Ignoring his new year resolution, Barry was sitting in front of the computer with his J.C.Penneys down around his ankles when all of a sudden a big gray e-mail window popped up in front of him, blocking his view of a grimacing woman in clear plastic heels, her feet wiggling in the air. Barry groaned in frustration. It was only another fifteen minutes before he had to clock in to work at Corrugated.
The text said,
Barry punched the button viciously with his mouse, his diamond-hard hard-on turning to mud.
It was easy to see why Outlook's spam filter had marked the message, apparently from an anonymous user at table six in an internet cafe, somewhere in Uruguay.
Barry's eyes bulged.
"hi, barry...sorry I haven't written...been up in the bolivian andes for a while, taking pictures of the condors drifting back and forth across the continental divide...13,000 feet there, the air's so thin it's hard to see how those birds stay up. I've been staying with those people we used to know in the ag school that have a UN program up in the altiplano. got to thinking it was time I came down. I'm in uruguay now, meeting with some farmers who raise rheas here tomorrow. You remember about rheas? big land birds, flightless, but they can run at 60 kph...anyway, talk to you later, barry, only have a few pesos left."
The only capital letters in the message all "I's," the punctuated gasps of effusive communication, an obsessively avian central subject. It was Dad. How could he have gotten the new e-mail address? And what could Barry possibly say in reply? Keep it short.
"Dad. Yeah, I thought maybe you were dead. It has been over six years now. I just added it up the other night. Mom's remarried, I guess you must know that. She sold the house and moved to New Mexico like she always threatened to do. I guess Krissy and I didn't count much for you guys in the end. She's back in school. I'm working in a fucking box factory, I'm on my way to work now, got to scram. How'd you get this address?"
His father's reply was similarly brief, responding to all the important points in a typically methodical though prefunctory manner, coming into Barry's inbox that afternoon and once again shuttling automatically into the "Junk Mail" folder. Kansas and Uruguay are only three hours offset in time, though it appeared that today the internet was passing through a half decade martian time slip.
"I've been in touch with your mother...I guess she couldn't wait...I know it's been rough on you kids, but I told you I might have to be away for a while...nothing I could do."
Obviously the old man wanted something out of him, Barry thought, checking his mail again after work. Probably money, considering the comment about the pesos. In his early forties, after an extended sabbatical from his university job, Terry Barron had become an increasingly eccentric ornithologist, his journeys in pursuit of rare species taking him further and further from his family and normalcy, the family home the highwater mark of his financial solvency, his wife, son, and daughter detritus left behind by the tide. Screw Dad and his "life list."
"This morning Senor Bozeman drove me out to his rhea ranch outside of Ciudad Montevideo..."Dad reported, as enthusiastically engaged as always, "...he raises thousands of them, still free-range birds...meat's delicious...they do stink a bit, though." Barry had to smile at that. You could infer a heck of an odor, a rattlesnake taste from the bland words contained in his father's e-mail.
Part II: Olor de pájaros
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