Lit Up | Tales in Parts

The Crows Lie

Part One: Before the crows arrived…

From the accounts of the few who knew her, nothing strange had ever happened to Milly Dreher.

Not before the crows arrived.

She lived in the leaning house where she’d grown up on Lydley Way, placed in her name after her grandmother died. She did alterations at the local department store where she’d worked since sophomore year of high school. The job was fine. No one called her “Big Milly” like they used to. Or “Wind-Milly,” as in, “She’s as big as a…” She hated the first name more because it was — no. She hated them both equally.

Most of her mornings began thusly: lukewarm shower, sherry-orange blouse with black slacks, one piece of whole-wheat toast, and a nineteen-minute commute at precisely forty miles per hour. Milly didn’t like speeding or the people who did. The biggest, and perhaps only, change in this routine was a new cell tower of some kind erected in the woods across from her neighborhood. Utility trucks blocked the main entrance for several days. She had to take a different route to get home.

“Did you see the tower?” her neighbor Hale asked as she passed by to check her mailbox.

A thin man with a large and perpetually red bald spot, everything Hale Moodie said sounded conspiratorial. Most evenings, even in the colder months, he would sit on his screened-in front porch, knocking back one beer after another with the TV turned up too loudly. History documentaries or women’s volleyball, whichever was on. Milly had heard Hale was married, but suspiciously, had never once seen this supposed spouse coming or going. She questioned whether the woman existed at all. That was her conspiracy theory.

“Yes, I saw the tower,” Milly said quietly.

“Well, what do you make of it?”

She shrugged. “It’s certainly tall.”

Hale gave her a pensive nod, as if she’d added something deep and meaningful to the conversation. (Were they even having a conversation? She just wanted her mail.) “You know they’re bad for the birds, those things. Confuses their, um, migratory patterns and such,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Milly said but stopped short of adding, and neither would you, you old drunk. “Sorry, I better get started on dinner.”

Hale settled back into his wicker chair and pulled a fresh tallboy from the cooler. “Alright. You have a good one, then.”

“You and your wife do the same,” she said. His lack of reaction seemed telling.

It started that night. At two fifty-two a.m., something struck Milly Dreher’s bedroom window so hard the wall rattled. Not as difficult as it should have been; her walls were thin. The first hit startled her awake. The second and third sent her across the bed to her nightstand. She pulled the snub-nosed revolver from the back of the drawer and loaded one bullet. With her hands shaking, even that much was a challenge. The gun was older than the house, and the cylinder got stuck in place easily. Was someone trying to break in? Milly couldn’t imagine so. What did she have that anyone would want? She flipped on the flood lights, and the backyard came into view.

“Who’s out there?” she shouted through a crack in the door, hoping this read as alert, not scared.

No one answered. But something in the dim light moved. It skittered through the dead leaves, thumped against the dry ground like a tiny fist knocking, knocking to be let in.

It sounded small. And small things are never scary.

Milly opened the door the rest of the way and crossed slowly toward the noise, pistol sitting heavy in the pocket of her robe. Then she saw it. A crow. A baby, possibly. Easy to miss at first, with its slight frame and frayed black wings coated in muck. However, there was no missing those spectral blue eyes. A red cut ran between them, blood and dirt clumping the feathers together along its misshapen head. She looked at the bird, at the spiderweb crack at the center of her window, and then down at the animal again. The crow watched, chest heaving wildly, as Milly knelt beside it and lifted its twitching body into her arms.

“Oh, sweet bird,” she whispered. “Did you really need inside so badly?”

The crow only blinked in response.

“Come on, then. Let’s patch you up.”

Milly expected the bird would resist, at some point. Its wings would beat to frighten her and break free. Its sharp beak would snap at her fingers to warn her away. She even fetched a tote bag from the guest closet, in case the bird got loose in the house and needed to be caught. But the crow seemed to have no interest in escaping and so much interest in Milly. As she set the animal down on a soft towel, cleaned the wound, spread ointment over it — even after she had finished and left the bird sitting on the kitchen counter — those blue eyes never left her. Perhaps it had suffered brain damage. A sad answer but a plausible one. The poor thing.

“You know, you’re rather little for a crow,” said Milly, “but you don’t look very young.” Too many patches of missing feathers. Too many long, gnarled scars. She didn’t name these features aloud. That would’ve been impolite.

With the bird seemingly content in its spot on the counter, Milly found her phone and searched phrases like “crow emergency care,” “crow sanctuary,” “how to tell crow age,” and lastly, “crows plus cellphone towers.” (Hale had put the idea in her head now; there was no shaking it loose.) Most of the results seemed unhelpful or overly technical, at least for such an early hour. And it was early. She needed sleep, but the thought of throwing her patient back out in the dark, alone, made her sick. What if it wasn’t able to fly away? It certainly hadn’t tried yet. What if the little crow became an easy meal for a snake or an owl or a hawk? She couldn’t stomach the thought.

“That settles it,” Milly said. “You’ll just have to stay here with me.”

The crow gawked at her.

“Nope, I won’t hear a word of it. You’re my guest. I insist.”

She scooped up the bird in the bath towel and settled them both into her favorite recliner in the living room. Already too comfortable in its presence. With the press of a button, the TV blinked on. A fully toasted Grace Kelly swayed and swooned over Frank Sinatra. There was talk of tiny bells in champagne bubbles and a song about fleeting time and fated meetings. For once, the crow took his eyes off Milly.

“Do you like this one?” she asked. “High Society. I can’t say I’m a fan. Sinatra’s character always bothered me, shoving his girlfriend aside because someone prettier came along. Bing Crosby is terrific in it, though. And oh, would you look at that dress?” Studio-made moonlight lent Grace Kelly a transfixing glow, catching on the silk flowers of her gown. “What I wouldn’t give to be swept off my feet in something like that.”

The crow looked back at her, held her gaze.

Milly smiled. Old Blue Eyes. “Yep. I think I’ll call you Frankie, if it’s alright with you,” she said. “Although, maybe not the most fitting name. They say Sinatra had a bit of a mean streak.” She placed her open palm under the animal’s chin. “Do you have a mean streak?”

The bird nestled its head in her hand. And it blinked.

Part Two coming soon. Follow to stay updated.