Like most men in his late sixties, Clayton Goddard had begun looking back on his life and measuring it in failures rather than successes. It’s often simpler that way.

            Looked at by any outsider, Clay’d done pretty well. Served his time and somehow made it out of Vietnam with most of his mind. Married to the same woman for 35 years until her death. Three sons and a daughter who all graduated college and were busy generating a whole new flock of Goddards. Worked his way up from a teller position to branch manager and finally VP of development.

            None of that mattered, though, on the morning of April 9^th, when his eldest son arrived on a mission.

            “C’mon, Pops,” Ethan said that afternoon, smoothing his thinning hair with his hand. “We’ve been over and over this. It’s time, Pops. Think of it as your legacy.”

            “Ethan, son….”

            Whatever Clay said after that didn’t matter. Ethan and his brothers and sisters had made their decision. It was time to sell the house they’d grown up in along the banks of Crooked River off the Cumberland Sound in South Georgia. He was too old, getting too forgetful, and frankly a little too weird.

            His latest was the kicker, though. Homing pigeons? Really?

            “Look,” Clay said. “I know you all mean well, but….”

            “You can’t live here, anymore, Pops. You just can’t. We don’t have a choice anymore, Pops. It’s over.”

            Clay looked at his son over the brim of his coffee cup.

            Maybe they were right. Maybe it was time.

            But what about his birds? Charlemagne, his oldest and proudest Racing Homer, had placed third in the 300-mile Southeast Classic. And Wilbur was already working toward besting that, maybe even in May’s Yearling Challenge.

            In the morning, Ethan remembered why he hated his old bed but loved waking up to the quiet.

            “I’d forgotten how much the belugas chat in the morning,” he said, settling back into an Adirondack chair with a mug of coffee next to his father.

            “They were trying to tell you how much they missed you.”

            Which made them both sad and quiet for a minute. It was their mother, not Clay, who’d always told them the Cumberland Sound belugas were talking to them. Just to them.

            “I’m sorry I’m letting you all down,” Clay said, later, after Ethan had eaten lunch and gone for a walk along the Crooked River. “As usual.”

            “It’s OK, Pops. It’s not just the money, you know. None of us really needs the money. Clifford, maybe. But he always needs money.”

            Clay said nothing.

            “It’s that we worry about you, too, you know. Tilly thinks you’ve gone batshit crazy with the whole pigeon thing.”

            Clay laughed. He could hear his birds stirring in their pen out back, impatient to be set free for the day.

            “Wouldn’t that be pigeonshit crazy?”

From Milly Mahoney-Dell’Aquila:

From Angelo Dell’Aquila: