Seeing Crows

by Matthew Miles

  “What do you mean?” I asked warily.

  “Well, you don’t know what kind of beer you drink, you have no idea what time bars close, and you smell like you just walked out of a glue factory.”

  I looked down at myself. I hadn’t dared take the time to shower in case Besse returned before I snuck back out. My clothes were clean but they weren’t much different than the clothes I wore to the factory otherwise, jeans and a T-shirt. My hands still bore blotches of brown stain on them, they smelled like coffin bottoms. I felt dirty, factory dirty, despite the clean clothes. “I’ll have a Utica Club,” I said. Van’s beer.

  “So where do you live?” she asked, not moving to get the beer. “You didn’t have time to go home before coming here, did you?”

  “Umm, yeah, I did, actually,” I murmured, not sure how to explain the circumstance, not sure if I wanted to. “I live in Still Creek, work out there too.”

  “Damn,” she said reaching for the drink, finally. “That’s out in the middle of nowhere, hah?”

  “It’s out there,” I said, taking the Utica Club. Opey’s was in Riverside, itself barely more than a large town, but a metropolis in the vast farmland of central New York, with a tiny shopping mall and a population in the thousands. But compared to the farmhouses and tarpaper shacks that lined the rough paved roads outside of Still Creek, it was a bustling center of wealth and commerce.

  “What kind of work do you do, anyways?” she asked, leaning back on the bar to talk to me.

  “I build coffins,” I told her, taking a drink of the beer.

  There was a second when her cadet blue eyes didn’t do anything, when her cleavage failed to rise even as her chest swelled with breath. Then her eyes widened, and just kind of blanked out. “I better get back to work,” she said.

  “What are you doing later?” I asked after her, joking around, trying to build my confidence up, as she walked away, but she didn’t hear. I smiled over my beer at myself, looking to see if Elle was still in her seat, wondering if she’d realized I was there, thankful the bartender had talked to me. Elle’s back was still to me. Someone else had arrived at their table, another young boy in designer jeans who slid a chair in where there wasn’t room for a chair next to Elle and now lounged with his arm behind her, leaning over to whisper things in her ear regularly. I nervously finished my beer, realizing I shouldn’t be here and wanting to make a quick exit. I hadn’t paid for the Utica Club yet, though, and the bartender’s steely blue eyes saw me finish it.

  “Want another?” she asked, sliding down the bar toward me again, already popping one open and landing it on the bar in front of me.

  “Um …” I stuttered, not knowing how to decline, my eyes shooting over to Elle, who was now leaning across the kid in designer jeans.

  “What are you looking at over there, anyway?” the bartender asked, following my gaze.

  “My girlfriend,” I said, nodding toward Elle. “I think she’s cheating on me. She hasn’t figured out I’m watching her right now.”

  “Oh, Jesus, man,” she said. “I’m sorry – look at that, is that the kid?”

  “I think so,” I said, looking down, sorry-faced.

  “Man, this drink’s on me,” she said, shaking her head, her blue eyes softening with sympathy. “Now I see why you showed up here like you did.”

  I looked up at her, away from Elle. She was so sincere; I couldn’t see myself in those eyes at all. I longed for that sincerity. The cadet softened to turquoise, looking for some emotion in me. I had no idea why I had just lied. “It’s like my friend Van says, though, I guess,” I told her. “Eventually she’ll just be another bitch who fucked my friends and stole my CDs.”

  The warm turquoise snapped back to cold steel. “Well, there’s your beer,” she said, and headed toward the other end of the bar to continue wiping it down.

  My sense of humor, jaded and not well received, did little to comfort me; in fact, as soon as the bartender left me sitting alone, I felt uncomfortable again being there. I missed even her cold warmth. I looked back to see what Elle was doing and she was walking right at me, grinning and excited.

  “There you are,” she said, landing less than gracefully in the seat next to me. “I was hoping you’d show up.”

  The bartender eyed me suspiciously. I kept my eyes carefully on the lip of my beer bottle with an occasional glance at Elle. “Not much to do at the factory tonight, so Van told me I might as well get out early.”

  “That guys creeps me out,” Elle said, laughing. “He looks so evil with that beard and all of those tattoos.”

  “Oh, Van’s harmless,” I assured her. “He talks a lot of shit, but that’s just because he’s full of it,” I joked. “Got to let it out somehow.”

  “Everybody in that place kind of freaks me out. It’s like a weirdo zoo there,” she said, still grinning at me.

  “You ain’t got to tell me,” I told her. “I’m glad I don’t work during the day with all of them. At night it’s just me and Van, and he’s not a bad guy, really. He’s just a little crazy. And Digger’s around – he’s alright, I feel bad for the guy.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “His kid’s fat and his wife does cocaine,” I said, with sincere sympathy. “So he never has any money and begs us for stuff.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Elle said, finishing her drink and setting the empty glass down.

  I could tell the bartender was eyeing it, dying to get near us and see what we were talking about. I flagged her down, cutting her off at the pass. I slammed the rest of my Utica Club. “Can I get you a drink?” I asked Elle.

  They didn’t check IDs in this place, which I knew from my last visit, the first time Elle had spotted me here. Elle probably had a fake anyway; I didn’t. When I was in high school, we didn’t need fakes; we sat on back roads and drank beers, smuggled from the coolers in the nearby Stewart’s to us by kids not much older than us. We didn’t drive to Riverside and hang out in bars.

  “Sure,” she said, pleased. “How about we do a shot and have a beer?” she asked.

  The bartender arrived. “How’s everything going tonight?” she asked us both, falsely warm eyes greeting me. I could read the suspicion that was really behind them. I weirded her out.

  “Can I get a shot of whiskey?” I asked. “And a Utica Club, and whatever she’d like.”

  “Let me guess,” the bartender announced. “You don’t know what kind of whiskey you drink?”

  “Old Crow,” I countered, annoyed with her nosiness.

  “And I’ll have a kamikaze shot and a Coors Light,” Elle cut in, and went on as soon as the bartender left. “Anyway, you’re the only person there that seems normal. Or kind of normal, anyway.”

  I was not normal. I wanted to tell her.

  She would figure it out soon enough.

  The bartender arrived with our drinks, finishing the mix on the kamikaze shot in front of us. “Here you are, sir,” she said sharply, “and here’s your girlfriend’s.” She shot her eyes at Elle to see how she reacted, but Elle was already lifting her shot to cheer with me.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, hitting her glass against mine and downing her shot with me.

  I gasped at the coarse Old Crow, despite my sweet memory of it, but she swallowed her shot smoothly.

  “You know, I have to start in the new office building on Monday, so you won’t be able to walk by and peek in on me anymore,” she said with a sly grin, sounding drunk.

  “What?” I asked, embarrassed, mouth burnt dry from the whiskey.

  “Relax,” she said, “I’m just teasing. It’s fun to talk to you there. You’re funny. It’ll be even less cool now that I won’t be able to at least talk to you anymore.”

  “Why are you working over in the main building now?” I asked, barely able to keep the disappointment out of my voice, taking the first sip off my beer.

  “I finished all of the records in the factory office. They’re all in the computer now, so
now I’m working in the main office to keep them updated.”

  “There’s nothing else to do in the factory?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said, shaking her head, widely and loosely enough to betray how drunk she was. “I’ll be stuck over in that boring office. It’s no fun over there, they’re so boring. Do you know what the password to open the computer program is? It’s coffin. That’s their idea of a great idea.”

  “Coffin? Really?” I asked. “What kind of stuff is in the computers?”

  “Your name and address,” she said, laughing and slurring. “And your phone number. I could call you. I could show up at your house.”

  “I already gave you my number,” I reminded her.

  “No you didn’t,” she said, grinning dangerously as she swayed her head barely side to side. “I gave you mine but you never called me!” She poked me in the chest. “So I had to look yours up.”

  A sudden fear struck me that Elle had called my apartment and Besse had answered. Could she have really found my number through the office? Elle knew when I worked; why would she call when she knew I wasn’t there? Did this have something to do with Duke staying at my house?

  I gulped quietly, starting to feel the whiskey shot burning deeper inside me. I didn’t care if Elle had called and Besse had answered, actually. Elle had called me. And she was standing here getting drunk with me right now. To hell with Besse. Elle’s continuous sway slightly back and forth was intoxicating, and made me aware of my own teetering sense of balance as I fell into the rhythm of her movement myself. I grinned. She had looked up my number; maybe she had showed up at my house. Would she dare? I imagined Besse answering the door. A taste of her own medicine. I reached my arm out to steady the teetering girl, steadying her with my hand on her hip, as much for my benefit as hers.

  “I even know how much money you make,” Elle said, spilling beer, which didn’t stop her moving, onto her own leg. She didn’t even pay any attention to the wetness on her leg. Only I dd. “Which is nothing. You should really get out of there. They keep more in petty cash there than they pay you in a month.”

  “Petty cash?” I asked, wondering who would be more shocked if Elle stopped by my apartment – Besse to see Elle show up at the door for me, or Elle to see that I lived with a woman. Shock mirrored on their faces. The neighbor having sex upstairs. Elle was swaying again and I slid my hand farther up her back to make sure she didn’t just topple over. She leaned more heavily into my arm.

  “Yeah, they keep at least a couple of thousand dollars in the safe in the office. You don’t even make that in a month. I ought to buy you these drinks. I’ve got a lot of money saved,” she said, just draped in my arm now, so that I had to puller closer to me just to keep her from sliding straight to the ground.

  The bartender arrived a second later. She probably hadn’t looked away from us. “Do you need another beer?” she asked me, but didn’t even look for a response, concerned about Elle. “Is she okay?” she asked, as Elle just slumped completely against me. She would have landed on the floor if she wasn’t dangling off of me, pinned by my arm, around her back, against me. I wasn’t even sure anymore if she was even conscious as I tried to keep her from falling totally. I wrapped my other arm around her too, putting my beer down, and tried pulling her back up to standing. This wasn’t the way I envisioned getting close to her.

  “You saved me,” she said, giggling, returning to some semblance of consciousness. “I owe you my life,” she promised, reaching her mouth to kiss me as I lifted her fully back to her feet. Wet lips from her wide open mouth landed on my chin and mouth and sucked their way toward my lips. We were quickly becoming the focus of everyone’s attention in the bar by now, our very own weirdo zoo right in the center of every drunkard’s attention. I just tried to stand her up straight as her friend in designer jeans, a wiry young tornado of fury, showed up and pulled her away from me. Though I hadn’t glanced at him, I was sure he had watched as intently as the bartender had the entire time Elle had talked to me, just waiting for the encounter to turn bad.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted, handing her off to a friend, a brutish square-jawed woodchuck of an 18-year old who had tossed hay as a child until he spent most of his time playing defensive end for one moment of Section III Class D high school football glory before going back to tossing hay for the rest of his life.

  Thank God it was the kid in designer jeans and not the hay-tosser who shoved me backwards over a stool, because I was able to keep my balance, even though my feet seemed to wrap completely around the stool’s wooden legs. I didn’t fall, but was forced to crouch near the ground to not lose my balance. When the kid started toward me again, I grabbed the fallen barstool and hoisted it between us, holding onto the seat, using the legs to keep him at bay.

  I wasn’t particularly afraid of him. After all, I was reasonably sure I had already built his coffin. But the best thing for now was to not let his friend need to get involved.

  “You fucking pussy,” Designer Jeans snapped. “Put that thing down!”

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  I took a step backward, putting space between us so I could swing the stool and club him over the head with it if I had to, trying to keep the legs far enough away so he couldn’t just grab them. Suddenly, a couple of dudes intervened. They were dressed like EMTs, probably having a beer while sitting around bored, on call. Heroes.

  “Hold on, John Wayne,” one of them said as he got between the kid and me.

  The other guy took the stool out of my hand, and put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Relax,” he told me, but I shrugged him off.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I told him.

  Elle’s friends led her back to their table, but she was on the verge of falling right back out of her seat, too drunk to realize what had just happened, most likely. The kid calmed himself by tending to Elle, snaking one last, hateful glance at me. The men who broke the fight up drifted back to their table, and I alone stood right where I was when all of this started, not knowing what else to do. The bartender arrived to solve my dilemma.

  “I think you should leave,” she said.

  There was no arguing.

  Hell, I never should have come.

  22.

  Besse was home when I returned. I saw the lights on from the driveway. I was back early – about half an hour earlier than usual – but I was too drunk to wait any longer. I wanted only to sleep, and not just where ever I happened to be. Besse was almost always asleep when I got home, even on Fridays usually, so I hoped either she wouldn’t notice or, even better, I’d catch her by surprise. Our relationship was just plain bad, and I knew it, simply disregarding each other almost, living on different shifts during the week - making no plans to do anything together whatsoever on the weekends, almost not communicating at all sometimes. Our bond had become silent, if it existed at all, us just somehow managing to still be comfortable sleeping near each other, but not much else.

  There were no strange cars in the driveway, at least, as I arrived.

  By the time I entered the apartment through the door from the garage, coming in by the kitchen, all of the lights were off in the apartment. I couldn’t remember for sure, because I had been so focused on the driveway and what vehicle might be occupying it, but I thought there had been a light on in the apartment when I pulled into the garage. I imagined Besse hearing me pull in and racing to turn the lights off, skidding down the scratchy carpet of the hallway and leaping into the bed in the dark, pretending to be hours asleep before I even reached the living room. How many nights had she actually been awake when I lay down next to her in the past? Thoughts of listening to Geechie or Beulah screwing upstairs while I laid next to Besse sleeping, or pretending to sleep, flickered through the fuzzy haze of the alcohol swimming inside me. Why was it easier to live this awkward untruth than confront each other, or our own apathy? We couldn’t fool each other, but we could fool ourselves, it seemed.

  I lurch
ed down the hallway, my steps uneven, my aim even worse. Thin blood picked up its pace, coursing through my body. I winced at my own lightheadedness, the hallway darkened around me. I twisted the doorknob in a single slap and threw the door open to scare her out of her fake sleep. The light switched on as soon as the door began to swing, piercing my eyes and brain.

  Besse sat on the bed, her arm returning from the bed lamp, looking at me in fright and anger. She pulled a blanket around her, up to her armpits, but otherwise we just stared at each other warily.

  I wanted to speak first but couldn’t get myself to.

  “You’re home early,” she said.

  “Van called it quits a little early tonight,” I explained, feeling accused.

  “What time was that?” she asked.

  “Just now, like half an hour ago,” I said, walking into the room and plopping on the end of the bed, my anger as thin as my blood, seeping out, booze making me just want to sit, lie down, sleep.

  Besse leaned near me. “Why do you smell like beer? And worse? What is that, whiskey?”

  “Oh, Van bugged me to have a beer with him before we went home. I think that’s why he knocked off early tonight, he wanted a beer so bad,” I said, laughing, untying my boots.

  A pillow swatted me hard on the back of the head all of a sudden, jarring me nearly off the bed, as bad as my balance was.

  “You’re such a fucking liar!” Besse snapped as I tried to upright myself.

  I turned around to look at her, confused about her sudden violence. “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  “Van called here earlier, shithead, looking for you,” she shouted, standing on her knees on the bed, the pillow dangling from her left hand, the blanket dropping back down to lie crumpled on the bed around her.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Hours ago.”

  I tightened my lips, looked toward the ceiling like it might have an answer.

  “He said you passed out at work and he sent you home. He called a long time ago,” she repeated. “He wanted to make sure you made it home alright,” she said, nearly in tears now from frustration.