Last year, after I lost my beloved bride to demon cancer, I hastily—and painstakingly—finished the book I had been working on, Perils of the Bike Path (A Jack Miller Senior Moment: Book Five), for quite a while. At that point, deep in depression, I swore that I would never write another novel.
But that changed a few months ago, when—mostly for therapy—I started a new book. It didn’t take long to realize how much I had missed it—how much WRITING has been and always will be a part of me. So I’ve been at it nearly every day since, and as of last week I passed the halfway point of The Magic of the Bike Path (A Jack Miller Senior Moment: Book Six). It should be ready for public consumption later this year.
Just for laughs—we can all use some in these troubled times—here is a rather outrageous scene from Perils of the Bike Path. The setup: Jack has ridden into an alternate Bodega Bay (“where the birds talk and the people squawk”), the town made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. This is the opening to Chapter Five, “These Crows Are Murder.”
Enjoying the auto show, I barely noticed that I’d reached the outskirts of the town. Still no people, but I did spot a building that pretty much confirmed I was in Bodega Bay, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Remember the schoolhouse from the movie, which I think had been an old church? And the small house next to it, where schoolteacher Annie Hayworth got pecked to death? Yep, there they stood, on my left, along with the playground where the crows gathered for recess.
You recall that whole big murder of crows (yep, that’s what a flock of crows is called) in the movie that landed behind Tippi Hedren on that jungle gym thing, right? The good news: no birds on it at the moment. However, sitting on the railing that separated the playground from the road were four crows, each one wearing a miniature sombrero. I mean, what was this about?
A bird’s-eye view of Bodega Bay.
“Hey hombre,” the crow on the left called out, which stopped me dead in my tracks. “Pon tu culo en el banco, amigo.”
What the heck, was the UT17 malfunctioning? Can’t they ever get the damn things right? I smiled at the crow and turned my palms up in a no comprendo gesture.
The crow turned to his brethren and said, in English (I guess), “Maybe this dude is deaf, or maybe he’s just a dummy.”
All three crows nodded, and one of them replied, “He sure doesn’t look like a rocket scientist.”
Okay, that pissed me off. “Now you’re getting nasss-ty,” I hissed in my best Indiana Jones voice.
“Ah, it speaks!” one of the other crows exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. “Sit your ass down on the bench, friend, like Fernando already told you.”
Fernando? It indicated a ratty-looking wooden bench nearby, positioned like the one that Tippi Hendren sat on to have a smoke while waiting for class to end. Maybe I should’ve just moseyed along, but rest for the wicked and the weary (and the elderly) was always a good thing, so I obeyed. Besides, I had no idea what these corvine caballeros had in mind.
“Okay team, let’s get this show on the road!” the first crow bellowed, sounding much like a carnival barker.
This sent the third crow into the air, where it hovered about five feet in front of me and said, “A thief broke into the zoo and made off with a cage full of crows. Yeah, he got away with murder!”
A terrifying scene from THE BIRDS.
Huh? The others laughed their asses off as the fourth crow exchanged places with the third. “Why don’t crows get their bags checked when they go through customs at the airport? Because they prefer carrion!”
Gawd, these turkeys belonged in the Garden of a Thousand Bad Jokes. The second crow took its place. “What do you call a crow who murdered another crow? Guilty!”
They continued laughing their butts off as the first crow, before replacing the second crow, hovered above me and said, “Hey hombre, you don’t think we’re a regular riot?” And it dropped a turd in my lap before exclaiming, “What do you call a crow’s birthday party when nobody shows up? An attempted murder!”
Okay, this was disgusting, and not funny at all, but since it wasn’t my first rodeo, I knew what I had to do. Jeez! Shaking off the turd I put on my best chortle and said, “Hey, that was a hoot!”
The first crow—Fernando—apparently bought it, because he returned to the fence and traded places with the third crow, who got in my face. “You know that a flock of crows is called a murder, right? But it’s only a murder if there’s probable caws! Get it? Caws!”
Yeah, I got it. But I held my belly as I laughed like I used to for real when Jackie Mason did his stand-up schtick. That brought the second crow over.
“A raven has seventeen primary pinion feathers. A crow only has sixteen. So the difference between a raven and a crow is only a matter of a pinion!”
Okay, that wasn’t bad, but you know, these crows were definitely murder, and I really needed to get going. Walking off as I guffawed, I glanced over my shoulder at the roaring quartet, who could have provided the entire laugh track for a sitcom, and said, “Thanks for the entertainment, but I gotta see a man about…some horseneck clams.”
I thought that did the trick, but as I turned to start down the hill, I heard one of the crows (Fernando again, I think) say, “Let us accompany you, amigo.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary…” I started to say, but when I looked back, I saw that the previously empty jungle gym now held at least 793 crows, give or take. Where in hell did they come from?
No matter, because they rose up into the sky like the Black Plague, and with the four caballeros in front they swooped down after me as I tore ass down the hill. I might’ve actually attained enough speed to shift out of this psycho bird sanctuary if I hadn’t hit a small pothole, which sent me and the Nishiki to the ground. I wasn’t hurt—too badly, anyway—but before I could move, the Black Plague descended upon me to…what, peck me to death, like Annie Heyworth, or take a collective dump, which would probably kill me anyway?
That’s when the whole lot of them, save the sombrero-wearing quartet, veered off and returned to the sky, headed off to who-knows-where. The first crow winked at me (I swear!) and said, “We were just messing with you, amigo. Have a nice day.” And they followed in the flight path of the Black Plague.