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

Mike.”
    â€œJust this. I’ve got sixty Angus pooping machines over here putting out a fresh supply of manure every single day. That’s what compost is, you know. So don’t go wasting your money on store-bought again, okay? They sterilize that stuff and kill off all of the helpful bacteria. My manure, on the other hand, is crawling with it.”
    â€œI’m not one to impose on my neighbors.”
    â€œHey,” he said, “if neighbors can’t give one another a little shit now and then, what kind of neighbors are they?”
    Again, Charlotte smiled. His kindness made her want to cry. “Okay.”
    â€œWe help one another out around here. You need something, you pick up the phone.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œYou can count on me to fulfill all of your seed, heavy lifting, and cow poop needs. All of your other needs, Mark Gatesman is the man you’ll want to call.”
    â€œGod. You just don’t quit, do you?”
    â€œThat’s a good opening for something dirty. But I’ll save it until we know each other a little better, okay?”
    She nodded but did not answer. The call had exhausted her in so many ways. She felt an urge to let her body slide down the wall, to find its natural resting posture as a heap crumpled into the corner.
    â€œIn the morning,” he told her.
    â€œIn the morning,” she said weakly, and hung up the phone.

12

    T HUNDER rumbled in the early evening, high and distant in the darkness. Charlotte sat alone in the living room with the television on, but she was unable to concentrate on the Lifetime movie, something about a young girl trying to locate the half brother she had never known. Charlotte had fixed a plate with a few crackers and slices of fontina and a half dozen Greek olives, but the plate went untouched, though the bottle of white merlot did not. Because the movie’s dialogue struck her as more distracting than engaging, she finally muted the sound and put on a Michael Bublé CD instead. The music, however, struck her as inconsistent with the rumbling night, so she searched through her CDs until she found the Berlin Philharmonic’s recording of Mozart’s Requiem . Then she went through the house and turned out all of the lights. By the time she settled onto the La-Z-Boy with her feet up and a light fleece blanket laid over her and the last of the merlot in her glass, the first movement was well under way, and a forceful rain was blowing hard and tapping like a thousand fingernails against the living room windows.
    She dreamed that she was sitting in a lawn chair in her backyard in the early hours of morning. She was very old and her feet were bare and cold in the wet grass. There was just enough chill in the air to make her think it must be September already, or maybe October, and she was glad to have a mug of hot tea cupped in her hands, its subtle fragrance of oranges warm on her face and the cup warming her palms and fingers. She could still hear the rain, but it was falling against her house, gurgling down the drain pipes, but not touching her, some ten yards away. The night was very dark, the sky overcast. She could make out five stars in the Big Dipper plus the hazy reddish glow that was either Mars or a communications satellite. She was aware of being very old in her dream and very tired, yet she did not wish to go inside the house where she could be warm and dry and alone. She wanted to remain outside awhile longer, looking at the stars and asking them, Who’s up there? and waiting to see if one of them winked at her in any fashion that could be interpreted as a response. She found that if she stared at the stars long enough, their fuzzy edges would elongate somewhat, stretch out a bit like hazy wings, and it seemed then that she might be staring at the negative image of a daytime sky, the sky black instead of sunlit, and the birds, instead of black, were full of light.
    After a while she became