The Caws

Every now and then, my evening walk to the train station is punctuated with the banshee shriek and thunder of urban fireworks. The first time I heard them, my head tucked instinctively while I scanned the summer sky. In the east, I saw weak tails of light and color spilling over U.S. Route 1. I continued walking, eventually losing sight of the spectacle behind some buildings. After settling into my train seat, I cellphoned my colleagues at the television station.

“I dunno,” they said.
“I didn’t notice,” they said.
“It’s prob’ly just gunfire or something,” they said.

In late Autumn, while the dubious display sputtered and screamed and popped somewhere in the city, I called a friend who lives a half mile away.

“Yeah, I’ve heard them,” she said. “I thought they were fireworks at the baseball stadium.”

“But,” I may have mentioned, “the stadium is in the opposite direction.”
“And,” I might have said, “it’s only five o’clock, too early for a game.”
“Besides,” I think I opined, “they don’t look so great. Surely they’re not for large audiences who clamor for excitement.”

Somewhere in there, a wise person stated that the fireworks were used to clear the birds out of the nearby cemetery.

Tonight, bathed by the rockets’ red glare, I ran for cover while skirting along the cemetery wall. When I arrived at the train platform, I found three huddling police officers. I asked them.

“Yeah, they’re for the birds,” they said.
“Somebody’s got permission,” they said.
“One night, someone called in ‘shots fired,’” they laughed.
“They come from that building,” they said.

I identified the building for them. It was the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which, I had suspected for some time, was the source of the display. But who really has permission? And from whom? And what’s wrong with a few hundred crows hanging out in a historic cemetery?

I looked up, and there they were. Hundreds of crows were flowing from the grave like black smoke at a plane crash site. And now I could hear them. At first, the volume was alarming. But soon, they were high overhead, and by the time I entered the train car, their calls were deadened by the silence of strangers.