The Crow in the Cherry Tree
By R.J. Lane
Two boys looked up when they
heard the bang.
They saw the crow fall through
the branches of the cherry tree. They
knew it had been shot, as boys know those things, even though theirs were not
hunting families.
The sound could have been that of
a firecracker. During the past weekend,
the holiday had heard many exploded on the church-resort grounds, and in the
forest trails that bordered them. It had
been expected there would be no killing.
But here was that loud sound, and there lay the crow. Its spread wings
fluttered in the deep, wet grass.
The boys watched it die. They looked at each other, and they looked
around, toward the adults walking and talking lower down the hill.
The fluttering stopped. The boys approached the crow. One picked it up by its wings. The crow’s head rolled crazily at the end of
its long neck. They boy slid a hand
beneath the black, warm body.
The other boy touched its
wings. He touched the black bill. He saw the drops of bright, crimson blood
that sparkled upon it.
The boy pulled the beaks
apart. More blood lay on the bird’s
tongue. The boy closed the beaks. The two companions stood together in the
ankle-deep grass of the old orchard.
High in the century-old maples that lined the nearby road of the former
farm, a crow began to call an alarm.
The boy holding the dead crow
explored its breast with his fingers.
They found a wound, tiny and dark with clotting blood.
The other boy turned from it to
face the crow in the tree. He looked
down the hill. He began walking. The boy with the dead crow ran to catch up.
A man sat in a wooden lounge
chair in front of a huge building by the road. He watched the boys
approach. He looked at the crow. One boy spoke to him. The man’s hand waved toward
the building. The boys turned and
climbed its steps.
The building’s office was empty. The boy with the bird waited outside its
door. His companion walked through a dark hallway. Voices echoed back to the boy with the
bird. The other boy returned with a
large man in his wake. The man looked at
the crow. He took the bird from the
small hands that cradled it. He held it
by one foot. The wings fell open. The
head rolled. Blood dropped from the beak
to the man’s shoe.
Crows eat the fruit in the old
farm’s orchards, the man told the boys.
The birds are shot and the bodies hung from the trees to warn away the
other crows. He turned and took the dead
crow back up the dark hallway.
That evening, as they walked by the
dining hall, the boys saw the corpse of the crow hanging from a limb of the cherry
tree. The crow in the maple was gone.
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