CROWS

One time I was driving with a guy I was seeing – should I give him a name? . . . Nah. We were on the back roads bumping along – it wasn’t paved and his shocks were useless. It was February and there was nothing growing and the sky and every shrub and stubble of plant fiber on the ground was grey.

In the fields around us were hundreds – maybe thousands – of crows. Crows on the ground and in the air – crows flying back and forth in overlapping black lines – a layer of crow hovering 100 feet above the ground. It was a convergence of what seemed like every crow in the four surrounding states. Cawing.

We were riding along in his Chevy Nova – also black – he had spray painted it to cover the brightly colored hippy drawings the previous owner had painted on it.

In the road I could see the swollen corpse of a possum – a big one – maybe 14 pounds. We’re not driving very fast so we could have avoided it. But ex-boyfriend drives us directly over the rotten body. It is unbelievably disgusting and he – him – this guy is laughing and mocking my disgust – eeeeeeewwwww, that’s soooooooo groooooooossss – as if the smell doesn’t bother him at all. We get out and possum flesh – which is mostly liquid and jelly at this point – is smeared all over the fender around the front tire. His laughter goes on and on while I ask him a hundred times over, what did you do that for? And what the hell is so damn funny?

I once had a friend who decided to move to Arizona because she saw two crows cut a sharp left turn in the sky and head in that direction.