The Crow's Nest 3-3

3-3

            Outside, loaded and having seated myself in the truck cab in Margaret’s yard… including having the demijohn bottle cushioned for travel but showing off in the center of my pickup bed load… I made a choice and… headed for Blood Farm.  Up the dirt roads, down the dirt road and UP into the farm yard where… as I stopped… Alice burst from the side door, eyed me come out of the truck cab and started yelling “NOTHING IS FOR SALE GO AWAY NOTHING IS FOR SALE!” to begin my… visit.

            “I KNOW I KNOW I DON’T WANT TO BUY ANYTHING I WAS JUST AT MARGARET’S AND SHE TOLD ME ABOUT YOU GETTING THE HOUSE BACK” I yelled back and that worked for Alice stopped yelling, look at me again, looked at the truck load and said “DID YOU BUY THAT FROM MARGARET?”

            “Yes.”

            Alice came right down the steps and went right to the back of the truck and started scrutinizing the whole load.  After a long minute she said “Well… none of that came from HERE.  In fact… it looks like it IS all Margaret’s stuff”.

            “I just bought it from her”.

            “That bottle’s full of her stamps” Alice said reaching a thin arm over the side of the pickup and pointing downward to the demijohn in the center.  “She did that when we were little girls; always put the stamps in that bottle.  Used a stick from cemetery flag to poke ‘em in.  Why’d she sell that?  I remember that bottle clear as today.  Funny bottle with all her funny stamps in it.  Can’t get ‘em out.  CAN’T even LOOK AT THEM.  She was cuckooed even then.

            “That was Margaret’s bottle?” I said.

            “When we were little girls.  Don’t look like its change a lick.  Except for the dust.  Used to be by the door in the living room.  In the corner.  Always there.  We always would look at it.  Sometimes we had some stamps to poke into it.  The stick was there too.”

            “No stick with it today.” I said.

            Alice paused while still looking at the demijohn and then said “Why’d SHE sell you that?  She’s just cuckooed now.”

            “Seems a little bit of that.” I said.  “Talks to her mother I think”.

            “TALKS TO HER ALRIGHT don’t she JUST but I don’t see her just HEAR them talk.  Came out LAST YEAR with that lawyer and THE WILL.  NICE MAN he is after I found out he wasn’t after us or the farm.  Nice man and kept Margaret straight and narrowed after she found out the will.  MRS. ARDSLEY kept her promise to me.  SHE always said to NEVER WORRY.  Well with Margaret I WORRIED.  Then that nice lawyer stood right here with Margaret and THAT WAS THAT.  Alice paused, took her eyes off the demijohn, turned from the truck back and cast her eyes up and down me.  “YOU KNOW WHAT:  Margaret didn’t seem to care.  I THOUGHT SHE’D BE.  But she weren’t.  Just stood with the lawyer there.  Never went inside either of them.  Stood there until that crow come down”.

            “Crow?”

            “THAT CROW THAT BEEN IN THAT TREE” said Alice point up into the branches.  “IT WENT IN THE ATTIC.  Eb-bEE chased it OUT.  It come down behind the lawyer’s car.  Hopped around.  Pecked the ground.  Then Margaret says SIMON to it.  Then says it again and again.  Well I know who Simon was; was her MOTHER’S CROW.  BABY crow pet when she was a little girl.  So I say that’s NOT Simon Margaret but she looks at that crow and says loud MOTHER. Well no one said anything and the crow flew off.  Then I said Margaret are you getting cuckooed ?  And she was cuckoo then and IS CUCKOOED now.  She’s never come back since but I hear they see her talking to the crows around in town.  Calls ‘em all SIMON”.