Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

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The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.

—Charles Darwin

“Hey, Doc. What can I getcha?”

“The usual, please, Kyle.”

“Usual? You never come in here, Doc. What usual?”

“Consider this a mental exercise. A little experiment. Imagine I come here every day and always order the same thing. I’m curious what you think that would be. What it says about how you perceive me.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“There’s a catch, though.”

“Is there now.”

“You must bring the same for yourself, and we’ll toast my newly minted usual together.”

“Huh. Well, fuck it, all right. As long as you’re paying for both—”

“Of course.”

“—then sure. I’m game. Lessee. Okay. Some of this… bit of this—”

“Keeping your back turned, eh? Nice touch. That’s the spirit. No pun intended.”

“—and boom. Here we go.”

“Hmm. Clear. No ice. Any clues as to what it is?”

“Sure. It’s your usual.”

“Fair enough. Bottoms up?”

“Definitely. Cheers.”

“Cheers. Mmm. Hmm. Um, Kyle, is this water?”

“Yep.”

“That’s what you imagine my usual would be?”

“Yep.”

“Now, you see, that is interesting. Care to elaborate on your thought process?”

“Absolutely not.”

Only after the funeral ends do I have the courage to mention the owl.

“Please tell me you saw it,” I say to Greg as he pushes the last of the road cones into the trunk of his cruiser.

“Saw what?”

“The bird. The owl.”

He grunts. “Yeah, so?”

“Aren’t owls nocturnal?”

Greg’s wiping dirt from his fingers onto a pristine white handkerchief. He stops to look at me, those wizened and kind eyes just barely peeking out from under bushy gray eyebrows. “I don’t really know. I guess so?”

“That was just… weird, wasn’t it? Not just an owl in daylight, but the timing.”

It had happened in the middle of the service. The whole town had been crowded around the grave as the casket was lowered. The pastor reciting a verse in his somber, even voice. The mother quietly weeping. Not the father, though. He’d remained stoic throughout his son’s burial.

But then, right as Pastor Osman said something about the wings of angels, an owl flew over the whole gathering, just ten feet above everyone’s heads. Most eyes were downcast in that moment, in prayer or in respect of others. I’d been a bit lost in thought myself, and happened to be looking up for signs of rain. The animal had glided right over us, silent and serene, in a path that took it in a perfectly straight line over the casket, leaving not even a shadow to mark its passage.

I sorta wish I could say it was albino, or even black as night. Something ominous or significant, but the bird was the typical speckled brown and gray. Just like any other owl in the Cascades, I suppose.

“A little weird, sure, but I’ve lived my whole life here, Mary. You get used to it. A little weird isn’t the problem.”

“What is the problem?”

“Embellishment. Just watch, by midweek the story being told in town will have that owl recast as a raven. One with a seven-foot wingspan and glowing red eyes. Something along those lines. In my experience, weird always starts with something pretty mundane. My advice? Don’t mention it to anyone else, lest the story grow.”

I absorb the words in scholarly silence and fall in beside my chief. We walk back up the hill toward the place where Johnny Rogers was buried. The cemetery is old and small, with a gravel parking lot made to hold perhaps twenty cars. Today there were dozens, though, filling the lot and overflowing all up and down both sides of the narrow lane leading up from the mountain road. That many cars meant Greg and I had to step away at the very end of the service in order to direct traffic and, finally, gather up all the cones we’d placed earlier this morning.

I’d thought we would be done once the cones were packed up but now find myself instead standing with Chief Greg Gorman at the graveside of the dead boy.

“Such a tragedy,” Greg says, more to himself than to me.

“He seemed like a good kid,” I say, lamely. I’m still the new arrival in this place, a place where everyone knows everyone, but no one really knows anyone. That’s another nugget of Greg Gorman wisdom, imparted to me at the job interview many months ago.

I consider asking Greg about the boy’s case. It’s been officially ruled an accident. A tragic, bizarre accident, but an accident all the same. Only, I noticed this morning that the file was still on Greg’s desk. Active, in other words. Chief isn’t in the habit of leaving something out unless he’s still working it, so there must be a reason. But now seems like the wrong time to ask, so I let it go.

“What’s next on the agenda?” I ask casually. “Should be a quiet day. We could—”

“I am headed home,” Greg says pointedly. “You should go home, too. I mean that. Take the rest of the day off. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my radio on.”

“Suppose we get a drink, then? A funeral should be followed by a toast, shouldn’t it?” The idea of going home, of being alone, couldn’t be further from my mind.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he says. “After that service, I think an evening of quiet contemplation is in order.”

I nod, but internally I’m already considering other options. A drive down the mountain to Granston, maybe? Plenty of friendly, talkative