As the Crow Flies

by Craig Johnson

  I pulled both strings.

  There was a thunderous crack, the tree trunk split, and I slapped against the limb, causing it to fall even faster with my rebound. The crow exploded in a battering flush of wings, the feather tips swatting me as I was jarred sideways. I slipped to the side and attempted to grab hold of the falling limb—for what reason, I have no idea.

  My face turned toward the chill of the sky, and I could see her frozen there with her wings fully extended, the tiny chain bracelet still hanging from her talon. I watched as she hammered the air with those black wings like two, massive blankets thrown into the wind, and then she flew toward the mountains like a razor—as straight as the crow flies.

  I tried to get my eyes focused, but it was as if I was looking up from inside a well. I felt a jolt in the core of my body and found that I could move. Everything ached, and I wondered if I’d hit the ground and been knocked unconscious. My muscles were sore—even my rear-end hurt—but it was more the dull thrum of inactivity than the aftermath of impact.

  I jerked a shoulder loose, followed by an arm, and then watched as my hand came up and rested on Albert Black Horse’s shoulder. “Whew.”

  His face cracked into a wide grin. “We were worried about you.”

  I took a deep breath and blew the stale air from my lungs. Looking past him, I could see the entire group from inside the teepee had gathered around with concerned looks on their faces. “I think I need to stand up.”

  He placed a hand on my arm and carefully helped me get to my feet as the top of my head bumped the canvas and I leaned inward. “And go outside.”

  Albert nodded and ushered me toward the flap that was propped open with the lacings trailing down to the ground.

  I stepped into the wooded clearing that I’d remembered from last night. It was morning, and a few members were preparing breakfast in a Dutch oven and a frying pan. An old, porcelain percolator squatted on a log by another campfire. Albert was beside me again and placed a hand on my back as I swayed a little in the clear, flat light of early morning. “You’re all right?”

  “I think so.”

  I took a few unsteady steps under Albert’s careful inspection and placed a hand on the rooted part of the old, fallen tree. I cleared my throat and spoke to the large man who looked up at me with a cup in his hand. “I’d gladly kill somebody for a cup of that coffee.”

  He laughed, plucked another tin cup from the ground, twirled it by the handle like a gunfighter, and picked up the percolator without benefit of a pot holder. He poured me a cup and stood as he handed it to me. “How was your trip around the moon?”

  “I am never doing that again.” I looked around, just to make sure the desert of my dreams hadn’t crept up on me. “How did I get back in the teepee?”

  He looked puzzled. “You… never left.”

  I lifted the mug up, but a slight flip in my stomach caused me to pause. Glancing over to the opening, I could see my hat still laying there with the handkerchief draped over it. “I was in there the whole time?”

  The Cheyenne Nation looked at Albert, still standing beside me, and the older man nodded. “You took the peyote, and it was the strangest thing we’d ever seen. You looked around for a bit, and then you just froze and stayed like that for…” He paused to look at his wristwatch and for some reason it reminded me of the bracelet around the crow’s leg in my dream. “Coming up on ten hours.”

  “My ass feels like it’s been sat on for ten years.” I forced myself to sip the coffee, and it started tasting good. I glanced at the Bear, who looked a little tired. “You were out here all night?”

  “I was.”

  I took another sip and approached vaguely human. “You must need a nap.”

  “I do, but we have errands to run.”

  I looked longingly at the bacon sizzling and popping in the frying pan and could imagine the golden biscuits rising in the Dutch oven. I sighed. “No breakfast?”

  “Not unless you can talk Mrs. Small Song and Albert here into a breakfast sandwich to go.”

  I chewed the biscuit as we made the turn on the trail into the opening at the base of the hill where Lola, Henry’s ’59 Thunderbird convertible, sat like a chrome-bedecked spaceship. There was somebody I knew in the back, and he wagged his tail and stood with his forelegs on the sill to meet me face to muzzle.

  I ruffled his ears. “Are you happy to see me, or are you just happy to see my biscuit?” He didn’t answer, and I was just as pleased to be around an animal that didn’t talk. I turned to the Cheyenne Nation as he slid in the front and slipped the key in the switch. I fed Dog the remainder of my breakfast. “We’re traveling in style today.”

  He smiled and closed the driver’s-side door. “We have to pick up Cady and Lena in Billings.”

  A major organ in my chest did a flip as I pulled out my pocket watch by the Indian Chief fob just to make sure we had enough time for what I had planned. “Oh, boy.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I returned the watch to its pocket, straightened my hat, and placed my hands on the passenger-side door, resting my weight there. “I have failed miserably.”

  He barked a dwindling laugh. “We’re making progress.”

  “That might not be the way they are going to see it.”

  I stood there like that, and he watched me readjust the pancake holster at my back and snap the safety strap on my .45, his face becoming even more serious as his eyes narrowed like the aperture of a scope.

  He turned and placed a forearm on the steering wheel. “There is something else?”

  I slid a hand across the gleaming, powder-blue surface of the vintage automobile the Bear had inherited from his father, the hand-buffed paint dancing stars of sunlight. “This is one beautiful car,” I sighed. “And I’m about to utter something I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d ever say: can we trade Lola here for Rezdawg for just about an hour?”

  I patted the chrome trim of the Thunderbird and glanced off in the direction of Painted Warrior, where Audrey Plain Feather had met her untimely demise. “We’ve got to do some four-wheeling.”

  8

  I studied the rain-washed landscape—it must have poured here again during the night—and the edges of everything seemed more poignant, as if the country had redefined itself, imposed a sharper image onto the cliffs and the crowns of lodgepole pines that surrounded the valley.

  The cliff was as Lolo Long and I had left it, with the exception of the CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape the FBI had strung between the trees and which we carefully pulled down and stepped over.

  The Bear stopped. “This is illegal.”

  I looked at him as Dog went underneath. “I’m sorry, is this your first time?”

  “I have always tried to lead a lawful life.”

  I cleared my throat and petted Dog. “Thank goodness; I’d hate to have seen what it would’ve been like if you hadn’t shown a modicum of restraint.”

  He watched where he was placing his moccasins. “Virtue being my nature.”

  I thought about the talking bear. “I thought asking questions was your nature.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I began looking around in a vague kind of way as he watched.

  “What, exactly, are we looking for?”

  “Something shiny.”

  He glanced up at the calypso-blue sky and breathed in deeply. “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “You’re going to laugh.”

  “I will not.”

  I nodded as I began searching the surrounding ground with Dog following me. “You will.”

  He raised a hand in solemn oath. “Indian Scout’s honor.”

  “I happen to know you were never a Scout.”

  “Perhaps, but I have been an Indian my entire life—with the possible exception of a brief period in 1969.”

  “And what were you then?”

  His head tilted, and he looked a great deal like the bear in my imagination. “I am still not sure.”<
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  I continued to look around at the edge of the cliff. “It was something the crow said in my dream.”

  “Vision.”

  “And something she was wearing.”

  He looked at me. “Wearing?”

  “Yep.”

  He glanced around. “I am not sure I want to hear this part.”

  “It was a bracelet; one of those medical ones.”

  He paused for a moment. “On a crow.”

  “You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

  He smiled instead. “Maybe the crow had a condition.”

  I glanced at him with a hard look, for all the good it was going to do, as he began looking in the branches. “Whooping cough; might have caught it from a crane.”

  “If you remember, I saw something reflecting up here from down below, and for some reason I’ve got it in my head that it’s a bracelet.” I stared at his Adam’s apple. “Do you mind telling me why it is you’re looking in the trees?”

  He spoke in a pedantic tone. “Because that is where crows live. They are drawn by shiny objects; if there was something up here, either on someone or left behind, the first thing a crow would do when it found it is take it to its nest.” He lowered his face. “Now, if you had had a vision of talking prairie dogs…”

  I joined him in studying the trees, and even Dog looked up. “All right.”

  He pointed skyward like the ghost of Christmas future, and his hand, tanned and powerful, extended from the rolled-at-the-cuff chambray shirt he wore. I followed his finger and rested my eyes on a twisted mass of branches and thick, seed-head grasses deep in one of the conifers.

  “There.”

  I glanced down from the cliff to check the angle. “Gotta be it.” I looked at the tree, which was a little to our right and almost at the edge. I indicated the lowest limb. “I don’t suppose you’d like to…?”

  He glanced over the precipice. “Not really.”

  I looked up and sighed. “I already climbed one today, and that didn’t end well; besides, I have to keep an eye on Dog.” I placed a thumb through the beast’s collar, just to emphasize my point.

  He watched me for a moment more and then sauntered over to the trunk, and it was as if he levitated himself onto the thing. I watched as he effortlessly made his way up, his weight causing the pine to shudder but not crack.

  He was almost to the nest when a large and very irate crow banked with the thermals rising at the face of the cliff and stalled for a moment before lighting about ten feet above his head.

  “You’ve got company.”

  He leaned out and glanced up at the crow, which had begun screaming down at him.

  I looked over the edge. “I think she might have young ones in that nest.”

  “Would you like to talk to her? You evidently have a knack.”

  “Very funny.” I kept hold of Dog. “Don’t let her knock you off.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  He started up again, and the crow flapped her wings and flew over me to circle the adjacent treetop. She planted herself in the pine next door and began cawing at Henry with a renewed ferocity.

  He was just underneath the nest when three small heads appeared and, thinking the dinner bell must’ve rung, began calling back to their mother. “It is getting crowded up here.”

  “I think you should look on the side toward the cliff.”

  He shifted his position and went up a few more branches, the limbs getting closer and causing him more difficulty. “Your concern for my welfare is very touching.” He was studying the bottom of the nest, and I saw him draw back. He smiled, shook his head, and pulled something from the bottom of the wad of intertwined material. He leaned out from the main trunk, holding on with only one hand, and tossed something through the air.

  It shone and caught the rays of the sun as I held out a hand, barely capturing it before it hit the edge of the rock. I breathed a sigh of relief, stepped forward, and released Dog. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  He was carefully descending, keeping time to the cacophony of crows but careful not to upset the nest anymore than he had to. “You always catch things.”

  I turned the item over in my hands—it was just like the one in my dream.

  “Visions, they never lie.” He was standing next to me now, examining the thin, stainless steel bracelet that lay in my palm.

  The medications that were engraved across the broader section of the band were diazepam, tizanidine, baclofen, amitriptyline, oxybutynin, dantrolene, and pregabalin. “You ever hear of any of these?”

  “Only diazepam; otherwise, no.”

  “Me neither.” I flipped the thing over, and we both stared at the red caduceus insignia: two snakes intertwined. This was different from the one used by the American Medical Association, which had only one snake.

  I held it out to Henry, who read my thoughts. “Caduceus; two winged snakes.”

  “Old.”

  “Yes, very.”

  I thought about it. “When did they stop using two snakes?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “Well, I know a place where we can find out some answers to these questions.” I glanced back into the tree where the mother crow was checking and tending to her still-squawking brood, and dropped the bracelet in my shirt pocket. “I must’ve seen it when we were up here and just forgot about it.”

  The Cheyenne Nation smiled as I held the FBI tape for him to step over. “Yes, that must have been it.”

  Rezdawg stalled out three times before we coasted into the Bear’s driveway alongside Lola and traded the ugliest truck on the high plains for the Thunderbird, a more reliable and suitable ride for the trip to Billings.

  The health center was on the way, and it was a quick drive, so we stopped there first; Lolo Long’s cruiser was parked in front.

  When we got inside, Henry stopped to look at Lolo, who, leaning with her elbows on the counter, was providing a remarkable, back-lit silhouette in the diffused light of the large window at the end of the hall. With one booted toe balancing on the tiled floor and the arched back I was once again reminded of just how breath-pausingly beautiful the tall woman was.

  She was talking with her mother as we pulled up but turned to look at Henry and me with what could have almost passed for a smile. “So, while I’ve been working, you’ve been out getting a holy high?”

  I waved at Hazel and turned back to her daughter. “It wasn’t really my choice. Anything happening?”

  “Artie Small Song, in a fit of remorse, hasn’t turned himself in, if that’s what you mean.” She flipped a wave of her hair back, glanced at the Cheyenne Nation dismissively and then back to me. “Your buddy, the man who puts the ‘Special’ in Agent, Cliff Cly, left a message and wants to meet at noon.”

  I made a face. “Can’t. I have to be in Billings in about an hour. My daughter and her future mother-in-law are landing from Philadelphia and I’d better be there to update them as to the ongoing preparations, or lack thereof.” I tipped my hat back and thought about Cly. “He probably just wants an update; he’s got people he has to answer to and reports he’s got to write just like the rest of us.”

  She didn’t seem convinced. “Uh huh.”

  I fished the bracelet from my pocket and turned to her mother for some relief from the jasper stare. “Mrs. Long, do you know when the AMA stopped using the two-snake caduceus in their insignia?”

  Lolo answered. “In 1910; they thought it was inappropriate, witch-doctor symbolism—that, and when they discovered the double helix in 1953, everybody mistook the caduceus for DNA rather than snakes.”

  I smiled as it dawned on me. “You were a medic.”

  She actually smiled back. “Yeah.”

  I handed her the bracelet. “So this would be from 1910 or older?”

  She studied the insignia. “But this isn’t AMA.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Army Medical Service Corps, or one of its ancestors; possibly the WWI Sanitary Corps
.” I was again attacked by jasper. “Where did you get this?”

  “Painted Warrior.”

  Henry interrupted. “A little bird told him.”

  We both ignored him. “I’d seen something reflected in the trees, and we found it in a crow’s nest.”

  She flipped it over in her hands. “It looks like it could’ve been up there since WWI.” She paused. “No, it couldn’t have.” She handed the bracelet to her mother, who readjusted her glasses and stared at the engraving on the other side.

  “These are modern medications.” The older woman glanced up at me, and I was starting to see more of a resemblance between mother and daughter. “Heavy medications.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She shook her head. “Diazepam is used to treat muscle spasms, seizures, and other side effects from alcohol addiction; the same with baclofen but it’s more for control of spasms. Tizanidine is a muscle relaxant, and so is dantrolene. Oxybutynin is an anticholinergic used to relieve urinary and bladder difficulties, and pregabalin is a pain killer and an anticonvulsant.” She handed the bracelet back to me. “Whoever is using these medications on a regular enough basis to put them on a medical bracelet is in enough trouble that they can hardly stand up, let alone push somebody off a cliff.” She reached behind her and poured a couple of cups full of coffee and handed one to me and the other to the Bear. “But they might think about jumping themselves.”

  “So, a dead end on both counts?” I pocketed the thing and sipped my coffee, gesturing with the cup. “Thanks for this.”

  She smiled, and it was unreserved. “You both look like you need it.”

  I glanced at Henry, who appeared to be catching a second wind, and grunted an affirmative. “We had a late night.” I patted my pocket. “Why would someone use an old bracelet like this for a medical ID?”

  She shrugged. “We see it from time to time; people use whatever they’ve got here on the Rez. The first thing we do when people come through here is check every piece of jewelry they have on them. We had a guy one time whose allergies were engraved on a Howdy Doody bracelet.”