It’s early in the year, a good month early, for rains like this. Tropical storms don’t usually arrive until March. But the water lashes and hammers down; it slants meanly from the sky and pummels the roof, the ground, and Weary’s head as he hunches his shoulders and runs to the Jeep.
There is no telling who can get where. Roads will be washed away. The power is out. But Weary is the one in ultimate command (nice—he likes that), and so, come hell or literal high water, he must get to the research facility and make sure the captive crows are tended to.
The wipers flick-flick-flick-flick so fast, but still, he can barely see. The palms whip and sway like manic hula dancers. The Jeep sploshes and spluts in the deep water-filled ruts of the road. At one point up the mountain, he has to gun the accelerator and hope for the best, as there’s a good two feet of floodwater blocking passage.
This would be the time when it would be nice to be back in Boston, tucked warmly into a Starbucks, reading Behavioral Ecology while sipping a peppermint mocha. Then again, that would mean he would not have just made it to the other side of that near-river by his own daring and valor. Anyone can order a double tall. Weary is here at the epic center of Woman-God-Mother-Nature, working with and against her. A palm branch hits the top of the vehicle with a crack, but he is unafraid.
It’s glorious, really. Look around. He’s alive!
The research facility looks brave, too, out here in this storm. With every light out, it’s dim, though, and the overworked gutters pour and pour. Inside, Weary shakes off the wet. First things first—the stores of feed. With the power gone, the eggs are out of the question, same with the fish bait and snails. It’s grains and cat food, shelled nuts and earthworms this week.
When Weary gets to the storage shed, he sees that Lotto is already there. Big, good, devoted Lot. Weary’s heart swells with fondness for him. It lifts with love for fellow humans together in bad times.
“It’s raining like a bastard,” Lotto says.
“It’s a typhoon!” Weary says. “How did you get here?”
“Bike,” Lotto says.
“Bike?” Weary can’t imagine it. There’s no conceivable way. “Bike and a miracle?”
“This storm’s not so bad.” Lotto was born in Nouméa. He’s used to these squalls. “Matias was here before me.”
“Good, good,” Weary says. But what he means is Fantastic. What he means is Thank you for being fine people with fine characters, almost like family. What he means is People like you make a place home.
“You should go back to your house now, Professor,” Lotto says. “It’ll take me and both my cousins to get your Jeep out if it gets stuck.”
“You should go back, Lotto.”
“I’m staying. Plus, Grandma’am is driving me crazy.”
“I don’t want you to be alone up here.”
“How could I be alone, with all of them?” He hooks his thumb toward the corvid pens. “Matias is probably staying, too.”
“Shame about the generator.”
“Piece of shit. Anyway, a generator doesn’t have a chance against this. You ever see a local with one?”
“They’re expensive.”
“Using your head is free and works better. I’d get back down the mountain in a hurry, though, if I were you.”
“I appreciate you, Lot.”
“It’s quieter here with all this wind than at home with Grandma’am and my sisters yapping at me.”
The thing is, in spite of his unconventional situation, life is beautiful here. Life is large. Life is one hundred percent.
With no power, and only the glass of wine for company, Weary is cut off. No phone, no television, but, more important, no Internet. No news. He paces, tries to read. Paces some more. Think of all the things that could be happening with Henry North and Isabelle, during this big stretch of pummeling rain and nothingness.
Plus, he will admit it. He’s become a little addicted to the click-click, the possibilities in the refresh. He’s as bad as the crows with the levers and their hope for their favorite treats. He presses and presses, only he gets tidbits of information instead of tater tots and hard-boiled egg.
The shutters bang-bang-bang. Weary tries to eat what is still safe to eat in the fridge. Drinks more wine. (Well, anyone would.) He paces some more. Knowing that the birds are in good hands back at the center, he has only one worry, one obsessive thought, one question.
What is happening, Isabelle?
Weary thinks of the one-eyed, long-bearded, Norse God Odin, the Raven God, with his long, dark cloak and broad hat, with his two goddess crows, Hunnin and Munnin, who bring him the news from all over Midgard. The ravens fly through the nine worlds and then return to Odin’s throne at dinnertime with their reports, mostly news from the battlefield, news about his female warriors, the Valkyries. Better yet, the raven goddesses could see into the future. They knew who would die, who would conquer, and they would whisper these knowings to him.
Weary could use those crows now.
He can only use the flight of his own imagination. He forces himself to settle into his desk chair, which sits in front of the dark, lifeless computer. The alcohol helps. He shuts his eyes. He raises his black satin wings. He lifts off. The wind through the palms sounds like the atmosphere zipping past his raven ears. The cliff is behind him, and now there’s only sky. He crosses the sea. There is a glass house on a bluff on an island. He swoops past the window, peers inside. There is a man and a woman.
They fight. They make love. A padded envelope sits on a table.
Raven Weary perches on a deck rail. Watches.
Empathy. What is she feeling? What is he? The envelope, which was once in Weary’s hands, is now in hers. He’s seen the hands; he imagines the lovely fingers opening the package. He imagines the weight of the ring on the left hand. Rip, tear, and then the images spill.
Weary knows there’s a good chance that Henry North will see the package this time. Perhaps he’ll even open it, paranoid child that he is. Would it hasten things? Blow it all up? God forbid, draw them closer for a time? Weary can’t control everything. But it seemed right to send the second envelope to their home where he might find it. It’s a little shakeup. A little rattle to the nerves.
Weary tries and tries to stare with his small, black-marble raven eyes into those large glass windows. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. One might think that Henry North is only paranoid because he’s been an unfairly and consistently hunted man. But no. Henry North is paranoid because he’s paranoid. He’s paranoid because he’s insecure, and he’s insecure because he’s been made small by that shitty, mean father of his. Weary is not unsympathetic on this point. He remembers his own father and the broken hinge on that violin case when he was a child, how scared he was to admit to it, because of what would happen. Still, you can blame and blame all you want; your actions are still your actions.
Crows are scavengers. They pick, pick at a body until only the skeleton is left. At first, for Isabelle, there will only be Henry North’s confident solid self, his largeness in the world, his practiced largeness. But then, even without Raven Weary pecking away to expose the soul, Henry North will show what he’s made of. Little by little, he will reveal the thin skin, and then the cruel heart, and then the fragile architecture beneath.
Raven Weary sits on the deck rail and watches. And then he lifts off again, to bring back the news to Norse God Weary, about who will win and who will lose this battle.
It’s possible he’s drunk.