About Cowboy and the Crow

by Sedonia Guillone
10 pages / 3700 words
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc

Patrick thinks his lover, Johnny Crowfeather, has disappeared. Johnny's truck is found, abandoned on the Reservation, and the only company Patrick has is his horse, Snoopy, and a very persistent crow. Old magic abounds on the Reservation, though, and nothing is quite what it seems. Will the full moon bring Patrick the answers he needs?

Sample

Johnny Crowfeather, where the hell are you? The question echoed in Patrick’s mind for the millionth time since Johnny’s disappearance. Resting his brush against Snoopy’s neck, he scanned the darkening landscape, as if somehow Johnny would walk out of the shadows, smiling at him.

Damn it. As usual, no Johnny. No one but him, Snoopy, and that crow on one of the fence posts Patrick had come out to the edge of the Double L to repair.

The bird had seemed to make a game of tagging along his fence-repair route, the one Johnny and he used to do together, that is, until a month ago. The bird now stared at him, its ebony head cocked to one side as dusk swallowed the last of the sunlight.

“Yes, you’re pretty,” Patrick said. Not that he understood crow talk, but the bird seemed to like it.

The crow opened its beak and let out a shrill caw. Patrick chuckled. “All right. As soon as I rustle up my own supper, you can have some.”

Seeming satisfied, the bird cawed again and lifted its wings before settling down to watch Patrick brush Snoopy.

A shiver ran down Patrick’s spine. “No,” he said out loud. For a second there, he’d allowed himself to entertain the whole skin-walker idea. If he started listening to Johnny’s grandfather, he was going to start believing that Johnny had become a skin-walker.

The last time he’d spoken to Nathan Crowfeather, the elderly man had shaken his head. “I kept telling my grandson he must not stare so long at you each time. It is not bad that he loves you, Patrick, but staring at you has made his soul vulnerable.” Apparently, in Navajo culture, staring at someone for a long time was a cultural taboo and a person who broke such taboos ran the risk of becoming a part-human, part-animal shape shifter, or something like that.

He shook himself and turned his attention to running the brush along Snoopy’s chestnut side, especially over the damp portions left by the heat of saddle pad and saddle. The Quarter lowered his small, delicate head and snuffled at the grasses below his hooves. Patrick gave his horse an affectionate pat on his withers. “Time for my feeding and watering now, Snoop,” he murmured.

Sighing, he glanced up at the full moon before getting his campfire going. Chilly October nights like this had been his and Johnny’s favorite, lying in their bedroll by the campfire after a day of mending fences, naked bodies entwined. Nothing felt better in the whole damn world than Johnny’s sleekly muscled body against his, his fingers wrapped in Johnny’s long smooth hair the inky black of a crow’s wing…

Johnny’s face haunted him the whole time he set up camp, heated his supper over the fire, and sat down. Audrey, the ranch-owner’s wife had given him a healthy package of homemade cornbread. As soon as he unwrapped it, he heard the now-familiar caw and the crow landed on the grass next to him.

Patrick laughed. “Favor cornbread, do ya? Like someone else I know.” He crumbled a chunk of cornbread and dropped it on the ground, watching the crow devour every crumb. And tried to ignore the dance of firelight off the bird’s wings because it also reminded him of someone else. Damn. He’d always had it bad for Crowfeather. Had since they were thirteen and in the same history class. Amazing he’d passed history seeing as he’d spent so much time staring at the ebony braid hanging down Johnny’s back. And amazing Johnny had gone for him too. There they’d been, two “two-spirited” people as Johnny said his people called guys like them, enduring every kind of pressure to be together.

Then, a month ago, Johnny had disappeared. One minute, he’d been on his way back from teaching his social consciousness class at the community college on the Reservation, the next, the police had found Johnny’s pickup at the side of the road and no Johnny. Anywhere.