Crows

[ChrisGibson]

Crows is a Geshichte Falls story which, chronologically, takes place at the very beginning. Russell does not feature in it, but it's fairly important nonetheless.


“Tonight! Tonight—!” Jackie sang, as she and Felice left Patti’s house on Friday morning.
“And wear something nice,” said Felice. “You might meet someone special.”
“I just met someone special,” said Patti, “and I’m not even divorced yet. which reminds me—”
“The lawyer?” said Felice.
“Um hum,” said Patti. “Need to meet with him for the first time today.”
Jackie’s stomach went queasy.
“I can’t really talk about this,” she said. “After all, it’s my brother you’re divorcing.”
Patti nodded. They were all quiet for a second, and then Felice said, “Oh, let’s stop all this frowning. Tonight we will paint Chicago red!”
They stopped at Sharon Kandzierski’s apartment, down the street from Jackie’s because Felice needed to pick up a suit.
“Now we have almost the same build in the shoulders,” Sharon said, “so you’ll look good in this.”
Felice spun in front of the mirror with the black top and jacket from the pants suit and approved of herself.
“If I can do something about this shelf growing off of my back...”
“Girl, no one wants a bone but a dog,” Sharon told her cousin, though Sharon had never had to worry about a shelf.
“Goin’ out on the town,” Sharon shook her head. “I remember when I used to run with the girls.”
“Come with us!” Jackie said spontaneously.
“No!” Sharon sounded like she’d been pinched.
“Yeah, Cousin Sharon,” Felice said in her rough voice.
“I haven’t—I haven’t been on the town in thirty years,” Sharon said.
“And Chicago no less!”
“Well, then you’re out of practice. Come on,” Felice cajoled.
“You might catch a man,” Jackie added. “You look good enough for someone half your age.”
“I already have a man, Jaclyn,” Sharon reminded the younger woman.
“No, you have a Graham,” Felice corrected her cousin.
Sharon snorted.
“Stop. No. you all have fun and let me know what happens when you get back. If you get back. If you can remember!”
Sharon shooed the girls—the women—they were both in their thirties by now, Sharon reminded herself—out the door, Graham heard her laughing as he came into the living room and sat on the sofa, under the large wicker sun which suddenly looked old and out of place.
“Graham, did you hear them?” Sharon said.
“No.” He didn’t appear interested as he turned on the television.
“They wanted me to run out on the town. Me an old woman running around Chicago hittin’ bars and what the not.”
“That is foolish,” Graham agreed. “Girls are girls. They don’t know we ain’t as young as we used to be. They don’t know how old they are either. Like Chayne,” Graham murmured.
“Jackie said I might mess around and end up getting hit on by a boy—”
Graham laughed.
“What young rooster would hit on an old hen like you?”
Sharon stiffened. Inhaled. Exhaled. That’s how she dealt with thirty-seven years of Graham.


Sharon Kandzierski was shocked out of her self examination.
“Mother, what the hell are you doing?”
Chayne entered the bedroom, hands crossed over his chest, scowling at the woman who had been twisting in front of the mirror.
“Chayne, am I old?”
“Well, you’re not young,” he allowed, “but then I’m not anymore either, so...”
“Well, do I look nice?” she asked her son irascibly.
“Yes, Mama. You know you do. You don’t have a wrinkle on you, and there’s no grey hair. And—and you’re not old.”
Sharon moved away from the mirror and flounced down on the bed.
“Jackie and Felice said that I should go to Chicago with them—”
“That’s a great idea!”
“But I said I was too old to be running around.”
“You’re never too old—”
“And your father agreed.”
“I thought you’d stopped listening to Graham years ago.”
“Usually I don’t” Sharon admitted. “And he said, ‘What would a young rooster be hitting on an old hen like you for? He said that—”
“And you listened?”
“Chayne, yes.”
“Mama, listen to me,” said Chayne, “Jackie’s in the living room right now. We came to borrow the station wagon because we’re going to get the choir robes. Now I want you to go out there and tell Jackie that you’re going to Chicago tonight,”
“But what’ll I look like, a fifty-seven year old woman running around in the streets?”
“Look like to who, Mother?”
Sharon was quiet.
“Mother, the only way anyone ever becomes old is by letting themselves get old. Now you can live or you can die. One or the other, no in betweens. The trip’s four hours and I know they’ll be leaving at about four o’clock, so I suggest you tell someone and make yourself pretty, or else you’ll be sitting around here tonight watching Graham snore in front of the television.”


Graham Kandzierski, turning to the entertainment page of The Saint Gregory Herald, did not hear the car honk three stories down on Royal Street.
Sharon Kandzierski did, and when Graham saw her striding out of the bedroom in heels that could fillet a fish and a poisonous red dress, tight as a sausage casing, he asked her, “What in the nation’s going on, woman?”
“I’m going out to raise some hell,” Sharon said, picking up her handbag and kissing her husband on his balding heard.
“Don’t wait up.”

“Jackie, I thought you knew where we were going?” Felice said.
“I did. I mean I do!”
“Then how come I’m stepping over this bum for the third time?” Patti demanded.
“We don’t know where the hell we are!”
“It could be worse,” Sharon said. “We could be that bum.”
“I guess you’re life has hit rock bottom when you turn into a landmark,” Patti allowed.
“It’s all starting to look the same to me,” Felice said. “Tall grey buildings, can’t see the sky, nothing but El tracks vibrating overhead. People walking in and—oh, my’God, Cousin Sharon, look!”
Felice ribbed Sharon and the two Black women saw, stepping out of a Saturn, a woman with black, Flashdance hair, gold lamé top, black handbag, micro mini skirt, legs covered in matching black hair, a bobbing Adam’s apple and a look of fierce determination as she closed the car door and walked into the club.
Jackie tittered, but Patti hit her with a handbag, “I don’t want to die tonight. He’s probably packing heat.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Jackie said as they passed the club and the transvestite’s car. “He—”
“They prefer to be called she,” interjected Sharon, and Jackie stared at her in surprise.
“Well, whatever she prefers to be called,” Sharon remarked, “Those pumps were fabulous. Even in a size fourteen.”
“You don’t see that in Geshichte Falls,” Patti remarked.
“You do,” Sharon disagreed. “But you don’t usually see it on Breckinridge.”
“Should we go to that club?” Felice asked.
“But that’s not our club,” Jackie protested. “The club we’re going to is on Wabash.”
“Well, how the hell can you tell you tell?” Felice demanded. “Shit, I don’t care what people say, all these streets look alike.”
“It makes me remember why we left Chicago—” Sharon spoke and the El train passing over them roared over her words.
Privately Patti agreed.
“Let’s just find the first club that we see, the first one that looks like a good time,” Jackie said at last. Then, “How about that one?”
Jackie pointed across the street. A yellow taxi whizzed by.
“The one called...?” Patti’s voice faded in disbelief as she touched the side of her mouth.
The entryway was plain, and so was the lettering of the sign, but the sign itself was a long pink, indisputable penis which Felice now read.
“The Big Nasty,” she pronounced the name dubiously.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

This was a great surprise! I am enjoying getting back into Geshichte Falls and this story is very interesting so far. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thank you, Matt. The whole time I felt like this part was missing from the story. I wanted to tell it, but had left it out before.

 

[ChrisGibson]

and tossed off his jacket.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!” roared the crowd, and Patti ran over, breathless with the young man who had just dipped her.
“Bridal shot?” Sharon whispered to Patti.
“I don’t remember one at my wedding,” Patti shrugged.
The boy who’d been holding her hand impulsively kissed her on the mouth. She stared back wide eyed.
“You’re beautiful, baby!” he hooted.
“She’s old enough to be your mother—” started Jackie, but no one heard her as the bride was brought forth, all in white and the crowd roared, “Drink! Drink! Drink!”
The bartender, took out a bottle of something, filled an exceptionally large shot glass with it, affixed to it a peach colored plastic cock and then shoved it into the bride’s mouth while the crowd showered her with condoms.
“Oh, my God,” Jackie murmured, her voice flat, and then she screamed as some biker smacked her ass and said, “Let’s dance, Mama!”
Jackie stared at him wide mouthed, then back at Sharon and Felice.
“Girl, why not?” Felice said. “He and Chip could be cousins.”
Felice had stolen Jackie’s cigarettes, was contenting herself with a gin soaked olive and Sharon was looking forlornly at her daquiri when she heard someone say, “Whazzup, whazzup, hot mama!”
She looked to Felice, and then heard, “No. You, pretty Mama!”
“It’s all you, girl,” Felice said, and Sharon beheld a white boy, no more than twenty-five with a backward turned baseball cap, jeans sagging to his knees, three gold chains and black shades.
“Um! Um! Um!” he said with a downward hand gesture for each um, “You are sooo FINE!”
Sharon looked at him, incredulous.
“A’know a’know a’know, you’re probably looking at this white boy saying, ‘How’s he gon try to mack with me? And you right, you right. I ain’t got no right. You are SUCH a Nubian goddess. I’d like to take you home with me, but if it’s alright by you, I’ll just have this dance?”
He offered his very white hand.
Sharon looked back at Felice.
“Com’on, Brown Sugar,” he urged.
Sharon looked back at Felice who shrugged.
“You heard him,” she said. “Go on, Brown Sugar.”


“Can I get you another drink?” White Boy asked as he swayed with Sharon.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” she joked.
“No! No!” he thought she was serious. “No, you’re just a beautiful lady and—”
“What?”
“I said you’re a beautiful lady.”
“It’s been a long time since a man’s said that to me.”
“Maybe you’re hanging around the wrong men.”
Sharon chuckled and shrugged as much as she could while slow dancing. “Maybe you’re right.
“I don’t even know your name,” Sharon told him.
“My name’s Robert.”
“Robert,” Sharon considered it. “Yes, that’s a nice name. Robert, I think I will let you get me another drink.”
After all they were free. He walked her over to the bar and asked what she wanted. Sharon tried not to think outside of herself or she would laugh at this whole situation. What would Chayne say?
“Here you go,” he served her the martini.
“You drink these often?” he asked her as they sat at the bar.
“No, but my son talks about them a lot. I don’t think he drinks them either, but he always puts them in his stories.”
“You’ve got a kid?”
“Yes,” Sharon nodded, smiling. “Yes. We all live in Michigan. With my husband.”
Robert bawked, and then said, “This is the man who doesn’t tell you you’re beautiful?”
“Not for a long time. My son actually tells me though, but he’s my son, so how can I believe that?”
“How old is he?”
Sharon laughed, suddenly realizing that not only was she young when she’d had Chayne, and still very attractive, but that Rober had no idea how old she was.
“Probably older than you! He’s thirty-five, an English professor and a writer.”
From the way his mouth opened and his eyebrows shot up, Sharon was sure that if she could have seen his eyes, they would be popped wide open.
“I’m twenty-three,” he confessed sheepishly.
“Well, I’m fifty-seven. Robert, let me see your eyes.”
Obediently, Robert took off his shades.
“You have very nice eyes.”
They were wide and almond shaped, very blue.
“You should show them more often.”
He blushed and made to put them back on, but Sharon’s hand held Robert’s down.
“Now your hat, so I can see your hair,”
It was gelled and parted, gold white, shaved at the sides and Sharon said, “See, I would never have known you were attractive if you hadn’t shown your face, Robert... Robert who has no last name.”
“Robert Keyes, Sharon....”
“Kanzierski.”
Robert’s eyes squinted.
“It’s Polish. My husband’s father was white—to make a long story very short—”
“No, no,” he said. “What’s your son’s name?”
“Chayne.”
“Get out!”
“You know him. Know of him? My son’s reputation proceeds me.”
Robert nodded and quoted.

Against all the pain I’ve seen and the knowledge that there is certainly something wrong
I hear the galaxies hum another song,
against the anguish and the pain I look into the stars at night
in them and in the sun and in the air is God’s own whisper—
there is a greater, greater “Something Right”

“Did Chayne write that?”
As happened now and again, she was embarrassed to know her son so little.
Robert said, “He did.”
“And you memorize poetry?”
“I do lots of things,” Robert smiled. “You don’t really know anyone at this reception do you?”
Sharon laughed and admitted, “My friends and I just wandered in here. We had no idea it was a wedding.”
“Sometimes I feel like I just wandered in here too, and this is my family.”
Sharon hadn’t considered until now that he must be related to the wedding party.
“The groom’s my brother.”


“Well, I want you to do that for yourself, Robert,” Sharon was saying.
“Go to school?”
“That or something like it,” she said. “Oh, Robert, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you and so much promise. I mean, I know it doesn’t look like that now. But, but I think you’re really special.” Sharon was telling him while Jackie came back to the bar and said, “Enough of the Chip look-alike.”
“That’s my cousin, Ralph,” Robert said.
“Oh,” Jackie coughed, and lit a cigarette. “Well, he was too much like Chip for me?”
“Jaclyn, you complain about this man all the time. What’s Chip like?”
“Oh, Sharon, he’s not that bad.”
“Jackie,” she looked at Robert too. “Children, listen to me as your elder just this once. You don’t have to settle for anything that’s not that bad. Life is too short for that. I forget that most of the time, but I’m learning it now. You need to do what makes you happy.”
“What if I don’t know what makes me happy?” Robert said.
“That’s the scary part, the not knowing. Because then comes the long time of trying to figure it out, and when you see it. It will terrify you.”
“Does John terrify you, Jackie?” Patti asked, suddenly coming up behind them, hair out of whack, shining with perspiration.
“Who’s John?” Sharon asked.
“John is Jackie’s flame,” Patti tattled.
“If there’s a John why the hell is there a Chip?” Sharon demanded.
“John is Patti’s little brother,” Jackie said.
“Here’s the story,” Felice interrupted. “When Thom and Patti got married, Jackie and John met each other—”
“Sixteen years ago—” said Jackie.
“And they’ve had the hots for each other ever since! They started out just liking each other. But then John got this girlfriend—”
“Kim—” Patti filled in.
“And they got married. Had three kids. Still, Jackie was holding a torch for him.”
“I was not,” Jackie colored.
“Was too. But then he and Kim got divorced.”
“And they’ve been divorced for almost two years,” said Patti.
“Well, then what the hell’s the problem!” Sharon demanded.
Jackie became silent.
Now she had to ask herself, What the hell was the problem?

The four women were walking down State Street very carefully. Once or twice Patti had thought of taking off her heels, and then decided against it. Above their heads, the El train thundered and flashed down fluorescent lightning.
“That was really sweet, what he told you,” Patti said. “That Robert boy.”
“He thought that God must have sent me to him. Well, who can say? I think he might be right.”
Sharon sighed and looked around the street still full of life, flashing neon signs and flashing people, marching up and down in heels.
“Sometimes I’m sure there’s a lot more of God than we see.”
Then she stopped being solemn and laughed.
Patti looked at the other woman expectantly.
“And Graham told me I couldn’t snag a man!” Sharon crowed.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Why would a young rooster go after an old crow like you?”
“He said that to you?”
“Um hum,” Sharon chuckled over it, nodding.
“Does he say that sort of stuff all the time?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sharon.
“I wouldn’t put up with that,” Patti shook her head, “With a man putting me down. I did for a while but... I don’t kwow Graham very well, so maybe I think of him differently. I guess you see something more than I do.”
“No,” said Sharon. “There isn’t anymore to see. But he’s right. I am an old hen. I’m an old crow. But I’m a beautiful old crow. And what’s more, I love Graham, and if that makes any since that sort of cancels out everything else. And then... and then... I’ve been married to him for a long time. Thirty-seven years is too long a time to call it quits.”
And then Sharon added, “So is sixteen.”
They walked on in silence for a while and, at last, Felice said, “Now Jaclyn, what street is the car on anyway?”
There was more silence as Jackie continued walking at the head of their group.
“Oh, Jackie,” lamented Felice. “Jaclyn!”
“Well...” Jackie turned around petulantly and said, “It’s.... one of these streets.”




THE END.... BUT NOT THE END OF GESHICHTE FALLS...

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great short story! It was nice to hear from the girls point of view. I look forward to more of Geshichte Falls!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Matt