The Sign

“Will, come sit with me,” my father said as I walked down the steps to the beach.

It was late April, evening and still daylight, although the sun was low over the lake and about to set.

My dad’s aluminum lawn chair was situated precariously in the pebbly shallows of lake Ontario, and he was fishing, his pole in one hand and a martini in the other. He had on his usual hat and jacket, since the breeze off the lake was icy cold.

“You must be freezing,” I said seeing that his feet were in the water. His canvas shoes and his socks were on the beach. He was in his element for sure.

“Aw, Will, it’s delightful,” he said. His pant legs were wet nearly to his knees, and I figured he had to be freezing.

But he was drunk, and so the cold did not seem to bother him.

“Bring the other chair and come on in. Sit with me a while. I’ll tell you a story about your grandmother,” he said.

Phoebe. My grandmother. She had been dead nearly ten years now. Still, I remembered her well. She was the stern, unsmiling, and sometimes downright mean grandmother. I figured this was where my father got his demeanor, and his tendency to unkindness.

I took off my shoes and socks, rolled my dungarees nearly to my knees, took the other chair and walked out to join him. The pebbly bottom felt uncomfortable on my feet, and the water was frigid.

“Jesus! Dad. I don’t know how you can stand it,” I said as I set my chair next to him and sat down.

Dad laughed a yellow-toothed laugh that echoed across the lake, and he held up his martini glass.

“Cheers!” he said as he downed the last of it. The he did something uncharacteristic. He dropped the martini glass into the water, where it disappeared.

“Silica,” he said. You know that sand has a serious component of glass in it,” he said. Ah, the chemist. Always teaching me something I did not care to know. He loved his science.

At that moment, his fishing line went taut.

“Oh, gees!” he said as he jerked the pole, hoping to hook whatever it was that was on the other end. But it was gone.

He said nothing. Instead, he reached in his pocket, pulled out a pack of Phillip Morris cigarettes, took one out and lit it with his ancient Zippo lighter, the one he told us he acquired from a bet he’d made with another sailor aboard ship in the Pacific, back in 1943. It was the one thing I hoped to inherit after he was gone.

Dad inhaled and blew out a long line of gray white smoke. Then he looked over at me.

“I used to have lunch with your grandmother every day. It became our habit, after my father died, since I was the only one of us kids that was still local. We would eat grilled cheese sandwiches, and she would fix me a cup of instant Maxwell House coffee. Oh, she loved her grilled cheese. And I came to like it, too, after a time. But your grandmother was never much of a talker, and so we often sat and ate in silence.”

He stopped for a moment and checked his line, because once again it seemed to go taut, but it was hard to tell with the wind blowing the way it was now. But it was just a nibble, he told me.

“Then, right after the first of the year, in 1980, as I recall, I drove in an awful blizzard from the water plant to her home up on 60th street. The temperature was below zero and there was a heck of a wind blowing snow so that you could hardly see to drive.

Once more the line went taut, and he jerked on the pole, but nothing.

The sun was halfway gone on the horizon, and a single strand of gold light stretched across the lake in our direction. For a while I forgot about the cold, it was so beautiful.

“The strangest thing,” he said as he continued his story. He flicked the last of his cigarette in an arc, and it hissed as it hit the water.

“When I went in to lunch, she had not prepared so much as a cup of Maxwell House. She was sitting there at the head of the table, the way she always did when we ate together, her back stiff against the chair. It was at that moment that I noticed how rail thin she had gotten.

“This is the year,” she announced when I joined her at the kitchen table.

“The year, ma? What year?” I asked her.

I had no earthly idea what she was saying.

“Last night I was awakened by an owl,” she told me.

“An owl? Here? No way,” I said.

“The wind was howling, and it was shaking the glass in the bedroom windows, which I guess was what woke me in the first place. But then, as I lay there in the dark, I heard it,” she said. And then she seemed to look right through me.

“Heard what, ma?” I asked.

“It was the most god-awful, frightening screech,” she said. She looked down at her intertwined hands on the table, and they were trembling.

There was only one, little pathetic tree in her back yard. Neither of her neighbors had a single tree in their yards. Hers was a new neighborhood of single- story brick homes that were built on the verge of a heavily industrial area. The air stunk most days, and the neighborhood was stark, and nearly devoid of any plant life whatsoever. I had no idea what ever made her decide to move there.

“It was a barn owl, I think. So, I got out of bed, put on my robe and went to the window and looked out. And there it was, staring right at me, like some sort of specter. And then it let out another screech, that chilled me through and through. “

I thought she must have been dreaming, and I told her so.

“No, Elliott, I was awake. I even pinched myself to make sure. And I knew then that it was a sign,” she told me.

“A sign of what?” I asked as I searched her brown, rheumy eyes.

“That this is the year I am meant to die,” she said.

“Aw, ma, come on. That’s absurd,” I said.

“Son, I am certain of it. By the end of this year, you will bury your old ma, ma in the Gate of Heaven cemetery, next to Arthur” she said. Arthur was her husband. He had been dead since August of 1960.

“Don’t say that. You are perfectly fine, I told her emphatically.

“Mark my words,” she said, just as calmly as if she was conversing about the weather.

“And sure enough, she died on December first. She wasn’t ill a minute, but she simply faded away. Like an old light bulb,” he told me.

I wanted to go inside and warm up. So, I stood up to go.

“No!” he said, pointing to the chair. “Sit!” he ordered.

“But, I’m freezing,” I said.

“Sit, Will, please. I need to tell you something,” he said.

So, I sat back down. For a long time, however, he said nothing. And I noticed that it was dark, and there was a sliver of a moon hanging low over the lake. And stars were out. The sky was dotted with them. It was as if they had appeared while I wasn’t looking.

“Last night I was awakened by an owl,” he said. “It scared the bejeebers out of me. What woke me out of a sound sleep was this terrifying screeching sound out by the lake. I knew without even looking out what it was. I had heard it before when Bob Cuff and I were camping up on the Burnt River in Canada. Do you know the sound?” He asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Will, it is not a hoot, not like you think an owl would make. It is more of a screech. It sounded like someone being tortured,” he said.

Then he looked off and was quiet for a while.

“It scared me half to death, to be honest. So, I got out of bed, went to the window, and looked out. I could see its’ silhouette in the elm tree nearest to the lake. I could barely make it out in the darkness. Then it flew off in a low arc, over the water.”

I was starting to shiver, and I really wanted to go inside and warm up.

“Will, this is the year that your old man is going to die,” he told me.

“Stop!” I said. “That’s pure nonsense.”

He shook his head.

“I am sure of it. Before the end of the year, you will bury your old man, right next to his ma ma, in the Gate of Heaven cemetery,” he said.

I stood up to go inside. I’d heard enough of his drunken foolishness. After all, he was healthy as a horse.

I took my chair, walked out of the water, retrieved my shoes and socks and walked up the steps to the house. When I got to the top, I looked back at him. He was sitting, hunched, his fishing pole dipping down into the water, and he looked to be dozing.

He’s crazy, I told myself. I considered telling ma, but decided against it.

My father died on December first, of that same year. On the very same day, twelve years after his mother’s death. Just like he said. And just as she had predicted her own demise.

And then, last night I was awakened by the screech of a barn owl, out in the woods behind our house. The sound was terrifying and unmistakable. So, I pulled the covers up over my face and I put my fingers in my ears.

“No way,” I whispered. “No fucking way!”