The Snow Falcon (24 page)

Rachel didn’t ask who he’d been to see, which surprised him until he saw she already knew he was lying, that there was no order.

She flicked through the slips of paper on the desk. “Things are pretty slow,” she said.

A dull fire burned in him. He didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t nagging him the way he knew some women would. She was just stating a fact, inviting him to talk. In one part of his mind he understood that, but in another it was too much to bear.

“Things are gonna pick up,” he told her. “This is just a bad patch. There’s a lot coming in soon. I’ve been seeing a lot of people.”

He listened to himself, and it was like hearing somebody else talk, running off a lot of stuff they both knew was bullshit.

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“Oh God, Pete,” Rachel said.

Her voice sounded so weary and mournful and it stopped him. It was a sound he wasn’t used to hearing. She was watching him out of those big gray eyes of hers and she wasn’t even angry anymore, just sad. She looked so goddam beautiful. It made him think of how things had once been, but that was all a long time ago.

“What are we going to do?” she said.

A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE TOM WATERS HAD come by to take a look at Cully’s wing. It was mid-March, and winter continued without letup. Snow fell most days, and the temperature at night dropped to a frigid ten below. Cully was flying to Michael’s fist four times a day, fifty yards without hesitation, but the line was still attached. One evening, Michael called Frank for advice.

“I feel like she’s ready to fly free, without the line,” he explained.

“From what you’ve told me, that sounds about right,” Frank agreed. “As a matter of fact, I’d say she’s been ready for about a week. So what’s the problem?”

The problem, Michael thought, was that he was afraid to take the step. Over and over he’d read the section in the book Frank had lent him that covered this part. “If training has proceeded as described, your falcon is now ready to fly free. On the chosen day, don’t vary the routine: Be sure to check carefully that she is sharp set, and then take off that line.” That was it, nothing more. Michael thought it must have been a long time since the author had free-flown a falcon of his own for the first time, since he made no mention of the sinking feeling Michael felt every time he contemplated the move.

“I guess I still feel a little like that myself sometimes,” Frank admitted after Michael had explained the problem. “By the time you get around to that point, you’ve spent a lot of time worrying about your bird, making sure she gets just the right kind of food and the right amount, making sure she’s got somewhere dry and safe to sleep.

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You watch her and worry she might have caught some kind of bird flu every time she sneezes, you mend her feathers for her if they get busted or twisted, you treat her like your whole world revolves around her—and then one day you have to take her line off and you know she could just take off and not come back. There’d be nothing you could do, and it would all have been for nothing.”

“That sounds like a fair summary,” Michael agreed.

“How’s her weight?” Frank asked.

“Bang on three and a half pounds. An ounce over that and she’s not quite so keen, sometimes she gets distracted. More than a few ounces and she’s barely interested. I could stand and call her all day, and I think she’d just stand on the porch rail preening herself and watching clouds float past.”

Frank chuckled. “I know the feeling. Do you weigh her at the same time each day?”

“First thing. I note it down, then I weigh out the day’s food and note that. Everything by the book.”

“Sounds to me like you know she’s ready. You just have to take the plunge.”

“I know. But I worry she’ll just take off. It’s not just that I don’t want to lose her, though that is a big part of it, it’s also that I doubt she could survive. With her wing the way it is, I’m certain she wouldn’t last out there on her own.”

There was a short silence before Frank answered. “Thing you have to remember is, between bird and man the relationship is a little onesided,” he said. “I understand how you feel about her. We get emotionally involved, we can’t but help it, it’s just the way we are. But a falcon isn’t like a dog, they aren’t going to love us back. Maybe that’s partly why we like them so much. They’ll respect us if we respect them and they’ll stay with us because it’s easier to do that than hunt their own food, but sometimes you fly them and they decide not to come back and that’s it. There really is nothing you can do about it. My guess is that Cully won’t take off. She knows she’s injured, and she knows getting food from you is easier than hunting her own. These birds aren’t stupid, you can believe that. I think you just have to trust that.”

“You’re right, I know,” Michael said. “It’s just about food, I understand that. For her, anyway.”

“You’d like it to be more than that, I know, and maybe it is. I’ve

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always liked to think that there’s more to it than that with the birds I’ve trained over the years. Until one of ‘em decides to sit in a tree all day and ignore everything I can think of to try and get her down. The thing is, that’s what’s so special. The fact that she’s a wild bird, and she’ll only come back if she chooses to. Sure, if she’s not hungry, she’ll get distracted and you can lose her that way, but that isn’t the real reason. Food just keeps her focused. In the end, it’s her choice. Sooner or later, you just have to let her make it, and then every day you fly her, she gets to choose again. It’s just the way it is.”

There was nothing else to say after that. Michael knew that Frank was right, and that he just had to make the decision. By the morning, he’d found his resolve. He put Cully on the scales as normal and weighed her, noting that she was at exactly her flying weight; then he took her up on his fist and exchanged her leash for the creance, which he’d read was the term for the line he flew her on. While she roused her feathers and picked at the rail between her toes, he weighed out half her normal ration. He’d decided that this was the last day he’d use the line, and he wanted her especially hungry for the following day, something he was sure she wouldn’t appreciate.

“Sorry, Cully, just a little insurance,” he murmured.

Taking up his glove, he glanced toward the trees at the edge of the clearing and then checked his watch. He was a little earlier than usual, which explained why there was no sign of Jamie. Ever since that first time the boy had appeared, he’d been back again morning and afternoon, watching Cully’s training from the cover of the woods. At first, Michael hadn’t been sure he liked the idea, afraid that the boy might do something to scare Cully or else start to make a nuisance of himself, but neither had turned out to be the case. In fact, he never came out from the trees, made a sound, or moved a muscle. Michael had begun to be curious about him, had even spoken once or twice, trying to get Jamie to step out into the open, but the boy had stubbornly held back, leaving as silently as he arrived. In a way, Michael had to admit, he quite liked the idea of having somebody share the experience of seeing Cully fly, even if it was a ten-year-old boy who never spoke a word.

Leaving Cully on the porch rail, he went inside the house and poured a half cup of coffee. While he drank it, his eye fell to Frank’s copy of The Goshawk. On impulse, he took it outside and wedged it into a low crook of the tree where Jamie normally stood. He had no

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idea if the boy liked to read, and he was sure the book was a little old for him, but if he didn’t want to take it, he didn’t have to. Going back to Cully, he fed her a tiny shred of meat, just to get her attention. She grabbed it eagerly, her plumage flattening, her demeanor altering instantly. She was all business now, her eye never leaving him, her talons gripping the rail tightly as she leaned forward. Michael started back into the clearing; when he turned, Jamie was there.

“I left something for you I thought you might like to have a look at,” he said casually. “It’s by your shoulder in the tree.”

While Michael took the lure from his bag and unraveled the line, he watched Jamie from the corner of his eye. Though the boy glanced at the book, he made no move to take it. “Somebody lent it to me,” Michael said. “It’s about a man in England who trained a hawk. You can borrow it if you like. It’s up to you.” He finished preparing the line, then added, for Jamie’s benefit: “If you were planning on coming over after school today, I won’t be flying Cully again until the morning, okay?” He got no response, and shrugged.

It was still early and the sky was cloudless, a pale winter blue. Cully shifted restlessly on the rail while she waited. She fanned her wings, holding them half open to catch the sun on her back. When he raised his fist, she flicked her wings, and in an instant she was coming toward him, the line trailing across the frozen snow behind her. She swooped up and grabbed the glove with a quick ungainly flap, stumbled, and began to feed. Michael turned to Jamie, but the boy had gone, and with him the book.

Michael spent his days working at the store. He’d drawn up a list of the materials he was going to need to fix the place up and worked out a budget he thought he could just about stick to. The power had been restored, and he recovered the windows with newspaper so that he could work without having passersby stare in at him. Cully stood on a perch he’d rigged up in one of the back rooms so that she didn’t have to breathe the dust he stirred up as he worked.

During the first week, he pulled the old fixtures apart using a heavy claw hammer and dragged the pieces out back, where there was a small service yard. Then he attacked the old counter, ripping off the front to expose the dusty plywood shelves underneath where once there had been containers of screws and bolts, brass hinges, and all kinds of assorted inventory that wouldn’t fit on the displays. He’d brought in an old heater from the house; it did an inadequate job of

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raising the temperature, but with all the physical work he was doing, he was sweating after an hour. It was good to be busy. With the store and Cully to occupy himself, he had little time to dwell on the thoughts and memories beneath the surface of his conscious mind, though sometimes he wondered what he thought he might sell in the store once he had it finished. He worked hard, and at the house in the evenings he’d cook himself a simple meal and read for a while. He was in bed early, too tired to think.

One night he woke suddenly, an image of Holly and Louise still fresh in his mind. He had no pictures of his daughter beyond one he had of her as a baby, and in a pool of yellow light from the lamp by his bed he took it from his wallet and studied her features, trying to imagine what she looked like now. He remembered her hand clutching his, how tiny it had been, but perfectly formed, every detail there in miniature. In the last months, before things had all gone so terribly wrong, she had been crawling and just starting to haul herself up against the furniture. When he’d come home at night, her face would beam and she’d try to say “Daddy.” Until then he’d never really noticed a child’s smile, the way it was like a powerful light shining from inside, the way it was an expression of the purest delight, unblemished by subterfuge or tiredness from a day at the office or bad news on the TV. It was just a smile. He kept busy to prevent himself remembering, though Holly and Louise lingered like dim regretful ghosts at the edge of his vision. He’d trained himself over the years not to wish for the impossible; otherwise, he was sure he would have fallen into the deep abyss of madness he’d once felt beckon so tantalizingly. He wondered if his daughter remembered him, wondering what Louise had told her when she was old enough to understand. When she’d spoken to him on the phone after the trial and told him she was leaving, he’d agreed it would be best for Holly not to see him or hear from him for a while, and later he’d written to say he couldn’t see any future in changing that. He’d received no answer, which he’d always been unsure how to interpret. The only letter he’d had after that had told him Louise was getting married again.

Padding downstairs in the dark, he went to the phone and called international information.

“Boston,” he said when the operator asked which city. “Peterson, Dr. Paul. I don’t know the address.”

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He waited for a moment while the woman keyed in his request. His heart was thumping, and he didn’t know if this was because he was nervous the number would be found, or because he was nervous it wouldn’t.

“Hold for your number, caller.”

He wrote it down, and after he’d hung up, he thought that all he had to do was call and somewhere in a house across the miles the phone would be picked up and it might be his daughter. He had no idea what he would say. After a while he folded the piece of paper he’d written on and went upstairs.

He paused on the landing by the door to his mother’s room, then opened it and stepped inside. As if he’d been holding his breath, he exhaled, and a memory filtered back into his mind.

How old had he been when he first understood the currents of uncertainty and recrimination that swirled around him in this house? He thought he must have been about seven years old. What was distinct was waking in the night feeling thirsty and going down the stairs in his pajamas. The light was on in the passage on the way to the kitchen, and the door to the living room was slightly ajar as he passed. He stopped to listen to voices irritably batting back and forth. He could remember his dad’s deep mellow tones, surprising for a man who wasn’t physically large. He was thin all his life; no matter what he ate, he just burned it up. His mother was thin, too, and she moved about the house in flowing dresses looking pale. Now, thinking of her, he likened her to a fainting southern belle, pining and making herself ill. It wasn’t her looks—she had sharp angular features and deep hooded eyes, lacking the appropriate softness—but she had that false frailty.