When I was a boy, my father taught me how to identify the geese that flew overhead our coastal Maine home. Pointing up at the flyway, he said, "Those are Canada geese. They migrate north in the summer and south in the winter." "Those are snow geese," he told me. "They have two colors, white and grey."

"And those dark ones," he said, "are evil geese. They fly low so they can bring misery to humankind. You ever see them flying in, you come get me." I nodded solemnly as boys do when their fathers tell them solemn things.

One time I saw evil geese on migration and yelled for Dad. He ran out with the shotgun, firing into the air and shouting, "This is for Martha! Remember Martha, you bastards?" One fell into the woods, and I still remember how it honked at him, wounded but still full of malice, before he executed it.

I was still young then. When I returned from my first year of college, he was gone, a handful of dark feathers the only indication he hadn't simply walked away from his life.

His shotgun in hand, I swore I'd make the evil geese pay.