Crows (9 page)

I
N THE DARKNESS
of his room Robert heard a soft sound he thought at first was part of a dream he was emerging from. He could not see a thing, and touched the thick steely coat of whisker on his face to steady himself. A swirl of cloth whispered across his eyes. Olive sat at the edge of the bed, just where his mother had sat. Her cool hand slipped beneath the covers and grasped his penis. She had been so nice to him since her boyfriend had kicked him out of the tree.

“Where's Glenn?” Robert asked. His body felt long and sore; he still felt the footprint left on his chest and his mind still picked at the dark emptiness of the fall.

Olive toyed with his penis in the disinterested fashion of a cat batting balled socks.

“He's busy,” she whispered. “School. Soccer. I see him occasionally. He feels terrible about what happened to you.”

They rolled around for a few minutes, kissing, cool mouths, more out of habit than desire. But nothing led anywhere and they both were grateful when Robert moved away from Olive and folded the pillow into a headrest.

“What's with you and me, O?”

“Not a whole lot,” she said at once. “I like you. I like sleeping with you. But there's not much between us anymore, don't you think?”

“You're right,” he said. His feelings were not hurt, but he was afraid if they looked too closely at their lack of affection for one another he might be asked to move out.

“What about this winter?” Robert asked.

Olive got on all fours above him, then lowered her breasts to drag them back and forth across his penis. “We have to keep warm, don't we?” she said.

“We'll sleep together,” he said. “But we're not in love.”

“We can see other ­people.”

“Of course. But winter is coming and we'll need each other.”

She had brought him around and so settled herself astride him and proceeded at a slow, grinding pace. Robert held her lightly at the waist. The new boundaries set down satisfied him, but they did not rekindle a new interest in Olive. He had to concentrate hard to see his way to the finish of the act, and soon he was left in the dark again, relieved to be alone, sore, then asleep.

He dreamed of Ben. It was a familiar dream composed of what Duke had told him about that night on Oblong Lake. Buzzard stood at the edge of the dream, his face skewed ugly with anger. His pant legs were rolled and he stood in water up to his knees. Ben stepped directly from his house into the boat and with an expert oar touch turned the bow toward the Cow and the Calf.

The boat was otherwise empty, then Duke was in it. Robert was sometimes in the boat, but not then. Thirty yards from the islands, where the lake was forty feet deep, Buzzard stood with hands on hips, water up to his knees.

Ben wore a red-­stoned ring. He pulled strongly on the oars but the boat barely moved. He talked softly to his son, then to Ethel, then to Olive, then to Frank Abbott, then to Robert, who was now alone in the boat with Ben. Lights along the lakeshore formed a face's smile, or a string of pearls, or short words:
COOK PEN ATE STEAL.

Robert heard the prop whip of an airplane. It had no lights (Duke recalled, later, that he had seen none) and was only a sound in the air. Then the sound went away, but never all the way away. Ben smiled at Robert. Buzz stood beside the boat in forty feet of water. He asked to get in, but Ben said he had better not.

The plane returned with an abrupt storm of sound and Robert, knowing the end of the story, dove from the boat onto a frozen lake, cracking his teeth and sliding effortlessly one hundred yards. Then the plane hit the water five yards from the rowboat's starboard side. Its pontoons cut the boat crudely into pieces. Frank Abbott stood in the water next to Buzzard. Ben vanished before Robert could see where he went, though that always seemed to be the point of the dream, to seek a clue. When he awoke his legs had fallen asleep.

 

A
SMALL ROUND
of applause greeted Robert on his first descent from the fourth floor. Ethel and the boys watched him shuffle into the kitchen. The floor was chilly beneath his bare feet. The air seemed bright and full of delicious scents he had forgotten existed outside his stale room. He got to a chair and sat down. He had to close his eyes. Duke hopped over with coffee and rolls.

“Welcome back,” Ethel said. She had a pencil behind her ear. Something in her expression betrayed amusement.

“I
am
back,” Robert said.

“Now we must settle on this crow hunt,” Ethel said. “The boys have told me you were passing strange tales as belonging to Ben.”

Robert nodded.

“Why is this news to me?”

“I can't speak for him. I just know what he told me.”

Ethel said sternly, “Duke and Buzzer want to go hunting for crows. Whether you think of them as birds or human beings or angels does not matter to me. I want you to take them crow hunting.”

“Or else?” Robert asked.

“Be gracious.”

“When I get my strength back, I will take them crow hunting.”

A
LATER EVENING,
they were grouped in the living room reading and watching TV. Buzz cleaned the shotgun and lined the green shells on the coffee table, making shapes with them, spelling short words.
GUN DUK MOM CRO BEN.
Ethel left the room and Olive followed her to her bedroom. Robert and Duke played checkers.

In an hour Ethel returned. She wore a black dress with a tiny orchid print, high heels, and a fine silver chain. Olive stood just off her shoulder, smiling at the stunned looks from Robert and the boys. Buzz held the shotgun as if about to load it.

Ethel's eyes went directly to her youngest child when she explained. “I'm going on a date tonight,” she said evenly. “I would have told you earlier but I didn't want it to be a big issue. I'm going out with a man I met some time ago. He'll be here in a few minutes. Please don't make this hard on me or yourselves. He's just a friend. I just wanted a night out with another adult.”

“What about Dad?” Duke asked. She had guessed right in thinking he would take the news hardest.

“I still love your father,” she said. “I always will.” She sat beside Duke, put her finger on his stack of captured black checkers. “But Ben is dead, Duker. He has been for more than two years. This is a fact we all must come to grips with. Going out tonight won't change my feelings for you or your father or Olive or Buzzer. But it's time I started rebuilding a life of my own.”

“He was never found,” Buzz complained.

“Does that really make a difference?” A glance at Robert; to keep him quiet? “He is dead because if he was alive he would be home now. He is somewhere, somewhere, but he is dead.”

“He's been gone before,” Duke said.

“Never this long. You don't see him circling the house.”

The front-­door bell rang and she stood. She smoothed her dress. Her clean hair held light. She kissed the top of Duke's head. A man came and stood in the hallway. He was quite tall, with the nervous hitches Robert recognized from adolescence: the young man meeting his date's family. Nobody caught his name when Ethel introduced him. He helped her into her coat and then held the door open for them to flee.

“Nothing to worry about there,” Buzz said when they were gone. “A gentleman, though.”

“But nervous,” Olive said. “He probably smokes, and Ethel hates smokers. She'll be home in an hour.”

“Doesn't she have to drive tomorrow?” Robert asked.

“Sure! She
can't
stay out late.”

“Be decent to her,” Olive cautioned. “She's more than just our mother. There
are
other sides to her.”

“Name one,” Buzz challenged her, his eyes uneasy.

Olive paid no attention. Buzz wiped a cloth up and down the shotgun stock. Robert had told them they would leave in the morning for the crow hunt, but with Ethel out in the night with a strange man their thoughts were elsewhere. Nobody left the room even as the hours turned over toward midnight. Duke fell asleep on the couch, his arms thrown over his eyes against the light. Robert read. Olive and Buzz watched an old movie on TV. The lights in the room were small islands with ponds of shadow between.

They heard someone on the front steps at a quarter to one. Olive snapped off the TV; a pretty girl with red hair had been about to shatter a mirror with a hammer.

“I wonder if he'll kiss her,” Buzz whispered.

Olive waved at him to be quiet. From his chair Robert could see through a window to the front porch. There was a light on, but he could see Ethel and her date only from the waist down. They spoke in mutters and there was a moment when they faced each other close together and Robert guessed he might have kissed her then. Ethel turned immediately and came inside and the man walked away.

She stood for a moment in the dark hallway putting something in her purse. They heard her sigh. Cold night air flowed off her as she slipped out of her coat.

Finally, Buzz called in a teasing voice, “Have fun?”

She stepped into the room where they waited. Her eyes were large and startled; she looked tired.

“Why are you still up?”

“Waiting for you,” Buzzard said. “That guy might've gotten fresh with you and we'd have had to rescue you.”

“Go to bed,” she ordered. She touched Duke's sleeping face. “He's the only one of you with any sense.”

With Robert's help she carried Duke into his room and put him to bed. His missing leg gave him an odd balance. She smoothed the covers over him.

“How did it go?” Robert asked.

“It was nice,” she said. “Sort of sad. We talked about him for about ten minutes, then we talked about me and my kids for about fifteen minutes, and the rest of the night we talked about Ben.”

“What did he say?”

She walked out of Duke's room. In the hall, she said, “Nothing I didn't know before. It got a little tiresome, as a matter of fact.”

“Like what?”

“He knew you were still looking for him,” she said abruptly. “He wished you luck. He said Ben deserves to be found.”

“Will you go out with him again?”

“He asked me. If he'd asked me earlier in the evening I think I'd have turned him down. He was boring me with his stories of what a great guy our Ben was. But just before he asked me he told me how Ben used to steal pencils and paper and skip staff meetings for no reason and drink coffee from the faculty pot without putting a quarter in the plate. That isn't much, I know, but it was heading in the direction of the Ben I remember. It was the first time all night that I missed him.”

T
HEY DROVE NORTH
out of Mozart in the morning. Through a string of small towns the land rose up in hills and filled with trees. Robert wore gloves, a sweater, a baseball cap, and sunglasses. Buzz had a hooded sweat shirt on under his camouflage jacket. He sat up in the front with Robert, the shotgun resting on its stock between his legs; he had risen at 4 a.m. from a night without sleep to clean the shotgun's immaculate workings one more time. Ethel had found him in the kitchen when she got up to drive her cab.

They reached a crossroads. A grocery store on one corner, a gas station on another, both closed. Windows still in shadow had frost on them.

Nobody spoke loudly lest the crows hear them coming.

“They're capable,” Robert said. “Crows aren't mere birds. You spend enough time looking into the lives of crows, you start to understand they are
not
mere birds. Their brains are twice as large as other birds. Crows will amaze you if you let them.”

“Just drive,” Buzz said impatiently. “We know where you stand on crows.”

“I doubt we'll see a crow all day,” Robert predicted. “They can smell the gun, or the oil you used to clean it, or the shot in the shells. Crows have noses like diamonds. If we drove out here without a gun, we'd have crows galore. Today, I don't think we'll see a single crow.”

But a mile on they rounded a curve and came upon crows in the middle of the road tearing at the scarlet strips of some car-­struck animal. With a casual flick of wings the birds moved from the car's path. In his mirror, Robert saw the crows resettle. They were lean, flat-­black birds who strutted when they walked; but they just looked like birds to Robert, and he wondered how Ben knew the things he did.

“They saw the shotgun,” Robert said.

“No way. We were moving too fast.”

“They saw the reflection off the barrel. Word will be traveling north ahead of us.”

Duke soon fell asleep in the back. A soft tune whistled from Buzz's lips, faint as a leak.

Robert said, “You can be honest with me, Buzzer. Are you planning to shoot me today?”

Buzz looked over at him, startled. “What an asshole,” he said. “I'm out to shoot crows. You're too low-­down to waste a shell on.”

This made Robert smile; it had such an Old West flavor to it.

“Where did you get that gun I found in your room?”

“None of your business.”

“But you did shoot those birds and squirrels in the gutters.”

“None of your business,” Buzz repeated. Then he shouted “Turn here!” so loudly Duke stirred in back. Robert missed the road but stopped and turned around. The new road cut through beaten blond cornfields grown in the spaces between tree and rock.

“Why this road?” Robert asked.

“I smell crows.”

Duke whimpered in his sleep. Robert turned the mirror to frame the boy's face. He was asleep, but in anguish.

“He's dreaming about the accident,” Buzz said softly. “He still wakes up crying. He misses his leg.”

“Maybe deep down he knows where your dad is. Maybe he dreams about that.”

“Why?”

“Maybe just once that night,” Robert said, “he put his head under the water and saw Ben floating away.”

Buzz took the shotgun and rammed the butt against Robert's head so hard it bounced against the side window.

“Shut up, you asshole!” Buzzard screamed.

Duke awakened with a shriek that was much worse than the pain beating through Robert's head. The car made one treacherous, swerving pass through the oncoming lane, which was blessedly empty. There was little room to pull over, so they drove on.

“Duke?” Robert asked.

The boy drew in his breath; it sounded wet and partitioned with phlegm. His eyes were filled with tears and clear snot pooled above his lips. Robert passed back his handkerchief.

“You have a good nap?”

“What do you think, asshole?” Buzz asked. “You dreaming about Dad again, Duke?”

Duke nodded. He wiped his eyes and nose. He had slumped back into the corner of his seat and watched the countryside roll past outside the window.

Buzz said to Robert, “Your head is bleeding. All this time I thought it was made of stone.”

Robert got his handkerchief back and pressed it to the contusion; not much blood, a sore egg rising.

Off that road Buzz found an even narrower vein of gravel that wound up into old hills and patches of oak and pine and birch. “No crows here,” Robert said.

“You're wrong. I feel them. I
smell
them. Crows in abundance.”

Robert parked the car in the shade. It was just ten o'clock. He held the back door open for Duke as he maneuvered out and then onto his crutches. Days before, in detailed preparation, he had muted their shiny aluminum shafts with camouflage paint.

“Who's going to carry the record player?” Robert asked.

Buzz had the shotgun to his shoulder and sighted on something in the distance. There was food to carry, and the record player. Buzz filled his pockets with green shells.

“You got the record, Duker?” he asked.

“Crow and owl,” his brother replied, taking a floppy disk from the inside of his jacket. The record was transparent red, four inches in diameter.

“The sky will blacken with crows,” Buzz foretold. He led these phantoms with the gun and cried,
“Boom!
and . . .
boom!”

They hiked a good half mile away from the car, Buzz afraid the sparkle of chrome and smell of gas would tip the crows. Buzz led, then Duke, then Robert. Duke picked his way ably over the loose earth and gentle rise in elevation. Walking, it was not so cold. Buzz carried the shotgun and the record player. Robert brought the small white cooler (that crows would see from a mile off) of sandwiches and soda.

Buzz reached the crest of a hill warm in the sunlight and pronounced them arrived. The sky was full and open all around them.

“A clear field of fire,” Buzz observed. “Perfect.”

The land rolled away from them like a painting dropped from the air; meadows, rock hills, a snipped thread of stream, dark plots of forest. Nothing moved. Even the wind had stopped, held its breath, so eager for death was Buzz's aura. He stood at the topmost point of the hill with the gun to his shoulder, sweeping its long blue barrel in 180˚ arcs. He then fed five shells into the chamber.

Duke sat on a rock, his leg out in front for balance. He squinted up at his brother.

“No crows here,” he said.

Buzz turned to him. “Give it a chance,” he said. “Fire that thing up.”

Robert set the record player on a square of level ground. He had rented the machine from SportsHeaven, the sporting goods store that anchored the Mozart business district. It was a huge blue place, brightly lighted, and all the employees wore referees' shirts.

Robert recognized the clerk who waited on him. His name was Joe Marsh, and some years earlier he had been the best basketball player Mozart College had. Robert's stories from that period of time were filled with his name.