Read RavenShadow for Free Online

mockery of sexual invitation.
    Doesn’t Raven feel seductive?
    O Raven, you have been doing your dance before my eyes for years, waiting for me!
    No, it is me who’s been waiting, bride of one true suitor, a lover cooing and inviting and subtle and knowing, knowing, knowing .
    Solid ground again.
    I took thought. That country between the Badlands on the east and the Black Hills on the west is ravine-ravaged. Hadn’t considered this. The ride to Rapid City would be dipsy-doodle, with a lot of time suspended high in the death-defying air. Where you invited me, Raven .
    Now my past prowled out of the corners of my mind and yowled at me, sang into my ears like an angry, moaning wind. I knew well what I was supposed to be, the way I was supposed to live. Supposed, supposed, supposed , that word like a gavel thudding down on the judge’s bench and declaring, Guilty, guilty, guilty. I’d been picked out by my family and by Spirit for things far higher than boozing, far higher than broadcasting. Every day the black-robed judge in the back of my mind reminded me what I was supposed to do, supposed to be, supposed to do, supposed to be. Every day I plugged my ears and tried not to hear, neither the judge’s words nor the sentencing gavel. The sentencing bang was all I really could hear, of course. I spoke it to myself so constantly it became my flesh, my hair, my belly. I have lost the world of Spirit I was born to. I have gotten lost in the profane world, the world-not-mine. And I am weary of myself, weary unto death .
    The wind whipped around my head, fierce, and its little eddies wandered into my ears and made echoey sounds, despair, defeat, despair, defeat … a-a-w-wk!
    I waited for the train to come. I sailed over trestle after trestle, dark ravine after dark ravine. I looked and listened for death, but the bastard wouldn’t come. I watched for Raven, but the black bird hid in the black night, waiting.
    After a while I saw ahead the crossing of the dirt road east of Buffalo Gap. The road cut a white, moonlit slash through the sagebrush.
    Escape! I can get off!
    I looked down the tracks, silver lines running into a dark hole. I wanted no escape. I wanted to roll on into the embrace of Raven. I wanted to dive off a trestle. Or smash into the skull of an engine. I imagined it. The engineer saw me, even with my lights out. He hit the air brakes. The whistle shrilled. The steel wheels screeched on the steel rails. The will of the engineer said stop, but the momentum of a hundred freight cars said, Crush.
    CRUSH !
    Suicidal anger? Suicidal depression? Who cares? Gavel, guilty, rapping, guilty. I want out, out, out.
    Rosaphine? I don’t want to hurt you .
    A pair of ghostly lights rolled up to the tracks and slowed, a pickup truck with a wooden house on the back. It hesitated, jumped forward, hesitated, stopped, lights bobbing. Evidently the driver could see our dark shadow. The headlights blinked up and down, like a beacon, an offer of refuge. No thank you, no refuge for me .
    We sailed past the crossing serene as a cloud sails in front of the moon.
    As we cruised past, I lifted a hand and waved goodbye, a shadow bidding farewell to light and rushing into shadow. Goodbye, whoever you are. I screwed up. Screwed up, goodbye.
    Then I looked back and thought, Wasn’t the shape of thatrig familiar? But I was leaving all that was familiar, except for you, Raven .
    I looked ahead into the night, and smiled. If I could describe that smile to you, every twist of emotion that was in it, you would understand everything about that night.
    I do not much recall the next twenty miles. Rosaphine zonked. I stood on the back seat, facing into the wind and smiling. Smiling, yes, smiling big. The smile of the man who has come to know himself, and despises himself.
    I opened my mouth, summoned the full power of the radio voice of a six-foot-six man, and as loud as humanly possible roared the cry myself—“A-a-w-wk! A-a-w-wk!”
    I was dimly aware