The Bird Eater Read Online Free PDF

school with a Big Bird lunchbox held in front of his knees; Edie and Fletcher embracing in front of a Christmas tree while Aaron’s finger encroached into the frame at the top right-hand corner; another of Aaron in front of the same tree, holding up a wooden baseball bat over his head in triumph. Aaron still remembered that bat, taking it out into the backyard despite the winter chill. But it was difficult to focus on fond memories at the foot of those stairs.
    He stared at the floor that surrounded the base step, at the very spot his aunt had fallen and broken her neck. They had said she’d taken a tumble, possibly light-headed from the injury she had sustained to her hand. But that was all they had disclosed, because what other details could you divulge to a traumatized fourteen-year-old boy?
    He forced his gaze away from those floorboards and climbed the stairs with slow, deliberate steps. The upstairs rooms were the ones he remembered most. His old room was firmly anchored in the early nineties, posters still push-pinned to the walls, so faded they were nothing but pale green and yellow shadows of the images they had once been. The Ghostbusters logo stared at him from across the open door—the last remnant of childhood giving way to the likes of Wayne’s World , Batman , and RoboCop. Aaron slid his hand up the dusty length of a Bon Jovi poster, its top right-hand corner having flopped down in a paper frown. The paper crackled beneath his touch like a dry autumn leaf. His bed was unmade, covered in black-and-red striped sheets, his pillowcase twenty-one years mussed. A pile of CD cases were stacked one on top of the other on his desk: Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More, Guns N’ Roses and Ugly Kid Joe—nearly a dozen of the albums Aaron had re-collected over the years, the same albums Ryder had grown fond of because Aaron played them in the car. His heart clenched into a fist as he stared at them, suddenly struck by how similar he and his son had been. A tiny replica, only so much better; seven years upon the earth, gone in a blink.
    He turned away, put the room to his back, took a steadying breath, and moved down the upstairs hallway to his aunt’s bedroom door. It was open, displaying a simple bedroom furniture set and a bed carefully made two decades before. Another set of photographs decorated a hearth centered on the side wall. A faded rug covered most of the floor, its dusty blue matching Edie’s comforter and drapes, reminding Aaron that it had been her favorite color, one that he’d search for anytime he bought her a gift for her birthday or Christmas or Mother’s Day. Without stepping further inside, Aaron used the camcorder to zoom in on details he was reluctant to explore too closely. A small vanity sat across from the bed, bottles of perfume carefully organized along its top. The oval mirror looked strangely discolored, as if the silver beneath the glass was starting to fade with age. The decay gave it a ghoulish appearance, like a haunted house mirror that magically displayed the dead. The wallpaper in one of the far corners was starting to peel away beneath the warped bulge of water damage—no doubt a roof leak that had spawned mold inside the walls.
    Shutting off the recorder, Aaron shook his head and turned away, suddenly exhausted by the idea of fixing this place up. It seemed like an impossible task, the kind of thing only a masochist would take on, but he had little choice in the matter. The house was his, regardless of whether or not the state of Arkansas had failed to alert him of his inheritance for the past seventeen years. We’re sorry, there must have been a glitch in the system. Aaron had two options: sell the house or move in, and regardless of what he chose to do, fixing up the place was step number one.
    He trekked back down the stairs in the paling light, the golden glow of sunset fading into an early evening purple. Stepping onto the front porch, he took a seat on the top