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I.
THE CROW
The baby crow is a storm under a Virginia sweet- spire as it struggles to move out of view. We know it is a crow because the wildlife rehabilita-
tor asked if its eyes are blue, which they are, and
if its mother is somewhere watching, which she
is. In fact, she caws at us from the top of a nearby tree with extreme frequency, so that we can hardly forget her. “The bird is probably fine,” the rehabilita- tor told us, though the angle of its right wing against the ground, flat like a hand getting a manicure, seems nothing like the left’s fluttering form. “Baby crows learn to fly from the ground. Honestly, they are just weirdos for a while. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He paused. “But if you want to bring it in...”
We don’t. There are bugs to think about, and pecks to our hands, and the drive, which will fill our Sunday night. Instead, we watch the crow until it finds a safe haven in the bushes and then walk home.
Still, we can’t quite shake the guilt, and so we each look during our daily walks. “I think it flew away!” one of us announces Monday afternoon. “Definitely gone,” agrees another on Tuesday morning. But on Tuesday afternoon, we find a wing by the barn. Dead, dead, dead, and likely our fault.
Then on Wednesday morning, during that hour when we drink coffee in our robes and pretend to read the pa- per, the crow makes an appearance in each of our yards.
We know it is the same crow because it is missing its right wing. The stub oozes yellow jelly, blood, and maggots. Flies circle, land, circle. The crow does not seem bothered by the insects or the weeping wound, but rather us, its killers, who it watches with its blue eyes in a scolding stare.
Then it moves on to the next person, so that the whole morning we are calling each other, asking Did you see it yet? You haven’t heard? It’s that crow...
Ben Johnson is the last house on the crow’s visitation list. By the time the crow perches on his fence, Ben hangs from the fan in his daughter’s bedroom. Maybe he already had plans to kill himself that day. Or maybe the crow pushed him over the edge.
Either way, we still see him every once in a while, his 1
neck bent and his head askew like a broken tulip about to tumble from its stem. Sometimes, he waves back.
II.
THE TWINS
All of the babies born in the month of July come in pairs. The doctors cannot explain how it happens. “There was only one, I swear to God,” they repeat to each other in call rooms across the state, yet despite the ultrasound pictures, in which one fetus clearly occupies the black holes of the mothers’ bodies, two identical children come out.
We are not sure what to do with these extra babies. They have no cribs purchased, no drawers of clothes prepared. Many go nameless for days. As news spreads, we discover there are shared characteristics between them—a birthmark on the right shoulder, for example, and a bald spot on the back of the head that never goes away but can, as the twins age, be covered by a careful haircut.
Eventually most parents adjust, but the psychological damage has been done. The youngest twins become moody, and they accuse their parents of constant fa- voritism. Stranger things happen too, like how older twins report waking up in the middle of the night
to find their younger twins standing over their beds holding a variety of strange objects—lamp shades, three hole punchers, and the like.
A new crop of therapists come to town specifically to deal with the twin crisis. Tensions grow.
Then, on the morning of their eighteenth birthdays, all of the younger twins disappear.
After this mass departure, which we call The Rapture (though we have heard rumors of a large group of young adults, likely the departed, spotted in the Chi- huahuan Desert), the older twins sink into their own melancholy. Missing their other halves, they tattoo birthmarks on their right shoulders and shave small bald spots on their heads. As their last desperate act, most of the older twins reenact the Dance of Zalongo and throw themselves over the edge of Thompson Cliff.
We assume this bloody stain is the end of the whole ordeal, but then over the years, the younger twins trickle back. Every few months we see one of them buying groceries or negotiating the price of a new car. Their birth marks fade; their bald spots grow in.
Crow Summer
Kelly Ann JAcobson