Song of the Crow. Layne Maheu
heavy weeping of the tree as my father grew even more menacing with pride. But Keeyaw showed no fear and only blinked and squinted with a look of vague curiosity, as if he had bad eyes, or my father’s attack was baffling him. My father continued harassing him with his hackles extended and his brow fierce. Keeyaw was about to creep back into the injured Giant when he stood back away from it. He walked up and down the entire sprawling length of the trunk and moaned, flummoxed by what he’d done, as if the whole thing would not release him from its enormous burden. And he took his frustration out on his beard, pulling at the bits of bark and leaf stuck there. When Keeyaw looked up again at my father’s territorial bickering, the white-haired creature had a sinking expression, even in his beard. Was it understanding? Had Keeyaw had a change of mind, or whatever it was that drove him at the woods, bent on destruction?
With defeated shoulders, he took the reins of his mule and walked off, dragging the animal away with him into the woods.
My father swooped over him, assured of his prowess. Over and over again, he mobbed the man, and Our Many’s eyes followed them, piercing into the unknown beyond the limbs of our spiny tree, where my father called from even farther off, from beyond the beyond, until his echo could no longer be heard.
In Keeyaw’s absence, the woods remembered their silence.
It was the hot, brooding silence of insects, and the silence of small songbirds high in the branches of the sweltering heat. They remained hidden from sight as if the treetops themselves chirped vacuously back and forth. And a strange inner weather began to affect Our Many’s eyes, the spell of an old mother crow, which was what she was. Later in life, I would find the large winter roosts filled with elder siblings of mine, crows from all ends of the wind, all of them singing out variations of her song. Our mother had lived long enough and had enough nests to be known as a mother of many, a great-grandmother over and over again, and though I have yet to meet another mother of many, I’ve heard of others. Every crow’s song includes at least one. Our stout, imperious mother had outlived two mates. Our father was her third. And like gurgling water from a waterfall, Our Many came down to us, and my brother and I—we opened our beaks to the sky, and waited.
When all the food was gone, she sang.
The bristles around her beak were thin with age and her eyes milky with cataracts. But when she opened her ancient horn, out came the call of fledges from innumerable nest times, from the seasons beyond counting, with a random whirl to the call, or the way she got stuck on one. Over and over again she cried out, “Sable . . .”
In a muted, dreamy voice, since she was just over the nest.
“Where are you?”
She answered her own call.
“Plucked away by owls.”
She fanned her wings open and flew down onto the abandoned tree, stretched out across a bed of scrub and fern. She bobbed there and sang into one of the few weeping branches that remained. She cawed inwardly, lunging with muscles of grieving gut, as if regurgitating her song, as if feeding and singing were one and the same.
“Nestor!” She called to some fledge of her memory, now lost inside the tree.
“Where?
“Where!
“Bloated by rain.
“Kettle, flung by the wind, eaten by mice, by flies, by maggots.
“Fledges snagged by hawks, by angry gods without names.”
Since crows can count up to seven, any bird beyond that in age is from the seasons beyond counting, and though it wasn’t always true for my mother, the seasons beyond her counting were advancing. She could remember the many who had flown from her nest. She just couldn’t tell how long ago they had come, or gone, or if they had gone, or where to.
Then Our Many flew back up to the nest.
Through her distant, cloudy blinking, I could swear she hardly saw us, but looked far into her song and whatever unfortunate simp her memory had conjured up just then.
Then somebody talked from the air. Maybe it was Moses. He said:
“You build a big boat.”
Crow did that and put the moose, the bear, the caribou, the lion, and everything in it.
—TOMMY MCGINTY’S NORTHERN TUTCHONE STORY OF CROW:
A FIRST NATION ELDER RECOUNTS THE CREATION OF THE WORLD
4. Treasure
“Who? Who dares attack the Giants of our song?”
Fly Home called his threats to the sky.
Then he called softly to Our Many, “Why the sad song?”
Soon he and Our Many were both above the nest, leaning over with a foodstuff so wondrous that Fly Home must have flown far to find it. Often our father returned with strange delectables from the human roost: meats made dark and rough by fire, sweetmeats wrapped in leaves, nuts and figs soaked in juice, and a thing called bread that my father liked to dip in fresh rainwater. He had a keen eye for all things human, and such offerings were his specialty.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
Our Many hushed me in discouraging whispers, as if Keeyaw were still near. But our father said, “From the beastman. By the sea.”
“Keeyaw?” I asked.
“No,” said our father. “I don’t like his nest.”
Our Mother of Many gave him a look as if to say—what? “You spend all of your time watching him, and you forget to raid his food stores.”
There was something about Our Father’s long, perching silences that made me and My Other strain our necks and blink out over the twigs of the nest with expectant wonder. Our father sat like a bird who had been long by the sea, who could swoop down and pluck things up from its briny depths. Not just clams and bright, juicy fish with wounded gills gasping on the sunlight. But utterly useless things. Shining metallic things. Like treasure. And nothing less.
“Me, Me, I Am,” cried My Other. “I Am.”
My hungry brother ate the most, yelled the most. He cried the most. He turned his baby’s blood-red beak to the sky. My father loved that beak and dangled food just above it. “Of course, my brave little flier, of course.” Fly Home laughed the deep, reedy laugh that was part of his song, and down came the food to My Other. Of course our father would prefer that beak; as it was the nourishing vessel to the promise of Pure Flight.
History speaks of the noteworthy flier, the Old Bone of Misfortune, who could fly in his sleep. He chased hawks and molested owls all through the deep of night, as if his flight were a manifestation of some strange, powerful dreaming. We’re also told of the remarkable abilities of the great flier Hookbill the Haunted, who flew not only in her sleep but while clutching tightly to the tree below her. Her soul took leave of her body. Thus unsheathed, she bore witness to amazing landscapes and events that far transcended the boundaries of the horizon and returned with news of these. She became a living oracle of sorts, dazzling crows and inspiring them with hope and awe. There were times when I felt My Other had inklings of this. He could see things just before they happened, like the great ones, said our father. In the promise of My Other’s wings was also the promise of the future, somehow, in my father’s eyes.
· · ·
Just then the woods sounded.
It was Keeyaw.
But he made none of his mournful hammering noises and so appeared with the impact