Sofia, Uncle Henry and Peter

SOFIA, UNCLE HENRY AND PETER

MIRI HUNTER

copyright 2021

SOFIA

I am more like Harry Potter than I could ever have imagined. We share the same familiar: a white owl. It lives high up in the salt cedar tree that stands in the southeast corner of my property. It watches me as I rake the leaves from the eucalyptus tree in the northeast corner of my property. It watches me as I paint the ancient picnic table in a color called pinot noir. I never liked the taste of pinot noir, but it makes a nice wood stain color. My owl watches me and my lover, Peter, as we dine in the evenings on that same picnic table under a canopy of a million stars. Its presence became even more apparent when I realized that it would follow me down the dirt road on the evenings that I drove to Peter’s house. The owl was obviously watching out for me or stalking me. I decided to go with the former idea and took to calling him Uncle Henry after one of my great uncles.

******

UNCLE HENRY

Sofia thinks she is smart and independent. She is both of those, but she is also a little insane. Living on her own in the middle of the desert because she wants to see the stars at night. I’m pretty sure she never thought about the snakes, the rats, the mountain lions, bobcats and coyotes or the fact that living alone in a city is far different than living alone in a desert. Of course there are hummingbirds and hawks and roadrunners and cottontails too. She has no one around her for miles. Sure it’s a great environment for an artist, but it can get lonely. Her partner lives a good bit away, so I was invited here by her Uncle Henry to watch over her. And that, although she doesn’t realize it, is why she calls me Uncle Henry.

When she was born, she entered the world with a mask on her face, a veil, if you will. Well that hadn’t happened in her family for quite a while. So it was a cause for some silent concern, especially by her grandparents. You see, in her family that veil meant that the child could travel between worlds. It was an advanced skill. Uncle Henry was a wise old man at the time of Sofia’s birth. His mother had been the last known veiled birth in the family. So he understood what needed to be done. Especially when she was young. You see spirits on this side and on that side of the veil would be bombarding her with thoughts, ideas, visions, sounds. Uncle Henry’s brother, Sofia’s grandfather, was a baptist minister and although he believed in the Holy Ghost, he was not going to have any of that veil stuff in his Christian family. Two brothers, but you would have thought that they had separate mothers.

*****

SOFIA

I love living out here. No one around. Occasionally a car will drive down the road only to realize that there is nowhere to go. They turn around and head back. I’m not going back. I’ve got nothing to go back to. Two failed marriages and a now defunct art career. Galleries closing, art dealers retiring. Nothing but auctions and jpegs. A jpeg is not Art, but I am digressing. I sometimes set my easel up outside and paint. I don’t paint the landscape. I paint what is inside my head. All the colors and intersections of realities. The intersection of realities is my insanity. The only way to explain it is through art, color, dimensions, lines, form which I abstract. I can sit out here in my desert home, traverse different realities, paint them, to get them out of my head, which gives me a reprieve from the madness. Uncle Henry just watches. He’s free to fly anywhere at anytime. He’s never been in a cage. Like the cage that my mind is held captive in.

*****

UNCLE HENRY

One night, Sofia was driving to Peter’s house. It was late, she was the only one, as usual, on the dirt road. I flew ahead, as usual, to make sure the road was clear. She was prone to running over things and getting flat tires. I don’t remove the obstacles, I just make her aware of them. I have my limitations. On this particular night, I saw something unusual in the road, a body. Well, the appearance of a body. It was shimmering, so yeah, it was from the other side of the veil. It was sitting on the side of the road. I sat down next to it to have a chat.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Time for Sofia to go,” the shimmering body responded.

I sat with the body for awhile, knowing that at any minute Sofia would be speeding down the road. She’d be thinking of the warmth there would be lying next to Peter’s body later in the evening. She would have no thoughts of this shimmering body and its plans. I had to make her aware, but I needed more information. I hadn’t heard anything from anyone about this being Sofia’s time.

*****

SOFIA

This is one of my favorite times of the day. Driving to see Peter. I’m in another cage, my car, but I am in control of the car. It is not in control of me. It’s a nice change. Driving gives me, what painting gives me, moments of freedom. Being with Peter gives me balance. I think we are both crazy but in different ways and it is comforting, at least for me, to find a kindred spirit. I mean a kindred person. Spirits have not been so kind to me. Spirits come in all shapes and sizes and appear at all hours. They have a total disregard for social protocols. Hilarious! As if the etiquette of this dimension means anything to disembodied voices.

I was laughing, when I noticed an obstacle in the road. I hated it when tourists left junk out here near the road. No local would ever do that. The wind out here can be crazy and stuff just blows around. I can’t afford new tires at the moment. Whoa! That’s Uncle Henry. What is he doing in the middle of the road? I put on my brakes. Uncle Henry flies up and over my car and then is gone. I stop and regroup. It’s not a good idea to kill one’s familiar. That was close. I look ahead to where Uncle Henry had been. Nothing. I guess he was just waiting for me, so he could say good night. Or something.

*****

UNCLE HENRY

I continued my conversation with the shimmering body.

“So what is the plan?” I asked.

“I’m here to collect on a debt.”

“She owes you something, I take it?”

“Nope, not me. I’m just the messenger. She has to pay up.”

“Tonight?”

“Good a time as any. I was in the neighborhood,” the shimmering body said with a smirk.

“What exactly is this debt?”

“Who are you? Oh, I see, you’re her familiar. You protect her. Well here’s a option for you.”

I listened to the shimmering body and it told me about Sofia and her life journey and how she wasn’t living up to her soul’s purpose or contract, by holding up out here in the desert. It was decreed that if she wasn’t going to to do what she was suppose to do, she may as well, not be here. The shimmering body never mentioned exactly what it was Sofia was suppose to be doing and when I tried to interrupt to ask, the body just shimmered in annoyance.

As I listened, I thought about Sofia, the veil, her battle with insanity, the intermittent peace that she felt here, her deep connection to Peter. It seemed to me that she had served the veil for many years and didn’t she deserve the respite she was finally finding? I thought long and hard about Sofia, her purpose. Daily I sat and watched her, just in case. This led me to think about my purpose. Was there more I could do to protect her? I looked again at the smirking, shimmering body.

*****

SOFIA and PETER

When I got to Peter’s he was outside waiting for me, which was unusual. He said that he heard, what sounded like a series of loud thumps and thought it might be me driving on a flat tire. Yeah, I had done that. But I was more careful these days and now when I got a flat I just called him. He always showed up. I loved that about Peter. He actually showed up for me. I laughed. He gave the tires a once over. All four were in tact. He unceremoniously moved across the yard.

“Where are you going?” I whispered. A whisper travels quite a distance at night in the desert.

“I thought I heard something over here.”

I followed him. I thought I saw something shimmering in the direction he was headed. He stopped and I caught up with him. He was looking down and I looked where he was looking. I didn’t say anything, but tears were burning my eyes as they began to flow down my cheeks. Peter placed his arm around me as the tears began streaming.

“What do you want to do? We can bury him or leave him to nature.”

“He was watching over me.”

“I know. But I watch over you too. Maybe I was too much competition for him.”

“I watch over you too, don’t I?”

“We watch over each other.”

“Will I be okay without him?”

“We will make it together.”

“I want to leave him to nature. He’s never been caged and I don’t want him caged in his death.

“Ok, we will leave Uncle Henry here.”

I bent down and picked up several of Uncle Henry’s feathers to place on my ancestral altar.

As Peter and I walked back towards his cabin, I noticed something shimmering near my car. I heard a rustle of feathers and a high pitched squeal as the shimmer faded into the darkness of the desert night.