It was quiet, so I figured that there wasn’t any other option. Circling the trunk, I found a limb that was within reach and stuffed the twine in my mouth, still tasting the bitterness of the peyote, wrapped my hands around the heavy branch, and swung my boots up toward the trunk.
I wedged an ankle in the crook and pulled myself around, the soot and grime turning my clothes black.
“Well, hell.” Taking the twine out of my mouth, I fed it back under the limb and checked the direction it took around the main body of the tree-under another branch and then up.
I rested a foot and tried to circle, the trunk being far too wide for me to reach around. Placing my boot on another branch, I continued climbing, following the string as it weaved its way through the tree.
Every once in a while I had to pull slightly on the twine, and when I did there was a small cry from above. “Oww.”
“Sorry.” I peered through the naked branches, and even though there was no foliage, it was hard to see. I placed the roll of string under my arm and wiped the black from my hands onto my jeans as I leaned back on another stout limb. “How much further are you?”
“Quite a bit, actually.”
“Can you see me?”
“Yeah.”
I looked up. “How come I can’t see you?”
“Well, I’m smaller, and you’ve still got a ways to go.”
I sighed and traced the path of the string as it worked its way in and out of the assorted branches. “Straight up?”
“Yeah.”
I lodged another foot in the crux of a limb and lifted my other leg, continuing to climb with the string in my mouth again. The trunk split at one point, and I could see where it peeled off to the west and straightened out toward the mountains. I was getting pretty high and could feel the tree creaking as it responded to my movements.
The string led me to the western route, but the branches were becoming sparser and I was afraid that if I traveled too much farther on the limb, it might break. I took a chance and glanced down, immediately regretting it. It was a good hundred feet to the sand below, and there were numerous back- and head-breaking limbs between. I swore to myself and wrapped my legs around a little tighter. “Maybe it’s only a dream.”
It was about then that I raised my eyes and saw her-a good-sized crow.
Farmers and ranchers don’t care for the birds, but I’ve always thought that they are beautiful creatures. They are also capable of more than two hundred and fifty distinct calls, which did nothing to explain the very female human voice in which this one spoke to me.
“How you doin’?”
“I guess I’m all right.”
I considered her predicament. From my perspective, I could see that the twine was wrapped around one of her legs, then her body, and finally had trapped one of her wings against the limb from which I now hung. “You mind if I ask how you got like this?”
Her dark head shifted, and a beadlike, tarnished gold eye drilled into me. “Isn’t that just like a man to ask a fucking question like that.”
“Sorry.” I studied the distance between us and the diameter of the limb. “I’m not so sure I can get out there to where you are.”
Her dark, feathered head shifted. “Don’t you have a knife with you?”
I thought about the Case I carried back in the real world and figured it was probably still in my left back pocket. “I think I do.”
“Then just cut the string.”
I thought about it. “I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.”
“Why?”
“Well, a bear told me that I wasn’t supposed to let go of the string and I’m guessing that includes cutting it.”
The crow continued to look at me. “A bear.”
“Yep.”
She flapped the free wing and picked at her feathers with a pointed beak, gleaning them straight, finally turning to look at me. “You’re fucking kidding.”
I sighed, thinking about how I was now having a conversation with a profane crow nearly at the top of a burned out cottonwood tree. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
“Well, then, you’re going to have to come out here.”
I looked down at the ground again. I’d heard that if you fell in your sleep it was okay, unless you hit, and then you supposedly died. It sounded like hooey-I’d probably heard it from my mother, who gave credence to those types of things.
I edged my way out. I was getting coated in the graphite-like soot, and the fine powder didn’t make it any easier to hold on. I gripped the branch and pulled myself another arm’s length before hearing a tremulous cracking noise somewhere back down the trunk.
The crow and I looked at each other, and she was the first to speak. “That was worrisome.”
“Yep, and you’ve got wings.”
“I’m also tied to the limb your lard-ass is resting on.”
I glanced down. “I wouldn’t exactly call it resting.”
Trying to ignore the sound and fury of the splitting trunk, I took the twine in one hand and passed it under the limb a few times, finally freeing it enough to untangle the crow’s body, which allowed her to get a talon onto the limb. “Can you pull the string enough to get your wing loose?”
She tried, but it was obvious she couldn’t. “Why don’t you just let go of the fucking string?”
“I told you, he told me not to do that.”
“You usually take the advice of blathering bears?”
I sighed. “It’s a habit, like trying to save cursing crows.”
She cocked her head, and if it was possible, she smiled. “I need more slack.”
More carefully this time, I slithered a little forward and was happy not to hear anymore disconcerting noises. I extended my arms and threw her a loop that trailed over her wing. She picked at it with her beak and was able to pull it partially loose, but I was going to have to get out there a little farther, perhaps a yard and a half from her.
The limb was getting narrower, and I was feeling a little tippy as it was. I grabbed the next arm’s length and gently pulled myself out farther. There wasn’t any sound, but I waited, just to make sure. I pitched the twine again and was rewarded with a loop that went past her wing this time with enough slack to allow her to scramble loose and hop up onto an adjacent branch that faced me.
“Thanks.”
“You bet.” I continued to look at her and noticed that the twine was loose but still attached in a bow to what appeared to be a bracelet wrapped around her leg. “The twine is tied to the bracelet?”
“Yeah.”
I readjusted a little, the pressure of the limb against my chest becoming a little uncomfortable as I studied the silver chain just above her talon. “How did you get the bracelet caught on your leg?”
“It was shiny, and I liked it.”
I studied it a little closer and noticed it had a medical symbol on it. “I guess we have to make a decision.”
She cocked her head and with one quick movement hopped onto my arm. “Yeah.”
“Can you pull it apart and free yourself?”
She shook her swarthy head, the feathers gleaming blue-black. “Nope-tried.”
“So, if it gets done, I have to do it?”
She shrugged a winged shoulder, pumped up her breast in a provocative manner, extended her wings, and then refolded them; I could feel a slight sway in the limb beneath me.
“Maybe you’re supposed to stay here.”
