The Hiring of May Witherspoon

The Hiring of May Witherspoon




         May enjoyed setting out bits of meat for the big birds. It was one of May's few pleasures. She would dice up some cheap round steak and set it out in cubes along the porch rail. The part she loved, what she adored about the ravens, was that they left her presents. She left them food, and they left her a fake pearl, a thimble, and little shiny things.
 
         She watched out her window as the big black birds landed and took pieces of meat. A raven landed and dropped a rock-like object, and they all flew away. Some had bits of steak in their beaks. She donned her housecoat and stepped out on the porch, curious about the rock.
 
         It was an uncut diamond the size of a cashew. Her gaze snapped up to the wire where they perched.
 
"Where did you get this?" she asked the raven she knew as the flock's alpha. Over time, they built a relationship, communicating with sign language. For instance, when he sat near the steak pieces, he would nod thanks, and she would return his nod.
 
As the big black bird gripped the wire, he turned his head and stared straight at her, as the bird's eye was on the side of his head. The gray sky made a solid backdrop behind his black silhouette on the wire, enhancing his face and eyes. The alpha wrinkled his brow and dipped his head—a heartfelt human gesture of thanks for the food.
 
         That same day, she caught the bus. May wasted no time cashing out her diamond in downtown Seattle. The broker asked where she got it. "Ta fuck difference does that make?" she asked the jeweler with a shrill shout. Next, he explained they needed to run a background check on the stone, per their policy. A moment later, he hurriedly returned and offered her a truckload of cash.
 
         May no longer depended on disability checks, and she opened a bank account in the Cayman Islands. May rode the bus home with a genuine, breathless smile, the first time she'd been this excited in years.
 
         The next day, May watched her neighbor, Ken Stritter, standing in his nasty, dogshit-strewn, and mud-packed fenced-in backyard. He was dressed in blue and yellow boxer shorts printed with flowers, a T-shirt, and sandals, his beer belly protruding. Stritter aimed his Crossman 1077 CO2 Air Rifle toward the power and cable lines along the single, light rail tracks they installed last year. Those wires were where the ravens perched. May peered at the disgusting man through her kitchen window.
 
         Bap! The CO2 rifle smacked feathers off one of the two big ravens on the power cable.
 
The gunshot caused the ravens to flutter and take flight, raising their gurgling croak to a shrill alarm, "Aaarrng!" Blood dripped from the wing of the targeted raven as it flew. Other ravens joined them—four ravens total now—May's four ravens.
 
         She wrapped her housecoat well and opened her kitchen door. She was going to end this. She clutched her housecoat at her bosom with one hand and held to her railing with her left. She negotiated the steps sideways down from her porch. Her black curly hair, mixed with gray, bounced in front of her eyes as she stepped down.
 
         The rain left her wooden steps slick, as usual. She meant to repaint them last summer, but the white paint had peeled off the ten steps down to the yard. Her house was set high off the slope atop her walk-in basement, with the front of the house set at ground level.
 
         This neighborhood in Seattle was old and rotting from the outside—like everything in this wetness—like me. She stepped sideways down the steps.
 
         May counted three dead ravens in his backyard.
 
"Don't you come down here, bitching at me, May!" Stritter said as he aimed at the big black birds circling. "If you didn't feed these damned things, they wouldn't come around."
 
         May paused and glared; her large, dark eyes narrowed. "You need to go put some fucking pants on!"
 
         Stritter snatched down his gun and faced her. He jerked down the front of his boxers, showed his junk to May, and grinned. His rotted front teeth were nasty.
 
         She snorted. "Seen longer cocks on the rats in my basement!" Nasty man! She took a couple more steps down. "You need to stop shooting my ravens! In my yard, I'll feed whatever the fuck I want to feed, nasty man!"
 
         "And in my yard, I'll shoot whatever the fuck I want to shoot, dirty lezzie!"
 
         Stritter turned, shouldered his pellet rifle, and searched the sky for ravens.
 
         "Like fuck, you will," May said as she reached the bottom step.
 
         The ravens lit on the house's roof on the other side of the tracks. Stritter smiled as he aimed.
 
         May picked up a stone the size of her fist. She backed up two steps to clear the chainlink fence separating the backyards. May was a high school softball pitcher. She pushed the rock out and went into her wind-up, wheeling her arm around and releasing the stone at her knee. The stone shot out like a projectile, striking Stritter squarely in the face. He wheeled his arms, peddled his feet in the slick mud, and landed on his back. May laughed.
 
         "Aaarrng! Aaarrng! Aaarrng!" The ravens cheered and flapped their wings. Stritter scrambled, getting up and holding his bleeding temple, and went inside.
 
Before sunset, she put small pieces of round steak out on the rail of her back porch. She sat at her kitchen table until the black shadows passed by her backdoor and window. Something was different this time. Two birds flew together in a tight ball, a frantic flapping of black feathers.
 
         She jumped up and went to the kitchen window and peered sideways across the porch. They brought her something big, and May waited for them to eat their food and return to their wire before she went to see. Easing the door open, she looked up at the powerline, and the four ravens watched her. The alpha bent forward, anxious to see her reaction. She eased the door open and stepped out.

         The big object they brought her was a pistol.
 
         High on the electricity line, the alpha nodded toward his mate on his left. The raven held out her wounded wing. The alpha raven growled to get May's attention. He looked at the gun and pointed his head next door to Stritter's place with a lift of his beak.
 
         "You want me to wing him," she said. "An eye for an eye."
 
         The alpha leaned forward, nodded toward the dead ravens, and looked back at her. The alpha frowned and trilled a low growl, "Arrrr." She studied the look in his eyes and the furrowing of his brow.

         May gripped the rail and leaned. "You want me to kill that fucker, Stritter!"

         They all stood tall, flapping and yelling, "Aaarrng!"
 
         The alpha raven flew to the roof of the house across the tracks. He took a few steps down the far slope and flew back to the wire with an object in his beak. It was another uncut diamond, but this one was huge. He leaned forward on the power line, turning his head right and left, making sure she got a good look at it. He nodded his head toward Stritter's house. His message was clear.

         If you do him, then you get this.
 
         The alpha's crew all stared at him, and he nodded. They raised their wings and flew.
 
         May craned her neck, watching them disappear—with her diamond.
 
         "That's a shitload of fucking money," she whispered to herself.

         She looked down at the pistol at her feet. "Let me get a close look at what you brought." She picked it up, dove inside her kitchen, and shut the door behind her. She knew what killing Stritter meant. Life would be running and hiding, looking over her shoulder. May scoffed.
 
         "What have I got going on in this house?" Loneliness, bad memories. A shitload of fucking money will buy a new life. She could live well for a while. May looked around and stopped at an old, framed portrait of herself and her former love, Patsy, now long gone. Fuck it. "I hear Vanuatu is nice. Hotels and bungalows by the beach. Swarms of pussy in bikinis. No extradition," she said.
 
         She got on the phone and made reservations.
 
         She bought a wig and new clothes and packed up what little she would take. She busied herself, tying off loose ends while watching Stritter for a few days. He lived alone after his wife came to her senses and left him. She took off years back and got away to nobody the fuck cares. Good for her.

         May watched out her living room window on her knees on her sofa with a small pair of binos. She wanted to catch Stritter in the basement by the washer and dryer, where most of the noise was. But the nasty fuck didn't do laundry much. Then, a thought hit her, and she crawled off the sofa.
 
         Early that evening, she went through the gate in his chainlink fence at the side of his house near his front porch. She trotted to the shadows and stopped. May set the paper bag on the ground and pulled out the contents. It was a disposable yellow gown worn in the hospital emergency departments, disposable booties, and hair covering, which she set on the ground by the bag. She finished dressing and put on nitrile hospital gloves. The final piece was the surgical mask over her nose and mouth. Squatting, she took a rock from her sack and broke out all the glass on his basement window.
 
         Bap!
 
         "Ahhh!" She let out a muffled yell, grabbed her shoulder, and spun.

         Stritter shot her with his air rifle, and it stung! She looked at her hand, and there was blood. She planned to surprise him, but he stood in his boxers at the corner of the house, aiming the little rifle.

         "What the fuck you doing breaking in here!" Stritter said.

         She reached to the back of her blue jeans and, quick as a cat, brought around the.45 AutoMag. She gripped the big automatic handgun with both hands.
 
         BOOM! The recoil brought the pistol up above her face. The power and recoil surprised her, and she almost dropped it and missed.
 
         Stritter, dumbfounded, fell on his ass. He started crab-walking backward, as fast as he could, around the corner and toward the back porch. She marched toward him, pointing the gun with both hands. He scrambled, pivoted, and got to his feet, picking up the Crossman 1077 rifle. When he reached the back porch, he fired it with one hand over his back, and the pellet smacked May in the chest.
 
         "Fuck!" She staggered back a step.
 
         Stritter stumbled into his backdoor with May behind him, and he got to his feet as he crossed his kitchen. She stopped and leveled the.45. May snarled, curling her lip.
 
         BOOM!
 
         Her ears rang when the big gun resounded impossibly loud in the small kitchen. The blast slammed Stritter against the refrigerator, and blood splattered across the fridge and all over the wall. Stritter grimaced with his left arm across his chest, still holding the Crossman in his right, then slid around and ran down the hall. She followed him, and he turned and aimed.
 
         Bap!
 
         The pellet hit her head and knocked her out briefly, and when she awakened on the floor, Stritter stood against the wall. He held his chest with his left hand, leaning against the wall, the rifle in his right. He labored to breathe, and blood trickled out the corner of his mouth.
 
         Blood ran down May's face into her eyes, and she huffed for breath inside the surgical mask. He had shot her in the forehead. Damn! He was an excellent fucking shot with that thing! She moved and fell over onto something hard, striking her cheek. It was her gun. She felt around until her left hand found it.
 
         Stritter, using the wall to hold him up and leaving a long smear of blood, raised his foot and stomped her hand on the gun.
 
         "AAAH!"
 
         She looked up at his wide-open boxer shorts above her and his rotten teeth. He grinned. The hallway tilted. Her head wobbled. She grinned back.
 
         She shot her free right hand up the leg of his boxer shorts, grabbed his nut sack, and yanked hard.
 
         The look of alarm on his face was priceless. The pain registered, and his knee came up. His foot lifted off her hand, and she got her gun. May rolled over on her back and aimed at his face.

         BOOM!
 
         Stritter's head jerked, and his brains sprayed over the wall and ceiling.
 
         Later, at her back porch steps, May carried the sack full of bloody hospital surgical protective gear in one hand and the gun in the other. May struggled to pull herself up the steps, holding her porch rails.
 
         Her face and the neck of her t-shirt had her blood mixed with Stritter's spray, and the light shirt she had worn she put in the sack was too bloody to wear. May bled from her shoulder, chest, and forehead from that damned pellet gun.
 
         Luckily, the small caliber pellet didn't penetrate her skull, but she figured she had a concussion.
 
         Once at the porch, she knelt, set the gun down on the landing, and turned to the power lines running along the track. The setting sun behind the ravens on the wire streaked with hues of orange and blue. She nodded at the alpha raven. I killed him.
 
         The alpha nodded back, eyeing her wounds.
 
         She opened the door to her kitchen and sighed. May didn't care about diamonds; she needed a stiff drink, a hot bath, and the first aid kit.
 
         The following day, the gun was gone the same way they brought it. In its place, the ravens left an uncut diamond, the huge one the alpha raven showed her yesterday. And beside it, they left an uncut ruby. She gathered the jewels and turned the ruby in her hand. "From her, his wounded mate," May said.
 
         She got busy. "Shouldn't cash any more jewels local." As she checked the flight itinerary, she daydreamed—Vanuatu, palm trees, beach blankets, and sand up the ass. She smiled at the thought.
 
         She would sell the jewels in San Francisco and wire the money to the Caymans. "I can't land in Fiji or Vanuatu with too much cash. Customs won't let me pass." She made a checklist. Passport, check. She updated it to cross the border to Vancouver. "There is no time for a phony one yet. I need an international burner phone."
 
         She knew they would catch up to her at some point. The cops were like hound dogs. But she could live well for a long time in the meantime. Movement out her window told her ravens had landed on the wire.
 
         May stepped out onto the porch and locked eyes with the alpha bird. She saluted him. The alpha bird raised his beak, stopped, and raised his wing in a proud salute. He dropped it, signaled to his comrades, and they all flew away. Somehow, they knew she was leaving, and this was goodbye forever.