This story, like all of my best stories, started as an idea we kicked around in writing club. As usual, I got carried away with it.
The Final Flight of the Icarus Goose
It was truly the nicest place Tilly had ever lived in. She and Jeff had fallen in love with it the moment the realtor had unlocked the rather unassuming front door and they had stepped across the threshold into the subdued splendor of the large and airy great room.
Their subsequent exploration of the house had only reinforced their initial impression. The bedrooms were big, yet somehow cozy. The bathrooms were miniature palaces, gleaming with bright tile and new fixtures. There were two working fireplaces, one in the master suite and one in the great room. The kitchen was sleek and modern and had two sinks, one beneath the picture window and the other on the service island.
The grounds - Tilly thought of the outside of the house as grounds, nothing this splendid could be called merely a back yard - were magnificent. The house was situated at the top of a small hill. Behind it, the land sloped gently down, flattening out again about sixty feet below where she now sat on the back patio. There was a small grassy area, complete with a picnic pavilion.
To the left of the pavilion was an oblong shaped pond, almost half an acre across at its widest point. A small dock with a diving board and a white pool ladder jutted into the pond. The pond was blue and clean, a slight breeze stirring the small reed patch at the far end. The water lapped lazily at the dock pilings, and occasionally a fish would jump, sending ripples the length and width of the shimmering surface.
Gazing out at her new kingdom, Tilly marveled at the sheer perfection of the place, offering up a silent prayer of thanks for the way their move had turned out. She and Jeff had had some hard times for the past year, what with his company going belly-up and his long and frustrating search for another job. They were in their early fifties, and Jeff had discovered that the market was not kind to mid-level executives at his age. Eventually he’d had to expand his job search out of state, which explained what they were doing here in eastern Ohio, so far from California.
Still, it had all worked out. The equity in their old home had been enough to finance their move across the country and put a nice down payment on what Jeff jokingly referred to as "The Mansion". "The Mansion" had cost maybe a third of what they had sold their Los Angeles house for. Amazing, considering that the old house had been a crumbling three-bedroom, one bath stucco on a 60 by 90 foot lot. "The Mansion" sat on five beautiful acres, and Tilly speculated that if this house and grounds were plunked down in L.A. the asking price would easily be a million five.
As Tilly watched, a large flock of Canada Geese soared into view. With shrill honking cries, they circled once around the house and yard, then swooped in to land, several in the water, the majority of the flock - about 30 or more, Tilly couldn’t tell because it was such a large group - coming to rest across the flat part of the lawn. They spread out at once and began rooting through the grass, making themselves at home as they searched for whatever it was that made up a delicious goosie dinner.
Tilly frowned. At first she had found the ubiquitous geese charming and picturesque. This opinion had changed radically the first time she had walked down to the pond after a visit from the feathery interlopers and found uncountable piles of droppings covering everything in the yard. Geese weren’t picturesque, she decided right then. They were a filthy nuisance.
She was a nonviolent person, and really didn’t wish the animals any harm. She just didn’t want them - and their almost dog-sized piles of droppings - all over her nice and pretty back yard. So far she had tried shouting at them, turning the hose on them, chasing after them, shooting off small fireworks and even blowing an air horn at them.
Jeff had come home one day with a product called Goose Away, with which he had assiduously sprayed the grass. The Goose Away had made the lawn stink to high heaven until the next rain had mercifully washed the stuff away. The geese had ignored it, except that after that visit there seemed to be more crap than ever covering the yard. They’d probably redoubled their fecal output out of spite.
None of Tilly and Jeff’s efforts had influenced the behavior of the geese at all. When she ran towards them waving her arms and shouting they fled her at a fast walk, jettisoning feces from under their tails as they went, but they didn’t fly away. Eventually, panting with the effort, she would give up the pursuit and slink back up to the patio under their scornful black gaze. The fireworks, hose and air horn had been entirely ignored.
Thinking about the problem now as she sat and glared angrily at the geese, she realized that the only time she had ever seen geese flee in terror was on a trip she and Jeff had taken to Canada years ago. They had stayed in a small bed-and-breakfast that was situated on a wooded peninsula, which jutted out into Lake Ontario. One sunny morning she had been watching a large flock of geese that had literally covered the far end of the beach.
The geese had been happily going about their usual routine of rooting and crapping, when a much bigger bird - Tilly had thought at the time it must be a bald eagle, but weren’t they extinct or something - had soared high overhead. The shadow of the eagle, made huge by distance, had fallen across the edge of the flock of geese.
The result had been instantaneous. As if directed by a single mind, the entire flock had risen into the air, honking loudly in panic, and flown away as fast as they could flap. Staring at the geese gathered in her own backyard, Tilly recalled the panic-induced speed with which the geese in Canada had fled from the eagle or condor or whatever it had been. As she rose to collect her car keys, Tilly began to smile. She had an idea.
Tilly and Jeff mostly used the pole barn to store lawn equipment. In true Tilly fashion, the right half of the large space had been carefully organized. There was a steel rack along one wall that held gardening equipment. Next to that the tractor was parked, beyond the tractor Tillie and Jeff kept their bicycles, snugly covered against dust and cobwebs.
The left side of the pole barn was kept bare, so that Jeff could use the space to perform maintenance on their cars and the tractor. A red tool rack, neatly bolted to the wall so as to be out of the way, was the only furnishing. Tilly always kept the tool rack meticulously arranged, each tool hanging from its own peg.
Into this pristine space Tilly carried the fruits of the past two hours, which she had spent shopping. At Plumbing World she had purchased several lengths of light-but-sturdy plastic PVC piping, complete with joint pieces set at various angles. These she arranged neatly in the center of the room, as they would be her first project.
A glance at the pond revealed that the flock of geese had nearly doubled in number while she had been shopping. Tilly turned her face up to the sky. Not a cloud in sight, although the wind was starting to pick up, enough to stir the trees and set all of her wind chimes to ringing. With a final baleful glare towards the geese, she pulled the heavy door of the pole barn closed and went to work.
Tilly labored solidly for the next three hours. Outside, the wind continued to howl, rattling the pole barn. Unheard in Tilly’s kitchen, the portable radio announced a weather alert for the area, with high winds of ever-increasing velocity expected to continue late into the afternoon.
At five o’clock, as Jeff settled into his car for his fifteen-minute commute home, the door of the pole barn slid smoothly open and Tilly finally emerged. By now the wind was literally howling across the open pond as the geese huddled in a dense group next to the small dock. As she pedaled her bicycle into the bright sunlight, Tilly glared triumphantly down at the flock.
Over her blue jeans and plain white tee, she was wearing the nylon harness she had purchased that afternoon at Mountaineer Outfitters. It fit rather snugly around her ample figure, but held the rest of the days work securely in place.
Fastened to the back of the harness was a pair of gigantic wings. The span was 24 feet, the length of two pieces of PVC pipe. The wings were framed in the pipe, which was covered with the cotton sailcloth. Glued and stapled to the cloth, covering every inch in a wild array of colors and shapes, were the feathers she had purchased at the Craft Corral.
Tilly advanced slowly to the crest of the hill, the wings trailing behind her. Reaching up, she grasped the sailcloth straps she had sewn to the PVC struts, about three feet from her body, and swung the wings up and into position, settling the ends of the poles into the holders she had made for them and fastened to the climbing harness. She slid her feet smoothly into the straps that held them securely to the pedals of the bicycle.
"Haaaaaaaaawwwww!" she shrieked, extending the wings fully to either side as she began to pedal down the side of the hill towards the geese. "Haaaawwww, you filthy things!"
Tilly's pedals rotated smoothly for a total of four rotations. On the fifth rotation the wheels of the bicycle merely brushed the ground. On the sixth rotation the wheels connected solidly with nothing as the wind caught the underside of her wings and lifted her majestically into the air. Her wheels spun wildly as she soared straight out from the hill, her "Haaawwww" changing into a shrill scream of terror, the bicycle stuck to her feet by the toe straps fastened snugly around her sneakers.
Jeff chose that moment to pull into the driveway. Despite the howling wind, the sun was shining brightly and he had no difficulty seeing the winged apparition that suddenly rose into the air above the house. His mouth fell open and the "quit smoking" lollipop he had been half-heartedly consuming dropped unheeded into his lap.
"Oh no way," he groaned.
"They were just supposed to flap!" she shrieked, as she banked sharply left, back towards the pond. The wheels of the bicycle were spinning as Tillie's feet pedaled wildly. The geese gazed placidly up at her, and from where Jeff was watching he swore one of them yawned.
"No way," he said again. Tilly, still screeching loudly, was borne away as the wind continued to howl.