King Crow

by Michael Stewart

  —What do you do then? My sister asked him, still not convinced.

  —I tramp the earth down. Any trees that are too old or are dead and I bring them down, so their branches can go back into the soil.

  I remembered how we left mum crying in the kitchen on all fours, and I suppose it must have occurred to my sister because she nudged me and said we’d better be getting back.

  As we walked off, I turned to the man. —Will you be here tomorrow? I asked.

  —Yes, but you won’t see me.

  —Is there any way that we can get you to be seen again?

  —Yes, you can bring me some food and some beer.

  —Do ogres drink beer then?

  —Oh yes, it’s an ogre’s favourite drink is beer.

  We always had plenty of beer in the fridge, and wine, and spirits.

  —We’ll come back tomorrow with some food and beer then, I said.

  —Good kids. You do that for me. You might have to think about me really hard to get me to appear.

  The eggs were still on the floor. The fridge door was half open, the fridge had turned itself on and was humming. The stuff that hadn’t been put away was on the work surface. We crept into the living room. Mum was sitting down with a large glass of wine, staring out of the window. My sister was clutching a bunch of bluebells, but she knew it was the wrong time. We went back into the kitchen and finished putting stuff away. I loaded up the fridge and my sister got a cloth and wiped up the mess. After I’d got ready for bed that night, I went to my sister’s room in my pyjamas.

  —Shall we go to the woods tomorrow?

  She was reading a magazine, but she looked up and nodded.

  We went back to the abandoned hut the next day. The fire was a few charred twigs and ash. There was no ogre. I took off my rucksack and unloaded it. We had a four pack of lager, cheese sandwiches and crisps. We laid them out for the ogre.

  I opened one of the packets and offered it to my sister.

  —Do you think he’ll come?

  She took a handful of crisps, but she didn’t say anything. After a while, I opened one of the cans. It was the first time I’d drank lager. I didn’t like it. I passed it to my sister, but she didn’t like it either. We ended up pouring it away.

  We didn’t really play together after that, me and my sister. I wasn’t bothered. I was happy on my own most of the time. Shortly after, we moved. My sister got in with a new crowd who used to hang around near the shops. We moved from the estate where I’d grown up to Ordsall and to the flats. I didn’t mind so much, I liked being high up. There were house martins and swallows and swifts up there. And there were rooks. By the side of the flats there was a park lined with trees and in those trees were rooks. They’d wake you up in the morning and at night they would roost in flocks and they made you feel like you were part of them. I never felt alone as long as I could hear the rooks.

  Funny thinking that bit of scrap land with a few trees was a wood. This is a wood, and it’s dark and the trees go on for miles. I’m trying to walk without breaking branches. It’s hard. I have to stand well back of Ashley and Smiler and only walk when they walk. They keep stopping to re-light their roll-ups, or get their bearings. I don’t know where Smiler is taking them. They make their way through bracken, clearing my path. Smiler has a torch and a stick to thrash the undergrowth.

  —It’s just through here. Smiler says.

  Ashley says something but I don’t hear what. They walk on again in silence.

  —You’re on the run aren’t you? Smiler says.

  —No.

  —You can’t kid a kidder.

  I don’t catch what Ashley says and they walk on again in silence.

  —I’ve seen it. I’ve been hunted and I’ve been the hunter. I know the look... This way, he says.

  They veer to the left and come to a clearing. Smiler shines his torch around then he gives it to Ashley to hold. He tells Ashley to point it at something then he moves some bracken to reveal a wire snare with a rabbit caught in it. The rabbit is still alive and it thrashes about. Smiler chuckles, —What did I tell yer?

  He takes the rabbit and hands it to Ashley. They swap the torch over and Ashley holds the rabbit but it flaps about. —Remember what I told yer. Grip it by its neck. Ashley does.

  —Now take its head, and give it a good hard twist. Like you’re taking the lid off a jam jar.

  We do and I hear the neck snap. Smiler pats Ashley on the back. —You know, being tough, it’s not the same thing as being cruel. He takes the rabbit off us and removes the snare. Then he takes a knife and he starts to skin it. —You do what you have to do, he says. —You don’t do any more. Sometimes what you have to do is go as far as you have to go.

  We hold the torch on the rabbit as Smiler guts it. —You want to be top dog right?

  —Yeah.

  —Well that means you’ve got to go further than anyone else is prepared to go. But you’ve got to remember, once you’re at the top, look out for the ones underneath, cos they’re watching, waiting for their chance.

  I decide this is a good time to head back and creep through the cleared path. Once I’m a good distance I make a run for it until I see the light from the shack in the distance. Becky is peeling potatoes over the sink. She seems relieved to see me. She gives me a big smile. She puts the potato she is holding in the pan.

  —You ok?

  —Yeah, how you getting on?

  She’s peeled quite a few potatoes. I’ve no wood to bring in though. She takes another potato and starts to peel it.

  —There’s something quite pleasing about peeling a potato, she says.

  I’m glad I’ve not had to use my axe, that Smiler was just taking Ashley to check out his snares. There’s nothing wrong with finding a rabbit and teaching Ashley how to prepare it for cooking. I think that’s probably a good lesson for Ashley. I don’t think he’s done much food preparation. Perhaps Smiler is ok, but I’m going to keep the axe close by just in case. After all, there’s not just me and Ashley to think of, I’ve got to look after Becky too. If the world ever runs out of food, like burgers and chips, there will always be plenty of rabbits. But then we’d be competing with the raptors again, and the government would put a price on their heads, like the king did in the old days.

  —Do you think he’s telling the truth? she says. —About prison and street fighting?

  A curl of peel shaped like a hook hangs from her knife and then drops into the sink.

  —I know one thing.

  —What’s that?

  —He didn’t get that scar shaving.

  She peels in silence for a while. I watch her work the skin from the potatoes. I take Ashley’s knife and go over to the sink. I take a potato and start to peel it. There’s not much room and I have to hunch forward. The lump of potato feels nice in my hand, just the right size for my fist to grip round. I know what Becky means, it feels sort of natural. My right leg and hip are pressed against Becky’s left leg and hip, and the warmth from her body starts to warm me.

  —We should go, she says.

  —Where?

  —I’m not sure it’s safe here.

  I weigh this up in my mind. Where is safe? At least here there are three of us against one. There are no guns. But she’s right, we can’t stay here for long, apart from anything else, I don’t want to. Smiler makes me feel uncomfortable, and I’m aware of the effect he is having on Ashley. It’s like we have split into two groups.

  —Thought you wanted to have some fun, I say.

  —Well, yeah, but...

  —How about if we stay the night, I say. —We can get up early in the morning and look for the ravens.

  She doesn’t answer, just peels the potatoes.

  —What do you think?

  She shrugs. I don’t know where we are going to go from here. All I know is that I want to go wherever Becky goes. I’m not convinced we can find the ravens, but for the first time, it doesn’t really seem to matter.

  Eventually
she says, —How important is it?

  And I know straight away what she means. She’s talking about the ravens. I tell her about my list. I go over to my book and show her.

  —There are 189 birds on there now, I say.

  She scans the list and laughs. —That seems a lot.

  —It is.

  She scans the list again in more detail this time. —I’ve never even heard of half these birds.

  She passes me the book and I put it back. She puts her arms around me and kisses me.

  —You’re a bit of a weirdo really aren’t you?

  I don’t mind being teased by her. If you get picked on for using big words, you stop using them, but it doesn’t stop you thinking them. And if you get picked on for being into birds, it doesn’t stop you being into them, in fact, you get more into them, but you just keep it from them. I actually feel less attached to the list than I ever have in my life.

  Still, part of me is still driven by it, it’s a funny thing I suppose, and I’m surprised Becky doesn’t find it weirder than she does, I don’t normally share it with anyone. Thinking about it now, I don’t think there’s anyone else I’ve ever told about my list. It’s always been my secret. Now someone else knows, it doesn’t seem as important. There’s that need there though, underneath, almost like an itch, and it would be satisfying to tick the raven off at last. More than that, it would be really satisfying to finally see them in the wild. Even more than that would be to finally see them in the wild with Becky. I suppose that’s it.

  I start to tell her about vultures to take our minds off things. Vultures remind me of ravens. They’re both scavengers feeding off carcasses of dead animals. They also remind me a bit of Smiler. I think it’s the bald head. Like ravens, they rarely attack a healthy animal but may kill a wounded or sick beast. They are a very valuable bird because they can eat diseased flesh containing anthrax and cholera bacteria.

  The thing is though, they’re becoming endangered, particularly in India, where farmers routinely medicate their animals with a pain killing drug which keeps the animals working for longer but which kills the vultures. This has led to hygiene problems in India as dead animals now tend to rot or are eaten by rats or wild dogs. India now has one of the highest incidences of rabies.

  The Parsi people of India, who are basically Zoroastrians, have a tradition which involves the vulture.

  —What are Zoroastrians? Becky says.

  I don’t really know. I tell her about the tradition. When a Parsi dies he or she is taken to the Tower of Silence where the corpses would normally be eaten quickly by vultures. This is because they believe that earth, fire and water are sacred elements and shouldn’t be contaminated by the dead.

  —That’s daft, she says.

  —Well, yeah, but the thing is, because of the decline in the vulture, lots of dead Parsis are taking too long to decompose and they are trying to save the vulture. Parsi communities in England want to introduce the vulture so that they can dispose of their dead according to custom.

  —That’s not going to happen, is it? she says.

  I tell her about the Jews in Broughton and that wire going round Northumberland Street, twelve foot up in the air to ward off evil spirits.

  —Isn’t there any trouble? she says.

  —Not when I was there, anyway. Now, don’t get me wrong, It would be great to have vultures in England, but my fear is that they would be competing with the raven, and the raven, being the smaller of the two, might lose out. Eventually the vulture would wipe out the raven, a bit like the story with the grey and red squirrel.

  —Right, she says.

  —The Parsi community should encourage ravens to eat the dead. Build the Tower of Silence and surround it by ravens. It’s a brilliant solution.

  —Mmnn, she says, and laughs. She thinks I’m joking.

  —Apparently Freddy Mercury was a Parsi, I say, as the door swings open and in walks Smiler and Ashley, with Smiler holding a dead rabbit by its back legs.

  —What’s that you say? Smiler asks.

  —We were talking about Parsis. Freddy Mercury, he was a Parsi, I say.

  —I’ve heard it called lots of things in the past, but I’ve never heard it called that before, says Smiler, and they both laugh. I don’t think Ashley knows who Freddy Mercury was.

  Storks

  It was shortly after the trip to Scotland. Mum had split up with Sarah and she had developed this thing with the taps. She had this thing about polishing the taps and if she saw a fingerprint on the taps she would grab your hand and try and match it up. Sometimes she wouldn’t talk for days, you’d talk to her but it was like you weren’t in the room. Then one day she took a knife to my sister. My sister was winding her up saying there was too much butter on the bread. Next thing she had the bread knife at her throat. I tried to calm her down, but she didn’t seem to hear me. Her eyes were wild and she was shouting, in my sister’s face.

  There was an incident with a neighbour too over the bins. A few nights later I heard all this commotion. I got out of bed. The door was open and they were dragging her down the corridor. I woke my sister and we both ran downstairs. We watched as they bundled her into a van. They wouldn’t let us go with her. They took us somewhere else.

  We had to stay at this place for a few weeks. It wasn’t very nice. When we went back to the flat with mum, she was speaking to us again. She was sorry, that’s what she told us. There’d been some mix up with the medication, she said. It wasn’t her fault. She bought us both an ice cream and we watched television together. It was Carry On Up the Khyber. We all laughed when it was revealed that Private Widdle was wearing underpants, but only after mum laughed. Mum laughed and then I looked at my sister and we knew it was ok to laugh, because sometimes you would laugh and mum would cry. Like that time when we watched this comedy sketch show. There was this man who owned a mansion and he was in love with his gardener but he couldn’t tell him and we thought it was funny, but mum cried about that.

  We had a Hawaiian pizza from Dial-a-Pizza. Perhaps a week later the nightmares about storks began. They’re very striking, particularly the marabou stork. The word marabou comes from an old Arabic word meaning the tomb of a holy man. I’d only ever seen them on the telly and once in real life when we went to a bird sanctuary in Yorkshire. It’s sometimes called the undertaker bird because from behind, with its cloak-like wings and back and skinny legs, that’s what it looks like.

  Like ravens and vultures, the marabou stork is a scavenger, so its bare head is well adapted. A feathered head easily gets clotted with blood and bits of spleen. Not ideal when you keep sticking your head in a corpse, I suppose. In the nightmare the birds would always be there. Usually in number. I’d be walking to school for example, and I’d spot one by the bus stop staring at me, then I’d see a line of them queuing for the bus. Or they’d be gathering around the all-weather pitch at break time. Staring at me. It got so I couldn’t sleep at night. In the end, the only way I could stop the birds from appearing in my dreams was to draw them. I’d do pencil drawings of them hanging from trees by their feet. Or pictures with their heads impaled on the school railings – hundreds of stork heads – one on each spike. I’d spend hours doing these drawings but it worked, the storks stopped coming. It was always marabou storks though, never any other type.

  Smiler is dishing out the rabbit stew onto enamel plates.

  —Get that down yer neck, he says, as he hands us the plates. He gets bottles of beer and opens them with his teeth. He hands them out. He takes his own food and beer and sits in his rocking chair. We’re sitting round the table. He starts to eat. We all start to eat. It doesn’t taste bad. There are too many potatoes maybe, but we got a bit carried away.

  —You didn’t finish your story.

  —Did I not?

  Smiler’s been telling us about some of his robberies, from a long time ago. I was interested at first until I started thinking about storks.

  —Well, you see, I became the bloke who did
the nitro, he continues. —I had the steadiest hands in the game, he says, and he holds one of his hands out to demonstrate and I’m struck again by the knuckles, like boulders, like skulls. Becky gives me a look: here we bloody go again she seems to be saying and I smile at her. It’s the longest I’ve ever been with a girl, not counting mum or my sister and I don’t feel uncomfortable at all.

  —It was one of them big chest safes. You can’t rush a job like that. Forty minutes, an hour. If it doesn’t work, you go home empty handed. If you get disturbed half way through, you scram. So Barry passes me the nitro and I get to work. I’d been at it for about twenty minutes tops, when I get this tap on my shoulder. Thinking it’s Barry, I turn around. It’s not Barry. Barry’s done a bunk.

  —Who was it? I say, not really caring one way or the other, but I can see that Ashley is hanging on to every word. Since I’ve been with Becky, I’ve started seeing Ashley in a different light. He doesn’t seem to me now to be a raven, not even a crow, more of a jackdaw. He seems to have physically shrunk and his hair doesn’t seem as shiny.

  —What we call the long arm of the law. In this case, Mr Security guard.

  —What did you do?

  —Calm as you like, I stood up and said, ‘What seems to be the problem, officer?’ He was so taken aback that in the moment it took him to register, I gave him the Smiler head butt.

  He puts his bottle of beer on the floor and his plate too and demonstrates.

  —Right between the eyes. You should have seen it, fell down like a dead man.

  Ashley laughs. Then Smiler notices me and Becky giving each other a look and he turns to me. —What’s the matter with you? he says and I join in with the laugh. I give Becky a look too and she joins in, although my laugh and Becky’s laugh don’t sound genuine.

  Smiler guzzles his beer. —Don’t you look at me like that, he says.

  He stares at me and I say, —I... I was miles away. I was thinking about the ravens. We’re going to look for them first thing. Where should we look?

  He thinks about this. —There’s a few nests around here, he says. —There’s a crag not too far away, I’ll show you in the morning. There’d be more if it wasn’t for the farmers. Can’t blame them, he says. I want to tell him that the farmers only shoot them because they think they kill their lambs, but they don’t. A raven only eats dead things. It’s not a killer. That’s why they keep out of the way of the farmers. The raven is a very clever bird. But I don’t tell him this, I just nod and smile at him uneasily. He stands up and empties the bottle.