Follow the Crow

by B. B. Griffith

  Chapter 18

  Ben Dejooli

  She saved me from the knife. From Danny’s huge knife. The knife that’s hung at Danny’s side as long as I’ve known him. The same knife that Danny would casually click in and out of its sheath when things got tense on calls. He used to use the bone handle to crush beer cans at station BBQs. He once plucked a two-inch splinter from my palm with the tip of it. Caroline stopped that same knife from ripping my throat open. That’s my first thought when I wake up in the hospital bed.

  The second thought is that it was a lot of work on her part to buy me another couple of days. Don’t get me wrong: the last thing I wanted was to get killed by my two-faced partner. When I go, I can count him being swallowed by a million crows among the top five most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. Ana being another one. Caroline being another. I would have missed that sight if it weren’t for her, but part of me wonders if she shouldn’t have bothered.

  The other two in my top five, in case you’re wondering, are kind of like memory snapshots. One is of a sunrise. Danny and I were coming off a nightshift one warm summer night two years ago. I had the next two days off. We were driving the fringes, the northern border of the rez, just flying across the desert in the cruiser, and the sun was rising over the sand and it painted the whole thing purple. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was. If you were there, you’d have thought so too. The way things ended up with Danny doesn’t change that sunrise. That picture. That’s forever.

  The second is a snapshot of a bonfire out at the Arroyo. It was a Saturday night, and I was with Joey Flatwood. Both of us were fourteen, tearing circles around the fire pit while our folks drank beers and talked and sang. I have this picture in my mind of us running around and around like a long exposure of light in the dark, and we’re leaving these phosphorescent firefly trails behind us. Even when I banished Joey, even when I thought he knew what happened to Ana and was keeping it from me, nothing could ruin that picture either. That’s forever, too.

  It’s funny how you take stock of these things when your life is coming to a close. You don’t really do it because you’re getting all sentimental, either. A lot of it is boredom. There’s not a lot to do in a hospital bed when you’re waiting to die.

  I’m pretty far gone, now, I think. There isn’t a lot of pain. The morphine drip killed all that, along with most of my hospital phobia. Funny how high-powered drugs will do that for you. So I’m not nauseous anymore and I’m not aching, but I am sort of being packed away. I feel like I’m being swaddled, slowly, from the feet up. I lose chunks of time. First it was hours, but the chunks are getting bigger. Half a day? A whole day? All I know is that the times between when I open my eyes are getting longer, and I suspect that when I actually die it’ll be just that: the time between when I open my eyes will be forever.

  I can’t really talk anymore, but I can think, and I can listen. I know that people are here with me. And that people are coming and going. Caroline has been the most constant. She holds my hand and speaks to me about everything, and I suspect that she knows I can listen. I think she can see more than most people. Can understand more. It’s like she can sense when I surface, even if I don’t open my eyes. She whispers to me about the bell. She doesn’t know what to do with it. I don’t either. She says it’s mine, by rights, but I don’t think it is. I don’t think it’s anybody’s. I don’t think it even belongs here at all. I can feel it, resting on her chest. It has this dull hum that seems to get stronger as I get weaker. She tells me that I’m flipping through the pages of my life. Setting the numbers in order. She whispers to me that she wishes she could be in there with me, flipping the pages. She wishes she could see it all. I can feel her tears, hot, falling on my cheeks, before she wipes them away. It feels good, to have someone cry for you. That may sound like an asshole thing to say, but it’s true.

  Mom is here too, although less frequently. I don’t blame her. I think her mind is breaking. I think it cracked when Ana died, but now it’s breaking. She’ll have lost everyone, when this is all over. I think she’s learning that it’s one thing to push everyone away when they’re still here and it’s another thing to have them disappear altogether. She talks to me, too, although she sounds off. She talks about the day Ana disappeared. She says it was just like this. Over and over again she says that: Just like this. Just like this.

  “It’s happening again,” she says, when I float back. She’s panicky, and her hand is trembling as it holds mine. I want to help her. She was dealt a heavy hand of grief in life and she folded with it, gave up early on, but I’m not sure I can begrudge her that. She couldn’t deal. Is that her fault? I’m not sure I could deal, either, if I was her. Maybe that’s why I joined the force. Not because I was dealing with Ana’s loss, but because I wasn’t dealing with Ana’s loss. I spent my days patching up other people’s problems instead of dealing with mine.

  I manage a squeeze, and she latches on to it. I open my eyes and mumble, “S’okay, Mom.” Kind of a stupid thing to say, especially given that pretty much nothing is okay. But there’s nothing she can do about it. I expect her to break down or something, but she doesn’t. She gets real close to me and says, “Stay, Benny. Stay here.”

  That’s pretty rich. I don’t exactly feel like running these days, Mom. But she’s serious.

  “Ana didn’t stay,” she says. “You must stay. No matter what Gam or anyone says.”

  Gam’s gone, Mom. Dead. Ana’s dead, too. And I’m going. I hope she gets the help she needs, my mom. This is going to pretty much destroy her. Is it bad that I take just a tiny measure of comfort in the fact that I won’t be around to see it?

  I get the sense that Caroline’s right. I’ve been flipping through my book, setting the pages in order, but here at the end there are a bunch of blanks. The pages are there, the numbers are right. They’re the end, but there’s nothing on them.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Something is coming. Something has to happen for me to close my book. It’s why I’m not dead just yet. It’s why I can still hear them. I’d heard that right before people die, some of them get really lucid. Sort of come back for one last big push. I think that’s what’s happening to me. I think I have one last big push stored up, and I’m terrified to think of what it’s for.

  The people around my bed are like pieces shifting on a combination lock. Doctor Bennet, Caroline, Mom, they need to be here, I feel it, but one is missing, and when that fourth shows up, I know it is time.

  Joey Flatwood.

  It’s late at night when he comes to me. I hear the whoosh, pop, and for one horrible minute I think Danny is back. I actually open my eyes. It startles me back to the surface, almost above the surface. This is it, I think. This is the push. This is the end.

  Joey is stunned, looking at me. He’s like a bull charging into the china shop only to find it’s a butcher’s. He reaches one trembling hand out towards me, and it hangs in the air.

  “Jesus, Ben. I mean…Jesus.”

  “Hello,” I say. It comes out a croak.

  Caroline stirs in the chair next to me. Mom stirs in the makeshift bed next to Caroline. Doctor Bennet walks by the door. I know he’s done that many times, many more times than he needs to, always with the pretense of checking my vitals or reading my charts, but I know it’s more than that. I wish I had more time to get to know the good doctor. I think we’d have liked each other.

  When Bennet sees Joey, he stops still, looks back and forth along the hallway, then steps inside the room and closes the door.

  The gang’s all here.

  “This is bad,” Joey says, staring at me as he walks over to my bedside.

  “Well, it’s not good, Joey,” I say. I try to smile. My lips are goopy from Vaseline.

  Joey looks from me to the other three, who watch him carefully, but everyone seems to know to stay quiet.

  “No. I mean they’re coming,” he says. “They know about the bell. They think you have it.”

&nb
sp; “Who?”

  “The agents,” he says, then he freezes and pricks his ears. He looks over his shoulder at the door. He turns back to me, and I can see that he’s genuinely afraid.

  “It’s here, isn’t it? I can feel it, too. It pulls at the crow.”

  We are all silent. Bennet looks at me. I have to make a conscious effort not to look at Caroline.

  “It’s here,” I say, at last. Then I ask him a question, very carefully, because I know a lot hinges on it. “Do you want it, Joey?”

  He looks at me without blinking, and he works his jaw around.

  “No,” he says. “No, I don’t think I do. I don’t think anyone can have it. Especially not them. It’s too…too much. Too dangerous. Too…everything.”

  “What is the bell?” Caroline asks quietly. Joey flicks his gaze over to her. He zeroes in on the leather strap around her neck, and I know he knows. I know he knows it’s right there, with her. But all he does is nod. And right then I know something else, too: Joey had nothing to do with Ana’s vanishing. Far from it. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that from the second I banished him, Joey spent every waking day trying to make sense of what happened to her, just like me.

  “It’s what took Ana,” Joey says.

  “What?” Mom asks. “What?” She’s getting louder. Bennet tries to quiet her, but she ignores him. She runs to Joey, grabs him with both hands, and shakes him. “What are you saying? You can’t just say things like that. You can’t just come in here and say things like that.” She slaps him, and he takes it. “What do you mean?” she wails. She is unraveling. Bennet grabs her with both arms and pulls her away. I hear movement outside.

  “I don’t know,” Joey says, and I see that he’s crying. “I don’t fucking know. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to know. You have to believe me. Ben, please. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But that bell took her away from me right before my eyes.”

  “I believe you,” I say, and I sound stronger than I have in what feels like weeks. The push is upon me. The crest is here. “Joey, I really fucked up, man. I really fucked up, and if you never forgive me, I understand.”

  “It was Danny, Ben. Danny planted the seed. Danny brought the hearing. Danny pulled all the right strings, with the council, with your family, with your heart. He wanted the bell for himself. He knew I wanted it too. But I don’t want it like he did.”

  “Nah,” I say, and it’s a sort of wail. The beginning of a cry. “Nah. I fucked up. I did.”

  There’s a subtle shift in the air, and we all feel it. A whistle, pop from down the hall. There’s shouting outside the room. They’re here. Joey turns to me. His eyes are swimming, but his teeth are gritted.

  “I want you to know, man. I want you to know that you never stopped being my best friend. Never. Not when you screamed at me at the hospital that day she disappeared. Not when you spoke against me in front of the court. Not when you stood and watched me cross that line out of Chaco. Never. And you never will.”

  Bennet locks the door. Joey looks at him. “Locks don’t matter,” he says, and just then there’s a whistle, pop and one of the agents is there. It’s Douglas, the bulldog one with the stained teeth. His face lights up, and his eyes are like tar-dipped coins.

  “Here you are,” he says, staring at me with wild, hungry eyes. He sniffs the air. “And it’s here, too.”

  Joey steps between us, and I see Bennet position himself in front of Mom and Caroline.

  Douglas snaps away, and then in a blink he’s back with Parsons, who looks fresh from a conference call, as always. Both of them stare at me, unblinking. They suck in the air as if mad for the scent of the bell.

  “Where is it, Mr. Dejooli?” Parsons asks. He’s like a schoolteacher giving an unruly pupil one last chance. But Joey steps in between us.

  “It’s not for you to have,” Joey says. “You don’t know what you’re doing. The crows are meant to protect the bell. To keep it secret. And safe.”

  Parsons and Douglas turn to Joey as if seeing him for the first time.

  “It will be safe,” Parsons says. “With us. And only with us.”

  Douglas steps towards me, but Joey holds out his hand and stops him. Douglas bumps into it and stares at it like it’s a tumbleweed bumped against a fence.

  “Back off,” Joey says.

  Douglas looks back at Parsons, who cocks an eyebrow. Then both of them laugh. It’s not a good laugh. It’s the strange, low laugh of the far gone, and I know there is nothing we can say that will stop these two men. Douglas unbuttons his jacket with one hand.

  “Don’t do this,” Joey says. “None of us knows what that thing can do.”

  “It’s more powerful than any crow. More powerful than all of the crows,” Douglas says, with strained patience, reaching in his pocket. “And if the crows can do this—” He grasps the totem in his bare hand. In a hissing blink he’s behind Joey, right next to my bed. He reeks of sulfur, like a pack-a-day habit of the devil’s own cigarettes. He grabs the sheets of my bed and throws them off, his eyes wild and probing. “—Then we must have it,” he says.

  There’s another pop, and suddenly Douglas goes sprawling back into the door, splintering the jamb and throwing it open with his bulk. In his place is Joey once more. It’s like Joey left us and then came back at a charge and checked Douglas straight in the chest. Parsons looks impassively at him. Douglas looks ridiculous, sitting like a child in the doorway with both legs out. He nods to himself and cracks his neck.

  “I said back the fuck off, suit. Both of you,” Joey says.

  “Impressive, Mr. Flatwood,” says Parsons. “I’ll admit, you know your way around the crow. But then again, you’ve had more time with yours.”

  He doesn’t sound impressed. He sounds pleased, actually. One look at Douglas confirms it. He’s smiling, too, from the floor. They both look like prize fighters at the title bout.

  “Last chance, Mr. Flatwood. All of you. Give us the bell, and we’ll let you live,” Parsons says, as Douglas stands and dusts off his jacket. “For a little while, at least,” he adds, looking at me with a wan smile.

  Joey starts to speak, but I beat him to it. “You aren’t worthy,” I say, surprising myself. Thinking of Gam. Thinking of Caroline. Gam carried it all her life and never said a word. Caroline carries it now, as it’s supposed to be carried. As a burden. A quiet burden. I don’t know exactly what this bell is, but I know that’s how it’s supposed to be worn: heavy and soft. As if he can hear my thoughts, Joey looks back at me and nods. It’s a thankful nod. It’s like he’s come back. Like we’ve seen each other in the airport and hit the bar, and it’s all the same. In my mind another page is written and numbered, and it has everyone here on it. I’m that much closer. I have minutes. Minutes until I’m gone. But there’s one more page yet to write.

  My words hit Douglas. He seems to me like the idiot of the pair. Proud. Quick to anger. His bureaucratic smile turns to a snarl. There’s a puff of air as he slips out of space, and I know he’s coming for me. For my neck. For my face. And I can do nothing. I am passing from this world, and if it’s Douglas that does it or the poison cells in my brain—six of one, half dozen of the other.

  Whistle, pop, and he’s there, in front of me. But so is Joey.

  Douglas brings his hand down, ripping through the air, trying to grab at my throat, but Joey stops him with a sledgehammer blow to the side that sends him sprawling again. Whatever plane the crows flip them to, it seems like Joey gets a running start before they flip back. Joey is not a big man and the drugs have drained him, but somehow he’s hitting like a fire hydrant. Joey doesn’t even blink before he throws himself at Douglas again. Douglas tries to phase out, but Joey catches him. What happens from there is like a movie seen in snapshots, like frames have been removed from the reel of a fistfight. They dance around each other, pummeling each other. They flip in and out of sync, coming back bloodied and torn. Douglas reaches for his gun at one point, but Joey grabs him and phases both o
f them out before he can fire. This time the blood comes back before they do, spraying out like whipped washing, and then they are with us again, Douglas’s head snapped back and his mouth split and Joey grazed at the shoulder. They blink out again, and a piece of a tooth is all that remains, clattering to the floor in their absence. I smile grimly. Joey always knew his way around a fistfight. I suppose an existential fistfight is still a fistfight.

  But then there’s Parsons. He watches the popping, whooshing, sucking explosions with a cold smile, like he’s hanging over the pit of a dog fight, and then he begins to walk toward me, adjusting his tie, sniffing at the air. Bennet swipes at him, but he phases in and out and takes no notice. Bennet lunges forward again, and again comes up with air. Parsons stops at the head of my bed as calm as a Sunday morning while Douglas and Joey rip at each other like desert coyotes.

  He is disturbingly gentle as he brushes my scrub top apart and pulls my palsied hands flat. No bell. He sniffs the air again, then he turns to Caroline. I try to scream at him, to lunge at him, to do anything. But my time is up. I’m being packed in. I can feel the weight upon me. The first words on the final page are being written, and I can see them in my mind. They say, A crow flew down the hall.

  Which is insane, because we’re in a hospital. And yet there is the crow. It passes across the open doorway at normal speed, but everything else seems to have hit a time pocket. No one else notices it, and I know that this is because no one else can see it. Then, in a blink, everything catches back up.

  I look back at Caroline, who is gripping the bell under her shirt like it’s pulling her down to the ground. Parsons walks towards her like a golem. He reaches for her, but Bennet throws himself towards him, and this time Parsons doesn’t phase out. He’s done with dancing between our two planes. He’s been snake charmed by the call of the bell, and he doesn’t count on Bennet’s reach. His haymaker staggers Parsons, who looks at Bennet as if he’s just arrived. Bennet takes advantage and slams his shoulder into Parsons, pushing him away, battering him back, putting distance between the agent and Caroline. He’s pummeling Parsons’ face bloody, and I think for one glorious minute that we’ve done it, that we’ve beaten them. Then Parsons takes out his gun.