10 November 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 3
Crow
When Alethea came over after school she wanted to know if my grandmother was a witch. Alethea lived less than a mile up the road but hers was the only other house for days. Her father, Jim, would come get her in an old pickup truck with big fenders and sometimes there would be a black dog in the back the size of a wolf.
Alethea knew my grandmother lived just across the pond, and we were standing at the road where you could see my house on one side and my grandparents on the other. At that point you could go either way without the pond getting in your path. I suppose now, thinking back about twenty years believe it or not, that Alethea needed to know before she set foot off that road and wandered into what could have been, to her, a witch's den, the whole truth and nothing but.
I took her hand and we walked to the saw grass and cat o' nines at the edge of the pond. I showed her a little burrow that me and my sisters had built by getting inside and pressing our backs against the grass until it was flat and comfortable and hidden from sight. The grass swayed and curled above us like clouds. It was warm and we could hear the ducks swishing through the water to get away from us.
Alethea let go of my hand, sighed quietly, and told me how the other girls at school, especially the ones in Troop 326 of which I was the only white girl, thought my grandmother was a witch and that I was a witch baby.
But how, I asked her. What made them think that? Alethea said it was her clothes, the crow, and grandpa. It was true my grandmother wore funny clothes. After her favorite tennis shoes with the colored laces, there were her stockings that she rolled into a ring just below her knees. And of course she always wore a plain old housedress that somebody must have sewed sometime long before I was born. And then there was just her. She was a full-blooded Cherokee with high cheekbones and jet-black hair that sometimes stuck out from the sides of her head and her fingers were long, strong as a man's—except grandpa's—and quick. She could snatch a candy bar from your hand faster than a snake could strike. She didn't talk much like old people sometimes do so maybe that made her kind of mysterious to the other kids. But I had never really known much different. To me, what Alethea might have believed was as big a surprise as I had ever had.
Alethea took up my hand again and looked at me with her gray eyes, imploring me gently to answer. But I was just a child and I loved my grandma more than any other adult in the whole world and Alethea made me mad. She was supposed to be my best friend. I joined the Scouts to be with her. I helped her with math, taught her how to fish, how to throw a baseball. How could she believe anything the other girls told her?
So I looked straight into her gray eyes and said, with as much snuff as I could muster, that my grandma was not a witch, but a Cherokee.
A what, Alethea cried.
A Cherokee, I said again slowly then waited.
As far as the crow went, his name was Charlie and he was as black as night and nasty. His beak was gnarly and covered with little scars and splotches of blue-gray from what I don't know, but it was absolutely true that crow could talk.
I have yet in my life either seen or heard of another crow like Charlie. And sometimes when I remember Charlie, it's still hard to believe, but I can still hear its scratchy, super-loud voice saying, get me out, Momma, get me out and the roof's on fire, and morning sugar. These were all things my grandfather said. Why Charlie picked up his words instead of grandma's is pretty easy to figure because, as I've said, Grandma was quiet. She talked with her hands more than her mouth. And grandpa could talk enough for three people. And you know what? You'd listen. He was the tallest man in Baxter County, Maryland with leather-tan skin wrinkled like a baby bird and waves of snow-white hair. Grandpa had retired from the airport where he'd repaired airplanes and helicopters and in the house he kept old props and widgets and things on the wall, some hanging from fishing line nailed to the ceiling like plants. We were not allowed to touch any of it. When he was in the garden of the famous, that's what he called it and I'll tell you why later, we'd ask grandma what this or that was and she nodded, saying, silly toys for little boys. And we'd laugh because she'd say the same thing every time we asked so we asked often knowing she'd smile, push her hair back and peek into the oven.
She's no witch, I said to Alethea, and Charlie's just an old crow. Alethea laughed then we both looked into the sky as the ducks exploded from the water and flew up like little planes full of dynamite. I fell to my back to watch, through the grass and cattails, the ducks disappearing at my feet as slow as syrup on a winter day; those ducks never did fly fast; wet wings and full bellies slowed them down.
When the ducks had gone, Alethea sat up and leaned over me, her breath like garlic with flowers.
What about the carrots, she asked.
So about the carrots, Alethea, I'll just tell it straight. My grandpa believed he'd made the world's most famous carrot. I don't know why he picked out a carrot to be so famous because there were peas and beans and onions and sometimes watermelon, tomatoes, scallions, and jalapeno peppers. And why it was so famous was because they were big. Grandpa believed that no living vegetable should be plucked, pulled or shucked till it had spent its full life growing. So everything he grew was big. Carrots were twice the size of regular ones, and then at school I'd always be amazed at how small the vegetables were, turning to Alethea or anyone else at those long white tables that could hear: what happened to this bean? Holding it at the end of my fork, up in the air for all to see, for anyone to answer, but no one could. And then I'd tell them about the vegetables at my house and they'd laugh or just stare and me not really understand what was going on so I just gave it up and ate. They tasted so much better at school, and I think that's why I needed to know so bad why they were different. And I never did get an answer from anybody.
I want to see the carrots, Alethea said.
I thought it might be the best thing to do so Alethea could tell the others what she'd seen and maybe then I'd have an ally against them.
We walked up the grass wedge that grew in the middle of the road where the truck tires didn't roll as a yellow Cessna lifted into the sky and flew above our heads. I told Alethea that the plane had two prop engines and could carry five people.
I know that, she said and turned away.
But I didn't believe her. There were skylarks in the oak tree at the edge of the yard and nests bundled in the moss. A rain barrel, filled to the tip, was crusted over with green scum, and we stopped to watch the invisible bugs trace lines and wakes across it. The house was just behind us with the boards on