“Do you know the saying, ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’?”
The teacher in her don’t give me time to say so, when she adds, “Well, you write about the baby while everyone else is writing about the bathwater.”
I nod and puff on my pipe. “You smart.”
? ? ?
In that first week of October when frost come most mornings, Roy Tupkin and his shenanigans make my crow friends grow curiouser. The fool’s leaving a trail, and the crows bring me bits of his messy life. They put em in a box I got outside my door just for Roy’s stuff. I’m shuffling through that box when Kate comes by.
“What’s this?” She steps in close and looks over my shoulder, nosy as all get out.
“Roy Tupkin’s stuff. The crows bring it to me.”
“Roy Tupkin’s? These are specifically his things?”
“Yep.”
“A box only for Roy Tupkin’s things…”
“What’s wrong with your hearing?”
“I hear you, Birdie, although I find it impossible to believe the crows know what belongs to Roy. You have to admit, it sounds far-fetched.”
“Far-fetched or close-fetched, these here things is Roy’s things, and the crows bring em.”
I don’t like to raise my voice to her, but she’s got too much valley thinking left in her. She edges closer and looks over my shoulder at what I lay out on the stump. A chewed toothpick. A white shirt button. A strand of red ribbon. A gold necklace. A plastic comb.
“And all of these things came from Roy Tupkin. For certain.” Kate’s got that uppity teacher tone in her voice.
“Kate, you what Preacher Eli calls a doubting Thomas. You wanna see Roy drop that there toothpick, a crow pick it up and bring it to this box, but that ain’t gonna happen. And you don’t know jack squat bout crows. Take Samuel there.”
My friend rests on the low branch, watches, and puts up with doubting Kate.
“I’ve been friends with that rocas going on twenty years.”
“Twenty years?”
“Yep.”
She blinks twice and says, “Did you say ‘rocas’? That’s your last name.”
“Yep.”
I light my pipe and give Kate time to think. She’s turned addlebrained today.
“Does ‘rocas’ mean ‘crow’?”
“Yep. Rocas is crow, and crow is rocas.” Everybody knows that.
“In what language?”
“Gerlac.”
“You mean Gaelic?”
“That’s what I say.”
“And you’ve known this rocas”—she points to Samuel—“this crow for twenty years?”
I look at her like she needs to grow an extra head cause the one she’s got don’t work. I don’t insult Samuel and answer. I head inside and pull out one of the Books of Truths.
She follows me in. I say, “Sit. Read.” I leave her.
? ? ?
My story starts with a mean winter. It snowed to beat all, with drifts up to the roof and low clouds dropping ice steady. Felt like you had to stoop to get under those clouds. I’ve got snowshoes on and wear Gray Wolf’s bearskin that hooks in front with wire and trails behind. I head out to check traps cause the larder is bout empty.
Pickings was slim that story day, and I only had one hare to show for it. Had one more trap to check before I head back home when I hear a gunshot from up on the ridge.
They shot me! Shot me in the back!
I stood for a odd second, then fell in the snow. The wind went quiet like it knowed something bad just happened, and the fire pain in my back made me suck air in little bites. Bodies come running, crunching through the icy snow, then they come up beside me. One of em said, “Shit, Elton, I told you it won’t no bear. You kilt a old woman, is what you done. Get her hare. Least we got something to eat out of this. You want the bearskin?”
They pulled on Gray Wolf’s bearskin but it stayed hooked, then they flipped me over. When I opened my eyes clumpy with snow stuck to my lashes, they jumped back.
A different voice said, “Lord, she ain’t dead. What we gonna do now?”
Elton said, “She’s a goner for sure, losing all that blood. I’m not wasting another bullet when the deed’s mostly done.”
Just like that, them scalawags walked off with my hare and left me for dead.
I looked up at the sky and gotta decide: Am I gonna die today or another day?
I picked another day.
I started the crawl to the tall hemlock to get outta the sleet coming down hard. I was a worm inching along, a snail leaving a trail. I got to the tree weaker than a body got a right to be and call itself alive. Scooted under the branches up against the trunk. Pulled the bearskin over my head. The pain in my back’s gone numb. Home’s far off. The hunters who shot me long gone. The snow has already covered my tracks. I wanna sleep. I heard the crows. I sleep.
I woke up cause something like BBs was falling. I pulled back the fur and saw juniper berries. They don’t grow here, but I ate some, slept some. The sun went down. The sun come up.
When I wake next time, I hear a rustling through the branches, and a man’s voice said, “There you is,” like he was looking for me. He picked me up, bearskin and all, and put me on his dogsled, and off we went over the snow.
I woke up in a teepee, warm and weak. Got no clothes on under the furs. Got a strip of cloth running round my middle holding medicine of comfrey root and honey from the smell of it.
The man in his underclothes sat on his heels and stirred stew over a fire. Wet clothes hung on a line. He saw me come to and poured black tea in a wood cup. “Drink this.”
I drink tea, sleep, and wake through daylight, then dark, then day. Day and night got turned upside down, and I don’t care.
One day I opened my eyes and sat up and ate his stew. The man said his name was Abraham. He said the crows saved me, and I said, “I know.”
“How come you know that?” Abraham asked, curious.
“I was a crow in another life. You believe that?”
“I believe you,” that man said.
“How come?”
“Cause you said so.”
Abraham had been coming through that stretch of valley where I was shot, and he saw a dozen crows circling a hemlock. He said he would have passed it by if it was vultures, but crows is different. They dipped in front of his sled, then flew back to that hemlock. He paid attention. He looked under that tree and thought he saw a starved bear, but it was me. He said I would have been a goner in another day if it won’t for them crows.
? ? ?
Kate comes out the trailer when she finishes my crow story. I’m quiet. I sort the box, but not really, and make her talk. She takes her time and I don’t blame her. She’s finding out she don’t know much, and that’s gonna make her feel lost for a spell. All her book smarts is worth a handful of nothing when it comes to real truths.
“I don’t know what to say,” she starts.
That’s good.
“Did you see Abraham again?”
That’s safe.
“No. Him a rover. Don’t stay in one place.”
“How long did you stay with him?”
“Nigh on two weeks to heal, then he brought me home, got in wood, built my fire, hunted, and filled my larder. Then he left. But something come home with me.”
“What?”
“Samuel.”
“Samuel?”
I nod my head toward the branch.