Aunt Hilda has always warned me about crows, and how they sometimes show up to herald a coming death.
She’s told me the story plenty of times. Before my late uncle died, he’d managed to get himself lost in the woods beyond Mink River. He was only found, days later, when a farmer and his boy spotted a murder of crows circling just beyond the back of their field. Thinking something large had died, they investigated and found my soon-to-be-late uncle slumped at the base of a tree, a little frostbitten and starved, but very much alive. He got treated at the hospital for the frostbite. Overall he seemed fine.
But it was just under a week later that he didn’t wake up in the morning. Heart attack in the night, the coroner said. Just a plain old heart attack. His ticker gave out; shlip-shlump.
The crows had known.
“You see?” aunt Hilda will say, leaning forward, right into my face. Her skin is crinkled wax paper when she grins, pale lips receding to reveal a shiny silver canine tooth. “The buggers wasn’t there cause he was hurt from the elements. They was there cause they saw his ticker giving out, only it hadn’t happened yet.”
“Wow,” I’ll say.
“You best remember that.”
She didn’t work another day after the death, not with the financial inheritance she was left with, and the enormous house, and all the acres of property to sell. She banked well over two million, retired early from her job at the philatelic center, and spent her time taking visitors and telling stories. Her favorite story is the crow story. Her favorite visitor is me.
But aunt Hilda’s been looking different lately. Thinner. Her eyes are sunken and raccoony, her wax paper skin more crinkly than ever around her mouth.
Crows have been roosting at night in the branches of the oak. The one in her front yard. They chatter with each other at sunrise.
“I don’t like it,” she tells me.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “They just like the tree.”
“They lookit me through the window, I swear it.”
“It’s nothing.”
She’s written me into her inheritance. I guess it’s since I’m the nephew that visits. In fact, I’m the only regular visitor she’s been getting for years.
Some in her situation, such aloneness, might be at risk of suicide.
I’ve shown up at noon today. The branches of the oak are black with crows. A few are hopping along the top of the roof, cawing raggedly. I didn’t think they’d be here so early.
The rope is heavy inside the bag. The latex gloves feel greasy in my pocket. It won’t do to leave prints.
Two million bucks. Even a fraction of that is a big piece of pie.
The crows take wing as I knock, as though I’ve signaled the end of their watch.
