“A lot of folks in Lakeport,” says Marian, “are excited about Eden’s Gate.”
“Why?”
She gives him a sad smile. “Well, you know what they say.”
He chews his shirt collar. He doesn’t know what they say.
“Money isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
She looks as though she expects him to laugh, but he doesn’t understand what’s funny, and a woman wearing sunglasses jerks a thumb toward the back of the library and says, “I think your toilet is overflowing,” and Marian hurries away.
Nonfiction 598.9:
Between 365 million and one billion birds die just from crashing into windows in the United States each year.
Digest of Avian Biology:
Multiple onlookers reported that after the crow died, a large number of fellow crows （well over one hundred individuals by some accounts） descended from the trees and walked circles around the deceased for fifteen minutes.
Nonfiction 598.27:
After its mate struck the utility wire, researchers witnessed the owl return to its roost, turn its face to the trunk, and stand motionless for several days until it died.
* * *
One day, halfway through June, Seymour comes home from the library, stares up into Eden’s Gate, and sees that Trustyfriend’s big dead tree has been cut down. Where this morning the snag stood on the hillside behind the double-wide, now there is only air.
A man unrolls an orange hose from a truck; a backhoe cuts galleries for culverts; someone yells, “Mike! Mike!” The view from the egg-shaped boulder now stretches up a bare drumlin of shredded forest all the way to the top.
He drops his books and runs. Down Arcady Lane, down Spring Street, south along the gravel shoulder of Route 55, traffic roaring past, running not so much in rage but in panic. All this must be undone.
It’s the dinner hour and the Pig N’ Pancake is packed. Seymour pants in front of the hostess stand and scans faces. The manager eyes him; people waiting for tables watch. Bunny comes through the kitchen door with platters stacked along both arms.
“Seymour? Are you hurt?”
Somehow still balancing five plates of patty melts and chicken-fried steaks on her arms, she crouches, and he lifts one cup of his ear defenders.
Smells: ground beef, maple syrup, French fries. Sounds: the grading of rocks, the driving of sledges, the back-up alarms of dump trucks. He’s a mile and a half from Eden’s Gate but somehow he can still hear it, as though it’s a prison being built around him, as though he’s a fly being wrapped and spun in a spiderweb.
Diners watch. The manager watches.
“Possum?”
Words stack up against the backs of his teeth. A busboy trundles past, pushing an empty high chair on wheels, the wheels going thumpthwock over the tiles. A woman laughs. Someone yells, “Order up!” The woods the tree the owl—through the soles of his feet he feels a chain saw bite into a trunk, feels Trustyfriend startle awake. No time to think: you drop like shadow into the daylight, as one more safe harbor is wrenched out of the world.
“Seymour, put your hand in my pocket. Do you feel the keys? The car is right outside. Go sit in there, where it’s quiet, do your breathing exercise, and I’ll be out as soon as I can.”
He sits in the Pontiac as shadows trickle down through the pines. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four. Bunny comes out in her apron and gets in the car and rubs her forehead with the heels of her hands. In a to-go box she has three pancakes with strawberries and cream.
“Use your fingers, honey, it’s all right.”
The fading light plays tricks; the parking lot stretches; trees become dream trees. A first star shows, then hides itself again. Best friends best friends, we’re never apart.
Bunny tears off a piece of pancake and hands it to him.
“Okay if I take off your muffs?”
He nods.
“And touch your hair?”
He tries not to wince as her fingers catch in his snarls. A family leaves the restaurant, climbs into a truck, and drives away.
“Change is tough, kid, I know. Life is tough. But we still have the house. We still have our yard. We still have each other. Right?” He closes his eyes and sees Trustyfriend cruise over a wasteland of endless parking lots, nowhere to hunt, nowhere to land, nowhere to sleep.
“It won’t be the worst thing to have neighbors close by. Maybe there will be kids your age.”
An aproned teenager crashes out the back door and lobs a plump black bag into the dumpster. Seymour says, “They need big hunting ranges. They especially like high vantage points so they can hunt voles.”