Fridays take forever when you are waiting for your week to end. That is exactly how Sara felt as it approached noon in the parts store she had been working in for seven years - every Friday praying for the weekend to come faster. Shortly past noon, her phone started vibrating in her pocket while she was helping David from Byrd and Son’s Logging find the exact flat-face o-ring for his hydraulic pump. Flipping her phone open, Sara saw that it was her sister calling. Realizing that it would take another fifteen minutes to help David choose the exact o-ring, she decided to talk the call from her sister in the hopes of being able to tell her that she would call her right back and diffuse her sister’s repeat phone calls to get her attention.
“Hey big sis, I…” was all she could get out before the interruption.
Terri, her older sister, interrupted Sara’s few words with, “I can’t take my life any longer. I have to find a way out.”
The phone went dead before Sara could say anything in return. She just flipped the phone shut and finished ringing up the two dollar o-ring that took her the past thirty minutes to hunt down. Working a parts counter is a bit like being a bartender. Everyone comes in with a story and they cozy up to the bar, place their order, and you are left nodding your head and listening as they rant on about the economy, their cheating wife or their children’s latest accomplishment. After David was well on his way with that special piece of two dollar rubber, Sara snuck her way back to the parts warehouse and called her mother.
“Mom, Terri just called and I think she’s having a break down of sorts at work. Can you call her back and find out if she’s okay? I’ve got to get back to the counter. There’s another customer,” she pleaded with her mother.
“Yeah honey, I’ll call her right now,” her mother promised.
Sara had already spent two hours of the morning taking her daughter to the doctor and couldn’t expect to take more time from work to go and take care of her sister. So she took care of the next customer constantly looking at her phone expecting to see another call come through. That’s when the dreamy son of the coal company owner came walking through the door, Doug of Mountain Resources. He was always a delight to wait on because of his timid smile and ease of making a sale. Whatever Sara showed him whether it was a new set of keys for any make and model or the dandy flashlights on display, he never left without way more than he came through the door to pick up. This time though was the new set of keys that were currently part of a contest Sara was hoping to sell the most for. A personal accomplishment of a mundane expectation was something to make the days pass. After he was happily on his way with the purchase Sara’s phone rang again.
“Hey Mom, is she okay?” she asked.
“No honey, we’re on our way to the hospital. Terri is on her way there in an ambulance. I guess she’s having some sort of nervous break down. I’ll take Suzanna with me,” her mother said.
“No Mom, just bring her to work with me. I don’t want her at the hospital getting everyone sick with strep. Bring her by on your way to the hospital” Sara replied.
“Okay, we’re on our way now.”
Sara started debating what she should do. Her sick child on her way to sit with her at work, her sister in the hospital and her son would be getting off the bus in about an hour to find no one at home waiting for him. Would he be afraid or would he happily go inside to the solitude of an uninterrupted Xbox game? What about her sister Terri? Should she plan to go see her after work, but what about her assignments for school that she had procrastinated about turning in and the deadline was tonight? Hopefully, the rest of the afternoon would go quickly but she kept worrying over her son, Gavin, getting off the bus.
Suzanna arrived with her grandmother outside the shop. Sara went out to the car and collected her daughter bringing her inside to sit at her desk and draw pictures to pass time. By four o’clock Sara decided to request to be able to run home and check on her twelve year old son. He wasn’t answering his phone and that just made her worry even more. So she loaded up Suzanna and ran out to the house to check on him. Only living five minutes from work does come in handy.
There was Gavin playing his games not even noticing he was alone. Suzanna collapsed on the couch and begged her mother to let them just stay there alone until she got off from work at five.
“Momma – I am so tired and your work is so boring. I want to lie down. We’ll be fine here together. I promise,” Suzanna pleaded.
Sara looked at Gavin standing in front of the television with the controller in his hands and said, “Gavin, will you guys be okay? I’ll be home just a little after five.”
“Yeah Mom, we’ll be okay,” he replied.
Sara rushed back down the stairs and out to her car for the short trek back to work. When she got there it was time for everyone else to go home and she’d be working the last thirty minutes alone. Never had this been a problem before, she was use to handling the store by herself. But it isn’t every day that she gets a phone call like this:
“Momma, there’s a big rooster in the house. You’ve got to come home, Momma. It pecked Gavin on the leg. I’m afraid it’s going to eat the cats,” Suzanna cried over the phone giving her mother every detail.
“A rooster? How can it be a rooster?” Sara relayed back while visions of the intruder flooding her mind.
“Well, it’s a big scary bird. I didn’t look real good and I’m in the bathroom hiding. Gavin’s out there trying to get it out of the house,” Suzanna replied.
That’s when Sara started dialing her son’s cell phone number from anther phone. She kept Suzanna on the line on her cell phone and held the office phone to the other ear. Conversation going in all directions, she was able to pull together the fact that a bird with a rather large beak had gotten into the house. Her son had been pecked in the leg. He was afraid. Her daughter was afraid. Only fifteen more minutes until closing and everyone on the other end of the line is crying, screaming and scared.
“Gavin honey, just go wait in the bathroom with your sister,” Sara consoled.
“I can’t momma. I think it’s in the hall,” Gavin said.
“Oh, no! Momma, it’s in the hall? I’m scared Momma. I think I hear it scratching on the door,” Suzanna replied after overhearing her brother’s voice outside the bathroom.
“Gavin, just go outside and wait on the back deck,” she told her son and then spoke into the other phone saying, “Suzanna, you stay on the line with me while I drive out to the house.”
It was five minutes until the actual closing time and Sara decided she would go ahead and check out. She set the alarm and locked the doors all the while keeping Suzanna on the line with her.
Sara rushed home to the rooster who had taken over the house. The evidence of his arrival into her home stained the walls with oozing brown bird feces and littered the floor with feathers. She quickly made her way to the bathroom to rescue her daughter from the big chicken hiding in the house and threatening to eat the cats.
“Suzanna, come on out of the bathroom. He’s not upstairs. He can’t get you,” Sara told her daughter after she opened the bathroom door.
“Where’s Gavin? Oh there he is Momma. I’m going outside until you are sure the bird is gone,” Suzanna said.
Sara walked through the entire upstairs searching for the rooster that might attack at her at moment. Nothing could be found but feathers and terds. So she went downstairs and found the cats about to pounce on a rather large wood pecker hiding in the mountains of dirty laundry. They were crouched down on all fours waiting patiently for the wood pecker to make his next move. Sara picked the cats up and tossed the felines upstairs, shutting the door to keep them at bay. She reached for the broom for defense, opened every door to the outside and began playing ‘shoo, shoo’ would the hugely beaked bird. With one swat of the broom towards the bird, he suddenly flew up and directly at Sara’s face. She ducked to watch him land on the rafter above her head. With another swat of the broom, he dive-bombed her head. He wasn’t leaving gracefully, so she decided they needed to have a conversation about this.
“Listen here woody. I need you to go fly the hell out of my house or I’m sickin’ the pussies on your ass. Now shoo!”
With one last swat of the broom Woody vanished out the garage door and into the blue sky.
“Holy moly – what a day!”
Forgetting completely about her sister laying the hospital and totally concentrating on the ‘shit’ at hand, Sara began cleaning up the carnage oozing down her walls and feathers littering the floor. Once everything was picked up again, the kids were inside; she collapsed into her chair to complete her procrastinated assignments and wondering if her sister was going to be able to understand why she didn’t make it to the hospital to check on her. Maybe she would tell her that a big rooster got in the house and was attacking the children and eating the cats. Maybe they gave her feel-good drugs and she would actually believe Sara’s story. Maybe she’d tell the truth and just concentrate on writing this story.
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