A CVS Goose

My best friend is a goose I met in the CVS parking lot.
I have always been a big fan of the way the CVS, a few blocks down from my house, decorates. It has a sterile feeling that reminds me of when I was five and had to go to the hospital. I broke my arm playing in the backyard with my younger brother, who pushed me off the playset because I called his limited-edition Hot Wheels Car with extra horsepower ‘girly’. I didn’t really think it was girly. I was mad because he had called my Lightsaber ‘sissy’, so it felt necessary to defend myself. My mother drove me and told me to wait patiently. She said she had informed the doctors, and someone would be there to help soon then left. I sat in the waiting room for over two hours before a nurse kneeled down next to my chair and asked me where my mother was. My father would end up picking me up after his shift.
I visit my local CVS every Thursday at noon sharp. Noon because that is when the shelves get restocked, and Thursday because that is the slowest day of the week for the store. It usually just ends up being me and the cashier, an older woman named Jody. She tends to wear a shade of pink or purple on days I go and has a pair of reading glasses clipped to the neckline of her shirt. She smells like cigarette smoke, but when I asked her if she smoked, she shook her head.
“Those things will ruin you quicker than they ruined my son,” she said.
After each conversation I have with Jody, she tends to make reference to how disappointed she is with her son. In order to avoid the topic, I have written up a sheet that details all the words, phrases, and questions that could make Jody bring it up. I have added something new every Thursday.
Geese are not uncommon in my town. On average, on my way to work, I see around ten. During the height of geese season, I’ll see around thirty in a day. It’s hard to name geese, as they look similar to each other, but my best friend is distinct from other geese. Near the end of his black, curved neck, is a scar he got from a battle. I was there that day and watched as he bit at another goose in his old flock. The goose was bigger, and the other geese seemed to like him more. When my friend got pushed back, the other geese flapped their wings, pushing him back into the beak of the opposing goose.
I read somewhere, online, that geese tend to stay with their family in a flock. The fight seemed to be over a bottlecap my friend had picked up and the other goose, who I assume was my friend’s brother, tried to take it from him. His brother honked over and over again into my friend’s face. An act one would suspect a younger sibling to do. My friend only lost because he was more focused on the bottle cap than the fight. I thought that he had won after I watched him strut off with the bottle cap in his mouth. However, my friend’s actions seemed to have angered the other geese and they flew away after an hour of comforting his brother. I sat on the park bench next to the CVS and watched, waiting for my friend’s family to return for him, but no goose returned to that pond.
After my friend’s life had taken a drastic shift, he began waddling his way up to my park bench and waiting for me to drop the lettuce I had meticulously picked out of my sandwich. The tuna sandwich I purchased at CVS uses four slices of lettuce. I suspected that Lacy’s Quick Meals, the company that made the sandwich, had a vendetta against tuna sandwiches much like my younger brother did. As a kid, he would cry whenever my mother set out our lunch plates that had the sandwich on them. I always made sure to eat what was set in front of me, but my younger brother would cry until my mother made him something else. Usually, a grilled cheese sandwich.
It’s hard talking about serious topics to a goose.
“I suspect there will be rain in the afternoon,” I said. My friend was happily picking up the lettuce scraps I dropped on the ground.
“You should seek cover tonight. You could catch a cold.”
Sometimes, I forget my friend is a goose. He tends to respond to my comments in an understanding way. It could be with a honk one day, or a shake in his tail feathers the next. On heavier days, however, he tends to respond with silence.
My brother’s wedding was on a Thursday. He had invited me by showing up to my door after my shift. It was raining, and the invitation had been soaked through.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but didn’t elaborate on why.
I wore a black button-down shirt and gray slacks. I didn’t own any ties, so my brother lent me one of his. It was white. When I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was seeing my friend. After the vows were exchanged, I sat to the right-hand side of my brother’s seat. His wife sat next to him and next to her were seats for her younger sister and parents. There were no seats for our parents next to me. I asked him if they were coming, but he told me no.
“Something came up,” he said and changed the subject.
We were served a fancy meal with meat, vegetables, and wine. I spooned the peas off of my plate, into my hand, and into my pocket. I noticed my brother looking at me as I did this, but he didn’t comment on it. The cake wouldn’t be served until after the dance. My brother’s wife asked if I was enjoying the food, and I said I was. I assumed this made her happy since she took the next few minutes to continue speaking with me.
“We will be serving tuna sandwiches later,” she said.
I had to wear a cast for six weeks. No one tells you that when you get a cast, your arm is going to itch, and it is near impossible to reach the spot that needs to be scratched. One night, at around one in the morning, the pain of not being able to reach the itch caused me to wake up. In a moment of genius thought, I made my way to the kitchen and grabbed my mother’s long wooden spoon. It was her favorite utensil to use when making her neighborhood famous creamy wild rice soup. My father found me, in the dark, furiously scratching under my cast with the spoon. He stopped me, pulled me up from the cold, tiled floor, and set me on the dresser in the bathroom. He plugged in my mother’s hairdryer, set it to cold, and put the nozzle to the opening of my cast. My father never said much to me when I was younger, but that night, he asked me not to bring up the spoon or the hairdryer to my mother.
“Excellent find, Filbert.” I smiled as Filbert, the name I decided for my best friend, padded his way up to the bench with a spoon in his mouth.
It was a classic, metal spoon he must have found in the parking lot. His collection of objects had been growing since his last battle. He had begun to store them on the left side of the building where there was a crack in the wall big enough to house a goose and his trinkets. Filbert had a tendency to show off these items to me before taking them to his hiding spot.
Before my brother was born, my mother spent hours picking out a name. My grandmother said she had never seen her so focused on something before. She picked the name Hazel. She said, when she was younger, it was once a popular name for boys. I asked her if that is how she chose my name. She said the process for picking my name had been different.
“You are going to be a big brother,” she said in a tone that carried finality.
Since the wedding had taken place early in the morning, I asked my brother if it was okay for me to make my way to the CVS. Filbert would be waiting, and it felt rude to leave him alone at the bench. My brother asked to join me. Together, we left the wedding venue and walked to the parking lot. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered near the vicinity of the automatic doors. Filbert was already at the bench patiently waiting. He flapped his wings at my brother’s approach. But unlike Filbert’s brother, my brother stood calmly.
“This is Filbert,” I told my brother. “He is my friend.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Filbert,” he said.
Digging into his pocket, my brother held out a handful of peas to my friend. Filbert accepted the offering, and quickly chewed them down.
“I just realized,” my brother said. “Your outfit matches your friend.”
“It does,” I said.