The raven looked from Campos to Mr. Rebeck and back. "Figures. You got the same nutty look."
"What kind of look is that?" Laura asked.
"Half here and half there," the raven answered. "Half in and half out. A nutty look. I know it when I see it."
He turned to Michael. "Latest news and weather forecast. Your old lady's in more trouble than there is in the world."
"Sandra," Michael said. He sat up quickly. "What's happened?"
Laura did not move, but Mr. Rebeck thought that she had become a little more transparent, harder to see. He tried to catch her eye, but she would not look at him.
"The cops found a piece of paper on the floor," the raven said. "Little piece of paper, folded up like a cone. Grains of poison all over it. Everybody's making a big fuss about it."
"Are her fingerprints on it?" Michael asked. He looked hungry, Mr. Rebeck thought, and somehow tired.
"No fingerprints," the raven said. "They figure she held it in a handkerchief when she used it and lost the thing before she could burn it. It was torn off a sheet of typing paper. They're trying to find the rest of the paper now."
Michael sank back slowly. "That's it, then. That's got to be it. It's over."
"Michael," Laura said softly, "drop it. Let it alone. It doesn't matter now."
Michael's voice was fierce and angry. "It matters to me. She's trying to prove I committed suicide. If they let her off, they'll come charging out here with their little shovels and dig me up. Bury me somewhere else, with all the other suicides. Would you like that? Do you want that to happen?"
"No," Laura said. "No. But I don't want her to die."
They stared at each other, ghost and ghost now, oblivious of the two men and the black bird. It was Michael who lowered his eyes first.
"I don't want her to die," he said. "I thought I did, but it doesn't matter. I don't care what happens to her, but I hope she doesn't die."
"Big discovery," the raven grunted. He cackled softly at some private joke. "Her lawyer asked for a postponement. They gave him a week. Trial's on for the fifteenth now."
"They've got her," Michael said without joy. "She must know it. The rest is just ritual. Will you let me know how it goes?"
"Don't nag me," the raven said. "I'll come around again today, after I get a look at the afternoon papers. Anything's in them, I'll let you know."
"Thank you," Michael said.
Campos was sitting cross-legged, with his head tilted far back on his neck, looking straight up into the sky.
"Lose something?" the raven asked him.
Campos lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. "Nobody gonna do any flying today. Rain coming."
The raven fell in with the change of subject. "How the hell do you know?"
"No birds singing," Campos said earnestly. "You hear birds singing, it's not gonna rain. Birds don't go out in the rain."
"That," said the raven, "is a large crock. I used to believe that stuff myself. No more. I woke up one morning and it was all gray, like it was going to storm any minute. But I hear the little birds singing and I think, Nah, my feathered friends wouldn't be out there singing if it was going to rain. They know what they're doing. So I went out to get breakfast, and as soon as I was out in the open it rained like hallelujah, brethren. Just sitting up there, waiting until it could get a good shot at me. And those feathered little bastards sang right through it. They sat in trees and sang. I didn't get dry for a week. Never trusted a bird from that day to this. Never going to."
"You don't like birds, do you?" Laura asked. "I've never heard you say a good word for them."
"It's not I don't like them. I just don't trust them. Every damn bird's a little bit nuts."
"You too," Campos muttered. "You too."
"Me too. Me most of all." The raven poked the lost black feather with a yellow claw. Finally he picked it up in his beak and gave it to Mr. Rebeck. "Put it somewhere," he said. Mr. Rebeck put it in his pocket.
"Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, 'I found it! I found it!' The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was."
"How did he get into Iowa?" Michael asked. "Slept past his station," the raven said scornfully. "How do I know? Probably got lost in a storm. Anyway, he just kept flying around, looking for the ocean. Wasn't discouraged, wasn't afraid. He knew he was going to find the goddam ocean, and all the ponds and streams didn't bother him a bit. Odds are he's still flying around there. Birds are like that."
He bent his head to scratch among the soft underfeathers on his chest and belly. The stars were going out now, one by one, dropping like pennies behind the television aerials and the skylights and the washing strung between the chimneys. The sky was still dark—a sated, navy-blue woman—but the grass was jittery with the expectation of dawn.
"Did you do anything?" Mr. Rebeck finally asked. "Did you help him?"
"What could I do? What the hell can you do for a seagull in Iowa? I just flew away."
"You should have done something," Laura said. "There must have been something you could do."
"I didn't know where the ocean was, for Christ's sake. I was lost too. What else would I have been doing in Iowa?"
"You're never lost," Laura said. "Surely you could have helped him. You could have done something."
"What? What? Will you tell me what?" The raven's beak clicked like a telegraph key. "That's the goddam trouble with you goddam people. You say, 'Something should have been done. You ought to have done something,' and you figure that leaves you clean. No more responsibilities. Don't take it out on me. I'm stupid. I don't know how to help anybody. I was lost too."
He glared around at all of them, muttering to himself, the golden eyes glowing like the devil's battle decorations, aware and alone.
"All right," Michael said. His voice was very low. "You're right and I'm a hypocrite and I've been one all my life. But that isn't going to stop me from feeling sorry for seagulls."
"It wasn't supposed to," the raven said. He looked away at the pink mouth that was just beginning to open in the east. "Dawn's coming."
"We'll wait," Mr. Rebeck said sleepily. His eyes felt as heavy as ball-bearings, and his neck could no longer hold his head erect. "Sing something, Laura. Sing something while we wait for dawn."
"You're half asleep," Laura said. "We'll take you home. You can watch the dawn as we go."
"No. We've sat through the night together. Let's watch the dawn together. It's important." He tried very hard not to yawn and succeeded.
"There's one of them every day," the raven said. "One's like another. You're dead on your feet."
"A singularly tactless image," Michael murmured.
"I'll sing you a song," Laura said to Mr. Rebeck. He could not see her, but her voice was close by. "Lie back, and I'll sing to you. You can watch the dawn lying down." So Mr. Rebeck lay back and felt the grass crush under his body. He put his hand in the pocket of his bathrobe and clutched the raven's lost feather. The rum has made me sleepy, he thought. I shouldn't have drunk so much, after such a long time. Campos was saying something, but his words were like matches lit in a storm. Mr. Rebeck felt a warm redness behind his closed lids and knew that the sun was beginning to rise. "Sing now," he said to Laura.