Revenge of the Crows

“You won’t have your internet or TV for three months,” Oscar said to his son.

Emily exhaled from the passenger seat. “Can you leave the poor boy alone? He’s only seven.”

John ignored his father and continued to stare out the back window of their silver SUV. After turned onto a jeep trail, they rumbled along over rocks for two-miles, the dust trailing behind. Finally, the SUV pulled in front of a falling down rusty sign, “Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch”. 

“The Idaho wilderness,” Oscar said. “This will be fun. Those hills over there? I remember biking single-track trails when I was a kid.”

“Good for you,” Emily said. 

As soon as they parked at the office, a weathered log cabin, John jumped from the SUV and slammed the door.

Oscar turned to his wife. “What’s eating him?” he said. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Emily muttered.

Oscar’s face reddened. “You want to have this out? Right now?”

Emily faced her husband. “I supported you through your PHD, but I didn’t expect you would take us out to the middle of nowhere. There’s not even phone service. We could have stayed home. I have friends, girlfriends, a life.”

Oscar grabbed the wheel. His knuckles were white and he glared through the windshield. “You KNEW what you were getting into.”

“But John didn’t,” Emily said, turning away and climbing out the passenger door. “You’re ashamed of him.”

In the office, a man with a broad brimmed Stetson cowboy hat, white mustache, and potbelly spit into a spittoon. He put his thumbs in his red suspenders. “Oscar Evans, I’ll be. Where’s your intern this year? Did you run off all the Argentinians?”

Oscar put his paperwork on the counter. “My son is the intern this year.”

The cowboy looked the boy over, head to heal. “Young man, are you gonna help your pop, the famous archeologist?” He rolled his eyes so only John could see.

The boy hesitated. “I guess.”

Oscar stepped in. “My son doesn’t talk much.”

The man grinned, a missing tooth in the lower front. “I reckon talking is way overrated, Oscar.”

In an hour, they were provisioned and ready to go. Oscar reached for his son’s hand and lifted him up behind him on the big bay horse, the black hide glistening. “When you’re eight you get your own horse, ok?” Emily mounted her small sorrel and with two pack horses roped behind, they rode up a trail overgrown with ocher colored arrowwood, sagebrush, and scrub pine. Bursting with white fluff, Cottonwood seeds by a river drifted in the air. After pouring water into his sombrero, Oscar poured it over his head. 

It took two days of hard traveling and camping out in their tent, but at the end of the third day they rose over a saddle between two mountains. A broad pine forest valley stretched out below with streams of spring runoff.

“The cabin is just over yonder,” Oscar said. "The archeological digs from last summer are about five miles beyond that. You’ll like the cabin, Em”

“You bet,” Emily said from her horse trailing behind. “We’ll go ‘yonder’, Tex, whatever the hell yonder means.”

Oscar woke before dawn in the cabin. Something was wrong. And then from outside against the wall of the cabin came a thud. With his wife sound asleep beside him, he reached to the bureau next to the bed and pulled his Colt 45 pistol from the holster. Another thud against the door to the cabin caught his breath cold all the way through to his spine. In the dim light from the dying fire-place, he held the gun. He padded silently in his bare feet to the front of the small three-room cabin. Thud. After lifting the bar securing the door, he raised the pistol above his head, took a deep breath, and slowly swung the door open. On the ground were two birds, large black crows with white bellies. One still struggled, then lay still, the blood speckled on the pine boards of the porch. He peered to the edge of the clearing to the forest beyond the flickering of the fire. The trees rustled, the firelight throwing shadows. There was no wind, only silence. He used a snow shovel near the door to scoop up the birds and flung them high into the forest. “There’s my sacrifice,” he said, stepped back into the cabin, and barred the door.

The next morning, Emily was up early. Oscar came out of the bedroom with his hair tussled and sleep in his eyes. He took a seat at the pine table. Emily broke three eggs into a glass tumbler. She whisked them and spooned in ricotta cheese, whisked again, and poured the egg mixture into a hot pan with glistening olive oil. The eggs were soon firming up and from time to time she turned them with a wooden spoon. She served them in front of Oscar, together with coffee and toast.

“Thank you, Em. This looks great.” He scrunched his eyes and glanced at his wife, then tore into the food. Soon he’d cleaned the plate. Cocking his head, he asked, “All right, what gives?”

“I’ve decided to make the best of it.”

Over the next weeks a pattern developed. Oscar would ride the dark bay horse to the recovery site, five-miles each way. Once he returned at the end of the day, he would clean up at the pump, the cold water drenching his body from the dust and chalk white earth from the digs. After dinner the family collected on a small porch with two rockers. As dusk fell, John would chase fire-flies in the cabin clearing. The evenings were cool and the sky would turn to soft pink and blue across the wide land to the west. Oscar reached for Emily’s hand and grazed it. She drew away, but the next night when their hands were close, she gripped his in her own. Neither spoke. In the morning, Oscar chased John out of the cabin. “Go get some firewood, son.”

“We need a lot of wood,” Emily said. “Take your time.”

*******

“How old?” John asked. He and his dad were at the archeological site. Ditches two feet wide spoked out around them from where they stood.

“I don’t really know, son. We have taken some artifacts to State University for carbon dating, but we won’t get an exact answer till next spring. I call this the ancient place.

`John’s eyes widened. “Ancient place? Cool.”

Oscar raised up, startled. “I didn’t think you cared about this stuff.”

Later, they scraped the sides of one of the cuts stratified into the white earth. Oscar explained the holes were hand hewed from the interns who were long gone as each winter approached. Artifacts lay about: arrowheads still razor sharp chipped from slate, crockery in shattered pieces. A stone club leathered at arms-length lay wrapped in a canvass tarp.

Oscar held his son’s hand, guiding him with a dusting brush. “Whoever was here made their own tools,” he said, showing his son how to chip away with a trowel into the white clay. “Careful son, mostly you only get one chance to make it right.”

The day over, Oscar packed some of the artifacts they found in saddle bags. He brought the extra horse around. “You ride,” Oscar said to his son, handing him the reins to the small sorrel. 

Oscar helped his son mount the horse. “What your mom doesn’t find out won’t hurt her.” 

With Oscar leading, the horses kicked loose rocks on the steep declining trail, both of them standing in their stirrups. Behind him, his son said, “Do you think I could be an ark-o-gist?” 

“You can be anything you put your mind to, son,” Oscar called back

“I guess. Dad?

“What son?” Oscar strained to hear.

“Thanks. Bringing me up here. I know you didn’t want to. Letting me have own horse, I mean. I love you, Dad.”

Oscar was on the lead horse and faced away from his son. He bent forward in the saddle and didn’t say anything for a long time.

****

Three days later, alone, Oscar lay in a ditch passed out in the white hard crust of the mountain. Waking up, he instantly remembered he’d been at the archeological grounds. The earth smelled sweet like rotten fruit and he tried to get up. After rubbing his head, blood covered his hand. “Shit, I fainted,” he said to no one. He carefully wrapped his skull with a bandana and went back to work, scrapping the earth with his trowel. After a while, he lifted a large water bag to his mouth. As he gulped, the coolness caressed down his throat and eased the nervousness in his stomach. Black crows in the Douglas pine scolded him with high-pitched screeches. Oscar threw rocks at the birds and they flew off, but soon returned to alight in the pine, relentless in their complaining. 

He examined the shards of pottery, many with black and red etchings against the chalk-colored stone where the craftsman had painted the vessel. “Don’t be jealous,” he said to the shard, and held the broken piece to his chest. He picked up the next piece and held it to his chest as well. “And you don’t be jealous either.” He lost time, and the night passed as he picked out each of the hundreds of shards. One after the other, he held each one to his chest and laid it carefully back. 

The answer hit him like a diamond piercing his forehead. He would need to move a tent to the digs. And now, with his mind made up, he kept going back to the darkness of when he fainted. Had he flatlined and come back? Was the dark place death? He didn’t think so. 

It took all night to help the shards feel better. When the blue blackness of dawn rose in the east, he lay sleeping on the menagerie holding the stone club like a warm blanket. He needed to tell Emily he was moving.

****

“I just don’t have time, Em. It’s selfish not to think of the historical significance.” 

Emily yelled. “You and your stupid historical significance. You’re the selfish jerk!”

John appeared in his bedroom door, his face red and wet. “Stop it! It’s Chindi!” he said, but his voice was low and foreign. “Chindi!” he rasped, pointing at his dad with an accusing finger. He collapsed to the pine floor, shaking.

Emily rushed to her son, kneeled, and held him. John’s mouth foamed white.

 “Chindi!” he said, standing up, the white scum dripping from his mouth. 

“What’s wrong?” Emily’s face grimaced. She choked on her hysteria and held her son’s cheeks in her hands and stared into his eyes. “Tell me, what’s wrong, my god!”

Oscar rushed over from the table and tried to hug John. His son pulled away as if Oscar’s hands burned his skin. “Chindi! Chindi! Chindi!” his son howled. He hugged his mother from behind and glared at his father. 

Oscar stormed out of the cabin and heard Emily behind him. “You can’t run from this Oscar!”

He thrashed through the thick undergrowth. It was late in the day and his arms bled from thorned branches as he thrust them aside. Finally, he collapsed and stared into the sunset. He sensed on the periphery of his vision, where the black meets his ear, a whisper. An icy wind ripped through him. Did I have a concussion? He shook his head to chase the sound, but could feel it move behind his periphery. When he didn’t try to look or turn the whispers came back.

He gagged to cut off a scream in his throat.

When he returned home it was already dark. The door of the cabin was open. Why would Emily leave the door open? Were they safe? No one was home. “They’ll be back,” he said out loud. He went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and slugged milk from a quart container. On the dining room table was a note. 

“Divorce,” it said. “I want a divorce.”

The milk container fell on the table and with short gulping sounds emptied on the kitchen floor. 

He took his time getting to the digs. Once there, he dismounted and pulled the tarp off one of the ditches. He removed the Argentinian poncho from one of the bodies and sliced the leathered skin away from the sinew. After removing his shirt, he tied strips of the skin to his body, around his neck, his back. With a pottery shard, he cut his arms and wiped blood on his cheeks. He walked deliberately to his gray, mounted, and rode in the night. He let the horse lead and closed his eyes, swaying as if tranced. There was no wind, the only sound was his horse’s hooves on the desert rock, the iron shoes scraping the stone. With the darkness close in, the voices whispered. Thou shalt be held safe. Cottonwood seeds drifted off the ragged trees. He felt the seeds were like warnings of angels, floating, touching his face. What are the seed voices saying? They were swirling in the silent air around him, speaking so softly. What are you saying? Thou is the vengeance. Darkness at his periphery whispered, the lips tickling, the breath stinking of stale blood, a sour milk. 

The lights from Emily’s campfire gleamed in the shadows ahead of him, the dying flames reflecting on the pines which swayed and dodged in the fire’s light. As he approached on the horse, the boy was standing away from the camp. Without a word, Oscar gestured to his son to take his hand and swung him onto the horse. He flicked the reins and slowly turned away. 

On they rode higher in the mountain, the horse picking the way over loose rock, always climbing. They didn’t speak for a long time.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son.”

“Nothing.”

They arrived at the digs and black crows were circling, dipping and crying. The air filled with the shrill guttural sound of hundreds of birds. Some would land on his back, picking at the leathered skin. He swiped at the birds to keep them away again and again. They screeched and dove and some clawed at his face. He swiped them away. Thee is the strength of land. He gently placed the boy on the ground next to a trench and directed him to face the sky. Facing east, Oscar sat next to the boy and brought his knees to his chest. In time, the sky in front of him turned from black to pale rose, a gray blue. He climbed to his feet and retrieved the club. Crouching next to the boy, he stroked the wood handle and held it against his chest, the sharp blade facing away.

At last, the sky brightened in front of him. He lifted his arm from the pain of the light. The day has not broken? Another flash and his eyes flinched. Mixed in the horizon’s sun was Emily facing him on the big horse, the sorrel. She was too far away for Oscar to hear. What is she saying? She needs to come closer. Her mouth was working a scream and one of her hands shook violently with the Colt pistol while she fumbled with the hammer. Shimmering invisibly in the rise of the dawn light next to her was a shirtless man in khaki leggings, his muscles lean. Wearing a red bandana, his hair was long and black, shining in the dawn. The man smiled broadly with large white teeth, but his eyes did not smile, and he waved his arm at Emily as if demanding she charge. His other arm stretched out to Oscar, pointing, his eyes bloodshot. 

The flash of the sun broke. Thou’s time is now. Oscar raised the club in both of his hands, the largest of the crows diving at him, screeching. He then stretched the club higher, arching his chest to the sun, and braced with all his strength to chop down. The light burst into his head, an explosion, and then it was black. I’m safe, he thought, but only for an instant.