Crows (34 page)

“That's a good idea,” Robert said.

“If I get the leg, I go to work, right?”

“Get the leg, then we'll see.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you haven't got the leg yet,” Robert said. “This is the first interest you've ever shown in it. When you're wearing it, come see me. Then we'll discuss a job.”

Robert waited to see where Duke would go with his thoughts and emotions. He expected him to run again, to come little by little finally to the decision just to get the leg and be done with it.

But Duke said, “Let's make an appointment for a fitting, then.”

“
OK.
When?”

“Right away. You tell me when and I'll be there.”

Robert laughed. “Why'd you change your mind?”

“A new school year's starting,” Duke said. “Everyone—­even ­people you knew last year—­are kind of strangers the first few days or so. I thought it would be a good time to have the leg not be noticed. My dad used to tell me how worrying what other ­people thought of the way you looked was a waste of time, because everyone was thinking about themselves. I've found that's true. Nobody cares that I only have one leg. I don't think they'll care I have a fake one, either. And, I need the money I'll make working at SportsHeaven.”

Robert called and made an appointment and later in the week he and Duke left for Madison, with Buzz riding along. Duke was nervous about the fitting, about having a stranger probe clinically at the stump he had worked so hard at incorporating into invisibility, and then voluntarily to hook on appendage of wood and plastic to the end of it, like a party gag, or weights on a racehorse.

“What's the name of this place?” Buzz asked.

“Land O' Limbs,” Duke replied. “Limbtique. Dairy State Prosthetics.”

“Knock it off,” Robert said calmly, and Duke subsided with a breaking wave of forced laughter.

Robert had had to go to Ethel to find out why Duke suddenly changed his mind about the leg. “It can't simply be money,” he said.

“O and I suspect it is a girl,” Ethel said, smiling. “What else is there to make boys that age act counter to themselves? Or in their own best interests?”

“Who is she?”

“We don't know. She may not surface until school starts. He's like his father that way.
His
women were like little mystery storms beneath the surface. You always sensed they were there, you just didn't know where.”

“Did they surface when school started?” Robert asked.

Ethel, as if reaching the limits of her examination of a buried memory, said curtly, “Yes.”

In the car, Robert wondered to what extent Duke was willing to open himself.

“Remember the crow hunt?” Robert asked.

“Oh yes,” Duke said. “I thought Buzzard would shoot us.”

“And that lame-­ass record player,” Buzz said from the back, scoffing. “We haven't rented that thing
once
since I started work.”

“It's a hot item,” Robert said. “Always good for twelve hours of continuous play.”

“We were around here, weren't we?”

“We were way north of here,” Robert said. “The other direction entirely.”

Duke said, “I try to tell my friends that story you told us—­about the crows? But I can never remember half of it.”

“Mostly it was about a crow trial. And crow deception.”

“You really heard it from Dad?” Duke asked.

Robert nodded. “I've forgotten the story, though.”

“You
can't
forget,” Duke cried, panicky.

Robert was made sad suddenly, that he had gone so long without a thought to the crow tales. Once so large in his life, they had lately fallen away, hiding at the bottom of the lake with Ben. Another of Ara's predictions coming true, he was letting Ben die all over again.

“Crows have a flaw in their brains that causes them to lose parts of their memory when they sleep,” Robert said. “The longer a crow sleeps, the more he forgets. That's why you rarely see a crow work hard. They don't want to tire themselves out. Crows, of course, conceited and arrogant as they are, see this flaw as God's way of keeping the crows from taking over.” He shifted down, braked at corner, turned, then resumed.

“Crows call it forgetful sleep. It nearly meant the extinction of the species, because crows—­before they understood forgetful sleep—­were sleeping long nights and waking up complete mental blanks. They were forgetting to eat, to protect themselves, to reproduce. It wasn't until a certain crow—­concerned naturally by the imminent demise of his kind—­figured out what was happening. He did this simply by going without sleep one night, purely by chance. He was worried, couldn't sleep, and another crow he had been talking with
did
go to sleep. In the morning, this crow who had fallen asleep remembered
nothing
of what they had talked about the night before.”

“Dad told you this?”

Robert glanced at Duke. “Parts of it,” he admitted. “The crow who had figured out forgetful sleep became known as the Smarter Crow. All crows consider themselves smart, so he was the Smarter Crow because he had saved the species. He was elevated from an ordinary crow to a major figure in crow society. He was celebrated every day, nearly to the end of his life. The Smarter Crow. And the sad part is that his life was brought up short by that one discovery. It defined him so rigidly he was never able to do anything or go anywhere that he was not deferred to as the Smarter Crow, and called upon to recount for any crows present how he came to save them from extinction. He never took a mate because he never could be sure if any female crow loved him or the fact he was who he was. He never had a family. He was never allowed just to be an average crow. In having the wisdom to save the species, he had doomed himself. He had done one thing so encompassing that he was never allowed to do anything else. He had saved the
species.
What else was there?”

“What happened to him?” Duke asked.

“He got old,” Robert said. “Or older. He got tired—­very tired—­of being the Smarter Crow. There was a banquet planned in his honor. He had been to ten thousand banquets just like it. He would be celebrated and he would be asked to stand before the assembled crows and recount for the umpteenth time how he had saved
Corvus brachyrhynchos.
They would applaud, as crows do, by clicking their beaks sharply together. Then they would cluster around him to express their personal gratitude, and wait for him to recount in even more detailed terms how he had saved their species. And he was like an actor who had done one play for years and years. He
knew
how to draw out the suspense, how to insert humor, how to manufacture emotion. It was what he did: He was the Smarter Crow.

“But this one night, old, near the end of his life,” Robert said, “he decided he had had enough. He made up his mind he was through being the Smarter Crow. He simply went for a long flight over the countryside, miles and miles, and only stopped when he was very tired. He proceeded to fall into a deep sleep. He slept through the night and into the afternoon of the following day. The longest, most refreshing sleep of his life. When he awoke he had forgotten who he was. He knew he was a bird, but he wasn't sure what kind. He did not know where he was. He did not know he was the Smarter Crow. He felt wonderful, lighthearted, and young. He spread his wings and flew farther away. The crows who were holding the banquet for him became worried when he did not appear. A few flew to where the Smarter Crow was staying, and when they could not find him a great uproar went across the sky. It was assumed he had been called back, and he passed into folklore. Over the next few years the Smarter Crow was sighted in different places around the world, but these sightings were discounted. The Smarter Crow in fact lived several more seasons as an ordinary crow. He took a mate. He had long felt the only way one could beat forgetful sleep was to have a mate who could stay awake while the other slept, then fill in the parts of memory lost in sleep. He raised a family and finally died wrapped in the warm wings of his mate. His children thought he was boring because he had forgotten most of what he had experienced in his life, and he was sure it could not have been important or he would have remembered it.”

A
N ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON
wrote Duke a prescription for a temporary leg.

“You're still growing,” the doctor said. “In three or four years we'll fit you with a leg for life. A leg to dance in.”

He was a fat little man with a close beard of white whiskers. He sat on a rolling stool at Duke's foot, examining the stump of leg, poking at it with his fingertips. Duke did not look at him.

“We will get you a sock to put over this,” he said, cupping the rounded pink end of the leg. He made some measurements with a cloth tape and a pair of calipers. “Three years this has been? Why do you wait so long? Why depress yourself?”

Duke said nothing. He chewed his lower lip, then shrugged.

“Well, better late,” the doctor said, patting the stump and rolling away to a small desk across the room. He wrote in ink on a yellow notepad, tore the sheet off, and handed it to Duke.

“You're in business, young man,” he said. “Come see me when the leg arrives. I'll give you some tips.” He hiked up one trouser leg and tapped with his pen on a shin of flesh-­colored plastic.

“Thirty-­seven years I've lugged this cannon around,” he said. “I love it. It lets me work, lets me dance with my wife. You are young and proud and have time to sit and sulk. Go. Come see me when the leg arrives.”

The week after school began, Duke came into SportsHeaven. Robert's eyes went to him, his expectant face, the filled tube of his missing leg.

“You got it,” Robert said.

Duke bent over and rapped the leg, producing a solid sound. The shoes he had on, one was worn, one was new.

“How's it feel?”

“Strange,” Duke said, still looking down. “I have a little trouble controlling it. I haven't fallen over yet. Small triumph. Anyway, Rob-­O, I've come for my job.”

“Just like that?”

“It's what I want to do now. I need money. You and Buzzer and Mom seem to have so much fun.”

“Not so much,” Robert said.

“So there's no job? Is that what you're saying?”

Robert pointed to the new leg. “Does that chafe?”

“Some. It's to be expected. They gave me a sock to wear. Plus a tube of ointment. I ask girls to put it on for me,” Duke said, grinning.

“Any takers?”

“Not yet. Hey, do I have a job, or not?”

Robert gave him an application. “Fill this out. It's standard.”

The pad of forms was nearly empty; kids came in every day, from Mozart High or M.C., or one of the towns down the road; some of the kids he knew, but most were strangers. Robert let them fill in the easy blanks of the application; they could tell their parents they had tried. But he had not been hiring since taking on Ethel.

He went into the store while Duke sat at the desk filing out the form. He felt safe in the blue expanse; he was in charge there. His numbers were up. Theft seemed to be diminishing of late. Faintly, like a fight song heard in a stadium a half mile away, came the strains of “On, Wisconsin.” It played from speakers hidden at the back of the store. Dave's idea, it was one of thirty-­three college fight songs on a tape that ran all day, with three minutes between selections. Herm loved the idea; he said it “filled the air with the taste of sports.” Robert often hummed along.

He made a tour of the store, walking down or looking into every aisle. His employees did not jump into false busyness at his appearance; this pleased him. He wanted them to be comfortable with him, he wanted their work to be fulfilling enough that they would not need to put counterfeit enthusiasm into it.

But in this orbit of his he saw no one who deserved to be fired to make room for Duke. He paused at the time clock to read on the cards the names of those ­people not at work. They were all good workers, drudges like himself.

Duke was finished when Robert returned. He took his seat and read the sheet. Duke's printing was small and clear, not the juvenile hacking of ink he saw so often on applications.

“I don't have an opening right now, Duke.”

Duke leaned forward; his false leg stuck out awkwardly as a roll of carpet and for a moment he had to shift it with his hands. “But you
made
openings for Buzz and Ethel,” he said.

“There was deadwood here,” Robert said. “Those ­people are long gone. I've only got good ­people working here now.”

Duke swiped at his eyes. “You
promised
,” he said.

“I didn't promise you anything, Duke,” Robert said. “I offered you a job months ago. It's not the nature of work to expect that job to be there whenever you decide you want it.”

The boy got to his feet. He arranged the new leg beneath him. He was getting tall. He looked more like his father than Buzz did, but without his father's self-­absorption.

“Sit down, Duke,” Robert said.

Duke waited ten seconds, then sat.

Robert said, “Tell me what happened that night.”

Duke's eyes went dry and cold. “Is that a stipulation of my employment?”

“It doesn't have to be,” Robert said. “I didn't mean it that way. I'm not saying you'll have a job even if you
do
tell me. I've just always wanted to know.”

Duke sighed, then began to speak.

“He'd had a fight with Buzz. I didn't know about what. Buzz was a very angry kid in those days. Dad let him blow off steam pretty regularly, but that night Buzz was laying into Dad like nothing I'd ever heard before. I was sitting in my room just listening to this. Buzzer had a filthy mouth on him and Dad usually put a stop to it eventually. But not that night. Buzz just went on and on and
on.
It was nearly dark when he finally quit. I stayed in my room. The house was very quiet. I thought they might have left.