Zumbrota VRBO
4/4/21 Easter Sunday 0215
Enjoyed our stay
here very much. Delightful accommodations, a location with attributes, and
friendly people.
Plus, the weather is
outstanding.
Altogether time and
money well spent.
Further, I had a most
remarkable experience tonight, - well, I guess it was last night as, I see now,
it’s 2 in the morning.
It was late and the weather
lovely – a soft breeze infusing the apartment here. We are from Duluth and in a
day or two we will be returning there. If you don’t know that city, well, we
have no reason to expect similar weather for a month, at least. On an impulse I
decided a walk would be nice. The moon was full and the sidewalks inviting.
Naturally I walked
to the covered bridge. In the park I noticed the crows were gathered in the
trees overhead. They murmured and stirred.
I recalled how,
years ago, when I worked in downtown Minneapolis, the crows would assemble in
Elliot Park across from our office.
Out the window I’d
see them, black clouds distant coming from all points of the compass, in the
premature winter dusk. When I took my walks on my evening break there they
would be. Watching.
On my return here I
decided to walk up East Ave take a look at the old Congregational Church in the
moonlight.
Upon ascending the hill,
I was stopped dead in my tracks. A rickety clacking sound caught my attention.
It was not the sound that halted me though. It was its source.
There crossing the
street in front of me was a singular, dare I call it so, apparition.
For ahead of me, on
the street, crossing diagonally, roughly from the hardware store parking lot, was
an old, no, rather, an ancient woman.
Stooped and bent,
she hobbled across the avenue, leaning forward, both hands upon a crooked cane –
hence the sound. She was swaddled in some sort of black robe, or shawl perhaps,
her head covered by a black hood, face obscured within.
Just when I had
regained myself, I saw something fall from the folds of her garments. A black object
laying there in the center of the avenue.
She continued on
oblivious to her loss.
I hurried to the
object and picked it up. It was a piece of black cloth wrapped about some small
heavy objects of various sizes and shapes.
“Excuse me.” I
called after her. “Excuse me! You dropped something!”
She stopped. She did
not turn for a few heartbeats, but then she rotated a bit and turned her head
slightly. From inside the shadows of the hood a small dark eye glittered. I
could, in profile, see a surprisingly large, and sharp, nose.
I approached, and as
I did, she held out a thin, pale, claw of a hand – she cupped her talon-like fingers
into a skeletal cup.
I placed the object
in her hand.
She tilted her head
to the side and down.
She looked at it.
“Aye.” She rasped.
She nodded and turned and continued on her way.
She walked along the
front side of the Quonset roofed business there (Siding and Window?) her
hunched shadow followed her along the façade. She disappeared around the south
corner of the building, into the dark.
I watched, rooted to
the spot.
Finally, I resolved
to look after her – it was so dark beyond the corner and she seemed so…vulnerable.
I approached the corner,
peered around the edge and…she was gone! There laid her cane, which I saw then
was nothing more than a broken, gnarled branch. There was no place for her to
make an exit, a chain-link fence stretched across the area.
Just then, startling
me severely, something landed at my feet! As I was about to look down a soft ‘Caw”
came from overhead. A shadow passed over me and I quickly looked up. A large
crow, or raven, soared then across the disc of the moon. I followed its glide,
in the general direction of the covered bridge until it disappeared from view
in the darkness.
Again I looked down
and there by my feet was a stone. And not any stone. Being from Duluth, even in
the moonlight I could recognize it as an agate. I picked it up.
It is nearly the
size of a walnut. On all sides, save one, it is unremarkable.
But on the one side,
the flat one, the shiny side, there is revealed a series of concentric bands,
one inside the other stretching, seemingly, into infinity.
Except there, deep
within, they pause, yielding to an open area.
And here, tonight as
I sit here at this kitchen island, under these lamps suspended, I can see,
framed by those white concentric rings, the dark image of a crow.
-Jeff
Smith
