As the crow flies wl-8

by Craig Johnson

  The tree stretched out a good hundred feet and was twice as high, with gigantic limbs and branches that reached up to the sun.

  The tough bark was matte black and covered with soot, and I could see where my twine circled the trunk and then disappeared. I walked around it a few times until the string was freed from the main body and swung up into the high treetop.

  I leaned back, trying to make out what held the twine, and raised my hand to block the sun. I sighed and pulled on the string a little, in the hope that whatever it was would reveal itself.

  I’d just started tugging when she called down to me. “Do you mind not fucking doing that?”

  I looked up through the scattering of branches breaking up the sky like shattered glass. “Sure.” I looked for the source of the voice but still couldn’t see anything. “Hey, could you help me? I’m not sure what it is I’m doing here and was wondering if you might know where we are or what it is I’m supposed to do?”

  It was quiet for a moment. “Do you have the other end of the string?”

  “I’ve got a string; I thought maybe you have the other end.”

  There was a sultry laugh. “Well, sort of…”

  I stared up into the sun again. “If you come down here, maybe between the two of us we can figure this out.”

  “I can’t.”

  I looked at the string. “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Maybe you should come up here.”

  I stared at the sooty surface of the burnt tree. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  It was quiet, so I figured that there wasn’t any other option. Circling the trunk, I found a limb that was within reach and stuffed the twine in my mouth, still tasting the bitterness of the peyote, wrapped my hands around the heavy branch, and swung my boots up toward the trunk.

  I wedged an ankle in the crook and pulled myself around, the soot and grime turning my clothes black.

  “Well, hell.” Taking the twine out of my mouth, I fed it back under the limb and checked the direction it took around the main body of the tree-under another branch and then up.

  I rested a foot and tried to circle, the trunk being far too wide for me to reach around. Placing my boot on another branch, I continued climbing, following the string as it weaved its way through the tree.

  Every once in a while I had to pull slightly on the twine, and when I did there was a small cry from above. “Oww.”

  “Sorry.” I peered through the naked branches, and even though there was no foliage, it was hard to see. I placed the roll of string under my arm and wiped the black from my hands onto my jeans as I leaned back on another stout limb. “How much further are you?”

  “Quite a bit, actually.”

  “Can you see me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked up. “How come I can’t see you?”

  “Well, I’m smaller, and you’ve still got a ways to go.”

  I sighed and traced the path of the string as it worked its way in and out of the assorted branches. “Straight up?”

  “Yeah.”

  I lodged another foot in the crux of a limb and lifted my other leg, continuing to climb with the string in my mouth again. The trunk split at one point, and I could see where it peeled off to the west and straightened out toward the mountains. I was getting pretty high and could feel the tree creaking as it responded to my movements.

  The string led me to the western route, but the branches were becoming sparser and I was afraid that if I traveled too much farther on the limb, it might break. I took a chance and glanced down, immediately regretting it. It was a good hundred feet to the sand below, and there were numerous back- and head-breaking limbs between. I swore to myself and wrapped my legs around a little tighter. “Maybe it’s only a dream.”

  It was about then that I raised my eyes and saw her-a good-sized crow.

  Farmers and ranchers don’t care for the birds, but I’ve always thought that they are beautiful creatures. They are also capable of more than two hundred and fifty distinct calls, which did nothing to explain the very female human voice in which this one spoke to me.

  “How you doin’?”

  “I guess I’m all right.”

  I considered her predicament. From my perspective, I could see that the twine was wrapped around one of her legs, then her body, and finally had trapped one of her wings against the limb from which I now hung. “You mind if I ask how you got like this?”

  Her dark head shifted, and a beadlike, tarnished gold eye drilled into me. “Isn’t that just like a man to ask a fucking question like that.”

  “Sorry.” I studied the distance between us and the diameter of the limb. “I’m not so sure I can get out there to where you are.”

  Her dark, feathered head shifted. “Don’t you have a knife with you?”

  I thought about the Case I carried back in the real world and figured it was probably still in my left back pocket. “I think I do.”

  “Then just cut the string.”

  I thought about it. “I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, a bear told me that I wasn’t supposed to let go of the string and I’m guessing that includes cutting it.”

  The crow continued to look at me. “A bear.”

  “Yep.”

  She flapped the free wing and picked at her feathers with a pointed beak, gleaning them straight, finally turning to look at me. “You’re fucking kidding.”

  I sighed, thinking about how I was now having a conversation with a profane crow nearly at the top of a burned out cottonwood tree. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

  “Well, then, you’re going to have to come out here.”

  I looked down at the ground again. I’d heard that if you fell in your sleep it was okay, unless you hit, and then you supposedly died. It sounded like hooey-I’d probably heard it from my mother, who gave credence to those types of things.

  I edged my way out. I was getting coated in the graphite-like soot, and the fine powder didn’t make it any easier to hold on. I gripped the branch and pulled myself another arm’s length before hearing a tremulous cracking noise somewhere back down the trunk.

  The crow and I looked at each other, and she was the first to speak. “That was worrisome.”

  “Yep, and you’ve got wings.”

  “I’m also tied to the limb your lard-ass is resting on.”

  I glanced down. “I wouldn’t exactly call it resting.”

  Trying to ignore the sound and fury of the splitting trunk, I took the twine in one hand and passed it under the limb a few times, finally freeing it enough to untangle the crow’s body, which allowed her to get a talon onto the limb. “Can you pull the string enough to get your wing loose?”

  She tried, but it was obvious she couldn’t. “Why don’t you just let go of the fucking string?”

  “I told you, he told me not to do that.”

  “You usually take the advice of blathering bears?”

  I sighed. “It’s a habit, like trying to save cursing crows.”

  She cocked her head, and if it was possible, she smiled. “I need more slack.”

  More carefully this time, I slithered a little forward and was happy not to hear anymore disconcerting noises. I extended my arms and threw her a loop that trailed over her wing. She picked at it with her beak and was able to pull it partially loose, but I was going to have to get out there a little farther, perhaps a yard and a half from her.

  The limb was getting narrower, and I was feeling a little tippy as it was. I grabbed the next arm’s length and gently pulled myself out farther. There wasn’t any sound, but I waited, just to make sure. I pitched the twine again and was rewarded with a loop that went past her wing this time with enough slack to allow her to scramble loose and hop up onto an adjacent branch that faced me.

  “Thanks.”

  “You bet.” I continued to look at her and noticed that the twine was loose but still attached in a bow to
what appeared to be a bracelet wrapped around her leg. “The twine is tied to the bracelet?”

  “Yeah.”

  I readjusted a little, the pressure of the limb against my chest becoming a little uncomfortable as I studied the silver chain just above her talon. “How did you get the bracelet caught on your leg?”

  “It was shiny, and I liked it.”

  I studied it a little closer and noticed it had a medical symbol on it. “I guess we have to make a decision.”

  She cocked her head and with one quick movement hopped onto my arm. “Yeah.”

  “Can you pull it apart and free yourself?”

  She shook her swarthy head, the feathers gleaming blue-black. “Nope-tried.”

  “So, if it gets done, I have to do it?”

  She shrugged a winged shoulder, pumped up her breast in a provocative manner, extended her wings, and then refolded them; I could feel a slight sway in the limb beneath me.

  “Maybe you’re supposed to stay here.”

  She looked off toward the mountains. “And never fly again?”

  “The bear said I wasn’t supposed to let go of the string until I found the living thing attached, but he didn’t actually say what it was I was supposed to do once I found you.” Maybe it was all just a mass rationalization, but I figured not allowing birds to fly was a crime in any reality. “Hop up here on the branch where I can hopefully use both hands.”

  She did as I requested, landing with the encumbered talon closest in an attempt to make the job just the tiniest bit easier.

  I loosened my grip and rested my wrists on the branch, trying to retain some sort of balance. I held the tab ends of the bow and laughed, mostly to myself. “Something’s going to happen when I pull this apart.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be free.”

  “No, something more than that; I’ve got a feeling.”

  She studied me. “Then don’t do it.”

  “After all this?”

  Her head movements took on a more animated quality, and I could tell she was a little annoyed with me. “I’m not fucking around; if you don’t think you should do it or something bad is going to happen, don’t.”

  I thought about what the bear had said about our natures; about how we did what we did because of who we were.

  I pulled both strings.

  There was a thunderous crack, the tree trunk split, and I slapped against the limb, causing it to fall even faster with my rebound. The crow exploded in a battering flush of wings, the feather tips swatting me as I was jarred sideways. I slipped to the side and attempted to grab hold of the falling limb-for what reason, I have no idea.

  My face turned toward the chill of the sky, and I could see her frozen there with her wings fully extended, the tiny chain bracelet still hanging from her talon. I watched as she hammered the air with those black wings like two, massive blankets thrown into the wind, and then she flew toward the mountains like a razor-as straight as the crow flies.

  I tried to get my eyes focused, but it was as if I was looking up from inside a well. I felt a jolt in the core of my body and found that I could move. Everything ached, and I wondered if I’d hit the ground and been knocked unconscious. My muscles were sore-even my rear-end hurt-but it was more the dull thrum of inactivity than the aftermath of impact.

  I jerked a shoulder loose, followed by an arm, and then watched as my hand came up and rested on Albert Black Horse’s shoulder. “Whew.”

  His face cracked into a wide grin. “We were worried about you.”

  I took a deep breath and blew the stale air from my lungs. Looking past him, I could see the entire group from inside the teepee had gathered around with concerned looks on their faces. “I think I need to stand up.”

  He placed a hand on my arm and carefully helped me get to my feet as the top of my head bumped the canvas and I leaned inward. “And go outside.”

  Albert nodded and ushered me toward the flap that was propped open with the lacings trailing down to the ground.

  I stepped into the wooded clearing that I’d remembered from last night. It was morning, and a few members were preparing breakfast in a Dutch oven and a frying pan. An old, porcelain percolator squatted on a log by another campfire. Albert was beside me again and placed a hand on my back as I swayed a little in the clear, flat light of early morning. “You’re all right?”

  “I think so.”

  I took a few unsteady steps under Albert’s careful inspection and placed a hand on the rooted part of the old, fallen tree. I cleared my throat and spoke to the large man who looked up at me with a cup in his hand. “I’d gladly kill somebody for a cup of that coffee.”

  He laughed, plucked another tin cup from the ground, twirled it by the handle like a gunfighter, and picked up the percolator without benefit of a pot holder. He poured me a cup and stood as he handed it to me. “How was your trip around the moon?”

  “I am never doing that again.” I looked around, just to make sure the desert of my dreams hadn’t crept up on me. “How did I get back in the teepee?”

  He looked puzzled. “You… never left.”

  I lifted the mug up, but a slight flip in my stomach caused me to pause. Glancing over to the opening, I could see my hat still laying there with the handkerchief draped over it. “I was in there the whole time?”

  The Cheyenne Nation looked at Albert, still standing beside me, and the older man nodded. “You took the peyote, and it was the strangest thing we’d ever seen. You looked around for a bit, and then you just froze and stayed like that for…” He paused to look at his wristwatch and for some reason it reminded me of the bracelet around the crow’s leg in my dream. “Coming up on ten hours.”

  “My ass feels like it’s been sat on for ten years.” I forced myself to sip the coffee, and it started tasting good. I glanced at the Bear, who looked a little tired. “You were out here all night?”

  “I was.”

  I took another sip and approached vaguely human. “You must need a nap.”

  “I do, but we have errands to run.”

  I looked longingly at the bacon sizzling and popping in the frying pan and could imagine the golden biscuits rising in the Dutch oven. I sighed. “No breakfast?”

  “Not unless you can talk Mrs. Small Song and Albert here into a breakfast sandwich to go.”

  I chewed the biscuit as we made the turn on the trail into the opening at the base of the hill where Lola, Henry’s ’59 Thunderbird convertible, sat like a chrome-bedecked spaceship. There was somebody I knew in the back, and he wagged his tail and stood with his forelegs on the sill to meet me face to muzzle.

  I ruffled his ears. “Are you happy to see me, or are you just happy to see my biscuit?” He didn’t answer, and I was just as pleased to be around an animal that didn’t talk. I turned to the Cheyenne Nation as he slid in the front and slipped the key in the switch. I fed Dog the remainder of my breakfast. “We’re traveling in style today.”

  He smiled and closed the driver’s-side door. “We have to pick up Cady and Lena in Billings.”

  A major organ in my chest did a flip as I pulled out my pocket watch by the Indian Chief fob just to make sure we had enough time for what I had planned. “Oh, boy.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I returned the watch to its pocket, straightened my hat, and placed my hands on the passenger-side door, resting my weight there. “I have failed miserably.”

  He barked a dwindling laugh. “We’re making progress.”

  “That might not be the way they are going to see it.”

  I stood there like that, and he watched me readjust the pancake holster at my back and snap the safety strap on my. 45, his face becoming even more serious as his eyes narrowed like the aperture of a scope.

  He turned and placed a forearm on the steering wheel. “There is something else?”

  I slid a hand across the gleaming, powder-blue surface of the vintage automobile the Bear had inherited from his father, the hand-buffed paint dancing stars of sun
light. “This is one beautiful car,” I sighed. “And I’m about to utter something I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d ever say: can we trade Lola here for Rezdawg for just about an hour?”

  I patted the chrome trim of the Thunderbird and glanced off in the direction of Painted Warrior, where Audrey Plain Feather had met her untimely demise. “We’ve got to do some four-wheeling.”

  8

  I studied the rain-washed landscape-it must have poured here again during the night-and the edges of everything seemed more poignant, as if the country had redefined itself, imposed a sharper image onto the cliffs and the crowns of lodgepole pines that surrounded the valley.

  The cliff was as Lolo Long and I had left it, with the exception of the CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape the FBI had strung between the trees and which we carefully pulled down and stepped over.

  The Bear stopped. “This is illegal.”

  I looked at him as Dog went underneath. “I’m sorry, is this your first time?”

  “I have always tried to lead a lawful life.”

  I cleared my throat and petted Dog. “Thank goodness; I’d hate to have seen what it would’ve been like if you hadn’t shown a modicum of restraint.”

  He watched where he was placing his moccasins. “Virtue being my nature.”

  I thought about the talking bear. “I thought asking questions was your nature.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I began looking around in a vague kind of way as he watched.

  “What, exactly, are we looking for?”

  “Something shiny.”

  He glanced up at the calypso-blue sky and breathed in deeply. “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “You’re going to laugh.”

  “I will not.”

  I nodded as I began searching the surrounding ground with Dog following me. “You will.”

  He raised a hand in solemn oath. “Indian Scout’s honor.”

  “I happen to know you were never a Scout.”

  “Perhaps, but I have been an Indian my entire life-with the possible exception of a brief period in 1969.”