Crossing Old Sandy

From the time we were old enough to catch crawdads in the nearby creek without getting pinched, my cousins and I were allowed to roam the farmlands nestled between the foothills of the Ozark mountains and the Arkansas River. We’d step out the door of Granny and Pa’s cozy rock-sided house accompanied by an eager pack of farm dogs, work our way through the barn, walk in one door and out the other at each of my aunts’ and uncles’ and great-grandparents homes who all lived “over yonder” or “down yonder” and then set off along the washboard dirt road that my family’s been settled along since the early 1800’s. Up the hill was Granny’s old schoolhouse, still furnished with broken pews and desks, a disheveled time capsule begging our imaginative spirits for dramatic recreations of academic life in the “olden days.”

Barbed wire fences were an inviting challenge as we aimed to slip between their tiny metal claws unscathed. This opened up worlds of seed-tick laden pastureland and abandoned homesteads full of vintage cans and broken dishes, with crumbling beds and chairs listing into floorboard holes as if the earth was calling them home again while we innocently played house.

There were muddy roadside ditches with frogs and lizards and toads that would pee on you, doodlebugs to fish out of their conical dirt holes with thin dry grass ends, emerging black and soft and ugly. Castaway beer and soda bottles were flung at bullet-hole riddled road signs for an exhilarating crash.

From there we’d pass the tiny and plain cinder block fire-and-brimstone-loving, fried-chicken-potluck-family-reunion-having Union Assembly of God Church, a community anchor whether or not the holy spirit warranted its members to speak in tongues or simply provide the green bean casserole.

Past the church, we’d take a right on Old Sandy, hollering childhood insults back and forth with the kids who lived in what was once a corner general store during its better days. I still don’t know if this was a true rivalry or a strange ritual we all secretly enjoyed.

Mawmaw lived down this road and was always waiting to greet us with hugs and sloppy kisses and her famous “nasty chocolate cake.” Our great grandmother never learned how to read or drive a car, but her cooking, quiltmaking skills and sharp wit made those life skills inconsequential. To get to her house, we had to pass an old overgrown homeplace on the right that was little more than a two room wooden shack with a sagging porch and a ladder on the steep rusted tin roof. We never attempted to enter this particular relic for reasons that remained undiscussed and is now long since forgotten by everyone but me due to a memorable Christmas Day.

Usually Christmas Eve in our family was the ultimate production. My grandparents would gather 30-40 family members and friends into a tiny room already crowded with gifts. At some point in the evening, you’d hear reindeer running around on the roof (a job coveted by my drunk uncles) and a PG-13 version of Santa (Pa) would appear at the front door, cussing Rudolph for their many misadventures. One year, that “damn reindeer” just stood on the roof and farted throughout the festivities. I remember this one even more vividly because I received a shiny new black scooter from Santa’s windy sleigh that year.

With Christmas Eve being the bigger holiday, Christmas itself was always calm and sleepy. My cousins would spend the day with their immediate families while the grown-ups recovered from the “eggnog” they consumed during Rudolph’s flatulence the night before.

Armed with my new scooter, I called my dog and we headed out for some of those sloppy Mawmaw kisses and a little adventure. We passed by all the cousins, aunts, uncles, the now quiet pentacostal church and turned right on Old Sandy. There were no foul-mouthed children in sight, for once. The countryside was quiet until I heard a small growl right behind me. My usually sweet and calm little dog was staring intently down the empty road ahead of us, vehemently disapproving of nothing, as far as I could tell. She then yipped loudly and reversed course with her tail between her legs, disappearing around the corner with incredible speed despite my calls. I turned back around, confused, when I spotted a white face with black eyes staring back at me from the rotting porch eaves of that old creepy house. As I tried to make the creature out, it slowly emerged from those triangular beams to reveal the rusty-winged coat of a Barn Owl. Never breaking my gaze, it hopped down to the front porch steps and shook off some ancient dust. Just then, a sudden blinding glow overtook its shape. It expanded upwards and outwards, becoming even more radiant until there stood the height and shape of a full-grown man in its place. I made out arms, legs, torso and head; all other features were lost in that bright white light. Turning to me with a brief nod, this inexplicable apparition stepped down the two rotted porch stairs without making a sound and walked across the road in front of me with a slow air of nonchalance. Upon reaching the other side, he faded into the bushes as quickly as he had emerged from the now empty eaves.

Like a broken spell, my body began to move without the benefit of wit and I was flying back down that washboard road like my scooter didn’t even need wheels to propel us forward. I didn’t stop until I was back at Granny and Pa’s, busting through the door and frantically trying to tell everyone what I just witnessed with words that failed to fit the shape of the holes left in my thoughts. This resulted in varying reactions from each of my family members, most of whom seemed hilariously impressed with the scope of my bombastic imagination. My dog was sleeping peacefully on the rug as if she had never left. I now presume that this was exhaustion and shock masquerading as indifference, but as my only witness, she slumbered all over what was left of my credibility.

Of course Granny believed me in a way that this was a fairly normal happenstance. In later years she would talk to static on the telephone for hours after one of my cousins passed at a tragically young age. The phone would ring and ‘Hello?’ would be answered with white noise repeatedly. Granny would grab the phone and say, “That’s Jordan checking in. I’ll take it!”

The glowing-barn-owl-man house has been gone for years now. There’s a newer ranch-style home in its place. No one in my family even remembers its existence besides me. I’ve heard Barn Owl sightings are increasingly rare in Arkansas these days, but perhaps there are still a few left out there, nesting in old forgotten rafters, waiting patiently for the right person to acknowledge the static on the other end of the line before they cross the next road.