She had to think for a second. “Uh, to the back, where we were before.”
“It’s by the drop-off,” Ellie said, “behind the mausoleum. Do you want to follow me?”
Diablo gave her a look, one that said he didn’t want any part of this at all, let alone….
“Good, follow me,” Ellie said, and quickly rolled up the window in case he was going to object. She waited for him to get into his car then pulled around him and led the way. She could have driven it in her sleep. Past the Michaels, the Smiths, the Epsons, the Websters…. Turn left, where the Coopers lay, the Bagleys….
The view of the lake with a full moon was spectacular. For a moment, after she parked, Ellie almost forgot Diablo was behind her. The moonlight drew her in, calling, calling, shimmering on the water. And suddenly she knew. “This really is good-bye, isn’t it Grandma?”
“Yes.”
Diablo sat in his police car, waiting and waiting for whatever it was he was waiting and watching over them for, but was totally unprepared for what began to take place. Ellie got out, walked around the car, and opened her grandmother’s door. She helped the old woman turn so she faced the outside. She touched her grandmother’s face and then her own. She touched her grandmother’s heart and then her own. Then she turned and holding something, bent down and gathered a clump of dirt and worked it back and forth in her hands.
He got out of the squad car at that point and walked slowly toward them. Ellie had her back to him and was standing at the drop-off. For a split second, he feared she was going to jump. For a split second, he feared he wouldn’t be able to stop her. He could see himself trying to save her. He could see himself jumping off the cliff after her. He could see himself….
It was her voice that made him stop.
“Ashes to ashes,” she repeated, at her grandmother’s urging.
“To the circle of energy, I return.
“My soul to the universe, of want no more.
“Grant me forever, part of the whole.
“I come as one, no longer alone.”
Thus said, she threw the soil from her hands, high over the water, and in an instant it was gone…but for the sound of fluttering wings.
~ 15 ~
Ellie had another favor to ask of Diablo. “Could you find out if there’s an APB on my Grandma?”
“An APB?” Under any other circumstances, he might have laughed. Even now, considering what he’d just witnessed, there was a hint of a smile on his face. “Why would you uh…?”
“Because, if we were only going for a ride, which is what we told them, we would have been back a long time ago.”
“Why don’t you just go back now? That way….”
“We can’t. She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to die there.”
Grandma Betty had her eyes closed and appeared to be dozing.
“Please.”
Diablo hesitated, then shook his head and walked to the squad car. Ellie was right behind him. “Maybe I should phone my dad.” Diablo handed her his cell phone and reached for the scanner.
Ellie got her father and Jewel’s answering machine. “Dad, this is Ellie. If the nursing home calls, everything’s okay. Grandma’s with me, and….” She paused, unsure of what to say, how much to say. “Uh, I just wanted you to know everything’s okay, all right? I’ll call you later.”
It was getting close to midnight.
No APB.
Diablo sat in his car looking up at her. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.” Ellie glanced at her Grandma, still dozing. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, you’d better come up with something.”
“Ellie?”
“I’m right here, Grandma.”
Diablo reached for her hand.
“I gotta go,” she said. “I don’t want her to get frightened.”
“What about you, Ellie. Aren’t you frightened?”
“No.” Oddly enough, she wasn’t. Not anymore. “Come on. Come talk to her. I want her to get to know you.”
Diablo rolled his eyes and followed.
Grandma Betty was feeling disoriented again, a little worse this time. She also couldn’t get comfortable and kept insisting she was in her chair at the nursing home.
“This seat goes back more. Can you put it back more?”
Fortunately the car seat did tilt back, which offered a little more comfort, but then her legs started cramping. Out came the horse blanket again. It would have to do. Ellie rolled it into a ball, cleanest side up, and propped Grandma Betty’s legs on it.
“How’s that?”
“Much better. Thank you.”
Diablo scanned the horizon, feeling uncomfortable as well. There they were in a cemetery, which was weird enough considering the hour. Now they were waiting for Ellie’s grandmother to die. He imagined trying to explain the sequence of events to his sergeant during one of their weekly briefings at the station. Particularly when he got around to the part about “His girlfriend releasing a bird and….”
“Diablo.” Ellie touched his arm. “Do you have a blanket?”
He nodded, refrained from saying, ”Your every wish is my command,” which is what he was thinking, and went and got it and returned.
Grandma Betty looked up at him. “How’s come you’ve never been to see me before?”
Diablo hesitated. “I work odd hours,” was all he could think to say.
“What? Seven days a week?”
“Sometimes,” he said, which wasn’t necessarily a lie.
“There. How’s that?” Ellie tucked the blanket snug around her grandmother and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Be nice, Grandma,” she whispered, and then to Diablo, the same. “Be nice.”
Diablo glanced away. Quiet came easy to him. It was a standard joke at the precinct: whenever you wanted a suspect to talk, let Diablo in the room with him. His silence and that stance of his had detainees talking a mile a minute in no time; something about the way he’d cross his arms and set his eyes on the person.
Grandma Betty had a little bit more experience on him though, more years. She was the one doing the staring now and eventually he was the one to speak. “Ellie never invited me.”
Ellie couldn’t believe he said that. It was the truth, technically, but still. She’d hinted at his coming with her on occasion, but he never offered, never picked up on it, so that was as far as it went. Ellie looked out over the water. Off in the distance, there was a flicker of bright light.
“I hear you bought a Harley.”
Diablo nodded. Under the circumstances, even this attempt at conversation, was bizarre.
“What color?”
“Cobalt blue.”
Grandma Betty clung to the blanket. “My second husband had a Harley. He didn’t have a title for it though, so he only drove it on back streets. I personally think he stole it.”
“Grandma….” Ellie laughed.
“It’s true, but don’t tell your dad.”
Ellie laughed again. Even Diablo chuckled.
Grandma Betty looked at the two of them, just looked at them for a moment, then shook her head. Ellie feared what she was about to say, but she didn’t say anything. She just shook her head and with a sigh, closed her eyes and dozed off again.
Ellie motioned to a park bench close by, and she and Diablo walked over and sat down. Diablo reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, remembered he’d kicked the habit about three months earlier, and crossed his arms. He drew a deep breath. It had been a long night, a tough shift. Two robberies, a domestic call, and a fatal car accident. A father and his son. The poor little kid was still holding on to his soccer ball.
Ellie linked her arm around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate you being here with me.”
Diablo nodded slightly. He didn’t want to be here. That was obvious. But it was obvious he wasn’t leaving either. “So where did the bird come from?”
“Wha
t bird?” Ellie yawned.
Diablo stared at her. “You know what bird I’m talking about, Ellie.”
She hesitated. “It was just an illusion, Diablo. Everything is an illusion.”
“Everything? What do you mean? Life, you, me? The crows?”
Ellie looked at him. That was the first time he’d ever mentioned the crows. She had no idea he even knew of their existence or their connection to her. He’d never acted as if he even knew they were around.
“What was the point? I heard what you said, but what does it mean?”
Ellie paused. There was a sudden chill in the air. “I wonder if I should go run the car heater for a while?”
“In a minute. Answer me first.”
“Ellie?”
“I’m right here, Grandma.” She turned to Diablo. He still wanted an answer. “I’ll explain it all some day, I promise. But it basically means she’s giving up her spirit. Releasing it, so to speak. She doesn’t ever want to come back.”
“You mean like reincarnation?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s it? That’s all you have to do, say you don’t want to come back, and it’s done.”
Ellie smiled. “Only if you’ve lived a very long time.”
* * *
A short while later, Grandma Betty suffered another wave of pain. This one wasn’t nearly as bad, she declared. But if no one minded, she thought she’d like to go to sleep for a bit. “I don’t know why, but I’m feeling really tired all of a sudden.”
The night couldn’t have been quieter. “I hope she doesn’t think she has to feel brave with you here,” Ellie whispered, when they’d walked a little distance away.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Diablo asked. It’s not as if he could leave.
“Nothing. I was just….” She paused, glancing back and feeling helpless. “She hates pain. It’s the one thing that frightens her.”
Diablo sat back down on the bench and when Ellie just stood there, her saddened gaze fixed on her grandmother, he urged her to sit next to him.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
Neither did he. “You okay?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I want to wrap her in my arms, Diablo. I don’t want her to go. She’s such an awesome person. Why did I take so long to get to know her?” She bit at her trembling bottom lip.
“Maybe if you take her back to the nursing home and….”
Ellie shook her head. “No, this is what she wants.”
The next time Grandma Betty woke, Ellie was all curled up in the driver’s seat, asleep at her side. It was near dawn. “You look like an angel,” Grandma Betty told her, smiling. And right after that, before Ellie could even sit up and wipe the sleep from her eyes. “So what happened to the Dildo? Did he leave?”
Ellie laughed. He was stretched out on the back seat, and had been asleep as well. Though as light a sleeper as she knew him to be and the way he just stirred, he was surely awake now.
Grandma Betty never looked better, felt better. She was positively radiant. She wasn’t in pain. She was well rested. She was ready for more adventure! ”Where can we go now? I still have time.”
When Ellie suggested the barn, Diablo got up and took a walk into the woods. Ellie waited for him at his car. He returned a little crankier than his usual morning self. “I just pissed in a cemetery. Bet that’ll get me into heaven.”
Ellie smiled. Grandma Betty’s mood had the same euphoric effect on her. Nothing was going to get her down. She wrapped her arms around Diablo’s neck and kissed him good-bye. “I’ll call you,” she said, and then did the strangest thing. She glanced over his shoulder, saw something barely in the dawn, and extended her hand as if touching someone.
“What are you doing?” he asked, turning.
“Nothing,” she said, but then did it again, and he shook his head. Whatever she saw, was invisible to him. He was not a believer. If he were, he would have seen it as well. There were spirits everywhere. Some happy. Some sad.
“I’m outta here.”
Ellie motioned toward Grandma Betty. “Go talk to her,” she whispered.
Diablo sighed and walked over and bent down on one knee, his awkwardness at saying good-bye to a dying woman, apparent. “I’m leaving now,” he said. “Is there anything I can do for you? Uh…something you need?”
Grandma Betty smiled. “Nope.” She’d just put on her red lipstick and had combed her hair and was raring to go. Ellie used Diablo’s cell phone, left another message for her father, same message as before, and off they went.
~ 16 ~
Ellie glanced at her gas gauge only after she turned into the driveway of the farm. It was a little game she played when she was low or about to run out. Don’t look till you get where you’re going. That way you only worry on your way back. She had a little over a quarter of a tank.
It was perfect timing, too. With the sun up, the horses had probably already been hayed and grained by now. She parked by the stable entrance. “I’ll be right back.”
She hoped Damian wasn’t a mess. Grandma Betty had seen dozens of pictures of him, but never in person before. She wanted him to look his best. She felt like a little child about to show off her favorite toy. Damian nickered at the sound of her voice. “Oh good, you’re clean.” She grabbed a brush and mane comb, gave him a quick once-over, really quick, and snapped the lead shank onto his halter and led him from his stall.
Victor appeared from out of nowhere. “Aren’t you the early riser? Out all night?”
“Good morning,” she said, and walked past him.
Grandma Betty was waiting anxiously. There was a time in her life she owned horses herself. Not her actually, but her father. They were workhorses on the farm, two of them. Big Belgians, and both so kind. Her eyes widened as Ellie led Damian toward the car. “Oh my.” He was taller than she’d imagined, bigger all over, and so pretty. So shiny black.
“Well, here he is, Grandma. What do you think?”
“He’s beautiful,” she said, breathlessly.
Damian stood looking around, the newness of his being outside so early, not yet registering. Off in the distance, a flock of crows landed.
“Bring him here. Will he let me pet him?”
Ellie led him closer to the car and opened the door, which spooked Damian a little, but not bad. He backed up a few steps and, at Ellie’s urging, came closer. Grandma Betty reached her frail hand out and much to Ellie’s surprise and pleasure, Damian nuzzled it. “Oh, he’s so soft.” He was a giant, looking down on her in the car, a curious giant, who not only nuzzled Grandma Betty’s hand, but stretched his neck so he could touch and sniff her face.
“He likes me,” she said. “See. He likes me.”
Most definitely. It was as if Damian knew her and Grandma Betty knew him. Her, through months and months and months of hearing about him, seeing his pictures, seeing him in her mind. And him, by some sort of association through Ellie, their closeness, their bond. Or perhaps by the sheer fact that she had his scent, thanks to the blanket that had kept her legs from hurting all night.
“Do you want me to turn him out? Do you want to see him run?”
“Yes.” Grandma Betty gave him a final pat on the face, and watched as Ellie led him over to the paddock and turned him loose. And oh, how he ran and bucked and kicked. And snorted. And pranced around.
“He is so beautiful, Ellie. I can see why you love him. He’s magnificent.”
“That he is,” Ellie said.
Damian ran to the end of the fence, stopped at the very last second, turned and ran bucking and kicking again, stopping only to raise his head and snort. When he’d finally run himself down, he circled and circled a spot, then buckled his knees and rolled in the moist grass.
“Are you warm enough, Grandma?”
“Yes, quite.”
Damian stood and shook himself off, then found another spot and rolled again. And when he got up, he grazed his way over to the fence, where Ellie
stood ready to get him and take him back into the barn.
Grandma Betty smiled the entire time, even when she closed her eyes to rest a moment while Ellie was gone. She had lots of stories she wanted to share, to remember. There was the time her dad yelled at her for riding both Belgians in the field, both…standing one leg on each of their backs and keeping them close.
“Betty, now damn it all, you’re going to get yourself hurt one of these days! Get down off them right now!”
“But dad….”
“No, don’t you dad me! Get down right now! If you’d fallen, you would have been crushed!”
Dutch, too, loved the horses. She laughed. The betting kind. Daily doubles, perfectas, trifectas. And the lottery. He loved to play the lottery.
A crow cawed from nearby, then another, and another. Grandma Betty listened and thought they sounded like magpies. By the time Ellie returned, there was a whole flock of crows lighting down and pecking around in the pasture. Ellie looked at them, and hesitated before getting back into the car. This was her world; she wanted to share all of it with her grandmother.
“Come,” she said. “Lolita, come.”
Grandma Betty watched as a single crow took flight and soared overhead.
“Lolita, come.”
Lolita swooped down and landed on a fence rail and commenced doing a dance; Grandma Betty was thrilled. “Oh, look at her!”
Ellie laughed.
Lolita sashayed up and down the fence, bobbing her head and turning and cocking it this way and that, and then danced some more. “Would you like to see her up close, Grandma?”
“Yes. Will she come?”
“I think so,” Ellie said. “But be very still.”
Grandma Betty nodded in anticipation as Ellie raised her arm and beckoned Lolita closer.
“Dudabachie,” she said, once, waiting, and then again. “Dudabachie.”
“What does that mean, Dudabachie?“ Grandma Betty wanted to know.
Ellie's Crows Page 9
