Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 8:55 A.M. EST} Papadaddy Two

Gentle Tweeter,

On another occasion my papadaddy enlisted me as his accomplice as he plundered the not-hatched offspring from beneath the feathery bottoms of domestic poultry. We made the rounds of a ramshackle hut where the chickens were quartered, and ruthlessly stole their future generations. All the while he grilled me: “You ever stop and consider how your ma and pa got themselves so rich so fast?”

My hands burdened with the basket of looted eggs, I merely shrugged.

He pressed his point. “How come every investment they make pays off?” Without waiting for a response, he explained, “Well, Sunshine, when your ma was your age she got herself a guardian angel named Leonard. Regular as clockwork he called her on the telephone.” Talking, he continued to loot nests. “She come to me and said as much. She was just a teenager when she told me her angel gave her the lucky number for a lottery ticket. She asked for me to buy it. Some stranger calling from gosh knows where… what was I to believe? Her ma believed her.”

Unthwarted by my failure to engage, he continued. “Her guardian angel, Leonard, even today he still calls her up. Angels can do that. It don’t matter where in the world she’s at; he finds her. Calls her direct. Calls your pa, too.”

I busied myself by inspecting a particularly speckled eggshell.

“It’s that Leonard,” my Papadaddy Ben insisted. “He’s the one who demanded they send you to us for the summer.”

That detail, Gentle Tweeter, arrested my eleven-year-old attention. I returned his rheumy gaze.

“You’re not supposed to know,” he said. His voice dropped to a whisper. “But you got a big showdown this summer with the forces of evil.”

My eyes must’ve betrayed my confusion.

“You didn’t know, did you, Honey Bun?” His complexion testified to a lifetime of neglected skin care.

No, I did not. A showdown? With evil?

“Well,” he stammered, “now you know.” His gnarled hands foraged in the straw of a nest and brought forth another egg. This new plunder he set in my basket, saying, “It’s best not to worry your little head about it too much.”