A Thousand Falling Crows

by Larry D. Sweazy

  To his surprise, the dog didn’t act aggressive at all. Most animals this side of wild would try to skitter away with a growl and barred teeth if they were hurt. But not this one. It stared into Sonny’s eyes, whimpered again when he didn’t respond, and held up its front paw.

  “You’re gonna make this hard on me, aren’t you?” He looked quickly under its belly, and added, “Boy.”

  The dog just stared at Sonny. It was more than he could take. He looked away again and took in the gathering loneliness of the situation. He knew the best thing he could do was to raise the gun and pull the trigger without any further ado. Be done with it. Get it over with and get on down the road. Put it out of its misery and go home.

  Sonny lowered his head. He couldn’t do it. He’d seen enough death and killing for one day. The image of Tom Turnell taking a shotgun blast in the stomach flashed through his mind. He couldn’t find it in himself to shoot the poor dog, pull the trigger, or kill any living thing.

  The dog was a hound dog of some kind. A mutt. Short haired, mostly all black from what Sonny could see, with a white patch on its chest and on the tip of its tail. He shrugged at the realization, walked back to the truck, and deposited the .45 under the driver’s seat, then made his way back to the dog. He eased down into the ditch until he was about three feet in front of the dog. It hadn’t moved an inch.

  “Can you walk?” Sonny asked, then said, “That was a stupid question wasn’t it? Like you can understand a word I‘m saying.” He crouched and offered his hand to the dog, balling his fingers into a fist, protecting them from a sudden attack. He didn’t know this dog, still didn’t trust it.

  Sonny’d had dogs come in and out of his life since he was a boy. Working dogs mostly, ones that had a job around the house and weren’t there to be a pet. Ones that kept the coyotes and foxes out of the chicken house, when there had been one, or to bark an alert when there was a need. Mostly, a dog was an extra mouth to feed, a luxury if there was no task for it to keep up with—one that saved money. Scraps were tossed into the yard to feed it . These days, most folks didn’t have many scraps to offer an animal.

  Dogs that offered comfort or just plain old friendship were a thing of childhood. Jesse’d had a few dogs, but they would disappear or come up dead, until the point came when Martha said no more would be allowed around the house. Sonny was always working, and she was the one that would end up burying them.

  The dog leaned in and licked Sonny’s knuckles. Sonny smiled, then slowly opened his hand and gave the dog a gentle rub on the side of the head. The dog leaned into him and whimpered softly again.

  The cry was more than Sonny could take. He stood up, leaned down, scooped up the dog and stuffed it under his good arm.

  It occurred to Sonny that the bed of the truck might be too hard on the dog, so he walked over to the passenger-side door and eased the dog onto the seat. It was then that he saw the bone protruding from the right front leg. The movement caused blood to flow outward, and Sonny quickly settled the dog into the seat, pulled out his handkerchief, and wrapped it on the leg, the best he could, using it as a tourniquet to slow the flow of blood. One more time, his battlefield experience had come home with him. The dog stayed quiet and didn’t seem to mind the handkerchief. It settled down into the seat and didn’t move another inch.

  Pete Jorgenson lived three miles south of Wellington on a sprawling piece of land that had been in his family since the white man had settled in the county. Pete was tall, blonde, a hulking man of obvious Swedish descent who wouldn’t hesitate to reach in and pull a calf out of a cow if he had to or bind a sparrow’s wing and see it to flight again, even if he thought the bird would die before it healed. He was a gentle soul and the only animal doctor within fifty miles. It was the only place Sonny knew to take the dog.

  Like the rest of the houses along the county road, Pete’s house looked like it had fallen into disrepair. The two-story clapboard house was in serious need of a whitewash. The boards were gray and weathered, and a few of the shutters hung cockeyed, one way or the other. Most folks didn’t have the money to pay Pete for his services, though he kept up with the calls for them the best he could. They’d barter food if they had it or services if they could provide them. Currency had come in a lot of different forms, including relief from the government, if a man could bring himself to take it. Sonny doubted Pete did.

  By the time Sonny stopped the truck and had his hand on the door handle, Pete was already coming out the front door, followed closely by his wife, Lidde, a short, round woman, as tall as Pete’s shoulder and jolly as an elf was expected to be. Her cheeks were always poised to break into a smile. But there was no happiness on her face at the moment, only concern.

  “Didn’t expect to see you on this day, Ranger Burton,” Pete said, looking up from Sonny’s missing right arm and into his eyes as quick as he could.

  “Sonny,” he said. “I‘ve quit being a Ranger, Pete. I figured you’d heard that.”

  “I heard that, but I didn’t believe such a thing was possible. World don’t seem right without a Ranger Burton in it.”

  “There still is. My son, Jesse, took my place.”

  “Um, I heard that, too, yah.” The tone in Pete’s voice changed. There was a hint of disapproval in it. “What brings you here?” he asked, changing the subject as quick as he could.

  The reaction stunted Sonny’s response for a second. It concerned him that folks thought less of Jesse than they did him, but he knew it was a simple thing: these people didn’t like any kind of change. They’d had their fair share. Jesse was going to have to prove himself. It would just take time. Simple as that. At least Sonny hoped that was what it was.

  “Well, I hit a dog,” Sonny said. “He’s over here in the front seat.” Sonny walked around to the other side of the truck. “Broke his leg. I put a tourniquet on it and I was hoping you could fix him up, then find out where he belongs.”

  “I‘ll see what I can do,” Pete said.

  Lidde stayed on the porch, watching over them, drying her hands on a freshly bleached apron. “I‘ll clean off the table and get the things ready,” she said, turning and disappearing inside the house.

  “I can pay you, Pete,” Sonny said, as he opened the passenger door.

  “Oh, I‘m not worried about that.”

  “He seems friendly. He let me pick him up,” Sonny said.

  “Well, that’s a start, yah?” Pete let the dog smell him, then reached in, pulled him out of the seat and headed toward the house. The dog didn’t offer a peep and Sonny followed after Pete dutifully, prepared to wait and see about the dog’s outcome. It was the least he could do.

  A gang of blue jays appeared out of nowhere and began to mob the crows. They had been sitting on the telephone lines watching for anything that moved, anything that would offer them an opportunity to feed after the storm. If nothing appeared, they’d make their way to a cache of food stored away for just that reason. Times were tough, grain was hard to come by, as was anything else on the desolate land.

  The nuisance that was the jays was not welcome. They came out of nowhere and were intent on chasing the crows off for no reason. It was long past nesting season, so there were no eggs to protect. Most likely, it was for fun, entertainment, or to get the attention of a nearby hawk. Flying off with an annoyed chorus of caws, it was then that the crows saw the girl and the man stalking her, and their hopes for a meal of flesh and blood were raised.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Well,” Pete Jorgenson said, “I think he’s going to be all right.”

  Sonny was sitting in a small parlor just outside Pete’s office. It was empty with the exception of another chair, worn and soiled with the faint smell of an old animal, and a dusty bookshelf that held two books, the King James Version of the Bible and Moby Dick. Sonny hadn’t felt compelled to crack open either book while he waited.

  He stood up. “That’s good to hear. You have any idea where it might belong?”

  There was a
speck of blood on Pete’s sleeve that hadn’t been there before. His hands were clean and his eyes tired. “Can’t rightly say that I do. Looks like he’s been on his own for a while and doin’ a poor job of it at that. Vern Maxwell used to raise hunting hounds that kind of resemble this one, but they were a little more mottled. Blue like him though. Clean him up and set ’im out in the sun and this one will look like the dark evening sky. Boy, ole Vern had a bitch that could tree a coon like nothing I ever did see. Those were good days, out hunting with Vern. He loved them dogs. Was real stingy with the studs and even stingier with them bitches, wanted to keep the line pure. Most times, he’d have the pups fixed before he sold them off. And sell ’em he did. Probably made a decent sum every spring and fall. Kept records of the mutts, too. I never seen nothin’ like it, really. Well, there’s folks back east that do such things, but they got them fancy dogs. We don’t see that much here.”

  Sonny sighed. Pete was a talker, but he was a good man and he still carried a hint of a Swedish accent, and that made him interesting to listen to. But Sonny was past the point of tired. It had been a long day, after all, and he wanted to go home. “Vern Maxwell died about three years ago, if I recall.”

  “Sounds about right, but seems longer, yah,” Pete said. There was no sign of the dog or Lidde. The house was quiet, other than the tick of a cuckoo clock hanging on the wall in the foyer. “Vern took ill about a year and a half after the Crash. He was seein’ it tough before then, though.”

  Sonny nodded. “So this dog probably doesn’t belong there.”

  “I doubt it; it’s just his daughter and her boy in the old place now. She’s got no interest in dogs like her father. Last time I was out there, she was down to one, and that bitch, the dog mind you, was past the point of havin’ more pups. Cow had colic. Poor thing got into a patch of beans. I had to do a rumenotomy right then and there.”

  Sonny stared at Pete blankly.

  Pete read Sonny’s lack of understanding right away. “Cow had gas it couldn’t pass. I had to puncture the first chamber of the gut with a cannula and leave it there for a few days so’s all of the gas would escape. Kind of like a needle with a valve on it. Anyway, the cow survived and Betty had a source of milk again, so everything turned out dandy.” He smiled broadly for a second, then let it fade.

  Something clicked in Sonny’s brain, a connection that he hadn’t made until then. Not that it mattered. “She’s a nurse?”

  “That’s right. Betty Maxwell. Most folks just call her Nurse Betty.” Pete’s tone changed when he said her name, just like it had when he’d shown slight disapproval for Jesse.

  Sonny eyed him carefully, thought about pressing it, but decided not to. It didn’t matter anyway—even though Nurse Betty had been kind to him, which as it was, was most likely nothing more than her doing her job. He felt bad that he hadn’t offered her a condolence for the loss of her father. “So the dog’s most likely a stray?”

  “Most likely, yah,” Pete said. “Could of come from Vern’s line, though, sure could be a Maxwell hound by the looks of him. He starts bayin’ after a coon you’ll know for sure.”

  “Well,” Sonny said, “I doubt I‘ll notice.”

  “I can’t keep him, Ranger Burton.” Pete’s voice was certain as steel, and his eyes drew hard, staring straight at Sonny. “I got more mouths to feed now than I can afford.”

  Sonny drew back. There were no barking dogs about. Just a chicken in the yard. The rabbit hutches looked empty, and Pete and Lidde never had children of their own but were known to take in a “troubled” girl on occasion and see her through difficult times. Most times, those girls would move on with their lives once their troubles were past.

  Sonny decided not to pry, but the comment struck him odd. He could reason it out, though. Folks who had a little more these days felt charitable to those that had less—which was the majority of folks in the county. It was hard telling who Pete and Lidde were feeding. He ignored the Ranger comment, too. No use correcting the man since it was obvious he was opposed to the change.

  Pete ran his hands through his thick blonde hair. “I thought you meant for me to fix him, not to keep him. I was able to set the bone and splint it. With food, water, and a place to rest, he ought to be back to normal in a few weeks. Might have a limp to show for his troubles, but he’ll have all four legs. I was afraid I was gonna have to cut it off at first. But since it just happened, we were lucky. There was no infection. He would have surely . . .” The clock seemed to tick louder, and Pete Jorgenson stopped talking midsentence, sucked in a breath, and dropped his head. His face turned pale as soon as realized what he’d said.

  “How much do I owe you?” Sonny asked, irritated.

  “Whatever you can pay.”

  Sonny looked Pete in the eye when he raised his head back up. “I can’t keep a dog.”

  “Well, you should have shot him before you brought him here then.”

  “I thought about it.”

  “I know you did. I would have thought about it myself. The world’s a hard place for a dog like him. Even harder now, no offense, with a bad limb. Who’s gonna wanna dog that’s broke?”

  Sonny didn’t say the words that formed in his head and made their way to the back of his tongue. The world’s a hard place for us all. He just stared past Pete and took in the silence of the house for a long minute.

  Lidde must have been out feeding the one chicken Sonny’d seen pecking at the dirt, out the back door, when he’d driven up. The dog hadn’t made a peep since entering the office. It was probably sleeping. He knew the silence, the loneliness of an empty house, and, truth be told, past the uneasiness he felt, he was not looking forward to going back home.

  Madness waited inside those four walls. He had only the voice in his head and the voices that came from the radio. At least there was that, at least he had a radio. Problem was the radio brought bad news into the house, brought in the meanness and ugliness people did to each other. But as he thought about it, he had just witnessed the madness of the world firsthand—again. Home didn’t seem so bad. At least it was safe. And he could turn the radio off when it got to be too much.

  “Well, I suppose I don’t have a choice but to look after him till he gets better,” Sonny said. “I did run over him.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be much trouble,” Pete answered. He smiled, relaxed like a burden had been lifted from him. “Those Maxwell hounds were good around the house. Offered a bit of talent as a watchdog, if I recall. I always swore that favorite bitch of Vern’s slept with one eye open.”

  “You’ll keep an ear out, then, just in case he belongs to someone? If they come looking for him? Or you hear tell of a lost dog?”

  “Oh, you betcha, I will.” Pete turned away with a successful smile and hurried back toward the office. “I‘ll get him for you.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t know its name, do you?” Sonny called out. His stomach was suddenly nervous.

  Pete stopped at the door, and turned back to Sonny. “Well, the thing is, I don’t. If you’re gonna keep him, then that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say I was keeping him, just looking after him till he’s well,” Sonny said. “Maybe I‘ll run him out to the Maxwell place and see if he belongs there, if I get the chance.”

  Pete shrugged, and the smile on his face disappeared. “Let me go get him for you.”

  A cawing crow startled Carmen. She looked up just in time to see a crow lift off the top of a telephone pole about a hundred and fifty yards to her left. A group of other birds were screaming at the big black crow, diving and pecking at it to drive it away from something. Carmen didn’t know what kind of birds they were, and she didn’t care. The suddenness and volume of the caws alarmed her.

  She looked down the track and saw nothing unusual for as far as she could see. Just shadows from the telephone poles and lines and the occasional stretch of scrub brush or trees. Her breath had regulated, and a certain level of calmness had returned
to her.

  I didn’t do anything wrong, she’d told herself. Nothing at all. Tió pulled the trigger. Eddie robbed the store. I just drove. Eddie made me. I had no choice.

  The crow cawed again, rushing away in the opposite direction so it was nothing more than a black dot in the clear blue sky followed by a swarm of smaller birds. Something moved on the ground, catching her eye. A shadow crossed the track, then stopped.

  Carmen exhaled, trying to push the fear away again. When she looked again there was nothing there. It was probably her imagination. The crow’s shadow. A deer moving along the trees, looking for something to eat. Nothing. It was probably nothing.

  Or Felix Massey coming after her. The thought was loud and clear, and it propelled Carmen straight to her feet.

  Fear or no fear, it was stupid to stay there. She had to run again. With as much swiftness as she could muster, Carmen tapped the letter opener in the front pocket of her dress, then picked up the pillowcase and looked down the tracks. Nothing, not even a crow. It had flown out of sight.

  She had no idea where she was or where she was going, but she damn sure wasn’t going to sit there and wait to be found. There’d be worse things in store for her than stepping in a snake hole and breaking an ankle if she did.

  For a brief second, the air was thick with humidity, and then, the next second, a dry blast of wind swept across the open field. The sun had burned away all of the moisture left behind by the rain in a short time. It was almost like the storm had never existed. Puddles were gone, and drops left on the brown grass had evaporated in the blink of an eye rather than soaked in. The grass was as brittle as it had been before the rain even came.

  Carmen ran as fast as she could toward the first building she’d come to, a small white church that at any other time she would have ignored, fled from. It was a Sisters of Mercy church, an old white stucco single-level mission-style church—bell, companario, and all. It must have been over a hundred years old or older.