Seven Crow Stories

by Robert J. Wiersema

  He had turned and was walking toward the door, but he stopped and looked back at me. I thought he just wanted to see me crying, broken. But no.

  “Charlie, I’m gonna tell you a little secret. Are you ready?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I didn’t give you anything, Charlie. I didn’t do anything for you. And most importantly? I didn’t make you do anything. Free will, Charlie. Everything you did, everything you earned, every person you screwed over, you did all that on your own. You did it because you wanted to.”

  He leaned in close, and he spoke in almost a whisper. “I’ve never bought a soul,” he said. “Ever. I’ve never made a deal.” He straightened back up and looked like he was doing his best not to laugh. “Really. I know you don’t believe me, but I’ve never made a deal. I’ve never needed to. Why buy a soul when you people are so eager to just give them away?”

  He started walking slowly to the door. For a moment he looked almost sad. Almost human.

  He looked back at me one last time from the doorway, and he smiled.

  “I’ll be seeing you.”

  Blessing

  Paul and Abigail realized, lying together on their wedding night, that they had never actually met.

  Their families had lived on the same block, just outside the centre of Henderson, for their whole lives. They were the same age, had gone to the same school, went to the same church, and when it became apparent that there was no one else they would rather spend their lives with, both sets of their parents offered them the same blessing.

  They were married in the spring of their twentieth year, in the United Church that they had always attended. It was filled with friends and family, grandparents, cousins, children playing noisily in the basement while the vows were taken, causing more than one smile in the congregation.

  Before the wedding, over dinner at Abigail’s parent’s home, both sets of parents had insisted that two more people be added to the guest-list: John Joseph and his wife Claire.

  It was impossible not to know John and Claire Joseph. They were an elderly couple who lived on a farm skirting the edge of the woods, where they grew enough for themselves, nothing left over even to sell in town at the Saturday market. They both still came in for the market, but they spent more time walking around and talking to whomever they encountered than they did shopping. It always seemed they went home empty-handed. And it was well-known in Henderson that they were among the wisest people around—that if there were a problem that needed solving, or a question that needed answering, sooner or later it would be asked to John or Claire Joseph.

  It was in this light that Paul first saw the invitation. “Do we have a problem, Dad? Do we still need more counselling?” They had just finished a series of counselling sessions with the minister to prepare them for the wedding and the marriage afterward.

  The two mothers smiled at one another, and shook their heads. “No, it’s not that way at all,” Paul’s mother said.

  “She was at both of our weddings,” Paul’s father said from the end of the table, taking a pull on his pipe.

  “Every person married in town invites John and Claire to the wedding,” Abigail’s mother confirmed. “It’s part of the compact.”

  Paul and Abigail looked at one another.

  “The what?” Abigail asked.

  “She wants to meet all the young people that she’ll be seeing,” Abigail’s mother said delicately. “She’s the . . . She helped in your birth, Abby.” She laid her hand across the table, over her daughter’s.

  “And yours,” Paul’s mother added.

  Both of the fathers just sat, watching, neither saying a word. Smoke from Paul’s father’s pipe curled toward the ceiling.

  “Don’t you remember them at Rob and Brenda’s wedding last year?” Abigail’s mother asked.

  Rob and Brenda were friends of Paul and Abigail’s, and their wedding the previous year was the first they had attended as adults. When Paul thought about it, he vaguely recalled Claire and John Joseph almost fading into the background in one of the rear pews.

  “I guess,” Paul said, still not entirely sure.

  “But I didn’t know she was a midwife,” Abigail said.

  “Why would you?” her mother replied.

  “Claire is a lot of things,” Paul’s mother added, but she didn’t say anything more.

  So it happened that close to the end of the receiving line, when their smiles were worn out and their feet were sore and all the two of them could think about was sitting down, Abigail and Paul were faced with John and Claire Joseph.

  Claire came first, shaking Paul’s hand lightly. Her skin was dry, cool, and soft to the touch. It was impossible to tell, just by seeing her, how old she was: her skin was a golden colour, rich and wrinkled, pulled tight in some places, loose in others. Around her eyes were tracks like a bird might make, her smile etched there, ineffably. Her voice, when she spoke, was like the sound of dry leaves and the wind. “It was a lovely wedding,” almost too quiet to hear.

  “Thank you,” Paul said, not sure of what else to say.

  She covered their two hands, still joined, with her other hand, and said, quietly but plainly, “You love your wife.” It was not an observation—it was a command, undeniable in its understated power.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, lowering his eyes to the floor, unable to meet her golden gaze.

  “Good.” She moved along past him to where Abigail was standing. Before taking her hand, though, she took a step back and just looked at her. Paul watched her seeing, knowing how beautiful his wife looked, but seeing her again through another’s eyes and finding it confirmed, over and over.

  And then, instead of taking her hand, Claire leaned over and, stretching on her tiptoes, kissed Abigail on her smooth cheek, saying, “I’ll be seeing you.”

  Abigail said later that she smelled of wild apples.

  Paul was barely even aware of shaking John’s hand, and the old man didn’t say a word to him. And soon the receiving line was done, and they sat down at the table for the toasts and dinner and dancing, and John and Claire Joseph were the furthest thing from their minds.

  That was the wedding. Afterward, they went back to the house that had been the gift of both their parents and began their lives together. They both worked—Paul was apprenticed to a carpenter on the edge of the town, while Abigail worked at the feed supply. When not working, though, they spent all the time they could together, just the two of them, building their lives in the new little house. And it wasn’t long, early summer, before Abigail realized that they were going to have a baby.

  She didn’t keep it a secret from Paul—she told him as soon as she knew herself. They were both so happy: it felt as if everything were coming together.

  And the next weekend, when they were both free, they went to the house of John and Claire Joseph.

  Neither of them drove, so they walked to John and Claire’s house. It wasn’t very far, and the distance passed quickly, laughing and jumping, cutting through fields, over fences, hopping over rows of corn that, only knee high, would soon be taller than they were.

  They came out of the last field in the back yard. It was a tiny house, nestled snug on one side against a garden, lush and green already, with a chicken pen close to the back door and a small yard with a cat curled on the lawn in the sun. John Joseph was sitting on the back stoop, a mug next to him, looking out toward the field. He raised his hand in greeting as soon as they emerged, and called toward the garden, “Mother, they’ve arrived.”

  Claire’s head appeared from where she’d been weeding the garden, a kerchief tied over her white hair. She stood up slowly as they walked toward her. She was wearing overalls, and her hands were full with weeds. They stopped at the edge of the garden and she came out to meet them.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she said, by way of a gre
eting, dropping the weeds on a pile at the edge of the lawn.

  Paul and Abigail looked at one another.

  Claire shook her head and smiled broadly, revealing a mostly toothless mouth. “I was actually expecting you a little sooner. I could tell just by looking at you at your wedding that the two of you both had a little wildness in you. It’s no wonder you couldn’t wait ’til after you were married.”

  They both looked to the ground.

  “Oh, stop your blushing, both of you,” Claire exclaimed. “When you get to my age you’ve learned not to make any sort of judgements about other people’s lives. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I just like to see two people that are happy together. And you two look happy to me.”

  Paul and Abigail looked at one another, and blushed anyway.

  “Are you happy about the baby that she’s carrying?” she asked Paul, stepping closely enough to him that he could feel her breath and looking up into his face, so he couldn’t look away. “Oh, don’t act so surprised. Why else would the two of you have come out here? I make a good cup of coffee, but it isn’t that good. What I want to know is if you think you can be a good father to this child.”

  Paul was very aware of both sets of eyes on him. “I think so.”

  Claire nodded. “I’m glad you didn’t just say yes, assume you knew everything.” She tapped the side of her head. “Shows you’re not stupid.”

  Turning toward the house, Claire took Abigail by the arm and began walking. “We’ll go in and I’ll get out of my gardening clothes and into my mothering clothes and we’ll take a look at you.” Turning toward Paul, she added, “You I’ll get a cup of coffee for, and you can keep John company trying to keep that stoop up. This is woman’s business.”

  Paul didn’t feel like he could argue.

  Paul sat on the stoop next to John Joseph, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. The day had turned out hot, but there was a cool wind blowing out over the corn, seeming to come from the woods behind the field. He took a sip from his mug. “Your wife was right. This is a good cup of coffee.”

  John smiled, creasing his face in the same way as his wife’s. “It’s from the city. We get it in the mail.” He straightened his legs out over the two steps, and Paul noticed for the first time that he was wearing grey wool socks without shoes. There was a hole near the toe on his left foot.

  John set his mug down on the stoop. “Do you know Jacki Constantine? Ray and Mia’s oldest girl?”

  Paul shrugged. “Vaguely. I’d know her to see her.”

  “Well, she’s a few years older than you, I suppose. Anyway, she’s a college teacher in the city. She’s the one who sends us the coffee. She’s one of ours. She knows how much coffee we go through, so every two weeks or so we open up the mailbox and there’s a parcel with a letter and a couple of pounds of coffee. Regular as clockwork.” He took a sip from his own mug. “I’ve gotten pretty partial to it over the last few years.”

  “You folks have been delivering babies for a long time, I guess.” Paul took another sip of his coffee.

  John shook his head vigorously. “I don’t deliver ’em. That’s not my place. I’m out here, usually just like we’re sittin’ here now. But yeah, we’ve been at it for a while. Hell, we delivered your daddy, what, forty years ago? Forty-five?”

  “That is a long time.”

  John smiled. “I guess it seems that way when you’re twenty.”

  Paul craned his neck to look behind them, to the back door, almost willing it to open. But it stayed closed. “Is it always like this, the husbands sitting out on the back porch?”

  “Where would you want to be?”

  He gestured toward the house, but John shook his head. “Oh no, you don’t want to be in there. That’s a place for women, not men. I know, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Hell, as soon as you start living with someone and follow them into the bathroom you think you’ve got it all figured out, and that there aren’t any more secrets possible between the two of you, but that’s not so. And that,” he gestured toward the closed door, “that’s the biggest secret you can imagine. Even for me. All that Lamaze stuff, men in giving birth with their wives. And they call that natural.”

  Paul started to say something, but as if on cue, the door opened up and Abigail bounced across the stoop to him. “Paul,” she said excitedly. “Claire says that everything looks really good. Really really good. Right?” She looked behind herself to where Claire was coming out of the house, dressed in a flower print dress.

  Claire nodded. “You’re gonna have a big healthy baby, about a month before your wedding anniversary. So you just take it easy, eat right, and come out to see us every so often.” She looked directly at Paul. “Both of you. I don’t want you feeling left out.” She smiled at him as she sat down on the stoop on the opposite side of John. “And what’d you think of my coffee?”

  He managed to be patient until that night when they were curled up in bed under a single sheet against the summer heat, the light from the partially open bathroom door spilling across the foot of the bed. Abigail was, at age twenty, still reluctant to sleep in the dark, and it made Paul happy to leave a light on for her.

  “So, what did the two of you do in there?” he asked, not even sure he should be asking.

  “In where?” she asked from where she lay nestled on his arm.

  “When you and Claire Joseph were in the house for so long.”

  “Oh.” She lifted herself on her elbow to look at him in the dim light. “We drank tea.”

  “What? I thought this was going to be some sort of consultation.”

  “Well, it was.” She lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. “She told me just what she told you—that the baby was going to be due in about mid-March, and that it would be big and healthy.”

  It was Paul’s turn to lift himself up. “But how did she know that? Did she do any tests or anything?”

  “She just knew. She touched my stomach and she just knew.” Unconsciously, her hand drifted to her belly, and began to rub it in a slow circle.

  “That’s it? She just touched you?” Paul sat upright, the sheet falling off him.

  “Yeah, that’s all.”

  “And that’s okay with you? You don’t need anything else, any real information? Like from a doctor?”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I felt so safe, so secure when I was in there with her. I think she knows what she’s doing. She has done it a time or two before.”

  Paul lay back down, and she curled against him. “Still, we should make an appointment with the doctor for you tomorrow, okay? I’ll feel better if you see someone who knows what’s going on.”

  “Will it make you fall asleep?”

  He just smiled and pulled her closer to him, kissing her on the forehead.

  But he lay there and listened to her as she fell asleep, the steady sway of her breathing, and for a long time after, just stared at the ceiling.

  They didn’t even need an appointment: Doctor Evans saw them almost as soon as they walked into the office. He opened the swinging door for Abigail, and led them through his office and into the examining room in back. Both of them had been in the room countless times, but Paul still felt a flutter as he first looked at the black vinyl table.

  Abigail hopped onto the table without being prompted.

  “What I would like you to do, Paul,” Doctor Evans said, running his fingers along his thin white hair to smooth it down, “is to come and keep me company in the office while Abby puts on this gown, then I’ll come in and see what I can find out for you, and we’ll both let you know what’s what. Okay?”

  Paul shook his head. “Actually, I’d like to stay in here while you do the examination and everything, if that’s all right with you.”

  It was the doctor’s turn to shake his head. “I’m sorry, but that’s . . . I
just don’t think that would really work out.” He put his hand on Paul’s shoulder, and with a gentle pressure began to guide him toward the book-lined office. “There’s coffee in the pot, or cold drinks in the little bar fridge. We’ll be out in just a few minutes, okay?”

  The connecting door sliding shut behind them cut off any response.

  Doctor Evans returned from the examining room no more than ten minutes later, but it felt like a week to Paul. He caught a glimpse of Abigail in the starched white gown through the door before the doctor slid it shut.

  He played with his stethoscope as he spoke. “Well, Abby is quite healthy, and very pregnant. Congratulations.”

  Paul nodded.

  “But I understand that you already knew that.”

  Paul cleared his throat. “We were out to see Claire Joseph yesterday.” He felt almost embarrassed telling the doctor. “She said that Abigail was due in about mid-March.”

  “March seventeenth, actually, give or take a few days.” He wandered through the office, and sat down behind his desk. “Paul, I want to tell you something. The Josephs are good people. They do good work. Now, I’ve treated both you and Abby your whole lives, and I certainly have no objection to bringing your child into the world, but, to be honest with you, you may be better off with Claire Joseph. I know that’s not what you were expecting to hear, but that’s the whole of it. When my wife was pregnant, both times, we went to Claire and John. Now, it’s up to you. As I say, I’m more than willing. . . .”

  Paul felt two warm hands on his shoulders, and he looked up to see Abigail, fully dressed, standing behind him. “We’ll let you know,” she said to the doctor, smiling.

  He nodded back at her as Paul stood up. “Good. You do that.”

  “I can’t believe it!” Paul said, as soon as they had closed the doctor’s front door behind themselves. “Is he some sort of crackpot, or something? Maybe we should take the bus to Chilliwack and see if we can find a real doctor there.”