A Thousand Falling Crows Read online

  The storm’s relief was a bath and a moment’s rest for the flock in a tree just inside the town, outside a human-built structure; a house that offered protection from the weather, day and night. A permanent roost was a foreign concept to crows. Home was the accumulation of crows around them.

  A shadow of a man appeared at one of the second-floor windows. The window was almost even with the branch that one of the crows sat on, standing as close to the trunk as it could. On a fine day, with the window open, a cat could have come and gone at its pleasure, out the window and down the tree easily. The crow would have never perched there, offered itself as prey. It was nearly invisible now and felt safe.

  The bird was aware of the man, and the man was aware of the bird. But there was no threat to either. One just considered the other, wishing it had legs or wings—or others of its kind to hunt and kill with, instead of being alone.

  Eddie rolled off of Carmen, spent and sweaty from making love. She still ached for him, wished that he wouldn’t have finished when he did, but he’d seemed preoccupied, uninterested, in a hurry to get it over with. He sat up on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette with his back to her. She liked how his vertebrae poked out, a perfect line down his back all the way to the crack of his ass.

  “Are you okay, Eddie?” Carmen asked, rolling onto her side, resisting the urge to run her finger down his back.

  “I‘m fine.”

  “Tió won’t be back for a while.” She couldn’t restrain herself, she reached out and touched the middle hump, but he pulled away, like he didn’t want her to touch him. “We could go again.” Sex was new to her. She had liked it from the start. Other girls complained that it was uncomfortable, hurt, was dirty, but she’d never felt that way at all. It just felt natural and fun, like everyone should do it. She pushed back the tremors of guilt fueled by the religion of her home, of her father’s insistence on it. No amount of Hail Marys would make up for the things she’d done with her body. She’d run away from all of that. It was her life and she was going to live it. If there was a hell, she would see him there—her father, writhing in eternal damnation for the things he’d done, right along with her. He wasn’t without sin. Running gin was against the law. He was no different that Eddie and Tió, even if he went to confession every week to absolve himself.

  Eddie turned to her, his noble face hard as stone. His eyes glistened like black diamonds. “He’s outside, listening. He’s a creep. I should have shot him and been done with it.”

  Carmen shivered, pulled the sheet up to her neck, covering her small breasts.

  The room was hot and all the oscillating fan did was disperse the already thick, humid air from one wall to the other. It didn’t have far to go. The smell of gin permeated everything; juniper berries, lemon rotting in harsh grain alcohol. It was almost more than she could take. Gin seeped from the pores of Eddie’s skin when he sweated, which was most of the time inside the small motel room.

  “He’s your brother,” Carmen whispered. “You can’t kill him.”

  Eddie turned to her, his face void of emotion. “He was born dead. Did I ever tell you that? The comadrona blew air into his mouth until he began to breathe on his own. He was purple, blue. That is why his brain don’t work so good. She should have let him die.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. I will have to be the one to kill him. I am sure of it.”

  Before Eddie could say another word, a loud knock came at the door. Rap, rap, rap. Carmen nearly jumped out of her skin. She drew back into the corner of the bed. Tió had always scared her. Even more so now that she had shared a room with him, seen how he and Eddie really lived.

  Eddie pulled his boxer shorts on and grabbed the .32 off the nightstand.

  Rap, rap came two more knocks. “Open up, Renaldo, I know you’re in there. Your idiot brother is standing next to me,” a man’s voice on the other side of the door said.

  Carmen watched the tension drop from Eddie’s shoulders, and she relaxed along with him, if only slightly.

  “What do you want?” Eddie asked, speaking louder than normal so he could be heard through the door. He put the gun back where he had picked it up from, covered it up with a newspaper, then quickly tugged on his pants. A bead of sweat glistened at the nape of his neck.

  “You need to pay up or get the hell out,” the man said.

  It was then that Carmen recognized the voice. It was the motel manager, Felix Massey. He was short, fat, always had a cigar sticking out of his mouth, and always wore white shirts with ugly brown stains under the arms. He looked at her like she was a piece of meat, like he wanted to eat her up all in one sitting. She didn’t like him, but she was nice to him so he wouldn’t rat out their gin-making location. Eddie paid him extra so he would keep his mouth shut.

  Eddie’s jaw tightened as he zipped up his pants. His muscles looked like stone. There was not one inch of his body that wasn’t filled with anger. Not only did Tió make her nervous but Eddie’s outbursts scared her.

  Eddie hustled to the door and flung it open. A gust of wind pushed its way inside, announcing the arrival of some much-needed rain. “You’ll have to wait, Massey. I ain’t got the money right now.”

  “That’s what you said yesterday.” Felix Massey peered around Eddie, made eye-contact with Carmen. If she could have melted away in the sheets, she would have disappeared completely.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, creep,” Eddie said.

  “We could make a deal,” Felix replied.

  Eddie stiffened and flexed his fingers at his side. It was almost like he was reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. He stepped forward so he was within an inch of Massey’s face. “Ain’t gonna be no deal, you hear me? We done made our deals. I‘ll get you the money you need before you close up for the night.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.”

  “Good. If you don’t, I‘m callin’ the cops. They’ll get you and your stink out of here.”

  Eddie reared back to take a punch at the man just as Tió appeared and rushed between the two men. “Ain’t time for that, Eddie. Be bigger trouble’n we need right now.”

  Eddie stumbled back, his neck red as morning storm clouds with rage. Carmen couldn’t see the look on his face, wasn’t sure if Eddie would go after Massey, Tió, or give up. Eddie never gave up.

  Tió followed his brother, so they were both inside the door. “We’ll get your money,” he said, as he slammed the door shut.

  “I close the office at eight o‘clock,” Felix Massey yelled. “The cops’ll be here a minute after, you understand, Renaldo. A minute after. You can count on it.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Lancer’s Market sat on the dry side of the county line. It was a long, narrow building that had been extended in length three or four times over the years. Sonny couldn’t remember a time when the store hadn’t been there. Mismatched clapboards gave away the extensions, faded and weathered, but apparent and unmistakable in their origin. They looked like yardstick marks on a doorjamb to note the age of a child, grown now and gone out into the world.

  It had been a long time since the building had seen a coat of paint, probably since Haden Lancer had owned the market in the late teens. He’d sold it not long after the war had ended and he’d buried his one and only son, Louie, in the graveyard south of town, his coffin wrapped in a tear-stained American flag. There was no one to carry on the name, the tradition, the business, and Haden had just given up after that. Last anyone knew, he was working down in the Fort Worth stockyards, pushing cows into the slaughterhouse.

  Sonny downshifted the truck and slowed to pull into the market’s lot. He tried to push the thought of Louie Lancer away, but he couldn’t. He never could get the boy’s always-happy face out of his mind, which was why he almost always avoided shopping at this market in the first place. It held too many ghosts. Instead, he’d make his way into Wellington when it came to gathering up groceries and a stop at the butcher. If
he had more time back then, he’d drive to Memphis. He liked the butcher better there. That was when an appetite, the taste and enjoyment of a meal, had meant something to him.

  Louie Lancer had been killed in the spring of 1918, as the war wound to a close, in the Third Battle of the Aisne. It had been late spring, during a surprise attack by the Germans on the Allies, hoping to push into Paris. Poison gas had been dropped, and Louie Lancer, along with a lot of other soldiers, had suffered a slow, miserable death. Sonny never told Haden that he’d seen his son die, couldn’t bring himself to. For the most part, Sonny wished to believe that his time across the ocean had been a nightmare, not real. Nightmares were best kept to one’s self and not shared with the world.

  He’d tried to avoid the reality of the war at all costs, but he felt he had no choice on this day. Lancer’s Market was the closest store to the house. Sonny didn’t want to push his luck and go too far, too fast. He didn’t trust his skills with the truck, driving one-handed on wet, muddy roads.

  A heavy, gray blanket covered the sky for as far as Sonny could see. The wind had stilled, and rain fell straight down in sheets, sometimes hard, unrelenting, blinding. It pounded on the metal roof like a thousand knuckles knocking, like something was trying to get inside the dry cab. And then, without warning, the toad-soaker would let up and fade into a sprinkle, revealing the road and what lay ahead. It was a wonder Sonny hadn’t hit anything on the way to the market. But from the looks of the lot, he was the only fool out and about in such weather. It was empty.

  Puddles had quickly pooled up, making for a tricky ride from the road to the front door. Ruts meant nothing when it was dry, and with the wind they’d mostly vanished in the drought, but the rain was coming down so fast the water didn’t have time to seep into the earth and vanish, pooling up in any dimple it could find. The puddles amazed Sonny. He would’ve thought the ground was so thirsty that it would have sucked up all the rain in one big gulp. But that wasn’t the case.

  The steering wheel jumped out of Sonny’s hand, lurching him to the right faster than he should have been going. Instinctively, he let off the gas, and the truck coughed and lurched forward, sliding sideways and coming to a stop about twenty feet from the front door. A cloud of steam rose from underneath the radiator, and the front of the truck tilted down. He hoped he wasn’t stuck in the mud.

  Anger and frustration quickly came back, and Sonny slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Damn it,” he said. “This is a big goddamn mess, just a mess. What the hell was I thinking?”

  He glanced over at the .45. No matter where he went today, he couldn’t get away from the war. The gun, a Colt .45 Government Model automatic pistol, was the sidearm he’d carried in France. He’d given up his standard-issue Ranger gun, a Smith & Wesson .38. One gun in the house with history was enough. Besides, he’d always preferred the .45. He’d carried it most days when he’d been on duty. It was the gun he’d faced Bonnie and Clyde with. The .38 had the kick of a kid’s pony, even when it was loaded with regret.

  Sonny reached over and grabbed up the .45. He wasn’t going to use it, and he didn’t think he would need it, but he felt uncertain and wanted all the confidence he could acquire. Walking out in the world with one arm made him wobbly from the toes up.

  He leaned forward in the seat, reached around and pulled up his shirt, then stuffed the .45 down the small of his back. His belt was tight enough to hold the gun in place, and he could get to it pretty quickly if it came to that. The metal was cold against his skin, and he tried to ignore the discomfort of it the best he could. He’d hung up his holster for good. It was right-handed.

  The rain finally let up, and Sonny decided to leave the truck parked where it sat. It wasn’t like the market was teeming with customers. He opened the door, checked for a puddle, and swung out of the cab with as much of a jump as he could muster. He landed squarely on two feet and hurried to the overhang that jutted out over the front door.

  There was little reason to give any attention to the row of buildings that sat down the road a piece from Lancer’s. Two roadhouses and another little market, which serviced mostly Mexicans, stood on the wet side of the county line, in about the same repair as the building Sonny was entering. As a Ranger, he’d made his fair share of visits to all three buildings over the years, but as a civilian he had no desire for the pleasures—and troubles—offered there. Things had changed since the end of Prohibition. People liked to gather in saloons and taverns, but Sonny never had. What went on in those places held no sugar for him.

  Tom Turnell owned the market these days. It had changed hands more than once since Haden had first sold it, but the name Lancer’s always stuck. Most folks would have probably objected if the name had changed, gone somewhere else, like Sonny wanted to, if that would’ve ever happened.

  The screen door stood ajar, and the front door was open, like usual. Four empty chairs sat facing the lot, Tom’s version of the liar’s bench, most often found outside of such establishments, though these chairs sat empty on most days. Had since the Stock Market Crash.

  Sonny pushed inside, wet from the rain and self-conscious of the empty sleeve pinned to his right side. He stopped just inside the threshold.

  The store was dimly lit. A scattering of bare bulbs hung from the ceiling over the two aisles that reached to the back wall. The walnut wood floor was scuffed and scratched from the years of traffic and was nearly black in color. The shelves were thin, not heavily stocked but freshly dusted. Sonny was hoping for a week’s worth of canned beans, but he’d make a pot to last if he had to boil some from a bag.

  The market doubled as a post office, and an ice house sat on the north side of the building. Tom’s nephew, Bertie Turnell usually ran the ice route, and Tom doubled as postmaster when Bertie was out making deliveries. Sonny didn’t see the ice truck out in the lot, so he assumed that Bertie was gone. As it was, Tom stood behind the long counter at the front of the store alone, staring back at Sonny, his mouth slightly ajar, like he was surprised to see a living human being and didn’t know what to say.

  “How’d do, Tom,” Sonny said, taking his hat off and shaking out the rain that had collected in the brim.

  Tom Turnell was thin as a newel post and just as bald as the finial that normally sat atop it. His eyes were sunken, with dark half-moons of worry extending down to the top of his cheeks. Smiles were rare inside the market. Most folks had little money to spend and would most likely try and barter their next meal instead of paying for it, thus the sign that hung on the front of the counter: “All Transactions Require Money. No Exceptions. No Local Scrip Accepted.”

  Some towns had turned to printing their own currency since the banks and the treasury couldn’t be trusted. Scrip was local money. Money for whatever the reason Tom had decided not to accept. That decision probably made business more difficult than it already was.

  “Well, if it ain’t Sonny Burton out on a day even ducks would declare too wet to swim in. What’re you in need of that brings you here?”

  “Got some empty space in the cupboard,” Sonny answered. A puddle had collected at his feet from the hat. He broke eye contact with Tom and stepped toward the first aisle.

  There was always an aroma in a grocery store that Sonny found comforting. Fresh vegetables, barrels of cornmeal and flour, along with talcum powders, Lux soap, and bag upon bag of potatoes, all mixing into a recognizable and expected smell of plenty. But on this day, all of those smells were distant, minimal, like they were just memories. There were no bags of potatoes to be seen, and all of the barrels had the lids pulled tight.

  “Truck out of Dallas that brings me canned goods was hijacked three days ago,” Tom said. “Ruffians emptied it, then set it on fire.”

  Sonny nodded. “Folks are getting desperate.”

  “You can say that again.” Tom looked up at the metal roof, cocked his ear to listen to the rain pelt it, then watched a thin stream break across a rafter and find a place to fall to the floor. �
��I don’t know how much longer any of us can hang on,” he said, rushing to put a pail under the current leak. Three other pails sat scattered about in the aisles. “Most of us bought a bill of goods when we sent Garner to Washington to be Roosevelt’s number-two man.”

  There was nothing Sonny could add to those sentiments, but he was in no mood to talk politics. Having a Texan as a vice-president had been a moment of hope that had fallen away as quickly as the shine of a new window. The victory had quickly become covered with the dust and grime of the Depression, just like everything else. “I suppose you don’t have a week’s worth of Van Camp’s, do you?”

  Tom shook his head. “Two cans is the best I can do for you. I got some cheese that I‘ll let go of for twenty cents a pound. Normally twenty-five, but you made an extra effort to come out. Besides, you took a rough bullet from them two outlaws. Be the least I can do for a man the likes of you.”

  “I‘m in no need of charity, Tom. Thank you just the same.”

  The market-owner stared at Sonny, then moved from the pail to the counter where a pile of cheese rounds sat. “You don’t want any cheese then?”

  “Sure, I‘ll take a couple of pounds, but at the regular price, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  A look of disappointment crossed Tom Turnell’s face, but he nodded with understanding and went about cutting off two pounds of cheese with a strand of wire knotted to two opposing wood handles.