Pick o' the Day: The Grackle Catcher (cont.)

            The strange feeling of urgency that had come over him kept Hank going longer than usual with his public service, and he hadn’t even noticed that almost four hours had passed since the sun had set.  He had never before caught and released so many grackles in one evening, and though he hadn’t kept a running tally, he figured it was more than 20 birds for sure.  The darkness was making his job even more treacherous than usual, and the parking lot was emptying rapidly, so he decided to wrap it up for the night.  As he struggled to fold-up his stepladder, he heard a zombie-like shuffling sound coming up behind him.  Quickly turning around, Hank was relieved to find himself face-to-face with Homeless Bob, a long-time acquaintance.  Homeless Bob, a lowly and disheveled old man with one tooth and a severe limp, who looked to be about 99 years old but who was probably, in reality, only pushing 60, was a harmless scrounge.  He scrounged the trashcans for aluminum cans and edible food.  He scrounged occasional free meals from kind-hearted neighborhood widows like “Hoolia”.  And, when he had to, he scrounged the parking lots asking people for their spare change.  Hank felt sorry for him and always gave Homeless Bob whatever he had in his pocket.  Seeing how bad off the poor man was never failed to make Hank thankful to God for how good he had it.  Once, about three years before, Hank, overcome by feelings of empathy, had even invited Homeless Bob to spend Christmas Eve night with him in his cramped pop-up tent trailer.  After they shared a meal of pizza pockets and popcorn, he let Homeless Bob sleep on the cushy foam mattress while he slept on the floor.  But when he woke up in the morning, Homeless Bob was gone.  Hank tracked him down later that day and asked him why he had left so soon, and Homeless Bob told him that he had to leave because he wasn’t used to sleeping in such luxurious digs.

            “Hey, Homeless Bob!” said Hank in as energetic a greeting as he could muster.  “How you doin’?”  But Homeless Bob didn’t answer him, and Hank saw that he looked sad and worried.  “What’s the matter?”  Homeless Bob’s face went from sad and worried to really, really, pathetically sad and worried, and his eyes were red and welling-up with tears.  Then the old man spoke.  “Hank!  Listen, Hank… I…,” and then he grabbed Hank by his bib-overall straps.  “I gotta tell you something!”  “What?” demanded Hank, alarmed at the desperate look in Homeless Bob’s eyes.  He had never seen the old man in such an agitated state before, and he again demanded to know what the matter was.

            “There’s… there’s a bird, Hank.  A bird that’s hurt.  Back behind the store,” stammered Homeless Bob.  “You need to go and help that bird, Hank!”  He let go of Hank’s overall straps, crumpled to the ground, and started weeping.  He then abruptly stood up and began shuffling away.  “Hey, wait a minute,” shouted Hank.  “Where you goin’?”  Homeless Bob said nothing else.  And he kept moving at a surprisingly fast pace until he was well out of sight.  What Homeless Bob had neglected to say, what he couldn’t bring himself to say, indeed, what he was ordered not to say, was that Merle and Lester had threatened to knock out his only remaining tooth if he didn’t give Hank the message about the bird.  And Homeless Bob was so ashamed of himself for having to do what he did that he shuffled himself out of the neighborhood that night and was never seen again.

            “Now that’s weird,” said Hank to himself.  He turned back and surveyed the almost-totally abandoned grocery store parking lot.  He was exhausted and hungry, and he wanted to go home.  But then he thought about the injured bird that Homeless Bob said was back behind the store.  He had never dealt with an injured grackle before, and he wasn’t sure what he would even do with it when he found it, but he knew he had no choice but to go back there and try to help it in some way.  If he didn’t, either Lester or a cat would find it for sure, and Hank didn’t want either of those things to happen.  So he picked-up his stepladder and made his way around the store to the poorly-lit and eerily-empty loading docks.  Figuring the bird would be cowering behind something in an attempt to protect itself, Hank began poking around the ubiquitous stacks of empty milk crates that towered ominously over him.  And as he did, he listened intently with his “good” ear for any sounds that might give away the bird's location.  But then he heard something that he didn’t expect to hear, something that sounded like a sad, ghostly, whining, sighing sound that would start, then stop, then start again.  It reminded Hank of flatulent gas escaping from a person who was desperately, but unsuccessfully, trying to hold it in… someone… like… Merle!  Hank’s head jerked up just as he heard Merle’s voice, along with the thunderous reverberations of the violent release of the rest of the pent-up fart, shouting “NOW!”, and then the entire stack of milk crates, in a cascading  avalanche of plastic cubes, came crashing down upon him.  And once again, Hank’s world faded to black.

            And though Merle and Lester thought no one had seen what they had done to Hank, there was, unbeknownst to them, one witness to their violent and cowardly assault.  A witness that was silently perched high above them on top of the one floodlight that bathed the area in a pale yellow gloom.  And this witness watched as Merle and Lester snuck back into the grocery store through the back door without checking on Hank’s welfare, without knowing or even caring if he was still alive.  And this witness, after taking in the entire scene, leapt off the light and flapped into the darkness.  And that very night, the B-U-T-T-S parking lot was quietly abandoned by the thousands of grackles that had invaded and overwhelmed it for the last two months.


(Next week:  The Grackle Catcher continues as Merle and Lester experience a rather unexpected (and horrible) consequence for what they did to Hank. )