Crows

by Charles Dickinson

  Duke shrugged. “Upstairs, I guess.” He looked at the empty space where his robe lay. “I miss waiting on the stairs with Buzz and O.”

  “They don’t wait up anymore, honey. The sleep right through like grown-­ups. I looked in on you last night. You were asleep.”

  “I was faking,” Duke said.

  “It looked real to me. You were snoring.”

  “It must’ve been somebody else.”

  “I was up all night, Duke,” Stephen said. The boy looked at him with faint curiosity. “I was anxious about coming over here.”

  Duke wanted to say: You could’ve saved us all some trouble by not bothering. But he was a gentleman and did not. His mother’s friend seemed proud of staying up all night, a little kid’s pride in an adult feat. The nights Duke had stayed up had been composed of hours long and cold, and not to be cherished. In the weeks after losing his leg and his father it seemed he was awake every instant of that time. He was always pushing against one pain or the other, trying to back them off him for an hour’s peace.

  He drank more orange juice. It did not feel like Christmas. He thought he heard birds outside, their calls sluggish with cold.

  Buzzard came into the kitchen then. He was already dressed in the outfit he was most at home in: Mozart High gym shorts over sweat pants, hooded sweat shirt zipped closed over a baseball jersey. He shook Stephen’s hand without enthusiasm, without looking into his eyes.

  Ethel excused herself. She went up to the second floor and on the stairs to the third floor met Robert descending.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said. He was dressed in layers of clothing, including one of Ben’s sweaters. He was sure he could see his breath.

  “Go out the front door,” Ethel said. “The Wilsons said they would be up at five. Go to their back door.”

  “It’s pitch dark over there,” Robert said. “I looked.”

  “It’s five forty-­five. They said they’d be up.”

  Robert nodded. He slipped past her and went down the stairs. Ethel called in a whisper after him, “Don’t let them see you leave.”

  She had approached him with her plot the night before. She had held the secret within her until the last moment, knowing that was the safest way. She did not want the gift or the moment spoiled.

  “And tonight, when you’re in bed with Olive,” she had said to Robert, “don’t tell her, either.”

  And he had not.

  In the darkness of the front hallway he pulled on his coat, his hat, and his gloves. He heard Stephen’s voice from the kitchen; words were indistinct, but they had the tone of desperate prattle. Robert felt a moment’s identification. Ben had welcomed him, but others took longer to be convinced; some held out to that very day.

  He dreaded the walk across the yard in the cold. The thermometer in Olive’s room had registered 49˚. When he stepped out onto the front porch the bitter air clasped those parts of his face not covered by his beard and pinched like a surly child. The air, dark yet, was motionless. When he set his foot down in the packed snow that had covered the ground since the first of November it shrieked as if in agony.

  Olive had blown him the night before, her mouth glittered when she finished, she smiled and said, “Merry Christmas.” But even that had not warmed him from the cold out on the lake. Olive’s warm mouth and five glasses of brandy had not melted that frozen nut at his center. He kept hearing Duke say, “I was afraid you were bringing up Dad.” And Buzz had not argued; he had admitted to the chance. Robert himself had been thinking the same thing, wondering at that horrid weight Buzz was pulling up from the lake, and was relieved at Duke’s handling of the moment. The day had been at a definite end.

  The dark windows of the Wilsons’ house bore the flat motionlessness of early morning. He crossed the yard between the houses, his head down, his hands in his pockets. Light in the kitchen of Ben’s house spread through the frost on the window and out onto the frozen ground. There was motion in the kitchen, a transfer of shadows.

  At the Wilsons’ back door he pressed the bell. The porch boards were slick, painted gray. The Wilsons were in their seventies and Mr. Wilson some time back had slipped somewhere behind his house and broken a finger in the fall. Ethel occasionally volunteered Robert to cut their lawn, rake their leaves, shovel their snow, but only when she felt mean and desired to wield the power she had over him.

  He pressed the bell again. He did a little hop-­dance but the soft racket this produced was insufficient. He hated being awakened on cold mornings and supposed the Wilsons shared this aversion. They were tired and had forgotten their promise to Ethel and now they were asleep deep in the house.

  Still, they were dealing with children, and Christmas, and the Wilsons should have understood that when they agreed to help. He hit the back door a series of solid shots. Mrs. Wilson pulled it open almost at once. She appeared at the door so abruptly she scared Robert.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Cigar,” she said cheerfully, letting him into the warm house. She surprised him, kissing him on the nose.

  “I know you’ve come for the kitty,” she said. “We’ve had so much fun with him we might not let you have him.” She giggled at this threat, then walked away from him. She opened a door and light rolled out. They descended a flight of narrow stairs. Affixed to the wall of the stairwell were bracket clasps to hold a broom, a mop, a dustpan, a shoe rack, a wooden box full of paper bags. Somewhere at the bottom of the stairs Robert heard the infant peep of the kitten.

  “Douglas and I have been up since two o’clock playing with the kitty,” she reported. “We had a cat once years ago, got it as an adult, and it was a nice cat. But we never realized how much fun a kitty is. Before they get so serious.”

  Her husband was sitting in the center of a rug on the basement floor. He was in his robe and pajamas, the light on the ceiling turning his white hair the pink of his scalp, and he cast out a string weighted at one end with a green button for the kitten to bat and chase.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Cigar,” he said, without looking at Robert. “I’m sorry you have come. We’ve had just the best time with this little critter.”

  “He’ll be right next door,” Robert said.

  Mr. Wilson smiled at Robert’s effort. “Not the same,” he said. “Not the same.”

  Robert unbuttoned his coat. Through the basement windows the morning was deepest black.

  “How’s your father?” Mr. Wilson asked.

  “He’s fine.”

  “I saw him downtown a while back,” the man said. “I wish it was my nature to wear a shirt with a sign on it out in public. I’d love to help your dad and mom out. But I couldn’t.”

  “What would your shirt say?” Mrs. Wilson asked, a loving teasing in her voice.

  Her husband grinned. His teeth were the porcelain blue-­white of new dentures. “Old fart?” he said.

  Mrs. Wilson giggled, blushed, turned toward Robert.

  “What are you going to name the kitty?” she asked.

  “That’s up to the boys. This is Ethel’s present to them. I’m just retrieving it.”

  “We wanted to give him a name so bad,” Mr. Wilson said. “But that’s too much of an attachment. You’re just asking for trouble if you put a name on something you know you’ll lose.”

  “True, Douglas,” his wife said.

  The morning still looked dark, but Robert had seen the first light coming into the sky and the orange glow from the kitchen of Ben’s house. He looked at the windows, turned away.

  The cat was thin, long-­legged, gawkily quick, white with a badge of black on its breast and a circle of black like a thrown punch around its left eye.

  “Don’t let the boys name it something stupid,” Mr. Wilson admonished.

  “Or demeaning,” his wife added.

  “Though any parents who would name two boys Buzzard and Duke could
be expected to raise strange children.”

  “Douglas!” Mrs. Wilson scolded; but she was amused, Robert saw, the scolding only for show.

  Robert scooped the cat off the floor. The remark about Ben and Ethel irked him; he would deny the Wilsons the presence of the kitten. Its rib cage hummed in his hand.

  “Thanks for watching him,” he said. “The kids will be surprised.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Our pleasure.”

  He was ready to leave, but first he had to ask: “I was wondering . . . why are your windows painted black?”

  They stared at him as if they didn’t understand. Then Mr. Wilson said, “Bob! I didn’t know what you meant, at first. But, yes. Our boy painted them years ago. He was playing war down here, this was an imaginary bomb shelter and he painted the windows black so the bombers couldn’t see the lights from our house. How about that? We don’t even notice it anymore. Over the years we’ve even added a ­couple extra coats.”

  Mrs. Wilson said bashfully, “It sort of makes us feel safe.”

  “I tell you, you can’t have too much of that,” Robert said. The cat was poised in the crook of his arm. He could feel its heartbeat through his sleeve.

  “They’re waiting for you,” Mrs. Wilson reminded him. “Merry Christmas again, Mr. Cigar.”

  He climbed the narrow stairs and went out the door into the cold. It was lighter out, but only a little. No light leaked out the Wilsons’ basement windows. They were safe. He looked up to inspect the sky for bombers. Nothing there, though they’d be as careful as the Wilsons to hide their lights. From above, the Wilsons would be hidden in the glare from Ben’s house. Safe.

  He was walking over the frozen ground, still looking up at the peaceful blinking of the stars as they washed out against the daylight, when he tripped on a brick set at an angle in the ground. It was one of a rectangle of bricks each positioned just that way to mark the boundary of the Wilsons’ flower bed. The bricks stuck like sharp tips of teeth through the crusted snow.

  He went down hard and the cat flew out of his arms. It immediately ran ten feet, then stopped to sniff the cold ground. Robert stood, pain thudding in his knees, hands, and cracked toe. He made a quick, angry lunge for the cat. The shriek of frozen snow and the sudden movement startled the animal and it dashed another fifteen feet away, finally hauled to a stop by curiosity at its icy surroundings.

  “Damn,” Robert muttered.

  The cat was blending into the dimness and the snow pack. It was getting away. He moved after it but his steps in the snow were like shouts that pushed the cat ahead. It ran out into the road; no traffic at that hour. The road surface was a pale strip. Bits of road salt gleamed dully, much too cold for them to be of any use.

  Robert turned to look back at Ben’s house. He wanted Ethel to see him and understand his predicament and send reinforcements. But the front of the house was still dark. The orange glow from the kitchen was the only light. The Wilsons were hunkered down in the painted safety of their basement; or they might have gone to bed, Christmas over.

  When Robert turned back the cat was gone. Then he thought he saw it in the shrubs across the street, a flickering of snow-­gray shadow. He ran to the spot but the cat was not there. He got down on hands and knees and sniffed like a dog in the cold beneath the shrubs. The earth was turned there in frozen chunks. No cats, however. Ben’s house seemed a mile away and impossibly inviting on the far side of the street.

  He ran down a narrow path between two houses, making a soft, panicky racket of breathing. The cat was gone, but he pursued its last verifiable direction of travel in hopes of catching up to it again. He stood very still in the backyard of a house whose rear patio door released muffled squeals of childish greed. He heard paper ripping, and a man’s voice cautioning against hurry.

  From where he stood, Robert could see the rear of a half dozen houses. Smoke rolled up from chimneys. Christmas had begun. He said a prayer for the lost kitten and went home.

  Ethel was waiting at the door.

  “I called the Wilsons to see where you were,” she said. “They said you left fifteen minutes ago.”

  “I lost the cat.”

  “What?”

  “I was crossing the yard and tripped and dropped the cat,” Robert said. He shrugged; he couldn’t believe it himself. “It got away.”

  She was on the porch without a coat. He steered her by the shoulders back into the house, then hung his coat on the clothes tree.

  “Don’t say anything about the cat,” Ethel told him in a whisper. “Olive’s been told. And Stephen. But the boys don’t know. We’ll pretend the cat never existed.”

  “I have gifts for them,” Robert said.

  She was not impressed by this. She gave him a last disbelieving look and went into the kitchen.

  Everyone was waiting for him. He wished them all a Merry Christmas when he came into the kitchen. He shook Stephen’s hand. He kissed Olive and attempted to kiss Ethel, but she leaned clear on a pretext of pouring coffee. He could see her infuriated face rounded in a dozen glass balls hanging from the Christmas tree.

  To Ethel, he gave a thermos and a plastic coin tray with an adhesive bottom to stick on the dash of her cab. She was always complaining of having to dig through her pocket for change, and expressing a desire for hot coffee in the middle of the morning.

  To Olive, he gave a new swimsuit and a pair of eyecup goggles. She thanked him and kissed him.

  “I want you to swim again,” he told her. “With me. Without me. I don’t care.” He did not say so, but he saw her body losing its swimmer’s hardness, its contours of ridged muscles he loved so much. He knew she would not come along with him on his dives for Ben.

  To Buzz, he gave a pair of new spikes with a pitching toe, a new glove, and a new ball. Buzz sat with these gifts in his lap, just staring at them. Leather’s boyhood aroma filled the kitchen. He rolled the ball in his long fingers. He had not thrown since that day Robert came to see him in the cage at school. He did not need a new glove. Just holding the baseball and the memory of pitching it made Buzz think his arm ached. But he thanked Robert just the same.

  To Duke, Robert gave an envelope. Duke tore it open and unfolded the brochure inside. He read it and turned it over in his hands. His eyes glistened with embarrassment.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  Ethel took the brochure from him.

  “It’s a new leg,” Robert said. “That’s more or less a gift certificate, good for one new leg.”

  “Robert—­”

  “We have to go to Madison,” Robert said to Ethel, “to have the leg fitted. Then he’s ready to ramble.”

  “I don’t want it,” Duke said.

  “Sure you do. In a month you’ll think you were born with it,” Robert said.

  “No way.” Duke’s mouth twisted against a desire to cry. When his mother tried to give him the brochure he swatted it away. He hopped out of the kitchen and down the hall. They waited for his door to slam, but he closed it like a gentleman, and the soft click he produced put a hole in their Christmas no one tried to fill.

  ROBERT TOOK A nap in the afternoon with Olive in the sunny cold of her bedroom, then dressed and went to his parents’ house. The house had a seductive warmth after winter at Ben’s house. It had no flowing drafts or fields of cold air. The heat alone was almost reason enough to stay.

  His mother kissed him Merry Christmas. She wore jeans and a dark green sweater, the sleeves pushed up above her elbows. A cluster of glazed red berries had been pinned above her heart.

  “How are things over there?” she asked.

  “Fair.”

  Dave came to greet him. He allowed Robert to set down his packages, then hugged him. He presented Robert with a cup of eggnog, cinnamon spread lightly over the yellow skin. He wore a red T-­shirt with the green letters of the
alphabet arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree. Robert glanced at it, then moved on, lacking the motivation to explore it in depth.

  “How fair?” Evelyn asked.

  “I lost a cat. I went next door to get it from the ­people who were watching it for Ethel. On my way back I tripped and fell and the damn cat got away.”

  His parents listened to this with grim fascination. Their arms were linked behind each other’s back.

  “To Duke, I gave a leg.”

  “A leg?” Dave said.

  “Yes. A prosthetic device.”

  “Isn’t that expensive?”

  “A small fortune,” Robert said, though the price had been less than he expected. “I’ve arranged to pay for it month by month.”

  “That’s a wonderful gift for him,” Evelyn said.

  “Duke will have nothing to do with it. He’s afraid of the idea, I think. He is just getting comfortable with the idea of having only one leg.”

  They took seats in the living room. The tree was in its traditional corner, frosted with lights and tinsel as old as Robert. It was also a tradition: the picking of the tinsel off the dried tree in the early days of the new year. The wrinkled strands, plucked delicately as old bones from their beds, were laid to rest until the following Christmas in the box they had been bought in.

  Robert was thinking about the lost cat, calculating its chances of survival. Olive had not mentioned it. Ethel had told Stephen what had happened, and the man’s vague frown of disapproval whenever he regarded Robert merely deepened.

  “Al Gasconade’s in town,” Evelyn said.

  “You saw him?”

  “I saw his mother. She told me. I told her where you were working and she said she’d tell Al. He’s with the Tribune now.”

  Robert sipped his eggnog. He would like to see Al again. Al had remained on the track while he had stepped off long ago. He was curious what Al thought of all this.

  His father stood up in front of Robert. He ran his hands down the tree of green letters.

  “My Christmas message,” he proudly proclaimed.

  *