Follow the Crow

by B. B. Griffith

  “Ben, this is Agent Parsons and Agent Douglas. They’re with the FBI.”

  I shake their hands. Some Indians say that all white men look the same. I never held with that until now. Both are medium height, medium build. Brown hair, neatly parted. Pale complexion, not a hint of facial hair. No smile to speak of. All business. These are men whose profession it is to get in, get out, and get forgotten. They are wearing different colored ties, at least. I can give them that.

  “They have a few questions to ask you about Joseph Flatwood,” Sani says, furrowing his weathered brow. He’s not happy having these agents in his station. I can tell before they even open their mouths that they have an air of blank-check entitlement to them. No doubt they’ve been trained extensively about Indian affairs, but I’d be surprised if either of them had ever set foot on a reservation before.

  “Mr. Dejooli—” Parsons begins.

  “Call me Ben.”

  “…Ben. We have an open investigation regarding Joseph Flatwood, whom we know to have been an acquaintance of yours. It’s progressed to a point where we feel you might be able to help us.”

  I look at Sani for a long moment. He barely holds a scowl at bay. The dimple in his chin turns into a pothole.

  “Council has given them free run of whatever resources Public Safety can provide,” he says, strained.

  Now that’s interesting. For the council to buddy up with the Feds, Flatwood must really be raising hell.

  “All right,” I say, slowly.

  “But first you need to understand that this is a classified case, and no details about what we will tell you should leave this room. It’s standard protocol for an ongoing investigation.”

  I feel a twinge of pain behind my forehead. It’s like Agent Parsons is reading from cue cards behind me.

  “Okay…but listen, I haven’t seen Joey Flatwood in almost six years. Not since he was banished. I haven’t heard from him either, if that’s what you’re getting at. That’s kind of the whole point.”

  Agent Douglas nods his head. “We know. We’ve been tracking Flatwood for years now. He’s been all over the southwestern United States, but just about the only place he hasn’t popped up is anywhere near Chaco Reservation.”

  Banished means banished. Flatwood respected the council, and our laws. That was one of the worst parts of watching him go: I knew he would be gone forever. I was glad of it, and I hated it at the same time. I still remember the way he turned back and nodded at me after he passed the welcome sign going the other way. It was a reassuring nod, as if he wanted to say It’s okay, Ben. That’s what made it so terrible. Nothing was okay. My sister was gone. We’d decided it was my best friend’s fault, and now he was going, too. He should have fought it, but it was like he gave up. That, more than anything, is what I keep coming back to in the middle of the night when I wonder for the millionth time if Joey Flatwood is really the reason Ana is gone. Why didn’t he deny it? I scrunch up my nose to try and cut off the subtle burning smell, but it’s getting stronger.

  “I thought he might be dead,” I say. “The way he just…disappeared like that. No word of him at all.”

  “Oh, he’s not dead,” Parsons says. “At least, not yet. He’s come close to killing himself several times, though.”

  Parsons’ textbook delivery makes me want to smack him. If Joey tried to kill himself, it’s probably because of me. There was a long stretch of time, right afterwards, when I wanted to kill him myself. But the idea of him wandering the southwest, drifting in and out of depression, makes me feel wretched. I’m almost positive that he knows what happened to Ana, and I hate him for refusing to tell me, but it’s been six years now and sometimes I think if I knew then how hard friends are to come by, I might have been a little slower to take the stand. I swallow down the distaste and try to match the agents’ flair for deadpan.

  “In fact,” Douglas says, “that’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What, Flatwood trying to kill himself?”

  “And failing…when he shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “We have reason to believe that Joseph Flatwood should be dead, but he’s not.”

  “You mean he’s bad at killing himself?”

  “No, he’s quite good. He’s just…still here.”

  I cross my hands over my chest and look at Sani, who gives me a small eyebrow shrug. “Why do you guys care if he kills himself?”

  Parsons clears his throat. “Between suicide attempts he has a penchant for robbing hospitals. We started following Flatwood after security cameras in three separate states picked him up lifting pills from the medicine cabinets.”

  Joey Flatwood, a drug addict? That’s even less believable to me than the gambler as a drug addict. Joey’s grandpa used to lecture us about drugs, and Joey got a firsthand education of the mess they can turn a man into living out at the Arroyo. He never touched the stuff. We made a pact back in the day. Cut our palms with Joey’s grandpa’s old buck knife.

  “He robs hospitals?”

  “Yes. We have him on security footage taking enough to drop a man twice his size. He looked right at the camera. He’s quite brazen. We also believe he may be selling what he doesn’t take, to keep himself liquid and able to move.”

  “And this is Joseph Flatwood? Joey Flatwood? About my height, bit bigger in the chest. He’s got a split lip—”

  “That was repaired, but poorly. Bowlegged. Grew up in your Arroyo,” Parsons says the word with mild distaste. “Has the tattoos on his knuckles to prove it.”

  “It’s him, Ben,” Sani says. “I’ve seen the tapes.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “Can I see these tapes?”

  Douglas looks at Parsons, who doesn’t move a muscle, but some agreement is passed between them.

  “If you’ll help us build a file on him, yes. We’ll give you access to the tapes.”

  “Ben, I’ve told them we’ll give them what we have, but you don’t have to work with them further. These gentlemen know where their jurisdiction lies.”

  My first instinct is to turn around and walk right out the door. I’d already helped the council build a case against Joey once, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. Now the US government wants me to help build another case, and I’m thinking how it is that it falls to me to damn a man twice. I think maybe the gods are giving me the retribution I asked for six years ago in spades, only right now I’m not so sure I want it anymore. It won’t make Ana any less gone. I oughta take a page out of the Danny Ninepoint playbook and throw out the playbook. But I can’t. I’m not like Danny. I just don’t know why, but my book is bolted open. As surely as Dad wanders the back yard. As surely as Sancho and his ilk talk circles around Flatwood to let me know they remember. For some reason, Joey Flatwood can’t be forgotten. Not yet.

  “What are you gonna do with him, when you catch him?” I wasn’t naive enough to think Joey could run forever. Not from the Feds.

  “We’re going to prosecute him on narcotics charges, breaking and entering, trafficking, and theft, and then, quite frankly, we’re going to breathe a sigh of relief,” says Parsons.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because his behavior fits certain profiles. We have reason to believe that Joseph Flatwood is on his way to hurting a lot of people.”

  Just then a huge crow clatters to a landing on the sill of the high window in Sani’s office, and it startles all four of us. It grapples with the stubby awning for a moment, its long black claws scraping at the metal. I step closer to it, looking for a flash of red and terrified that I’ll find it.

  “They’re all over the place these days. It’s that time of the fall,” Sani says.

  The crow watches us sidelong, its arrowed head nearly pressed up against the glass. In profile I can see that its beak is like a six-inch shard of obsidian. It only lingers for a moment, then it drops from the sill. I can hear the beating of its wings. Still staring at the empty sky where it was, I know my
answer.

  “All right. I’ll help. Give me the tapes and a few days to run it down. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “How about two days. We’d need a full character profile. What he was like growing up. How you knew him. What he was like in school. Any warning signs you might think of. And, of course, a full account of the banishment. We want your personal opinions, Ben. You knew him best.”

  I nod. “Two days,” I say. Something about how eager these men are doesn’t sit well with me. The whole story is off. Suddenly I remember the Arroyo. The tracks. The Feds roll around in just the type of town car that would leave those marks. I saw a Lincoln town car parked out front, in the handicapped spot, coming in. That would have done it. They wouldn’t have any care for the gambler, of course, but there were strange similarities: the drugs, the Arroyo…the crows. Pieces of a bigger story all butting up against each other like tumbleweeds. If the Feds knew Joey grew up in the Arroyo, what else did they know? And what weren’t they telling me?

  Chapter 5

  Caroline Adams

  I’ve been thinking a lot about Ben Dejooli, and it’s kind of annoying me. I’ll be working along, giving meds or helping a patient to the bathroom, and then out of nowhere he pops into my mind. I have four patients today, and one of them is a really large Navajo. Morbidly obese. She requires our specialized bed and the new hoisting system to get her on her feet so she can get to the restroom. She’s also extremely rude to me and to every other person assigned to her. And a lot of people have been assigned to her. This is her sixth time gracing us with her presence in my tenure here. She’s been bumped from the ER and onto the Oncology overflow. She is what we call a frequent flyer. She doesn’t have cancer, but she has just about everything else. That’s what happens when you’re two hundred and fifty pounds overweight. You get everything.

  I have no problem with fat people, but I do have a problem with mean people. Especially when we are understaffed and one of my patients who actually has cancer looks ready to code on me at the drop of a hat, and instead of tending to him like I should I have to deal with this woman and her whining for more pain meds and accusations of abuse from the staff. It’s all I can do not to file her away, and just when I’m about to give up on everything—her, the Navajo, Chaco Reservation, the whole day—Ben Dejooli pops into my mind. He’s looking at me with that haunted gaze, and his eyes are like dime-sized windows into the rich-clay bottom of a lake. And it gets me through the rotation and keeps me moving until I can get a half a minute in the break room to eat my granola bar.

  But then, when I’m two bites in to my “dinner,” my phone rings and the code alarm goes off at the same time. That means it’s my patient dying, and I drop the bar and start running, along with everyone else. Mary Ellen grabs the crash cart from the manager’s station and is a half-step behind me. When I get there, the CNA is already doing chest compressions, and there is more blood than I have ever seen at once pouring from the patient’s mouth. This is one of those horrible times when a nurse is faced with a crossroads, and this is the longest I’ve ever stood frozen in one spot during a code. It feels like half a minute, but in reality it’s just a few seconds. Then Mary Ellen is behind me with the crash cart and in full-blown battle-manager mode, and I can see why she’s the boss.

  “Get him on his side,” she says, firm and cold as winter stone, as she’s rolling out the defibrillator pads. All hesitation gone, I wade into the blood, jam both hands under the patient fireman style, and roll him halfway around while Mary Ellen slaps one pad to his back.

  “Front,” she says, and I ease him back as Mary Ellen slaps the second to his chest. He is completely non-responsive. It’s like moving a bag of dirt. I place the Ambu oxygen bag over his face, but he’s still breathing blood and it smears against the inner plastic like melted lipstick. It’s already collecting in a pool.

  “We’re gonna need suction,” I say. My voice is distant and small, but another nurse hears me and preps the vacuum.

  “Clear!” snaps Mary Ellen, and we all step away. I take the Ambu bag with me, and blood drips from the mouthpiece in a steady line. We wait for a horrible eternity for the readout. It says “No shock advised. Continue CPR.” We all move in. Mary Ellen revs the panel again while a doctor injects the IV with epinephrine. The second nurse sucks the blood from in and around his mouth then steps back, and I pump oxygen. The CNA is sweating profusely but hasn’t given up on the CPR. God bless him. We’re supposed to do this for three minutes before we can shock him again. That’s what the book says. It feels like an hour.

  “Clear!”

  We step back. In the movies the patients jolt. In real life it’s more of a sad shudder.

  We wait for the readout. “No shock advised. Continue CPR.”

  We move back in.

  Suck, squeeze, suck, squeeze. The Ambu mouthpiece leaves red rings around his nose and lips. They dry black just in time for another suction and then another squeeze of the bag. They’re lurid on his ghost-pale skin. There is no movement under his eyelids, and all of a sudden I notice I’m quietly crying. Some detached part of me wonders when that started. How long have I been here? Minutes? Hours?

  “I’m calling it,” I hear, and Bennet’s voice is like a bucket of cold water. He’s looking at the readouts. His face is grim, but his voice is strong.

  “He’s dead. There’s nothing else we can do. He had lung cancer. Once the tumor bursts into the great vessels there’s nothing that’s going to stop the bleeding. It was only a matter of time. We knew it. He knew it.”

  And now that he says it, I see the blood is everywhere. It’s on the patient. On the bed. On the floor. Up and down my sleeves and on the CNA’s face. It’s on Bennet, too. Tears roll down my cheeks, but I don’t want to touch my face. Bennet looks at me, and his eyes soften. I think if he says anything to me I’m going to break down, but he just nods, thank God.

  “Everyone give your roles to the nurse at the door. Time of death, three twenty-seven.”

  It takes ten minutes to sort out the roles for the log, and by then everyone is shaking, including me. The CNA most of all. I make a mental note to buy him coffee, or lunch. Then I almost laugh out loud at how tiny that gesture would be, all things considered, and it occurs to me that I am in a minor state of shock.

  The line limps along. I step up.

  “Caroline Adams. I’m the primary nurse.”

  Then I shuffle out. We all shuffle out in different directions like we’re lost in the place we’ve worked for years. I just cross the hall. I’ll need to clean him up and present the body to the family.

  “Anybody willing to help me do post-mortem?” I ask, and it feels like I haven’t talked for days. I have to clear my throat. I’m pretty sure I squeak.

  The CNA nods at me, and Bennet says, “I will.” I want to hug both of them then go to sleep for a week. And all of a sudden I’m thinking about Ben Dejooli again. Would he bleed like that? Probably not. If my worst fears are true and he has a brain tumor, he’d probably go out like a candle. There’d be no blood at all. Just the cancer pushing down on the nerve system until he stopped breathing. Bennet brings me back from the brink of breakdown again when he hands me a stack of wet towels. Then he and the CNA roll the patient and strip the bed. I’ve never seen a doctor do anything like this before, and it’s the next thing that makes me want to cry. I viciously clear my throat and dab my face with the hot towel. I’m supposed to be one of the strong ones here.

  I busy myself cleaning the floor and swallow down the ball in my throat. Eventually I’m under control. The repetitive swabbing movement helps. But then a strange thing happens. I don’t usually go in for supernatural stuff. I believe that there’s something bigger than me out there, and I guess I call that thing God. But when you’ve seen death like I have, you recognize it less as a scary passage or sacred departing and more as just the flipside of life. It’s what’s at the bottom of the sack of time all of us is handed when we come in to this world. I suppose thi
s makes me disillusioned, but if it does, I’d challenge you to find a nurse out there who isn’t. A lot of people prefer to keep the guts and gristle of life behind the skin, like our bodies are bags of magic. Doctors take the opposite extreme. Nurses, for whatever reason, are wired differently. We get in this game for the people, but we also see the guts for what they are: guts. This patient is gone. That’s why it gives me pause when I feel something brush past my back while I’m cleaning the patient’s face and mouth. I actually step aside.

  “Sorry,” I say, thinking it’s Bennet or the CNA trying to get around me, even though I know it felt different. More subtle. Like a whisper. The brush of a blade of grass.

  Bennet looks up at me from across the room. “It wasn’t your fault, Caroline. It was stage four lung cancer.” The CNA looks up at me and nods in silent agreement. He’s by the far closet pulling out new sheets. Neither of them is anywhere near me. I blink at them until I realize that Bennet mistook my meaning, then go back to gently swabbing the side of the dead man’s face. Then it happens again, and this time it’s like I can hear the crinkle of the bed, like he’s sitting up, even though he’s just as still and rigid as when I started cleaning him. This time I step back, and I can feel the hairs on my forearms standing on end. Which would be understandable if I were the type to get creeped out by a dead body, but I’m not, which makes it all the stranger.

  Then I swear I feel the movement of air on the damp at the back of my neck, and I find myself turning and staring at a spot in the middle of the room. My eyes tell me nothing is standing there, but there is just a hint of color to the air. Like that same strange smoke I saw on Ben’s skin, but this is a different color, and it takes me a minute to recognize that it was the unique color of my patient. It snuffed out when he died, I realize this now, yet here it is again, like an echo of cologne passing by me for just a moment. And then it’s gone. And, naturally, the two men I asked to help me clean and dress the room catch me staring into space like a cat.