Crows

by Charles Dickinson

  He climbed the stairs to Ben’s old office. He met no one along the way. The office was locked and dark. A student had taped a note to the door: PROF. MASON . . . HAVE BAD STREP THROAT . . . MUST MISS EXAM . . . MAKE-­UP POSSIBLE? WILL CALL. O. HEDDIFF. SEC 3-­A.

  “I’ll bet,” Robert muttered. O. Heddiff was taking a chance leaving a note in the heart of winter where anyone could get at it.

  He left a note of his own: ANY CROW TALES? CALL ROBERT. A FRIEND OF BEN’S. 675-­5227. PLEASE.

  His hope was that the woman would return while he stood outside her office door. He did not want to go home to wait for her to call. But after a half hour, Professor Mason had not appeared. He feared that she too was holed up at home for the winter; teachers and students, disgusted with their lots, passing bogus notes back and forth to each other, neither knowing the other had also gone into hiding.

  Robert went down the stairs and back outside. Across the wide white sweep of the campus not a single person moved. Wind picked up snow and threw it against vertical surfaces with the solid pattering of sand.

  He headed for home. The wind was at his back and he progressed easily across the campus to the lake. His exertion kept him warm and he found he liked it out there on the ice. The wind had blown his tracks from the first crossing faint; they were straight as smoke rising on a calm day, testament to his determination to be in out of the cold.

  Feeling fine, warm, he altered his course slightly, heading for the Cow and the Calf. The Calf, that low flat plate of stone, was covered with snow. Only a rise in the plane of the lake, and memory, told him of its presence.

  The Cow had high sheer sides glazed with thin ice. It felt grainy to Robert’s touch. He had never been on the Cow; very few ­people had. The Calf’s smooth accessibility, the way it lay like a griddle for the summer sunbathers, made the difficult climb onto the Cow unnecessary. It was a graceless hump of stone thirty feet higher than the water level. Scratchy pines grew like wild hairs in the creases of the rock.

  Robert walked all around the island looking for a way up. Already the cold was worming back into him. He allowed himself one orbit of the hunched rock and found on the side away from Ben’s house (which comforted him with its green book shape) a narrow foothold that led up to another narrower foothold. From there he grabbed a pine branch and pulled himself up the icy face, and onto the Cow.

  And once up, he wondered why he had bothered. He had thought he might find some clue to Ben, or Ben himself. But there was nothing; not even the litter of picnickers. The thin pines hastened the impression of darkness. They turned the wind into sad music. The surface of the Cow was not level at any one place, and with its icy casing made him feel he could slide off at any moment.

  He looked for the way down, shivering. He could not find the small steps in the rock he had taken up. Reaching blindly with his foot for a purchase, he started to slip. No pines came forward to be clutched. The rock scraped ferociously along the inside of his lead leg. Then he went over the side. In summer he would have torn his body badly, scraping it, plunging into the cold water and cracking his bones on the rocks just below the surface.

  But in winter the fall was short and the ice held. He hit with a jolt that cut his tongue; Ben might have heard the thud. Some muscle in that warm, lightless meeting place of legs, buttocks, and testicles was stretched or torn and it hurt to walk. It would ache in the morning and exhibit a bruise that Olive, but not Robert, could see.

  When he reached home limping he was told a Professor Mason had called for him while he was out.

  SHE WAS WAITING for him in a booth of the restaurant the following day. The gray sweater she wore had a collar tugged so slack with use that it hung almost like a bib, specks of white ash caught in it. She was smoking and drinking coffee and appeared utterly comfortable with herself, her clothes, her surroundings. She smiled when she saw Robert, half rose to shake his hand, then hooked ash blond hair behind her ears.

  “I’m glad you left that note,” she said at once.

  He smiled and lowered himself gingerly into the booth. He had limped down the restaurant aisle, full of an odd anxiety, a sense he was on display; thinking everyone knew his reason for being there, everyone knew this woman, everyone knew Ben and the crow tales, everyone knew everything.

  “I pulled a muscle yesterday,” Robert explained, when the woman remarked with her eyes on his careful motion.

  “Too bad.”

  Her eyes matched her sweater; the same gray, and somehow pulled out of shape.

  She jabbed out a cigarette and lit another.

  “You’d be surprised how many kids just drop around,” she said. “Some claim to not know he’s dead. Others just stand in the doorway and look around. Take in the essence. It’s sad. They make me miss him again.”

  Robert glanced out the window. The temperature that day at noon was exactly 0˚.

  “I was told a while ago that he was a mediocre teacher,” Robert said. “Also that he was a cheat. And—­” He forced his voice to be still, let the last charge die. “If so, why do students come to see him now?”

  “He was a charming man,” the woman said. “That is a poor assessment, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “Was he a bad teacher?”

  “Not bad. There were better teachers, teachers who got the material across more effectively. But do students visit their offices like they’re shrines? I doubt it sincerely.”

  She exhaled smoke. Robert became lost in it, coughed. She said, “I get to work in the morning sometimes and find the lock picked. I’ve had it changed three times.”

  “Are things missing?”

  “His things,” she said. “They are respectful, though, these thieves. They don’t empty the shrine. They just take one or two things, maybe a grade book or an old petri dish or a water glass. They’re understanding.”

  “Maybe it’s one person cleaning you out a little at a time.”

  She considered this. “I don’t think so. I think it’s different ­people, each wanting a piece of him. He might have been the first teacher in sixteen years of school who ever meant anything to them. Doesn’t speak well for the rest of us, does it? Nobody steals anything of mine.”

  “You aren’t missing,” Robert said. ­“People know where they can get hold of you. Death is an exalted state to kids that age; they think Ben has the answers to the big questions. Maybe they will be able to divine part of the answer in his grade book, or a water glass.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “And you’re living in his house? Think how you’d be envied if these other Professor Ladysmith worshipers knew. Raising his kids, are you? Sleeping with his widow?”

  “No. I help out. The house requires a lot of work. They allow me to stay.” And because he did not like the directness of her words about Ethel, he added, “And I sleep with his daughter.”

  “What do you do otherwise?”

  “I work at SportsHeaven. I have to go there soon.” He lifted his sweater to show her his zebra shirt. “We have to wear these,” he said. “I was hired for the Christmas season, then asked to stay on. The only one they asked to stay, by the way.”

  “Ben would be proud,” she said. “He respected ­people who worked, ­people who did a good job.”

  Robert looked away. She kept returning to Ben, just when he thought they had broken clear.

  “You have a pretty name,” he said.

  “Thank you. Ara is short for Arabesque. My mother wanted me to be a ballerina. For seven excruciating years I was put through ballet lessons that my mother wished she could take.” She held out the hand that held her cigarette, then pulled her sleeve up past her elbow. Her hands were appealing; large, stained with nicotine and red-­ink slashes, and the skin giving a wide-­pored impression of thickness, as if it would be difficult to puncture. Her long forearm had an overlay of muscle; her wrist was thick and braided
with veins.

  “Big, right?” she said. “I am a big-­boned woman head to toe. Gravity has a real hold on girls like me. All those pretty jumps . . . like the cow going over the moon. To this day Mother calls me Arabesque. Never Ara. As though I might go up on point at any moment.”

  Robert’s father came into the restaurant then and winked at Robert while he picked through the coins in his hand to buy a gum and a newspaper. His T-­shirt was bright yellow, with a bumblebee stencil on the front.

  “There’s my father,” Robert said; he didn’t know why.

  Ara swiveled in the booth to look behind her. His father saw her as she waved. Dave came toward them.

  “He looks like you,” she said, facing Robert again. “You both have that shy, wise-­ass demeanor.”

  “Long time no see,” Dave said. He shook Ara’s hand. “My name’s Dave Cigar.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Ara Mason.”

  His father reached across the table to grab Robert’s hand, swirling Ara’s ashes as he did so. “I’m Dave Cigar,” he repeated. “A local merchant.”

  “Nice shirt, Dave.”

  “It’s my way of fighting winter. Bees. Flowers. Pollination. Warm images. Anything. I’ve had winter up to here.” He gave himself a pat on the head.

  “Another two months at least, Dave,” Robert said. “Best to just let time slide. Relax. Smooth the edges.” Robert said all this without believing it. The novelty of this woman was all that kept winter from beating him down utterly.

  Dave said, “My son the buddha.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Business has been better. I told you—­nobody thinks T-­shirts when it’s twenty below. What do you do for a living, young lady?”

  “I’m a professor at M.C.”

  “And what do you profess?”

  She grinned. “I profess to know biology.”

  “Where do animals go in the winter?”

  “Some hibernate. Some migrate. Some die.”

  “And some fools stay in town,” his father said.

  “Would you like to sit down?” Ara asked, taking pity on the forlorn air he put out.

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I’ve got to get back. Someone might want a T-­shirt to remind them of summer. Or a baseball team might want to get a jump on the season by buying their uniforms in zero-­degree weather.” He furrowed his brow, then grinned. “Might be a sale idea in there somewhere. A pre–freezing mark sale. A going over thirty-­two degrees sale. Pleased to meet you.” To Robert he said, “You, too.”

  Dave walked away from them. On the back of his yellow shirt was a stencil of a bee’s behind, with a stinger tipped in the shape of a heart.

  “I like him,” she said. “Your last name is really Cigar?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like him.”

  “I can’t take him seriously,” Robert said, irked at his father’s self-­deprecating charm, the same running attitude that snared his mother; a shy wise-­ass.

  Ara laughed at his observation; she seemed to sense it would annoy him. She flashed stained teeth when she threw back her head, exposing a long cave of throat.

  “My mother owns the site where the store’s located,” he said. “One after another my father’s moved various going concerns in and out of there. Wind chimes. Candles. Stationery. You name it. Now T-­shirts. It’s been T-­shirts for nearly six months, which makes it an unqualified success. But business has been slow forever. T-­shirts could go at any time. And if my mother didn’t own the store, Dave would’ve been gone long ago.”

  “Mozart needs ­people like your mother and father,” Ara said.

  “Why?”

  “Business is the heart,” she said with a serious nod, as though she meant it. “Commerce is the hub around which everything revolves. Why is any town built in a particular spot? Because that’s where the money settled.”

  “Oblong Lake,” Robert countered. “No lake, no Mozart. No Mozart, no college. No college, no Professor Mason.”

  “But the town and the college and you and I are on Oblong Lake because there is money to be made,” she said. “And men like your father keep it running.”

  “My mother,” Robert said, “deserves nine-­tenths of the credit.” He was uncomfortable in the presence of praise of his father. Men and women meeting Robert for the first time were forever telling him about his father, with his wisecracks and his hangdog charm. And all Robert could think of were the lines of merchandise going in and out of the store, the front rooms and the basement of their house crammed with the next line, only waiting for the latest failed goods to be cleared out and the shelves dusted. And in the midst of that chaotic failure was Evelyn with her unblinking love and support for her husband. She worked twice as hard as Dave, and when Robert complained she told him that was how they operated best; Dave was the salesman, the idea man. “And I’m the mule,” his mother said, beaming.

  “My parents’ T-­shirts are a very minor spoke in Mozart’s wheel of commerce,” he told Ara.

  She leaned toward him, hooking her hair behind her ears to keep it from falling into her coffee. She was about to say something—­about his father, he was sure—­but he quickly slid halfway out of the booth. He knew he was being rude; her gray eyes were startled at his sudden motions of departure.

  “I have to go to work,” he said.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t visit longer.”

  He pulled some bills from his wallet to cover the check, which was pale green and made transparent in spots with grease. Their waitress’s name was Winnie; she had dotted her i’s with circles and in these circles drawn simple smiling faces.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “Can I walk you to work?”

  The question made him smile. Its phrasing, the clarity of it, made it touching. He was confused by the need it conveyed, however. For some reason she wanted to be with him.

  He said, “If you want. That would be nice.”

  Ara pulled on a cap knitted from an explosion of colored yarns. Its tasseled end hung halfway down her back. Her mittens were a matching riot of color.

  Outside, she explained, “My ex bought me these.” Her eyes were watery from the punch of the cold. Robert said nothing, just walked on. He could already feel the cold seeping up through his boots. At the corner where they turned left onto the block of SportsHeaven a digital time/temperature clock reported it was –2˚. Down two degrees. Just past noon and the cold was marching toward darkness with its starry frost of deep space.

  “I’m late,” he said to Ara, to excuse his breaking into a limping half trot. She kept up almost gratefully. They reached the store and stepped into the space between the outer and inner doors.

  “I don’t envy you the run back to your car,” Robert said.

  She grimaced and laughed. Her nose was red and her eyes gray; his mother’s old school colors, he recalled absently. He wanted to get inside and start work.

  “You busy later?” she asked, looking directly at him.

  “I work until almost midnight,” he said. Joe Marsh kept giving him responsibilities and grudging quarter and half-­dollar an hour pay raises that he said came straight from Herm Branch.

  The woman handed him a violet business card; she had been holding it a long time, he realized; there was a damp indentation at one edge curved to the arc of her thumb. On the card was printed her name, address, and phone number.

  “This is where I live,” she said. She understood the thin ice she had allowed herself to venture out upon, and required he make at least part of the trip with her.

  “Midnight’s not too late?”

  “No. We’ll exchange crow tales. One of Ben’s.” She had learned that in Ben lay a certain golden charm with which to obtain things of value, whether companionship or peace or a favor. She used it with Robert and he
said he would be there, as she had known he would.

  THE DAY’S WORK unwound in slow progression. Joe Marsh removed his bandoleer and hung it on a peg when Robert arrived, then went home for lunch.

  The cold kept customers away and for the next two hours Robert was practically alone in the store but for the girl up front at the cash register. He walked in the aisles straightening stock, certain items needing nothing more than a firm, loving touch to settle perfectly in their places. He was not bored; he felt afloat in the huge blue cavern of balls and pressurized air.

  He heard the tiny electric pop over the speaker that preceded an announcement. Perhaps a customer had entered the store; perhaps the girl was calling out to ask if she had been abandoned.

  But she announced, “Foul-­weather gear on one! Foul-­weather gear on one!”

  Herm Branch appeared at Robert’s side. They said hello and shook hands. Robert felt bad for Joe; out to lunch again when the owner arrived.

  “Hello, Mr. Sports Scribe,” Herm said heartily, smiling, a display of large teeth.

  “Joe here?” he asked, removing his Russian hat.

  “He’s at lunch. You always come when he’s at lunch.”

  “Joe always comes when he’s at lunch,” Herm said, and laughed with himself. “He tell you yet?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Your promotion. You’re assistant manager. Straight salary now.”

  Herm did not name a figure, though Robert waited. The owner said nothing, waiting himself, and finally Robert said, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Joe lobbied very hard for you. He said you were a good worker, he trusted you, you don’t steal me blind. Somebody like that should be encouraged.”

  “Not bad for seasonal help,” Robert said.

  “I’ll say!” Herm exclaimed. “This is unheard of in the annals of SportsHeaven. Don’t tell Joe I told you. Pretend you’re surprised.”