The tops of the pine trees shut out the sky. Down through their branches tumbled screeches and the flapping noise of many wings. Above the tumult rose an agitated treble screech. “Small! Small! Where are you?”
Small’s reply was almost drowned by the screaming of crows, the crackle of dead branches and the swish of green ones. The young girl jumped to the ground so close to the querulous elderly voice that its owner “ouched”!
“Mercy, child! What ever were you doing up there?”
“Getting him.”
At sight of the naked, scrawny-necked bird the girl held out, the woman screeched again; disgust swept over her face. “What are you going to do with the revolting creature?”
“Tame him, teach him, love him.”
“You have a yard cram full of domestic fur and feathers at home. Why must you desire to add a carrion crow to your collection?”
Small’s gasps were quick and exultant, the sobbing breath of a competitor who has won his trophy hard. The hardest part had been the persuading of this relative to drive her out to the wood where she knew crows nested. The excuse she gave was flower gathering. The crow’s naked flesh throbbing against her hand thrilled her and was more than compensation for her ripped flesh and clothing. “I do call it luck,” she gasped, wrenching apart two portions of garment stuck to each other with pine tree pitch, “great luck to find anything so easy; crows usually build in out-of-the-way places.”
“I should call that out of reach,” said the woman with an upward glance at the trees and a downward glance at the tattered, gummy girl. “Tidy up, Small, while I untie the horse.” One foot on the step of the buggy, she called, “One crow is bad luck!”
“Had I best climb for another?”
“Mercy, no! Come home and get your deserts. One-crow luck will fall on you when the Elder sees your bird, see if it doesn’t.”
Small placed the crow tenderly in the front of her jacket. At the last turn, with the crow’s fate and the Elder just around the corner, she said, “Thank you for taking me. I did so want a crow. Just to touch wild things sends me crazy-happy.”
“I am glad my children are not like you, Small,” said the woman. “Out quick! I’d rather be gone before the Elder sees that bird. Don’t let her know I had a hand in his getting. I trust one-crow luck won’t spill over me too.”
Sniff, cluck, slap—the old horse started. Small went in to face the Elder.
There was one thing you could be absolutely sure of—that the Elder would do what you did not expect. There was a twinkle in her usually stern eyes as she regarded her little sister and the crow. A use for the bird came immediately to her mind.
“Small,” she said, “Mr and Mrs Smith have come to pay us a long visit.” Small grimaced. She detested the Smiths, a pretentious couple who preferred visiting to housekeeping. Small took no pains to hide her dislikes. The Elder figured on using the crow to curb Small’s tongue. Each wag of her long forefinger a warning, she said, “Courtesy to my guests, Small, or out goes your crow.”
Putting the crow into a small basket, Small was on her way upstairs. “No, Small! The beast lives on the veranda.”
The evening meal seemed endless. Mr Smith told bragging stories which Mrs Smith laughed at. Neither the Elder nor Small’s two other sisters could laugh at the type of story told by Mr Smith. Small chafed, longing to go to her crow.
“Why so sober, kid?” A great tweed elbow dug into her ribs.
Small felt the resentment a girl in her teens knows when called “kid” by an enemy. She starched herself, caught the Elder’s eye, sagged. A general move from the supper-table saved her. She rushed out to the veranda and the crow.
At her touch, up was thrust a red hole of a mouth feebly supported on a wobbling neck. A yet unconscious eye was on either side of his head. Above and below the mouth the crow had an ineffectual scrap of soft beak. Out of the mouth poured urgent pleading squawks (not made in the throat but coming direct from the stomach), life’s roaring for fuel.
With a little pair of wooden pincers Small stooped to fill the gaping mouth. Smith, who had followed her onto the veranda, leaned across and blew a great puff of tobacco smoke into the crow’s mouth. The bird cowered and gagged.
“Despicable bully!” blazed Small, and raised her eyes to see that the Elder had followed them onto the veranda and was watching. There was interest in the crow in her eyes, warning for Small, and contempt for the Bully.
The crow grew with amazing rapidity. Soon his neck stopped wobbling and his legs could support his body. He stood upright in the nest and squawked when Small came to feed him. She stuffed the food down his throat and he gobbled greedily.
Soon the little grey casing in which each feather was sheathed burst and the released feather fluffed to cover his nakedness. They tickled and this induced him to peck and preen. Development rushed upon him, he discovered something new about himself each day. The last and most wonderful thing he learned was the use of his wings. At first they only flapped but had no power to rise. The heavy stomach in which his strength was generating required still the warmth and support of the earth. As yet the air had not called him, so he was content to hop or sit until his wings equalled in strength the rest of his body.
When the desire to rise came he hopped up and up from object to object until he reached great heights—then, afraid to trust his wings to float him down, sat screaming for Small to fetch him.
Small said, “Your bird-mother could help you now so much more than I.” But she got a ladder and scrambled up to the roof and fetched him off the chimney, or the ridge pole, while the Bully sat below jeering and calling the bird a fool.
It was at this stage in the bird’s life that the Bully found unlimited opportunity of tormenting Small, through her crow. Long ago he had sensed that the Elder used the crow to keep Small’s tongue in check. He saw Small bite back the angry retort by burying her face down on the back of the crow, holding him tight. The man said to his wife, “Ha! It is fun kicking up pepper in that kid, to watch her hang on to that bally old crow and nearly bust with fury.”
“Look out,” warned the wife. “For the present this is a convenient habitation. Would you drive me back to drudgery? Are you so anxious yourself to seek a job?”
The man scowled. He compelled Small to fetch and carry for them. If the Elder were present she sullenly complied. If the Elder were not present she refused, and then the couple told on her.
Silently Small noted that the Elder said no more about getting rid of the crow, but punished her instead by whipping, scolding or shutting her in her room. The man’s pleasure in tormenting the girl lost value when he could not use the crow as a medium.
Before the bird had use of his wings, Smith took him one day and set him on the clothes-line. Then he whipped the line up and down furiously. The fledgeling clung to the line as long as the strength in his feet hung out, then he flopped heavily to the stones and squalled for Small. Out of the door she flew. Behind her came the Elder who, looking straight at the man, said, “Mr Smith, I dislike cruelty.”
“Only a carrion crow,” replied the man with an insolent shrug.
When Crocker, as Small called her crow, had mastered the air, his movements and entire nature quickened. He seemed possessed with the desire to tease and trick humans.
“Crow, you are getting to be a nuisance,” said Bigger, flapping her duster at Crocker who, a small china dog held in his beak, impudently contemplated her from the window sill with guttural croaks and a cocked head.
Bigger hurled a pail of suds—soap, scrub-brush and all—over him. He shook the drops from his glossy back, drank from the puddle with relish, speared the soap with his powerful beak, and flew across the garden to the wail “My soap!” from Bigger.
“Mustn’t it be grand to make folks scalding mad, to fly off higher than their threats and farther from their hurls,” sighed Small. “But it would be best of all to be a waterfowl and able to use the water as well as earth and air.”
Bigger stamped an impatient foot. “Look here, Small! Don’t you go bringing any waterfowl home!”
Small never caught up with Crocker’s damages: first the family came with complaints and then the crow for comfort. One either side of her, up and down, up and down, she was like the pivot across which their troubles seesawed.
The Bully built a boat in the Elder’s back yard. The crow watched from the maple tree. When the Bully was not about, the crow stole his small tools and the galvanized nails. Though the Bully never actually saw, he guessed and he complained to the Elder.
“It would be better to put your tools away when you leave work,” said the Elder.
Crocker relished a bit of fresh meat. The Elder, frying chops, saw two piercing grey eyes set in shiny blackness peering over the door sill. “No you don’t, crow,” she said, and shut the door upon him.
To a bird a window is as good as a door. He watched the Elder safely into the pantry and flew into the kitchen. He hovered over the sizzling frypan, making careful selection. The Elder’s wooden mixing spoon came down on his back. The chop of his selection fell upon the hot stove. But the crow had tasted. With dogged determination he defied the Elder’s whacks and hopped across the hot surface, burning his feet but retrieving the chop. Making a good getaway he retired to the coal bin where he morosely nursed first one foot and then the other. Small came to him with butter for his burns and comfort to his heart. With a twinkle in her eye the Elder related the episode at lunch. Everyone laughed and followed up with some mischief story about the crow.
The Bully alone did not laugh; he looked grim. His wife said, “I can’t think why anyone could be bothered with a nuisance like that crow.” The Bully looked approval at his wife. He said, “His mischief is not going to last so much longer nor will the kid grin so hard when I wring that vermin’s neck. I intend doing so when I catch him stealing my tools.”
“You daren’t! You bully! You sponger! The crow belongs here, you don’t,” cried Small, beside herself.
“Small, leave the room.” The Elder’s voice was cold and hard. The Elder’s face was granite.
On her way upstairs Small met the woman who had driven her out to get the crow.
“Crow troubles Small?”
Small nodded. “It’s that beastly bully.”
“One black crow, child!” The relative wagged a finger, her head, and her reticule at Small.
Small crossed to the bedroom window. She saw the crow on the edge of the barn water-barrel. As she looked, some bright object dropped from his beak into the barrel.
“Crock!” she called. “Caw” came the instant response. The bird flew to her.
When according to their lights the whip and the Elder had thrashed manners into Small, she went, sore and angry, to the water-barrel. In the clear shadowed water at the bottom she saw a number of small tools glistening and a pile of galvanized nails.
Bigger whispered to the Elder, “The ‘call of the wild’ may be the solution of our crow problems!” The Elder frowned and turned her back. Middle was staring. The Bully and his wife stood grinning. Small, watching intently, was twisting the corner of her apron into a rope. The group stood on the lawn of the cottage they had rented for the holidays. It was near the sea and close to the little wood where Crocker was hatched. To the crow was to be left the choice of returning to the tribe of his blood-brothers, or continuing in captivity with his humans. The crow mob were assembled in a nearby willow tree, clamorously inviting. The wicker cage stood on the lawn with the door open.
Six cats crawled out, shortening their legs and elongating their bodies, slinking across the lawn to the nearest shelter available. Administering a smart pinch to the tail of the last cat so that she yowled and hurried, the crow strutted out. He paused to preen the taint of cat from his ruffled feathers. He was keenly aware of the other crows, but gave no answering caw. He shook himself, crouched, spread his wings and took his place among the flock, a perfect crow, black as they; but inside he was different, knowing as he did the feel of human protection, of human love, sensing, by the tone of the human voice, anger and coaxing. Dumbly he understood the difference between human laughter and human crying; here in the willow, among his feathered brothers, he felt the tense watching in the eyes of the humans he loved.
He swooped to Small’s shoulder.
The wild flock flew away. The knot of humans dispersed. Small and her crow were alone.
He tried the patience of his humans to the limit that summer—ripping the pillows open for the pleasure of scattering the feathers, hurling every match out the window, picking the eyes out of a visiting child’s doll, and the flowers and feathers from the ladies’ hats, raiding the larder, pinching the cats’ tails, agonizing the canary, ripping, stealing. Everything was at his mercy, as there was little cupboard room and doors and windows always stood open.
The Bully’s razor and his wife’s curling tongs disappeared.
“That confounded crow!” muttered the Bully. Everyone said, “Nonsense, they are too heavy for a crow’s beak.” For a week everyone hunted.
His seven-days’ beard turned the Bully into a pirate. His wife’s hair streamed from her head straight as bulrushes. Their tempers were seven times worse than usual.
After a week: the crow chortling in a tree-top—Small climbing to investigate, handing the rusty implements to the Bully with a mock bow as she descended.
The Bully’s revenge on the crow was to molest a hornet’s nest close to where the bird was roosting. Hornets swarmed around the bird’s eyes, imbedding their venomous stings. The bird, mad with torment, flew to Small. As she beat off the hornets she heard a snigger in the bushes. The Bully was there, his hands filled with stones, one of which was poised to hurl.
“Coward! Mean-natured little nobody! Prating of your ancestors! Why, you are not even a common gentleman!” screamed Small.
The Bully rushed to tell his wife that the kid had insulted him. His wife rushed to the Elder. The Elder rushed for the whip.
Bully Smith sat beneath the open window. Each sing of the whip was salve to his gentlemanly wounds.
When it was over, Small, tearing from the house, tripped over his sprawled legs.
“Scuse me, kid!” His leer of delight was unendurable.
Small flew to the woods across the field. Fluttering close behind her came the crow. In the deep moss under the trees, her face down among ants and beetles, Small cried into the earth. Crocker strode up and down her spine, chortling, tweaking the loose hair around Small’s ears, fluttering his wings, twisting his head this way and that. He hopped down from her prostrate person and tried to poke his beak down through the moss that he might peer into her face. Soft and throaty were the noises he made as he pecked at her fingers. Tender croonings, as of a mother crow urging her little ones to face the world and fly. For the moment the adult crow had changed places with the child who had mothered him.
Rolling over, Small laughed up at the crow “Aren’t we eye-swollen frights! If I was you, Crock, I’d go back to the crows.”
The crow pushed his head under her hand, a baby crow again, begging to be caressed, begging mothering from a human child.
The Bully resumed his boat-building and the crow his stealing. The man caught him in the very act of teasing the caulking out of the seams of his boat. In a fury he went to the Elder and demanded that the bird be destroyed. Again the Elder said, “I recommend, Mr Smith, that you keep your tools in their box when not in use.” The Elder resented the overbearing attitude of the man. Coolness sprang up between hostess and guests.
Crocker’s opportunity was the hour of family worship, when the Elder, sober-faced, read each morning from a little black book. Small knelt in the window seat and encouraged the bird to come to her there that she might divide her attention between the Elder’s prayer and the bird’s mischief. Hopping through the open window he would creep under Small’s hands, his shiny feathers still hot with sunshine.
Bigger saw. “It is profane to share your prayers with a crow!”
Small retorted. “If you had been praying instead of peeping you would not have seen.”
“Hush!” The Elder strode across the room, smacked the crow with the prayerbook, drove him away, and slammed the window. Watching the indignant hop of the bird down the path, Small mumbled, “He’ll pay back.”
He did. The agitated tap, tap of Bigger’s heels down the hall said he had before she burst open the breakfast room door and screamed, “It can’t be borne! Come and see!”
All left the breakfast table, all followed to the drawing-room and stood aghast.
Bigger’s knick-knacks had been swept from the mantle-piece. Everything was in a smashed heap upon the stone hearth.
“Oh, girls! Look at Auntie! I’m evened on her at last!” giggled Small. The sunlight blazed through two pecked holes in Auntie’s photoed eyes. She was torn from her frame. The twisted cardboard forced a crooked smile from Auntie. Another peck had provided her with a dimple foreign to Auntie’s flesh and blood.
Middle gently turned Auntie face down.
“Don’t do it!” cried Small. “She’d far sooner spit fire at us through holes than snub her nose in a pile of rubbish!”
“Small! For shame!”
But even the Elder’s thunder was out-thundered by a bolt from the hall.
“Lady, if that black devil ain’t shet up I quits me ‘angin’! ’Im tweakin’ out pegs! Wash floppin’!”
The distracted Elder went to appease the washerwoman. As she passed Small she said, “He’s got to go, Small! Manage it how you wish but go he must!”
“Delighted to officiate,” said a voice at Small’s elbow. With a disgusting throaty gurgle the Bully drew a coarse finger across his own neck. The Elder gave the Bully a look of utter disgust. Small ducked her head into the crook of her elbow and rushed from the room.
“I’ve done it,” she said to the Elder that night in a squeaky, pitiful voice.
“How?”
“Sent word to that boy on board the ship that he may have Crocker.”
“The boy who asked you to get him a crow? He will be good to him.”
“They”, she pointed towards the guest-room, “are going.” She wanted to cheer Small.
Small stood before the Elder one week later. “The boat had sailed. My message was too late!”
The Elder pretended her thoughts were elsewhere. “I am having screens put to all the windows and, Small, it would be better to cage Crocker at night. Crows wake so early.”
The Elder crossed the yard. In her apron she carried something tenderly folded.
“What?” asked Bigger.
“The crow.”
“How?”
“Shot. This shooting by boys must stop! Their shots always find the wrong mark. The entire band flew away—just one, Crocker, silhouetted against the sky. Of course, he got it.”
“Oh, bad luck it should be he,” said Bigger.
Middle came and looked into the apron, broke her usual indifferent silence by saying, “I’m sorry.”
Small, kneeling by the yard chopping-block, had her head buried among the chips. Her tears were pouring into the sawdust.
Bigger blurted very loud so that Small might hear, “I didn’t really mind his mischief.”
“My watch didn’t break when he threw it out the window,” added Middle.
The Elder untied the apron strings from about her waist. She folded the apron round him, making a neat little parcel of the crow, took the spade, and started for the garden. The spade dragging along the gravel roused Small, who lifted a chip-tangled head with red swollen eyes.
“Never mind, Small! I’ll do it,” said the Elder. Small saw a bright red spot ooze through the white apron. She buried her face again.
“Crow luck again, Small?”
Small jumped and faced the elderly relative.
“You were wrong,” she cried. “My one crow was never bad luck. He brought laughs to everybody. He rid us of the Bully.”
0 comments