"Between the Sky and the Ground" by Amelia Skinner Saint

Bradley threw the walnuts as fast as he could pick them up. They were staining his hands and sweater, but he didn’t care. He kept his eyes on the bird, who sat unmoving atop the bird feeder as walnuts sailed past. With his last nut, Bradley squared his shoulders and took careful aim. He released it with a windmill fling that sent the walnut crashing into the deck rail eight inches to the left of the bird feeder. Bits of husk scattered like shrapnel. The crow fluttered and rose a few inches before resituating himself on the perch.

“Don’t patronize me, cocksucker.”

The bird tilted his head, eyeing Bradley as he backed into the cabin. He tried to slam the glass patio door behind him, but it screeched and caught, diminishing the overall effect.

He returned to his desk at one of the large, western windows. It was a window cut and framed for a writing desk to sit beneath it, looking out over the sloping forest and beyond to grey-white mountaintops in the distance. There Bradley drummed his fingers on the keyboard, and watched the crow bob and peck its way around the deck like a rich widow in a jewelry store.

The stand-off had begun three days before. He’d been in the cabin for four, but had spent the first getting settled. Though the place was furnished quite well by the foundation, Bradley had brought a carload of homey comforts: Egyptian cotton facecloths and towels, antique bedspread, daffodil-yellow stand mixer with pasta press attachment and his treasure: a large pen and ink portrait of Charles. He’d had it commissioned for their sixth anniversary.

“The sixth is the paper anniversary, right?”

“That’s the first,” Charles grinned and pinched Bradley’s ear, “but I’ll take it.”

“Oh, well. What did I give you for our first? The silver tie tack? So I guess I’m off the hook for the silver anniversary. Which one is that?”

“Twenty-fifth.” Charles gave Bradley his faux-exasperated smile.

“How do you even know these things? I swear, sometimes I think I married a portly, middle-aged yarn enthusiast. You’re such a Martha.”

Charles clasped his shoulders and kissed him. Later they hung the portrait in the dining room—a compromise—after Bradley had suggested the mantle and Charles had countered with the guest bath, above the toilet. It didn’t move from that place for five years, until the morning Bradley packed up his Volvo and left for a two-month writer’s retreat in the mountains.

The interior of the cabin was large with an open floor plan. Hardly cozy. The design was clean, modern and simple—a late nineties remodel—and there was no place of honor for Charles’ portrait. No mantle, hardly an inch of wall space, all rustic wood and sill-less windows. In every spot, from every angle, you were accosted by the beautiful view: mountains to the west, sparkling lake to the east. It was a splendid place to write—to finish Bradley’s stalled fourth novel—but Charles had no place in it. In the end, Bradley leaned Charles against the bedroom wall, beneath a bay window. There, at least, he could look into his face as he carried on his half of their late night conversations.

Bradley had always chattered away at Charles, even when he wasn’t listening. He’d been a sounding board, echoing back what was too bitchy or too ego-centric or just too damn queer. But he was more than that. He was wise and quick and serious with a quiet humor that only those who knew him well, and sometimes only Bradley, could appreciate.  Now Bradley had to play Charles’ part too, and it was exhausting. He worried that he was making Charles into a caricature of himself. Then he worried that he had lost the ability to create a believable character. If he could not even authentically render the man he’d lived with for fifteen years, how could he hope to create a character that anyone would want to read? What was the point of even trying to write a novel that was doomed to be populated with cartoonish stick-men? Then Charles interrupted and told him to quit being so damn neurotic and get back to work.

When he was settled at his desk, relaxed and collected with spice tea, Debussy CD and fingers on keys, the crow started in again. He’d always read crow calls as “Caws,” but this one screamed “Rawk” and “Reek” instead. This was a mutant crow. A demon.

Rawk-Rawk-Rawk-Reek-Rawk

Ad infinitum.

Work was impossible. Bradley hadn’t written a word in months. Two months, exactly. He was 150 pages into his most ambitious work—a blend of magical realism and classic Americana with a YA bent. Very now. A guaranteed seller. His main character had just reached the desert (which represented adolescence) and was about to have the dream-hallucination where his dead father appears to him as a black loon and tells him he must cross the wasteland. It’s the pivotal scene in the novel. Or it will be when it gets written.

“I can’t get a thing done. Not a thing! This bird is a plague, I swear. Is this you, Charles? Are you haunting me?”

Quit being dramatic. You’re the one who pretends to believe in all that spiritualism crap, not me. Besides, I’m far too busy with Walt to be haunting you.

“Walt? Whitman or Disney?”

Oh stop. You’re putting ridiculous words in my mouth to set yourself up for a witty retort. You know very well I wouldn’t be seeing anyone so soon. And Walt Whitman? Really? If you’re going to project your bizarre attractions onto me, please keep them in the current century.

“Fine. I’m sorry. Now what do I do about this fucking bird?”

You want to know what to do? Here it is: stop using the bird as an excuse. Stop getting up from your desk at every little squeak. And stop spending your days having interminable chats with your dead husband. Now get back to work.

The cabin, the retreat, the foundation, had all been perfect in a way. In the way of mean-spirited irony. In the way of the cosmic balancing weight that Bradley had always reverently feared. The letter from the Wasserman foundation arriving in the afternoon, Bradley trying desperately to reach Charles to share the good news—the life-changing news, he probably would have said—and Charles, all the while, lying dead on the floor of his office with the cap from a stick of lip balm lodged in his windpipe. Bradley had even bought him the lip balm. It was utterly ridiculous. It was the thick and clumsy kind of irony that, if he had read it in a novel, would have made him cringe with embarrassment. If only Bradley had said, “I would give anything to get this fellowship.” But he had not said that. He sometimes thought that if he had, it would have all been too much, too cheaply tragic for life to allow, and Charles would have hacked up the cap and come home to dinner.

But he didn’t hack it up. He died. And somehow life kept going, and it was fine. Not tragic, not serendipitous, just fine. After the funeral, the so-sorrys and the endless estate nonsense, Bradley had needed to get away from the apartment for a while, and here was the retreat. The cabin was far enough from the city that he wouldn’t be tempted to drive back to spend a weekend sniffling into Charles’ pillow. And it was beautiful; almost irritatingly so. Bradley had never been the outdoor type, but even he had to admit the postcard-worthiness of the place. The trees, the lake, the fucking snow-capped mountains! Nowhere near a city, but close enough to a town for grocery deliveries. It was an impossibly perfect place. Except for the crow.

It was always there. Waiting for him to sit down at his desk. The first day Bradley had assumed the thing was begging for food. He imagined that it had become something of a pet for the eccentric writers who rattled, one after another, through the cabin. The idea was charming, or at least interesting. He took the bread from his sandwich (he didn’t need the carbs) and tossed it into the yard. He was beginning to suspect that this had been a mistake. The next day he tried baiting the bird further out into the woods, dumping bread heels and pithy fruit fifty yards or more from the house, but after each foray to retrieve a snack, the crow returned to its station on the empty bird feeder just outside the office window.

Just put up a curtain.

“Ha! You would say that. You never understood anything about beauty or inspiration.”

And you do? You want to pick a fight. Why don’t you go ahead and say something that will haunt you for the rest of your life and get it over with?

“Fine. I will.” Bradley had risen from his chair and was pacing along the back wall of the office. “Choking on your Chapstick cap? That is the stupidest way for a person to die. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to make that sound tragic? ‘Oh, noble Charles, ever dedicated to keeping his lips supple, but never wanting to tie up his other hand by holding onto the cap.’ I mean really. You had to be so cool all the time? You couldn’t just put on Chapstick like a normal person?”

You know you loved the way I took off the cap with my teeth. You said I was like a cowboy, rolling cigarettes with one hand and steering his horse with the other. That’s the only reason I did it.

“It always comes back to this! It’s my fault that you’re dead. My fault that you didn’t have a better relationship with your family. My fault that we couldn’t afford that second place in Vermont. Now who’s picking a fight?”

Still you.

Bradley went to the kitchen and began opening and closing the cupboards, looking for something, but he didn’t know what. He decided to call the grocery store, even though he’d brought enough food for at least another week.

“Hello?...Yes this is Bradley Gaither, I’m out at the Wasserman cabin...Yes, that’s the one. I’m wondering if you could help me out with a few things?...Great. Um, let’s see, sorry, I should have made a list. What kind of cheeses do you have there?...Hm…Uh huh…Hm…Okay, well I guess the farmhouse cheddar…half a pound?...And I also need something, um, something for pests?...No, not exactly. I was thinking poison...You know, maybe I should just come down there?...Yes, you too.”

Bradley decided to let the crow choose its own fate. If, after he went to the bathroom, changed into a clean sweater, put on his socks, shoes and jacket, the crow was still at the window, he would buy the poison. If it was gone, he would just get the cheese. He was completely fair and did not rush. When he was ready to leave, he leaned into the office and peeked discreetly out the window. The crow had not moved.

I can’t believe you’re going to murder that poor bird.

“Oh, give it a rest. It’s no worse than hunting. Or are you no longer a hunting apologist now that you’ve gone to the place where the good birds go?”

You know very well it’s nothing like hunting.

The young man at the store was not what Bradley had expected. He was fashionably dressed in slim jeans and a plaid shirt—the kind of plaid that suggests rustic without actually being rustic—set off with dark, rectangular glasses and an intricately twined pashmina. Where the fuck would you even buy a pashmina around here? Bradley was suddenly very aware of the fact that his pants had pleats and his sweater had an archaic pattern.

“Hello.” Bradley adopted his gracious-but-aloof tone. “I called earlier. About the cheese?”

“And the rat poison?” The young man spoke with a level of sarcasm that had come to be the sole defining characteristic of his generation. Completely uninspired and thoroughly annoying. Bradley wondered if he wasn’t perhaps familiar with his work. His writing was generally critical of the younger generation. In a recent interview, he had called them “a bunch of weepy premature ejaculators.” The assertion was not based on any personal knowledge. He just thought that the term aptly described the coddled-smarmy-eager personality trifecta of every barista and Whole Foods employee he encountered.

Bradley roughly calculated the odds that this particular young man had read that particular issue of The Idaho Review and committed his bite-sized contributor photo to memory. He decided that he most likely did not recognize him and was using sarcastic bravado to conceal the fact that he was a weepy premature ejaculator.

“Well,” Bradley said, “let’s just start with the cheese.”

Bradley overbought. Driving back to the cabin with four sacks of local produce, smoked meats and rustic cheeses, he dreaded the coming days of gorging on perishables.

Why do you always have to impress everyone?

“I wasn’t trying to impress him. I was…being polite.”

Oh, my ass. You think he’s back there right now telling all of the townies about the devastatingly handsome sophisticate who was just in there scrutinizing the prosciutto! You’re pathetic.

“What is your problem? You’re being such an ass.”

You’re making me an ass. Is this who you think I was?

The young man, Ethan, had suggested that Bradley stuff the rat poison into a sardine. He said that a crow had once flogged his little brother and stolen his sardine. The question—why was the child running around outdoors, eating a sardine like a popsicle—Bradley chose not to ask. He bought the sardines.

He estimated the crow to be equivalent to two rats, counted out the proper number pellets and stuffed them into the belly of the largest sardine in the can.

I can’t believe you’re touching that thing. You never once went trout fishing with me because you said you couldn’t bear to touch a fish until it reached sashimi form. And here you are jamming your finger into the piscatorial equivalent of Spam.

“You’re not helping.”

He put the sardine on a dessert plate, but thought it looked suspicious and rolled it onto a paper plate instead. When he opened the back door, he thought for a moment that the crow had moved to the stair rail, but he soon realized that this was not the case. There was a second bird perched there. As he stepped fully onto the deck, he saw a third on the corner post and two more hopping around in the sparse grass below. He put down the sardine and retreated into the cabin.

“Did you see them? Oh my god, I’m in a Hitchcock movie.”

Who are you trying to kid? You’re no Tippi Hedren.

He watched from the office. The crow—one of the crows—flew down to the sardine and circled it, cocking its head from side to side, then flew back to its perch without touching the fish. The birds spent the rest of the afternoon strutting and fluttering around the outside of the cabin, shitting and making the most god-awful racket. At seven o’clock, Bradley gave up the watch, took an Ambien and went to bed.

The next morning, the flock had grown to at least twenty birds. He couldn’t bear to count them. He waited until a civilized hour, then called the Wasserman Foundation. The receptionist was less than helpful and said that there had never been a crow problem there before, as if Bradley had stuffed them into his car and brought them all with him. When he illustrated the ridiculousness of her explanation, she became curt and suggested that he call someone locally to come and take care of them. She did not ask him to send the bill for reimbursement, but Bradley immediately began composing the terse note that would accompany the invoice.

He found a two year old phone book in the undersink cabinet and flipped to the only listing under Pest Control. It was not a business, just a name: Geoff Murray. He was desperate, so he called. Over the course of the minute-long conversation, Geoff (who insisted that his name was pronounced Gee-off) laughed several times, loudly and for no discernible reason. When Bradley tried to explain that he was only seeking some advice, Geoff interrupted, telling him that he would be out in an hour. Bradley was relatively certain that he’d heard a toilet flush as he was hanging up the phone.

Two hours later, an unmarked, red pickup truck pulled into the drive. Bradley met the man outside.

“Gee-off, I presume.” Bradley extended his hand as proof that solitude had not dampened his manners.

“Pleased to meet ya, Mister…?”

“Gaither. But—Bradley, you can call me Bradley.”

“Pleased to meet ya, Brad.”

Bradley let that one go, though no one had called him Brad since he’d retired his Doc Martens and left for Dartmouth.

“They’re around back,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

Bradley escorted him to the corner of the house, but went no further. Geoff paced a perimeter around the deck. He stooped and tilted his head, studying the crows as if he were one of them. He returned to the near corner post and, without warning, kicked it with the side of his work boot and yelled, “Hyah!”

Bradley stumbled backward against the side of the cabin in a near-faint. The birds took off, flying over the house toward the lake. Geoff bent over laughing as Bradley clutched at his chest, trying to manually prevent a heart attack. His fright was quickly replaced with relief.

“I can’t believe how you just did that,” he said. “How can I thank you? What can I pay you?”

Geoff laughed again, “Oh, I hate to tell ya, it’s not that easy. That gave them a start, just like it did you. But they’ll be back before too long.”

“Well, then how—”

“Only thing to do with crows is to pester ‘em. You pester them as bad as they pester you and pretty soon they’ll say, ‘Aw, hell, this guy’s too much trouble’ and they’ll go on to somebody else. See?”

“Pester them. How exactly would I go about pestering a crow?”

“Well, one thing is to move stuff around.” Geoff climbed the deck steps. “Turn the chairs over. Move that table out to the yard. Get rid of that bird feeder. Next day, move it all again. They won’t like that. Then you can take some plastic wrap—like plastic wrap, you know?—and lay it over these rails here where they like to perch. They’ll get so tangled up in that stuff, they won’t know what to do.” Geoff laughed again.

“Mm hm, then they’ll leave?”

“Should. Unless of course they got a nest around here.” Geoff scanned the trees and Bradley did too, though he was not sure exactly what he was looking for.

“What?” Bradley said. “What if they have a nest?”

“Well, you won’t get ‘em away from their nest. Not until their chicks are ready to go too.”

“And how long?”

“Oh, depends. Crow’s a slow grower. If there’re eggs, could be nine months. Could be a year.”

Though he had never fainted before, Bradley felt the urge to do so for the second time since Geoff’s arrival. Instead, he thanked Geoff, gave him all the money he had in his wallet and went inside to lie down. When he woke up, he could hear that the crows had returned. He stood in the office with the light out, far back from the window where he could watch the birds without being seen. They were everywhere: lining the railing, strutting across the shit-splattered deck. As he moved further into the room, he saw that the sardine was gone.

“They took it!”

Took what? Your will to live?

“Oh, don’t be an ass. They took the sardine.”

You’ve deceived and poisoned a simple bird. Let’s go find the corpse so we can have it mounted as a trophy.

Charles was beginning to sound too much like Bradley. He went outside. The crows seemed strange. Skittish. Their mood put Bradley on edge. In groups of two or three they took flight, but they did not fly away over the cabin as they had before. They flew around the deck, flitting from one rail to the next like they were playing a game of avian musical chairs.

“What are they doing?”

Circling their prey, obviously.

Bradley looked up at them cautiously, half expecting shit to rain down on him. Something dropped with a thud just beside his foot, making him jump. It was the sardine, still fully intact.

Are you satisfied? Now you’ve got a flock of crows with a grudge.

“This isn’t possible. Is it? Birds aren’t vengeful. Are they?” Bradley had closed himself up in the bedroom, the furthest room from the crows.

Do you really want to get into what’s possible and what isn’t? Are you having a conversation with your dead husband right now? And while we’re on the subject of impossibilities, how did you even get this fellowship? Is your writing really good enough to warrant ten-thousand dollars and a two-month vacation? Didn’t Larry Richter call your prose labored? Hacks who write labored prose and still don’t understand irony don’t get fellowships.

“What are you saying?”

I’m saying: did you even apply for this fellowship? You don’t remember, do you? Have you ever even heard of the Wasserman Foundation? Wasn’t Wasserman the name of your elementary school principal?

“What, you think I’m inventing all of this? You think I’m actually lying dead on our bathroom floor because I couldn’t bear to live without you? Well maybe I am. Maybe this is what happens when hack writers die. They go upstate to an eternal writer’s retreat.”

Bradley’s voice began to wobble.

Oh, stop. I’m sorry. You know I think you’re a great writer. You did get the fellowship—of course you got it. You deserve it. Now get rid of those crows and finish your damn masterpiece so you can dedicate it to me.

Bradley found a pair of binoculars in the window seat, along with a hat—some ridiculous fisherman’s thing. He set the hat aside and went into the office with the binoculars. He began to discern patterns in the birds’ flight. Occasionally a bird would fly lazily away from the group. When it returned, another would fly off, always in the same direction. He hung the binoculars around his neck, pulled the fisherman’s hat down low on his forehead and went outside.

The birds took notice. They flew in low, criss-crossing patterns around him, as if they were trying to get as near to him as possible without touching him. Bradley, still surging from his argument with Charles, was not intimidated.

It didn’t take long to find the nest once he began looking in earnest. It was about thirty feet off the ground in the crotch of a birch tree. When Bradley approached the tree, one of the crows dove at him, squawking and fluttering close enough to brush his hat with its feathers. Bradley dropped to the ground and covered his head with his hands as the crow flitted away, rawking.

Where do you think you are? Dresden?

“A World War Two reference? Really? That’s the best you can do?”

No. That’s the best you can do. And you wouldn’t even know that much if not for Vonnegut.

“Shut up and help me find a ladder.”

There was a shed behind the cabin, which Bradley had assumed was locked. Upon inspection, though, there was only a well-worn stick in the latch where a padlock might have been. Inside, Bradley found all manner of useful landscaping/bird-eradicating implements: an aluminum ladder, a shovel, a flare gun and a knife with a two-foot blade that could have been used to chop down small trees. He wasn’t sure what he might use the knife for, but he took it nonetheless, and slid it carefully between his belt and slacks.

Oh, who do you think you are? You look like a little boy playing Jungle Explorer.

He was making a great effort not to speak to Charles.

Armed with the flare gun and knife and still wearing the found hat, Bradley crept to the corner of the house where the crows could not see him. He had never fired a flare gun (or any gun) before, but, given his general impression of the average gun enthusiast, he decided that it must be relatively simple. He’d heard of “the safety”, but wasn’t sure if this was an actual device or just an appropriate manner of handling a gun. He decided that there was no harm in just pulling the trigger and seeing what would happen. After all, it wasn’t a real gun.

He pointed it at the sky above the deck and fired.

The report was disappointing—barely noticeable—and certainly not loud enough to frighten the birds. The flare itself shot only about six feet into the air and landed with a fizzle on the dead leaves that carpeted the side yard. The whole performance didn’t even draw the attention of the crows until Bradley ran from his hiding place and began stomping on the flaming leaves.

The crows lilted toward him and casually observed the commotion. They called in a chorus that sounded sickeningly similar to laughter.

“Oh shut up!” He stalked over to the deck post and kicked it as hard as he could.

The kick rattled his entire body and set off a burning pain that shot from the ball of his foot up to his knee. But it did the job. The crows lifted off in unison and disappeared over the roof of the cabin.

Tough guy! You’ve managed to frighten an animal that’s a tenth of your size. And in just under a week, too. Your father is going to burst with pride.

“I’m not speaking to you, and I wish you would do me the same courtesy.”

Bradley had never climbed a ladder before, but he was sure that he could do it. He checked it three times for stability, making sure that the feet were pushed firmly into the earth. The ladder did not quite reach the nest, but he climbed up anyway. He could get close, then use the long-bladed knife hanging from his belt to unseat the nest from the tree.

“Now who’s ridiculous?”

Hmm, I don’t know. Who is it that’s plotting an elaborate bird abortion?

“Never mind. I’m still not speaking to you.”

Oh, aren’t you?

When Bradley was near the top of the ladder, he paused. He heard infantile reeks rawks coming from the nest above him.

Oh, come on. You aren’t going to back out now, are you?

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I need to think.”

This is hardly the place for a lengthy analysis of your personal ethics.

“Shut up. I need a minute. Just let me think.”

Well, what are you going to do? You would break the eggs, but you won’t kill the chicks? Do you really want to stand here and debate the question of when life begins? Just tip it over. Same as hunting, right? And, hey, they’ll have a sporting chance. They’ve got a good thirty feet to learn to fly. It’ll be like a crash course.

“Oh my god. That’s terrible. Even for you.”

For you, you mean. You’re the only one here.

“Fine, it’s terrible for me. I’m a terrible person, I have an atrocious sense of humor and I can’t even finish a fucking YA book. I might as well add bird murderer to my list of failings, so let me get on with it.”

He pulled the knife from his belt and climbed to the second rung from the top, hugging the trunk with one arm. Even there, he could barely reach the bottom of the nest with the tip of the blade. The bed of grass and pine straw was adhered to the bark and would not move as easily as he’d imagined. He clung to the tree and stepped onto the top rung. The birds were screeching and jostling about inside the nest. He did not want to hear them, and he certainly did not want to see them. He closed his eyes and tried to do it fast, in a single motion.

As he swung the blade, the ladder tilted under his shifting weight. He missed the nest entirely. The knife hurtled and stuck in the branches of a small pine tree, and Bradley began his long fall toward the ground.

At first he flailed and grasped for something, anything, but there was nothing to grasp. Bradley stopped trying to catch himself. He let his body relax against the air, and felt for an instant like he was flying.

Once he reached the ground, he was aware of very little. His body seemed to have separated from the rest of him, whatever the rest of him was. He could not move. He suspected that he was breathing, but he wasn’t sure.

Are you alright?

Bradley’s mind was quiet, quieter than it had been in months. There was a roar in his ears and he listened hard for something beyond the roar—something beyond Charles’ voice inside his head—to speak to him, to tell him that he was still alive. He heard the familiar rawks and reeks of the crows as they returned to their roost.

He closed his eyes and smiled, “I am.”

Amelia Skinner Saint is a roller derby player and assistant editor of the Briar Cliff Review, living in Sioux City, Iowa. Her essays and articles have appeared in 5 on 5, Inside Line Magazine, Blood and Thunder and USARS Magazine. Her short stories have won the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the H. E. Francis award. She tweets as @SkinnerOrSaint when she's drinking.