Ravens - By George Dawes Green

WEDNESDAY

Romeo was driving down from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the baffling twilight, going too fast, when a raccoon or possum ran in front of the car. The impact was disturbingly gentle. No thud — just a soft unzipping, beneath the chassis. Still, it tore at Romeo’s heart. He braked and pulled over.

Shaw awoke. “What’s wrong?”

“Hit something,” said Romeo, and he got out and started walking back up I-77, hunting for the carcass. Shaw followed him. A tractor-trailer bore down on them with a shudder and the long plunging chord of its passing. Then the night got quiet. They could hear their own footsteps. Cicadas, and a sliver of far-off honkytonk music. “God,” said Shaw. “This is it. We’re really in the South.”

But they found no trace of the animal.

They walked quite a ways. They waited for headlights so they could scan up and down the highway. They backtracked and searched along the shoulder. Nothing — not so much as a bloodstain. Finally Romeo just stood there, watching the fireflies rise and fall.

“Hey,” said Shaw, “I bet your friend got lucky.”

“Uh-uh. I hit it.”

“Well maybe it was like a sacrifice.” Playfulness in Shaw’s tone. “Maybe it just wanted us to have a propitious journey.”

When they got back to the Tercel Shaw said he was wide awake and could he drive? That was fine with Romeo. He got in on the passenger side, and they descended into the North Carolina piedmont. His ears popped; the air grew humid. He tilted his seat all the way back and looked up at the moon as it shredded in the pines. Somewhere after Elkin, NC, he let his eyes slip shut for just a second — and then the highway started to curve beneath him, and he felt himself spiraling slowly downward, into a bottomless slumber.

Tara kept away from the house on Wednesday nights.

Wednesday nights were jackpot nights. Mom would start drinking early. Pour herself a g&t in a lowball glass; then fan out all her lottery tickets on the coffee table and gaze lovingly at them, and touch them one by one and wonder which was going to be the one. The TV would be on but Mom would disregard it. All her thoughts on the good life to come. Yachts, spas in Arizona, blazing white villages in Greece, the unquenchable envy of her friends. She’d finish her first drink and fix herself another. Her boy Jase — Tara’s little brother — would put his head in her lap while he played with his Micro. She’d tousle his hair. She’d swirl the ice in her drink. At some point the colors of the dying day, and the TV colors, and all the colors of her life, would begin to seem extra-vivid, even gorgeous, and she’d tell herself she was the blessedest woman in the world, and pick up her cell phone and text her daughter:

I know we win tonite!!

Or:

I need u!! Tara baby!! My good luck charm!! Where are u? Come home!!

They were siren calls though, Tara knew. She had to be deaf to them. Study late at the library, catch a movie, hang out with Clio at the mall — just keep clear of the house till the jackpot was done and Dad would come home to take the brunt of Mom’s drunken post-drawing tirade. By midnight Mom would have worn herself out with rage and grief, and she’d have passed out, and the coast would be clear.

But on this particular Wednesday, Tara had made a blunder. She’d left her botany textbook, with all the handouts, in her bedroom. She’d done this in the morning but she didn’t realize it till 7:00 p.m., after her organic chemistry class, when she checked her locker and saw that the book wasn’t there.

She had a quiz tomorrow. She hadn’t even looked at that stuff.

She thought of calling Dad. Maybe he could sneak the book out to her. But no, it was too late. He’d be on his way to church by now, his Lions of Judah meeting. Maybe Jase? No, Jase would tip Mom off; Jase was in Mom’s pocket.

No. What I have to do, Tara thought, is just go back there and be really docile and don’t let Mom draw me into a fight, whatever she says don’t fight back —and first chance I get I’ll slip away to my room before the drawing, before she blows up.

Tara went to the parking lot and got in her battered Geo, and left the campus of the