Crows by Charles Dickinson Page A

her breathing. In that tiny house, Dave might have heard it too, and been comforted that she was there.
    She asked, “What’s the real story here, Rob-­O?”
    He smiled in the dark kitchen. His mother’s skepticism was without subterfuge. She sensed her son was fooling with her.
    â€œThat is the whole story, Ev,” he said. “I was caught in the storm. I’m sorry I forgot to call.”
    â€œRobert . . . tell me. Have you run away from home?”
    â€œDoes Dave want to know so he can have his den back?”
    His mother laughed softly. “Yes, he does. But pay him no mind. There just were times in the past when I thought you’d run away. I know Dave disappoints you. But you can’t run from that.”
    â€œEvelyn, quit blowing this all out of proportion.” He lowered his voice; he thought he had heard the house start at the exasperated tone in his voice, as though it were a snap of lightning. He was too much a stranger to have fixed in his mind where everyone was in that huge house, where they reclined or sat reading. He did not know whom he was disturbing and so assumed he was disturbing them all.
    â€œYou both would be happier with me gone,” Robert said. “I’ve made it awkward since I moved back. When I was living there before, that was normal. To leave and return, though; that’s failure. You got used to an empty house, having each other to yourselves after all those years.” He found himself very near to crying, self-­pitying.
    â€œI don’t rank the men in my life according to how much I love them,” Evelyn said. “But your father is my husband.”
    His mother hung up in his ear after wishing him an impersonal good night’s sleep. He retraced his steps back to the fourth-­floor room, and into bed.
    The sun was out in the morning and he was alone in the house. A ringing phone woke him but he could not get to it before the ringing stopped; the phone was floors below, almost ticklish, something caught in the throat of the house. Clammy wood floors chilled his bare feet; cold drafts blew up the back of his shirt and almost filled it like a sail. He slapped his pebbled arms. Pockets of cold lurked in the stairwells and hallways. No notes for him in the kitchen; they expected him to be gone.
    He reheated coffee and drank two cups very hot. He was happy to be alone. If Ethel had been there, without Ben to make him welcome, he would have been paralyzed with uneasiness. But the kitchen was warm and he found a sweet roll high in a cupboard and ate it with the coffee.
    It seemed impolite to attend Ben’s class without speaking to him afterwards. He lectured on communication behavior in wolves and concluded effortlessly two beats ahead of the bell. Its cued ringing brought a smile of bored pride to Ben’s face. Robert met him in the little room behind the amphitheater and Ben asked him to come to his office.
    â€œWhy did you tell your wife I had a falling out with my parents?” Robert asked.
    Ben rubbed his eyes. “Did I say that?”
    â€œYes, you did.”
    â€œI don’t remember saying that.”
    â€œLast night,” Robert replied, willing to go along, but uneasy then in a way he had never expected. “Your wife offered to give me a ride home but you told her I had had a fight with my father in order to get her to allow me to spend the night.”
    â€œYou spent the night at my house?”
    â€œLord, Ben!”
    He said, “Must be that forgetful sleep.”
    R OBERT STOOD AT the base of the birch tree looking up at Olive’s dark window. His legs and back ached from carrying storm windows up the ladder all day. He had not seen Olive since the evening before. Her room had been locked when they returned from the game in Baraboo; he had knocked but she had not answered.
    Now he was exhausted and fighting a sadness that had no focus. Buzz had been beaten, but expressed a