A reflection of an incident at the Seabeck Conference Center, in the late 1970s

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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