May 28, 2025 • 9 mins
When Laura returns once more to the place where her uncle disappeared, she expects only silence. Instead, she finds a voice calling her name, a face she thought was long gone, and a reality that begins to unravel.
Grove Koger is the author of Not, a chapbook of poetry; and When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure. He’s Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, and blogs about travel and related subjects at https://worldenoughblog.wordpress.com/author/gkoger/.
You can read "Nighthawks" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.
Website: kaidankaistories.com
Please feel free to contact me through the website contact form.
Follow us on:
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Grove Koger is the author of Not, a chapbook of poetry; and When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure. He’s Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, and blogs about travel and related subjects at https://worldenoughblog.wordpress.com/author/gkoger/.
You can read "Nighthawks" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.
Website: kaidankaistories.com
Please feel free to contact me through the website contact form.
Follow us on:
Bluesky
Substack
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to the kaidon Kai Podcast, where the eerie,
the mysterious, and the spine chilling come alive in stories
that linger long after the last word is spoken. I'm
your host Linda Gould, and tonight I'm reading Nighthawks by
Grove Coger, in which a girl makes her annual trip
(00:30):
to the desert where her uncle mysteriously vanished decades ago
while searching for her This year is different, though she
hears someone calling her name. Can her search finally have
been fruitful after so many years? And if so, what
does that mean. Grove Coger is the author of Not
(00:52):
a chap Book of Poetry and When the Going Was Good,
a guide to the ninety nine best narratives of travel,
exploration and adventure. He's assistant editor of Deis Loki, The
Lawrence Durrell Journal, and blogs about travel and related subjects.
You can find his work and his web page in
(01:12):
the episode description. And Now dim the lights, Settle in,
and prepare yourself for Nighthawks by Grove Koger and Joy.
It was my uncle's voice, but she had repeated the
(01:35):
words several times, never finishing. But they waited patiently. Some
of the story, well, some of the backstory they had
pieced together over the years. They shared an extensive common history.
The group did full of bravado. They called themselves the
Nighthawks after the Hopper painting. They had grown up together,
(01:57):
gotten drunk together, loved Oh yes, they were in it together.
But then there were the bits and pieces that came
trailing along the beforehand bits. One of them involved Laura's
misadventure in the Owaihi Desert when she was little, misadventure
for her, bad business for her uncle, who had left
(02:21):
the family party to look for the lost girl, never
to return. Although the lost girl herself wandered back a
while later, clutching the lizard that she had been chasing,
she blamed herself a little, couldn't help it. Who wouldn't
Yet the uncle was an experienced hunter and hiker, if
not quite a mountain man. It was bizarre. The search parties,
(02:46):
and there were a lot of those, eventually wore themselves out,
concluding that he had fallen down a crevasse. And there
were a lot of those too. Anyway, that was the backstory.
That and the that Laura returned by herself every year
to the scene of the well event every anniversary, okay,
(03:08):
but this year had been different. It was my uncle's voice.
They waited, watching her carefully. The fire crackled. It was
my uncle's voice, but his face. Aha. She screamed, and
(03:31):
they jumped up to hold her. She was shaking, couldn't stop.
But then she pushed them all away, sat back down,
scooted back closer to the fire, and finally told her story.
She had driven into the mountains, per the usual routine,
to the very spot where the family had parked her
station wagon that year, just over the rise by the creek.
(03:55):
She knew the place perfectly well, but the routine helped
keep the experience at bay for the of the year.
This time, she was a little late. The shadows were
stretching out over the hummocks and down the gullies, and
a cold breeze had sprung up. But that didn't matter,
did it. She never stayed long, just hiked around a bit,
sat for a time on one boulder or another, and
(04:17):
stared at the creek. She didn't expect anything. She just
knew she had to complete the routine and then drive
back and meet up with the group. For the rest
of the evening, she was alone but she was a
tough girl and smart. Always kept a little canister of
pepper spray on her keychain. She was fiddling with the chain,
(04:38):
in fact, twirling it around her index finger, and watching
a solitary bird sailing across the sky, when she heard
someone calling her name, stretching it out into long syllables.
It kept calling ah from somewhere. The voice was familiar
(05:08):
to make a long story short, and she desperately wanted
to do that. The figure of a man eventually appeared
over the top of the rise on the other side
of the creek, striding along, looking this way and that,
calling for an instant she thought of the other nighthawks,
the only people left in this life who would know
she was there, right there, right then. But no, of
(05:32):
course not. The voice was wrong, wasn't it. Plus he
was approaching from the wrong way. There was nothing over there,
no place to park, just a hundred miles of nothing, desert.
But there he was, still, striding toward her and calling
lo A. The rest happened all at once. Just as
(05:56):
she recognized the voice, the sun below in the sky
broke through the clouds and shone on the man's face. Aha.
She screamed again, remembering the face, and they held her again.
It was him looking for me, but his face. This
is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. Things
(06:17):
like this don't happen to anybody, not really. Oh God,
I must have driven here like a son of a bitch.
Give me another beer, please, She drank. Okay, I'll say it.
It was my uncle. He was looking for me, the
way he must have been looking for me twenty years ago.
It can't be, but it is was. I don't know
(06:41):
what to do. She drank again. I don't know what
to do. What if he she drank again. I have
to be careful or I'm going to be sick. Laura
took a deep breath. She did indeed feel more than
a little sick. It might help to be sick. It
(07:02):
might be just what the doctor ordered. She turned in
her chair, started to get up, felt self conscious, but
at the same time you that she had never loved
them so much, the Nighthawks, all of them together, loved
them all. They'd help her get this straight, whatever it was,
help her understand. She started to smile. She looked up
(07:25):
the faces she loved and no, no, no, no, not
you too, Not you too? What's going She tried to
break free, but they were holding her again, not tightly,
just holding her, holding her up as if she would
understand if they held her long enough. But she wouldn't.
(07:48):
She wouldn't, she wouldn't. Not Ever, this is such a
sad and unsettling story. It's not uncommon, I think, for
someone trying to do a good deed to end up
paying for it with their lives. And it's always sad
when someone dies, but it's just that much worse when
(08:11):
it's in the act of trying to save someone. Right,
And imagine poor Laura who has to grow up with
the fact that someone disappeared because she was just off
looking and exploring. I mean, she was just curious, being independent,
but now she has to carry that weight with her forever.
So yeah, she would be a perfect candidate for someone
(08:31):
who has to revisit the scene of the crime, so
to speak, searching for an answer to make sense of
the inexplicable. And there's a lot of inexplicable in this story.
Plus it's another example of be careful what you wish for.
So thank you Grove Koger for such a short, but
impactful story. The Kai Don Kai has so many interesting
(08:52):
stories like this one from every genre. Please subscribe to
the podcast and check out the substack to see comments
by authors about the inspiration. Although, to be honest, I
think this month not very many sent me something, so
I'm just posting art and that's because I love art,
and I think that art can speak to us as
(09:13):
well and point out some of the human characteristics and
foibles that we have, just like these stories do. So
please pick your poison and follow me on Instagram, Facebook,
Blue Sky, or substack. It's all in the episode description.
Thanks so much for listening today and I'll see you
(09:33):
next week.
Hello, and welcome to the kaidon Kai Podcast, where the eerie,
the mysterious, and the spine chilling come alive in stories
that linger long after the last word is spoken. I'm
your host Linda Gould, and tonight I'm reading Nighthawks by
Grove Coger, in which a girl makes her annual trip
(00:30):
to the desert where her uncle mysteriously vanished decades ago
while searching for her This year is different, though she
hears someone calling her name. Can her search finally have
been fruitful after so many years? And if so, what
does that mean. Grove Coger is the author of Not
(00:52):
a chap Book of Poetry and When the Going Was Good,
a guide to the ninety nine best narratives of travel,
exploration and adventure. He's assistant editor of Deis Loki, The
Lawrence Durrell Journal, and blogs about travel and related subjects.
You can find his work and his web page in
(01:12):
the episode description. And Now dim the lights, Settle in,
and prepare yourself for Nighthawks by Grove Koger and Joy.
It was my uncle's voice, but she had repeated the
(01:35):
words several times, never finishing. But they waited patiently. Some
of the story, well, some of the backstory they had
pieced together over the years. They shared an extensive common history.
The group did full of bravado. They called themselves the
Nighthawks after the Hopper painting. They had grown up together,
(01:57):
gotten drunk together, loved Oh yes, they were in it together.
But then there were the bits and pieces that came
trailing along the beforehand bits. One of them involved Laura's
misadventure in the Owaihi Desert when she was little, misadventure
for her, bad business for her uncle, who had left
(02:21):
the family party to look for the lost girl, never
to return. Although the lost girl herself wandered back a
while later, clutching the lizard that she had been chasing,
she blamed herself a little, couldn't help it. Who wouldn't
Yet the uncle was an experienced hunter and hiker, if
not quite a mountain man. It was bizarre. The search parties,
(02:46):
and there were a lot of those, eventually wore themselves out,
concluding that he had fallen down a crevasse. And there
were a lot of those too. Anyway, that was the backstory.
That and the that Laura returned by herself every year
to the scene of the well event every anniversary, okay,
(03:08):
but this year had been different. It was my uncle's voice.
They waited, watching her carefully. The fire crackled. It was
my uncle's voice, but his face. Aha. She screamed, and
(03:31):
they jumped up to hold her. She was shaking, couldn't stop.
But then she pushed them all away, sat back down,
scooted back closer to the fire, and finally told her story.
She had driven into the mountains, per the usual routine,
to the very spot where the family had parked her
station wagon that year, just over the rise by the creek.
(03:55):
She knew the place perfectly well, but the routine helped
keep the experience at bay for the of the year.
This time, she was a little late. The shadows were
stretching out over the hummocks and down the gullies, and
a cold breeze had sprung up. But that didn't matter,
did it. She never stayed long, just hiked around a bit,
sat for a time on one boulder or another, and
(04:17):
stared at the creek. She didn't expect anything. She just
knew she had to complete the routine and then drive
back and meet up with the group. For the rest
of the evening, she was alone but she was a
tough girl and smart. Always kept a little canister of
pepper spray on her keychain. She was fiddling with the chain,
(04:38):
in fact, twirling it around her index finger, and watching
a solitary bird sailing across the sky, when she heard
someone calling her name, stretching it out into long syllables.
It kept calling ah from somewhere. The voice was familiar
(05:08):
to make a long story short, and she desperately wanted
to do that. The figure of a man eventually appeared
over the top of the rise on the other side
of the creek, striding along, looking this way and that,
calling for an instant she thought of the other nighthawks,
the only people left in this life who would know
she was there, right there, right then. But no, of
(05:32):
course not. The voice was wrong, wasn't it. Plus he
was approaching from the wrong way. There was nothing over there,
no place to park, just a hundred miles of nothing, desert.
But there he was, still, striding toward her and calling
lo A. The rest happened all at once. Just as
(05:56):
she recognized the voice, the sun below in the sky
broke through the clouds and shone on the man's face. Aha.
She screamed again, remembering the face, and they held her again.
It was him looking for me, but his face. This
is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. Things
(06:17):
like this don't happen to anybody, not really. Oh God,
I must have driven here like a son of a bitch.
Give me another beer, please, She drank. Okay, I'll say it.
It was my uncle. He was looking for me, the
way he must have been looking for me twenty years ago.
It can't be, but it is was. I don't know
(06:41):
what to do. She drank again. I don't know what
to do. What if he she drank again. I have
to be careful or I'm going to be sick. Laura
took a deep breath. She did indeed feel more than
a little sick. It might help to be sick. It
(07:02):
might be just what the doctor ordered. She turned in
her chair, started to get up, felt self conscious, but
at the same time you that she had never loved
them so much, the Nighthawks, all of them together, loved
them all. They'd help her get this straight, whatever it was,
help her understand. She started to smile. She looked up
(07:25):
the faces she loved and no, no, no, no, not
you too, Not you too? What's going She tried to
break free, but they were holding her again, not tightly,
just holding her, holding her up as if she would
understand if they held her long enough. But she wouldn't.
(07:48):
She wouldn't, she wouldn't. Not Ever, this is such a
sad and unsettling story. It's not uncommon, I think, for
someone trying to do a good deed to end up
paying for it with their lives. And it's always sad
when someone dies, but it's just that much worse when
(08:11):
it's in the act of trying to save someone. Right,
And imagine poor Laura who has to grow up with
the fact that someone disappeared because she was just off
looking and exploring. I mean, she was just curious, being independent,
but now she has to carry that weight with her forever.
So yeah, she would be a perfect candidate for someone
(08:31):
who has to revisit the scene of the crime, so
to speak, searching for an answer to make sense of
the inexplicable. And there's a lot of inexplicable in this story.
Plus it's another example of be careful what you wish for.
So thank you Grove Koger for such a short, but
impactful story. The Kai Don Kai has so many interesting
(08:52):
stories like this one from every genre. Please subscribe to
the podcast and check out the substack to see comments
by authors about the inspiration. Although, to be honest, I
think this month not very many sent me something, so
I'm just posting art and that's because I love art,
and I think that art can speak to us as
(09:13):
well and point out some of the human characteristics and
foibles that we have, just like these stories do. So
please pick your poison and follow me on Instagram, Facebook,
Blue Sky, or substack. It's all in the episode description.
Thanks so much for listening today and I'll see you
(09:33):
next week.
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