Well, no, I guess not. It seems that—though they mate for life and defend and support their mates fiercely—Crows aren’t all that faithful in practice; there are Crow philanderers, Crow hussies, and what we label incest is meaningless to Crows (and so is innocence). Of course Moss’s daughter wasn’t actually Dar Oakley’s; and though Dar Oakley had seduced her with a purpose other than love, as far as I can tell from asking him, he hadn’t just pretended to feel something in Dr. Hergesheimer’s parlor that he didn’t really feeclass="underline" I think he and all Crows are incapable of that. Anyway Dar Oakley was mated with the daughter of Digs Moss for Snails in every Crow way; pretty soon they started building a nest together. Their first attempt at a family failed, but that’s not unusual for a new bride only a year old. They wouldn’t remain mates for long, but that wasn’t because of anything within the ethos of Ka, or within Dar Oakley’s false heart, either.
At the end of the summer molt, when Crows are spry and happy again, when the job of mating and raising young has gone by successfully or otherwise, when the winter roost is assembling and Crows are choosing to go in this direction or that, to this gathering or that one, then Crow hunting has its high season.
Dr. Hergesheimer had been little seen by any Crow that summer. Whether he’d hunted somewhere else or hadn’t hunted at all—only one Crow wondered about that; but Dar Oakley had flown far and had no news of him. That was odd, but by the time he appeared again in the demesnes of Dar Oakley’s flock, Dar Oakley had been able to prepare, and—more importantly—to see that as many Crows as he could inculcate, induct, persuade, and win over were also prepared.
When he came, Dr. Hergesheimer came alone, which was strange. He drove in the move-by-itself wagon, which slowly bumped and coughed its way over the stubble and the furrows and then through the tall grasses up to the edge of the Beech grove, the roost of Dar Oakley’s great flock. In the open bed in the back were no guns and none of the usual equipment; it was empty except for one long tool and two smallish red boxes. For a long time after he had stilled the truck he only sat in it, a black lump, hands on his knees. The Crows were largely gone at that hour, out in all directions foraging in the drought. The Beech leaves were already turning. Dar Oakley, out of sight, grew restless watching the Doctor do nothing at all; he had to struggle with an impulse to fly out above him, show his face.
Not yet.
Dr. Hergesheimer at last got out of the truck and went to the rear to remove the tool and the two red boxes. Carrying them, he walked out across a dry streambed to where the trees grew most densely. He put down the boxes, and with the tool he bored a hole in the earth—that was what this tool was for, one of the countless tools that People used, each for a different purpose. When he had pulled up the augur and knocked the dirt from it, he knelt to open the boxes, and from them he took a number of red cylinders and carefully slipped them one by one into the hole, tamping each one down with a willow stick he picked up. The last red cylinder he messed with awhile for reasons Dar Oakley couldn’t perceive, and then put it, too, into the hole, and from it he uncoiled a long thick thread or thin rope, black and stiff, which he laid out across the ground, clearing space in the grass and earth for it to lie flat and straight. That was tempting; Dar Oakley wondered if he ought to drop down and tug at it, pull it away, but thought not. Let him see more of what the Doctor was up to.
When all that was done, Dr. Hergesheimer walked back to his wagon and sat on its footstep. He took a flat bottle from one pocket and bread from another and ate and drank. The shadows of the trees lengthened over the grass.
Dar Oakley had never understood why Dr. Hergesheimer had for so long hated him. Actually, he never tried very hard to understand it; he knew the boy and the man hated Crows. But it was Moss’s daughter who had revealed to him that it was he alone, Dar Oakley, that the Doctor sought. How could she have learned such a thing, not being a particularly smart Crow? It took her a while to make clear to him how Dr. Hergesheimer would point to his cheek when he talked to other hunters or with farmers whose fields he crossed with his guns. White cheek, the gesture meant, she was sure of it. With her in the field where she called Crows to their deaths, he’d point at his own face—white cheek—and then to the sky and the trees where Crows were and where the Crow he wanted might be.
However that was, Dar Oakley was certain that no matter how much the Doctor had hated him before, he hated him more now, when the little Crow he’d caught and raised had been stolen from him. Perhaps that was why he sat there unmoving: he was waiting for the Crow he loved to return to him.
It was now the time the Crows began to return to the trees. Dr. Hergesheimer roused, stood, and lifted the Crow-call from where it hung on his breast, wetted the stopper, and called. The call wasn’t Distress, it wasn’t Rally, it was a simple Here I am, where are you? Dr. Hergesheimer blew with his hands cupped at the end of the call, moving them expertly to control the air flow. It always amazed Dar Oakley that the sound made by a Crow-call—even when blown by an expert, even the sound made by the Doctor’s magical call—was actually not the sound made by any living Crow, and yet it could reach deeply and instantly into Crow hearts. Into his, Dar Oakley’s, too. Crows were already answering, Crows who were making for the Beech grove, calling, I’m coming, I’m near; their responses earned other calls from other Crows. From far off they could see that the hunter was no threat to them, had no gun.
The roost was filling.
Dr. Hergesheimer had let his Crow-call fall and lit a cigar when both he and Dar Oakley saw Moss’s daughter come in. She cried to see him—perhaps she knew him by the smoke, but she certainly knew him. Hello, hello, still the fledgling’s seeking cry. She left the crowd she’d come in with and fell, crying all the while, to where the Doctor sat. He laid the cigar on the stepping-place of his wagon, and lifted up his hand to her—you could see the grin within his black beard. Dar Oakley called to her, Come away, come, danger, danger, but Crow calls don’t carry names—they’re a different order of speech—and Dar Oakley also didn’t want to alarm the gathering Crows so that they scattered. Because this was their moment, confused and unsettling as it had become.
He descended from his perch and beat down toward where the Doctor stood. Shrieking defiance, he turned his white cheek to him. It’s me, here I am, he cried in challenge, in fury: all the fury of his father finding the Vagrant with Mother, the fury of Va Thornhill’s Crows in the rout of the Wolves gang. He hadn’t actually been able to imagine very exactly what would happen after this challenge, since he’d formerly expected a gun, a pursuit, and now that was out. He settled on the ground, staring down his enemy first with the darkwise, then the daywise eye, challenging him to come on.
There was no way to understand what the Doctor did then: he laughed a big, warm laugh. He cast off Moss’s daughter and took strides toward Dar Oakley as though to converse with him. He even waved his hand. Like a shy female with an aggressive suitor, Dar Oakley lifted off and then settled again not far off, closer to the trees. Dr. Hergesheimer followed. Did he mean to capture Dar Oakley with his bare hands? The Crows in the trees were calling, querying, warning, changing places, the Biggers closer, others scolding from farther off.
Well, this’ll do, Dar Oakley thought, this’ll do. Dr. Hergesheimer came closer, talking in words Dar Oakley didn’t understand but pressing him farther into the grove, sometimes shooing him like a farmwife shooing chickens when he seemed to want to go elsewhere. But elsewhere wasn’t where Dar Oakley wanted to go. What must happen was happening, though for no reason Dar Oakley knew: Dr. Hergesheimer was within the home place of a multitude of Crows.