Crows In a Murder

I'd washed up in a town that didn't seem to actually exist. It wasn't even a speck on the map, just a smudge. I could hear whistles, birds and trains, children's laughter (I hated that one the most). It's hard to believe that there is any place that isn't haunted in some way. I had graduated from marijuana to morphine to heroin. Eventually you are above your own body, watching as your clumsy form smashes a lamp here, overturns a desk there. Eventually you're just not welcome anywhere anymore.

I think an ice age was coming . The birds would dig themselves underground and the grass squeaked with each step.

I had, somehow, been given a sort of secret box that could only be opened with the right key. My memory of receiving this box is entwined with a drug fantasy, so I'm distrustful of it. I have flashes of an argument, of a litany of my sins. All of the accusations were true. So here I am, in a town that doesn't exist, that has no ghosts. So I was conjured.

I'm trying to convince you of something here, I realize that. I have the perpetual junkie habit of sincerely needing you to believe falsehoods. I'm attempting to be as honest as possible about all of this but I haven't been acquainted with the truth in years so I'm rusty. I promise that my dishonesty will be indistinguishable from the facts. They will merge, seamlessly, and I'll probably be disoriented. You'll have no idea because, let's be real, this is just a story to you. But it's my life. And I have to confront my own biases, my own desire to alter what happened because I know I won't look very good. If you think I'm an awful person because of all this...I guess I'm hoping that you'll one day live long enough, like I have, to stop caring about looking good.

I had some vague desire to turn up at the cop's house and kill his family. I had some notion that I could gut his whole family in front of him before he could even pull out his gun. He had his head shaved in a way that was intended to inspire hatred. He scowled when he lit a match. He would turn down chocolate milk. He was probably too proud to ever be dirty. Wait. That's not the place to start.

We had been out challenging trains. That's what we called it. We'd play chicken with the train, but without cars. We'd just wait until it was bearing down on us and see who could hold on the longest. Tommy had even been hit once. He jumped out of the way just a split second too late and the train clipped his ankle as he was in the air. He spun end over end before landing in a ditch stuffed with ugly rocks. He blamed the alcohol but we all knew the truth. He cheated death just to hold it over our heads. I don't think any of us ever forgave him for surviving that night.

I had gone around the back of the house to get in. There was a broken mirror on the door, we'd broken it to do cocaine off of. It was just a sliver of glass and if you held it wrong, you'd come away with a bloody hand. Tommy had become the leader of the gang by eliminating any potential rivals. We followed him without discussing it and it was probably a horrible idea. Something about his face always reminded me of when lakes catch on fire because they're so polluted.

That mirror seemed to be what the house revolved around for a few months. A sliver of mirror and we'd see bits of ourselves, just dashes of our reflection. It was as close as we could get to heaven in those days. It was before we had taken on all the things that would drown us. We'd watch out the window. Nuns waddling up and down the sidewalk (some kind of community outreach program was on the same block so we had to avoid that side of the neighborhood). The kids that would dash into the street, trying to retrieve a foul ball. That was the genesis for our idea to challenge the trains. That and Blake's reward money.

But to really understand what was happening, you have to realize that maybe people aren't good or bad. Sure, we were uneducated criminals, con artists, and potential stool pigeons. But there was a hazy sense of honor among our group. We had pride. It was particularly popular to insist on failing all by yourself, without help from the others.

I had come in through the back door and I tripped over a wire. Someone had booby-trapped the back entrance. I pictured a bowl of tarantulas being overturned above my head and braced myself for the attack but nothing happened. I didn't hear anything so I called out, "Who's the wiseass that booby-trapped the porch?"

Gravy was leaning against the wall in the hall between the kitchen and the living room and he just pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started packing it against his hand. Jerry entered the kitchen, scraping past Gravy, and stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at me.

"I said who's the wiseass," I repeated, getting nervous. I thought maybe I'd walked into the wrong house by mistake and these people just looked like my friends. And then I had the troubling thought that I could so easily mistake strangers for my friends or that, even more sinister, my friends were really strangers all along.

Tommy's not feeling so good," Jerry said.

"Yeah?" I mumbled, standing up.

"Somebody stabbed him."

I walked past Gravy into the living room and found Alison and Betty and Sally sitting on two sofas. Nial was at the desk, cleaning out the barrel of an antique musket. Tommy sat in a chair, sweating. He had a hand clamped securely over his left collarbone.

"Somebody stabbed Tommy?" I asked the room.

Gravy pushed me aside and sat on the arm of Tommy's chair. "Here," he said, offering a handful of enormous pills.

"How am I supposed to swallow those?" he demanded.

"For the pain," Gravy explained.

"I said how, not why."

"Should we take him to a doctor?" I asked the room.

Alison laughed and said, "Good idea." Then everyone laughed. I felt stupid and ashamed.

For a year I went to therapy because I was doing bad in school and got in a few fights that weren't really my fault. And I lost every fight I was in; I thought that counted for something. My mom would smack me on the back of the head and say, "Good idea," every time I suggested that she put me in a different school. She said it like I was a complete idiot and Alison said it the exact same way. I didn't like feeling like I was 13 years old again, especially not in front of my friends.

"Oh, we tried to take him," Nial said. "But the chair."

"Right," I said. "The chair."

Jerry snuck up behind me and gave me a playful kick to the back of the knees and I fell down again.

"We should have rigged that sledgehammer," Gravy said, turning to Jerry.

"But people don't know," Jerry said. "You can't spring a thing like that on people without telling them."

"Yeah," Gravy agreed, "but if we told them." Then he turned back to Tommy and said, "I can get you water for the pills if you want."

"I couldn't swallow those even with water," Tommy said and that ended the discussion.

"Hey, come on, hey," I said. "I'll take you to a doctor. I know a doctor."

Alison laughed again and said, "I'll bet he's got a great writing arm." And then she laughed so hard she fell off the couch.

Betty looked from her to me and tried to explain, "Alison has stopped taking her medication and is now living the clean life."

"Shoot," Nial said. "This damn barrel is warped."

"You're not gonna shoot it, baby," Sally said. "You just need to point it at them."

"Nial held the barrel up to the ceiling and looked through it before responding. "Yeah, but if I do have to shoot it, the thing could go sideways and take out one of you."

"It can't be that bent," Sally said and stood up to look at it.

Nial turned on her viciously and said, "Don't touch it! I'm doing my best to make sure there are no fingerprints on this!"

I said to Tommy, "Hey, man, do you want me to take you to the hospital?"

Tommy considered and then asked, "What about your tires?"

I looked down and said quickly, "It's not raining. They'll work. "

"Leave him," Nial interrupted. "He's gotta stay there because of the chair."

"What is this?" I asked Jerry . "Why does he keep saying the chair?"

"There's a spring poking through and I think it got him in the liver. If we pull it out without medical help, he's a goner."

Alison giggles wildly and says, "Chair of death!!"

"I'm sorry for her," Betty said. "She's out of medication. She's stopped taking it altogether."

"This is too weird," I said and went back into the kitchen. Gravy followed me in there and he whispers to me, "We're going to get the guys that did it. Could you stay with Tommy?"

"I think he needs a doctor," I tell him. He's bleeding all over the place."

"We can call the fire department to come cut him out of the chair after we get back. But we have to leave soon or else these guys are going to get away."

I promised to stay with Tommy but I planned on leaving right after they left. The thought of sitting with a bleeding Tommy all night, the night before Easter, was just too much for me. I went digging for the mirror but somebody had stolen it. Finally, I stood up and said, "Well, Tommy."

"It was an accident," Tommy blurted out.

"What was an accident? The chair or what?" I was already headed to the door.

Tommy stood up and walked toward the television.

"You can move," I said, literally shocked.

"Of course I can move," he said. "Not a damn cripple."

"They said the chair-

"I made up the thing about the chair. I didn't want to go back there with them and see those people."

I studied him for a minute and then said, "Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"

He considered and then answered, "Not unless I get really bad."

"What's really bad? How do I judge?"

"You know," he said, "talking in tongues or something. Or if I pass out."

"What if you just...you know...die?"

He's crossed to the window and he turns around and says, "I think they stole your car."

Saw something strange in a store window. Can't explain what it was, and maybe this was another drugged out dream, but to the best of my knowledge it was an overweight shopkeeper scraping out the veins of a bulimic model. Her legs were splayed enticingly but her face was raw pain. I saw that window every day for maybe two weeks, more and more scared every day. I dreamed of that model, the bulimic cheeks turned sallow and pale. I saw her hitching up her skirt, lifting a leg gracefully over a leather chair, always a leather chair. I could see the slip she wore slowly sliding off those rounded shoulders, all bone and muscle.

And then maybe the dream changes and she's an ex that I've never known. The kind of woman you never get over, they become your downfall. But I had a girlfriend at the time; I had a number of ex-lovers too. I knew the intricate run of the bones that make up the hips. I had a crystal-clear recollection of the taste of champagne swallowed from that little dip in the nape of the neck, right where it meets that forgiving collarbone.

So in this dream, after it has changed and the model and I have had a torrid affair, I find myself leaving a picture of myself outside her door. I'm burning white candles. I'm shouting her name into the wind as it rains down upon me. I'm chasing some ghost so real I can actually put my arms around it. I write her name on a slip of paper (Kate, it looks like, but maybe it said "Wait") and I burn that in a bowl. I am anxious about the strength of the fire. I know my passion could inflame the whole kitchen. So I quickly light the slip of paper and then run for the sink, turning on the tap and grabbing the spray nozzle. Whether this is to prevent a fire or to protect myself should this ritual make Kate appear instantly (no Wait), I wouldn't speculate. But, like most men, I do not feel comfortable until I have that spray nozzle in my hand.

Then we're at a cocktail party. The evil shopkeeper is there, he's always dressed as some kind of demented Santa Claus, the clothing seems almost like maternity-wear on his stocky frame. I loathe this man instantly, even before he's opened his mouth. But he takes things to a whole new level. He stalks my beautiful Kate, he hounds her relentlessly through five rooms of this wretched party where meat is served in raw slabs. The people are dressed in their finest but each wears some kind of prosthetic face so that the only thing genuine are the eyes. Even the teeth are stowaways, they've been ripped out and replaced with some sort of impossible ivory reproduction. These teeth send out secret signals in their clatter and I soon lose track of the party. This could be a flock of flamingoes.

I am lagging behind Kate as she eludes the shopkeeper. His suit is growing an angry red, changing color to match his temperament. I dreaded some kind of projectile weapon. I could just picture him removing a lead powder pistol and slowing to load it and shooting my dearest right there in the crowd of flamingoes. I could see the red spread out like a blanket pulled from a pocket, an opera transported to real life. I saw this all clearly in my mind and rated the threat as very real, yet I felt unable to quicken my pace. I was constantly being stopped by the dead-eyed party attendees, congratulated on my tuxedo, patted on the back about some business deal I had succeeded in. I wanted to punch them, I wanted to rush right over them but I feared a stampede. I was as polite as my inner demons would allow me to be, fearing some sort of vicious reprisal from these paper dolls.

And then I finally overtake the shopkeeper and I join my beloved. I spread her skirt behind her, some vague notion that I can give her wings to fly away. I see her reflection in a shattered mirror, I see her cut into a million little pieces, none of them adding up to a whole. I touch her regal skin, I feel the velvet and the pulse beneath it and then the hand falls on my shoulder. The shopkeeper has captured us, he has taken us prisoner. But he releases Kate, he gives her away entirely. I see the cuts on her forearms, I see her dripping nose. I see the shadow of an old person waiting to enter her body, biding time until it becomes her. I see her walk away awkwardly, looking back in terror. I see it and I turn back. I give up the chase and surrender. I prepare for him to scrape my veins out.

But when I look in his face, I only see myself. He has no personality, he is not real, no more than the others at the party. I see myself, I see a reflection of something I've been aspiring to be my whole life. I see a hook protruding from my chest and when you turn it, my blood will pump in the other direction. I see question mark shadows. I look up to avoid seeing myself but now I'm above my body, now I'm looking down into my own eyes. The loop of this reflection could go on forever. I scream for Kate, I shout until my throat is raw and I'm breathing smoke. My heart is running on a bad battery, my legs are made of glass.

I stop and picture a swan. I picture a swan gliding softly into the bluest water possible. This is on the coast of Mexico, some town too far for me to ever visit. There is the release of disappearing altogether. I want to vomit and be healed. I want to broker some compromise. Kate touches my hand gently and, for the longest moment, I am free from the searing pain of the present. I want to buy in.

But now I'm back, I'm back in this room of cardboard cut-out people. Kate has escaped, she has run to some far corner where gravity is lower, where she can float just off the floor. Before I can stop myself, I'm on my knees, staring up into the lifeless face of the shopkeeper. He's become everything I've ever feared and I am not ready.

But in the end, it's not where he sticks the needle in my vein that hurts. It's where the arrow was removed from my heart.

It was about ten degrees and falling, outside some outlet store in a used-up mall. There was literally nothing else around and I was trying to score. I thought I saw some relief but when I approached him there was a misunderstanding and a bigger man grabbed me by the collar and said, "That's enough. You, out of here."

So it was back out into the cold. Sometimes a wolf will eat its baby. I felt regret about the future. I felt jealousy for collapsing stars. I realized free agency just doesn't pay. I saw white turn to red, I felt a ghost brush my back. Snow. Snow and wind. I threw a cigarette butt towards a pigeon and thought I would cry. It was my 23rd birthday and I was all alone.

Went out with Angie to where the ships had run aground. Sacred spot, a lot of sailors had died there, probably. I could just imagine the ship ramming, stopping short, and then maybe the guy went through a window. Do they have windows on those big ships? I think maybe they do. I think they have to. Sometimes you need a clear view.

We were like angels that day. We walked through the wreckage, we held hands openly. We shared laughter over black tar heroin. She had the look of a horse when it has a lot of run left in it. We could almost make out smoke signals. She said the words that meant the most. It was the day we stopped being in love.

When we got back to town, it was like we hadn't left at all. Tommy was in a beef with the bartender; he'd sold him bad hash or something. He used to pound on his chest in that bar and yell, "What do you mean no more for me? I'll tell you when I've had enough." That's just the way Tommy was. You couldn't hate him or anything. You couldn't even look him in the eye when he got like that. He'd kill you as sure as he'd light a match.

That particular day I was speaking of, that was the day that Angie realized she was in love with someone else because I was impossible. I was okay with it because sometimes you know that you're wasting a girl's time by being in love with them.

She stared at her feet and said, "This is nobody's fault. You didn't do anything."

I just nodded so she added, "No, I mean you could have been better. You could have, you know, been better."

Trying to placate her, I said, "This doesn't need to change you and me."

"There is no you and me," she replied, that most amazing painted toenail still drawing her attention. "There hasn't been for weeks. You need to start living in real life."

We had been standing on a dune looking out over the forest, away from where the ships had run aground, over the forest on some hill was a grain elevator. I asked if there was farming in this area. I didn't think there were any fields here. She shook her head and said, "That's not a grain elevator."

"Well what the hell is it? It's on fire."

"It's not on fire," she told me.

"There's smoke right there. I can't believe what I'm seeing here. That grain's on fire and these ships beached themselves. We are surrounded by death here."

She started walking away from me and said, "It's a chimney. They cremate bodies there."

Tommy was allowed back in the bar on the condition that he drink quietly in the corner and tip heavily. He was not allowed to ask for the channel to be changed (one of his favorite activities; he loved to watch boxing matches from the mid-80's and explain why each fighter was better or worse than Sugar Ray Robinson) or to talk to the waitress. He paid no attention to the dancers that night, but I saw him looking wistfully at the television set. The television was playing a re-run of Gunsmoke.

I guess I should also tell you about when my jacket had been stolen from Bernie's bar (the Very Best), which had become like a home to me. It might have been the last place I felt safe. It saw me through bad times and also had been at the heart of many good days. Tommy had gotten onto a good score. He claimed he had found an abandoned semi somewhere near Barclay, but we found out later that he had actually hijacked it with Danny's crew. I never knew him to carry a gun but I never had my hands in his pockets. Tommy had gotten a reputation as a loose cannon and he cocked his hips a certain way when he walked. But the semi only had a shipment of little Visine bottles. We made a day of it at the campus, selling Visine to pothead students.

We're in the parking lot of some kind of burger joint off the highway. Tommy's got six bullets in his pocket, five of them are spent cartridges. He's trying to refill a printer ink cartridge. He's got some kind of kit to do it. He's explaining how they calculate acres with just a few short measurements. Then he's talking about triangulation to learn the height of a mountain from the ground. I interrupt him to tell him that I was seeing his ex until yesterday.

"She's difficult. She's hard on everyone," he offers.

"It was nobody's fault," I try to explain. "You don't get to plan these things."

"Christ, I think I got ink in a cut. That'll go straight to my heart, won't it?"

I conceded that it might.

"Just what I need," he muses mirthlessly. "A tattoo on the inside." He pauses and then says, "Tell me about her. What's she like after me?"

I had gotten some of their story from her when we first began to sneak away. Cupping her chin in my hand, I would plead with her, bargain. I would slowly lead her into a cage. The bed was barely big enough for two and we often slept on the floor because it was more comfortable. It was the way it always was with me.

First she would trade verbal blows with me, accuse me of the most horrible things. Her condemnation of me was warranted. What I kept from her was a lot more than what I actually showed. But sometimes at night, she would levitate. She would float right off the bed and she would turn cartwheels above me. I needed her to stay out of reach.

I knew there was evil in me. I found myself glaring at the mirror, seething about the person I was stuck being. I could have spoken her name at that moment but I was sure some kind of curse would descend upon her. I knew that any words that came from my lips would be damaging. I wanted to fix things but I never learned how. I wanted to protect her from me. It's not easy to realize that you're the worst thing a person can get into. And then drag them in deeper.

I traced lines along her birthmarks and freckles, mapping her beauty. She would confess how disappointed she was in me, like it was her failing. She knew me too well to be kind but that was her nature. I bruised my tongue trying to explain how I felt, tied up in white lies and alibis. I found six thousand words to placate her but never said anything helpful. I could have saved her but I lost us both.

She reached deep inside me and handled my heart with her bare hands. She prodded this and stretched that. She taught me that life is about losing in increments. And she would say, "It's nothing you did. Once something dies, that's it." She had let go of my heart after pulling it from my chest. She wiped the blood across my lips and said, "That's our last kiss." She left it to me to sew the wound back up.

But what can I tell Tommy? Tommy who once beat her and kept her from the things and the people she loved. Tommy who distrusted her because of his own behavior. Tommy with his sulking manner, his talkative fists, his cold distrust. There was something about him that scared me. I knew that if he started calling me names, everyone else would join in. Either to gain his favor or because they'd always secretly harbored a hatred toward me and now Tommy was endorsing the abuse. I always tried to stay on his good side because I wanted to be liked, and if not liked then at least convince myself I was liked. I also thought he might destroy my face on a whim. Like most friends, I always had to hope that Tommy would not kill me.

A last scene from that relationship, one that I try to relate to Tommy. It's six AM and the sun has just started to come up. I am pacing the apartment, worried about some guy that thinks I've ripped him off. I'm continually checking the lock on the door, muttering to myself that it won't do much good against a sledgehammer. I want to be a predator. Angie is working on a stuck zipper with her delicate hands. Typically, we haven't slept at all. We were up all hours arguing and pleading and accusing and confessing and begging to be absolved. Our sins were pragmatic, necessary for absolution. We were trying to manufacture salvation because we couldn't earn it. I once tried to tell her that I wasn't a bad guy. I couldn't convince either of us.

I slipped out around 7 a.m. and went up to the cafe to get a couple muffins to bring back. Her favorite was chocolate chip, mine was cinnamon. I also got some orange juice. The taste reminds me of Methadone. I caught my reflection in the glass of the door and was reminded of the kind of person I am, and I felt ashamed. But, for the first time, I thought I knew where I was going and I thought that was enough. I thought there might be an anchor somewhere in this world. I walked in silence, enjoying the fact that the world was waking up and that I wasn't doing anything wrong for once.

Back at the apartment, there was a note on the floor. She had ranked me by positives and negatives. The best thing that could be said about me was that I didn't like hurting people. There are some secrets you learn to live with, unspoken and locked away. Seeing this list, it crystallized some unnamed dread inside me. It was like hearing the safe slowly being opened, one tumbler at a time, and the worst of the worst would be unloaded from the vault. Brought into the harsh light and confronted. I'd never been more frightened. Maybe she didn't believe the horrible things she accused me of but was convincing herself because I wasn't worth the investment anymore. I tore the list up and threw it in the trashcan. Now she would know I'd found it. There was no way to hide what I'd just done. It was time to wake her and confront her.

I tried to take it back. I tried to change the whole thing and laugh about it but the laughter turned to tears and then I was angry. She was angry. I just wanted to love her. I have all this love and I don't know where to put it. I could live with her disgust as long as she let me love her.

She left that afternoon, saying something about a modeling contract in the city. I was sure she'd stay gone. I hated myself for driving her away. When she showed up again, I knew it was because she had no other options. I was the only thing in life that wouldn't refuse her. We kept dating because I was willing to be her last resort. It's the kind of thing you don't brag about but it sure lets you know your worth.

There's some kind of auto accident. Georgie dies and Nial wants them to drag the river. Georgie had Nial's guitar and typewriter in the car but now both are missing. When the cops suggested they had ended up in the river, Nial wants to drag the river. Then he tells us that the cops stole them. Tommy says Nial should take revenge but even he doesn't believe it. He just wants Nial to believe it's a good idea.

Next thing, Nial's putting up reward posters for his guitar and typewriter. Tommy scoffs at them and says, "You draw that yourself?"

"Yeah," Nial says. "I think I really captured the spirit of the guitar."

Might as well have been stick figures. I want to say this but Nial is notorious for bearing a grudge. I once said his shoes were losing traction when there was an ice storm and he didn't talk to me for the rest of the winter. Spring came and he just started asking for cigarettes. It took me until the end of the summer to even get him to say my name. Well, it just goes to show. You never really choose your friends; or you shouldn't be allowed to, anyway.

Then Blake showed up with the guitar and typewriter and demanded the reward. This was before we even knew Blake, before he'd killed the cat and started a fire in the kitchen. We saw some kind of damaged soul in there, some kind of demon picking him apart piece by piece. We knew right away he was one of us.

Nial gave him the fifty dollars; thirty dollars was in change in one of those big plastic water jugs.

"What do I do with this?" Blake asked.

"You roll it," Nial said, examining the guitar for any signs of wear.

"Then what?" Blake asked.

"Then take it to a fer chrissake bank."

Blake looked at me and said, "That's not cool. You don't give a man change. Hey, tell him to give me cash."

"It's cash," Nial says.

"It's not cash," Blake said, searching for support with his eyes.

"It's almost as good as cash."

Blake took Nial out for a beer and when they got back, it turned out Blake had the same fourth grade teacher as Nial. They came back best friends. Tommy didn't like it. "Who's this Blake?" he'd ask. "Are we locking the doors?"

But Blake liked us all so damn much. After the fire, he wanted to make things up to us. That's when he started looking for a piece of land to build a new place on. He was convinced we could build it ourselves. Tommy offered to keep us in beer if we actually built it. We went and looked for land and ended up with the train tracks.

I think maybe it's important that what I said earlier about Angie was said. Because I don't want to forget that we shared that day. That's just how life was. People came in and people went out. There was no middle, or never much of one. Once someone had come in, they would soon go out. Nial stayed the longest, maybe three years. I made new friends and broke friendships, I lost old friends and I buried some.

It gets strange from time to time. Those days when the sky is green like a hailstorm and there's no sound on the street except the kind of laughter that cuts like a knife. You start to plot ways out of society. You start to weigh the pros and cons of success. Sometimes you've just gotta walk until there's no sky over you anymore. Until you reach the sea and enter it. And become it.