999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [48]
“Here’s to the two of you!” said Mr. Fairfield, starting up the engine of the pickup and lifting the bottle of alcohol towards Dampy and Hooter. They looked at each other with a sense of shame and complicity, and then the pickup moved out onto Route 97.
“I seen you before, you know that,” Mr. Fairfield said. “At the Saturday garage sale. I noticed you there on the FREE table. For weeks. They can’t give away that ugly little fucker, I thought. So, when I saw you again tonight I thought—I’ve got just the place for him. The perfect little dork of a buddy. Right, Dampy?”
Dampy was mum. It was a cruel and provoking thing to have said to the poor little owl, who was a homely bedraggled creature, to be sure. Dampy was used to having his feelings hurt. He was numb to such abuse. But poor Hooter must have been close to tears.
Mr. Fairfield seemed to pick up on that thought. “Hey, I guess I’m no looker myself. You got that beak, I got this gut, and Dampy there is a goddamn basket case. Dampy has got more problems than Dear Abby. But Dampy don’t talk about his problems. Not to his family anyhow. But maybe he will to you. What do you say, little fella?”
Neither Dampy nor Hooter said a word.
Mr. Fairfield took another hit from the bottle and they continued the rest of the way in silence.
When they arrived home, it was Mr. Fairfield who introduced Hooter to the new Mrs. Fairfield. “Look, honey, we got another member of the family.” He dropped Hooter into Mrs. Fairfield’s lap with a loud but not very owlish Whoo! Whoo!
“Isn’t he a darling?” said Mrs. Fairfield without much conviction. “Isn’t he just the sweetest thing?” She took a puff on her cigarette and asked, “But what is he, anyhow?”
“What bird goes Whoo! Whoo! He’s an owl. Look at him. He’s got a beak like an owl, and those big eyes. Got to be an owl. So we called him Hooter.”
“But he’s got teddy-bear-type ears,” Mrs. Fairfield objected.
“So? No one’s perfect. He’s a fuckin’ owl. Give him a kiss. Go ahead.”
Mrs. Fairfield put her cigarette in the ashtray, and sighed, and smiled, and planted a delicate kiss on Hooter’s beak. Hooter could tell it was a real kiss, with feelings behind it, and so he knew he was a member of the Fairfield family from that point on. He, who’d thought he’d never belong to any family but just spend the rest of his life in a box in the basement of the Dutch Reformed Church.
“Okay?” said Mrs. Fairfield, turning to her husband.
“Now tell him you love him.”
“I love you,” said MR. Fairfield, still looking at Mr. Fairfield in an anxious way.
“Okay then,” said Mr. Fairfield, rubbing his hand across the fur on his own head, which was the same color brown as Hooter’s but much longer. “We got that settled. Now you all better hit the sack. I’m outa here.”
Mrs. Fairfield looked disappointed, but she didn’t ask where he was off to or whether she could come along.
Mrs. Fairfield was basically a stay-at-home type, and Dampy and Hooter took after her in that respect. They might spend hours at a time on the love seat watching TV with Mrs. Fairfield, or playing Parcheesi by themselves under the dining room table with its great mounds of folded clothes waiting to be ironed. Rarely did they go out of the house, for they knew there was good reason not to. The woods were just behind the house, and Mr. Fairfield told fearful tales about the woods. Most animals that did not have human families to live with had no home but the woods, which could be a dangerous place, even for owls. Owls are predators themselves, and hunt for mice and smaller birds, but they are preyed upon in turn by wolves and bears and snakes. As for young pussycats, Mr. Fairfield said, the woods meant certain death. Dampy must never, never go into the woods by himself, not even with Hooter, or they