Read Crows for Free Online

it.”
    â€œPretty dumb,” the woman said. She seemed to be waiting for an answer.
    â€œI’ve got to get going,” Robert said. “And you’ve got your class.”
    â€œRelax,” Professor Mason said. “Take my chair. I’m out of cigarettes. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.” She said to Ben, “Tell him a crow tale. Tell him about the crow with the broken wing.”
    She left the office, first shaking Robert’s hand again.
    â€œI really do have to get going,” Robert said.
    â€œSure you do,” Ben said, distracted.
    â€œWhat was all that about crows?”
    Ben smiled thinly. “She was making fun of me. A private joke.” He had put the bad wing away in his desk drawer. “I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, “and when Professor Mason returns with her cigarettes she’ll drive me away with her smoke and stink. You’re lucky to be getting away while you can.”
    R OBERT MADE THE walk home, following the road that circled the lake. He could see a speedboat way out on the cold water. The boat’s hull was caked with silver and some distance behind, skipping like a stone, was a late-­season skier in a yellow wet suit. Nearer to shore a sailboat flew, its white mast checked with blue marlin. Robert could see three ­people in the boat. One girl had long blond hair that flowed like a kite’s tail.
    The lake road was as old as Mozart. Its pavement was turning to crumbs at the edges, and the salt of winter and the expansion and contraction of the seasons left potholes that were repaired with stinking dollops of asphalt, which broke open inside of a year. His dad had gotten him a job one summer on such a road crew—­a horrid summer; the stink took three months to leave his skin the following autumn, whiffs of it rose sneakily to him in hot showers. On the far rim of the lake, miles away, the road was unpaved for a stretch and in the summer a cloud of white gravel dust hung, coating the trees and the children who played on the beach.
    Robert followed the road into downtown Mozart. He was carrying his biology text and a notebook empty but for a half page of notes; he had a pen in his pocket. A car passed and honked at him. A head vaguely familiar turned in the shadows of the front seat to call to him, to wave a hand. Robert waved back.
    He stopped in Cobbler’s newspaper store to buy the Madison paper. On a wall behind the counter were clippings from the Scale trumpeting the feats of Mozart High’s and Mozart College’s athletic teams. The tape holding them in place had gone brittle and useless, replaced with bright-­headed pins. Robert’s by-­line was up there often; Al Gasconade’s, too; Dale Turbotel’s (gone to St. Louis); Bill Jenk’s (gone to Wausau); Art Haig’s (out of the business). The Madison paper sent a reporter to M.C.’s games, but when the Scale died the high school lost its press coverage. On Saturdays after Robert had written about games that Mozart High had lost, he would stay in his apartment to avoid the sniping of parents and fans who disagreed with his interpretation of the event, his reconstruction of a pivotal play, his choice of quotes, occasionally even the final score. He had seen the paper’s folding as a perverse revenge against these ­people.
    Del Cobbler, who had owned the store for nearly twenty years, was behind the counter. He was a petite man with an ageless face who wore a green-­billed printer’s shade. The smoke from his cigarillo would rise from his mouth and bend noxiously around this outcropping, which had been stained murky and fingerprinted over the years. With delicately tough hands he snipped the wire from a bale of newspapers and slapped one still stinking of ink onto the counter. Robert put down his money.
    â€œI saw your dad this morning,” Del said.
    â€œYou collecting plates now, Del?”
    The