Crows

by Charles Dickinson

  “It would be awfully cold getting up at five,” Robert said. She would rise and snap the warm seal they had formed, like a butterfly emerging prematurely.

  “I have to want to do this,” Olive said, nodding. “And this guy, this coach, he seems very stern and determined. He won’t let me slide, I can tell that. You, you’ve let me slide.”

  WHEN HE AWOKE he found Ethel in the kitchen scrubbing the faded floor tiles with a wood-­backed brush. Her hair was held out of her eyes with a pine-­green scarf. When she saw him in the doorway to the kitchen she ordered him to halt.

  “Stop right there,” she said. “If you wanted to eat, you should’ve gotten up earlier.”

  He did not argue and she returned to her work. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded, watching her. She had a narrow waist for a mother of three, flowering into hips and buttocks held tight in old pink denim pants now wet and dark at the knees. Her breasts were small, like O’s. Her neck was cord taut with the exertion of work.

  She stopped and faced him again. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Leave. I won’t be through here for an hour. Go eat in town.”

  “Too expensive,” Robert said. “I’m saving my money.”

  She made a huff of disbelief.

  “Did O tell you she may join the M.C. swim team?” Robert asked.

  “Yes. She was quite excited that they might pay for part of her school. I don’t want that to be the only reason she does it.”

  “She said she wants to race.”

  “She wants something in her life besides school, this cold, and an extremely reluctant suitor.”

  “Am I a suitor?”

  “You tell me,” Ethel said, glaring up at him from under a loosed swatch of hair. “She deserves more than what you’ve given her.”

  “What have I given her?” Robert asked.

  “From what I can tell,” she said, “a warm body to sleep next to and roll around in bed with, and not much else. She might as well be an electric blanket for all the feeling you show her.”

  “We know each other too well to fall in love,” Robert said.

  “Then let her go race. Sleep in your own room, or if it’s too cold, move out,” Ethel said. “But she’s worth more than you show her. There’s more to my daughter than spread legs, pardon me.”

  Robert, feeling slapped, would not back away. Ethel went on scrubbing the floor with angry, digging strokes of the brush.

  “How are things with you and Steve?”

  She dropped the brush into the bucket of black water at her side. With an exaggerated effort of unbending she rose to her feet. She winced at Robert. “I thought he was going to take me away from all this. But I was wrong.”

  “All what?”

  “This house. Driving a cab. Worrying.”

  “He blew it New Year’s Eve, didn’t he?”

  Considering this, she took in air until her cheeks were round, then let it escape with a whoosh!

  “Yes. He made the mistake of telling me things I already knew quite well, thank you. He got ahead of himself—­ahead of both of us. He meant well. It just backfired.”

  She returned to her knees and took the dripping brush from the water. She said, “So I have returned to the life of the lonely widow, after a brief fling as a merry widow.”

  “What did he say about Ben that was true?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “I just know that at the time they were the wrong things to say.”

  “Do you miss him?” Robert asked. “Ben?”

  “Go away. I’ll never miss him as much as you think I should.”

  He changed into his zebra shirt and black pants and headed into the cold. He would eat lunch in town, then go to work. But he turned away at the restaurant door and went to his parents’ shop. At the sound of the door opening his father came out of the back room. His eyes were eager and hopeful. He wore no T-­shirt, just a plain white shirt with a pen in the pocket and the sleeves rolled up.

  “Robert,” he said.

  “How’s business?”

  Dave worked his hands without answering. There was no hiding the silence of the rooms, front and back.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “She’s taking some time off,” his father said quickly. His words were jerky with their desire to carry no feeling. “A week or two,” he added.

  The shop had that look it always got as it degenerated toward failure; the look of no longer trying. Care was missing in the placement of displays, shirts were crammed unfolded back into the high racks behind the counter, snips of felt lay on the floor blatant and embarrassing to Robert as dandruff flakes on his father’s shoulder. A light was burned out on one wall. The dead bulb stuck out like a tumor amid the working lights, patiently waiting to spread to the others.

  “Things don’t look good, Dave.”

  “I’ve been in better positions.”

  “I sense you’re about to fold this particular tent.”

  “My son the mind reader,” Dave said. But he did not deny Robert’s assertion.

  “How long has Evelyn been gone?”

  Dave turned to check a small calendar on the wall. He seemed to be trying to figure something, but could not. Then Robert saw the calendar was for January, when they were already well into February. Robert went behind the counter and tore off the month and crumpled it in his hand.

  His father examined the new month. “This is the sixth day,” he said, as though he could not believe it. “She said she wanted to have some time to herself. She wanted to putter—­that was the exact word she used, Rob-­O—­putter, like she’s Sam Snead, that she wanted to putter around the house. She wanted to pursue other interests.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. He said, “You tell me: What other interests?”

  “I don’t know,” Robert said. All his life his mother’s only interest had been her husband and whatever business he was currently running into the ground. She had seemed to draw everything she required from the wiry little man who lost his hair and grew a small, round belly, as though the hair was packed there under his shirt for safekeeping.

  Now she was gone; or gone home. She scared Robert, cutting Dave loose the way she had. He checked the clock. Did he have time before work to talk to her?

  “I hear good things about you around town,” Dave said cagily.

  “Things?”

  “Good things. Word travels in Mozart. They talk about my son the big shot, about to take over in SportsHeaven.”

  “No truth to that,” Robert said. He wondered if Joe Marsh heard the same stories; or was he removed, his ears sheltered by Mrs. Marsh’s thighs?

  “You’ve shot up like a Roman candle,” Dave said, getting into the spirit of his bragging. “Word has it you are the favorite of Mr. Branch.”

  “You know Herm?”

  “Herm? Herm, is it? In my day it would’ve been Mr. Branch for the first ten years.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not personally. But he’s famous in this state. Mr. Sports. He has a cup of coffee and a piece of pie when he’s in town. He talks to the locals, and what he says is you’ve got comer written all over you. One day you’re part-­time seasonal help, the next day you’re No. 2 man.”

  “He’s been nice to me,” Robert said.

  “And . . . I hear bad things about the No. 1 man. Bad things.”

  “Joe?”

  His father nodded. “His days are numbered,” he predicted with cruel good humor. “You’ll be in the driver’s seat by the All-­Star break.”

  “Joe’s a good guy,” Robert said. “He’s just a little turned around right now.”

  “So spin him!” Dave cried sharply, jabbing a finger at his son. “That’s how it’s done in the world, Rob-­O. If a man
is a little turned around, you spin him until he’s so dizzy he falls right out of the hunt. That bandoleer he wears! Does he think ­people aren’t cognizant of that kind of oddball behavior?”

  “He’s in charge,” Robert said, weary of his father’s wind. In all the time he had been in the store no customers had entered, no phones had rung; the world might have come to a halt for his father the day his wife went home.

  “I have to proceed on the assumption he will be in charge for the time being,” Robert said.

  His father waved a hand and turned his back on his son. “Ah! No killer instinct,” he said.

  Robert formed sharp rebuking words but refrained from letting them fly. His father, from the back, looked old and small, with his thin-­skinned pants low on his hips and his shirttail out. With Evelyn gone he looked defenseless.

  “Maybe, Dave. I gotta go to work. Sell some balls.”

  His father waved a hand without looking at his son, then slipped like a bather through the curtains into the shadowy back room. But he came out again almost immediately, the sound of Robert departing identical to the sound of someone—­wife, customer—­arriving.

  ROBERT, SHORT OF time, ran through the sunny cold air to the house of his parents. The walk up to the house was clear and so straight through the parallel ranges of snow that it looked carved, shaved and measured with a level.

  His mother answered the door holding a book and looking pleased with herself. She gave him a kiss.

  “What have you done?” Robert asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was at the store. Dave is completely lost.”

  She had been reading on the couch in a patch of sun and now she resumed her post.

  “I was just tired of it,” she declared. “I’m fifty-­five years old and I felt it was time for me to do something else. On my own.”

  “But, Dave—­”

  She waved a hand. “Nonsense, Dave. He’ll survive. He says my not being there is like I died. And there’s some truth to that. But this way he’s got me to come home to. So it’s good practice for him.”

  “What do you do all day?”

  She stretched, smiling as though the action was faintly sinful. “As little as possible,” she said. “Mostly I read.” She frowned. “Don’t look at me like I’ve let you down. It’s an exact replica of the look your father gives me when he leaves for work.” She took a deep breath. “He was starting to bore me, and that scared me. I never thought I’d feel that way about him.”

  Robert was out of time and told her so.

  “Dave brags about you to anyone who will listen,” she revealed, standing. “He goes to his meetings and tells all his friends what a success you are. It enlivens him.”

  “Big deal—­assistant manager.”

  “To him, it is,” she said. She did the buttons on his coat. Mother and son were nearly the same height. “He’s always had me,” she said. “He’s never had to be valuable to anyone other than his wife. So for you to become assistant manager of a store you don’t own—­that’s impressive to him.”

  “Do you plan to stay away for good?”

  She nodded. “I have retired.”

  “What’s next for him then? When T-­shirts fold?”

  Evelyn shrugged. “He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m leaving that up to him, too.”

  “It will kill him,” Robert said.

  “He’ll live,” she replied confidently. She had the door open and with a fingertip in the condensation on the storm door window, absently sketched a circle, then divided it like a pie in half, quarters, eighths; by then the heat from her finger made the circle start to run. She kissed her son good-­bye.

  AT SPORTSHEAVEN, A package awaited him. Its bulky rectangular shape in the corner of the back room reminded Robert that spring was near, that most of another winter had been put behind.

  He said hello to Joe Marsh, who sat in his bandoleer smoking at his desk. “Package for you,” Joe said.

  “Yeah,” Robert said. He was tempted to leave the package for later, to open at home. He knew what it was. He knew the month and year in the future when he would finish paying for it. With it, and Duke’s new leg, he was heavily committed to installment debt. This frankly amazed him, a man who six months before would not pay to see a movie with the girl he slept with.

  Joe Marsh offered a mint from a roll he kept in his bandoleer. Robert accepted the candy; it was pale green with deep red specks imbedded in it. He noticed a half-­eaten link of dried sausage in one of Joe’s loops; put there for safekeeping. His father’s voice banged in his head and made him embarrassed for Joe Marsh: cognizant.

  “Is that the wet suit?” Joe Marsh asked. The mint had bought him a question or two.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Saw the credit-­card paper,” he said.

  “It will give me a ­couple extra months at each end of the diving season. I got the long-­cuff, three-­finger mitts, ice cap, boots.”

  Joe Marsh shrugged. “Snug as a bug. You going to open it?”

  “Not here. It’ll just get in the way.”

  “It’s in the way now, Bob.” He glanced at Robert. “You ever met Mrs. Marsh?”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” Robert said. He did not really want to meet her, either. She would stand naked in his imagination.

  “She’s on her way over,” Joe said. “I’m taking the night off.”

  “Any reason?”

  He held a ball of crumpled paper in his palm, his wrist cocked as in the days when he was somebody. With a rolling of his shoulders in the chair he mimed an offensive move and launched the paper ball toward a distant wide-­mouthed wastebasket. It went in.

  He beamed at Robert. He might have forgotten for a moment where they were; for a moment he was a star again, and Robert a sportswriter whose only responsibility was to spell the names correctly and tell Joe Marsh’s story well.

  “I’ve got the blues,” he said, frowning at the last word as if he had just been reminded of the fact. “I’m going to take the wife to a movie in Madison. Maybe dinner. Then—­”

  “I know,” Robert interrupted. He did not want the details. Mrs. Marsh might arrive in the small room at any moment to hear her husband’s lewd commentary.

  Joe Marsh pouted, denied. “Of course, if I leave, Herm will probably show up,” he whined. “I’ve worked eleven days in a row and no sign of him. He hasn’t even called.”

  “He probably figures you’ve got the place under control.”

  Joe Marsh’s eyes clouded faintly at this thought; to be so trusted, of such intrinsic value. But he knew otherwise and frowned again. He stood and hung the bandoleer on the peg.

  “Anyway—­I’m taking the night off.”

  “What have you left for me to do?” Robert asked.

  Joe Marsh tapped a stack of paper with a red pencil, leaving faint dots. “I left you the ordering here,” he said. “And you’ll have to do the books later. We also got a shitload of spring gear in this afternoon. It’s in the loading area. Find a place for it and get the kids to stock it for you.” He smiled, spread his hands. “Hey, you’re No. 2 here. That means No. 1 can shit on you and call it delegating authority.” His smile cracked unevenly across his face.

  Joe Marsh picked up the phone and punched a number. He wadded another ball of paper, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder. He stood like this for long moments, then hung up.

  “She must be on her way,” he said, then shot the paper into the basket. “She almost refused to pick me up. She’s got the car, but she wanted me to walk over and meet her at the apartment.”

  A slender arm passed through the curtains of the back room doorway, a small hand with pink painted nails and a beaten silver spoon ring.

  “You here, Joe?” a woman a
sked in a low voice. She thrust her head in and saw her husband. Robert was behind her, leaning on the desk. She wore her thick brown hair blown into a disciplined cloud of tight curls. She was little, more than foot shorter than her husband, with an appealing weight in the breasts and hips. Her face seemed freshly removed from a bad wind; her skin was very red, with shallow creases and minute pits, as if she had been asleep on a beach. Her eyes were the brown of the very best basketballs. Robert thought he remembered her from the games he had covered years ago; she had sat and rooted Joe Marsh on.

  Joe introduced them and she shook his hand. Joe had his coat on and she had her arm through his, already leading him away.

  “Ready to go, honey?”

  Robert wished Joe Marsh had never said a word about her. Every touch and turn of her frame carried some hidden signal.

  “If Herm does show up, tell him about the eleven straight days I worked,” Joe said. “Don’t sweat all the other stuff. Do what you can.”

  Robert nodded. Mrs. Marsh was already out of sight. Then Joe Marsh was gone.

  Robert chewed another mint from Joe’s bandoleer. He stood trying to decide where to begin work. Mrs. Marsh had had on red stockings, red shoes, and a fur-­collared coat. He saw her clearly standing to cheer Joe Marsh as he lifted free of the defending knot of players to nail the ball home. He saw her hands come together and go away in applause, saw her tight curls shiver. She gasped as the ref rushed in, his whistle shrieking, to call a foul. She took the grip strengthener from her purse and she returned it to the shelf, and when her offer of a bribe was refused and she was free again, she pivoted with the deftness of her husband and walked away.

  HERM BRANCH DID come to the store that night, and Robert almost laughed at Joe Marsh’s prescience; he had a feel for the approaching end of his job.

  There was no warning at all over the PA, Herm just appeared in the back room where Robert worked on the ordering.

  “Hey, Mr. Sports Scribe,” Herm said jovially, looking around. He held his Russian hat.

  “Hello, Herm.”

  “The store’s a mess,” he complained without rancor. “In one aisle I found two cigarette butts and a gum wrapper, just your generic litter. One aisle, this was.”