Lie Still

Prologue

The ring glittered, resting on the dirt of the forest floor, the sun catching it in the fractured afternoon light falling through the leaves.

The ring hadn’t been there the day before. A week of brutal, ceaseless rain finally cleaned it up and washed it from its hiding spot twenty years too late, long after something terrible happened.

A hiker paused when he saw it, nearly turned away, and then recognized it for what it was. Plastic. Made in China. A prize from a gumball machine. He picked it up and briefly examined it. A pink heart-shaped jewel on a small, dulled band. He thought about taking the ring home to his three-year-old daughter, probably strutting around at this very moment in her Barbie princess crown, but he decided his wife would yell at him. Tell him the ring was a choking hazard. His daughter would ask why it was scratched. He dropped it as casually as he had flipped his empty Ozarka bottle into the brush a few minutes earlier and trudged on up the trail.

He didn’t feel the eyes on his back, watching him disappear.

The crow swooped in.

It was the same crow that had been stealing the change out of a broken car-wash vending machine a mile down the road. Exactly $57.50 to date, all of it deposited daily into the sawed-out window of Joey Tucker’s pine tree house that he built all by himself that summer. Joey told no one about the money. He thought it was a secret gift from God.

Few people-certainly not Joey or the man in the forest-know how smart crows are.

But the crow was done with Joey. Joey was rich enough. The bird flew through the trees, higher and higher, sweeping through clouds still heavy with water, a tiny black dot, taking his prize with him.

The crow recognized the ring for what it was.

For what it once was.

A bit of joy.