Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) by Randall Silvis Page A

too, won’t it?”
    â€œYes, but first you’ll have to carry those wet bags out through the pasture. A forty-pound bag of wet compost will feel more like sixty pounds.”
    â€œWell . . . I can use the exercise.”
    â€œI’ll come out and move them for you,” he said.
    â€œMike, stop it, please.”
    Even to her own ears, her voice sounded tight, too shrill. She wondered how it must sound to Mike Verner.
    â€œI didn’t mean to make you mad,” he said.
    â€œI’m not mad. I just . . . I was just so proud of myself after I carried all those bags into the barn,” she told him. “I felt like I had really accomplished something, you know? And now you want to come out and undo that for me and prove that I’m really just a foolish city lady after all.”
    â€œNow, did I say that?”
    â€œNot in so many words.”
    A few moments passed. Then he said, “You know . . . come to think of it . . . putting those bags in a stall might be a better idea than mine.”
    â€œAnd why is that?”
    â€œWell . . . it just is. Stop asking so many questions.”
    She laughed again. “You’re a good man, Mike.”
    â€œI wish somebody would tell my wife that.”
    â€œI will if I ever meet her.”
    â€œOn second thought . . . no sense stirring up trouble, is there?”
    She said nothing to that, only smiled to herself, felt her weariness returning, felt the morning looming out there on the other side of the horizon.
    â€œBy the way,” Mike finally said. “What did you think of our Sheriff Gatesman?”
    â€œHe seems like a nice enough man, I guess.”
    â€œThe question is, nice enough for what?”
    â€œOh, Mike.”
    â€œHe’s single, you know.”
    â€œYou don’t say.”
    â€œBeen a widower for going on, what, a dozen years now.”
    â€œHe never mentioned it.”
    â€œHe wouldn’t. They’d only been married about a year and a half when it happened. She rolled her car over an embankment out on Route 74.”
    â€œI heard about it from Cindy at the post office a while back. What an awful thing to happen.”
    â€œI guess so. Patrice and little Chelsea, both.”
    â€œHow old was the child?”
    â€œFour months. And she was the light of his life, you know? Both of them were.”
    â€œJesus, Mike.”
    â€œHere’s what makes it even worse. It was just a week or so before Christmas, and they’d been to the mall in Carlisle so that Chelsea could get her picture taken with Santa Claus. Cindy tell you all this?”
    â€œNo, just that there had been a car accident.”
    â€œWell, Mark was supposed to go with them to the mall—a family day, you know? But then there was this altercation up at Little Buffalo State Park, reported to be a shoot-out of some kind, but it turned out to just be a bunch of drunken kids shooting off firecrackers. But by then, Mark had sent Patrice and Chelsea off on their own. When they didn’t come home and she wasn’t answering her cell phone, he went out looking for them.”
    â€œHe’s the one who found them? Oh God.”
    â€œSo be nice to him, okay? Be very nice, if you know what I mean.”
    â€œI know exactly what you mean. But, Mike, honestly . . .”
    â€œHe’s a nice, lonely man. That’s all I’m saying here.”
    â€œGod, Mike, please. Don’t do this to me.”
    â€œI happen to know that he thinks you’re sort of special.”
    â€œYou know no such thing.”
    â€œCharlotte, listen to me. I am the source of all knowledge. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you can start convincing my wife.”
    She laughed a high, strange, whimpering kind of laugh. “I really wish you hadn’t told me about his family.”
    â€œPart of my job as the town gossip,” he told her. “And one other thing.”
    â€œNo more,