Crows by Charles Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    â€œShe’ll be back! Mark my words.”
    Robert said, “Right, Dave.”
    His mother, going to get her husband a fresh beer, winked at Robert above Dave’s shiny head.
    Robert ran his fingers over the letters carved in the mug. They were scratchy, of uneven depth and spacing; but when he took his eyes out of focus, the message and the workmanship approached perfection.
    B EN AND R OBERT might never have spoken, for all the attention teacher paid to student in the following weeks. Robert assumed Ben had been offended, a potential friendship snapped cleanly dead by his quick, blunt honesty.
    Robert could not decide if Ben was a good teacher. He often let the class out early, which made him popular. Also, he brought to class each day his jars of living specimens, and this was a big hit. He would lecture for forty minutes with a python around his shoulders; or pretend unwittingly to release a flock of monarch butterflies into the room, causing the girls to shriek with delighted fear; or he would stage cockroach races on the slate flats of the front table, with tiny white numbers painted on the insects’ backs.
    All this spectacle often did not seem to have a point, or so Robert thought. He wondered if he was learning anything, or if he was supposed to. The tests Ben gave were faded mimeograph sheets with a date in the corner ten years in the past, the date he’d typed the stencil and filed it. The questions included: How many butterflies did I release into the room on Wednesday? (Answer: eleven). How many remain? (Two, they found a haven atop a speaker box in one high corner of the amphitheater and, safe, beat their wings slowly, as if still out of breath a week after being freed.) How many times did I forget my lunch since the last test? (Six. Olive always had wet hair, and touched Robert’s ear in passing, but otherwise ignored him; when cold weather came she wore a floppy hat of thick rhubarb-­pink yarn pulled down over her head.)
    At the conclusion of one Friday class Ben caught Robert’s eye and motioned him into the room in back, then through the blue tunnels to his third-­floor office.
    â€œHow’s my class?” Ben asked. “Am I worth a science credit?”
    â€œMore than one. Four, even. But I don’t know if I’m learning anything.”
    Ben unlocked his office door. His back to Robert, he turned on the light and went inside. Again Robert wondered if he had misspoken; this man kept sending out signals of friendship and Robert kept ignoring them, or misreading them.
    â€œAre you learning anything you can use in your later life?” Ben asked rhetorically, dropping dried black specks like bacon bits from a jar marked FLYS into two aquariums containing a half dozen fat toads. “Not specifically, no. Nobody in your class has any interest in a career in biology. They’re only there because it is a requirement. I just try to instill a sense of wonder and appreciation. That’s why I race cockroaches and set butterflies loose. Maybe one day something I’ll have said will be recalled by a student and he’ll stop and take a closer look at something he might have walked blithely by if he hadn’t taken my class. Maybe a fact he learned from me’ll impress his kid someday . . . bring them closer together for a moment.”
    He sat at his desk and rubbed his eyelids with his fingertips. The skeleton of his crow remained, its wing still fractured. On the floor beneath his desk was a pair of women’s open-­toed high-­heeled shoes.
    â€œI’ll tell you,” he said. “You guys are more fun than the ones who want to be scientists. No roach races for them. They want to learn something. They demand it. It’s tough work, then.”
    Ben stood. He asked, “Are you busy? Would you like to get some dinner?”
    They took Ben’s car on the road around the lake. It got darker earlier each evening and