Crows, Talking to Him, 1963 by John Brantingham

Henry has been discharged neither honorably nor dishonorably because one day he just didn’t feel like eating anymore, so he got too skinny. They told him that he needed to get healthy again, but what was the point? Maybe he’d have something when he got hungry, but most of the time he didn’t, so they told him to go home, and now he’s on a bus to upstate New York, way back as far as he can be: folded arms, closed eyes, hoping everyone keeps away, but passengers keep coming until it’s full. A woman about his age, pretty and all of that, sits down next to him and says, oh I get to sit next to a man in a uniform. He says I guess so, but without any flirt in his voice because he’s not hungry for food or sex or people. All he wants these days is just sleep, so he closes his eyes, and he keeps them shut going off into a kind of half sleep with its half dreams. He only resurfaces because her hand is on his leg, which would have been a dream a year ago. Now when she pretends that she didn’t realize her hand was there and fakes a giggle, he tells her it’s all right and closes his eyes, but he can feel her tense, and she asks him if he doesn’t like girls or something. The bus is slowing, and even though it’s not his stop, he grabs his duffle and gets off, walking in this strange city in Ohio, maybe 200 miles from home, but he doesn’t want anything to do with the bus or the woman or the army or the world. So he walks until he finds a park, and he sits down against a tree, and it hits him that he is truly and well out, so this is the moment he falls asleep, good and hard, right in the middle of a park in northern Ohio, despite traffic and kids and the sounds of crows telling him he’s allowed to come back to himself now.

John Brantingham’s work has been featured in The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. His nineteen books include Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press), and he co-edited The L.A. Fiction Anthology (Red Hen Press). He manages The Journal of Radical Wonder and lives in Jamestown, NY.

22 July 2022