Finding the Sky

by A. M. Burns

  “Sometimes I think they understand who has helped them get well. A lot of folks say that birds of prey can’t show gratitude, but I don’t know if that’s true or not. I know they’re a lot smarter than most people give them credit for.” Scott shoved a stack of empty butter tubs at him. Most of them had red smears in the bottom from the meat that had recently been in them. “If you’re here, you can give me a hand. I’m about halfway done.”

  “Okay.” Dillon loved helping Scott with the birds. It was cool on its own, but it allowed him to spend more time with Scott, even though they were now spending hours a day together.

  It didn’t take them long to finish feeding the birds, and they found themselves at Mel’s flight. “Hey—” Scott handed the last tub other than Mel’s to Dillon. “—why don’t we take her out for some nice long flights? She’s nearly done molting and needs some extra exercise. She’s turned into a real perch potato this summer.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “We can take her down to the road, we can get some good distance between us and let her fly. She’s hungry so I don’t think there’s any fear of her taking off on us.” He reached for the empty tubs in Dillon’s hands. “Why don’t you stay here and I’ll run into the house, get a leash, and an extra glove. Need to separate the food out too.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Good. Be right back.”

  Dillon stood outside the flight and looked at Mel, who was watching Scott hurry away with an odd tilt to her head and a question in her dark brown eyes. It was the first time that Dillon had realized that her eyes were the same color as Scott’s. “He’ll be right back.” Somehow, talking to her made sense to him. She ruffled her feathers and then preened for a moment before tucking up her foot and appearing to drop off to sleep.

  The wind was still and the humidity heavy as Dillon stood there in the aisle between pens and looked at the napping red-tailed hawk. He loved the way her feathers reflected different colors as she breathed. With each subtle movement, another shade of brown or beige came into being. Watching them in the wild, it’s hard to see all the differences in them. Here it gets a lot easier. She’s so incredible. I need to talk to Scott about being a falconer. I want to have this in my life. He sighed. I want Scott in my life, forever. It was the first time that he’d admitted to himself that he really wanted Scott around full-time. Since Kareem’s death the week before, he and Scott spent most of their free time with each other, often making out but just as often holding each other. Dillon had never understood before the comfort people drew from simple, intimate contact like just being in someone’s arms. He’d learned the basic comfort and pleasures physical contact held, and he didn’t want to be without it anymore.

  Mel straightened and looked down the aisle, alerting Dillon to Scott’s return before Scott turned the corner and started toward them. “Do you recognize the sound of his walking?” Dillon stared at her, but she remained silent, like he knew she would, and never took her eyes off Scott.

  “Okay, you two, are you ready to do this?” Scott handed a glove and small bowl of tidbits to Dillon.

  “Sure.” Dillon slipped the bowl into his pocket before he pulled on the glove.

  Without saying anything else, Scott unlocked the flight and held his gloved hand out to Mel. She flew from her perch to him. After she landed, she glanced down at his fist. She stamped her foot as Scott got hold of her jesses and clipped them off to the leash he’d tied to the D-ring on his glove. “Not yet. You’ve got to work harder than that today for your food.”

  Her look was harsh as he carried her out of the flight and started for the main gate. Although she glanced about as he carried her along, she remained calm and seemed to focus on the house. It wasn’t until they came within sight of the van that she tried to fly off Scott’s fist.

  When she folded up her wings and sat quietly again, she stomped on his hand again. “I think she thinks we’re going hunting.”

  “Why do you say that?” Dillon had been carefully walking on Scott’s offside so he didn’t upset Mel.

  “She bated toward the van. We normally take the van when we go hunting.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.” Dillon thought it showed how smart she was.

  Once they were past the van, she kept looking over her shoulder, back toward it, reinforcing the idea that she wanted into it. Every so often, Scott would carefully touch her feet, drawing her attention to him. “We’ve got other plans right now,” he told her softly.

  “So what do I do?” Dillon asked as they reached the end of the driveway.

  “Walk down almost to the next driveway. Then just hold your arm out with a tidbit on your fist like we’ve done in her flight. Nice and easy.”

  “Okay.” Dillon’s heart pounded as he walked down the dirt road that ran between their houses. He stopped when he thought he was far enough away. He pulled out the tidbit cup, put a piece of meat on his fist and looked over his shoulder. Scott nodded and Dillon held up his fist.

  Mel came at him like a shot and seconds later she landed delicately on his hand. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” Mel snatched the food from his gloved hand and immediately looked over her shoulder before launching back down the road to Scott.

  They repeated things for several minutes, until they both ran out of meat. She ended up on Scott’s hand, and Scott had her jesses secured to the leash by the time Dillon reached them.

  “That was so much more fun than just having her make little flights to us in the flight pen. Why don’t we do it that way every day?”

  “Several things.” Scott started walking back to the flight pen. “First, during the molt, she can be a bit unpredictable. It would’ve been horrible if she’d decided to go sit up in a tree for several hours and I had to beg her to come down. Second, it’s warm, which also makes her unpredictable. It’s much safer in warm weather to do things in the flight. I’d have died of embarrassment if she decided to catch a thermal and go soaring. It’s really pretty, but birds can get a real long distance away in a short time soaring.”

  “Yeah, that might be bad.” Dillon didn’t want to think about Mel flying away. “Wouldn’t she come back?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Lots of factors can affect if a bird comes back to where it was lost or not. In warm weather, she might get so far away that she couldn’t find her way home. They aren’t homing pigeons.”

  “Okay, so if warm weather flying is so bad, why did we just do it now?” Dillon knew there was a lot that he didn’t know about the birds and couldn’t wait for the learning curve to be over.

  “I’ve been cutting her weight the past few days and then gave her a skip day yesterday.”

  “Skip day?”

  “In the wild, hawks don’t eat every day. Sometimes they don’t catch anything. This makes them try harder the next day. So it’s a good idea in captivity to do this from time to time. It helps get their attention. Since she had a skip day yesterday, I knew that she’d pay attention to us today.”

  “So it was safe today?” Dillon held the main gate open for Scott and Mel.

  Scott huffed. “I wouldn’t say safe, exactly. There’s always the possibility that shit might fly. Let’s just say, I figured I knew what she’d do and she did, so everything worked out.”

  “I’m glad it did. So how long before we can go hunting?” Ever since Scott explained how Mel and the other falconry birds hunted with them, he’d wanted to go.

  “Probably a couple of months.” Scott reached Mel’s flight and slipped through the open door. “One drawback to living in Texas, it doesn’t get cool here as quickly as other parts of the country. But she’ll be finished with the molt in a couple of weeks, and after that, it’s all about weather.” He undid her leash and she flew back to her perch. With a quick wipe of her beak, she was already settling down.

  Scott walked out of the flight, locked it, then stood next to Dillon and watched Mel start grooming. “One plus to living in Texas, or so I hear from other fal
coners I know, is that we have an open season on rabbits and squirrels. There’s a few guys that start hunting as soon as their bird is out of the molt. I don’t do that. Not to mention, I don’t like sweating while I hunt. It doesn’t seem right, although last year we hunted in short-sleeve shirts at the field meet in January.”

  “Yeah, it was rather warm last winter, wasn’t it?”

  “Okay, so now what?” Scott walked toward the house.

  “If it was earlier, I’d say we take a ride, but Uncle Bryan will want to have dinner in a little while.” Dillon pulled off the falconry glove and handed it to Scott.

  “Why don’t we go feed the horses, then, and see what’s going on? I’ll go let Alex know I’m heading down there.” They walked into the house, put up the gloves, and added the tidbit cups to the tubs in the sink before they went looking for Alex. It was getting to be routine, and Dillon found it to be a routine he enjoyed. Everything in Kerens was making him happy, pushing away the darkness from his previous life in Dallas.

  24

  DILLON HELPED Uncle Bryan clean up the kitchen after their dinner of quick burgers on the grill. He never realized how much better home cooking was than fast food until he’d come to Kerens. His mother always seemed to be running late for something, so they’d eaten most of their evening meals from various restaurants around the neighborhood. Uncle Bryan was far enough away from the restaurants that they weren’t really an everyday option. But his cooking was far superior to fast-food fare.

  “I heard from Detective Graham today.” Uncle Bryan folded the dish towel and hung it on the door handle in front of the sink.

  “What did he have to say?” For a second Dillon’s hands started to sweat with the unknown. He wiped them on the towel he held before he folded it to join Uncle Bryan’s.

  Uncle Bryan walked toward the living room. “Let’s sit down and talk about it.”

  “If we didn’t talk about it over dinner, this must be serious.” Dillon nervously wiped his hands down his jeans.

  “Yes and no.” Uncle Bryan settled into his favorite chair.

  Dillon perched on the corner of the couch, suddenly wishing that Scott was there with him.

  “He heard back from the DA; the case with the convenience store is officially closed. The store owner complained a bit, but wasn’t willing to file civil charges if the DA didn’t want to file criminal charges. That’s good news. They’ve also found most of the rest of the Shanks.”

  “Where are they?” Dillon leaned forward.

  “In Syria.”

  “Where?” Dillon thought it sounded like a country he’d heard about in school, but he couldn’t remember where it was.

  “It’s in the Middle East.”

  “What are they doing there?” It didn’t make any sense to Dillon, but then he flashed back to another conversation with the detective and Kareem’s words about needing fighters.

  “They’ve joined some kind of radical group in the war over there. Some oil man managed to get them out of the country.” A concerned look crossed Uncle Bryan’s face. “I’m so glad that Hassan wasn’t able to get you to that moving truck. You’d have been on that plane, and I never would’ve gotten you back.”

  “I’m glad too. It’s hot enough here in Texas. I don’t want to live in a desert.”

  “You realize they would’ve killed you over there? They don’t like gays at all. You probably don’t see the various news sites about it, but they’re stoning gays and throwing us from buildings every day. A lot of those countries have the harshest antigay laws in the world.”

  “They still think it’s a choice?” Dillon asked. Even with the things he’d put up with in school, being bullied for being gay wasn’t part of it. If he’d gotten with Robbie, it might’ve been different. I guess I’ve been lucky, but I don’t know what school will hold for me out here. At least I’ll have Scott to lean on.

  “I think some of them are more backward than a lot of the rednecks around here. At least the rednecks around here can be reasoned with once you get them drunk enough.” Uncle Bryan shook his head. “No, don’t ever try that method. Forget I mentioned it. It has too much possibility to get messy. But overall, I just want you to know how thankful I am that Kareem didn’t haul you off and that you’re still here with me.” He swallowed. “I wish your mother was still here too.”

  As his chest tightened, Dillon nodded. “I do too. Speaking of Mom, any chance they were able to tie Kareem to the drive-by?”

  “I was getting there. They did a ballistics test on Kareem’s gun and actually managed to link him to several recent murders, including your mother’s.”

  “I knew he had something to do with that. There was just something about the way he went on about me not having a family now. It almost sounded like he was gloating.”

  “It was probably some kind of psychological thing for him, or the terrorists he worked with. Get you into a place in your mind where you’d be willing to accept their teachings by taking everything important away from you.” Uncle Bryan chewed on his lip a bit and drummed on the tight leather of the chair arm. “The things I hear about what some of these people are willing to do in an effort to expand their forces is just horrifying. I hope we never have to personally deal with them again.”

  “Me too,” Dillon agreed.

  “Now, we can get on with our lives and just be thankful that the holes left behind aren’t bigger. One last thing, I’ve called a company that will go in and finish cleaning out the apartment. Goodwill didn’t want anything to do with it after finding out that the driver was a Shank and people had been shot during the attempted pickup. I think everything important is out of there.”

  The idea of going back to the apartment sent chills through Dillon. “If we missed anything, we can just replace it later. I don’t want to go back.”

  “That’s what I figured. It’ll be taken care of tomorrow.”

  Dillon’s phone chimed with an incoming text. He glanced at it. It was Robbie. “Good. I think I’m going to go chat with Robbie for a while, if that’s okay. And Scott’s expecting me in World in a bit.”

  Uncle Bryan stood and gave Dillon a big hug. “I’m so happy that you’ve found a life out here.”

  Dillon hugged him back. “I’m happy too. Thanks for taking me in, Uncle Bryan.”

  The phone chimed again, sounding almost impatient.

  “Go, talk to Robbie, tell him hello from me and make sure he knows that I’m happy he’s feeling better.”

  Dillon headed down the hall. “I will. I’ll also let him know what Detective Graham said.” He started replying as he walked.

  Dillon> Was talking with Uncle Bryan.

  Robbie> No prob.

  Dillon> U doing ok?

  Robbie> Yeah. Mom let me out of bed today.

  Dillon> Good. How soon before she lets u out of the house?

  Robbie> No clue. Want to break now.

  Dillon> Scott and I will come take you to the movies when she lets go.

  He relayed the information Uncle Bryan told him. Robbie was as happy as Uncle Bryan had been about Kareem failing. By the time he finished chatting with Robbie, it was time for him to log into WoW and meet Scott.

  The game booted quickly, but it didn’t show Scott as logged on. Dillon started doing small things in the game as he waited for Scott to appear, but after five minutes, he still was not there. Dillon picked up his phone and started to text Scott when there was a tap at his window.

  He put the phone on the desk and went to the window. Outside, Scott grinned at him.

  “I thought we were gaming tonight,” Dillon said after he opened the window.

  “I thought you might like a change of plans. It’s a really pretty night out. What do you say we ride down to the lake?” He pulled off the backpack he had over his shoulder. “I remembered towels.” The light from Dillon’s room sparkled off the mischievous gleam in his eyes.

  “Are we riding or walking?”

  “Up to you. We’d get
there faster on horseback.”

  Dillon gestured Scott toward the front door. “Okay, but we have to ask Uncle Bryan if it’s okay to take the horses out.”

  Dillon closed the window, and with a light happy step, hurried to the living room. Uncle Bryan looked up from the show he had on as Dillon walked behind him and to the front door.

  As Scott came in, Dillon gave him a lusty kiss.

  “What are you two up to tonight?” Uncle Bryan asked. “I thought you said you were gaming.”

  “That was the plan,” Dillon said, “before Scott changed things on me. Do you mind if we take the horses down to the lake?”

  Uncle Bryan rubbed his chin for a moment. “Scott, do your folks know about this?”

  “Yes. I told them I was coming down here to see if Dillon wanted to go for a late-night swim. They said it was okay as long as we were together. If he didn’t want to go, I’m to go home and not go swimming by myself.”

  “Good call. I’ll give them a holler when you two leave to let them know that you’re on your way.” Uncle Bryan let out a long, slow breath. “The road between here and there is fairly smooth and the horses know it, so there shouldn’t be any problems. Watch out for coyotes and cars.”

  Dillon nodded. “We always do.”

  “You two go and have fun.” A serious look crossed Uncle Bryan’s face. “Also watch out for watchers. If you think you have an audience, assume you do and don’t do anything that will get you into trouble. Do you understand?”

  Dillon glanced at Scott, who nodded. “We understand. Thanks, Uncle Bryan.”

  “Just be quiet when you come in. I’ve got to get to bed early and get up for a client call in the morning. Don’t forget your phone, in case there’s a problem.”

  Patting his pocket, Dillon realized he didn’t have the phone. “I’ll go get it.” He hurried from the room and down the hall. His excitement level built. I hope we’ve got our little spot at the lake to ourselves.