Crows by Charles Dickinson Read Free Book Online

something. But the store never matched the golden promise predicted by Dave. They could never overcome the barrenness of their store’s location.
    Poor business did not matter to Evelyn. She had found in Dave Cigar the person who made her happiest in her life. Her father had been a busy, forbidding man, immensely successful at his work, polite to his wife and child. When she was in high school it occurred to her that her father was never summoned to the phone when he was home. She began to count the days that passed without a call for him. She counted fifty-­one straight days before he got a call from work in the evening, and he cursed and hung up and hurried out into the darkness. She loved her father, but he had no friends and he rarely laughed. All he did was work.
    Dave Cigar tended the store and she was pleased when he sold something, but she liked him best when he told jokes on the phone, or talked to his friends when they stopped in, or when he strolled over to the restaurant on the lake road and killed the afternoon visiting. He was in charge of several civic organizations; he was good at those sorts of duties, but Evelyn suspected Mozart’s businessmen put him in charge because they assumed he had plenty of time to spare, with an heiress wife and a dead location.
    She loved the sound of his voice, his smile, his enthusiasm for each new line, and the way he did not see the goodness in himself that she cherished so. He in turn used her as a barometer of his self-­worth, content to assume that if she stayed with him for years he must have been doing something right, though he could not say what.
    They did not plan to have children. However, Evelyn became pregnant in the third year of their marriage. They were selling monogrammed aluminum awnings at the time, and not doing well. Money was not a worry, but Evelyn was uneasy about what a baby would do to their marriage. She wanted Dave to herself. She was afraid the child would not see what it was she loved in the child’s father; she knew Dave could not bear not to be loved entirely by her. Dave was afraid the child would see him for the man he thought he was, not the man Evelyn loved him for being.
    Robert was born and he was indeed a wedge that she worked hard to adjust to. Dave proved to be a gentle father, giving up sleep, talking softly to Robert as he carried him through the house on colicky nights. But she was also careful to assure Dave he remained all she needed or wanted. She knew she loved Dave; it was still a mystery what sort of person Robert would become.
    R OBERT WAS WATCHING the news when his parents arrived home. He was drinking a beer and thinking about the wet-­haired girl who brought his biology teacher lunch.
    Dave just about came to his wife’s shoulders.
    â€œRoberto,” Dave exclaimed, “did you leave a dollar in the icebox for that beer?” The question was put forth with a smile, but with an edge, too. Dave had not forgiven Robert for returning home, for pushing him out of the small den he had waited years for, all that time looking forward to the day his son left home.
    Evelyn kissed Robert on the top of his head. She gave him a wink hidden from Dave.
    â€œHow was business today?” Robert asked.
    â€œDon’t ask,” Dave said. He got a beer of his own and sat on the couch opposite his son.
    â€œYour father sold a pewter mug today.”
    â€œIs that right? Engraved?”
    Dave licked beer foam from his upper lip. “Go ahead, Evie. Rub it in.”
    Evelyn was laughing in a soundless way that was a clue to great hilarity. Robert had been amazed all his life at the quickness with which his mother laughed helplessly at something his father had done or said.
    â€œWhat?” Robert demanded to know, irritated at the way they held him out of their lives at times like that.
    â€œA woman came in today and ordered a pewter mug for her husband,” Evelyn said. “She was the only person