"That was odd," she said. "I liked it," Toby said. She scanned farther down the dial, then farther up than before, but she could not find the strange display.
She hit the Off button, and the screen went dark.
"Well, anyway," she said, "time to grab breakfast, so we can get on with the day. Lots to do in town. Don't want to run out of time to buy those sleds."
"Buy what?" the boy asked as he got to his feet. "Didn't you hear me before?"
"I guess."
"About snow?" His small face brightened. "It's gonna snow?"
"You must have enough wax built up in your ears to make the world's biggest candle," she said, heading for the kitchen. Following her, Toby said, "When? When's it gonna snow, Mom? Huh? Today?"
"We could stick a wick in each of your ears, put a match to them, and have candlelight dinners for the rest of the decade."."How much snow?"
"Probably dead snails in there too."
"Just flurries or a big storm?"
"Maybe a dead mouse or three."
"Mom?" he said exasperatedly, entering the kitchen behind her. She spun around, crouched in front of him, and held her hand above his knee. "Up to here, maybe higher."
"Really?"
"We'll go sledding."
"Wow."
"Build a snowman."
"Snowball fight!" he challenged. "Okay, me and Dad against you."
"No fair!" He ran to the window and pressed his face to the glass.
"The sky's blue."
"Won't be in a little while. Guarantee," she said, going to the pantry. "You want shredded wheat for breakfast or cornflakes?"
"Doughnuts and chocolate milk."
"Fat chance."
"Worth a try. Shredded wheat."
"Good boy."
"Whoa!" he said in surprise, taking a step back from the window.
"Mom, look at this."
"What is it?"
"Look, quick, look at this bird. He just landed right smack in front of me." Heather joined him near the window and saw a crow perched on the other side of the glass. Its head was cocked, and it regarded them curiously with one eye. Toby said, "He just zoomed right at me, whoooosh, I thought he was gonna smash through the window. What's he doing?"
"Probably looking for worms or tender little bugs."
"I don't look like any bug."
"Maybe he saw those snails in your ears," she said, returning to the pantry… While Toby helped Heather set the table for breakfast, the crow remained at the window, watching. "He must be stupid," Toby said, "if he thinks we have worms and bugs in here."
"Maybe he's refined, civilized, heard me say cornflakes."
" While they filled bowls with cereal, the big crow stayed at the window, occasionally preening its feathers but mostly watching them with one coal-dark eye or the other.
Whistling, Jack came down the front stairs, along the hall, into the kitchen, and said, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. Can we have eggs and horse for breakfast?"
"How about eggs and crow?" Toby asked, pointing to the visitor.
"He's a fat and sassy specimen, isn't he?" Jack said, moving to the window and crouching to get a close look at the bird.
"Mom, look! Dad's in a staring contest with a bird," Toby said, amused. Jack's face was no more than an inch from the window, and the bird fixed him with one inky eye. Heather took four slices of bread out of the bag, dropped them in the big toaster, adjusted the dial, depressed the plunger, and looked up to see that Jack and the crow were still eye-to-eye. "I think Dad's gonna lose," Toby said.
Jack snapped one finger against the windowpane directly in front of the crow, but the bird didn't flinch. "Bold little devil," Jack said.
With a lightning-quick dart of its head, the crow pecked the glass in front of Jack's face so hard that the tock of bill against pane startled him into a backward step that, in his crouch, put him off balance. He fell on his butt on the kitchen floor. The bird leaped away from the window with a great flapping of wings and vanished into the sky.
Toby burst into laughter. Jack crawled after him on hands and knees.
"Oh, you think that was funny, do you? I'll show you what's funny, I'll show you the infamous Chinese tickle torture." Heather was laughing too. Toby scampered to the hall door, looked back, saw Jack coming, and ran to another room, giggling and shrieking with delight.
Jack scrambled to his feet. In a hunchbacked crouch, growling like a troll, he scuttled after his son. "Do I have one little boy on my hands or two?" Heather called after Jack as he disappeared into the hall.
"Two!" he replied. The toast popped up. She put the four crisp pieces on a plate and slipped four more slices of bread into the toaster. Much giggling and maniacal cackling was coming from the front of the house. Heather went to the window. The tock of the bird's bill had been so loud that she more than half expected to see a crack in the glass. But the pane was intact. On the sill outside lay a single black feather, rocking gently in a breeze that could not quite pluck it out of its sheltered niche and whirl it away… She put her face to the window and peered up at the sky. High in that blue vault, a single dark bird carved a tight circle, around and around. It was too far away for her to be able to tell if it was the same crow or another bird.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They stopped at Mountain High Sporting Goods and purchased two sleds (wide, flat runners, clear pine with polyurethane finish, a red lightning bolt down the center of each), as well as insulated ski suits, boots, and gloves — for all of them.
Toby saw a big Frisbee specially painted to look like a yellow flying saucer, with portholes along the rim and a low red dome on top, and they bought that too.
At the Union 76, they filled the fuel tank, and then went on a marathon shopping expedition at the supermarket. When they returned to Quartermass Ranch at one-fifteen, only the eastern third of the sky remained blue. Masses of gray clouds churned across the mountains, driven by a fierce high-altitude wind-though at ground level, only an erratic breeze gently stirred the evergreens and shivered the brown grass. The temperature had fallen below freezing, and the accuracy of the weathermans prediction was manifest in the cold, humid air.
Toby went immediately to his room, dressed in his new red-and-black ski suit, boots, and gloves. He returned to the kitchen with his Frisbee to announce that he was going out to play and to wait for the snow to start falling.
Heather and Jack were still unpacking groceries and arranging supplies in the pantry. She said, "Toby, honey, you haven't had lunch yet."
"I'm not hungry.
I'll just take a raisin cookie with me." She paused to pull up the hood on Toby's jacket and tie it under his chin. "Well, all right, but don't stay out there too long at a stretch. When you get cold, come in and warm up a little, then go back out. We don't want your nose freezing and falling off." She gave his nose a gentle tweak. He looked so cute. Like a gnome. "Don't throw the Frisbee toward the house," Jack warned him. "Break a window, and we'll show no mercy.
We'll call the police, have you committed to the Montana Prison for the Criminally Insane."
As she gave Toby two raisin cookies, Heather said, "And don't go into the woods."
"All right."
"Stay in the yard."
"I will."
"I mean it." The woods worried her. This was different from her recent irrational spells of paranoia… There were good reasons to be cautious of the forest. Wild animals, for one thing. And city people, like them, could get disoriented and lost only a few hundred feet into the trees.
"The Montana Prison for the Criminally Insane has no TV, chocolate milk, or cookies."