Crows (30 page)

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Robert said; he was showing off, making light of a thing feared by this man who had killed Ben. “Let's face it: I'm not going to find Ben. He's nothing but particles now. This diving is just filler for me.”

“You're a water type,” Frank Abbott said. “I'll bet you're afraid of heights.”

Robert laughed briefly. He still awoke sweating dreaming of the leaf rot in the gutters of Ben's house, and the pinch in his waist of the rope tying him to the chimney, and the spacious danger of looking out across the treetops.

“You dive,” the pilot said. “Some day I'll fly again.”

“But it's like flying.”

Frank Abbott shook his head. He was smiling, savoring the safety of that shell-­backed chair on the warm earth, beer in hand, the water distant.

“Go out with me on the boat then,” Robert said. “You don't have to dive. Just monitor the boat.”

“Even that's too close. That's the edge between one and the other.”

“You once routinely landed a plane on that edge,” Robert said.

“But the edge thinned to nothing once and now I want nothing to do with it.”

“Tell me about that night.”

The pilot glanced at Robert. “It was a very routine flight. I had dropped a load of fishermen at a camp in northern Wisconsin. I headed back for Mozart. It was in the evening. Nearly dark. I wasn't in the air more than a half hour before it was
very
dark.”

Robert pictured the plane, the night, and wondered where Ben and Duke were when the pilot turned for home; how far along that line were they that would intersect with the line the plane followed? Ben might have been changing to warmer clothes. Duke might have already been worried by the electricity of unease in the house.

“Very routine, though,” the pilot said. “I knew the way home. All the light marks along the way checked out. Bing bang boom.” He snapped his fingers, proud of the precision of that flight where a moment's imprecision might have been a blessing. “Around ten o'clock I see the northeast rim of Oblong Lake pass under me. I'm nine, ten miles from home. I lower my altitude.” He held a steady hand out, parallel to the earth, a hand in flight. Robert's heart began to race.

“I see the Cow and the Calf,” the pilot recalled. “Darker spots in the dark. I know they're there, so I'm looking for them. Somebody was camping out—­roasting hot dogs, maybe—­on the Calf. I saw their campfire.”

“A fire?”

“A campfire,” Abbott said, impatient at this snag in his descent. “I circled the town once. I could see the light I'd left on in my apartment. It was a beautiful night. But so
dark.
I'm coming in. Very routine. The lake rises up toward me. It's darker than the air, but shiny underneath. Can you picture that? Other than that, I saw nothing.”

“And you just landed on them?” Robert asked.

The pilot coughed into his fist. “At the moment my plane touches the water there is always a certain amount of spray thrown up—­whiteness. And there is always a certain
thump
of landing.
This
landing—­I remember a flash of white, not spray. Like catching sight of something out of the corner of your eye—­but when you really look for it, it's not there? That's what happened. A flash, a thump, a shudder through the controls, a gremlin in the wires. My lights were on. I saw nothing.” He took a drink of beer. He was landing the plane again; always the same.

“I should have flown again,” he said. “I'm trapped now.”

“But you didn't try to help them?”

“I didn't know there was anyone to help,” Frank Abbott said. “Only the next day—­when the divers were out, the kid was in the hospital without his leg, and my plane had a crumpled pontoon—­only then did I put some times and places together. Only
then
was I pushed into the story.”

“It just seems—­”

“How it seems to you is of no concern to me,” the pilot said. “I landed right on top of them. Six feet longer they'd both be alive and in one piece. Six feet shorter and they'd probably have been minced in the prop. Their boat ground to sawdust.” He threw his empty beer bottle out into the darkness; its brown glass vanished instantly and Robert had to listen for its landing on the earth's carpet.

“I had to ask,” Robert said.

“Sure. Look. I invited you here to talk about this and I get all extended emotionally when you ask a perfectly sensible question.” He went into the cabin for more beer. Robert saw an unmade mattress through the doorway, blue-­black stripes on gray, spotted with stains of mystery the shapes of islands. The pilot returned with two green bottles of ale.

“This is warm,” he apologized. “The beer's gone. This stuff is better warm.”

“Thanks,” Robert said. “What are your plans now?”

“Plans,” the pilot said. “I'd like to fly again. When and if that takes place I'll know I have returned to a normal state of mind. I've nearly run through the money I made selling the plane. I have extended it with odd jobs and a succession of rooms like this.”

“Come diving with me,” Robert said, getting to his feet. The time was perfect. He was certain he would not find Ben that night.

The pilot looked up at Robert. “Give me a job,” he said.

“No openings.”

“You're the boss. Make an opening.”

“We don't have enough work for the ­people there already,” Robert said.

“Give me a job and you can save me.”

“Come diving with me and you can have a job.”

“Don't make me do that.”

“No dive, no job.”

“I'll freeze to death.”

“Then you row the boat,” Robert said. “And when I find Ben, you help haul him into the boat. For that you can have a job.”

T
HE PILOT'S PULL
on the oars was impressive. Life on the ground had made him strong. Robert watched without a word more compelling than a direction now and then to the shifting point on the lake he remembered ceasing the previous day's search. In his blue suit, in the night's warmth, he was sweating. As always he felt clumsy and poorly shaped. He awaited the graciousness bestowed by the cold water.

Shore lights were few that early in the morning. The preparation and collection of equipment, the working out of details of the job to be offered, had all consumed time. Birds would begin to complain and celebrate in the woods within the hour. Robert had narrowed to three the field of employees he could fire to make room for the pilot.

Abbott, when Robert instructed him to stop rowing, folded the oars in the boat and trailed his long fingers in the ink-­dark water. He seemed amazed.

“You're really going in there?”

Robert had already pulled the ice cap down over his head, and though he saw the pilot's lips move he did not hear what he said. Frank Abbott did not think enough of the question to repeat it.

“Just stay in this general vicinity,” Robert said. “There's a very slight current, about half a knot. Pick landmarks to the north and east and try to stay at that point where they intersect. OK?”

The pilot nodded, his arms folded within his jacket.

“The boat won't sink,” Robert assured him. He slapped the hull and it echoed out and back.

“Unless someone lands on it,” the pilot said. His eyes rolled upward. Robert was sure he would see a plane coming in; the darkness was incomplete, like sheer cloth. But having seen a plane, what would he do but duck?

“You're here,” Robert said, “so you're safe.”

He made a quick examination of the seals of his suit, positioned his mask and snorkel, then rolled over the side of the boat into his element. He came up to get the water torch from the boat, then went under again. His intention was to search a small slice of lakeshore before returning to the boat. He swam without enthusiasm; he was diving only to make a point to the pilot.

His light bore a tube through the dark water, which in the light was the color of warm ale bottles. Chromic flashes darted through this tube of light. Each scared him breathless, then lost its power with its invisibility. He had no imagination for what lay outside the tubular light.

He came to a rise of tumbled rocks. They were huge and shadowy, chained like a train wreck, climbing out of sight. Robert pushed his light into the green spaces between them. He saw nothing. He had been right, Ben was nowhere to be found.

After fifteen minutes of diving and then checking his position against the rowboat with its mast pole of the seated, huddled pilot, Robert headed back. He was chilly and tired. He kept to the surface, kicking easily, light running ahead of him. The bottom of the lake seemed to rise to him. Daylight was bleeding in. He would sleep late on his decision of whom to fire.

He looked ahead and there was a face centered in the tube of light. It was a bleached face with wide, petrified eyes, framed by a semicircle of white-­hot hair. A bony hand swept across the face.

Robert spit out the mouthpiece of his snorkel and took in a chestful of icy water in his need to scream. The face, out of its element, grabbed Robert by the neck.

The pilot had stood up in the boat in some effort to beat back his fear of Oblong Lake. And like a patient beast the lake had seized its chance and thrown the boat sideways under him, flipping the pilot overboard. He thrashed in the cold water before Robert returned to save him.

He got the pilot back into the boat, then ordered him to row quickly to shore, believing the energy generated by the rowing would compensate for the soaked, cold clothing and chill morning air.

But back at Cabin Four on the edge of the woods, which teemed with raucous birds, the pilot was elated. He clasped Robert's rubber shoulders.

“I'm safe,” he exulted. “I fell into the lake and I got out. It had me dead to rights, but I got
out.
”

“You
looked
dead,” Robert said. “I thought you were Ben.”

The pilot swallowed, spat, then laughed. He later saved Robert from having to fire someone, refusing the job at SportsHeaven, preferring to seek work in his chosen field.

 

M
EN HIS FATHER'S
age began stopping Robert on the streets of Mozart and inviting him for cups of coffee. The black and white stripes of his work shirt, the history of his ascent at SportsHeaven, indicated respectability, uprightness, and dependability to more ­people than Robert would ever have expected.

His time was taken on the town's walks by men who seemed to desire his company and opinions only because he was in charge of a local business and they had heard he was, in addition to being Dave's son, good at what he did.

“God, I envy you,” Dave said, after Robert had complained one day of being made late for work by these friendly shows of respect. “I've never in my life been stopped like that. Never.” He rolled a pencil in the stubbed valley between his ear and temple. “I'm always the guy doing the stopping. You can tell a loser—­he's the guy bathing the winner in accolades. Believe me.”

“Dave, you know that's not true,” Robert said. “You can't walk six feet in this town without stopping to talk with somebody. I never knew how you got anything done.”

“I didn't,” Dave said. “I was everybody's silver lining. And look where it's gotten me.”

“Dave, it's a pain in the ass,” Robert said. “They don't have anything important to say. They just want to
chat.
”

“And the winners are impatient,” Dave said.

“Don't you have work to do?”

“I wanted to tell you an idea I had.”

“Make it short.”

His father's wounded eyes ran away from him, then back. “Your mother never made fun of my ideas,” he protested.

“And I'm not either,” Robert said. “It's just that you have so many of them. You wanted to alphabetize the stock. You wanted to play college fight songs over the PA. You wanted to dress the cashiers like cheerleaders. But have you washed the south wall like I asked you? No. Did you stock those new racket frames? No. Did you sweep the odd-­numbered aisles, yet? No.”

“I'm not geared that way, Rob-­O,” Dave said.

“Geared?” Robert cried, his voice climbing in anger. “You make four and a quarter an hour. At that wage, you're geared to do menial labor, not
think.
”

“Forget it. Maybe I should tender my resignation,” Dave said.

“I've got a lot of work to do,” Robert said. “What's your idea?”

“A bike rack,” Dave said. “A place out front for the kids—­or adults for that matter—­to park their bikes. It'll make the sidewalk tidier and safer. Plus it'll be damned inviting for kids to come in and browse and spend money.”

“Browse, period,” Robert said. “Kids who ride bikes don't buy, Dave. They just hold the balls and dream.”

“It was just an idea.”

“When you were a kid, Dave, did you ever buy anything from a sporting goods store?”

“I didn't have any money,” Dave said, sore at his son's rebuke.

“I just walked up and down the aisles,” Robert said. “Touching the balls. The leather pebbles. Holding a baseball. Swinging a bat—­a short half swing because there wasn't room to let it out.”

“It was just an idea,” Dave repeated.

“Thanks,” Robert said. He gave his father a gentle, friendly push toward the door into SportsHeaven. “Keep them coming.”

But when his father was gone Robert still could not break free of the river of idleness that carried him along. The street chats, the words of his father, the rush of his father's ideas balanced against the absence of his father's daily work, all held Robert in the chair at the desk. He toyed with a pink eraser, its edges rounded and blackened with use, as if it alone kept him afloat.

Herm Branch was expected that day. He was coming for the numbers for the previous month, the month of May. Robert had worked late the past four nights preparing them, and though they were not robust numbers they were an improvement.

Still, the numbers were a disappointment to Robert. He could not understand why more ­people did not buy sporting goods. June was nearly complete, the longest day of the year had passed, and the Earth was rolling toward another winter. Still, ­people were hesitant to put any faith in the summer. Hot days assembled in a line, the grass on infields burned, the beach sand heated, but still the numbers were sluggish.

Robert blamed Oblong Lake. Mozart's center, it was always cold. A wind on the hottest day would catch the lake just so and blow the memory of ice into the heart of any picnic or softball game.

Theft hurt the numbers, too. Items kept disappearing: a $45 golf club, a $52 football, a $60 pair of running shoes, a $33 basketball hoop, a $90 speargun, a $4 box of table tennis balls. He called the police in early June, once each shift of the same day, arranging the visits with them in advance. They made an appearance, walking through the store with their radios talking on their shoulders like electric parrots, and Robert thanked them for their time. He wanted his employees to be aware of the police's presence. Yet items disappeared. Robert put Buzzard on the day shift with the assignment of watching the other employees. He reported seeing nothing. Dave, given the same assignment, gave the same report.

The nights of working late on the numbers kept Robert from his diving. The lake became a stranger in that time. He felt his chances of finding Ben diminish; Ben had these days to find a new hiding place. This did not make Robert unhappy.

He read in the newspaper of a woman's body found at the bottom of England's deepest lake, allegedly thrown there by her husband. Wrapped in a rug, weighted with stones, she had rested at a depth of 120 feet for nearly six years. “She was preserved by the cold,” the paper reported, and Robert set aside the story, shivering, to return to his numbers.

He read in the same day's papers of crows drugged by something in the window putty they loved to devour, then smashing windows by the hundreds with their beaks. Robert wondered: When they awakened would they remember their vandalism? Would they remember what made their skulls ache so?

An earlier day, Olive had said, “You don't look for Daddy anymore.”

Robert was dressed for work; he had dreamed of late of removing his ref's shirt and finding parallel black and white stripes running vertically through his skin. In the dream, tiny roadsters raced on the tracks formed by these stripes; the cars were one of a set of fourteen, retailing at $3.95 apiece.

“I haven't given up,” he told Olive. “I've been busy.”

“You've been busy before. That never stopped you.”

“He's a bigshot now,” Duke said.

“That job's still waiting for you,” Robert said.

“I don't want it.”

“When you work up the nerve to get the leg, come see me.”

“Won't happen,” Duke said.

“You really think you
are
a bigshot,” Olive said. “Passing out jobs like some kingpin. Trading something for a job at your little sporting goods kingdom.”

Robert snickered, rubbed his hands, trying to cut away at her scorn. “It's absolute power,” he said in a cackling, old man's voice, “and it's corrupted me absolutely.”

Olive said coldly, “That doesn't hide the fact you think you're hot shit.”

Robert shrugged and drank his coffee. He would only do so much to mollify her.

“Give Ethel a job,” Duke said. “Give her the job you're holding for me.”

“She has a job.”

“She hates it,” Olive said. “She says her stomach knots every morning. Why should she have to get up at 5 a.m.? Give
her
a job, Mr. Bigshot.”

“She'd be bored,” Robert said.

“Driving a cab is exciting?”

“Ask her,” Duke challenged. “I bet she'll jump at it.”

“Right now, we only have a spot open for a one-­legged boy.”

“Fuck you,” Duke said dismally.

“It's a great place to work. Ask Buzzer.”

“He says it's a joke,” Duke jabbed. “He told me your dad sits and gabs all day while you prance around like Hitler, or somebody. He says it's boring work and most of the kids goof off when you aren't around.”

“That's why there's always opening for basket cases like you,” Robert said, his face warm.

“Why can't you give Eth a job?” Olive asked.

“No openings.”

“No. Really.”

“Look—­I want to be of some help to Duke. I'm willing to make a space for him. Ethel already has a job. I don't think she would want to work for me.”

“Just ask her,” Olive said. “She might surprise you.”

Olive brought up the subject later that evening. “Mom—­if you could find a better job than driving a cab, would you take it?”

Ethel looked at her daughter. It was nine o'clock on a Sunday evening. She sat with her legs out on a plumped hassock, a book in one hand, a can of beer in the other; she would be asleep soon, and already she was dreading the five o'clock bell.

“What a silly question,” she replied.

“That's a yes?”

“Of course.”

Robert said, “They want me to give you a job at SportsHeaven.”

Ethel's eyes turned hungrily to him. “What do you pay? Could I sleep past six-­thirty? When do I start?”

Olive laughed and clapped her hands.

“There's no opening,” Robert said. “It was only an idea put forth by your children to make trouble.”

“There's an opening for me,” Duke said, “because I'm a crip and he can feel good giving me a job.”

Robert nodded gravely. “We do have one opening for a chickenshit.”

“
I'm
a chickenshit,” Ethel said.

“You'd really work for me?”

“If it got me out of the cab and paid enough, I'd come in a minute,” she said. Her gaze challenged him.

“No openings,” he repeated.

Ethel tipped up her beer to finish it. “Whatever you say, Boss.” Robert saw her wink at Olive. “But since you're wielding a little minor power here, I'll counter with some of my own. I want you out of here in a month.”

Robert asked, “And if I give you a job, I can stay?”

Ethel gave this some thought. “No,” she said. “I want you out, even if you give me a job.”

“Don't be spiteful.”

“It's not spite,” she replied. “I'm tired of having you around, living off Ben's memory. You don't even look for him anymore. I give you one month.” She crushed her beer can with hands grown strong wrestling balky cabs; a mouthful of beer remained at the bottom and splashed on her lap. She cursed.

Robert said, “I have paused in my search for Ben. I have not given up. When I am past this busy time at work I will resume my search for him. If you think it best that I leave, I'll gladly go.”

“Where will you go?” Ethel asked.

“
Already
you're worried about me. I could stay,” he said, “and ease all your cares.”

Ethel shook her head. She took her crushed can and wet lap out of the room. It was the last they saw of her that night. Olive went to bed alone; since her fall through the ice she complained of cold, but she never was so cold that she required Robert's presence. All that time Robert slept a floor above her, their beds nearly parallel, rarely missing her except for those few moments after she broke away from him at night and climbed the stairs to her room.

She kissed Duke goodnight atop the head. She kissed Robert in the same spot; he was a brother now, almost a father.

O
N ANOTHER DAY,
Robert worked a surprise day shift to throw an off-­balance note into the thieves in SportsHeaven. He caught no one, and in fact got little work done. He felt out of place in his own store. The employees resented his distrust. In the hour before he went home for a break (he was returning at closing time to do the books), he was called to the phone, only to have the caller hang up on him when he answered.

When he arrived to do the books, Buzz met him in the back room on his way to punching out.

“How'd it go tonight?” Robert asked; he felt conspicuous, at work in a plain shirt.

“We sold some stuff,” Buzz said. “Not much, but some.”

“Thanks for the report.”

“When's your Dad going to give it up?”

Robert said, “I don't know. I've talked to my mother. She won't come out of retirement.”

Buzz rubbed his chin. “How can I break this to you?” he said. “The guy does
nothing
all night. He just talks. He won't stock. He won't sweep. He won't do pricing. He just
talks.
” Buzzard glanced at Robert, cleared his throat.

“What would you do in my place?” Robert asked.

“Fire his ass,” Buzz exclaimed, nearly cheerful.

“Fire your own father?”

“I would if he was fucking up like yours.”

“He's an idea man,” Robert said defensively. “He's not geared toward this kind of work.”

Buzz shrugged. “I've said enough.” He pulled his ref's shirt over his head and hung the shirt in his locker; no stripes ran on his taut, pale torso.

“Who's going to be assistant manager?” he asked.

“Whom would you suggest?”

“Me, maybe.”

Robert resisted the desire to put the young man down, to extract his revenge for the remarks made about Dave.

“I'll keep you in mind,” Robert said.

“I work hard. I'm a quick study. I'd be a good assistant manager.”

“How's the arm?” Robert asked.

Buzz held his right arm out. To Robert's eye it was microscopically thinner than the left, subtly wasted. Since punching Dick the day Robert fired him, Buzz's arm had not ceased aching.

He put the arm through a slow throwing motion. “Stiff,” he reported. “Sore here and here.” He touched his shoulder and elbow.