Frank Kellerman was losing his son.

Losing him, Kellerman knew, as surely as the soft, breezy Oklahoma autumn of 1961 was hardening into winter. Losing him to something vague but sinister, a force Kellerman did not understand and, more importantly, could not control. Something he could not even see--except in the peculiar disturbing behavior of his son.

At the age of eleven--the boy's birthday two weeks earlier had left Kellerman feeling more anxious than happy--Curly seemed to have stopped growing, stopped maturing. Puberty was maybe less than a year a away, Kellerman figured, but instead of sprouting into an awkward, aggressive adolescent, Curly seemed to be frozen in childhood. In fact, as cold November winds began to blow from the north, sweeping over the plowed wheat fields just beyond Kellerman's five acres, stripping leaves off the maple and red bud trees, Curly seemed to be regressing--a word Kellerman had picked up from a psychologist Hugh Downs was interviewing on the Today show. Regression, the psychologist explained, meant going back, reverting to an earlier pattern of behavior. Kellerman stared over his morning coffee at the image on the small black and white TV resting on the kitchen counter. The psychologist was talking about some rats he had run through a maze, but a moment after Kellerman heard the definition he leaped from his chair with the explosive energy of recognition.

"That's it!" he cried to Babe. "That's what's happening to the boy: He's regressing."

"You make a better door than you do a window," Babe said, setting her cup on the table and leaning sideways to see around Kellerman to the maze the TV psychologist was pointing to with a stick.

Kellerman took a step to his left and heaved an impatient sigh. "Don't you see? Curly's going back--behaving like he did when he was younger."

Babe looked up at him and rolled her eyes. Kellerman saw strength in those eyes, the kind of strength that comes from conquering pain. She had developed this strength only recently. Her expression and bearing conveyed a sense of weight, of an object immovable, out of proportion to her actual size. Rolling her eyes seemed to express something far more substantial, a great shifting of volume, like an ocean liner rising a few inches with a wave. Her slightest gesture had its effect on Kellerman, and often she could elate or dismiss him simply by raising an eyebrow. This time, however, she felt compelled to speak.

"The boy's not a rat, Frank."

Kellerman fell a step backward, as if the force of her words had struck him like a well-timed jab to the chin. "Nobody's calling him a rat," he sputtered, feeling slightly disoriented from the blow. "All I'm trying to do is find an explanation for the way the boy's been acting. The man on the TV's not talking about rats; he's talking about people."

In truth, Kellerman himself did not understand very much of what the psychologist was saying. Kellerman knew he was no brain, but he felt he understood the point of view of the rats as they ran through a series of mazes the psychologist kept changing in order to test their reactions. Lately, Kellerman's own life had assumed a similar shifting pattern. It was only a couple of months now since Carl Vukovich and the Yukon National Bank had taken away his beloved garage and auto-body shop. Only a couple of months since he had abandoned his wife and son--briefly, only briefly!--and lost their trust, especially the boy's. Pete Yuri was pushing up daisies in a cemetery in Fort Scott, and Roger Maris had broken Babe Ruth's home run record. For a while Curly had barely spoken to Kellerman. Then a month ago the Crow Woman had returned, after an absence of--what was it? Two, maybe three years--and Curly had suddenly started talking to birds.

Babe shook her head. "It's your problem more than his. You shouldn't make such a big deal out of it. The boy's all right; let things take their natural course."

"Natural course!" Kellerman glared at her. "The boy's talking to birds, goddamn it. Sparrows, crows, pigeons, hawks--and not like he's pretending either. I've listened to him. He thinks they can understand him."

Babe let out a long sigh. "He loves animals. He used to talk to them all the time."

Kellerman threw his hands up in the air. "That's what I mean, damn it. He used to do it, when he was six or seven. Now he's doing it again. It's the goddamn Crow Woman; I know it. Ever since I told him to stay away from her he's been regressing."

Babe shrugged in a way that told Kellerman the conversation was over. She turned back toward the TV. Kellerman clenched his teeth, then crossed in front of Babe and headed toward Curly's bedroom. Kellerman was going to be late for his job on the maintenance crew at the capitol, but that was the least of his worries.

He found Curly still buried under the covers, pretending to be sick. Kellerman yanked off the blanket and sheet.

"Rise and shine, son."

The boy drew his knees up under his chin and moaned, a pitiful, obviously faked moan. Regression, Kellerman thought, remembering the way Curly used to fake being sick to avoid the stern classroom of Mrs. Beauchamp, his fourth grade teacher. Curly was in the seventh grade now, and this was the fifth day in a row he'd pretended to be sick.

"Come on," Kellerman said sharply, but grabbed the boy's shoulder's with gentle strength, shaking him just hard enough to let the boy know he wasn't buying any of it. "Come on, let's go."

"I don't feel good," Curly complained, but rolled slowly out of bed and started to pull on his blue jeans.

"Where's your pajamas?" Kellerman asked.

"I don't feel good in pajamas."

Another regression. When he was seven Curly used to claim his pajamas choked him, that he couldn't breathe inside the cotton. Babe had let him sleep in just his underwear for a year. Then on Curly's eighth birthday Kellerman had given him pinstriped pajamas that looked like a real New York Yankee uniform. He'd slept in pajamas every night since then--until now.

Kellerman said nothing and watched the boy finish dressing. He didn't have to watch; he knew Babe would see to it Curly was dressed and fed in time to catch the bus, as she had every morning this week. He knew his wife and son were both waiting for him to leave for work, that the boy's "illness" was really a symptom of his father's presence, that everything would be all right as soon as Frank Kellerman stepped out the door. Curly would return home from school this afternoon feeling just fine, ready to run off and play down by the creek, where Kellerman had always--except for one regrettable time--left him alone. There would be no more talk of sickness until Monday morning, when Kellerman would once again try to get Curly up in time so the three of them could have breakfast together before he left for the capitol. No more talk of sickness, though the boy would be sure to avoid him all weekend, as he had for nearly a month now, since the day the boy changed.

Kellerman bit his lip as he watched Curly silently button his shirt. He still didn't understand exactly why his son had changed--there was more to it than just the brief abandonment, more to it than simply a loss of trust--but he certainly knew when.

"What's bothering you, son?" Kellerman blurted. "Are you still mad at me about the Crow Woman?"

The boy looked at Kellerman blankly for a moment, then bent down to lace his tennis shoes. Mad, Kellerman knew, was too weak a word to describe what his son was probably feeling, but Kellerman didn't want to think about what the right word might be.

He sighed, then turned and left the room while Curly tied his shoes. "He's up," Kellerman said to Babe in the kitchen.

Babe nodded, then seeing Kellerman just standing there, looked up again. Her voice was soft. "It's really not so difficult to understand, Frank. We're five miles north of town. There's hardly another boy or girl Curly's age within two miles. You took away his only reliable playmate. And not for the first time, either. It's natural he resents you for it."

Kellerman glared at her. "I don't want no sixty year-old crazy woman thinks she's a goddamn bird playing with my boy! I had to do it--and you know it."

Babe blinked noncommittally. "You're just going to have to give him time to get over it."

Kellerman stared through the back screen door toward the brown freshly plowed wheat fields that bordered his five acres. "Time? It's been a month now--how much more time does he need? And what am I supposed to do in the meantime: Watch him talk to all the goddamn birds in the trees?"

Babe shrugged. "I think the boy'll be all right."

Kellerman closed his eyes, then opened them. He nodded, grabbed his jacket off the counter beside the TV, and kicked open the screen door.

Babe called after him: "Don't you want some eggs or something?"

The yard was a luminous gold in the cool morning light, and quiet. Kellerman glared up at a line of black birds flying by overhead, then hurried on to the car. The Hudson was parked on the gravel drive that curled around behind the house. Before getting into the car, he glanced at the old limestone schoolhouse that lay a hundred feet to the north. Since the bank had taken away his garage and auto-body shop, the schoolhouse had become his special sanctuary, the place he could go to work on things and forget his family problems and the bullshit he had to take at the capitol. No one ever bothered him when he was in the schoolhouse--except the Crow Woman.

The thought of her prompted him to scan the area around the schoolhouse, then check out the propane tank, which lay like a miniature submarine halfway between the limestone building and the woodframe house-- then search the line of maple trees next to the fence that separated his five acres from Orville Zucha's wheat fields. He saw no sign of the Crow Woman and wondered hopefully if his latest threat had finally convinced Orville to lock the old loony bird away. He doubted it. Threats had never worked in the past. Nothing had worked.

Kellerman shuddered as he remembered the very first time he had seen her: Ten years ago now, just a few weeks after he'd bought the place. He looked up and spotted her peeking into the schoolhouse at him through the south window: Her gray shrunken face cocked slightly, one black eye watching him like a scavenger bird eyeing a corpse. He jumped and nearly sliced his finger on the lawn mower blade he was sharpening. Before he could move again she puffed her chest and made an even more startling noise: a hoarse, moaning cry that sounded like something dying. It shook him like an unexpected peel of thunder. By the time he got outside she had vanished.

"You hear that?" he asked Babe when he reached the house.

Her back to him at the sink, she turned slowly, giving no sign of concern. Curly sat on the tile floor, playing with some blocks. "Hear what?" Babe replied.

"That sound a minute ago."

"All I heard was a crow."

He called the police, as much for his own sanity as anything else. Big Bob Swanda was Chief of Police in Yukon in those days.

"Orville should have warned you about Mabel before you bought that place," Swanda said. "You'd better have a talk with him."

Kellerman's mouth opened slightly as he pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the receiver. Orville Zucha had sold him the five acres, house and schoolhouse included, for two thousand dollars. Not a bad price in 1951. Orville was a big square-headed wheat farmer in blue overalls and a gray striped cap. He lived half a mile east, down a narrow dirt road, in one of the shabbiest houses around. Kellerman took him for a dumb Polack, and at two thousand the property seemed a steal.

"Mabel? Mabel who?" Kellerman barked into the phone. "What should Orville have told me?"

The voice on the phone sounded muffled, as if Swanda were stifling a laugh. "Mabel Zucha," Swanda said finally. "Orville's mother. She's a sweet lady, really, 'cept for one thing: She thinks she's a bird."

Kellerman's lips parted again, and he remembered the rasping sound the old woman had made at the window.

"A crow," Kellerman said.

"What?"

"Babe thought she heard a noise like a crow."

"You could say that," Swanda agreed. "Fact is, folks around here call her the Crow Woman."

"Christ on a crutch. Why doesn't Orville put her in a home or something?"

"He keeps her locked in the house most of the time," Swanda said. "His wife looks out after Mabel while he's farming, but sometimes she gets out."

Kellerman sighed. "Well, fine. What's it all got to do with me?"

"Nothing, except you just bought her roost."

"Her what?"

"Her roost: the place she goes after she's been on the wing, so to speak. You really don't know anything about Mabel?"

Kellerman bit the inside of his lower lip until it hurt. "I'm listening, ain't I?"

The police chief cleared his throat. "You ought to hear the whole story then Call up Horace Loudermilk. He was there when most of it happened."

"When what happened?"

"That old schoolhouse of yours is almost a hundred years old. Used to be the Spring Creek School, only school in this part of the county. Lot of folks went to school there; used to be the only public building for miles. Well, Mabel was one of them. Her maiden name's Kolar. Parents come over from Bohemia. You know, in Czechoslovakia. They made the run that opened up this part of the territory in eighty-nine. Had three boys, every one of them killed in the First World War. And Mabel. I don't know if it's true, but they say she was born on the first day of the century." Kellerman heard Swanda take a deep breath. "I don't know, maybe Mabel would have turned out different if any of her brothers had lived to take care of her. Ask Horace. He can tell you."

Horace Loudermilk was the unofficial historian for the town of Yukon. He lived on a farm just north of the Canadian River next to actor Dale Robertson's horse ranch, the Rocking R. It was me named her the Crow Woman, Horace said when Kellerman called. It was her eyes put me in mind of a crow: Round and cold black, like you could see deep inside her head if you just looked close enough. But nobody did. Look her in the face and she’d stare you down with them black eyes like a crwo eyeballin’ you from a tree. I don’t think she meant nothin’ by it, but it made us boys uneasy. So we teased her with snakes and rats and dead armadillos. It was just our meanness made us do it. She was just a little bit of a girl, and we wanted to see her bawl, wanted to see them black eyes fill up with tears. Well, we teased her and teased her till she got jumpy like a ground squirrel and wouldn’t look none of us in the eye no more. But I don’t believe I ever did see her cry.

Only boy let her alone was Hubert Zucha--and he was plain crazy. One day when he was tweleve he decided he was a catfish. That’s right: a catfish. Jumped into the river and tried to feed right off the bottom. Took four of us to haul him up on a sand bar and pump out the mud water. Few years later, when it come time to fight the Keiser, all us boys old enough rode over to El Reno in Luke Kastl’s hay wagon to join up. Only one the Army turned down was Hubert. I don’t know what he done to cause it, but the sergeant said he wasn’t puttin’ no rifle in that boy’s hands. So Hubert stayed home for the War. ‘Bout the time most of us, the lucky ones, was just gettin’ back from France, Hubert and Mabel got married.

No tellin’ what attracted ‘em to each other. They was both outcasts, so to speak. Only passion in Hubert’s life was them pigeons he raised up in the loft of his parents’ barn. Had a whole flock up there: white ones, gray ones, speckled ones, you name it. You could see a hundred or more circlin’ round the barn of an evening. Hubert’d be up there with the pigeons; you could see him through the barn door, lettin’ birds in an’ out of the cages he’d built. I swear he’d stand in the doorway and toss pigeons up in the air one by one, then point an’ wave like he was directin’ each bird which way to go. They say he had some of them birds trained to fly all the way to El Reno and back.

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Well, I’m glad I was back in time for the weddin’. The old Church of St. John burned down in the winter of eighteen, so they got married in the Spring Creek School. That’s right: the one on your place. Half the town of Yukon was there. When the ceremony was over the two of lthem come outta that schoolhouse like a couple of chickens runnin’ from a fox. Never seen a woman so scared in my life. Shakin’ so bad I thought she’d tear right outta that weddin’ dress, which was sky blue. First sky blue one I’d ever seen. They come down the steps all shimmyin’ and shallyin’, and then a funny thing happened. Hubert, who looked like a ghost most the time, took hisself a deep breath and got a little color in his cheeks. Then he grabbed Mabel by the hips and lifted her up like he was a strong man, which he wasn’t, right up into the buggy. Brand new shiny black piano box buggy he’d ordered special from the Studebaker Brothers. Oh, it was a sight, I tell you: Ribbed leather seats and a three-bow leather top; hickory cane wheels and steel tires. We didn’t have but three or four automobiles around Yukon then, so people appreciated a good buggy. Well, the moment Hubert sat Mabel down in that buggy she calmed down. I mean just dead quiet peaceful, sittin’ there in that buggy with her arms folded in her lap as calm as you please. I don’t believe she ever actually looked at Hubert the whole time, just kept her eyes shinin’ on the road ahead. It might of been the light reflectin’ off the dress she was wearin’, but I swear to God when they went past it looked to me like them black crow eyes of hers had turned blue.

They was fixin’ to go when a couple ol’ boys noticed the pigeon cages in the back of the buggy. It got quiet a moment and you could hear ‘em cooin’ plain as day. Later on when we was all talkin’ ‘bout it, Ted Turch said Hubert had only his best fliers in them cages. Well, there wasn’t time to say nothin’ to Hubert about it, but just before he cracked the whip over that big roan horse of his, Luke Kastl yells out "Where you headed?" Hubert looks back at him an’ grins the biggest grin I ever saw an’ says back "We’re goin’ to the moon."

Well, afterward some of us were talkin’ an’ Ted says he thought Hubert might of said "honeymoon." Well, I’m here to tell you he said "moon" clear as a bell.

Well, nobody thought much about Hubert and Mabel for a couple days. Then Mabel’s parents got a call from the sheriff down in Sulpher. Hubert’s dead, he says. Fell off a cliff above the Wildhorse River. That’s what he said at first. Later on it come out Hubert had took Mabel up on that cliff and jumped off. Why, nobody knows. But a couple miners were fishin’ down on the river and seen him up on the edge of the cliff, lettin’ birds outta cages. Birds flew all around in a circle above his head, like they was takin’ their bearings. Then Hubert points up at somethin’ way up in the sky--maybe it was the moon, I don’t know--and starts flappin’ his arms like they was wings. Her kept flappin’ an’ the birds kept circlin’. Then all at once’t he jumped. The miners swore he flapped his arms all the way to the bottom. Birds circled around above the river for a while, then finally flew away. They found Mabel still sittin’ in that buggy up on the cliff.

Sheriff brought Mabel home in that buggy a couple days later. Only instead of pigeons they had Hubert in a pine box lashed on the back. We had a hell of a time gettin’ Mabel outta the buggy; she hung onto that seat like death. Didn’t want to leave Hubert, I guess. Just when we thought we had her calmed down, she got away from us and grabbed onto one of the buggy wheels. Took us a good five minutes to pry her off. Sheriff told her father it’d be a good idea to get rid of that buggy; it reminded Mabel of too much.

Later on you could see it was more than grief, the change in her. The shine had gone out of her eyes. They was black as a snake pit now, no life in ‘em a’tall. She didn’t stare back at nobody now, and didn’t act jumpy neither. Nothin’ riled her now. Far as I know, she never talked to nobody about what happenedon the cliff. Not even to the priest. Didn’t even go to the funeral--nobody could make her go. See her on the streets of Yukon after that an’ she’d take no notice of you, just go on her way. It was like whaterver was behind them eyes of hers died up there on that cliff. But the worst of it was, we found out later she was pregnant. Naturally we all thought she’d go away somewhere before her time come, but not Mabel. She went about her business as usual just like before, until the day Orville was born.

I don’t mind tellin’ you we was all scared about what kind of mother Mabel’d be. But we were wrong. She raised that boy herself, and, well, you can see for yourself how Orville turned out. Mabel’s parents died when Orville was still little. Didn’t surprise nobody the way they both went within a fewweeks of each other; they’d lost three boys in the War, and then Hubert. We worried about Mabel an’ that boy all alone on the farm. Well, we were wrong again. Mabel hired Luke Kastl and a couple more boys to run the farm until Orville was old enough. They did OK right through the Depression. Better’n most, anyway. Looked like things were going to turn out all right for Mabel after all.

Then the next war come, and Orville stayed home to run the farm. The two of ‘em come through that OK too. Fact, Orville got himself a medal from the War Department for growing so much wheat to support our boys over in Europe and the Pacific. Wears it every year in the Czech Festival Parade. Well, anyway, one day not long after VJ Day it got real hot, so hot the locusts were crawlin’ outta their skins. Right in the heat of the day, Mabel disappeared. Orville looked an’ looked an’ finally found her standin’ in the sun outside the old Spring Creek School, starin’ into a window. They’d closed up the school before the War, and Orville’d bought up the five acres aroound it from the township an’ built that house you’re livin’ in now. He had in mind to tear down that old schoolhouse, I believe. Well, when he called to Mabel she took no notice of him. Just kept starin’ real intent-like into that window like she was lookin’ for somethin’. Place was empty then; wasn’t nothing in there to see. Well, before Orville could catch up to her, she turned away from the window an’ run off down to the creek. Sight of her runnin’ kind of froze him, I guess. He’d never seen her move fast like that before. By the time he got after her she’d disappeared into the trees. He looked an’ looked--and then he saw her. Up on one of them gully cliffs above the creek. Starin’ up into the sky an’ tremblin’ all over like she’d spotted somethin’ up there that scared her. But there wasn’t nothin’ in the sky but sun. No clouds, no birds, not even a moon. From where he was down by the creek, Orville couldn’t see her eyes, but they had to be burnin’ from starin’ up into that bright sun. Then you know what she did? Hooked her thumbs under her armpits an’ started flappin’ her arms like they was wings. Flappin’ an’ flappin’ like she was gonna jump right off that cliff and fly away. Hot as it was that day, Orville froze like a icicle. And then Mabel opened her mouth and made that sound . . .

* * *

Now, ten years after Horace Loudermilk had told Kellerman the story, the sound Mabel made echoed in Kellerman's ears as he drove on to work. The same sound he had heard that first day he saw the old woman watching him with her black crow eyes through the window of the schoolhouse. A sound that was many sounds: a laugh, a moan, a cry of pain. A hoarse, crow sound: Haaa. Haaa.

At the capitol he settled into his usual electrical maintenance routine--changing light bulbs, checking the new circuits in Legislative Bill Drafting, keeping an eye on the main generator--and tried to put the sound out of his mind. It was no use. The sound followed him down the long arching hallway from the east entrance on the first level, all the way to the marble and granite cylinder of the central rotunda. The sound echoed through the capitol all day, following him from floor to floor, room to room, until he could stand it no longer.

He took off from work an hour early, at four o'clock, and hurried down the wide granite steps of the capitol to the Hudson parked in the asphalt lot next to the official Pride of Oklahoma oil derrick. He wanted to beat Curly home from school, wanted to meet the bus, greet his son with ball and glove--a brand new Mickey Mantle signature fielder's glove he'd bought the boy for his last birthday--and maybe play some catch the way they used to before that damn broken hip--which still hurt like hell, but he could get around now. The way the two of them used to play in the old days before the bad summer and the Crow Woman came between them.

Kellerman slammed the dashboard with his fist as he pulled out of the lot. The whole thing was his fault--he could see that now. The crazy woman had pestered him for a decade now, eyeballing him like a vulcher every time he went near the schoolhouse, making him feel like . . . like he didn't know what. He should have had her put away in Sunnyview or some other place where they locked up loony birds. Not that he hadn't tried--there was just no budging Orville on the point. And no forcing him, either. Orville had too many friends in high places.

"My fault," Kellerman muttered as he pulled onto the highway. He should have tried harder to make Orville have her committed--that was clear now. But a couple of years ago the problem seemed to have solved itself: Mabel had stopped coming around the schoolhouse. Mama’s slowing down, Orville explained one day when Kellerman asked about her. She don’t try to get out like she used to. So Kellerman tried to forget her. Let the poor woman be, Babe had always said. She just watches you is all. What’s the harm?

"Harm?" Kellerman asked the road ahead. "No harm as long as it was just me the old bird brain was watching. It was different when she turned her crow eyes on my boy."

He had often warned Curly to be careful around Mrs. Zucha, that something had happened a long time ago to make things go wrong inside her head. Kellerman didn't make a big deal out of it, though, because until her return a month ago she had never paid any attention to Curly. Her black crow eyes were always focused on Kellerman and the schoolhouse, even though Curly was usually nearby, watching her watch Kellerman. When Curly was six and seven, he used to pretend he and the Crow Woman were special friends, birds of a feather who flew everywhere together. Me and the Crow Woman’s gonna fly over the creek today, Curly would say, and spread his arms and soar through the kitchen. Since the Crow Woman had never even acknowledged the boy's presence, Kellerman let it go. After all, this was just pretend.

Then a month ago she returned--and turned her black scavenger eyes toward his son. Kellerman gripped the wheel of the Hudson and chewed his lower lip as he remembered stepping out of the schoolhouse to discover Mabel hiding behind the mulberry tree, watching not himself but Curly, who was mowing the grass around the propane tank. Kellerman was too far away to see the black look in her eyes, but the sight of her peering around the tree trunk at his son gave him a chill.

She disappeared behind the stand of trees lining his fence as soon as Kellerman stepped into view.

"Mrs. Zucha's been getting out again," he said to Curly as he approached the propane tank. "I'm going to have to call Orville; you let me know if she comes back."

To Kellerman's surprise, the boy spun around, letting the old wooden-handled push mower coast to a stop behind him, and looked up at his father with angry eyes. "I knew she was there," Curly said. "She was just watchin'; that's all. What's wrong with that? Why you have to call Orville?"

Kellerman's lips parted in shock. "Son, that woman--"

"I know," Curly interrupted. Then turned around, picked up the handle, and resumed mowing.

Kellerman stood motionless, watching the grass clippings spray up behind the churning blades. After a minute or so he went into the house and told Babe what the boy had said.

"Why should that surprise you?" Babe replied. "You think he should like the idea of keeping an old woman locked up?"

Against his better judgement, Kellerman decided to let it go. He said nothing to Orville this time, but kept an eye peeled for the Crow Woman. She seemed to disappear for the next week or so, as if Orville had somehow received the message anyway. Good riddance, Kellerman thought, and looked forward to a few weeks of peace.

Then three weeks ago Curly was late for dinner, and Babe sent Kellerman out to look for him. "I think he's down by the creek," she said.

Kellerman was reluctant to look for him there, suspecting the boy had a secret place near the creek, a place where grown-ups were not welcome. One of Babe's jab-like glances sent Kellerman on his way.

Nearing the creek, he began calling Curly's name to give the boy a chance to come out without revealing his secret spot, if there was one. Kellerman heard his own voice echo along the banks, but received no answer. It was the middle of October and the creek was dry. He looked along the wooded part first, past the sycamore and red bud trees, then wandered up the deep gully cut out by flash floods and during the spring tornado season. From above, the gully looked like an open wound, the living earth sliced open to expose the tender red flesh. From below, on the dry creekbed where he walked, the earth looked long dead, the red walls of the gully turning slowly brown, chipping and flaking away in the unseasonably hot sun. The sun bore down on him, radiating off the walls, and the sandy floor trapped the heat, burning up through the soles of his shoes, making him hurry on toward the promised relief of the shade trees where the gully flattened out beyond the last bend. Sweating dizzily, he had almost forgotten about Curly when he rounded a middle bend and looked up.

Fifteen feet above, on the edge of a nearby cliff, he saw the Crow Woman. She stood in absolute silence, staring up into the empty sky. She wore a dress of faded indistinguishable color reaching all the way to her feet. Despite the heat, a gray shawl curled around her shoulders like the furled wings of a bat. Kellerman gasped and stepped back out of sight, then peeked around the bend of the gully and watched.

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For a long time she didn't move. Her black eyes stared up at the bright sky directly overhead. Kellerman looked up, expecting to observe a flight of birds or maybe the moon. But the sky was empty. Then he turned back toward the cliff and saw her mouth open a little and work up and down, silently, as if she were whispering something too soft to hear. Then she opened her arms, extending them to each side, slowly, until they were parallel to the edge of the cliff, the shawl spreading out like wings.

Kellerman was afraid she was going to jump. No! he wanted to shout, but his mouth made no sound. A breeze came up, lifting the shawl, making the fringe flutter beneath her arms. Kellerman forced himself to look away--then spotted another figure: his small eyes intent, enraptured, silently watching the Crow Woman from the far end of the gully.

"Curly!"

Kellerman didn't mean to shout--the word burst from his lungs. The boy jumped, then stumbled, spilling onto the hot sand from his hiding place around the bend. He looked at Kellerman, then turned and ran, disappearing behind the red wall. Kellerman started to call after him, then swallowed his breath.

When he looked up, the Crow Woman had vanished.

Kellerman winced now, as he turned the Hudson off Highway 4 onto Czech Hall Road into Yukon. The incident on the cliff had started the boy's regression, he decided. Of course he had forbidden Curly from going anywhere near the Crow Woman after that. He knew the boy wouldn't like it, but no son of his was going to play with crazy women who thought they could fly! Naturally, Babe took the boy's side: "He just feels sorry for her is all."

"Sorry my ass," Kellerman had countered. "That woman's spooky. You didn't see her spreading her wings like a buzzard up on that cliff."

That was three weeks ago. Since then the autumn winds had turned cold. Curly had stayed away from the Crow Woman all right--but he'd also avoided his father, first claiming that since he had no one close by to play with he just wanted to be left alone. That was OK until Kellerman discovered him sitting under the mulberry tree, talking to a sparrow. Who you talking to? Kellerman had asked. The bird flew away as he approached. Nobody, Curly answered, and stared down at the ground until Kellerman walked on toward the schoolhouse. Inside, he looked out the window and saw Curly climbing the tree toward another sparrow on a higher branch. Kellerman held his breath as the boy climbed to within maybe four feet of the bird--then sighed with relief as the bird flew off.

He decided to say nothing more about it to the boy, and hadn't, though in the three weeks since the incident on the cliff Curly seemed to talk more to the birds in the trees than to his father. It'll pass, Kellerman had thought.

Then five days ago Curly had started pretending to be sick in the morning. This morning Kellerman discovered the boy had stopped wearing pajamas. Enough's enough, Kellerman thought now as he pulled the Hudson into the driveway. He wanted to make peace with his son by playing a little catch before they sat down to dinner. Fat chance, Kellerman admitted as he switched off the ignition. Curly hadn't touched a ball or bat since Kellerman's return from Afton.

Getting out of the car, Kellerman had the strong impression the school bus had beaten him home. The back yard looked empty. "Where's the boy?" he practically shouted at Babe as he entered the kitchen--then hushed when he saw the look on her face. She was standing next to the window by the sink.

"He's talking to a skunk," she whispered and pointed through the glass.

Kellerman turned and looked back through the screen door. In a moment he saw them, next to the propane tank, which had blocked his view before. Boy and skunk faced each other about a yard apart. Curly sat cross-legged on the ground, whispering and holding out a piece of raw bacon. The skunk was twisted into a U with both ends facing Curly: nose sniffing cautiously at the meat, tail pointing straight up, ready to spray.

Kellerman watched the two figures and felt a chill. "See?" he whispered to Babe. "Regression."

"Oh, stop it, Frank," Babe whispered. "Just don't let him touch that thing."

Kellerman told her to calm down. Regression or not, the boy knew all about skunks. If he was fool enough to get close enough to one to get sprayed, then maybe this was the best way to learn his lesson. Babe looked at Kellerman and cringed. Kellerman watched the two figures by the tank and chewed his lip. Despite the erect tail, the skunk seemed more intrigued than angry--and appeared to be edging closer to the meat. The boy's eyes turned a brilliant white, lit with the same intensity Kellerman had seen in the gully. He suddenly realized the boy might get close enough to the skunk to be bitten.

"Hey!" Kellerman banged on the door frame as he yelled.

The skunk jumped, sprayed Curly in the face, and ran off. Curly gagged and struck wildly at his eyes. Kellerman gasped, then raced toward his son.

"You stupid, stupid!" Babe stammered a few minutes later, and struck Kellerman several times on the shoulder as they rubbed Curly's face with wet soapy towels. The stench choked off the boy's sobs and made Kellerman's nose and eyes burn as if he were sniffing gasoline. He held his breath and tried to convince himself it would have been far worse if the skunk had gotten close enough to bite his son.

"I'm sorry," Kellerman moaned, but couldn't tell if the boy even heard him.

It took half the night to wash the worst part of the stink off. Kellerman cringed as he watched Curly's face turn red and raw--dead, chafed skin peeling off in patches like a first degree burn. "It'll be fine by Monday," Kellerman lied, and crept out of the bathroom.

Saturday morning Kellerman realized in shame that their roles had been reversed somehow: Now he was lying and avoiding his son's eyes. Babe's unforgiving stare was almost as difficult to bear. What are you going to do about this? her eyes demanded. He had no idea. Curly was even more remote now, hardly acknowledging Kellerman's existence. And when the boy did take not of him, it was with suspicion, as if there were always another angle, another shade of meaning in every word, movement, gesture. Kellerman ran his palm over his bald head and tried to think. He needed a lever, a point of common interest, like playing catch had been, to reach the boy. On Saturday afternoon he came up with an idea.

"Get in. We're going to town," he ordered both of them and held open the door to the old GMC pickup.

"What for?" Babe asked as she climbed into the cab.

"We'll know when we get there," Kellerman answered and held the door open for Curly to climb in between them. The boy remained where he was, standing about six feet away, frowning at the truck. Kellerman waited. He had chosen the old GMC pickup because it was Curly's favorite to ride in. When he was five Curly had pronounced GMC "Jimmy." Hop up here in my lap and I’ll let you steer Jimmy, Kellerman used to say.

Now, his face red and peeling, Curly stared suspiciously at his father holding open the door. "Hop in," Kellerman said brightly. The boy glanced at Babe, who was sitting quietly in the cab, then raced past Kellerman and climbed into the bed of the pickup and settled down in the corner next to the spare tire. Kellerman choked off the groan in his throat and got in.

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The ride into Yukon was silent. They stopped in front of Kroeger's Pet Shop. Babe looked over at Kellerman and sighed. "I appreciate what you're doing, but I don't think it'll work."

Probably right, Kellerman thought as they went in. He'd tried this tactic once before, when Curly was eight, bringing home a slobbering German Shepherd pup named Fritz. What kind of boy doesn’t like dogs? Kellerman had reasoned. But Curly would have nothing to do with the pup, who wet the rug five times before Kellerman decided to keep him strictly in the garage. I’d rather have a rat, Curly said, and refused to feed the pup. You’re forcing it on the boy, Babe explained. You should let him pick out his own pets. Kellerman was bitter. My old man wouldn’t even let me have a dog, he said. He was sure Curly would learn to love the pup in time, but after a week Fritz was run over by a hay truck.

Maybe Babe's right, Kellerman conceded now as they gawked at the newspaper-lined cages of howling, hissing, whimpering, pissing dogs, cats, geese, hamsters, and other stinking animals.

Got any skunks or rats? Kellerman almost asked old man Kroeger, but thought better of it. If the boy sees something he likes, fine. If not, I ain't saying a word. He almost said something when Curly stared for a long time into a tank containing piranha fish. Thank God it's not feeding time, Kellerman thought when the boy finally looked bored and moved on. All of the animals seemed to bore him, especially the yowling, scratching dogs. He passed cage after cage, barely glancing at the wet, eager noses pressed against the wire. At the very end of the row was a single cage. Curly stopped in front of it and stared inside.

Casually, Kellerman moved over to the next aisle and began examining boxes of bird seed. Out of the corner of his eye he peered back at the cage. Inside was a ragged lump of brown fur. Kellerman pretended to read the back of a box of Hartz Mountain parakeet seed, waiting for Curly to move on. He didn't.

"What's in that last cage over there?" Kellerman whispered to old man Kroeger at the register. Babe was looking out the window, but he could tell she was listening.

Kroeger was a tan, wrinkled old man with a fae like a dried mud pie. "Golden basset hound," he replied tonelessly.

"Dog?" Kellerman asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Practically pure bred." Kroeger was peeling 75 cent price tags off plastic bowls and sticking on tags that said $1.98.

"Dead or alive?" Kellerman said, looking back at the motionless lump in the cage.

"You couldn't afford a live one," Kroeger said.

Kellerman walked back to where Curly was still standing in front of the cage. Up close Kellerman could see the basset hound looked just like Kroeger. "You like that dog?" he asked, trying not to sound hopeful.

Curly shrugged. "OK."

Kellerman looked down at the dog, who lay in a wrinkled heap with one eye open watching a bug crawl along the rim of an empty water dish. "This here dog chase cars?" Kellerman shouted back at Kroeger.

Kroeger shook his head. "Guaranteed not to--legs too short."

"Yeah? Well, what does he do?"

"Drink beer. He prefers Budweiser, but he'll drink Coors if he has to."

Kellerman looked back down at the dog, who lifted his head and gave Kellerman a droopy-eared look that reminded him of the winos in the alley next to the old Colcord Hotel in the City. "You sure this is the one you want, son?"

Curly curled his fingers around the wire of the cage and nodded.

A beer hound. Curly named him Boozer. The fence around their five acres consisted of only three wires, so the first thing Curly did was teach Boozer never to cross the road in front of the house alone. Kellerman watched him spend hours that first evening training the dog to be walked across, whipping him on the butt with a magazine whenever he tried to cross by himself. Now that's sense, Kellerman thought. Just before sundown they gave Boozer a pail of beer with his Kennel Ration. "Sonofabitch drinks like my old man used to," Kellerman remarked as they watched Boozer lap up the entire pail without coming up for air, then raise his head and lick the foam off his nose. Fifteen minutes later Boozer stretched out on his back on the grass and began to make gurgling noises, then moved his legs back and forth like he was trying to trot upside down. Then he fell asleep.

"Well, I'll swan," Babe said, laughing on the porch.

"Not exactly Rin Tin Tin," Kellerman observed.

"He's better," Curly said.

Curly loved Boozer immediately, Kellerman noted with satisfaction and hope. Satisfaction that he had finally given the boy something that he liked, hope that the dog would somehow get Kellerman and his son back on the right track. It was too early to tell. At least Curly was now playing with a real pet instead of talking to skunks and wild birds and crazy old women. Kellerman was careful not to appear to take advantage of whatever feelings the beer hound may have awakened in his son. For his part, Curly remained distant all weekend, never inviting Kellerman to join in the games of chase and tug of war he played with Boozer. On Sunday afternoon, after Boozer appeared to be learning his lesson about the road, Curly took him hunting in Orville's pasture down by the creek. Boozer was too short-legged to actually catch anything, so the two of them returned that evening empty-handed except for the Daisy air rifle slung over Curly's shoulder and the cockle burrs stuck in Boozer's ears. Kellerman had given Curly the BB gun last summer. I never had such a thing when I was growing up, Kellerman said the day he handed the shiny black rifle to his son. But Curly had kept the gun in his closet, claiming he didn't like to shoot things. My son the apprentice monk, Kellerman had thought. He was glad the boy had finally changed his mind.

"I think you may have done something," Babe whispered in his ear as they crawled under the covers that night.

Kellerman nodded hopefully. "Tomorrow's the test," he whispered back, and turned around to find Babe smiling at him.

On Monday morning Kellerman went to roust Curly out of bed--and discovered he was already at the breakfast table, eating a bowl of Wheaties. Boozer lay under the table, sniffing at Curly's sneakers. Now this is more like it, Kellerman thought, but said nothing as Babe handed him his coffee and turned up the volume on the Today show.

Kellerman looked at his son. In the last few weeks the boy actually seemed to have grown a little, his stick-like arms beginning to flesh out just a bit. Good, Kellerman thought.

For the first time in weeks, Kellerman drove to work content.

The weather turned colder that week. The north wind stripped the last leaves off the maple trees in the back yard and covered the bare limbs with frost. As Kellerman pulled into the driveway each evening he could see Orville in the distance, plowing the field beyond the east fence with his John Deere. Each evening Kellerman hoped Curly and Boozer would be waiting on the back porch or snuggled warm in the kitchen to greet him. But he was disappointed. Every afternoon after school Curly disappeared with Boozer and the BB gun. The first couple of days Kellerman let it go. Wednesday afternoon he began to complain. "Just once I'd like to come home to my family when my family's all home," he said to Babe, hoping she'd take the hint.

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"The boy's got his own way, Frank," she countered, though her eyes looked softer this time.

Thursday afternoon the boy and dog were gone as usual. Kellerman glared at Babe, then turned around and went back out the door to look for them.

As he crossed the pasture to the wooded area down by the creek he began to have second thoughts. So the boy has his own private time with his dog--what's wrong with that? Now you're going to horn in on it. Why? Because it doesn't include you.

He had almost talked himself into going back when he spotted them. They were just ahead, moving through the dry brush around the red bud trees, heading for the creek. Without thinking about it, he decided to hang back and follow them.

He crept along about fifty yards behind, watching Boozer lead the way, sniffing and scratching through the dead brush. Probably buried his empty Bud cans down here, Kellerman thought as he peeked through the red bud trees. Curly was right behind Boozer, air rifle braced against his chest, trying to move quietly through the brush but snapping twigs and catching limbs across the face. As hunters they were pathetic, Kellerman judged. Birds, rabbits, and chipmunks heard Boozer thrashing long before he was aware of them. When he managed to catch a scent he would rear up and bellow, scaring off everything within a hundred yards. Whenever a lazy sparrow would actually take wing at close range, Curly would line up the shot but never fire. Kellerman wondered if the BB gun was even loaded.

He lost them when the dry gullies leading into the creek began to branch out into the pasture beyond. He started to turn back when he heard Boozer woofing and baying at something further up. Beerbelly's finally cornered something, he thought, and hurried up the gully to see. He rounded the bend--and saw the Crow Woman looming on the edge of the cliff.

Kellerman froze. Curly was on the cliff with her, only a few feet away. They faced each other, squatting about six feet from the edge, flapping their arms and making laughing, crow-like sounds. Boozer trotted nervously around them, barking and whining and trying to join in. Kellerman had no sense of time, no idea how long he stood on the dry creek bed looking up through the steam of his own breath at the sight above him. He saw, felt, only the image before him: The idiot woman and his son, facing each other, two gross mockeries of birds, flapping their arms like wings, cawing, staring into each other's eyes and seeing God knows what, while the whining dog bounded around and around them. And then, in a flash that nearly knocked him flat, Kellerman recognized what was taking place--saw Curly expand his arms and hold them steady like the wings of a hawk gliding above a field, saw the Crow Woman spread her own arms an instant later, her gray shawl lifting in the breeze. She was imitating him.

"Curly!"

The cry was involuntary. He yelled without thinking, without meaning anything. If he had been thinking, he would have kept silent. The sound of his voice startled the woman more than the boy. She jumped, took a couple of flapping hops trying to right herself--and stepped over the edge. Her long dress caught the wind like lifting wings, holding her a moment in mid-air like a great bird just beginning to soar--then the dress blew over his head and she dropped like a sky diver whose chute had failed. The cliff was about twenty feet high at the point she fell, and Kellerman felt more than heard the smack of her brittle body on the sand floor of the creek.

The impact flattened her into a splotch of indistinguishable color on the sand. She lay silent, unmoving, the dress covering her like a shroud.

Kellerman raised his eyes to the cliff. Curly stood looking down at the Crow Woman, his eyes glazed over, seeing and not seeing the image before him, like a blind clerk Kellerman had once seen drop a porcelain statuette of Will Rogers on the marble floor in front of the Bureau of the Handicapped Booth in the capitol. The statuette had shattered with the explosive pop of a light bulb. The blind man remained standing over the spot of impact, arms still extended, clenching and unclenching his fists, as if time could somehow be reversed and he could find again in the invisible space before him the fragile object that had slipped through his grasp. On the cliff above Kellerman now, Curly's hands dangled helplessly at his sides, fingers quivering in faint spasms. Next to him Boozer peered over the edge, ears half lifted, half drooping in futile attention to the mute figure lying on the sand. Boozer wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air, then began to whine.

"She's OK," Kellerman yelled suddenly.

Even before Curly's stunned eyes turned toward him, Kellerman knew what he had done. "She's OK," he repeated, as if saying the words could make them true. He moved toward her with a will that was not will, a hope that was not hope. Fear thrust him toward like the brute reflex of a cornered animal--but slowly, the air around him grown suddenly thick and heavy, resisting him like water. He had never seen her up close. When finally he stood breathless and trembling over her still body, the first thing he noticed was insignificant, ridiculous: The dress she wore was blue. Or once had been blue--age had left only a hint, a vague memory of color. He didn't wonder about it, for lying there in a rippled splatter on the sand she looked chillingly bird-like. Like a chicken hawk dashed to earth, knocked out of the clear bright sky by a farmer's shotgun. He saw no blood, no steamed breath rising from her lips in the cold air. The profile of her bird face displayed the rigid contortions and contradictory ease of death. Her eyes were pinched shut from the opposing pressures of earth and twisted shoulders; he beak-like mouth opened slightly, allowing a gray tongue to spill out, coated with speckles of sand. She must have weighed all of eight-five pounds, a wreckage of hollow broken bones.

Then she moved.

Her head twisted slowly upward and her eyes cracked open, looking up at Kellerman with a cold black light. In the eerie suspense of the moment, her stirring did not really surprise him. What he saw in her eyes did. He expected only the dumb, stricken look of a wild bird brought to earth. But as she looked up at him the impenetrable blackness in her eyes seemed to dissolve for a moment into soft blue. And something else--a look that startled, bewildered, and finally terrified him: A soft blue look of intimacy. Trust. She knew him. Or thought she did. And he knew instantly he would never understand that look--nor the word that issued faint but unmistakable from her cracked lips:

"Hubert."

The word shook Kellerman to his bones.

But before he could say anything, before he could even consider his reaction, consider pretending for a moment that he was indeed Hubert, indeed her long-dead husband (long dead crazy man who thought he was a catfish, then a bird) come back to this world from a better one--before he could even consider this, the soft blue look in her eyes vanished. Her eyes returned to black, and she was gone.

Trembling, Kellerman looked up at the cliff. Curly had disappeared. Boozer stared down at the body on the creekbed, then lifted his head toward the gray sky and began to howl.

Kellerman looked up. Staring down on him like a pale ghost was a full moon.

* * *

"I want you to know I don't consider what happened your fault, Frank." Orville Zucha sat on Kellerman's sofa, his John Deere cap crumpled in his lap.

It was Friday morning, following a night Kellerman wanted desperately to forget. Curly was still in bed. Kellerman had tired to get him up half an hour ago. I’m sick, Curly had said, and pulled the covers more tightly around his neck. Kellerman was afraid to pull them off, afraid to discover the boy had shed his pajamas once again. He left Curly in bed.

"I appreciate your coming over to tell me that, Orville," Kellerman said. I wish you'd tell the boy, he wanted to add, but didn't.

"Nope," Orville said, twisting the cap in his fists. "You warned me for ten years something like this might happen. I guess I always knew it could."

"You want some coffee," Babe asked.

"Nope." Orville shook his square head and rose to his feet. "That's all I come for."

Kellerman stood. "Sorry it happened."

Orville shrugged and opened the front door. He pulled on his cap and turned back to Kellerman. "I 'preciate your puttin' up with Mama all these years."

Kellerman felt his face turn bright red.

Orville's eyes were moist. "That old woman was crazy, but I loved her. I wished I could of been a bird so I could of told her."

Kellerman swallowed and tried to say something, but Orville was out the door.

In the kitchen a few minutes later Babe laid her hands on Kellerman's shoulder. "I just looked in on Curly," she said softly, then paused for a moment. "Maybe you were right all along, Frank. We've got to do something to help him."

"Something," Kellerman said, and headed out the door.

He thought about it all day as he replaced light bulbs and monitored power gauges at the capitol. What could they do? Have the boy see a head doctor? Would that really help him? Despite all his thoughts about regression, Kellerman didn't really think much of psychology. The problem seemed bigger than that somehow.

Driving home that evening, he tried to think of something to say to Curly. It’s nobody’s fault, son, was the best he could come up with, and he knew it wouldn't do.

"Where is he?" Kellerman asked Babe when he stepped through the kitchen door.

"He's over on the south side of the house, playing with Boozer. I let him stay home from school today," she added.

Kellerman nodded and stepped over to the side window next to the refrigerator. Through the glass he saw the two of them, boy and dog, playing a silent game of tug or war with a rag. He had intended to rap on the glass and call Curly inside to talk. The silent fury of the boy's tugging stopped him. He realized the game was not a game but a release. He did not interrupt.

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He decided to speak to Curly after dinner, but when Babe cleared the dishes away Kellerman discovered his mind was a blank. He opened his mouth to speak as the boy got up from the table, but no words came out. Curly looked him in the eye for an instant before heading back to his bedroom.

"In the morning," Kellerman promised Babe. "I'll talk to him in the morning."

"Tomorrow morning's the funeral," Babe reminded him.

"I know."

* * *

He awoke suddenly in the night.

"What? What?" he cried, and threw off the blankets.

"It's Boozer," Babe said wearily. "He's howling. Go see what's the matter with him."

Arrroooooo. The mournful sound filled the house as Kellerman got out of bed and padded down the dark hallway toward the kitchen. In the moonlight he saw Boozer with his paws up on the sink, howling out the back window. Kellerman flipped on the light. In the harsh brightness he could see the dog trembling.

"It's only the moon, boy," Kellerman said.

Boozer paid no attention. He howled once more, then dropped down on all fours, panting heavily, as if he had just run a great distance. Large drops of sweat dripped off his nose, spotting the floor. Kellerman spoke soothingly to him, but the dog appeared not to hear. A few moments later Boozer's ears lifted and he looked around the room, around and through Kellerman, as if he weren't there.

Suddenly Boozer bolted past Kellerman back through the doorway into the dark hall.

"Where you going?" Kellerman called after him, then spotted two eyes watching from the dark hall. "Curly?" he said. The dog and the eyes vanished. A moment later he heard the door to Curly's bedroom click shut.

* * *

At breakfast Saturday morning Kellerman felt himself trembling. It wasn't from trying to talk to the boy across the table, though the words still hadn't come, and Babe was beginning to look at him sharply. It was the idea of going to the Crow Woman's funeral that frightened him. His fear made no sense, he knew, but he couldn't help it. He was afraid she would make that sound--the hideous moaning crow sound--then sit up in the casket and open her eyes (which eyes--black or sky blue?) and see him. See who? he asked himself. Frank Kellerman, the man who had scared her to her death? Or dead Hubert, who wanted her to fly?

He thought he understood now why Mabel had watched him all these years. But why had she picked him out to be Hubert? Just because he worked in that old schoolhouse? He looked nothing at all like Hubert. Old man Loudermilk had shown him pictures of a tall, skinny, round-eyed boy with skin the shade of bleached sand. The Man in the Moon, old man Loudermilk called him. Kellerman was short, bald, swarthy, and squinty-eyed. Why pick him?

He tried to put the fear out of his mind by talking to Curly. "I want you to understand something, son," he began. "What happened to Mrs. Zucha was nobody's fault. Not mine, not yours. She was old and it was her time." Kellerman noticed Curly was trembling too, then realized the boy had never been to a funeral. "There's nothing strange or scary about a funeral," Kellerman said. "It's just a time to show your respect, that's all. Your mother and I will be right there beside you. After we get home we'll have a talk. OK?"

Curly looked up at Kellerman and his eyes seemed to soften. Kellerman wanted to reach out and hug him, but was afraid the boy would back away. Don't push, he warned himself. A moment later Curly got up and went to his room. Babe came over and stood next to Kellerman. He took her hand. "Let's get ready," he said.

The funeral turned out to be uneventful. To Kellerman's relief, the Catholic funeral mass required a closed casket. Half of Yukon were there, it seemed, including most of the old-timers like Horace Loudermilk and Bob Swanda. Kellerman knew some of them would got down to the Los Angeles Gardens afterward to swap Crow Woman stories. He wanted no part of it. Nor could he bear to look straight at Orville, whose honest, square head bowed like a tilting brick as he knelt in the first pew. Throughout the mass Kellerman kept an eye on Curly. The boy seemed to bear up pretty well, Kellerman decided, though he did notice Curly seemed unnaturally stiff, as if he were holding something in. Kellerman had expected to boy to cry, maybe even make a scene, and was glad he hadn't.

Boozer greeted them at the back door, bounding into Curly's arms. Kellerman tossed his coat on a chair and heaved a great sigh. Now that they were home, he felt less urgent about talking to Curly. He decided to talk to the boy after dinner, after he'd had a chance to figure out what needed to be said.

After dinner he was still sorting things out. Idiot, he thought. Just tell the boy what you want him to know. But what was that? That his father still loved him after taking away his special playmate, after what had happened with the skunk, after what had happened in the gully? It was true--why was it so hard to say?

The evening air was turning cold, but the three of them decided to take Boozer out back to play. Boozer was especially playful this evening, bounding after balls and rolling onto the crisp lawn. Whatever had set him to howling the night before was obviously long gone. Later they sat on the porch and watched Boozer lap up his pail of Budweiser, foam bubbling up his snout. Kellerman smiled, though he'd seen this sight many times before. Babe and Curly were smiling too, watching the dog, and Kellerman was grateful for the rare moment when all the felt the same way about something. A few minutes later they were all laughing out loud as Boozer tried trot, right-side-up this time, after finishing his beer. It was hilarious, watching him stagger around the back yard on three, then two legs, dragging his butt over the grass. Curly tried to help him keep his balance, lifting his rear end in an attempt to keep his back legs vertical. It was no use. "Nice try, Rin Tin," Kellerman said when Boozer finally gave up and rolled over on his back to sleep. Boozer always slept for at least an hour after taking his brew. As the sky darkened Curly went inside to watch television; Babe started the dishes. Kellerman remained on the porch, watching the lights of Oklahoma City begin to glow on the eastern horizon, feeling more content than he had in weeks. He didn't notice Boozer roll groggily to his feet and head for the road.

The Coca Cola truck wound up in the ditch, bottles stuck in the earth like stubby knives. "I swerved to miss him," the shaken driver swore. "But he trotted right in front of my wheels."

"I'll bet, you blind bastard." Only the absurd knowledge that it was the dog who had been drunk kept Kellerman from grabbing the driver by the throat. Curly looked at the body in the ditch and said nothing.

They buried Boozer under the mulberry tree. Kellerman dug the hole and refilled it. Curly stood off to one side, by himself, staring at the hole. When he had finished filling the hole, Kellerman dropped the shovel and just stood there.

"We'll get another dog," Babe said in her strongest voice. "You can pick one out tomorrow."

Curly stared off toward the west, where the last glow of the sunset was fading into gray.

"It's OK to cry," Babe said. Curly looked down at his feet. Babe turned to Kellerman. "Tell him, Frank."

Father and son looked at each other. The boy's eyes were round and white in the twilight. "Well, say something," Babe urged.

Kellerman's lips trembled. He opened his mouth half an inch, but nothing came out. A few moments later Curly walked past him toward the house.

Babe watched him go, then shook her head and sighed. "Don't worry; he'll get over it," she said softly to Kellerman, and laid her hand on his shoulder. Kellerman pulled away and looked at her with wild eyes.

* * *

Late that night a sound woke Babe from a fitful sleep.

"Frank?"

She rolled over to find his half of the bed empty. "Frank?" she repeated, louder this time, and sat up in bed. The sound--low, mournful--echoed again. She leaped out of bed and flipped on the light. "Frank? Curly?"

No answer. She grabbed her robe and hurried down the hallway toward Curly's room. The boy's bed was empty, the covers thrown back. At the foot of the bed his pajamas lay in a heap.

"Curly!" she shouted, and ran back through the house. In the kitchen she heard the sound again--it was coming from the outside.

"Curly! Frank! Where are you?"

She could see nothing through the window, only the faint reflection of the moon on the glass. She took a deep breath and opened the back door. A cold wind stabbed her through the screen and she pulled her robe tight. Squinting, she brushed windblown hair out of her eyes and searched the dark yard.

A moment later the sound echoed again. She turned toward it--and gasped.

There, next to the mulberry tree, she saw them: two dim, shivering silhouettes in the moonlight. Her husband and son, standing naked, clutching each other chest to chin like frightened lovers--their heads tilted up toward the cold gray moon, their mouths wide open, moonlit steam rising from their lips like ghosts, releasing the sound, howling the moon out of the sky.