Seven Crow Stories

by Robert J. Wiersema

  She smiled, but kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead.

  Even though I was driving, I couldn’t help but look at her; her strong, pale face, her secret smile, her eyes. She was the most beauty I had ever known, and I knew that I had to make the most of our brief time together.

  The cornfields gave way to forest as the road wound up the hill. Most of the trees were evergreens, dark in the grey air, but scattered between them were bursts of sudden colour, startling reds and oranges.

  How many times had I come up this hill? Saw those trees? Heard her laugh? It felt like it was all fading away. I felt like I should be struggling to savour as much as I could of every moment, but I knew it was already too late. Too far gone.

  The parking lot was full, and we had to park well away from the cemetery gates. I didn’t bother putting up the top. Let it rain—it didn’t matter to me anymore.

  We held hands across the parking lot, not speaking until we had passed through the open gates and were walking along the paved path between the orderly rows of gravestones, Henderson’s past laid out, marked and remarked.

  “Good turnout,” I said of the cars in the lot, and the crowd we could see gathered in the distance.

  She nodded. “He was well-loved.”

  “People came from near and far. . . .”

  “He made a good life for himself,” she said.

  “Gone too soon.”

  She looked at me. “Yeah.”

  As we walked, the wind blew, scattering leaves orange and yellow around us. We walked through the brilliant blizzard, the sudden whorl of colour in the world of grey.

  As the leaves fell to the earth, she let go of my hand and stopped.

  I turned to her. “What is it?”

  She stepped off the path, onto the carefully manicured lawn. “This is as far as I go, Daniel,” she said, raising her hand as if to say goodbye.

  I took a step toward her, but she waved me away. “You’ll have to go the rest of the way on your own,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, taking another step toward her. “It’s right there.” I gestured toward the funeral.

  “You know I can’t go, Danny. You know why.” She reached toward me as if to touch my face, but she was too far away, just out of reach.

  “Izzy, what’s . . . ?”

  “Thank you, Danny,” she said, stepping further away from the path, across the wet grass. “Thank you for last night.”

  “Izzy,” I cried out, stepping toward her. I reached for her, and for a moment I felt the fabric of her coat between my fingertips and then it was gone.

  And she was gone.

  And I was standing in the grey fall air at the foot of a grave. It was a grave I recognized, a grave I had visited dozens—hundreds—of times in the past twenty years.

  Isabel Maria Scarfe

  April 15, 1969 – October 14, 1985

  Gone Too Soon

  At the edge of the stone that was all that remained of my true friend, my first love, there was a slim bundle of carnations, withered and wet from the rain.

  I had left the flowers there the week before, on the twentieth anniversary of the night that her car had left the road, flipping into the ditch, filling with water.

  We had been coming back from my house, trying to beat her curfew, and she had cut the corner too close.

  Gone too soon.

  “Izzy,” I whispered before turning away, stepping back onto the path. The crowd was close, and I could hear the voice of the priest in the cold October air.

  The congregation seemed to be standing in a pool of sunlight, a patch of warmth and bright surrounded by the dark cold. Every step brought me closer to them, and I began to be able to make out individual faces in the crowd.

  Colin and Alex were there, the last of the old crew still in town. They were standing with their wives, next to Sherry, who tended bar at the Bird of Paradise, and Graham, who taught at the elementary school. Frank and Jim from the press were there, scrubbed clean and dressed in black, their faces tight and lined. All of the faces were familiar, but more than I could name in the few steps I had left.

  The five of them stood at the graveside.

  My father, looking stoic, face lined and back hunched with his age, held my mother as she cried. My two boys, Michael and Stephen, strong little soldiers in their matching black suits, never taking their eyes from the polished wood of the coffin.

  And Marie. My wife, my life, a crushed tissue in her hand, tears streaming unabated down her cheeks. I wanted to reach out to her, to try to comfort her, to tell her that I was all right.

  I wanted to tell her that I had settled for nothing, that I knew now that the life we had made together was the life I was meant to have lived. I wanted to tell her all those things I had never told her in life—that she brought me joy by simply being, that our family, our life together, was more than I had ever dreamed, that just to love and be loved was a state of grace—

  And as I stepped into the light, as from a dark forest into a clearing, I felt a warm wind take hold of me, lift me away from the earth, scatter me to the four directions. For a moment, just a moment, I felt myself in the sunlight, in the grass, in the leaves, in the dying and the reborn. I felt myself in the breath of my children, in my father’s arms, in the tears of my wife. I felt myself in the western wind, and in the small rain.

  Let it rain.

  Seven for a secret,

  Never to be told.

  The Last Circus

  I was eleven years old the day the last circus came to Henderson. It was late August, just before the Labour Day weekend, when the world would start to change and grow cold. The leaves were dry in the trees in the woods along the edges of the fields, not coloured yet, but you could feel it coming. The air was already chill in the mornings when I was out doing my chores. It was sweltering by noon, but the mornings were a hint of what was to come.

  I was in the west field, far from the house, when the first of the trucks went by. I was going to bring the cows in from the pasture for milking, watching the tall grass as it whipped black lines of dew on the legs of my jeans, and probably wouldn’t have even noticed the truck—there was nothing unusual about trucks with rattling, roaring engines going too fast up the road out front of the farm, farting thick blue exhaust—if not for the horn.

  The whole world seemed to jump, startled by the metallic braying that started off like a distraught donkey before dissolving into a hysterical laughter that echoed in the small vee of the valley. Twisting my back faster than my legs could turn, I almost fell over as I spun toward the road.

  The caravan stretched as far as I could see, all the way down to the bend at Charlie’s place, maybe farther for all I knew, a ribbon of colour threading between the green of the fields.

  I took a step toward the fenceline, toward the road, as the lead truck approached. It was red. You could tell the colour had once been as bright as a fire engine, but now it had faded to a rusty shade, all soft rounded lines and a bubbled hood. The truck was pulling a trailer, a battered silver Airstream, and it seemed to be barely holding together. I could hear the rattle of the frame even over the roughness of the engine.

  The windshield was caked with dust; it was impossible to see the driver, but as the truck started to pull even with me, a bare arm extended from the window, gesturing in a way I couldn’t quite understand. Was it a wave? A salute?

  An invitation?

  I jumped almost as high when the horn sounded for a second time, and I could have sworn that I heard a laugh from inside the truck as the arm pulled back in and the window rolled up partway.

  But I wasn’t looking at the arm, not anymore, or at the window. I was looking at the sign on the driver’s side door, the rough sketch of a rounded tent, circled by the words Zeffirelli Brothers Circus and Marvels.

  Circus and M
arvels.

  I forgot about the cows, forgot about everything else. I turned and ran back toward the house. The wet grass slapped at my legs, sprayed as high as my face as I ran.

  The caravan unspooled alongside me, faster than I could keep up, and I kept glancing sideways at the vehicles as I ran, the ragged edge of my breath as loud as the engines. Everything I saw, every fragmentary glimpse, felt like a promise: an old VW bug painted with DayGlo flames that I just knew was full of clowns, I could picture them spilling out the doors—onetwothreetwelvenineteen—each of them gaudier, more laugh-terrifying than the last. Another truck, this one a battered, rusted green, struggled to tow a trailer so huge I marvelled that it could move at all, the whole side of it covered with a painting of a trio of jungle cats, a lion, a tiger and a panther, garish and cartoonish, but they looked like they might leap off the truck, spring toward me without warning. A wheezing Winnebago, decorated with a painting of a beautiful woman, long red hair seeming to float behind her, the green of her eyes mirroring the scales of her tail . . .

  My cousin Bob was sitting behind the kitchen table as I burst through the mudroom door. My parents had been away for almost two weeks, driving back to New Brunswick to help my grandmother. . . . Or at least that was what they said.

  This is a grown-up trip, kiddo, my dad had explained, when I asked him. You’d just be bored. Besides, he had added, your cousin Bob is going to stay with you while we’re gone, take care of things. It didn’t really answer the question, but that was the way things were now, with my mom and dad.

  “Bob! There’s—”

  “Cows all in?” His voice was low, slow, as he lifted the coffee-cup toward his mouth. His eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses, his hair swept back away from his face.

  I couldn’t contain myself. “There’s a circus!” Then I realized how childish I sounded, and I felt my face start to redden. When Bob was around, I tried to imitate his slow calmness, the way he had of only saying something if he’d had a chance to think about it through some and decided it was really worth saying. I would hang around while he worked on his bike, pretending to follow along as he pointed things out to me, pretending to understand what he was talking about, but mostly just focusing on the tiniest details, like I was filing them away to give more attention to later. The flag on the side of his gas tank, the chip in the red paint from a sprayed rock. The road dust on his motorcycle boots, turning them a dusky grey. The stiffness of his jeans, the way they looked like they might stand up on their own, given half a chance. The way his leather jacket creased at his shoulders, at the back of his elbows.

  Filing it all away, so I would have it when he was gone.

  The one thing I did not do—not ever—when Bob was around was to act like a little kid.

  I tried to pull myself together.

  He set his cup—dad’s cup—on the table and wiped at his moustache. “A circus?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  “What makes you say that?” He was talking even more slowly than normal, taking even longer to react than he usually did. Was he tired? Maybe he was feeling the effects of having to keep farm hours while my mom and dad were away and he was staying with me. The night before, he hadn’t come in till after I was in bed.

  “Look,” I said, gesturing past him toward the front window. Beyond the lawn and the front garden, a row of trucks were passing now, all of them marked with the Zeffirelli logo on their door. “Look!”

  He turned slowly, but not before I saw the faintest twitches of a smile at the corner of his mouth. His voice didn’t rise or change when he said, “Well. Isn’t. That. Something.” When he turned back around, he was grinning. “And I suppose you would like to go?”

  I just nodded; there was no way I was going to even try to speak.

  “Well,” he said, drawing out the word. “You do have a lot of chores. . . .”

  My heart stopped in my chest.

  “And there’s church tomorrow.”

  I felt like I might never breathe again.

  “So I’m not sure . . .”

  I blinked, hard. Why was he doing this? I couldn’t make the words I was hearing match up with what I thought I knew about Bob. I couldn’t make the sound of his voice square with the smile on his face. Why was he—

  “Tell you what,” he said slowly, as if coming to some sort of realization. “If you get your chores done.”

  And then it clicked. He was messing with me. I started to speak, stopped. Pushed down the grin that had bubbled up inside me once my heart had started beating again. I had to play along. A laugh threatened to burst out of me.

  “And you get your clothes laid out for church.”

  Oh my God, it was really going to happen!

  “Then we can talk about—”

  “Thank you Bob!” I exploded. I felt like I was moving in every direction at once, like I wanted to run around in a circle and shout at the top of my lungs. I finally understood the way Lady, my old dog, used to feel when it was time to go for a ride in the car.

  I pulled it all back in, tried to be cool, hoping that Bob hadn’t noticed anything.

  But his grin was even wider. He had noticed.

  Placing his hands on the table, he pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s get those cows in,” he said, and I could hear the sound of his bootheels on the kitchen floor. “They ain’t gonna milk themselves.”

  I had never been to a circus.

  I mean, I had read about them in books and comics, but I had never actually been to one for real. I knew what to expect, but I had no idea what to expect.

  I spent the morning in a blur of excitement and confusion: I did my chores as fast as I could, driving the cows to the barn at almost a running pace, throwing hay bales down from the loft as Bob milked, collecting eggs from the chickens and scattering feed, standing still for just a moment as they thrashed and puffed and clucked all around me.

  I had finished all the reading and worksheets that my teachers had given me for the summer, so I didn’t have to worry about that. I showered without needing to be asked, taking actual time to wash my hair and scrub myself, not just standing in the rainstorm, as my mom called what I usually did.

  I laid out my church clothes on the chair in front of my desk, careful to line up the creases and folds just right so there wouldn’t be any wrinkles the next morning.

  When I got back down to the kitchen—dressed, hair brushed—Bob was just getting in from the barn, shaking out his leather jacket and draping it over the back of a chair.

  “I’ve finished my chores,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and steady. “And my clothes are laid out.”

  “You know the circus isn’t until tonight, right?” he said, adjust-ing his jacket so it hung evenly. Not looking at me.

  I felt like I was vibrating, like everything inside me was speeding up, like I might not be able to hold myself together much longer.

  When Bob turned toward me, his face was curiously flat, expressionless. “Can you grab something for me?” His voice not giving anything away. “Just on the top of the fridge.”

  I shuffled a couple of steps. I wasn’t tall enough to see onto the top of the fridge, but I could reach. My fingers brushed the cool curve of the blue mixing bowl, and I looked at him questioningly.

  “Should be an envelope.”

  I patted my fingertips along the top of the fridge, its cool white smoothness with just a hint of warmth underneath, warmth and the faint vibration of motor and fan.

  When I felt the roughness of the paper, the envelope, I slid it to the edge so I could pick it up. I extended the envelope toward Bob, but he shook his head. “It’s not for me,” he said.

  My name was written on the front of the envelope, my mother’s loopy handwriting as familiar as my own cramped scrawl. The envelope wasn’t sealed, the flap tucked into the openi
ng, easy to wiggle free. Something moved inside me, an almost anxious sense of excitement, anticipation that felt almost like dread.

  I looked up at Bob. His features slipped into his usual easy smile.

  “For real?”

  He just grinned as I slipped two orange tickets into my hand. They were thick, thicker than the art paper at school, and printed with the same logo I had seen on the doors of the caravan: Zeffirelli Brothers Circus and Marvels, over the words Henderson Agricultural Grounds and today’s date.

  7:30 pm.

  I couldn’t pull my eyes away.

  “But . . .”

  It didn’t make sense.

  “How . . .”

  Bob waved his hands in the air, whispering “Magic.”

  It had to be. My parents had been gone for weeks, and the circus had only come to town this morning, so how had they—

  “It was in the papers, you goof,” Bob said, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “The circus. There have been ads for it in the paper for the last couple of weeks, and tickets for sale at the Shop Rite.” He watched me as I tried to put everything together. “Haven’t your friends been talking about it? I would have thought everyone was going mental.”

  Jaws clamped tight around my heart.

  Bob was looking at me. “Didn’t your friends say anything?”

  I started to say something like I don’t— or What friends? but stopped myself. “I guess they hadn’t heard about it either,” I lied. “Maybe their parents wanted to surprise them, too.”

  He nodded slowly. “Maybe,” he said, looking at me closely, like he was noticing something he hadn’t seen before.

  I looked back down at the tickets, rubbing my fingers over the symbol.

  Bob was already on the bike, wiping at a spot on the gas tank, as I fumbled with the helmet’s strap and buckle. I took a step back from Bob’s bike and turned slightly away. I didn’t want him to see me.

  “You ready?” he called back to me, the engine sliding into a smooth rumble, somewhere between a purr and a roar.