RAISING CROW (Special version for Nifty).
Copyright November 2022. Boris B Chen All Rights Reserved.
Copyright notice:
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holder.
This book contains graphic descriptions of sexual intercourse and masturbation using adult language. This book also contains vivid descriptions of violence, and homosexual sex. No person under age 18 should read this book. Do not read any of my books if you are easily offended or sensitive.
All the characters, locations, events, and acts described herein are fictional. Any similarity to real people, places, and events is purely coincidental. Nothing in this book is real, none of it happened.
Feel free to contact the author: borischenaz mailfence
What's this book about?
The story begins in Amarillo, Texas in August, 1993 just before Labor Day Weekend.
The main character and narrator is Robert Davis, a lanky young man about to start his fourth year of high school. Robert's closest companion is his dog, a four year old Great Dane named Crow. Back in 1989 Robert was handed a puppy to care for within minutes of its birth by emergency C-section. Crow was 100% bonded to Robert who wanted to always to provide the best care possible to his four-legged child.
Robert had secret longings for other boys since elementary school but never had any experience and nobody to learn from. Rob's best human friend was a flamboyant young man, (a few months younger) his friend Daniel. Dan lived one block from Robert.
Daniel was legally deaf, a fact he kept well hidden at school but was very flamboyant in a school/city that was not very welcoming. Some of his closest friends suspected Daniel acted and dressed that way to hide his deafness and crippling lack of self-confidence.
Robert's mother works at a top secret nuclear bomb research/manufacturing facility near Amarillo and was very well known/respected by police/fire and city officials. Lisa Davis was the person who designed the smallest ever thermonuclear warhead (a bread loaf size, 1-megaton range thermonuclear device), she was also well known in the highest offices of the Pentagon; although at home she was just `Mom.' Lisa Davis was regarded as the second coming of Edward Teller.
Eight years ago Lisa also earned several patents for the lightest, safest, and most comfortable bullet/fire-proof fabric ever made, and started a factory to make and use the fabric to make police-fire-EMS-city employee uniforms. Amarillo was the test bed for the new fabric, it saved lives and was given out for free during product testing. Lisa Davis is considered something like the official Daughter of Amarillo and is dearly loved in town. All the city employees had to drive to her house to get their free uniforms so everyone who works for the city knows where she lives and works.
Lisa is the daughter of two well known and wealthy parents, she was born and graduated high school in Galveston, Texas. Like her parents (both had doctorate degrees) Lisa earned her doctorate in chemistry at a very young age. She was drugged and raped during a dorm party and gave birth to her only son (Robert) days before her 20th birthday.
In this story Robert dealt with his lack of social experience and self-confidence, he met another boy (Tom) from a very different background but the two meshed well together.
With his pre-existing relationship with Daniel and the dog, the new boyfriend dealt with the complicated nature of building a friendship that didn't compete with Robert's first priority: his very large dog. The dog felt his first priority was the safety of the pack, especially eighteen year old Robert Davis.
Much of this book is actually about the dog. If you are 'dog person' then this might be a good story for you to read and share.
The dog-character Crow was created to honor the memory of my deceased Great Dane (1993-2003).
Information for readers:
In all my books, the symbol ---- means undescribed time has passed.
Many web sites including Nifty do not always support accents and tildes over letters, so they are missing in this version.
Characters: (spoiler alert)
Lisa Davis, PhD. Chemist, genius, nerdy, on several nations' enemies list.
Robert Davis. Only child of Lisa Davis, only grandson of the Davis family in Galveston, wants to be a professional photographer someday. 6'1" tall, 125lbs.
Crow Davis. (aka: Soaring Crow) Pure bred male Great Dane with black fur, possibly reincarnated soul of long deceased Pawnee Indian leader. 150lbs.
Daniel Lund. Neighbor and best friend of Robert since grade school, deaf, in constant conflict with his father. Gay, flamboyant, wears eye makeup. Speaks with gay accent, small statured. 5'6" tall, 95lbs.
Thomas Riley Jr. New best friend of Robert, multiracial, multilingual. Gay masculine/muscular, wants to own a restaurant someday after graduating culinary school. Brown skin, black hair and eyes. Aprox 5'9" tall, 135lbs, born locally.
Maria Riley. (Tom's mother) Vietnam War veteran, met husband in Germany had one child, then husband died in traffic accident. Hispanic, born in Texas.
Bethany: a friend of Robert. Bethany's mother is Maggie, a close friend of Lisa Davis.
Grandpa Davis: PhD. University professor of Microbiology.
Grandma Leslie Davis: PhD. University professor in Chemistry.
Jacob: Deaf student at Texas A&M Galveston, major in Education.
Chapter 1: August 29, 1993. Final days of summer vacation.
My counselor told me to start journaling, I'm supposed to do at least one paragraph per day, but I'm not being graded on it. I'm journaling with my mom's Dell 320s laptop, with Windows 3.1, CompuServe software, and Word. She used it for two months then handed it to me, 'happy birthday' she mumbled and ordered something better. The good part was she got me my own CompuServe account and gave me her old 9600 baud modem and her Epson Daisy Wheel printer too.
Mom and I live in Amarillo, Texas. She's from Galveston Island. I was born there but we moved here when I was a baby. My grandparents still live there. Mom works at Pantex outside of town, she's a chemical engineer with above top-secret clearance. Pantex makes stuff for the Pentagon, but she won't talk about work with anyone, especially me. She said knowing about her work could put my safety in jeopardy and violate federal laws with harsh penalties, like life in prison.
This summer I turned eighteen and next week I'll start my senior year at Amarillo High School (AHS). I walk to school, it's only six hundred feet from our driveway to AHS, Mom said she'll trade me car keys for my high school diploma. We live on Sandie Drive near my school. Mom and I share her car, a 1992 Buick LeSabre, which should become mine next June.
My best friend was Daniel J. Lund, a real bohemian. I'll tell you more about him in a minute. My name is Robert Davis but I was called several names: Robert, Rob, Bert, Robbie, or WOOF. Sometimes I got called `FAG!' at school.
I started seeing a counselor in my sophomore year when Mom insisted I needed adult male guidance. My other best friend was my dog. He understands me more than anyone on Earth. He's four years old, a pure bred Great Dane with very soft black fur. To me he's four but in his mind he's an adult male, and I suppose for a dog he is fully grown. Great Danes take much longer to grow up (physically and emotionally) than almost all other breeds. They tell me Danes age rapidly after the first year and few live more than ten years.
Back in eighth grade Mom got me to volunteer at a local animal hospital that doubled as a city dog shelter. I work there one day a week. My main job is to scrub every cage and water bowl. But the best part was taking two dogs at a time into their enclosed outdoor prison yard and play with them for about twenty minutes getting them to run around and play with the toys as much as possible. I became good friends with many of them. The play yard and kennel were the only places on Earth where everyone was obviously happy to see me.
One day we got a really sick Great Dane in the hospital section. They said she delivered all her babies except one was stuck inside her. The dog-doctor did immediate surgery to save both of 'em. The next day the mama dog went home but the owner abandoned the puppy. The vet and my mom decided to send him home with me since it needed `round the clock care, bottle feeding, and being kept warm (my mom was good friends with the doc's wife). The doc gave me bottle feeding supplies for the first month it was almost an around the clock job. Luckily the puppy was born three days after our last day of school so I had the entire summer to raise the puppy, my first dog. For the first few weeks he spent part of everyday down inside my shirt, like a kangaroo pouch. I did that to keep him warm and near me. He seemed to enjoy the ride and the hours he spent sandwiched between my shirt and my stomach.
Mom was amazed at how fast it grew. "It's a Great Dane puppy, what did you expect?" was what the doc said when she came to pick us up after his four-week physical and shots. One day the pup showed an interest in solid food so my job as mommy was scaled back. He actually walked into the pie pan of puppy food when I set it down for him the first time.
We got him a wire cage, the biggest one they sold at the farm supply store to cage train him instead of traditional potty training. It worked like a charm, by the time he was seven months old we had no more accidents (and I had no more ruined t-shirts), this dog was house-broke without any actual training. The dog doctor said puppies acquired a distaste for their poops about the same age they gained an ability to control their bladders, using the cage kept them near their waste and reminded them to do it outside, and the cage also became his own safe place. Mom put a small blanket over the cage so it was always darker and felt a little isolated and safe in his own warm padded cave. We covered the inside bottom with shredded newspaper as padding and to absorb pee.
He spent nearly every waking minute with me that summer. We were outside all the time doing things when he wasn't asleep. I stuffed him down my shirt and stuck his little head out between the shirt buttons, so it looked like I grew a little dog's head on my stomach. We spent most nights together in my bed. I'd be on my side, he'd sleep on an old bath towel snuggled against me, usually with his body against mine.
When he first came home he always wanted to sleep with his chin touching my neck, then after two weeks of that he had to sleep with his back touching my body, and that never ended, he still has to be touching me somehow when he goes to bed. Now, he always sleeps with his head down by my feet, usually with one of his paws touching my leg somehow. I think he does that so it wakes him up if I get out of bed during the night.
I live half way between two large parks so we went to one of them every day so he could run and get sunshine and fresh air. It was fun watching him try to run with feet that were way too big and legs that were too short. Great Dane puppies are not graceful at anything. And he grew so fast it seemed like if you blinked your eyes when they opened the dog was a tiny bit taller! Some people joked you could even hear him grow.
During his first week of life while I was bottle feeding him Mom asked what I was gonna name him. I got an idea when we were sittin' in the drive-thru lane at KFC. There were several crows on top of a fence behind the store. My brain got stuck staring at their round eyes and shiny black feathers. So I decided if I ever got a black dog I would name it Crow. That's what I told Mom but when she wanted to know why, I reminded her about the birds and how the puppy had black fur and dark eyes so the name fit, plus the Vet told me dogs only really paid attention to single syllables in spoken language, Crow was a simple word that didn't rhyme with anything, and it sounded kinda cool. 'Mom, meet Crow, baby Great Dane!' I raised his paw and had him wave at Mom, she laughed at my antics, but she really liked the puppy too.
Crow clawed the crap out of my arms while he bottle fed, he always stared silently in my eyes while he drank from the bottle and tried to stay awake. I always wondered what he thought about having a human boy for a mommy, even as a baby I'm sure he understood I was a different type of animal. But he never complained or seemed to question his life. Crow was very affectionate towards me. Over the months he took up more and more space on my bed. By the time he was eighteen months old Mom got me a bigger bed. That's how I got a full size bed in my room. He'll also sleeps with Mom once or twice a week, but he slept in my room the rest of the week. Crow dearly loves Mom and Daniel too, his world truly was just us. But he always seemed to enjoy meeting new people, especially after he got taller than most people.
I told Crow everything. We snuggled in bed and talked. He stared in my eyes and listened to every word I said. But I guess that wasn't enough to keep me out of the counselor's office at Mom's orders. If Crow thought I was going to cry he tried to lick my face with his long Great Dane tongue. He really read my moods like a pro. Maybe Mister Levinthal the counselor should talk to Crow instead, and save us a bunch of time. Sometimes when Crow and I were in bed together, he put his head on the other pillow, I just talked - he listened but never made fun of me. Being tall and skinny meant I got picked-on at school, plus I get the F-word shouted at me at least once a week because I was often seen hanging out with Daniel.
Back to today, Crow had his fourth birthday party last June. He has some gray hairs between his nose and upper lip. He's taller than me on his back legs and we're the same weight, 150 lbs. I'm 6' 1" (184cm). My hair was brown with blue eyes, Mom said I was 'lanky.' Crow had black hair and dark brown eyes, but he did have a small white patch of fur on his chest.
I've heard people say that the white fur patch on many dog's chest is a sign all animals would recognize of domestication, same with a curved tail.
Daniel loved Crow too, their friendship was mutual. Crow rarely stopped chewing on his arms and hands when he came over. They're a blast to watch wrestling on the TV room floor. One time Crow knocked Dan into the curio cabinet, two of Mom's glass statues fell and broke. We all spent time in the doghouse after that. She got part of the blame, having a Great Dane in your home required some thought about what things you left sitting out. A tail wagging Great Dane near any table can instantly wipe it clean, everything hits the floor with a crash. We learned over time and now our house looked kindergarten-safe inside. We put nothing of value below six feet. There was a short piece of blue painter's tape six feet up the wall in every room to remind us how high Crow can reach. The danger zone includes all counter tops, the refrigerator, and even the upper kitchen cabinets. We added dog latches to all lower cabinets and even on the refrigerator door. By the time he turned three all his escape attempts and opening cabinets or the refrigerator all stopped. Let me tell you, a nine month old Great Dane who decides to dig a tunnel under the rock wall around our back yard... is like having a run-away backhoe in the yard! He could make the dirt fly with those big old paws. We filled the holes with rocks and that stopped him from digging more than once per hole, then one day it all stopped. That was when he officially became super-lazy. It was around the time we started leaving the TV on to Animal Planet all day while we were gone and he was home alone.
The only thing that keeps Crow out of our upper cabinets is he's very lazy, the only animal on earth that is more low-energy than a Great Dane is a three toed sloth. If he wanted something from an upper cabinet he'll stand in the kitchen and bark until someone comes and then he stares at the cabinet until you get him what he wants. Sometimes he just wants to sniff something in particular because he can smell it all over the house and is curious what it is. And when he wants something and he barks inside the house he really doesn't bark, he does a thing we call Boofing. It's kind of like a low-energy bark without fully opening his mouth, and it makes a sound we call a Boof. Yes, Crow is sometimes too lazy to bark properly, as if it took too much work. Actually, I think he boofs because his full volume bark hurts his ears inside the house.
Since he was a puppy I have worked to teach him English words. So every time he barks I scold him and tell him to talk with his mouth instead of barking. "Crow, if you want people to treat you like a person you have to stop acting like a dog!"
We jokingly say he is a Trans-Dane. He is transitioning from Dog to Human, that's why I scold him for behaving like a dog. He sees people do things then he wants to try it too. He likes to drink from water fountains, but he can't work the buttons. He watches TV, eats off a plate, he has chores and a set-bedtime, and we brush his teeth (but he hates toothpaste). I would like to buy him clothes but nobody sells clothes for a dog that big.
Okay, now the story about Daniel Lund. He is the only openly gay kid at Amarillo High School (AHS). We're talking rainbow bling, rainbow t-shirts, kilts and bag pipes on Halloween costume day, only that because the school said he could not dress like a woman on campus. I suppose that made me `gay by association,' but I swear I have never had sexual desires for him. His body still looks like a little boy under his clothes, which turns me off.
But we've been something like best friends since second grade. He was flamboyant then and now. I just accepted that's the way he was and slowly learned to ignore his school appearance. In his case being flamboyant doesn't mean he's gay but it showed that he wanted to be different, I think he also used it to keep people away since he was rather unpopular. Most people thought Dan was too weird to talk to, and half the time if someone said hi to him in the hallway or the cafeteria he'd never respond. At home he usually dressed like a typical teenage boy from Texas.
Daniel was hard to explain to people. His unusual looks, the way he dressed and spoke were separate from his sexuality. He discovered bling long before he had any idea where babies came from or how they got in there. Daniel was difficult to figure out, it was caused by what I named:
`The Daniel Paradox.'
He dressed fancily - almost girlish but didn't want to draw attention to himself, he sort of dressed like Boy George in the music video `Karma Chameleon' (by Culture Club). He liked to socialize then didn't have much to say, his voice was gayish sounding and high pitched but he didn't want people to know his sexuality. Behind the eye liner and excessive bling he was a very gentle and fun loving person. And in all honesty he was also the smartest person in our school, which was another thing he kept well hidden. Daniel's brain recorded and stored everything he saw in great detail, forever. He deliberately marked wrong answers on tests to keep his grades down. One time in 9th grade he got busted when he marked answer A on every question he deliberately got wrong.
When the teacher reviewed the test sheets she noticed he got exactly 90% correct on every test he took and always marked answer A on every question he got wrong. His mother got called into school for one that too. I'm pretty sure he got beat for it but beatings had been going on for years.
It would be safe to say that he was easily one of the most intelligent people at AHS, smarter than most teachers too. His single biggest problem was his father; Dan was born to the wrong family.
Daniel's current boyfriend was a cute boy named Carlos. He's a skinny seventeen year old junior at AHS (six months younger than Daniel). They met at the Palace of Pepperoni over by Bell Street and 34th Avenue where Daniel worked two nights a week. Carlos was straight acting and nothing at all like Daniel (Carlos looked way younger than he was, some people thought was in 7th grade, and he was 5'5" tall). They kept their thing very quiet for his safety (Amarillo Hispanics then were not broadly supportive of gayness in the 1980s and 90s). AHS was more than a little on the redneck side toward gays too. After he came out I got the feeling Daniel was trying to look like Boy George but he never pulled it off very well. But it was a huge shock at school, no boy had ever worn makeup in school before him, except on Halloween. He started wearing it gradually so he never got busted for it.
It was also easy to see the Daniel Paradox in gym. Picture Daniel in gym: 5'6" tall, maybe 92 pounds, thin arms and legs, very long blonde hair in a pony tail, with eye liner in our dorky gym shorts and baggy tank-top, wearing girls Nike shoes with pink highlights and a large Jesus on the Cross necklace. The only good part was he started dressing like that in third grade so it was old news in high school and by then almost everyone ignored him, except me. His appearance royally pissed-off some of the reddest of our redneck fellow students. And that was my impartial description of my friend Daniel J. Lund. He said Lund was a very Norwegian name.
Oh yeah, something else about Daniel is because he's deaf it makes him talk funny. It makes him sound very stupid but it's because he cannot hear his own voice. He is very self conscious about his voice so around people he rarely speaks which makes other kids think he is: dumb and stuck-up, neither of those is even slightly true.
The only reason we became friends long ago was because we only lived a block apart, I can see the roof of their house from my bedroom window.
And that concludes my presentation on the Daniel Paradox.
We're online. Mom and I have accounts on CompuServe. The rest of the world was on AOL but Mom's been on CompuServe since 1982 and said she's never gonna change. Daniel and his parents were on CompuServe too. We emailed every day, before and after school. We'll have two classes a week together when school started on Sept 8th, a Tuesday.
I told Mom that CompuServe and AOL will be going out of business soon but she refuses to admit that the internet is getting faster and soon everything will be hi-def and color and we'll eventually be able to watch movies over the internet, but she's still stuck in her amber VGA, text based world.
I'll wrap up this chapter with a bit about myself. I'm super nerdy and I liked to read. I get decent grades in school but I'm not planning on going to a university, maybe Amarillo Community College. Mom said I should be an English major but I'm thinking more like maybe photo journalism. I have a decent Canon A-1 35mm camera (with 28, 50, and 150mm lenses) and a full B&W darkroom set-up in my bathroom. Let me tell you, if you date a girl and have a darkroom in your bathroom, don't let her see it, that stuff is a guaranteed relationship killer.
I've been out on a few dates with girls but usually get dumped after they found out I'm super-dorky, a virgin, never kissed a girl before, and sleep with a 150 pound dog; someday I know I'll meet the right person. I have a friend who is a girl, we've known each other since Sunday school in first grade but we're just good friends. Bethany's mom and my mom work together at Pantex. Allow me to also confess up-front that Crow and I are virgins and we're focused on putting an end to it.
Oh yeah, before I go I should explain that Mom said she doesn't know who my father is. She got drugged (Roofied) and raped at a party but didn't like to discuss it. Mom and I are close, her name is Lisa Davis. She was nineteen years old the day I was born so I guess that made her almost thirty eight years old today.
I remember she told me they isolated DNA from several boys after she got to the hospital but nobody was arrested.
Write the author: borischenaz mailfence