He walks the rest of the way home and stands in the driveway with his backpack on and the wing clamped against his chest. In the lots of Eden’s Gate, a model townhome is nearly complete and four more are going up. A truss dangles from a crane while two carpenters move back and forth beneath. Clouds blow in and lightning flashes and for an instant he sees Earth from a million miles away, a mote hurtling through a barren and crushing vacuum, and then he’s in the driveway again and there are no clouds, no lightning: it’s a bright blue day, the carpenters are fixing the truss into place, their nail guns going pop-pop-pop.

Bunny is at work but has left the television on. On-screen an elderly couple pulls suitcases on wheels toward a cruise ship. They clink champagne glasses, play a slot machine. Ha ha ha, they say. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Their smiles are excessively white.

The wing smells like an old pillow. The complexity of the brown, tan, and cream striping on the flight feathers is outrageous. For every 27,027 Americans, one great grey. For every 27,027 Seymours, one Trustyfriend.

The owl must have been hunting from one of the Douglas firs along the edge of Cross Road. Some prey, a mouse probably, crept to the edge of the pavement below, sniffing, twitching, its heartbeat flashing in Trustyfriend’s preterhuman hearing like a buoy light.

The mouse started across the river of asphalt; the owl spread his wings and dropped. Meanwhile a car barreled west down the road, headlights cleaving the night, moving faster than any natural thing should move.

Trustyfriend: Who listened. Who had a pure bright beautiful voice. Who always came back.

On the Magnavox the cruise ship explodes.

Well after dark Seymour hears the Grand Am, hears Bunny’s keys at the door. She comes into his room smelling of equal parts bleach and maple syrup. He watches her pick up the wing. “Oh, Possum. I’m sorry.”

He says, “Somebody needs to pay.”

She reaches to touch his forehead but he rolls against the wall.

“Somebody needs to go to jail.”

She sets a hand on his back and his whole body stiffens. Through the closed window, through the walls, he can hear cars moving along Cross Road, the whole terrible unceasing human machine roaring on.

“Do you want me to stay home tomorrow? I could call in sick. We could make waffles?”

He hides his face in his pillow. Five months ago the hillside beyond the wire was home to red squirrels black finches pygmy shrews garter snakes downy woodpeckers swallowtail butterflies wolf lichen monkey flowers ten thousand voles five million ants. Now what is it?

“Seymour?”