The Golden Owl

This story is for my grandma. I miss you, Amy. It began as a monologue from the POV of a redneck with a hidden soft side. I wanted to take an extremely vulgar, unlikeable character and see if I could make him sympathetic by the end of the story. It's long and there are few breaks, but stick with it if you can. (It figures, only I would dedicate a story to my grandma that begins with a masturbation joke).

1

Murphy didn't immediately see me peering in his living room window from the front porch. He didn't see my head tilt and mouth gape open in mystified wonder, watching his hands jerking up and down in rapid succession while his eyes didn't seem to blink from the television. I contemplated tapping on the window to make my presence known, thought better of it and continued to indulge my voyeuristic observation a bit longer.

A few moments later when he peripherally noticed a slight move in the window, he jolted upright in his recliner and dropped the objects that were in his hands. He rushed to the door, yanked it open and pounced on me. I was standing on the front porch with a six-pack of beer wrapped in a brown paper bag. The bag dropped to the ground and one one of the Budweiser cans burst and soaked the bag, seeping out onto the tiny stone porch.

Fuming huge gasps of breath, he dragged me into his apartment , slammed the door and jacked me up against the wall. A plastic framed picture of Franco Harris a few inches to the left of my head fell off the wall and landed face up against his leg. The cramped, rectangular living room was decorated with clothing from every part of the body strewn about the floor, a back log of last week's newspapers shabbily stacked at the foot of the couch, and a growing pyramid of empty beer cans on the coffee table. 'Detroit Rock City' blasted from his stereo that was propped up by two orange milk crates in the corner.

"So you like peeping in other people's windows, huh?"

"I, I--Get the fuck off me! I was walking up to the door and I just looked in the window! I mean, shit! Haven't you ever glanced in somebody's window before if it's on the way to the front door?"

"Glancing? Are you fucking serious? You were staring at me man, what the fuck?"

"I was staring because I've never seen a grown man knitting before! I mean-- shit man, is that fucking fuchsia?"

He tightened his grip on my shirt and drove me into the wall again, slamming the back of my head into it. The impact made the CD player skip, and all I heard during that brief pause were my heavy gasps of breath.

"You fuckin' smart, asshole? Huh? You bein' fuckin' smart?"

Our noses were nearly touching; his nostrils flared as they rapidly exhaled steam from his boiling face. His normally wide round eyes contracted to mere slits, and his mouth twisted into a fierce grimace. Expecting a hearty welcome from my surprise visit, I was paralyzed with fear from his violent greeting.

"Murphy please, calm the fuck down!"

My terrified appeal must have begun to quell his surging rage. He relaxed his grip on my shirt and turned away from me. Slumped against the wall and gasping for air, I watched him walk into the dark kitchen and grab a beer from the fridge, adroitly cracking it open with the same hand.

"Go get your sixer and sit your ass down."

Once I opened the door, I thought about running to my car and getting the hell out of there, but dodging him at work would be impossible, so I picked up the remaining five beers from the lake of Budweiser, hesitated for a final moment, and walked back inside. Murphy was pacing in front of the TV.

"Dude, if anyone at work finds out that I make those," he pointed to the half-finished afghan draped over the side of his recliner, "I swear..." He pulled a can of snuff from his pocket and wedged a rub behind his bottom lip. "Sorry for losing it man, but you're the only person who knows anything about this. Shit, now I'm starting to feel bad. Really man, I'm sorry. I always figured this would happen someday, eventually. But you really fuckin' scared me, standing in the window like that."

"I scared you? Do you welcome all of your visitor's that way?"

"Hey, you're the only fuckin' person who knows about this. I never knew how I'd react when I got, well, caught."

"Ah hell, it's alright I guess. I have to ask though, man--if you're so worried about being spotted, how come you were knitting in the living room? Why not do it in your bedroom where you couldn't be seen?"

"Press play."

"Huh?"

"The VCR, jerkoff. Press play."

I picked up the remote next to him on the coffee table and did as instructed. When the video came on, and my lips pursed and the corners of my mouth twitched as I battled the urge to break into a fit of laughter. Sweat began to moisten my forehead as I avoided eye-contact with Murphy, a blanket-knitting warrior, capable of unleashing a furious beating at the slightest prompt.

"It's Betty Marshall. Her tapes show techniques for mastering the Knit and Purl stitches. Teaching myself some advanced shit."

"May I, uh, ask how you learned how?"

He drained his beer and turned down the stereo with the other, skinnier remote that was on the table. Looking down at his shoes, he sighed and shook his head slowly.

"I can't believe we're having this conversation. Remember, if you fucking tell anybody--"

"I swear to God, man."

He took a deep breath and spit a wad of Copenhagen into his old, dented can.

2

When I was eleven, my mom and dad were fighting a lot and were real close to getting a divorce. I didn't know this at the time, didn't find out until they really did get divorced when I was fifteen. Anyway, at the time, they didn't want me to see them hating each other and shit, guess because I was so young, so they sent me to stay with my grandparents in Altoona.

I really loved my grandparents' house so I was all for it. I mean, my Grandpa never really said much and when he did he was a strict Sonofabitch, but he said some funny shit sometimes. His right leg was amputated just below the knee from some crazy accident in the coalmines. He had a wooden leg in the hall closet that gave me fucking nightmares for years, no shit.

Anyway, he had a wheelchair and everything but he didn't really move around too much. He used to read these dime paperback Westerns, these Louis L'amour books. Must've had a hundred of 'em. He'd drink coffee in the morning and read them at the kitchen table, or if it was nice out we'd wheel his ass out onto the front porch. Then he'd just sit there like a piece of fuckin' furniture or somethin'. I mean, he came in for dinner and shit, but he spent most of his time on the front porch.

Murphy got up, picked up the picture of Franco Harris that was still on the ground, replaced it on the wall and walked into the hallway-shaped kitchen to grab another beer. He spit a mouthful of saliva snuff into one of the empty cans and took a long swig from the fresh one.

Anyway, my Grandaddy was ice cool but I was always closer to Grandma. I don't know man, she was just the shit. She never gave me any fuss, always gave me my space. But at the same time, when I was depressed or whatever, she could cheer me up when my mum and old man couldn't. We used to play Connect-Four and shit. She loved board games.

Man, I learned some good lessons from her. Like she was a real competitor when we played games. She just hated to lose. I remember one day when we were playing Yahtzee and she kicked my ass for like three hours. So naturally I threw a fucking tantrum and started to cry and shit, but she never let me win just so I could feel good. I finally beat her right before I went to bed that night and it was the best fucking feeling, because I knew I beat her myself--she didn't pull any kid-always-wins shit on me. I don't know, you grow to appreciate that kind of shit.

Did I mention her cooking? I mean, she put EFFORT into it. She'd start at one o'clock right after "the Young and the Restless" was over, you remember that shit? Yeah, she loved her soaps, too. Anyway, she'd slave in the kitchen all afternoon and me and gramps would reap the fuckin' rewards come five-thirty every day, hell yeah.

So when Grams was in the kitchen and Gramps was on the porch staring at clouds and birds and shit, I had the whole backyard to myself. It was fucking massive. Didn't have it for long, though.

There was this kid Evan that lived next door who came over a few times, but he was pretty square. I'd try to get him to catch baseball and shit but he was never into it. I knew from the start that he was a pussy, but he let me boss him around and shit so it was pretty cool.

Way back near the shed there was this huge pear tree. One day I asked Gramps if Evan and me could build a tree house and he kinda nodded and mumbled some shit, then I went and told Grandma that he said it was okay and I got the green light. I've always been fuckin' sly like that, I don't know. Yeah, Evan was pretty much worthless, so he just kinda stared at me while I did all the work, nailing in the wooden planks that was gonna be the ladder.

So I was hugging the trunk on the twelfth or thirteenth step of the ladder, which was pretty high, like ten feet or so, and this wasp was buzzing around one of the pears right by my head. I don't know what I was thinking, I usually freeze up like a fuckin' statue even now when I see a bee or a wasp, but I took a swipe at it. The pear snapped off and dropped to the ground, and this must've pissed it off 'cause it came right at me. Stung me right above my eyebrow right here. I panicked and fell out of the tree and landed next to Evan who just stood there holding the spare hammer like a jerkoff, like he was going to hammer ANYTHING.

I broke my left leg and my eye swelled up like a fuckin' egg from the wasp sting. That little chode Evan didn't even get my grandparents. He dropped the hammer and ran straight home. Never saw him again, the little shit. Damn, they were really pissed at me for a few days after I got the cast on it. That was the only time they ever lectured me like parents, but I didn't really mind 'cause I knew I deserved it.

3

Anyway, I was all pumped up to have this awesome summer, now all of a sudden I'm confined to the house for two and a half months. What made it like ten times worse was that their tv only got three channels really good, and they were both pretty possessive over it. Grandma had her soaps in the afternoon, even when she was cooking dinner, and Gramps watched his Westerns at night when he came in from the porch. That left me with about two hours a day, except for my Saturday morning cartoons.

The first few days I hung out with Grampa on the porch a lot, but it drove me fuckin' nuts just sitting there. I think I started to get on his nerves too, 'cause he just wanted his peace and quiet and I'm asking him a million questions and shit. He was pretty patient, but one of those days I was bitchin' about my leg a lot, being a real shit, and he told me he'd saw it off and give me the wooden leg in the hall closet. That really freaked me out, and I started crying and threw a fit. Grams really bitched him out that night; I was in bed but I heard her giving him shit in the kitchen.

The next day was the worst of the summer. I got Gramps in trouble and felt bad about that, but I was really still just feeling sorry for myself. Grandma though, God love her, tried everything to cheer me up. She made lime Jell-O, played damn near every board game in the house with me, I even think she took it easy on me 'cause I remember destroying her ass at Battleship. But nothing really cheered me up. Then after dinner once she finished the dishes, she sat down in the living room with the TV turned down, pulled out this pink and white blanket that was almost finished, two balls of yarn and started knitting. I don't know, man. It just fascinated the hell out of me, the way she explained that it started from those two white and pink balls of yarn and was now a near finished blanket that she made. I mean, she didn't buy it at fucking K-Mart, she MADE it, ya know?

Anyway, she taught me the basics, casting on, making the loop, binding off--well, you don't need to know that shit. I guess I picked it up really fast though, 'cause I was knitting little patches by the time I went to bed that night. The next morning I couldn't wait to finish my fuckin' Kix and get back on the couch. It really made her proud, too. You should've seen her man, she really thrived on teaching it to me. Gramps drove us to the crafts store and we bought a bunch of yarn, green, gold and more white, and another pair of needles. All of a sudden my summer didn't seem ruined because of my leg.

I was completely transfixed. This was a guy who exuded alpha-male hubris at work; in three years I'd never heard him speak of anything besides sports, strippers and fast food. This was the first time I heard him speak of any woman with the slightest amount of respect.

She would invite some of her cronies over, this lady named Helen Stratahaus and some other old bag named Marcy. She had these patches of gray facial hair and smelled like maple syrup. Ever meet anybody that smelled like maple syrup? It's not a good smell like you might think, man. It's fuckin' nauseating. We let her sit in the recliner on the other side of the living room while the three of us sat on the couch. Helen was cool at first because she used to bring over vanilla pitzels and chocolate chip cookies in this Folger's Coffee can, but she was kind of a lousy knitter for someone her age. She just sort of gossiped all day in this loud-ass whiny voice about her church's council meetings and her fuckin' neighbor's son-in-law who always turned around in her driveway 'cause it was wider.

Marcy meant fuckin' business though; she'd just sit there, knitting away and nodding her head every once in a while. When she did talk, her voice was real phlegmy and gross and I had to concentrate on the low volume of the tv to tune her out. Maybe she knew that she sounded like she was gargling when she talked and was quiet out of courtesy, I don't know. Barely a fuckin' peep out of her on most days, though.

Those turned out to be my friends that summer. One time I added up all their ages in my head and it was like a hundred and ninety years or some shit. But it didn't really bother me; all I cared about was finishing something big by the end of the summer. I wanted to go home to Pittsburgh at the end of August with a fuckin' blanket that I could show mom and dad.

4

So Grams had this book of patterns and designs and I flipped through it one day and picked out this bad-ass Golden Owl that was near the end of the book where the harder designs were. It had an olive green border with a white background for the Owl, and it looked pissed man, real squinty eyes and it's mouth gaped open a bit, with it's wings extended like it's flying right at you and shit.

I worked day and night on that fuckin' blanket. Of the four of us, I was definitely the most focused at my work. If Helen Stratahaus didn't check a can of sweets at the door almost every day, I would've been a little dick to her; blabbing on and on like she did got really old after a while, real distracting. And I knew she must've driven Gramps up a fuckin' wall with her loud whiny voice disrupting his peace and quiet.

At first I struggled making the Owl. It seemed pretty advanced, even for Grandma, and I fucked up a couple times at the beginning. Marcy seemed to have the most experience with following difficult patterns, so after about a month she switched seats with Helen and sat in between Grams and me on the couch. It was tough because I had to close my nasal passages and breathe through my mouth or her pancake stank would make me fuckin' sick. It was really that bad, man. But she helped me in the areas that Grandma didn't know much about, and seriously, by the end of the summer I didn't mind her nearly as much as that fucking blabbermouth Helen. One night at dinner Gramps asked me if I could knit a muzzle for her. Yeah, she was a real pain in the ass, and her cookies weren't that great anyway.

As the summer dragged on, the Owl started to take shape. Taking instruction from Marcy, I started at the bottom and worked my way up. When it was about halfway finished, I started carrying it up to bed with me at night and would fall asleep with the hallway light on, staring at the bottom half and imagining what it would look like when it was finished.

By the beginning of August it really started looking good. The pissed-off look on the Owl was identical to the pattern in the book. My Grandma was so fucking proud, man. She'd invite over other old ladies from the church, some that Helen spent the entire summer bitching about--you should've seen how fucking nice she was to them in person, by the way, and they'd get all mushy, patting my head and shit. I won't lie, I ate that shit up--every kid does. Every time we went to the grocery store, some old coot that Grandma knew would be praising me. I felt like a fuckin' celebrity to every senior citizen in Altoona.

Mom and Dad would each call once or twice a week, never together, and the Owl was the only thing I would talk about. It was really the only thing there was to talk about. Grandma was still Grandma; Gramps was still asleep on the front porch.

When mom picked me up on Labor Day weekend and took me home, my cast was off by then and the Owl was finished. I ran out to the van and wrapped it around her when she got out. I knew that she was happier to see me than anything, and the Owl impressed her and shit, but she didn't get all crazy over it like everyone else did. At first, I don't think she believed that I really did it myself. Grandma showed me off like I was some kind of fucking prodigy, but mom just didn't seem that, interested in it, I guess.

It was the same thing with pops. Plus, he probably would have wanted me to spend my summer memorizing the Pirates box scores in the sports page or some shit. I think that they were just too involved in their own problems that they didn't see that it was the first thing I found that I really loved to do. Or maybe they did recognize it and ignored it because it wasn't what they wanted me to love doing, I don't know. Either way, I was so fucking hurt by their reaction that I gave the shit up. Begged Grandma not to make a big deal about it and swore it off forever.

The Owl hung around my room for years. I slept with it sometimes and shit, but when I got older like in high school I stowed it away in my closet because I got shit for it from a couple of my friends a few times. When I finally moved out I packed it with me but never took it out of the box.

Anyway, Grandma died last year, finally. She was eighty-seven and just fuckin' miserable. Gramps died two years before that, and people say this shit all the time but I know it's true--old married people go straight downhill after the other goes. When he died I handled it alright, 'cause shit, when I was thirteen he looked like he was five minutes from dying, so you could imagine what he looked like a few years ago. But Grams was always so fuckin' active and in good shape, when she went man, shit. I pulled out the box and dusted off that fuckin' blanket, and cried into it like a fuckin' child. Next day I drove all the way to Elizabeth so nobody might recognize me and bought some yarn and needles and shit. And I don't know man, I just feel good when I do this shit. It makes me forget that I drive around mulch and mushroom shit every day, makes me forget how long it's been since I got laid.

And with that, he let out a belch that I could smell across the coffee table.

"Damn man, that's some fuckin' story. Didn't expect to hear anything like that when I came over--don't worry, I know, your secret's safe. Hey, where is this blanket, anyway?"

"You're leaning on it, jerkoff."

"Huh?" I leaned forward and looked over my shoulder. There it was, folded and draped over the back of the loveseat; the round eyes that were closed to mere slits glared at me, and only the top of the screaming beak was above the fold. I grabbed it and opened it up, holding it in front of me. It was worn and the corners were a bit tattered, the white yarn had faded a bit over the years, but it still had all the warmth and comfort that everybody's favorite blanket has.

I examined the vengeful eyes and the ravenous gaping beak, and something familiar about the expression struck me. Then I realized that I had indeed seen that frightening face before, earlier on the front porch, when Murphy swung open the front door and dragged me inside his apartment.