Seeing Crows Read online

  Since the office switched to computers, Van kept bitching that they were going to fuck his check up and he knew it. “I know all about breaking in doors if you know about breaking in computers,” he liked to say.

  I found an excuse to stroll past the little records office every day if I could, even though I didn’t have much reason to. Usually I only caught a glimpse of Elle leaning over some folder, spewing dust as she opened it, her red hair falling off her shoulders and draping the sides of her face. I figured I was just a name in a ledger to her. I sat in her chair now and opened some of the drawers. I found an appointment book, like people keep phone numbers in, and agendas if they have one. I flipped through it, until I found her parents’ name and address. I knew where her folks lived already, it was too small of a town not to. She had an older brother that Logan had hung out with a few times and I knew indirectly. Her mom worked in the factory office; that’s how Elle ended up here for the summer. I knew exactly where their house was, as a matter of fact, not far from where Logan died actually, out past the intersection where County 68 crossed Old Plant Road, only you turned right where Logan had gone straight.

  I fixated on that intersection in my mind, picturing Logan tearing through it on his bike, not even pausing at the 4-way stop sign. I still pictured him doing things all the time, replaying some of the last things I saw him do. I guessed that’s what it meant to miss someone. You fill the gaps somehow.

  Picturing him losing control of his motorcycle, I traced the outline of a body, like in a police crime scene, in the dust on the desk top and then started to paint the lines in with some White-Out I found. The White-Out had a piercing, chemical smell not unlike the industrial glue we used all night, only sharper even. I leaned back in my chair and lifted it closer to my nose. I pushed one nostril shut and inhaled sharply, for as long as I could. It burnt like crazy, like breathing fire. The White-Out fell out of my hand to the floor, rolling across my pant leg on the way.

  I handed the pen and paper to Van on the porch.

  “What the hell took you, boy?” he asked, squinting at me. “Shit, you been gone almost a long time!”

  “I don’t know, I just had to find some paper in there,” I said.

  Van continued to look at me suspiciously, but then he smiled. “You’re fucking crazy, kid, and you don’t even know it,” he said, grin spreading. “You’re a funny one.” He shook his head as he started writing on the paper. “Hey, listen,” he said, finishing his scribbling. “Here’s my phone number. You should call me someday, come over and meet my wife. She’s a real pretty woman, I tell you. I got a couple a kids, shit, just a few years younger’n you. Going off to college in a couple of years if I can afford it. Can you believe that? Shit, you’s just a baby yourself. My wife’ll love you, I told her you was a good shit. We’ll have a barbecue or something.”

  He handed me the paper.

  “Thanks,” I said, shoving it in my pocket next to Elle’s appointment book.

  4.

  “Yup,” Duke said, shaking his old head. “Something’s in the air. People’s just breathing it in all around. Making everyone crazier and crazier.”

  “Dad, you act like the whole atmosphere is so polluted it’s causing brain damage,” Besse said, mouth open, looking at him.

  “It ain’t the atmosphere,” Duke said, perusing the headlines of the paper in front of him, ignoring Besse’s exasperation. He sat in the fuzzy orange recliner in my and Besse’s living room with the newspaper lifted into the air, never looking out from behind it. He snorted and hacked and slapped the pages of the paper. “It’s the government. And businesses. Keeping secrets from each other. And with each other. Don’t none of them even know the truth. And maybe it ain’t even like they did it on purpose. Maybe they set something in motion they don’t even know about yet.”

  Coughing, Duke turned another page. “Where’s the goddamned local news?”

  But he had to drop the paper in his lap as the cough became a full-fledged gagging and he needed a free hand to wipe his chin. His square jaw was set hard on his narrow face. His whole countenance resembled a synapse between neuron endings. Lines – a heavy fingerprint of wrinkles and hair-deep crevices radiated around his eyes and descended almost far enough to reach those stretching up from around his mouth, but not quite making it across the smooth plain of his cheeks. A thin, grizzly white beard speckled the bottom of his weathered face. He wore his work pants, green Dickies the same shade as his button-down shirt. A little white oval patch with red trim said Duke above his heart, above the shirt pocket. His mesh hat had a similar patch on its padded front, matching his pants and shirt.

  It was midmorning on Saturday. I had just woken up. Duke was already visiting Besse when I walked into the living room still in my boxers, my hair standing at impossible angles. Besse shot a glance at me and then up and down me, ordering me in a single look to put more clothes on. I shambled into the room anyway, scratching my head, and plopped down on my back onto the couch, dropping my head on her lap and looking up into her face. Duke sat opposite us, across the room, staring again at the headlines now while I tried to read Besse’s expression around the protrusion of her breasts.

  “Where were you last night?” I mouthed at her, but Duke was already blurting something out, paying no attention to me.

  “See? See that?” he snapped. “Schoolteacher went to a student’s house to leave his homework ‘cause he was sick and the kid held her captive for more’n three hours before the parents found her locked in the car trunk when the dad got home. Saw her car in the driveway still. Eleven years old, that boy. And you know what? The damned mother was there the whole time. Arrested for possession of drugs and negligence. Ought to put that little shit in prison for that. And the mother too.” Duke yanked his hat off to shake his balding head, letting the paper fall from in front of his face again. His jaw kept moving, even though he’d stopped talking, lips mashing and teeth grinding – what teeth he had left, anyway. A steady cough rumbled up from his lungs, more like a river than a spasm and spittle frequently bubbled out of his lips.

  I pulled on Besse’s shirt, a pink tank top, to flatten her left breast so I could see her face more clearly. “What time did you get home last night?” I mouthed silently. She wasn’t wearing a bra and I watched her nipple take shape behind the fabric as I pulled it tighter.

  “Where was the father?” Besse asked, completely ignoring me.

  “Working, of course,” Duke snorted. “Works all the time, paper said. Goddamn man bust his hump everyday and got a family like that. I’m telling you, people’s just breathing it in these days, just breathing it right in.”

  “Maybe it’s just you, Duke,” I said. “Don’t you suck in chemicals all day? Hell, maybe that’s one of them houses you worked on.”

  If Besse wanted to ignore me, I would simply talk to her father. She’d answer just to keep me from harassing Duke, before I incited him into a chemical overreaction.

  “Hell, boy, you know I ain’t never been there. These people probably don’t even care if they’s living with bugs. Family like that. That kid probably didn’t know no better. It’s that damned no good lazy mother ought to be thrown right in jail. Sounds just like your mother, Besse.”

  “Dad, stop,” Besse said curtly.

  “What’s your excuse then, Duke? Why you so crazy?” I asked, finally eliciting a glare from Besse. I used the moment to ask her, barely audible this time, “Who were you with last night?”

  The glare went from disgusted to hostile.

  Duke was raving again. “I don’t need no excuse, boy. I tell you what, I got me an honest job, and I work hard. Keep a clean home – ain’t no bugs, ain’t no problems with the law. Raised my kid right. Only bad thing she ever done is take up with you. And all that despite her mother.”

  “Dad,” Besse snapped, a one word order.

  “Duke, you’ve been spraying too much of that shit at home. You don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore,” I tol
d him.

  “Soon I’ll have to be spraying it around here, boy, way you live, lazy son of a bitch. I got to get me out of here,” he said, rising slowly, gasping for air as he did. “Besse, you take care. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “Bye, Dad,” she said, waving as he walked out the door to the garage. People who knew us came in through that door; strangers knocked on the front door.

  “Your dad, the exterminator,” I said. “That man’s breathed in a few too many chemicals, there, Besse.”

  “You’re a fucking dick,” she snarled, throwing my head off her lap and standing up.

  My head bounced back on the couch. I watched her as she walked away, her ass barely covered by her gray cotton underwear.

  5.

  “Jesus Christ … Oh God …”

  I lay on the couch still, exactly as Besse left me after Duke departed.

  “Oh God … oh no …”

  I laid on my back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of our upstairs neighbor having sex above me. I rarely heard them unless one of them was getting laid. I didn’t know which one made all the noise. Two women lived up there. They were maybe a little older than me, mid-twenties possibly. I saw them coming in and out of the house all the time. I watched them every chance I had, walking up the driveway from the street where they parked. Because their apartment was larger than ours, extending over the garage, Besse and I got to use the garage and driveway. We shared a washer and dryer in the basement with the girls and I sometimes ran into one or the other down there or on the stairs.

  I spoke with them briefly on occasion when I passed them, not much, just a few words, and never enough for me to figure out which one was the screamer.

  I wondered if Besse was ever down here by herself while our neighbor was getting laid upstairs. Did she get aroused when she heard it? Probably not like I did. She must hear the one sometimes, though. What if she wasn’t alone when it happened? Was Duke ever here? Another lover? Besse wouldn’t admit it to me. But I worked every evening until eleven, and didn’t get home until near midnight sometimes. She was always asleep by then. I didn’t know how she spent her evenings.

  “Ahh, shit …”

  I’d be late for work afternoons when I heard my neighbor having sex, unable to leave, transfixed by the breathing, the muttering, the occasional yelp. I’d think of Elle to get myself out the door

  “Hhhhhh …”

  The sound of my neighbor getting laid resounded through my head whenever I chanced upon one or the other of them. I often couldn’t think of much to say, just felt stupid. Because all I could do was wonder. Which one was it? I looked at their lips, I listened to their breathing. Beulah was a brunette and was the friendlier of the two, or at least she talked more. Geechie was the quieter, more reserved, blonde.

  That was the definition of frustration. Nothing they did in front of me ever gave away which one made all the noise. I thought about little else around them.

  “Oh stop …”

  No squeaking bed, no headboard against the wall, no hands slapped on the floor. Just her moaning.

  By the time she stopped, I was wound up like a jack in the box. I needed to get out. It was still morning. Besse had gone to the mall to meet some unidentified friend, nearly forty-five minutes away in Riverside, the closest largest place to Still Creek, where we lived in the stretched out farmlands of central New York. I wouldn’t see Besse for hours. She’d come home alone. I’d never know who she was with.

  I threw some clothes on and got in the car. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I couldn’t stay in the apartment all day long, or any longer, for that matter. I nailed a gas station about a mile away from the house. I kept pumping on the trigger of the nozzle, imagining that it made the gas flow faster, like a keg of beer or pumping a BB gun. Or maybe it kicked out more fumes at least, and I stood in the wavy heat of the summer sun, in the hazy ripples of the gas fumes and thought about Logan dying to this smell. I imagined that his lungs full of these vapors numbed his consciousness to the pain of his road-burnt skin, pierced by broken bones or simply rubbed off by blacktop and speed and evil friction. I hoped it lulled him into a stupor, a disorienting death where the reality of what happened never did register. Breathing that gas, I felt closer to my friend than I ever had, even though I know him practically since the day I was born and until the day he died.

  After paying for the gas I hopped back in the car and sped off toward the intersection near Elle’s house and Logan’s death. An idea occurred to me.

  6.

  By the time I came home around midnight, Besse was already in bed. Tired and wanting to do nothing but the hit the bed and pass out, I pulled my pants clumsily off, my feet stomping each time I yanked a leg free of the tight denim. I tugged my shirt off over my head, the still-buttoned sleeves catching on my wrists, causing me to thrust my fingers right into the blades of the whirling ceiling fan. I jerked my hand back down and cursed quietly, still trying to free myself from the shirt. Besse stirred. A button popped and the shirt was ripped free from my arm over my head, the fan scooping the shirt right out of my hands. My eyes failed to adjust to the light in the room and I couldn’t see but I could imagine the shirt revolving slowly and quietly around the room, not complaining or getting dizzy. That was one of us at least. The twirling fan blade seemed to be spinning the whole room with it, or maybe it was just my head. I crawled into bed with boxers and my socks on.

  “You smell like gas,” Besse mumbled in her half sleep.

  I took silent, cautious sniffs to see if I could smell anything on her. “I didn’t eat anything weird,” I said.

  “No, idiot, I mean gasoline,” she said, waking some.

  “Oh, I just filled my car on the way home. How bad is it?”

  “Not bad. Where were you?” she said, awake enough to lift her head so she wasn’t just talking into the pillow.

  “Over at Van’s,” I said, pretending to be falling asleep.

  “Isn’t that the guy you work with?” she asked, sliding nearer to me.

  “Yeah,” I said, sniffing for any whiff of gasoline as Besse pushed herself closer to me. I couldn’t catch the scent. “He keeps asking me over to meet his family. He’s got two baby girls and his wife’s supposed to be some great cook, and he asks me every week to come over.”

  She nestled in closer to me, slid her arm around me. “I love it when you cuddle with me,” she mumbled. “You never cuddle any more.”

  “So I went over there,” I said. “I even drank a beer.”

  “You drank a beer?” she asked, her voice much sharper now, like she was suddenly wide awake, her body stiffening.

  “Van loves to drink. Even does it while he works,” I laughed. “I only had one with him tonight.”

  I felt her relax some. “You’re not supposed to be drinking any more, you know.”

  “I didn’t even enjoy it,” I said.

  She slid her arm back, rubbing my stomach with her hand.

  “His wife’s real pretty,” I said. “For a woman her age. Popped two kids and is still skinny. She must be almost forty.”

  “Do you think she’s attractive?” Besse asked, kissing my neck.

  I tried shaking my head but my neck stiffened at her kiss, and my back snapped rigid. The muscles between my stomach and hips fluttered beneath the touch of her hand though. While my body tensed in resistance, she became only softer, warmer, in comparison to me, the crush of her breast on my rib, her moist lips on my neck, her hand rubbing my stomach.

  “I think it’s good for you to make some new friends,” she whispered, cautiously. “I mean, with Logan … you know.” She wasn’t able to say it. With Logan dead. With my best and only friend gone.

  I laid there stiffly, in stark silence. She continued to stroke me, sliding her hand up and down me, gently, waiting for some reaction from me.

  “Why don’t you want to have sex?” she whispered in my ear, her teeth on my lobe. “What’s wrong?” she asked.


  “I do,” I lied, feeling the sudden coolness of her palm as I rolled on my side to face her. I imagined Elle at work, leaning over her desk. I thought of the neighbors Geechie or Beulah getting laid at lunchtime. Van fucking Digger’s wife. I finally noticed the smell of gasoline as Besse kissed me on my lips, rolling me onto my back. I imagined Logan unconscious in the road. I pictured the rage of blood rushing free for its first time as bone tore through skin.

  I couldn’t stop Besse from making love to me.

  7.

  I cruised slowly past Elle’s cluttered little office Monday afternoon, restless with guilt over the stolen appointment book, certain she would have noticed this morning. I peeked cautiously out of the corner of my eyes through the dusty window facing the factory, saw her red hair draped over her shoulders and hiding her face. Her back straightened in my last glimpse of her as I drifted past the doorway toward the loading dock, though I had no real business over there.

  “Hey,” I heard her say from behind me.

  I stopped but wished I hadn’t, pivoted in slow motion, acted surprised, not even sure she was calling out to me. She was.