Crows Read Online Free PDF Page B

credit to get my degree.”
    â€œThen what will you do?”
    â€œI don’t know. I worked for the Scale until it folded.”
    â€œRobert Cigar,” Ben said, as if hearing the name for the first time. “You wrote about Olive, and you wrote about my boy Buzz.”
    â€œDid I make up quotes for him, too?”
    Ben laughed. “You’ll have to ask him that.”
    â€œWe were instructed to get the names in the paper,” Robert said. “As many as possible. Whole rosters. Names sold papers—­though evidently not enough. I was pretty good at it. I was the best pure writer on the staff. But I was lacking in several other facets.”
    Ben listened to this assessment, then said, “I like that you don’t blame others for your fate.”
    â€œNo point in that.”
    â€œBut other than the need for a credit—­why take my class?”
    Robert was afraid to disappoint Ben, but there was no other reason. “I can’t lie,” he said.
    Ben brushed crumbs from his lap. “Of course you can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry to eat and run like this, but I’ve got another appointment in a few minutes. I hope you enjoy my class. It’s intimidating, thinking I may be the last teacher you ever have.”
    He started back down the path through Rapist’s Woods, toward the sciences building. Robert went along with him.
    â€œI hope I haven’t offended you,” he apologized. “All the classes I ever took at M.C. I took because I needed them for a degree.”
    Ben, walking, looked over at Robert. “Well, that’s certainly a vote of confidence.”
    They crossed the walk and entered the building, then again went into that inner core of passageways and climbed to the third floor. All the way Robert groped for some word that would set things right. At any moment Ben could have turned him loose curtly. But he didn’t; he let Robert accompany him back to his office. He unlocked the door and went inside and took his seat. Putting his legs beneath his desk there was a snap! and Ben cried angrily, “Damn!”
    He had kicked a fragile construction of wing bones off the skeleton of the crow. Ben stooped and brought the pedestal and wing up onto the table. “Damn,” he repeated. “When I put that under there I said to myself—­‘Don’t do that. You’ll forget it’s under there and step on it.’ And look what happened.”
    He turned the wing bones in his hand. He blew dust from them.
    â€œLook at this,” he said, suddenly enthusiastic, motioning Robert near. “Hollow bones. Light as a feather. Lighter than a feather. That’s the secret of flight. Birds lack the weight that keeps us lumbering humans earthbound.”
    Ben fit the fractured bone pieces together. “I think I can fix this,” he said. He turned in his chair to listen to the pneumatic sigh of a door opening and closing and a brief clatter of footsteps in the hall.
    â€œHere’s Professor Mason,” he said, just as a large, plain woman with ash blond hair and wide, pale features entered. She slipped past Robert without looking at him and set an armload of books on her desk. Robert was intrigued by the territoriality of the room; Ben dominated fully three-­quarters of the available space and this Professor Mason did not seem to mind.
    â€œThis is Professor Mason,” Ben said to Robert. “This is Robert Cigar, Ara. One of my students. He is a sportswriter of some renown. He’s covered Buzzer.”
    She shook Robert’s hand with the barest interest. “How do you do?” she said. She asked Ben, “Will you be long?”
    The three of them, and the packed papers and jars of life, had reduced the office to an uncomfortable, nearly intimate, dimension.
    â€œLook at this,” Ben said, holding up the broken wing bones. “I put this under my desk and then kicked