Seven Crow Stories Read online

  Praise for Robert J. Wiersema

  Praise for The World More Full of Weeping

  “[H]aunting . . . seamlessly blends literary fiction with mythic fantasy to create a lyrical, surreal and deeply melancholic reading experience.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Praise for Black Feathers

  “It’s a tale that’s both intoxicatingly bloody and bloody superb.”

  —Rue Morgue

  “[A] disturbing and disconcertingly good read.”

  —Quill & Quire

  Praise for Bedtime Story

  “. . . a ripping fantasy quest . . . Wiersema mesmerizes with this artful telling of two interlocking tales . . . resolving in a way that will no doubt attract Hollywood producers. (John Cusack or Nicolas Cage could play the hangdog dad.) All this makes Bedtime Story a page-turner.”

  —Maclean’s Magazine

  Praise for Before I Wake

  “Wiersema has crafted a literary supernatural thriller that grips the reader in a chokehold and doesn’t let go until the very last line. . . . Before I Wake is a classic thriller: creepy in all the right places and deliciously suspenseful. Beyond that, it has great emotional depth and resonance. It is a story about good versus evil, faith versus faithlessness, redemption and the cost of miracles. . . . A unique, spellbinding, and ultimately uplifting gem. ”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Before I Wake is deceptively easy to read because it is so well written and so emotionally engaging. It is not, however, an easily forgotten book. It will haunt you long after you’ve lent it to a friend. And lend it you will, because it is just too good not to share.”

  —National Post

  FIRST EDITION

  Seven Crow Stories © 2016 by Robert J. Wiersema

  Cover artwork © 2016 by Erik Mohr

  Cover and interior design © 2016 by Samantha Beiko

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed in Canada by

  Publishers Group Canada

  76 Stafford Street, Unit 300

  Toronto, Ontario, M6J 2S1

  Toll Free: 800-747-8147

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Distributed in the U.S. by

  Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

  34 Thirteenth Avenue, NE, Suite 101

  Minneapolis, MN 55413

  Phone: (612) 746-2600

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Wiersema, Robert J., author

  Seven crow stories / Robert J. Wiersema.

  Short stories.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77148-395-7 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77148-396-4 (PDF)

  I. Title.

  PS8645.I33S49 2016 C813’.6 C2016-905897-2

  C2016-905898-0

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Peterborough, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  [email protected]

  Edited by Samantha Beiko

  Proofread by Leigh Teetzel

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  Also By Robert J. Wiersema

  The World More Full of Weeping

  Before I Wake

  Bedtime Story

  Walk Like a Man

  Black Feathers

  For the lost, and the gone . . .

  Contents

  Grateful

  Tom Chesnutt’s Midnight Blues

  Crossroads Blues

  Blessing

  The Crying in the Walls

  Three Days Gone

  The Small Rain Down

  The Last Circus

  Some Notes on Stories, Short and Otherwise

  Publication History

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Grateful

  It was just getting dark when I saw her, a little past nine o’clock.

  I had just come around the bend when my headlights fell across her; it was almost too late.

  I was driving south along that stretch of the Malahat just past the summit, where the highway shrinks to one lane in either direction, a sheer rock wall on one side of the road and a drop several hundred metres down to the cold waters of Finlayson Arm on the other. There was no shoulder: she was standing in the lane itself, pressed against the base of the rock wall. I jerked my wheel to the left, and a Nanaimo-bound trucker in the other lane swerved and laid on his horn. Checking for headlights in my rearview mirror, I slammed on the brakes, sliding to a stop just past her.

  I broke out in a clammy sweat, and I could barely hear over my heart as she opened the passenger door.

  “Are you nuts?” I stormed at her before she could speak. “You could have gotten yourself killed. You could have gotten me killed.”

  “I’m sorry,” she flinched. She was leaning on the seat and bending into the car, and it looked for a moment like she might recoil, disappear into the night. All I could see of her in the half-light was a dark nimbus of hair and the ungainly protrusion of her backpack.

  “What were you doing out there?” I was gradually calming down, but it hadn’t reached my voice yet. She still seemed wary, unmoving and tense, wound tight as a watch-spring.

  “Well, my friends, they went on ahead, and . . .” She paused.

  It was the quaver in her voice. All of a sudden I was on her side. “They just left you here?”

  There was a movement that I took to be nodding. “I don’t think they really meant to, though. They were, you know, drinking a little. . . .”

  “Some friends,” I muttered, catching a sudden flash of headlights in my mirror at the same moment we were almost blasted onto the rocks by a souped-up truck.

  And again, a horn.

  “Okay,” I said, keeping my eye on the mirror. “Where are you headed?”

  “All the way to Victoria,” she said, as if it were some sort of hopeless quest.

  “Hop in,” I said, clearing my stuff off the passenger seat. “Let’s get out of here while we still can.”

  She folded herself into the compact seat with an agility that some people attribute to teenagers; I don’t remember ever being that flexible. She stuffed her knapsack in around by her feet, and as soon as her door was closed we were doing eighty, both of us still in one piece.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said, turning to face me. “You can just drop me off wherever. I’ll figure it out from there.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s all right. I’m headed right into town. I’ll get you where you’re going.”

  “I’m grateful. It’s a relief not to have to worry about it.” She brushed her hair back from around her face.

  In the ambient light from the dashboard and the sky, I could see that she was a pretty girl—dark hair, dark eyes, dark features, a little turn at the ends of her mouth that made her seem to be smiling. From my reading I would say that she had a dark Irish look to her, but I’ve never been to Ireland, and my entire impression of her was based on sidelong, half-lit glances, so I have no idea how accurate that would be.

  �
�My name’s Murray,” I said, a little awkwardly. “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time back there.”

  “No, I know how stupid it was to just be standing there. . . .” She shook her head. “I’m Jenny.”

  “Good to meet you, Jenny. Is there any sort of music you like?” I asked as I reached to eject the Grateful Dead CD.

  “No, this is fine,” she said, before I could press the button.

  “We could listen to the radio.”

  “No, this is cool. Just continue as you were before you were so rudely interrupted.” I glanced over at her and saw her smiling at me.

  Not pretty. Beautiful.

  Brett Mydland started singing “I Will Take You Home” in the pause that followed.

  “Appropriate,” she said.

  “So tell me about these friends of yours,” I said. “What were they thinking, just ditching you on the Malahat?”

  “It was just a few of us. We were headed up to Cowichan for the night. Bit of a party—sort of a graduation thing, you know? Stacey’s folks have a place up there on the lake.” I nodded. I remembered very well the blur of parties that surrounded my high school graduation.

  “Where are you graduating from?”

  “Oak Bay.”

  I nodded again. “I graduated from Reynolds.”

  “Really? When?” She seemed oddly excited by the fact that we had high school graduation in common.

  “Seven years ago.”

  “So what have you been doing since then?”

  “The only thing I could do when I finished school: more school.”

  She nodded knowingly. “Anyways, we were headed up to the lake and, I don’t know, I guess I got separated. I just want to get home.”

  “Well, I’ll get you there.”

  There was obviously something that she wasn’t telling me, but there was no way I was going to try to force it from her. I assumed that her friends had ditched her, and right away I was back in high school, going to parties where I wasn’t invited, where I was ignored, desperate to find somewhere, anywhere, to fit in.

  She smiled.

  “So are you going to school in the fall?”

  “Yeah. That’s the plan, at least.” She shrugged, as if the whole thing were out of her hands. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Are you done school, or . . .”

  “Yes, indeed. Seven years and two degrees and all of a sudden I’m Mr. Fitzgerald, high school English teacher.” I plumped myself up in the seat, mocking an effort to look important.

  “That’s cool.” She sounded genuinely enthusiastic.

  I shook my head.

  “What?”

  “I guess I’m sort of like you, out there tonight.” I gestured at the darkness around the car. “I have no idea how I got here.”

  “You don’t want to be a teacher?”

  “It’ll pay the bills, at least. Assuming I ever get a job. And if I can pay the bills then I can finally move out of my parents’ basement. . . .” I wasn’t really sure what I was going to say until I had already said it.

  “Well, what did you want to do?”

  I shrugged as if I didn’t know.

  “What did you go to school for, then?”

  I took a deep breath. “I started out with an English degree because I figured it’d help me be a better writer. And when that didn’t happen, I figured I’d go for an education degree, put it to some use. At least then I’d be able to eat.”

  “You wanted to be a writer?”

  I nodded.

  “So what happened?”

  I faked a wry chuckle. “That’s the funny part. I have absolutely no idea. It’s like I woke up one morning and that whole part of me, all my drive, all my dreams, it was just gone. And I was—” I put on a booming baritone this time “—Mr. Fitzgerald, high school English teacher.”

  She didn’t laugh. “Were you any good?” she asked.

  “You get right to the point, don’t you?”

  She shrugged.

  “I honestly have no idea anymore. I thought I was. Well, at first I used my writing to . . . I don’t have the happiest memories of high school. I used writing these stories as my way of getting even.” Glancing toward her, I saw a rueful half-smile of understanding settle on her face. “And when I first got to university I started writing these poems. Some of them even got published. I used to think I was good. That I had ‘potential’ with a capital P. I don’t know, though.”

  “What happened? Why did you stop?” She pulled her legs up to her chest, sort of folded herself together.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. It just sort of drifted away. I got a job so I wouldn’t have to get a student loan, I started thinking about grad school, all sorts of things, until it just didn’t seem very important anymore. The worst thing is, I didn’t even notice it happening, and then one day it was just gone, and I wasn’t that person anymore. I’d become someone else. Someone I didn’t know.”

  “That’s sad.” She nodded like she understood. “It’s kinda like those stories you see in the paper, you know the ones: seventeen-year-old honours student, bright future ahead, scholarships out the wazoo, dies in fiery car wreck days before graduation. Lost potential. That sort of thing.”

  I nodded slowly. “Sort of. Maybe that’s the better way to go, though. You don’t just fade away. You don’t have to watch yourself just fade away.” I glanced over at her. “Is there something you really want to do? Something that you need to do, with a passion?”

  “I want to be a doctor,” she said, without hesitation. “I’ve known ever since I was a little kid that I wanted to help people. That’s why I’m going to university.”

  “Yeah. That’s the way that I used to feel about writing. Then I got to here.” I glanced at her again. She was staring at me, thoughtful. “You want a piece of advice? Don’t let this happen to you. Take what you want and really go for it. Don’t let it die, like I did.”

  She shook her head. “Not a chance.”

  It was that smile that brought me plummeting back to earth. “Well.” I forced a chuckle. “That was your valedictory address. . . . Maybe I should be a guidance counsellor.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “What?”

  “I think you’ve got a lot of passion. You can hear it when you’re talking about the passion you think you don’t have. I think you’ve just misplaced what you’re looking for. It hasn’t died. You just need to find it again.”

  I don’t know why, but I shut her out. I knew the truth of what she was saying, the wisdom—it was something that I had told myself countless times. I just couldn’t make myself believe it. “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Listen, where am I going?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Uplands,” she said, in a quiet voice.

  We passed the rest of the drive without a word.

  “The next left,” she said tersely, just after we passed through the gates into Uplands. And then, after I turned: “And right.” I turned again, and she said, “It’s the place at the end of the block.”

  I pulled up in front.

  It was a huge stone house, probably a hundred years old, with a roundabout driveway behind a set of high gates. “Home sweet home,” I muttered, trying to break the tension.

  “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she snapped back, reaching between her feet and pulling her knapsack into her lap.

  “Hey,” I said, turning to her. “I’m sorry that I cut you off back there. It wasn’t very polite of me.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s really none of my business. You just seemed so unhappy.”

  “No, not unhappy.” I tried, but I couldn’t think of another adjective and I gave up. “I’ll get over it.”

  “I hope so,” she said. She opened up the door a
nd stepped out. Leaning back in, she said, “Thanks again for the ride. I really appreciate it.” Turning away, then turning back as if in afterthought, she said, “Good luck.”

  “You too.” I smiled at her. “And congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  As she was about to close the door I call out to her. “Hey.”

  She leaned back into the car and I stretched in my seat toward her. “Listen, do you want to go, I don’t know, maybe get a cup of coffee or something?”

  She smiled broadly, but shook her head. “Thanks, but . . . I need to get home.”

  I nodded, not having expected anything else.

  Not disappointed. Not really.

  Closing the door, she hefted her knapsack onto her shoulder and walked through the gate. I watched as she walked up the driveway, the darkness of her slipping into and between the pools of shadow, only starting the car as she disappeared up the front steps.

  I drove around for a while before I went home, hoping that my parents would both be asleep by the time I got there.

  I was late coming up from the basement for breakfast the next morning. Mom and Dad were both sitting at the table, empty bowls from cereal already on the floor being fought over by the cats, half-empty cups of coffee at their elbows. They had split up the morning paper and were pretty engrossed, but they both looked up as I came in.

  “You got in late,” Dad said.

  I nodded, pouring myself a coffee.

  “Did you have any luck?”

  “Well, Duncan’s not hiring for sure. They’ve had to lay off fifteen teachers in the district, so there wasn’t much point, but I did leave a resume. Cowichan just opened up their on-call list, but there are about seventy people ahead of me on it. Maybe Nanaimo, though. They’re building some schools up there, so . . .” I crossed my fingers. “They won’t know until September anyway.”

  Mom pulled a new section of the paper across the table. Dad asked, “Any plans for this afternoon?”

  I shook my head. “Same old, same old. Retool my resume, maybe go for a swim.”

  “Oh, no,” my mother muttered into the newspaper, shaking her head. “People are so bloody stupid. Listen to this: ‘Fiery Crash Kills Four. A group of four Oak Bay High School graduating students died near the Malahat summit at 7 pm yesterday, according to an RCMP spokesman, when the car they were driving lost control and left the road, plunging to the rocks above Finlayson Arm. Alcohol is suspected to be a factor. . . .’”