Read Online The Wilding by Benjamin Percy - Free Book Online Page A

horned owl the size of a toddler.
    She can barely register the seeming impossibility of such a thing—when the owl opens its wings and hurriedly flaps them and launches itself into the air. Its claws are open and its beak is open and it flaps and screeches its way through the living room, battering the walls and windows, seeking escape, its feathers smoldering, leaving smoke in the air like contrails from a jet. There is an old wedding photo sitting on the mantel and the owl knocks it from its perch and it shatters on the floor. Then the owl makes a beeline for the dinette. Justin releases a scream to match the owl’s and Graham falls over backward in his chair and Karen ducks down and runs for the front door and throws it open and not ten seconds later the owl departs through it, disappearing into the evening.
    Karen has her hands over her heart to settle it, its beating like a hammer wrapped in cloth. “Holy shit.” She closes the door and leans against it.
    Graham pulls himself—and then his chair—up from the floor. He opens and closes his mouth but doesn’t seem to know what to say. The house smells as if it is cooking. A few feathers—clear and incandescent, the color burned out of them—float through the air like the lost wings of wasps.
    “What the hell happened?” Karen says. Her breathing is tough, like she just got back from a run.
    Justin shakes his head as if he doesn’t know even as he says, “When I was a kid, starlings would fall down the chimney. They liked the updraft. The warmth of it. Sometimes they’d get high on the fumes and pass out.” He stands and walks to the fireplace and picks up the fallen photo—he and Karen are smiling in the back of a limousine—the glass from its frame now sprayed across the hardwood, reflecting the fire and seeming to emit an orange glow. “I guess we ought to get a chimney cap.”
    “Why don’t we have one? Shouldn’t you have installed one? You know we didn’t have one, so you must have thought about this?” She cannot stop herself. Her shock has turned over like a black dog and become anger that grows worse when he only half tunes in to the upset buzz of her voice as it rises between them like the smoke of the burning owl. “Seriously, Justin,” she says, moving toward him, snatching the photo and setting it roughly on the mantel once more. “The windowsill has dryrot. The outlet in the bathroom doesn’t work. There are bees’ nests in the soffits. One of the porch steps feels off-kilter.” Her voice is close to cracking with emotion. She hates when she comes undone, but lately it happens more and more, her temper flashing, taking over.
    Sometimes she feels like two women. One of the women is a mother and wife. And after Graham takes his nightly bath—after he brushes his teeth and pulls on his jammies and climbs into bed—he calls out for this mother and she walks down the hall and pauses in the doorway of his bedroom. He lies there, the covers pulled up to his chin. At the sight of her, his eyes scrunch shut and his mouth trembles with the start of a smile, as he pretends to sleep. She walks slowly to his bed—slowly because every footstep scares a shiver or a giggle from him—and then she—again, slowly—drags the sheet from his body until he is completely exposed. They both are laughing at this point. At the base of his bed, with two hands, she then snaps the sheet and it hangs in the air a moment before sinking into the shape of him. And then it is time for the kiss—one on each eye, the nose, the mouth.
    This last Christmas she bought him a digital camera. Since then, he was rarely without it, its carrier clipped to his belt. He studied its manual as if he would be tested—dog-earing pages, highlighting passages. He would snap photos of things she thought strange. A damp mass of hair pulled from the drain. A dead chipmunk by the side of the road. His big toe after he accidentally rammed it into the coffee table and brought a