The Bird Lady Melodie Edwards (bio) That morning of the owl, I remember taking my time walking home from my grandmother's hogan. I didn't want to go home to my dad, is why. He was laid off from the oil fields again. Next to the phone he kept a list. He'd written "Fucking Drilling Companies" across the top of it, most of them scratched off so hard the paper was all shredded up. I walked home slow as I could, taking "the frontage road"; that's what Dad called it, a foot/horse/four-wheeler track down a gully parallel to the highway that could take you all the way to the reservation forty miles away if you wanted it to, and I did. I didn't want to go home at all, but Grandma made me. "Your dad likes to cook for you," she said. "Go home so he can put food in your belly." But who wants to sit at a table listening to another person chew? My feet kicked red sand as I walked, filling up my shoes, making them heavy. That's when I saw the revolving lights and scrambled up the arroyo wall to the highway. Anything to delay going home, but what I saw made me wish I was home already. A blue pickup lay turned over in the middle of the road, its front wheels buckled in as if holding a bellyache. People sat in the road under blankets. I didn't know them, but I knew them, it was that kind of small town. One big lady, talking to a police officer, kept saying "Howl" or "Ow" like she'd forgotten how to cry out. The policewoman turned her head, and I followed the direction her eyes looked off to a puddle of feathers. I thought "Owl," and turned away. The owl is death, I heard Grandmother Yazzi's voice sing in me. When an owl crosses your path, turn back. Without opening my eyes, I swiveled in my tracks. Dad would have to come pick me up on his motorcycle. "Hey, little girl!" someone called. "Stop, please." I stopped but I didn't turn around. Then I felt a hand like something with talons on my shoulder. [End Page 83] "It's okay, she's dead now, I covered her up. But I saw the owl's eyes watching you. She knew you, didn't she?" I opened my eyes and saw a middle-aged white woman in an army jacket and white earmuffs. I recognized her from somewhere, maybe school. She looked like a substitute teacher, one of those skinny women with hunchy walks and big glasses who come twice, then never again. "I don't like owls," I told her. "Maybe you know where her nest is though?" I was shaking my head. But there was a place where I went sometimes, a lost place, a narrow place where the birds made noises that sounded like I felt inside. Hungry noises, urgent. "Can you take me there?" How did this skinny lady in her earmuffs know what owls thought about? When I looked up at her, I saw a fluffy feather stuck in her perm. So I started walking. I heard the woman follow. We went past the accident and down into the arroyo. "Hey!" the cop shouted after us. "What about the dead bird?" "Wrap her up and put her in my car," the woman shouted back. "I'll take her to the Fish and Game when I get back." One of the people sitting in the street asked, "Who's that?" "That's the bird lady," the cop answered. We walked a ways up the canyon, through knots of clematis, to the narrow place. The snow was still all over everything. The bird lady did all the talking as we walked along. No rabbit tracks at all, she said, no owl food. She said the closest place were the buffet tables out on the highway. She said we must be getting close to the owl's nest. Why, I asked. No more bird calls. After awhile, I thought I heard the tiny owlet noises...