The Crow

There was a crow in my book club. Not sure who invited him. Someone might have suggested we read The Crow Road and then someone got the crow to join for the first session. We probably laughed. Well not Hilda, she never laughed, she took book club very seriously. If you hadn’t read the assigned chapter and come prepared with notes then you were put on tea and coffee duty. l used to do it on purpose. Not read the book, not prepare any notes. I preferred doing the tea and coffee. And that was why the crow and I became friends.

I’m not sure when I first decided to open the window and actually let the crow inside. It might have been after Hilda gave Deidre a right tongue lashing for saying that Bridget Jones was a modern classic. Hilda doesn’t believe in modern classics. Anything written after Dickens is the work of a world gone mad. Which makes me wonder how we ever came to start reading The Crow Road. No actually I know why. I suggested it, for a laugh, just to lighten the mood. I might even have been the one to invite the crow now that I come to think of it. It’s hard to remember these days. I think it's the meds.

I know just when I decided to let the crow help with the tea and coffee. It was after I watched him pecking away at the counter. The thought came, “I just bet he could dish out the sugar cubes with that beak.” Just seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to ask him while the others were busy debating which was Jade Austen’s best work, Emma or Pride and Prejudice. I prefer Northanger Abbey. Anyway the crow agreed to sugar duty if he could also add the milk. At least I think it was milk. In any case he did a fine job.

I can’t remember when they first noticed my little helper. It might have been after he had that accident with the knife that I used to slice the cake. There was a lot of noise at that point, I think Deidre might have screamed. No one liked my suggestion we use his head to cast lots like they do in The Tenth Man. I don’t think Hilda likes that book. She doesn’t like anything anymore. At least there’s that. Then the police came. I was taken away and given something that made me sleepy.

I have more crows now. They fly in my head and snuggle with me on my pillow. Their feathers are sharp as quills.