The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich [5]
Kendra, on the other hand, had resolved her adolescence beautifully. After a few stormy junior high school years following her mother’s death, she settled into a pattern of achieving small things with great flair, for as I mentioned she had no talents, and was at most a mediocre student. She gave the impression that she was going places, though, and so she did, though her acceptance into a prestigious college was a mystery to all who knew Kendra. Her teachers, including me, were stymied. Perhaps it was the interview, one woman told my mother. Another was convinced of a mistake in the college computer records.
At night, in raw blue winter darkness, Krahe enters our house via that back screened porch, a door to which he has the key. The back door inside the porch is the only one that unlocks with that key, and I keep things that way for the following reason: should I decide, should I tire, should I have the enlightenment or the self-discipline or the good sense to stop Krahe from coming to me in the night it will be a simple matter. One locksmith’s fee, nothing more. One tossed key. No explanation owed. Though my mother must sense that Krahe’s night visits occur, we do not and have never spoken of it. Her room is downstairs at the other end of the house. We live privately, in many respects, and although this is how we prefer to live, there are times I nearly spill over with my need and wish to confide my feelings.
For when he steps into my room it is to me as though I am waking on a strange and unlikely margin. As though the ocean is set suddenly before me. Landlocked, you forget. Then all of a sudden you are wading hip-high into the surge of waves. In the moment, there is so much meaning, so much hunger in our mouths and skin. I think every time is the last time I will be with him. I am physically amazed. What I like best is the curious, unfolding, confessional quality of sex. I seek it, demand it of him, and for a matter of hours he is bare to me, all candor and desire. How can he lie? He begs things of me. Put your mouth here. We are reversed from our day selves in nakedness. I gain assurance in some switch of roles I do not altogether understand but which I suspect is entirely due to my manufactured scorn. He believes I am invulnerable. I protect myself with every trick I know.
Ravens are the birds I’ll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens. I’ve watched these birds so hard I feel their black feathers split out of my skin. To fly from one tree to another, the raven hangs itself, hawklike, on the air. I hang myself that same way in sleep, between one day and the next. When we’re young, we think we are the only species worth knowing. But the more I come to know people, the better I like ravens. If I have a religious practice, it is the watching of these birds. In this house, open to a wide back field and pond, I am living within their view and territory. Krahe’s family group of birds divided up a few years ago. Once, they numbered eight or more. Now just three live within and around the pine, and six live somewhere in the heavy fringe of woods beyond my field. Two made their nest. Three hatchlings were reared. The other raven was killed by Davan Eyke.
You may wonder how on earth an undisciplined, highly unpleasant, not particularly coordinated youth could catch and kill a raven? They are infernally