A Murder of Crows

Again Someday                  Chapter 1

 

 

“I spelled my name wrong.”  I laid the shaking pen down on the desk, pulled back my hand,  trying to hide it in my sleeve. My eyes flickered towards the lawyer.

Her hair matched her shoes; black, shiny, formal. It was almost like she was wearing a uniform; the lawyer’s uniform. I slid the paper folder towards her. She opened the folder and studied the bottom of the document. ‘Do we have to go through this again?’ I thought. ‘Ah shit, not the whole thing all over again.’

She blinked.

“I’ll forever be known as Rick Raison.” My smile quivered.

“It’s a witnessed signature. Nobody will notice.” She matched my feeble smile but her eyes studied me. Finally, she placed the folder back on the desk.

She blinked again.

I looked out the frost-edged window to the snow–covered rooftops below. Even though we sat a distance from those triple panes, I could still feel the cold on my cheek.  Her desk and working area were backed by a private boardroom.

When I had walked down the long-carpeted aisle I noticed that her space was twice the size of all the others on this floor. I wondered how she ranked to have such a large office. Divorce must be must be pretty good business.

I looked out at the snow topped buildings far below. A crow flapped past. Every beat of the fat bird’s wings seemed to be an effort. Then another one flew past. A pair of crows. I waited for more.

“How many is a murder?” I nodded towards the birds.

She snapped me a sharp look. I pointed.

“A murder of crows.”

The lawyer looked out the window, then she turned her head back to me, slowly. The first black bird pumped the air like it was flinging snow off its wings. The crow changed direction, then altered direction again. The bird seemed to be choosing between the buffet around the dumpster behind the Greek restaurant, or the easier pickings of the open garbage cans beside the Worker’s Compensation building.

“Is that good or bad luck?”

She shrugged.

“I think a murder should be more than two crows. Looks like this is an attempted murder.”

Her head turned back to the documents. She shuffled the papers as I looked out the window.

“Old joke.”

She didn’t look up.

Streaks of snow on the roofs trailed the chimneys in long thin white dunes. Steam leaking from the vents hung limp, motionless, grey. Like pennants from a defeated army. I watched the top of my lawyer’s head as she paper-clipped the documents, initialed the bottom of each page, neatly organizing the end of my marriage.

“It’s….” My hand indicating the divorce papers. “It’s like I died.”

“Well, it is a death.” She finally looked up. “A death of a family.”

“You’re not supposed to agree with me.” I snorted.

She didn’t smile.

 

Her side table was crowded with photographs. In the pictures everybody wore suits, men and women. Suits buttoned up. Suits in a solemn line with their jackets open. Suits that revealed round white-shirted stomachs like a line of florid faced Puffins holding their drink bouquets.

In the middle of all those smug suits one picture stood out. It was of a little girl with a wide, innocent smile sitting on a horse. She was dressed in a black equestrian helmet and shiny knee-high riding boots. A disconnected hand held the horse’s reins.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Two more, here, and ah, here.”

I picked up that pen again. I wanted to fling the pen through the plate glass window into the cold, so it would fall screaming all those fifteen stories down to the garbage cans where the crows ate.

She looked at me.  “Okay. We’re finished.”

We leaned away from each other and settled into our chairs, away from those papers. My work T-shirt blotted the freezing dribble of sweat running down my backbone.

“After all this, we, finally finished?” I repeated hopefully.

“Just to settle up.” She straightened and opened up yet another white file folder.  “You still at the same address?”

“I’ll pay now.”

She smiled that professional smile.

I took out my plastic-covered chequebook; this time I would make sure my signature was correct.

I had failed at school. I had failed at a couple of jobs. But this failure was the worst. Nothing compared to this. This was the first time I had to take pen to paper and officially declare that I had failed.

I was brought up in the 1950’s and it was drilled into me that a man’s purpose is to provide for his loved ones, to sacrifice for them. My father didn’t preach this to his sons, it was simply understood. A man’s job, from the time of cave man bringing home meat, to this old welder bringing home pay cheques, has been to deliver the goods.

It’s about your place in the clan. You are the man, you paid the bills, you are a good provider. The loss of that purpose was what frightened me. I wanted to be proud of what I did, bringing home the bacon, providing for my family.  A life without purpose is like you are a hole in the ground. A hole in the ground that people avoid.

“What happens next?”

“On the eighteenth.” She held up the documents. “This is seen by a judge. Unless there’s a reconciliation….”

“That’s not going to happen. She’s getting married, again.”

After a long moment she shrugged and went on.  “The judge will stamp this. There is no need to attend. It’s all pretty… clinical. A month after the eighteenth, the divorce becomes final.”

I handed the lawyer the last of my life savings.

She stacked the three folders, clasped her hands and leaned back again into her chair. “Well, at least you can go back to work. You’ve always got that.”

“I’m sixty. And I just lost everything. You know that two guys died on my last job? Their hearts gave out after weeks of trying to work with their lungs half-full of water.”

“What happened?”

“They got gassed. Just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I searched for those crows out the window as she searched my face. The crows were important to me right now.

I smiled at the memory of Dave, my friend. On this last job, Dave and I had welded two long steel joints opposite of each other, Dave on one side of the steel hopper, and I on the other. Our welding became a two-day long race. In the end Dave had beaten me, and took great delight in reminding me of it. Afterwards we sat in the direct sunlight of a northern Manitoba fall day. The noise of the construction site all around us but because we were up so high nobody could see us. Just the two of us, sitting in the warm sunshine talking. Two old welders who had started out together back in the 80’s, sitting back in the sun and kidding each other.

I reminded Dave that we had first met on a chartered airplane toTuktoyaktuk in northern Canada some twenty years ago. I remember that his young wife had to lug two tiny babies into the airport to see him off.

“How’s the kids?”

Dave went quiet. Real quiet. I had struck a nerve.

“Hey!” The Foreman’s white hardhat came over the edge of the tank.

“I need a welder!” The Foreman looked down at us. “Which one of you bundles of energy is finished?”

Dave and I pointed to each other. Except I still held onto my welding gun. “C’mon!” The Foreman motioned to Dave. “And Ranson? Let’s see some smoke coming from here.”

And that’s how easy it is to be chosen to die.

The next job that the Foreman gave Dave was close to the top of the stacks. The gases were real thick up there. But we never knew how deadly those gasses were. I don’t know what happened, whether he wore a mask or not, but those gasses must have scalded the insides of his lungs. They filled up with fluid. After two weeks of laying at home gasping for air Dave’s heart gave out.

The crow appeared at the window again. My eyes followed its path, avoiding my lawyer’s eyes.

“I’ve been too lucky, too long.” I looked back at the Lawyer. “I have so many welding burn scars on my body that I can’t remember where I got half of them. But you know what? Burning flesh smells like pork.”

I let that sink in. Somehow I wanted to shock her.

The lawyer stared at me, her eyes wide.

“When I told my wife-, my ex-wife that she said. ‘What’s that tell you?’”

The lawyer continued to stare. “Every once in a while she did have a sense of humour.”

The lawyer quickly clipped the green cheque to the documents, then stood. I followed her lead and put on my khaki jacket with the small welding burn holes in the creases. I once saw a marriage counsellor being interviewed on some TV talk show. The counsellor said that when a couple arrives at her office, there is always one who is better dressed. Better Dressed is always the one who wants out.

I stopped and turned back to the woman holding the door. She started and blinked. I had to say something. We weren’t just talking about selling a truck here. I just signed away thirty-seven years of partnership, of joy, of sadness, of a shared life. I wanted to shout ‘this…this was my life! We had kids! There’s a reason I spelled my own name wrong!’

“Mary.”

I had never called her by her first name. She stiffened.

“I just want to say.” I pointed a shaking finger at the documents on her desk.

“I just want you to know. Its important… I, I was a good… good and, and faithful….”  I couldn’t get the rest out. I tried again, then again, then gave up.

I’ve lost count of the number of nights I laid on some construction camp bunk wishing I had the control to finish that sentence. But I couldn’t.

She patted my rough coat. She opened the door, but she leaned against it. In the outer office I could see the secretaries staring. I couldn’t leave. I was not dismissed yet. For the first time Mary looked at me, really looked at me. Business over, she became simply, a trusted advisor.

“You talked about getting a boat. Well, do it. Get a boat. And spend some time on it. Put some life between you and this. You deserve a break.”

She didn’t blink this time as she handed me a tissue.

“Thanks, Mary.” My eyes fixed on her shiny black shoes swimming on the office rug.

The three secretaries’ heads raised as my work boots thudded past.