bang

there is a loud bang like a gunshot. there are sixty people in the bar and we all jump. after we finish jumping we hang, unsure if we are now witnesses to another news story. if news of our secondary pain will cause tertiary pain to others. it will not. whitney gamely finishes reading question eight of round three of bar trivia. tonight’s theme is les miserables.

a man who had been on the sidewalk walks in and tells us he didn’t do it, but people shot some fireworks down the street. he is wrong–a few of us saw it the brief black flutter on its way to the ground.

between rounds we go out and across the street to look at it. there is nothing to say so we say something. “is that blood?” “poor thing.” “must have flown into the transformer.” it is a crow; it flew into the power transformer and the power transformed it into the sad corpse lying perfectly here in the gutter. none of us is so gauche as to take a picture of a mangled sudden corpse, but a couple of us take pictures from across the street. a spatter of blood and a mangled black lump.

an hour later the utilities truck arrives. there was no power outage, not even momentary. the interruption of the crow’s flight was permanent on one side and not even so brief as to be fleeting on the other. with no damage done their job is easy. they leave shortly.

the black lump remained.