A Thousand Falling Crows (3 page)

No grass grew on the grave. No name had been given to the dead girl. She was a wanderer, a ghost now with a sordid past, her wicked ways most likely the cause of the sad end she'd found in the middle of some farm-to-market road in the Panhandle of Texas. Newsmen forgot about her. The sheriff misplaced her file, stuffed it in the bottom of a drawer in a room that was rarely visited. Her flesh fell away from her skin in the bottom of a grave in Potter's Field. It was like she had never stepped a foot on the good earth, had never existed at all.

The crows went about their summer business. Families were raised and fledged, the promise of winter certain but distant. What corn had survived the drought was hardly worth eating. For now there was a bounty of dead things to feed on. But hunger would come soon. The desire and hunger for fresh meat, already dead or just dying, would be unbearable. Grain or meat, sustenance would come from wherever it could be found. Only survival mattered. The hand of death provided the crows the opportunity to continue to fly.

CHAPTER 4

MAY 1, 1934

Nine months later, there was no ache to warn Sonny that something was wrong. He could see it coming, though. The tips of his fingers were turning black. His arm was useless, had been since two bullets had blasted through the top of his shoulder, slicing the arteries, and exploding his flesh into a mess that was left beyond repair. Part of his body was dying, a quarter of an inch at a time. It might be weeks, or months, before the poison took him—if he did nothing, if he ignored the darkness and pretended his life was normal. The lack of pain was a contributor to denial. He could look away and not feel a thing.

The doctors had said there was no hope in saving the limb at the time of the shooting, but Sonny had resisted, remained stubborn in his stance to live out what remained of his life whole and intact.

He had been right-handed all his life and couldn't imagine having to depend on his weaker, less reliable, left hand. That hand seemed to have a mind of its own, often ignoring his commands recklessly—or on purpose, he wasn't sure which. Even in his clearest moments, Sonny couldn't see himself with only one arm, a sleeve pinned to his side, a constant reminder of what he once was. That seemed to be an unimaginable way to live, with part of your body lost, incinerated, not even saved, like a rare diamond, to be buried with you.

Oddly, in those moments Sonny remembered when he was a little boy and his father, who had fought for the Confederacy, would stop along the street and talk to men he saw without a leg or an arm. They whispered, lowered their voices, looked away distantly to the past, to some unseen place. It was like they spoke a secret language or belonged to some secret fraternity. At the end of the whispers, his father would pull away from the amputee solemnly and push Sonny forward, reminding him of what to say: “Thank you for your service to the cause.” The wounded man would normally nod with glistening eyes, offer a sad smile in response, wordless in his gratitude but certain in his loss when he looked to where a leg or an arm once had been.

The words echoed deep in Sonny's memory as he stood, an old man himself, fully dressed in front of the mirror, staring at himself, separating his story from the legion of dead Confederate soldiers who lived in his mind. Somehow, he thought he was going to will a miracle and save his fingers and arm from rotting off.

If he screamed, no one would hear him. He was alone. The nearest neighbor was a mile and a half to the east. Sometimes, he went to the basement. It was dark and dank down there, the walls built into the earth with planks, bound with roots from above. The smell was old, musty, organic. When he turned off the single bare light, it was like standing in a giant grave, a grave he could dance in, cry in, scream in, then walk up the stairs and out into the waiting sunlight, like he was well, whole, and resurrected from his nightmare.

He never believed it for a second. There was no question what path lay before him—he had seen it before.

Sonny had fought a different war than his father, on the soil of a foreign land with an army of Allied Forces fighting side by side against Germany's aggravated threat to the world. He had survived that war in one piece, although he was affected with what his father often referred to as “Soldier's Heart,” a melancholy that lasted a few years after his return to Texas and took a toll on his family that still stood to this day. These days they called it “the thousand-yard stare” because of the unfocused gaze of men like him who'd come back whole in body but not in mind. It was an apt description. Better than shell shock, Sonny thought.

Martha had fought against his depression and lost quietly. Her sudden death was probably a relief to her, an escape from him that no legal document could guarantee. His son, Jesse, had been a teenager at the time of his return from the World War and was full of rage and distance—in some ways, the boy had not changed. They saw each other once or twice a year, at holidays, and sometimes at funerals. Brownsville was a world away from Wellington. The long miles that stood between them suited each of them just fine. The universe had conspired to separate them, and it was probably for the best.

He had mastered dressing with one arm, though buttoning a shirt had been a challenge in the beginning. He'd rigged up a dowel rod with a little hook on the end that he used to finagle a button through the hole. It was, he supposed, the shape of things to come, a hook as an appendage. He shuddered at the thought, recoiling from the vision of himself as a monster, a hooked pirate gone mad, slashing away at anything that got in his way, at anything that made him angry. A gentle moment quickly turned into a bloody accident. He would have to avoid touching anyone—even more so than he did now.

He'd found that boots were easier to get on than shoes that had be tied, but weren't as easy to get off. Mostly, he'd figured out how to survive, though weakly and slowly. It had taken him an hour to get dressed.

Before he was shot, dressing and shaving were acts that he gave little thought to. He'd just floated through the morning, doing one thing after the other. Now when he opened his eyes after a restless night of sleep, he dreaded putting his feet on the floor. He just wanted to stay asleep.

Sonny drew in a deep breath, the house around him silent but for the ticking of a dusty old grandfather clock, then squared his shoulders and walked out the front door. He had a doctor's appointment at ten o‘clock.

CHAPTER 5

MAY 14, 1934

The nurse wheeled Sonny toward the door. “Is somebody waiting for you, Mr. Burton?” She was tall, blonde, and spooned into her white uniform that looked a little too tight and a little dull from one too many washes. At another time the woman, her voice husky and her perfume sweet, might have garnered a look of desire from Sonny—but not now. She was too young and he was too old. Desire of any kind had been stowed away long ago. It surprised Sonny that he even recognized such a thing at that moment.

“No,” he said. It hadn't occurred to him to tell anyone about the surgery. “I drove myself here, and I can drive myself home.”

The nurse stopped so suddenly and unexpectedly that Sonny nearly tumbled face-first out of the wheelchair. He reached out to steady himself with his right hand, but it wasn't there. The arm was gone. Hacked off in a sterile room while he had been anesthetized with some miracle drug that had taken him to the depths of sleep and to the edge of death, only to return him to the land of the living with a body he did not recognize—or want.

His brain had not adjusted to his new reality any more than his body had. His brain obviously still believed that his right arm was attached to his thin torso because the nerve endings under the incision burned like the nurse had doused the stub in gasoline and lit it on fire.

“You can't drive yourself home,” the nurse said. She moved from behind the wheelchair and faced him, standing stiffly, like a drill sergeant, her glare hard as stone, her hands placed solidly on her hips.

“Well, I best start walking then.”

The nurse flipped her gaze to the door, and took in the bright, hot day that awaited them both as soon they stepped outside the hospital doors. She shook her head.

Beyond being shapely, her fingers were bare of rings or jewelry of any kind. She looked to be in her early thirties, a slight pouch in her belly the only imperfection on her womanly body, a distraction from her obvious beauty, most likely caused by the recent experience of childbirth. Sonny had seen that shape before and was aware enough of his own loneliness, and status as a widower, to notice the effects of a recent pregnancy. It had to be that.

“There's no one to call?” the nurse demanded again.

Sonny shook his head. “My son lives in Brownsville. He's busy with a family of his own. I didn't want to bother him.”

“That sounds like an unlikely story. You just had your arm amputated, Mr. Burton. What about church people?”

“I don't attend church, thank you very much.”

“Another likely story.”

“It's all I have to offer.”

“I can't let you drive home alone. It's not safe.”

“I drove here with one hand. The arm didn't work any better then than it does now. I live alone and once I‘m gone from here, I‘m on my own. What's the difference?”

“I know about it. That's the difference.”

“I‘ve learned how to do for myself with one arm. I‘ll be just fine. Push me to the door and leave me be. I‘ll manage. Beyond that, I‘d rather you not push me into a rage and make me curse in front of you.”

“You'll mind your manners, Mr. Burton, thank you very much. I am only interested in what's best for you. Doesn't matter how much you think you can do. I can't allow it. I‘m sure Dr. Meyers wouldn't have released you if he'd known your circumstances.”

Inwardly, Sonny smiled at the nurse's gumption and lack of tolerance at his crankiness. He liked her but didn't let it show, didn't think it mattered anyway.

A familiar voice rang out from behind the nurse. Neither of them had detected the presence of another human being. “I can drive him home,
señora
.” It was Aldo, the middle-aged janitor who had visited with Sonny after he'd been shot. “If that is all right with
Señor
Burton and you? His house is on my way home.”

Aldo looked at the ground sheepishly. His eyes were bloodshot, like he lacked sleep; most likely he had worked a double or triple shift. His brown skin looked even more unhealthy than it had the first time Sonny had met him, and the wrinkles on his long face looked deeper and harder, if that were possible. Worry had cut into the man quickly. He'd aged ten years in a matter of weeks.

The nurse stared at Sonny with questioning blue eyes that flickered with relief. He could see the ocean in her eyes. So much so, he had to look away. “I don't want to put anyone out,” Sonny said.

“It would be my pleasure to drive you home,
Señor
Burton. You are a hero.”

Sonny shook his head, but said nothing. Heroes walked away from the battlefield in one piece, whole like his father, who had survived more battles and wars than any one man should have and lived to tell about it.

“I think that would be a fine idea, Albert,” the nurse said, reading the name tag embroidered on Aldo's work shirt.

“Aldo. His name is Aldo Hernandez,” Sonny interjected tersely.

“It does not matter what she calls me,
señor
,” Aldo said.

“Yes, it does.”

“I‘m sorry, I didn't mean any disrespect,” the nurse said.

Sonny lowered his head when he realized that he didn't know the nurse's name. He'd perused her body, allowed himself a fleeting moment of attraction, and chastised her for treating Aldo differently because he was a Mexican, when, in reality, she probably wasn't. He was sensitive about prejudice. Maybe more so than he should have been. “What's your name?” he asked in a softer tone than he had yet used when speaking to her.

“Betty. Betty Maxwell,” she snapped.

“I‘m sorry, Mrs. Maxwell,” Sonny said. “It's been a long day.”

“Miss. It's Miss Maxwell, if it's all the same to you. But you can call me Nurse Betty. Everybody does.”

Sonny continued staring at the floor. “I think it would be fine if Aldo drove me home. Just fine, Nurse Betty.”

“That's good, Mr. Burton, because you certainly weren't going to drive yourself.” Betty Maxwell turned to Aldo and, in impeccable Spanish, she said, “I am sorry to have offended you, Aldo. Could you please bring
Señor
Burton's car to the door?”

“He doesn't know which one it is,” Sonny said, with a smile, his Spanish as perfect as hers.

The road was bumpy, and Sonny was surprised by the pain he felt shooting through the arm that wasn't there. Doc Meyers had said it might happen from time to time. Phantom pain, he'd called it. But Sonny hadn't listened too closely when the explanation had come. He didn't think such a thing was possible.