the shrubs.
Oh no, Ron thinks, oh no, oh no, oh no.
He runs through a break between the bushes, pushing the spiky branches away, and finds his neighbor sitting there in a lawn chair, paperback book in hand, a glass of tea sitting on a tiny table next to him.
Ron’s arrow is protruding from his upper chest.
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