As The Crows Here Fly

I feel it in my stomach, not butterflies, but a bird whose wings are my ribcage; it stands firmly at the pit of my stomach, small head in my throat. I can feel it blink. Pretty sure if the plane goes down I’ll be safe, there are feathers between my bones. I half need to poo and half want to laugh. 

I am not sure what my voice will sound like so when she asks are you travelling  alone? I nod, she looks concerned and asks will someone be meeting you at the other end? 

I think maybe there are feathers in my teeth or one might pass over an eyeball. My father I say in my regular voice, my father will be picking me up. My mother is on the other side of the glass, she is biting her bottom lip and smiling at the same time. We are both doing our best at bravery, but I know she is having trouble. It started yesterday when she gave me this haircut. I don’t think she meant to go so short, she was in some kind of sad and scissory vortex, she didn’t say sorry but she was, she is. I try to smile and turn my eyes on, I try to let my girlhood out but it’s hard. I’m wearing jeans and runners and my worn-out The Who t-shirt, Roger Daltrey’s face is torn, I got a mullet, sometimes I wish I was normal. 

My mom gets brave as I get weak, my knees go backwards like the bird’s, she stands up and smiles for real, maybe it’s a little higher on her face than usual but it is sincere. My bird cranes its neck, stomps, I give her one last smile and wave, and then I walk through a soft tunnel. The stewardesses give me special smiles, also high, they see me to my seat, I get the window, and look through I don’t know how many thicknesses of glass but find my seated, see-through mother. 

When she agreed to let me go for the summer it had been easy, like when they make you book your next cleaning at the dentist—I mean it’s six months away, and they say how about June 24th at noon? You say sure why not, it’s a cinch until it’s June 24th at noon. It’s a four hour flight, but it only takes three and a half, the pilot says the wind is favorable, but I know it’s my bird. 

Thunder Bay is a small airport. Nobody asks if I’m okay or where’s my father or what’s with all the feathers. I follow everybody else to the roller coaster which stays empty for a long time. I look around for him. I didn’t say what do you look like? I figured I’d be able to tell, but I can’t. I don’t get any signals from any of the men on the sidelines; they all look fed up, and I hope he’s not one of them, that his handsome self will glide through the door now. 

Okay NOW. 

Airports are loud, there are constant announcements which contain numbers and fuzz, but suddenly I hear something familiar, my name, Moxie Foster please come to the  Air Canada desk at the west end of the building. Jesus Christ what’s west in all this mess, but the bird knows, I am practically cawing. I get there, but he’s not there, it’s a woman. She looks like I Love Lucy in a polka-dot dress. 

You must be Moxie, she says. I’m Trixie, your dad asked me to come get you. He got called in to work. 

I am not what she expected either. 

Before I forget to mention it – life is full of these small things that can so easily slip away – there was a moment on the plane when I looked down at the blue of Lake Superior and noticed the shadow of my bird a darker blue over the lake. 

My handsome father was a lineman for the county. The first time I saw him he was atop a pole. My bird blinked and my throat clenched into a single sob. I wasn’t certain Trixie heard it, she had the radio on and every song she turned it up, she said I LOVE THIS SONG each time, she slowed down and pointed there’s your dad there. I think my one syllable sob got absorbed into the atmosphere, nothing stood much of a chance in that car. She had the windows wide open, it was hot hot, a single piece of paper soared and crashed around the back seat, the air came into the car in big pushy billows and Pasty Cline bounced out.

2

A woman in a field turned as we passed, shaded her eyes, I shaded mine back. That’s Crazy Blaize Murdoch Trixie said, scarecrowing. 

Why “crazy” I asked but the words toppled out of the car unheard. 

I could feel my father’s footsteps on the porch that night, they weren’t the plunk drag plunk you might expect after a double shift, they were quick and light. He burst through the door and came at me like the sunrise. 

I have a recurring scarecrow, it comes up in my dreams mostly. Last night it was Blaize Murdoch in her field, and this morning my bird is gone. 

Imaginary birds are capable of anything. 

I can’t remember if I asked her what she did, likely not. I had to keep swallowing to keep my bird down, but on the drive to my dad’s Trixie told me she was a tar bender. I thought she’d done a splendid job. The curves in the road seemed to me perfectly executed, smooth and soft and safe. It was like I was watching a movie through the car window, the beautiful lake smashed apart now and then by birch forests, obliterated by cedars, long glimpses of The Sleeping Giant, my bird swayed, the ride was thrilling but not dangerous. I am glad I was too shy to compliment her – I mean how does one say nice  pavement! – it wasn’t until later I caught on in pieces that it was a joke, she was really a bar tender. She said I could go whenever I liked, the fries were to die for, another one I  hadn’t heard. 

Come for lunch, she said. 

I am impatient, always early. I wasn’t supposed to arrive until July 2nd, but last minute, with the permission of my teachers and my mom who said okay a little shakey, my dad said okay exactly the same way, I went ahead a changed my ticket. Our first morning at breakfast I was empty, my bird was gone, but still I couldn’t eat. I kept looking at my father across the table and he kept looking at me. He didn’t eat, either. We walked outside together, a bit of a shuffle at the door, our eyes a perfect match but shy. I asked him where Trixie’s bar was. He turned and sliced the sky with his arm, aimed it across the field and straight through the forest, as the crow flies he said. I didn’t want to look stupid so I nodded. He continued to explain, but I caught his profile just then and it was exactly like my own, and as I considered this his words went into the soft trombone of Charlie Brown’s teachers. He left for work, I waved from the huge wooden porch, my smile maybe running high. 

3

When lunchtime approached, off I went in the direction of his slice toward the French fries that might kill me. 

The field was wonderful, lots of birds, the lake boiled generously at my side, The Sleeping Giant nodded. When the field finally ended I was hot, tired, buzzing and hungry. I’d lost the lake and couldn’t yet see the blue of it through the dark forest. I had the feeling you get when somebody’s watching you, it was almost like my bird was back but he wasn’t. There was no indication of my father’s slice. I was not sure how a crow would get through all the tangles. I didn’t see any birds at all, not even one, but maybe crows were different here. I kept going. 

They said later that I wouldn’t have survived even a single night let alone three in that swampy forest, that if it had been just a week later the bugs would have skinned me alive. I suspected another euphemism, and I asked them to explain. The paramedic said the bugs would have killed me, that he’d seen it before. 

My mother was there, and my grave father, who had been searching for me from the tops of poles throughout the county like the crow’s nest on a pirate ship,  was different, as if he’d been the one who was lost. 

He held my hooked-up hand and my mother’s hand. There was a stranger in the room who stood by the door, and my eyes kept going to her. But the nurses fussed, people curtsied in to get a look at me, my bird was back, my father’s co-workers in their spear-toed boots and white overalls shuffled in like astronauts. The guy from the local paper gave me a Jimmy Olson wink. I returned it but my winked eye stuck, the other one slammed shut, and I’m told I slept 36 hours, that my parents barely budged.

4

My school picture was on the front of The Daily Miner. I saw it when I woke up, the headline SOME MOXIE! 

My bird was different after that, definable, he was a crow, a professional crow, no feathers did he leave in my teeth, nothing came from my collar – he was stoic, careful – no thing flitted across the skin of my eye. 

  He left the night I returned to the bedroom in my father’s house, my mother stayed a few more days, and Trixie quietly moved out. I sat up in bed and watched her through the second-floor window, there was something tragic about the perspective. She climbed small into a cab alongside cardboard boxes. She was wearing a plain white dress. She didn’t see me, but I waved anyway. I noticed three perfect circles of blood on my bandage like she’d left some of her polka-dots behind. 

My mother sold the salon and came back at the end of the summer. She immediately opened it up again here in town. I started grade nine, and my bird came back the first day only. He held my head high, and from the inside of my mouth he spread my lips into a perfectly situated smile. 

It was Blaize who saved me. Somebody in the search party finally approached her and told her what was going on, and she said, turning and slicing, she’d seen me right there a couple of days ago, and why didn’t anybody ask her before, they knew she was a watcher, didn’t they? 

I was surprised she was so young. It was she who stood in the hospital. We balanced eyes, I mouthed thank you. She is my soft and breathing scarecrow, my watcher and my sister, her eye on my bird, she sends him my way when necessary, and takes him away again in my dreams.

Photo by Ehsan Eslami on Unsplash