Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (35 page)

E
MPTINESS everywhere, darkness and dreams. She awoke to the sense of somebody in the room, though it was not Livvie, of that she was sure. She lay listening, alert, waiting for a sound. “I'm not afraid of you,” she said, though she was.

After a few minutes she rolled to the side, reached out to the lamp on the nightstand. Turned on the light, looked from corner to corner. No shadow but her own.

She sat in the chair by the window for a while. The light from her room lay in a trapezoid on her lawn. She kept waiting for a figure to step into the light and look up at her.
Are you coming out?
he would ask.
Or should I come up?

But the minutes passed—fifteen, then thirty—and no one appeared. She sat there and shivered and felt she had never been so cold. She climbed back into bed but could not get warm.
What's wrong with me?
she wondered.
Why can't I stop shivering?

She decided that she needed something to help her sleep, something to quiet her nerves. It did not matter what the doctor had said. The doctor did not know. She went into the bathroom, and without turning on the light, she found the bottle she needed and shook two tablets out into her hand. She put them in her mouth, took a swallow of water. Yet still she shivered. So empty, so cold.

T
HAT night, for the first time, she dreamed of Jesse. Jesse walking the tree line just off the lane, heading home. In her dark sleep, Charlotte steps off her rear patio and walks out to meet him. He sees her coming and turns back into the woods, disappears into the dark branches. But Charlotte knows where to find him, and he is there waiting, sitting on the fallen tree, unafraid and still. The tree trunks are black with a recent rain and the ground is shiny-wet. The rain falls from the canopy in heavy drops that thump against her head and shoulders but make no sound. The crows sit overhead, silent, too, waiting for a gunshot. And Jesse sits there with the shotgun standing between his legs, his small, wet hands on the black, wet barrel. Charlotte's footsteps make the only sound in this dream. The soft, wet crunch of leaves beneath her boots. She is so very cold in this dream, she is shivering, unable to control the violence of her shivers, rattling like a skeleton. She moves close to him, needing warmth. He watches silently with a strange, crooked smile on his mouth. His eyes are the darkest things in the woods, blacker than the crows. Charlotte wants to speak, wants to break the woods's silence, but she can only shiver. She feels the strangle of words in her throat, but when she opens her mouth, nothing but a raspy grunt is possible. Jesse blinks a slow, sleepy blink and his crooked smile widens just a bit. Then he looks up into the trees, and with that, the crows come down off the branches. They just step forward and come down with wings spread, drifting down in a beautifully slow and silent descent. They land at Charlotte's feet until they completely blanket the ground. Others follow from the treetops to land on her shoulders. Their weight is peculiarly soft but heavy. More and more crows descend to land atop her and pile up at her feet. The ones at her feet sit motionless while looking up at her, hundreds of small, bright eyes. Soon there are too many on her shoulders, and she is leaning forward from the weight, yet they descend, they settle on her back now, driving her lower. Then she is on her knees, yet more crows drift down, as many as the leaves themselves, and she realizes suddenly that the leaves are falling and turning into crows as they fall. She is pushed onto her hands and knees, struggles to hold her head up. Jesse isn't even watching now; he is staring up into the canopy, up through all those black, denuded branches to where a pink glow rises, the first blush of morning. Charlotte watches all this in a kind of slow motion as one elbow collapses from the weight on her back and she falls to the side. Now she turns her head skyward, and all she can see is a beautiful, graceful cloud of black wings descending, and then everything is a soft, fragrant black atop her, fragrant with the scent of a misty night sky.

It is not a frightening dream, but so crushingly sad. The weight of the crows as they cover her is the weight of sadness. Breathing becomes more and more difficult, but she does not panic; this is what she wants, to be subsumed by the blackness.

The only unpleasantness is the chill.
The crows should be warm,
she thinks.
The bodies should be warmed.
And now that her consciousness has turned to the chill, the chill becomes everything, the only sensation. The chills and the breathlessness, the suffocating sadness. She cannot breathe, but she is shivering violently, her bones like ice, body rattling in the wet leaves.
Christ, the cold, the cold,
she thinks,
I can't stand the cold . . .

S
HE awoke gasping for air, her body curled tight beneath the comforter but covered with goose bumps, the comforter pulled over her head and down over her face. She exposed her head and sucked in the air, but she could not stop shivering. She told herself,
You're freezing to death. What is wrong with you?

There were more blankets in the empty bedroom down the hall, so she switched on the lamp on the nightstand, climbed out of bed, and made her way to the door. Her bare feet felt numb on the hardwood, toes curled and stiff as if she were walking on ice.

Stepping out of her own room, she faced Livvie's. The door was only partially closed. Charlotte moved closer, peered through the opening. The sibilance of breath, regular and warm. She eased the door open wider, a slow, soft creak that did not disturb the rhythm of Livvie's breaths. The light from Charlotte's room flowed softly into Livvie's.

Charlotte moved closer, walked lightly on her heels, and came to stand beside the bed. Livvie lay sleeping on her side, her body open and facing Charlotte, knees slightly bent, one ankle atop the other. She lay uncovered in pink pajamas, faded flannel in the shape of her body.
How can she sleep like that, uncovered?
Charlotte wondered.
She must be warm, she must be so warm.

Livvie's lips were parted just slightly, and Charlotte could hear each breath escaping, a whispered
shhhh
, a mother's
shhhh
. The sound itself was warming, the warmest thing she knew. Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed as delicately as she could, moved only an inch at a time, measured her own breaths against Livvie's. Finally she lay beside Livvie and brought her legs up, leaned so close that her toes touched a flannel pant leg. She could feel the breath from Livvie's mouth now and moved her own face even closer, wanting to breathe Livvie's breath, wanting the warmth and life in her. And when the breaths alone were not enough to warm Charlotte, when still she shivered, she moved closer still, hands reaching softly, feet reaching for Livvie's feet.

Livvie inhaled and drew back when Charlotte touched her mouth—not a sudden movement but sufficient to wake Livvie. She saw Charlotte's face so close and drew back farther, blinked, coming alert. Her eyes opened wider, and only then, in the look that came into Livvie's eyes then, only then did Charlotte realize what she had done, see where she was, and feel the coldness return.

“No,” Charlotte said pulling away, pushed away by the look in Livvie's eyes, “it's not . . . I was so cold . . . I've been so cold.”

Livvie said nothing. Then looked away. And reached to the foot of the bed, pulled the comforter up, covered her body, and turned toward the window, curled and covered on the edge of the bed.

Charlotte turned in the opposite direction, put her feet to the floor. She hurried across the ice to her own room, the sheets cold, and cocooned herself in the comforter, too cold to move again, too cold to reach out and extinguish the light.

N
EXT morning a misty dawn. Charlotte lay still cocooned, listening as Livvie packed up her things. Footsteps on the stairway, three trips up and down to carry everything onto the porch.
How will she carry it all home?
Charlotte wondered. But then she heard a car arriving, again the slow crunch of gravel. She climbed out of bed with the comforter still wrapped around her shoulders and went to the window. There was Gatesman's brown sedan at the end of the driveway, the engine idling. Waves of heat rose off the hood. He climbed out and came toward the house and disappeared from Charlotte's view. His voice was low, a few whispered words. And soon he reappeared on his way back to the car, Livvie's suitcase in one hand, a grocery bag in the other. He opened the rear door and set them inside on the seat.

Charlotte held the comforter tight around her as she hurried down the stairs. At the foyer she stood behind the screen door, looked out onto the porch, saw Livvie handing Gatesman the final overstuffed grocery bag. Livvie stood there for a moment, watching Gatesman, then said in a soft voice, “I'll be right back.” When she turned to the door, she saw Charlotte looking out.

Livvie said, “I was coming up to say good-bye.”

“You don't need to do this,” Charlotte said. “It wasn't what you think last night.”

Livvie came close to the screen but did not reach for the door. “I just think this is better,” she said. “I want to be back at the trailer anyway. I mean, if Jesse comes back . . .”

“I was just feeling lonely is all. I just . . .”

“I know,” Livvie said.

And Charlotte thought,
But you don't.

Livvie said, “I can't thank you enough for everything you've done.”

“What about getting back and forth to work? You can use my Jeep, I'll get you the keys.”

“It's okay. Mark is going to go to the bank with me today. He says he can get them to give me a loan.”

“I'm sure he can,” Charlotte said. Then, “What if Denny comes back?”

“We don't think he will.”

We?
Charlotte thought.
It's
we
already.

And why not?
she asked herself later. She had gone to the Windsor chair in her studio, sat wrapped in the goose-down comforter while the orange glow of morning slowly turned the window and curtains into a portrait of light.
Why should it not be
we
already?
she thought.
They're entitled,
she told herself.
They're deserving.

Unlike you,
she told herself.
Who deserves only you.