Seeing Crows

by Matthew Miles

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked, barely able to get the words out, perhaps not really wanting to get an answer.

  “Oh God … do it now … harder … ohh … do it … hhhhh …just fuck me …”

  I can’t imagine what the expression on my face looked like, but I saw the terror in hers.

  “Are you going to hurt me?” she asked.

  “No,” I assured her, but not sure how else I was going to keep everything quiet.

  “Fuck me … fuck me … fuck me …”

  When I finally moved she just crumbled into a ball on the kitchen floor at my feet, adding her scream to the chorus from above.

  45.

  I walked softly up the steps. It was funny. I couldn’t hear the voice from out here. Their door was unlocked when I tried the handle. I left it open behind me to avoid making any noise. Not that they’d hear a creak in the floor at this point.

  “Oh God now …”

  I tiptoed into the hallway. Their apartment was laid out much like mine, but larger. It was easy to tell which bedroom the noise emanated from. I just didn’t know whose room it was. I had never been up here, though I did see Beulah in the window of the back room the night I tackled Duke and Besse pulled the pistol out. And that is where the noise came from. I took the thirteen steps down their hallway to the bedroom at the end on the left. I relaxed my whole body, let gravity pull me out of the tiptoe position, and stood firmly on my whole feet.

  “Hhh …hhhhhh … hh …”

  I dropped my hand on the doorknob and twisted it as soon as my fingers touched it. I was ready to bet that it was Beulah. I tossed the door open.

  All I saw was a white man’s ass, a tangle of hairy flesh on top of snowy skin, pale arms and legs sticking out from beneath a flabby load of man flesh.

  “Do you have any duct tape?” I asked, cursing internally, as the dude jumped up and toward me, surprised and angry and confused.

  I couldn’t get a peak around his barrel-chested mass for the life of me, even as I beat a fast retreat out of there.

  46.

  Holding the phone, fixated on the dial tone, I thought about Logan’s brother calling to tell me that day what I knew already. If he had known I already knew, but not how, it would have been easier for him to dial my number, there wouldn’t have been that moment of silence after I picked up before he said anything. I imagine he held the phone for a minute or more, perhaps minutes even, trying to think of how he would tell me, trying to accept the reality of Logan’s death enough to convey it tangibly to me. The silence when I picked the phone up was for his sake, not mine, but I can’t say I didn’t need it also.

  “Logan’s dead,” he told me simply, after we’d said hello.

  It was my turn for silence then. “What happened?” I asked, after a pause, a breath.

  “Motorcycle,” he sobbed, unable to say it, inhaling. “He was going too fast.” Exhale. “He lost control.” His voice cracked.

  There was more silence from me. I didn’t know how to react, what would be sincere. I flipped a page in the phone book. “Do you have a lot of people to call still?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I’ll let you go,” I offered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hung the phone up, closed the phone book. I didn’t ever want to have to do that. I poured a drink.

  47.

  The phone began beeping, warning me I had ignored the dial tone for too long. I pushed the button, lightly, and released it, listened again as the steady dial tone comforted me, like a flatline in an ICU that tells you someone’s pain is over.

  Before it beeped again, I touched a number. But I didn’t keep dialing. Slowly, like moving a chess piece without confidence, I dialed the second number. Eventually I dialed the rest. It rang no more than three times.

  “Hello.”

  “Van,” I said. “It’s me.” I really needed his help.

  “Kid!” he said, his tone changing from gruff to happy. “About time you called. I been worried.”

  “Yeah, I know, I should have called earlier.”

  “Well, shit, what’s going on? Is everything okay?” he asked, concern stretching his voice thin.

  “I’m alright. Things ain’t so good here though. Besse left me.” I had much bigger problems really. Start simple.

  “Oh Jesus, man,” he said, with a note of true sympathy. “You guys was all fucked up anyways. So what are you doing now?”

  “I’m a little messed up,” I told him, breathing Old Crow into the mouthpiece. “I’ve been drinking. I got in a car accident and drove off. I think the troopers are looking for me.”

  And if they found me, this was only going to get worse and worse. But I couldn’t exactly tell Van that; I feared Besse was going to the police, and I didn’t want to bring them to Van. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Van, I need some help.”

  “Shit, boy, you got to get out of your house,” Van said urgently.

  “I know,” I told him. “I’ve got all of the lights off right now, the Buick’s in the garage.” But the garage couldn’t hide all of my problems – for long, at least.

  “Anybody hurt?” he asked.

  “Not that I know of,” I answered. In the accident, anyway. “Besse was there. She saw the whole thing.”

  “She was with you?” Van asked, trying to sort the details out.

  “No, she happened to be getting out of some guy’s truck right where it happened. Or that’s why it happened, really. I was looking back to see who she was with.”

  “This have anything to do with why she left?”

  “Not totally. We got other problems too.”

  Like murder.

  “She cheat on you?”

  “Yeah, but I known for a while. I just told her tonight that I knew, though. It kind of all blew up.”

  “Fucking bitch. You should fuck your little girlfriend there at work.”

  “Maybe I should go try to find her,” I said, though I knew exactly where she was. I really needed his help, but didn’t quite know how to bring it up.

  “Shit, boy, don’t waste your time with that right now. It’s too late for today. Why don’t you just come over here? Me and my wife’s here, and her friend, and we’re having some drinks. We’ll take care of you.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. It sounded better than I cared to admit. I could talk to him off of the phone.

  “Come on, boy, you can walk here in twenty minutes from your place. You don’t even have to take your car out. You don’t sound fit to drive anyway. And it’s going to be bad enough if the cops find you. You know where I live, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be over,” I said. “I have to change. I’m still in my work clothes. I still smell like a coffin factory.”

  “Jesus Christ, kid, you sound like you’ve been sniffing glue all night. You don’t want to keep breathing that smell in, Goddamnit. You got to keep your nose clean, boy.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t come over there then.”

  Van laughed. “Fucking wiseass. Get your ass over here.”

  There was a click and then silence, no long, beautiful dial tone, no flatline, no comfort. I walked down to my bedroom and opened my closet to find some clean clothes to throw on. My suit, the funeral suit, still hung front and center, starched and cold, right in the doorway of the closet. I didn’t have many other occasions for it. It hadn’t seen the light of day since Logan’s funeral. It sagged on the hanger from the weight in its pocket.

  48.

  “Well, would you look at this?” Van half shouted, opening the door to let me in. “You look like you’re dressed for a goddamned funeral.”

  “Maybe I am,” I said, extending my arm down the length of my black T-shirt and black jeans like I was modeling the outfit for them, stepping through the open door while Van still held onto it, into the kitchen.

  “As long as it’s not mine or yours, kid,” he said, still smiling. “T
hat’s all I care about.”

  He gave me a little shove toward the table, where two women sat facing each other, until they saw me and looked up. They both held cigarettes, slanted off their fingers, trails of smoke drifting off each, and joining, along with the smoke from another cigarette in an ashtray on the table, in a giant cloud swirling around a crooked and noisy ceiling fan. It was like a dragon’s breath or a thick pot of soup being stirred.

  “Get on in here and meet my wife,” Van said, closing the door behind him. “I’ll get you a beer.”

  “Hey handsome,” the woman on my left said, smiling over at me. She had permed brown hair that had been dyed blonde once and make-up like actresses wear, in plays. She had her pointer finger stuck in the neck of a Utica Club and used it to tip the can onto the edge of its bottom and roll the bottle in circles on the dirty tablecloth.

  “This is my wife Retha,” Van said, pointing at the permed woman, “and her friend Billie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Billie said. She wore a pair of cut-off Daisy Dukes and a flowered blouse. She squinted when she exhaled cigarette smoke, making the long bangs of her straight brown-dyed-red hair touch her eyebrows. It was the brown eyebrows that really gave the dyed hair away.

  “Thanks,” I said, still standing just a couple of steps inside the door.

  Van walked to the refrigerator and opened it.

  “So you’re a single man again, hah?” Van asked, bending down toward the bottom shelf. “You going to nail that little redhead soon?” He turned back from the fridge, kicking the door closed. “I told you all this kid was a ladykiller,” he said to Retha and Billie, winking with a drunken grin.

  “Yeah, I got a date with her soon,” I told him.

  “No shit,” he said, sitting at the end of the table near the fridge. “You should have brought her over.”

  “Who are you talking about, honey?” Retha asked Van.

  “This chick Elle. A little eighteen-year-old hottie working in the office down at the factory. Got us assholes drooling all the time.”

  “Shit, should’ve gotten her to come over too, then,” Retha said.

  “This guy right here is probably the only one of us ever have a chance of popping that,” Van said, toasting me with his beer. “I got you a beer, kid, but I ain’t giving it to you until you sit down at this table and relax. You look like a goddamned undertaker standing over there like that.”

  Everybody laughed, including me. Retha kept waving her arm at me until I finally sat and looked fully relaxed in a chair opposite Van with a beer in my hand. I wasn’t actually relaxed at all, but I had to be patient until I could talk to Van alone. Van picked his cigarette up from the ashtray and offered me one from his pack. I declined.

  “So you work with Van, honey?” Billie asked me, without fully turning her head to look at me, flicking the ash off her cigarette instead.

  “Yeah, we’re the only ones working at night,” I said, swallowing some Utica Club. It was ice cold and warmed me immediately. “Second shift.”

  “You like making coffins?” she asked, looking at me now.

  “Actually, he builds the coffins,” I said, nodding at Van. “I fill them up.”

  Everyone giggled at the joke, but not much.

  “I just try to not make him look bad by working harder than he does,” I told them.

  Everyone laughed, knowing Van’s ego. The ice started to break around us, helping me to actually relax some.

  “We get our business done,” Van said with a grin and flicked a cigarette into the kitchen sink. “You scratch my ass, I won’t kick yours.”

  “How many times I got to tell you to use the ashtray, Van?” Retha hollered. “You ain’t the one got to clean that shit out of the sink.”

  “You lucky I don’t just put it out where ever I damn well please,” Van said, lighting another with a grin.

  “So you guys want to keep playing cards or what?” Billie asked, grabbing the deck off the table.

  We played Pitch with teams of two. Van and I were partners. He situated himself so he could just lean back in his chair and grab beers from the fridge for everybody whenever we needed them. Actually, he grabbed them for all of us at once whenever one person needed them, mainly himself, which meant I always had two beers sitting in front of me, since I couldn’t drink nearly as fast as him. The more they piled up, the funnier everyone thought it was. I fidgeted restlessly, but no one noticed how relaxed I was or was not anymore. I needed a few minutes to talk to Van, but I was scared to tell him everything anyway, so I just squirmed through trick after trick in the card game, anxious for it to end, thankful every time a new hand started.

  “You can stay over here for twenty bucks if you get too drunk to go home,” Van laughed.

  “Leave him alone or you’ll be sleeping on the couch and he’ll be sleeping in your bed,” Retha scolded Van, laughing.

  “That’s cool, because I’ll be sleeping right on top of Billie because it don’t look like she’s going nowhere neither,” Van said, and Billie giggled, spilling beer.

  “Alright there, Romeo,” Retha said. “You just keep your mind on the game. Because the losing team’s got to take their shirts off,” she said, looking sideways at me, and everyone laughed again.

  “Alright then,” Van announced. “Winners get to take the shirts off the losers.” His cigarette dangled from his mouth even as he spoke, looking down at his cards. “Come on, boy,” he said to me, “looks like we’re going to get ourselves to second base tonight.”

  Van and I built up a rhythm of playing together and took a lot of tricks. He looked across the table at me a lot, nodded his head slightly, and shook it a hair occasionally, tapped faintly on the floor right next to my foot sometimes, and alternated between squinting at me and widening his eyes. I was really just trying to tell him I needed to talk to him in private. He was telling me what cards he had. It was blatant, it was cheating, but Retha and Billie were always looking at their cards or down at the table and never saw. Van had no idea what I was trying to say.

  We won the game handily and fast enough, but the bet was extended to the best two out of three. More beers were passed around. I picked up the half of a beer I had in front of me already and poured most of it down my gullet. I swallowed just before my throat clenched shut and I felt a shudder of nausea, the alcohol taking over all the liquid space inside of me, like an infectious poison. I drooled right out the corners of my mouth and held my throat closed. Everyone laughed at the face I made.

  “You got Heart, boy,” Van said, raising his eyebrows at me. “Just look at you, drinking all them beers. A lot of Heart.”

  I felt the tiniest tap on my foot. We won that round.

  “Hope you girls are warm,” Van said, arranging his new hand. “Going to be cold with no shirts on.”

  “It’s not fair,” Retha complained. “You guys work together all the time in that loud ass factory, you probably know how to talk without saying nothing. That’s why you always win.”

  “Hey, you really don’t do no work at the factory?” Retha asked me, hiccupping.

  “Hell, yes he does,” Van said loudly, stepping on my toe. “Kid’s a real handyman, a Jack of all trades. A regular Ace of Spades here.”

  “That’s crazy,” Billie said, slurring, holding her cards in plain view of all of us. “Must be hard working in a factory.”

  “Just wait till he has to take that shirt off,” Retha said. “We’ll see how hard he works.”

  “No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head, talking with thick, slow moving tongue. “I don’t do much there. Just dip the bottoms, mostly.”

  Everyone laughed again, even though I wasn’t joking, and somehow we won another hand. Van passed around some more beers but spared me this time because I had only just opened the last one. Remaining diligent, I took a drink from it while Billie dealt the next hand.

  “It’s your bid, boy,” Van said when Billie was done.

  “I’ll shoot the moon,” I said, m
y head rocking a little.

  As I had to lean forward to rest my forehead on the table, to keep from throwing up, the pistol shoved in the front of my pants dug into the flesh of my stomach - reminding me too this night wasn’t over for me, no matter how much I drank to avoid dealing with it. It was a stupid bet but it didn’t matter, we ended up taking every trick and the game too. And that entitled us to these women’s shirts.

  “What do you say I give you a tour of my house?” Van asked, rising from his chair as everyone threw their cards into a messy pile at the center of the table.

  “Sure,” I said, watching the women to see if they were really going to remove their shirts. “What happened to our bet, though?” I asked, and everyone laughed.

  “Save it for later, boy,” Van said. “You got to save something for your girl Elle, remember?” he asked.

  “Maybe he just wants to see some real tits,” Retha laughed, ballooning her chest. “You know, a real woman’s tits.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Van told Retha, standing and leaning forward with both arms on the back of his chair. “That girl’s got a real set of tits.”

  “Go show him the house, Van,” Retha said, slapping him playfully on the arm. “Me and Billie got to finish talking about something anyway.”

  “Come on, boy,” Van said, walking out from behind the table. “I’ll show you the place and you can meet my daughters.”

  I pulled my chair back but the hind leg caught a piece of torn and ragged linoleum on the floor and my chair toppled backward. I shot my hand to the floor as I tipped out of balance. The chair bent under my weight and collapsed and spilled me onto my side on the floor. A thousand dirty footprints on an unwashed floor greeted my cheek as I pressed against it. I think those prints stayed there, and remain there until this day, in my memory at least, as though the soles of a thousand boots had trampled on me. This was my existence, my upstate exile, to be dirtied and trampled upon by the thousands, millions of people to whom I would never be important, or interesting, or of significance. Van pulled me to my feet from under my shoulders, grinning.