Pygmy Owl

Six months ago, when I moved into my first floor condo on Creek Street, I was all by myself, moving boxes and furniture out of the U-Haul truck. A scraggily man sauntered up to me and introduced himself as Buck. He shook my hand, and I made sure to wash up before moving any more boxes. He carried the heavy furniture, and afterward I picked up a pizza and some beer at a joint down the street. When I came back he was sleeping on my couch. I plopped on the recliner, turned on the TV to Highlander, and threw back a few beers. By around ten I was tired, so I woke Buck and sent him home, but I couldn’t fall asleep until I steam cleaned the couch he had slept on.

The next morning, I woke up to the roar of a lawnmower outside. I put on my glasses and stuck my head out of the window.

“Buck, what the hell are you doing?”

“I can’t hear you!” he yelled.

“I said, what the hell are you doing?” I yelled back.

He turned off the lawnmower. “First time’s free, then you’ll have to pay me.”

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “How much?”

He raised 10 fingers. “And half a pepperoni pizza.”

“How about at 10 am?”

“Got it.” He left the mower in the middle of the lawn. He came back at 10 and I gave him the other half of the pizza.

The following weekend Buck helped me plant marigolds in my vegetable garden to repel aphids. He wouldn’t dig the hole deep enough, saying that even if not all the roots got under the ground, they’d get there eventually. I followed after him, uprooting, redigging, and replanting. He pretended not to notice, and eventually didn’t even bother with holes, just took the plants out of their cartons and plopped them on the wet ground. Before we got to the last side of the tomatoes, he stood up. “How come I come over here, and you never come to my house?” he said.

“Well, let’s go when we finish up here.”

“No, let’s go now.” He brushed his hands on the butt of his jeans and took off across the street, completely disregarding traffic.

“Buck!” I yelled, but he was already on the other side. He motioned for me to cross. I put a finger in the air to signal “one minute.”

I washed my hands in the kitchen, and from the window over the sink could see Buck jumping around his front yard like he was avoiding land minds. I put a small, sanitized packaged hand wipe in my pocket, just in case.

I crossed the street at the crosswalk, and by the time I got to Buck’s house he was sitting on his front steps. His dilapidated old house nestled into the dry ravine, and mesquite and paloverde trees surrounded the house in an attempt to hide the cracking mud walls. Several saguaro ribs jutted out from the top of the flat roof. A cactus wren perched on one.

“Watch out! Watch out!” Buck yelled as he pointed to my feet, where a dead rattlesnake lay in the path.

He opened the garage door to reveal old Cadillac panted cobalt blue with metal fleck. He stroked her wheels. I touched the headlight, my fingernail scratching off dried bird poop. I discretely used the handi-wipe I brought.

I followed him through a laundry room, devoid of machinery. He threw open the door to his left, admitting a strong gush of air and bright light. Thousands of tiny shards of glass epoxied to the upper half of oneof the walls reflected light from the picture window on the opposite side. Photographs of birds covered the others.

“Did you take these?” I asked, staring at a picture of a pygmy owl perched on a flower of a cholla.

He nodded, and then motioned for me to take a seat on the only furniture—a papasan chair without the cushion.

“No thanks, I want to see the rest.” I started to walk toward a door to my left.

He told me he’d show me around another time, so I went home, took a shower, cooked eggs and asparagus, and watched television until bedtime.

Buck and I developed a routine. I’d order a pizza Saturday night. He’d come over Sunday morning, mow the lawn, and eat the rest of the pizza. Once I convinced him to let me cut his hair. It took several vacuumings to get all his hair out of my rug.

He needed $40 more dollars to buy a new camera. His old one broke when he went hiking, he said. He chanced upon a snake sliding out of a hole in a saguaro. Half a Gila woodpecker was sticking out of his mouth making a terrible racket. He got scared and dropped his camera.

“How terrible,” I said.

I took him to buy the new camera. He insisted on sitting on a towel. “Been having problems,” he said.

“Are you eating well?” I asked.

“Some canned peas, wieners from a can, some powdered milk, a half of a pizza on Sundays,” and he rattled off some other nutrient-deprived, preservative soaked foods.

After he picked out his camera, we stopped at Fry’s, where I bought him to groceries. He went overboard with the Cheerio’s and peanut butter. I pushed fresh vegetables and fruits, but he countered me by saying that they’d just go bad because he didn’t have a refrigerator.

He wore his camera everywhere. “Never know when I’ll see a red-tail hawk,” he said.

I got lazy, so on Saturday night’s I’d just bring the half pizza with me into my room and eat my half while watching movies on network television. In the morning, Buck would rap on my window, and I’d open it just enough to slide out the pizza with a $10 bill taped to the cardboard. We didn’t talk on those days. He’d start eating the pie before the window was shut, and I’d turn over and fall back asleep.


I saw Buck’s car roll over into the ravine. The combination of creating elaborate dinners for one and not having a dishwasher left me at the kitchen sink for at least an hour every night on the days I wasn't eating pepperoni pizza. Once I tried to make my own, and Buck didn’t like it so he wouldn’t cut my grass the following week until he saw the delivery box with his own eyes.

So that particular Saturday, I had made a delightful lunch—grilled pears with ricotta, chicken basted in all sorts of spices, and a simple spinach salad. I had set aside servings to bring over to Buck, but wanted to clean the dishes first. This chicken created quite a mess in my new pan.

I had learned the sound of Buck’s car from a distance, and when I heard the grumbling of the transmission that day, I looked out my window to the exit off of I-10 onto Creek Road. That’s how I saw the accident. He was going too fast, and the wheels couldn’t keep up with themselves. The car rolled over. When I got to the scene, Buck wasn’t moving.

The officers asked me all sorts of questions, and I didn’t know the answers. I didn’t know if he had any family; I didn’t even know his last name. I said he was my friend, he mowed my lawn and he liked Cheerios. Rather than drive away empty, the ambulance took me to the hospital where I was treated for shock. They let me out after a few hours.

The pizza delivery guy arrived at my door at 8:30. “You didn’t call,” he said. “I thought something might be wrong.”

“No, everything’s fine.” I smiled and lied and paid him a big tip. I ate half the pizza still standing in the doorway with the door wide open.

Sunday morning at 10 I awoke to silence. I dressed in my best linen pants and blouse, packed my purse fill of handi-wipes and paper towels, clutched the half-eaten pizza, and jay-walked across the street to Buck’s house.

I set the pizza on his chair, and walked over to the picture of the pygmy owl sitting on the cholla flower. Gently, I removed it from the wall and wrapped it in the paper towels.