Horaltic Pose

Alyssa sees the vultures, their bodies like black hats hanging on the edge of her crumbling roof. She lives on a busy street. There was roadkill, lots of it. Today’s offering: a sandhill crane, who’d fallen prey to the metal jaws of a pick-up truck or a moving van. It was hard to say.

“What a shame,” Alyssa thinks. “No one is careful.”

The three birds descend, necks hanging like willow branches above rusty flesh that would soon be in their guts. Alyssa watches, keen, as they perform their autopsy on the poor bird who lay crumbled in the grass. 

She is transfixed by the rhythm of this raptorial feast; a turkey neck bouquet bobbing and in and out of crushed grey ribs. One bird stood tall above the rest, took more than his fair share and pecked at the others who tried to take his cut. Vultures are not dimorphic, but she knew this was a male. He was larger, his feathers menacing as his claws, carnivorous rakes commanding the crane’s concrete-colored down. If the others wanted some, they would have to wait their turn. 

“Hey,” Alyssa shouts. “You share with the rest of them.” 

His vitreous eyes lurch in her direction.

Alyssa tells him, “You heard me! Don’t be selfish.”

She’s been smoking and staring for several minutes, but he only notices her now. He surveys her from a distance, takes a few steps and prowls her way. A thicket of trees makes a shadow across his pelt. He stops abruptly, fretting from foot to foot.

Alyssa snickers and says, “You waiting to ask me to prom or something?”

A raspy hiss crawls up from his throat, beak standing proud like an uncut toenail. After a moment, he hisses again and retreats to the middle of the road. Slowly, like a paper fan, he expands his wings, flashing his feathers as he wobbles in the wind. 

In another world, she would take his stance as a threat but Alyssa knows what this is: a horaltic pose. Vultures do this to spread the surface area of their bodies and open themselves up more to the sun.

Her father really did teach her all she knows about these birds. He would be proud of that, if he could feel anything at all.

The vulture remains in his place despite the oncoming traffic. An Amazon delivery car stops inches away, but the vulture is not afraid. He spreads his wings further. Eventually, the truck backs up and makes a U-turn over the median. 

Alyssa laughs one time, a shallow, dusty noise. The bird is unchanged and open, feathers bustling with the summer breeze. He turns in a circle, three slow rotations on the ground. Suddenly he stops. He had forgotten about Alyssa. He stares at her intently. 

She lowers her head and voice, addressing him, “Hello, Mr. Vulture.” 

He blinks once, twice. 

“You’re a very pretty bird.” 

The vulture sneezes. She never knew vultures could sneeze. Guess the devil swoops into their nostrils, too.

Alyssa says, “Bless you,” and the vulture blinks again. 

She never saw herself as a person who talked to birds. 

Though an ornithophile, she did not speak to them directly. That was her father’s thing. And he surely would have found this vulture rather darling.

She thinks about her father, a man fascinated with horror movies and all things macabre. 

Her father—now a cadaver—sits in an icy morgue, awaiting the scalpel and intrusive autopsy hands. He’d acquired multiple rib fractures in her nursing home and had to be examined for foul play. When she’d met him at the hospital after a reported fall, a scrap of the man he was lying in that little bed. His little legs were covered in bruises, an open sore patched with what looked like masking tape, and he was shriveled and crumpled, a paternal strip of beef jerky—not the man he used to be. His hair was unkempt and strangled, his nails jaundiced and sharp. His mobility was gone, but still he tried to rise from the bed, muscles burning and tendons twisting in an effort to warm himself up.

“Cold,” he garbled. “I am cold.”

“I know,” Alyssa sympathized. “Hospitals are freezing.”

“No. It’s me. I am cold.” 

He passed away later that night. Alyssa watched him for hours after. He was cold, his skin mottled, his fingers blue. Over time, his skin grew orange. His jaw was still and remained unhinged. She could not believe it; she’d visited him not too long ago. One month, maybe two. He was walking, talking, even feeding himself. To an extent, he carried himself as the man in the proverbial driver’s seat. He was too far down the line of dementia for Alyssa to care for him full time, but she didn’t know the facility had slipped up so horrifically.  

Though he was gone, Alyssa got him a blanket and wrapped it around his stiff, unmoving arms and legs, masking the lumps and lesions from her teary eyes. 

She tries hard, but can’t forget her father, dead. She sinks to her porch railing, watches the birds between the bars.

“I should have taken care of him,” she says. “I should have brought him home with me.” She sighs a teary, regretful breath, “I never should have put him in a nursing home.” 

The vulture watches warily. He doesn’t understand a word she says. Instead, he hobbles back to the crane carcass, wings retreating to his abdomen. Rejoining his clan, he resumes his meal as if the anthropomorphic exchange had never happened.

Alyssa’s forehead sticks to the wood, sweat making her slick with regret. Somehow, she is freezing, and alone.

She takes a last drag of cigarette before throwing it, still smoldering, into the grass. The vulture is still eating; a crane’s blood lingers on his mouth.