Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

Maybe he was alive. Maybe, like him, he had hid away from the Vaca B. Why hadn’t he searched for him? Why hadn’t he gone to his house? Fear. Cowardice.

When the movie finally ended, Eric was relieved. The others were laughing and smiling, and Remember looked as proud as if he himself had made the movie. Birdie was the most excited. She sat facing them, telling them what she had seen as if they had not been watching it too.

“And he had springs in his jacket!” Birdie recounted with a bright laugh. “It was so funny!” She talked excitedly at them all, but especially Eric. “That was the best movie!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “The best one ever!”

Eric nodded his head, smiling, but felt no pleasure.

Finally, when they all settled on the floor with their sleeping bags and Remember had shut down the generator, when there was only the quiet sounds of sleep around him, Eric searched in his backpack. He found the book he had taken from Charlie’s house. The pages were warped and stained from the hike, and the book was bent and discolored. Eric flipped past the introduction to the first chapter.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life,” Eric read, “or whether that station will be held by anyone else, these pages must show.”

He had read this sentence a hundred times, but little else. He had a hard time getting past this thought.

Eric woke suddenly to the sound of birds at the window. He had seen them in his dreams, multi-colored birds, flapping at the window, beating their wings against the glass to get inside. His mouth seemed full of feathers. Then he focused and blinked and sat up in the darkness of the shack, and realized it was only a dream. There were no birds at the window. But the sound of their wings remained.

Eric looked about him in the gloaming light of the first dawn, and saw, faintly, a crouching figure in the darkness. He knew it was not any of them, he had been with Lucia and Sergio and Birdie so long, he would recognize their figures anywhere. It was a malignant, crooked figure, like some troll. Eric’s heart shrieked when he realized it was going through their backpacks with the quiet agility of a thief.

“Hey!” Eric cried, springing to his feet. His voice pierced the silence like a knife. “Get away from that!”

The figure leapt away guiltily. Eric stepped forward, his heart filled with rage. “Get away from there!” he shouted.

The others had woken now, and someone flicked on an electric light. The darkness ripped apart. The figure stood revealed in front of Eric. It was Remember, and he looked terrified.

“What’re you doing?” shouted Eric. “What’re you doing in our bags?”

“Calm down,” the old man said, trying to smile. “I was looking for some aspirin is all,” he said. “My teeth hurt something awful.”

“What’re you doing in our stuff?” Eric cried again, as if the old man hadn’t said anything.

“I told you,” Remember said. “Just calm down, son, I didn’t want to wake none of you.”

“You’re a thief!” Eric yelled.

“Eric,” Lucia said. She stepped to his side and put a hand on his arm, but Eric slapped it away without looking at her. His eyes flashed at Remember.

“You’re a thief,” he hissed. “You’re a goddamn thief!” Remember swallowed and looked at Lucia and Sergio as if for help. This enraged Eric more. “You think we’re stupid? You think we’re going to come in here and let you steal everything we have?” Eric moved toward him and Remember stepped back, stumbling over a pile of VHS tapes. The sight made Birdie begin to cry. “What would you have done if you found something you wanted?” Eric stepped toward him again. “Then what, huh? Knife us in our sleep?”

“I swear,” Remember said, holding up his hands. “I swear to you, I just wanted some aspirin.” He smiled a broken smile at them. “It’s my teeth,” he explained. “They give me all sorts of pain.”

“Is that right?” Eric asked, his voice a hiss. “Why not ask us before you went to bed?”

“Didn’t hurt then,” Remember said weakly.

“Eric, calm down,” Lucia said, but she didn’t approach him this time. “Just calm down.”

Eric ignored her, his whole body trembling with fury. “You think we need this shit?” he cried. “You think you can lure us in here with your goddamn television and movies and steal from us?”

Remember shook his head. His shining eyes were wide.

Eric stalked to the kitchen and picked up a huge, iron pan. “You think we’re going to be fooled?” he cried.

“Stop it, Eric!” Lucia yelled.

Eric hurled the pan into the TV. There was a burst of bright light and a horrible sucking sound. Then the room was sprayed with foul smelling glass. The television was a smoking ruin, a dark mouth filled with shards of teeth.

Remember howled with pain. He stumbled to the television and then rested his forehead on it like it was a dead thing. “What’d you do that for?” he moaned. “Look at what you done!” He began weeping miserably. “Why’d you do that? Why’d you take that from me? It’s all I got! Why’d you do that?” Remember sobbed then, holding his arms around his head.

While the old man cried, the others wordlessly gathered up their belongings.

“Why’d you do that?” Remember asked again, turning his blue eyes toward them. “I nearly broke myself getting this here. I’ll never have another like it. Why’d you do that to an old man?”

Eric turned and stalked out the door. Birdie followed, still crying. She kept crying as they walked away into the forest, her breath coming in painful, deep gasps. Later she picked up Remember’s terrible refrain. “Why’d you do that?” she asked. She continued asking for a long time, but Eric said nothing.

Vermont was beautiful. It seemed there were more birds now, fluttering everywhere, singing loudly at dawn. Birds that Eric had never seen before and birds he knew by name like cardinals and chickadees and buzzing Ruby-throated hummingbirds. Forced by steep hills to follow rivers and roads, they found themselves on old farm lands. The grass grew high without cows to graze them. Evidently cows could not survive without humans. Goats could, however, and pigs. Sometimes they would see a great bristling pig appear at the edge of the woods and eye them with ambivalent malice. Pigs were mostly solitary, but the goats moved in herds. But there were not many of them, and they looked harried and stressed and not long for the world. The howling dogs at night and the yips of coyotes boded nothing but extinction to what remained of human husbandry. Only the pigs would remain, turned back to boars, with great bristles and tusks, reclaiming their dignity as if their slavery had never happened.

Birdie was not speaking to him. At night, she slept close as usual, but when she looked at him, her eyes were conflicted. It broke Eric’s heart. He wanted to explain to her that trust had died long ago inside him. He wanted to say that Remember wasn’t what he seemed to be, that he was just as much an illusion as the movies he watched. But he was not sure of this. Many times he had wondered if Remember had actually been looking for aspirin. He wanted to explain all this to Birdie, but how could you explain to a child that sometimes you had to do bad things because there was nothing certain in life. No trust. No faith. No ability to be sure of anyone or anything. Why would you say that to a child? It was better that she be angry with him than to hear such terrible cynicism.

Lucia too was silent with him. The siblings switched to Spanish, as they always did when the group suffered stress. Eric saw that now. He seemed to see much more than he ever had. Things were clear to him, clear as Birdie’s soft and solid hand in his. That was real. That was certain.