Hell on Steroids

There's a rustle behind me and when I turn to look, I see the puppy has latched onto a sofa pillow easily twice his size and is determinedly dragging it across the ceramic tile floor.  He sees me see him and immediately tries to run but it's an awkward burden and he doesn't make much progress.  I sigh, tell him "No!" and take it away from him.  He gives me a pained look, trots off, and in just a few minutes returns  with a four foot piece of chewed up weatherstripping.  After I take that away, he disappears again but presently I hear more rustling and when I go to investigate, I find him doing his best to carry off a 12 pack of shrink wrapped paper towels. He's already on the third stair step, nearly halfway to the landing, and looking bright eyed and proud of himself.

Well, I say, You've got ambition, I'll give you that.

He drops his prize and tilts his head at me.  There's expectation in his eyes.

You know, I tell him, Cute is the only thing standing between you and a lethal injection.

He drops the ragged edge of the plastic wrap and sits, still looking at me with an alert, lopsided puppy grin.

Give it here, I say but when I reach for it, he snatches it back and we're suddenly in a tug of war.  The plastic rips and a half dozen rolls of paper towels come loose and skitter down the stairs.  Before I can get to them, he's gotten one in his teeth and given it a violent shake, pulling it free from its roll.  There's not much I can do except watch - giving chase would only encourage the game -  as he scrambles down the hall, darts into my office and through the classroom, leaving a trail of towels in his wake.  Eventually I manage to corner him under a folding chair by the double doors and realizing there's no way out, he finally surrenders.

But of course this is all only in the first half hour of my day and I fear he's just getting warmed up.  Before the day is over, I will have rescued a makeup kit bag, two dvd's, a spray bottle of Febreze, a pair of bluejeans, an entire cardboard box of bank statements, several assorted but mismatched socks, a Bic lighter, half a roll of plastic trash bags, a section of carpet matting, a handful of permanent markers, a package of UPS shipping stickers and a roll of electrician's tape.  All that's missing is a partridge in a pear tree.

This is not a dog, I tell Michael as I pry open the puppy's jaws to retrieve a thoroughly mangled pack of mentholated cough drops, This is a Weapon of Mass Destruction cleverly disguised as a dog.

Not wanting to give up his latest trophy, the puppy hangs on and growls.  I give him a smart pop on the nose and he gives me an aggrieved look before dropping the cough drops and launching himself back into my arms where he knocks me over and begins to smother me with kisses.  It's like trying to catch and restrain a hyper affectionate eel.

Michael is running errands when I leave so I herd the dogs outside one last time on my way out.  I open the door and the old pit lumbers out.  The chihuahua follows, snootily milling around the flower beds and trying not to get her feet wet.  The cur dog comes last, stumbling with each step and trying mightily to dislodge the puppy who has gotten a death grip on his hind leg.  Both are flailing and growling like flying monkeys but the cur dog wins, flinging the puppy off with one violent, final shake.  The puppy immediately tears across the lawn and hurls himself at the old pit in a full, frontal assault.  There's some initial bobbing and weaving, a couple of laps around the lawn furniture and several choke holds before the pit loses patience and takes the puppy down, sending him sprawling with one swing of his massive head.  The whole thing takes on a slightly cartoonish and acrobatic quality and I find myself thinking that this must be what wrestling looks like.  Then, with the kind of persistence you rarely see anymore, the puppy turns and begins to stalk the chihuahua.  Her sixth sense kicks in almost immediately and though there's a good ten feet between them, she whirls, snarls, and curls her lip in warning. The puppy, having no more sense than a breadfruit, charges and in a matter of seconds the fur is flying and it sounds like hell on steroids.

Salvation - also known as distraction - comes in the form of the mail truck.  As soon as it rounds the corner and pulls up to the curb, all four dogs unite in a show of solidarity and rush the fence like the hounds of hell.  Our mailman knows his part in this well and cheerfully calls all four by name as he walks up the drive. By the time I get them back inside, lock the door and reach the hall, the puppy is already at the front door, straining mightily to reach the mail slot and kidnap another a batch of mail.  He sees me and gives me a guilty look then seizes an L.L. Bean catalogue between his teeth and skitters up the staircase.

I lock up and leave and the last thing I hear is the mailman shouting Hi Yo, Silver! Away! and a thunderous chorus of barking from the upstairs windows.

Sometimes I yearn for those pre-puppy thrilling days of yesteryear.

 

  

Summer Corn

It was coming on sunset when we got to Miz Lilly's cornfield. The wind had shifted and like all island raised children, we knew a storm was on the way even though we couldn't see the passage or the rolling fogbank just off Peter's Island. Keeping to the dusty dirt road meant risking getting caught in the rain - worse, being late for supper - so after a quick vote, we decided to cut through the corn.

Just as we'd been taught, we walked single file through the green, ripening rows, now and again dodging wayward stalks and watching the sky. We were almost to the pasture behind Uncle Willie's when we stumbled into the bad patch of trampled corn and zigzgged broken stalks.

Jeezum crow, Ruthie said in surprise, What happened here?

Looks like a runaway tractor, don't it, Betty Jean agreed, Mebbe Miz Lilly done took to drinkin'.

Not likley, I said mildly, mebbe somethin' chasing the cows.

Yeah, Betty muttered, somethin' like a tractor. Move yer ass, Ruth, I'm feelin' raindrops.

By the time we got to the edge of the pasture, it was sprinkling, light but steady, and we could see the fog rolling in from the west. I was thinking it reminded me of one of those giant paving machines smoothing out a newly laid road when I heard Ruthie laugh.

Lookie there, she called to us, somethin' even got the scarecrow!

Miz Lilly ain't never had no scarecrow, Betty said with a frown, You seein' things, Ruth.

But she wasn't. We caught up with her and saw what she was gesturing at. From a distance it looked like a bundle of rags in overalls, a flannel shirt and side by side muddy work boots pointed skyward.

Oh, Jaysus, Betty said under her breath, That ain't no scarecrow. It's Stump Sullivan. Goddam, I hope he ain't dead.

Now there weren't a livin' soul on the islands didn't know Stump Sullivan was nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake. Folks said he had some kinda fallin' down shack in the woods, no one knew exactly where, and that he lived on the whiskey he stole from the stills. Come winter, he slipped into the summer houses for shelter, moving from one night to the next and never doing any real damage. In the summer months though, he holed up in the woods and only came out once a month to pick up his disability check. It was enough to persuade some islander making a trip to the mainland to stop at the provincial liquor - an id and a clean shirt were really all you needed to make a purchase, no matter how ridiculously huge - and bring him back several bottles of rotgut vodka.

Dumber'n dirt, Sparrow liked to say, and bedbug crazy even when he ain't likkored up.

And now, here was ol' Stump, splayed out on the damp ground of Uncle Willie's back pasture in the rain, dead to the world and snoring up a storm.

Well, Ruthie said, leastways he ain't dead. What we 'sposed to do?

Do? Betty snapped incredulously, Do? We ain't 'sposed to do nothin'! Reckon he'll wake up or drown and I don't much care which!

Ruthie stood her ground. We cain't just leave him! she protested stubbornly.

Hell if'n we cain't, Betty shot back, He's jist a nasty, crazy, old drunk! I'm goin' on! And with that, she gave us both an angry glare, turned on her heel and stalked off. We watched her go until the fog swallowed her whole.

Now what? I asked Ruthie mildly, You have some kind of a plan?

Reckon we could drag him yonder to the hay wagon, she said, nodding back toward the corn,

It'd be some shelter.

I thought about arguing, decided it wasn't worth the time it would take, and shrugged. Feet or hands?

She considered this. Stump Sullivan was built - not to be indelicate but as Sparrow would've said, “like a brick shithouse” - and I'm not sure either of thought we could do it.

Feet, Ruthie said finally, That way if'n he wakes up, he cain't latch onto us.

This made a certain amount of sense so we each grabbed a muddy boot and started to pull.

Ol' Stump never made a sound, but Lord help us, he was heavy and when we got to the hay wagon, we both had to get down on our hands and knees to haul him under. He still never stirred though for a few seconds the snoring seemed to stop and we weren't sure he was breathing. Ruthie gave him a nudge in the ribs and he kind of groaned, then turned on his side, curled up and resumed snoring. An empty vodka bottle fell out of his back pocket.

So long, Stump, I said, wiping corn silk and mud off my hands.

Ayuh, Ruthie agreed cheerfully, Sweet dreams, Stump. Jist don't die.

We made for home. We didn't beat the storm, Betty Jean told on us - What were you thinkin'? my grandmother demanded irritably, Upstairs and out of them wet clothes 'fore you catch your death! - but Stump Sullivan lived to drink another day and was none the wiser.

Finch Wars

Not having the good sense to know the difference between brave and reckless, the kitten goes into stealth mode and steals up on the little dachshund who is peacefully sleeping in the corner where he keeps his toys. I watch her peer around the corner of the loveseat, her rear end quivering like jello, and then she trills a warning and pounces.

It's the trill that gives her away, of course. He comes awake like a thunderbolt, all false fury and righteous indignation, and chases her out of the sun room, through the bedroom, into the dining room and finally to the kitchen where she leaps onto the counter, out of his reach. He gives a soft but firm Woof! in her general direction, then after a brief stop at the water bowl, trots back into the sun room, rearranges his toy collection and goes back to sleep, his head resting protectively on Lambchop, his favorite. It could have been his gentle snoring that caught her attention, or her natural curiosity but my money's on her need to disrupt any quiet moment. She's a born stalker, an intrepid instigator, a trouble maker who thrives on mischief and mayhem, what the 60's establishment liked to label an outside agitator. And she's very, very good at it.

Lately though, she's been getting back a little of her own. A pair of what I think are finches, has taken up residence in the azaleas outside of the sun room windows. They're pretty birds with their soft muted red and brown coloring, but they're highly territorial, surprisingly aggressive and quite loud. They chatter constantly, run off other birds and even chase and attack the squirrels that play in the crepe myrtles. They hover and flutter and dart about, scraping their wings and bodies against the glass and driving the kitten to distraction with their antics and the noise. And they're fearless - witness the precise and strategically carried out air strikes against the neighborhood cats - or the innocent shih-tzu next door, tag teamed with their daredevil manoevers so often that he cringes at the sight of them and runs yelping for the shelter of his garage. Shades of Alfred Hitchcock.

The kitten watches all this with intense fascination and I'm sure, no small measure of frustration.

I think it makes her little kamikaze self try harder.

If she watches long enough and learns to fly, it won't surprise me a bit.

Smoke, Mirrors and the Telephone Company

I need you to call the 'phone company, Michael tells me off handedly and before he can even finish the sentence I can feel my spine stiffening with resistance and my blood running cold, I want to see about adding an 800 number here.

I am calm.

I am resolute.

I am determined.

I am a grown up.

I can do this.

I make a silent vow that I will not lose my temper.

Absolutely, the first rep tells me, I can send you a link and you can do it all on line.

I have my doubts it will be as easy as she would have me believe but I'm willing to try. I open the link she sends and begin to make my way through the process, which to my pleasant surprise, actually turns out to be simple until I get to availability where I hit the wall I've been expecting. There's a problem with your request, I'm electronically informed, Please call your local business service specialist. I start again.

Oh, no, the second rep tells me carelessly, We can't do that. But I can transfer you to someone who can.

The first gnawing teeth of suspicion are starting to navigate up my spine.

I am calm, I remind myself.

I am resolute.

I am determined.

I am a grownup.

I can do this.

I can do this without losing my temper.

Another annoying series of prompts eventually gets to me a recording where I answer all the same questions all over again before I finally get to a recording that actually has something to do with availablility.

If you are in Michigan, Wyoming, Connecticut, Texas or Illinois, press one.

If you are in Vermont, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina or New Mexico, press two.

If you are in Mississippi, New York, California, Iowa or Alabama, press three.

The pencil I've been holding and tapping against my desk snaps abruptly in two.

If you are in Washington, Maine, Delaware, Ohio, North Dakota or Wisconsin, press four.

If you are in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Virigina or Louisiana, press five.

I press five and immediately hear The number you have dialed is not in service.......

With will power I had no idea I even had, I refuse to give in to the urge to repeatedly slam the handset into the wall and pitch whatever remains through a window.

I'm so sorry, the third rep tells me - although if anything she sounds somewhere between bored and amused - let me get you the right people.

I'ld be happy to help you, the fourth rep assures me, but you see, your service runs through the internet and it won't accommodate a toll free number.

Forty five minutes have passed - another forty-five will fly by before I'm done - and I'm beginning to think that the only solution to technology is a strategic nuclear strike.

Are you telling me, I say slowly while I clench and unclench my free fist, that it can't be done?

She patiently explains to me that of course, it can be done, but we would need a dedicated line installed and a separate telephone. She then tells me all the benefits this would entail - we'd know when someone was calling us toll free, we could track the calls, etc.

And the cost? I ask tiredly. She gives me a figure that is eight times what they advertise and I thank her and hang up quickly so she doesn't have the chance to thank me for choosing them, a standard closing that would surely drive me over the edge. All in all, it's the sorriest display of technology as progress that I've seen since the last time.

I relay all this to Michael who looks at me exactly as I expect, as if I've taken some exotic cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs. Before he can tell me I must've misunderstood, I fling my notes at him and tell him to call himself. Maybe he'll get a fifth rep and a better answer.  Miracles happen every day, so they tell me.

Dora Jean

Dora Jean's retirement party went off without a hitch.

After better'n forty years of school teaching, she got a cake and a plaque and, providing she was frugal and watched her pennies, enough of a retirement income to keep her and her cat fed.

She shyly thanked everyone for their cards and good wishes, hugged her fellow teachers, erased the blackboard one final time and walked home to her tiny but cozy little nest above the old hardware store. Here, home with her cheerful chintz curtains and comfortable chairs, she and the cat, a wiry old tom she called Alfie, she was most at ease. She slid out of her low heel pumps and put them neatly away, changed out of her prim sweater and matching skirt and hung them in the only closet, tucked her only string of pearls into the little heart shaped jewelry box she kept by the bed. With Alfie twining about her ankles, she slipped into her favorite old house sweater and paint stained overalls, found her fuzzy slippers and padded into the small pullman kitchen to put on the copper tea kettle and finish the morning's crossword puzzle.

Well, Alfie, she said, thoughtfully nibbling on the end of her faithful ballpoint pen, Can you give me an eight letter word for “the end of times”? No? How about “He who was looking for an honest man”, also eight letters?

When the kettle whistled, she poured tea, cut a small slice of lemon pound cake for herself and a slim wedge of cheese for the cat.

I can't say you're much help today, Alfie, she told him, Have you been keeping up with your studies?

The cat regarded her solemnly but had nothing to say.

No matter, Dora Jean shrugged and being very careful to keep her letters well inside the little squares, neatly filled in DOOMSDAY and DIOGENES.

After washing and dryiny the tea things, she curled up with Alfie and the rest of the newspaper, read it front page to back, watched an hour or so of the BBC, and was asleep and dreaming by nine.

Forty years of a habit are hard to break though, and she was up, bright eyed and alert by 6am the next morning, halfway through the day's lesson plan before she remembered she was retired and had no place to go. This was a disagreeable thought, she told herself, so determined not to give in to idleness or worse, self-pity, she unpinned the wall calendar from the back of the door and laid it out on the kitchen table along with the “Dartmouth After Dark” page of the paper.

Bingo, she read aloud, a scrabble club and a book club - this made the teacher in her smile -

there was volunteer work at the provincial hospital, meals to be delivered for the shut-ins,

A Green Thumb Society, two bridge tournaments, a Ladies Auxillary Knitting Circle, an All Welcome Dance at the Legion Hall. She could learn to quilt, take piano lessons, discover the secrets of gourmet cooking or be a part time dog walker.

She had circled the book club when she saw the announcement of the Canadian Armed Forces Reunion for a regiment whose name she knew immediately.

Now that, Alfie, she told the cat, might be worth dressing up for. I knew so many of those boys. And in her small, precise handwriting, she added the details to her calendar and circled the date.

I'll have to buy a new dress, she mused, maybe even a new pair of shoes. And I wonder if I still have the beaded evening bag......

She got the new dress and a pair of glittery heels that she was absolutely certain were much too young for her but found she couldn't resist. She had her hair cut and highlighted and got her nails manicured, found her beaded evening bag and borrowed a wrap from a friend. She dabbed perfume behind her ears, checked her lipstick, tightened her mother's pearl clip ons one last time and feeling like an aging Cinderella, headed out the door.

Good night, Alfie, she called to the cat, Don't wait up!

It wasn't until the taxi delivered her to the door of the Legion Hall that she realized she'd forgotten not only her reading glasses but her change purse.

Oh, bother, the driver heard her say as she fished around in the evening bag, I'm so sorry but I seem to have left my glasses and money at home. Let me run inside and I'll find a friend and borrow enough to pay you.

The long suffering and cynical driver would have none it and it was at that moment while she was doing her best to persuade him that fate noticed her and stepped in. A tall and slender stranger in evening clothes and white gloves materialized at her elbow, spoke softly to the driver and handed over an American ten dollar bill. She gave him an uncertain smile when he offered her his arm but, as she would later tell friends, there was something in his eyes.

A damsel in distress, he said kindly, may I see you in?

You may, sir knight, she said, a little shocked at her own boldness, and slipped her arm through his.

And will you dance with me? he asked.

I will, kind sir, she replied and almost giggled, I would be most pleased to do so.

Getting a little impatient, fate decided to up the ante at the sign in table when Dora Jean and the stranger stopped to register and get their plastic name tags. Each gave their name to a smiling volunteer - they had to raise their voices a little to be heard over the music and the chatter - and then they turned to each other and exchanged the tags so each could pin one on the other. Dora Jean saw it first but the stranger was quick to follow and their hands froze in mid-air.

Jed? she could barely whisper, Jed! Oh, my God!

His eyes widened in shock and recognition. Dora! he exclaimed, Good God Almighty, Dora Jean!

I knew it! she declared, I didn't know I knew it but I did! I saw it in your eyes!

You're thinner, he smiled at her, but every bit as pretty as the last.....he didn't finish the thought, just tucked her arm over his.We're going to catch up if it takes all night, he assured her, but first we're going to dance.

Most people knew the story of how they'd been childhood and then teenage sweethearts until the war. Jed had been sent to France and one thing led to another and instead of coming home, he'd met the woman he was to marry and moved to the United States. Dora Jean had heard nothing but rumors and speculation for years - she knew he came back once a year for the reunion but had never tried to see him – it hadn't seemed the proper thing to do now that he had a wife and children. The stories turned darker as the years passed. There was talk of trouble in the marriage, of alcohol abuse a general sense of unhappiness, and finally a deadly disease. She couldn't remember where she'd heard of his wife's death and though she thought briefly of sending a note, she didn't have an address and feared stirring up talk if she'd pursued it. Somewhere in between all those years, she'd consigned the youthful romance to lessons learned. She didn't exactly forget, but she didn't exactly dwell either.

Life is too short and too precious to cry over, she told Alfie, We were very young and it wasn't really real.

Fate, on the other hand, plots and plans and weaves complicated webs and less than a year after the reunion, they were married. It wasn't for very long, Jed died a few short years later and Dora Jean followed soon after that.

But I have an idea that the time they had was worth the wait.

Pocket Change

My grandfather was not well liked.

The last summer he spent with us on the island was my least favorite.  He was ill - with what was never discussed - but he spent a good amount of his time in an upstairs bedroom and insisted my grandmother be at his beck and call, stopping whatever she was doing to fetch him hot tea with whiskey or a dose of parabolic or clean sheets.  We were not allowed to play inside for fear of disturbing him and I can still hear his voice - harsh, whiny, helpless but demanding, always disagreeably demanding - as he shouted Nana's name. She jumped at the sound and scurried up the steep steps like a squirrel each time he called.

We had no company that year, not even family came and visitors were few and far between.  The silence was oppressive and unfamiliar - nobody except Nana was allowed in the sick room - and by June, we were all bad tempered, exhausted and battered.  Our usual carefree summer had been turned into a kind of pre-death watch with even Aunt Pearl and Aunt Vi keeping their distance.  The fishermen who regularly would drop by with a haddock or a pound of scallops still came but they knocked very quietly at the screen door and didn't come past it. There were no birthday celebrations that summer, no after supper card games, no Ladies Auxillary meetings or sewing circle gatherings or Red Sox games on the radio.  Nana wouldn't even leave the house to go to church on Sundays.  Children and dogs were turned out every fine day and confined to the sunporch with the door shut if it was foggy.

It was a wearying, lonely, and dark summer and it bred resentment and shame.  I knew he was a crude, vulgar man, a dominating and unpleasant bully with a nasty temper but discovering that others knew it as well was hard.  He frightened people, his family included, and there were times when I wished he would die and be done with it.  I hated his iron handed selfishness and his brutal dismissiveness of my grandmother.  I hated the way she cringed when he talked to her, the way he called my mother names and made fun of the islanders who were so much a part of our lives.  I hated the way the upstairs smelled of sickness and bleach and the way the village felt sorry for us.  In time, I hated him.  It wasn't something he could buy off with his usual handful of pocket change.

In July, we jumped at the chance to get away and spend time at the farm with my daddy's family but I desperately missed hearing the ocean each morning and night and felt guilty about leaving Nana.  We stayed three weeks and then returned to the island, finding things just as we'd left them.

My grandfather didn't die that summer nor for several of the summers that came after but he never came back to the house on The Point either.  I never thought that anyone missed him.

Oliver's Curse

By his own admission, Oliver was the "meanest sumbitch in the Valley" and in his final days, he did not go gently. There were, in fact, a good many in Grand Pre in the summer of '58 of who didn't think he'd gone at all.

Nothin' but superstition, a course, my grandmother assured us - the voices, the apparitions, the unexplained late night lights - superstition and rumor, hardly a genuine haunting. For the most part, it kept the realty company frustrated and the would be buyers at bay. The old gingerbread farmhouse where Oliver had lived alone for all his adult life fell into disrepair, then dilapidation, and finally ill repute. It wasn't long before it was put up for public auction and sold for taxes to the highest bidder.

Some disreputable land developer from the city, Nana said disapprovingly - More'n likely got it for pennies on the dollar and gon' clear the land and put up some fancy, damfool, newfangled shoppin' center  Somewhere between the tax sale and the groundbreaking though, peculiar things began to happen at the old farm. There were accidents with the heavy machinery, workers got lost and claimed to hear things in the woods, the weather seemed bound and determined to delay the process at every opportunity. Hard hats and lunch buckets went missing on a regular basis, paychecks inexplicably didn't clear, crews that had worked together for years suddenly couldn't get along and brawls broke out daily. Two construction foremen were fired for drinking on the job and one was caught setting fires. Grand Pre started thinking less in terms of a haunting and more in terms of a curse.

Ain't nothin' to sacrifice a virgin over, my grandmother remarked contemptuously, but might be time they's havin' some second thoughts 'bout that place.

Then in the spring of '61, a most unusual storm hit. On a clear late afternoon in Grand Pre, without the first drop of rain, lightning shot from the cloudless sky. According to the witnesses, the first couple of strikes sheared into the trees around the main house and split them clean in two. The third struck an earth mover and it exploded, sending bits of charred metal raining down like shrapnel. The fourth, fifth and sixth - every man there swore they struck simultaneously - set the woods on fire.

The fire burned for two days - the same amount of time as it had taken the developer to order all the crews out - the same amount of time it took for the Mounties to arrive. By then, the blaze had died out but the land was blackened with soot and ashes and the smell of smoke was still strong enough to make your eyes water. Around the woods that surrounded the farmhouse was an odd but quite precise circle of seared, scorched trees and burned up grasses that stretched well past the treeline but uniformly stopped a hundred or so yards from the rough wooden fence that encircled the house. The farmhouse itself was intact - eerily and impossibly so, the mounties realized quickly - it was undamaged, untouched, unassailed.

Naturally enough, no one believed a word of it

I declare, I ain't never heard such nonsense, my grandmother announced, as if anythin' could've survived that kind of fire less'n it was a Act of God!She couldn't dismiss the mainland paper quite so easily. They had pictures - black and white and grainy to be sure, but pictures all the same - as well as a sordid story on the house and its curse and even Oliver. Nana snatched it and angrily stuffed it into the old cast iron stove.

Damfool yellow journalism rag! she spat, Folks don't need no excuse to git stirred up! Not enough of 'em mind they's own business as it is! 

But Nana, I wanted to know, Why didn't it burn up?

How on God's green earth do I know, she snapped and gave me a mild swat on the backside, It ain't for me to know the likes of it! And not for you either!

Folks steered well clear of the place after that and when the hurricane came a few years later, the last beams gave way, the roof caved in, and the whole thing from fence to brick chimney was carried away in the wind. If there had been a curse, some folks said, it had done its work well.  Last I saw it, it was a barren place of broken trees and dead grass. Except for a faraway owl watching over it from a dead tree,and a few gulls overhead, there were no signs of life or regrowth, just bare, burned ground and a very faint, plaintive hint of smoke. I knew it was only my imagination - this was the real world, after all, and smoke simply does not linger after so many decades - but nevertheless I decided not to stay long.

 Even if they're not real, sometimes you have to respect the power of a curse.