A Mating of Hawks

by Jeanne Williams

“Not exactly. But what makes their use possible, what checks your tax returns, fouls up your bank account, scrambles your health records, swathes you in printouts? What makes mistakes that no one can unravel and is utterly unreachable by reason or entreaty?”

  “Computers!”

  “That’s it,” beamed Pencker. “And when rioting and violence are so terrible that people will long for any kind of peace, the Beast will take control of the computers and rule the whole world.”

  Tracy asked Pencker a few more questions. As the Beast haunted his future, so Communism, crime and inflation haunted his present. Flipping off the tape recorder, she asked him to let her take a few pictures, for which he posed with a beatific smile. Then he picked up a rifle and started to join his flock.

  “What sort of weapon is that?” Tracy asked.

  He patted the barrel. “An AR 18. I like it because it fires faster than the Heckler & Koch 91. Manually, it can get off twenty rounds in five seconds but this one’s automatic. I just squeeze the trigger and it rips off twenty rounds in one-point-eight seconds.” He smiled again and went out.

  Tracy reran a little of the tape to check the sound level and, satisfied with the quality, grabbed her camera and hurried out of the prefab and into—a nightmare.

  The sun was dazzling, yet darkness kept filling Tracy, an enveloping horror that made her see the world around her in dizzying flashes, like speeded frames of a movie, sound coming and going in bursts. People blazing away at man-shaped targets that spun and dangled crazily. Faces hard or eager or fearful. Children shrieking: “I hit him! Look! Right in the heart!”

  She almost screamed as a man loomed over her. Her own terrified face stared back at her, tiny and distorted, from reflecting glasses that turned the black face into an eerie mask with a tuft of sparse beard. Spotted camouflage clothes made the apparition seem a huge serpent.

  Shrinking back, she was braced by Judd’s hard arm and his deep voice. “This is Pardo. Learned his trade in Nam. He was Infantry, extended to be a helicopter door gunner. Pardo, Tracy’s just taking photos today but she’ll be back for some personal coaching.”

  The impenetrable mirrored glasses came off. Now that she could see his eyes, she liked something about his face even before a smile warmed it. “Pleasure, Tracy. Anyone messes with you, I can sure show you how to blow ’em away.”

  He sounded his whistle. Everyone hurried over, all with rifles or pistols. Some had both. Children gripped .22’s. An almost tangible odor of excitement filled Tracy’s nostrils, a dull sickening taint like that of old blood. Again swirling darkness clouded the bright day. She lay pinned to the driveway in Houston, gasping, struggling …

  Pardo’s voice. Her brain fumbled, could not decode words. When she could see again, Pardo had vanished but the group was surging forward.

  “They’ll try to track him down,” Judd said. His mouth seemed full and fleshy. “Come on, let’s see the action.”

  Six times in the next hour, Pardo rose up from thickets, dropped from trees, emerged from hollows in the earth. Never was he seen till he chose to be. Frustration grew, especially among the men.

  “Next time he pops up like a jackrabbit, I’ve a notion to crease the inside of his pants,” muttered a husky, sunburned, blond young man.

  Judd said pleasantly, “Mister, you stifle that kind of talk or you can turn around and leave.” He added gently, though his stare made the blond man’s drop, “You may be behind Pardo, but I’m behind you.”

  Pardo ran them back from the creek, fanning them out and telling them to hunker behind the nearest cover at one whistle, drop flat on two, and fire at three. By the time they got back to headquarters they were dusty, scratched and hot.

  During the break for coffee or soft drinks, Tracy talked to several women. One was a fragile brown-haired girl with pansy-velvet eyes. She was a nurse. Leaving a Tucson hospital one night, she’d been forced into her car by an armed man who’d made her drive out in the desert. He’d raped and beaten her, left her for dead in an arroyo. She had crawled to a house. That was over a year ago and her body had healed but her dark eyes filled with tears as she said brokenly, “I still have bad dreams. I sleep with the light on and have to use sleeping pills.”

  “If you’d had a gun, could you have gotten it out and used it before your attacker could have shot you?” Tracy asked.

  The small woman stiffened. “I don’t know. Probably not. But when I work the night shift now, I keep my gun in my hand while I’m walking to my car.”

  “What if a friend startled you and you shot before you recognized him?”

  “Any friend of mine had better know not to come up on me suddenly,” the young nurse said. She shivered, hunching her shoulders. Tracy knew exactly how she felt.

  An older woman, overweight and breathless from exertion, said she was taking the course because she and her husband ran a neighborhood store that had been robbed twice that year. “It’s awful,” she sighed, wiping her face with a tissue. “Used to be we knew everybody who came in. Gave credit, delivered free to shut-ins. People were more than customers, they were friends. But these days—” She made a gesture of bewilderment.

  The men were examining each other’s weapons. Pencker’s AR 18 and the similar-looking but manually fired Armalite 180 were in high favor, with the Heckler & Koch 91 heavy assault rifle also popular. The most popular handgun was the Colt Commander .45. A licensed dealer was offering to get anyone interested a deal on Remington 870 Bushmasters.

  “Fires the same round as the M-16,” he explained. “There’s a $200 federal tax and you’ve got to be checked out and given a permit by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and firearms, but I can still give you a bargain if three or more of you take one.”

  With a blast on the whistle, Judd announced there would now be instruction in the care of weapons and individual marksmanship coaching. Advanced students could practice with the Remington or one of the other Stronghold machine or sub-machine guns.

  “Now,” said Judd, steering Tracy over to face a man-shaped target twenty feet away. “Try for accuracy first, then for speed. Remember, you’ve got six shots. It takes just one.”

  Only one of the first load hit the target, and in the foot, at that. Judd blew his breath through his teeth. “Boy, do you need practice! Load up and try again.”

  Ten minutes later, she was hitting the target half the time, though she still had a tendency to shut her eyes and lower the barrel when she fired. When she hit the valentine pinned where a heart would be, Judd gave her a hug and a boisterous kiss.

  “That’s the way, doll. Told you you could learn!”

  “An apt pupil,” came a cold voice behind them. “I doubt if she’s the hotshot I’ve come to see you about, though.”

  They whirled. Tracy flushed, for some reason feeling judged and guilty at Shea’s icy stare. Judd grinned hardily. “Why did you come, little brother?”

  “Someone shot a deer on my place the last day or two. Field dressed it and packed the meat over here.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Someone’s eating venison.”

  Judd said testily, “It’s out of season, even if your place wasn’t posted, so do you think whoever did it is going around telling people? Hell, no! He’ll have it stowed away in ice chests.”

  “Let’s have a look at those ice chests, then.”

  Judd’s eyes blazed. “You’re not a game warden and damned if you can do that to my students!”

  “Why not? Call it a man practicing to defend his property.” Shea started to saunter toward the parked vehicles.

  “Pardo!” Judd yelled.

  The tall black strode over, eyeing Shea, who had turned back. “Yeah?”

  “Did you cross the fence and get a deer?” Judd’s voice was tight.

  Pardo shrugged. “When I start huntin’, I don’t pay much mind to fences. Did get me a deer yesterday. What about it?”

  “You know darn well it’s not deer season,” Judd growled. “Part of
our agreement is that you keep your nose clean! I don’t want a bunch of Fish & Game people running around out here.”

  Ignoring him, Pardo lazily surveyed Shea. His attention sharpened. “Hey! That you, Sergeant Scott?”

  He put out his hand in the brotherhood grasp and Shea responded, though his face was still grim. “What the hell are you doing here, Leopardo? Thought you were going back to Detroit and make gas guzzlers!”

  Pardo’s grin faded. “Lost my job, man. You know. Nerves. Got to drinkin’. Wife split, took the kids. Drifted awhile. Then I saw this ad for an instructor.” He grinned. “I tell you, sarge, there’s not much market for what they taught us in the war and it’s tough to settle down to what you used to do. What you doin’ for yourself?”

  “That’s a good question,” put in Judd. “He’s sure not ranching!”

  “I’ve got a place right over the fence,” Shea said. “If you get tired of this job, you’ve got one with me.”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Trying to get the range back to what it should be. Raising dry-land food crops, stuff like that.”

  Pardo’s jaw dropped. “You own that place?”

  Shea nodded.

  “Then how come you were just an enlisted man? How come,” Pardo asked savagely, “you were in the friggin’ army at all?”

  “He’s got a noble soul,” drawled Judd derisively. “Wouldn’t take special privileges.”

  Shea looked past Judd to Pardo. “Come have a drink when you have a chance. And that job’s open.”

  Pardo shrugged, a hint of puzzled suspicion in his eyes. “Sounds pretty dull, sarge. But I’ll take you up on the drink.” He chuckled. “Won’t shoot any more of your deer, either.”

  He went back to his trainees. Shea gazed after him, regret and bitterness emphasizing the lines in his face. In that moment, he looked much older than Judd, who said amiably, “Anything else we can do for you?”

  Slowly, Shea scanned the men, women and children who were practicing. “You could tell these people that the gun they have in their house is six times as likely to kill one of them as an intruder. You could tell them three-fourths of the crimes committed with guns are done with stolen weapons.”

  Judd reddened. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder what the hell kind of a soldier you were!”

  “If you’d been one,” Shea returned, “you might not get so turned on by guns and all this vigilante scene.”

  His look included Tracy, who both wanted to explain why she was there and tell him it was none of his business. Mostly, she ached at the sight of him, a hunger deep beneath the quicksilver fire that ran through her at the flick of his eyes. Did he feel nothing of that?

  He turned and moved toward his pickup. Judd got in front of him. “Shea, we need to run cattle on your lease.”

  “Have you culled your herd?”

  “Damn it, no!”

  “Then we’ve got nothing to talk about.” Shea swung past his half-brother and climbed into his pickup. He didn’t spare Tracy another glance.

  Judd stared after the wake of dust, then shrugged, grinned down at Tracy and drew her back to the target. “One more round, doll, and then we’ll eat.”

  After lunch Judd and Pardo showed films and diagrams of how to convert a room or house into a citadel. During a break Tracy heard one of the men in front of her say, “If things do blow up, I hope the people in the cities are killed. Sure don’t want to have to stand off mobs of starving animals.”

  “We’re from Tucson,” growled his neighbor.

  “Well, you’re getting prepared,” fumbled the first man. “Didn’t mean you.”

  The pansy-eyed young nurse had joined a coalition that was working for stiffer rape sentences and publicizing judges’ attitudes on the crime. No one else Tracy interviewed had tried to work for reform or to change the laws, though most were fiercely against gun control.

  “If we can’t have guns, how’re we going to defend ourselves?” several argued.

  As Judd drove Tracy home that evening, he gave her an expectant smile. “So what did you think of it?”

  “There’s a lot of fear.”

  “Stronghold replaces that with confidence.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  His brow furrowed. “How can it not be?”

  “If people who really aren’t comfortable with guns start keeping them at hand, they may feel more confident but wind up thoroughly dead.”

  “Shea’s little speech brainwash you?” Judd asked incredulously. “After the stories you taped today?”

  “If guns are the problem, and they are, then adding more guns seems like trying to put out a fire by dousing it with kerosene.”

  “Sounds like an interesting tactic,” said Judd. Pulling off the road, he stopped the RV, pulled Tracy into his arms and closed her mouth with his.

  IX

  His lips were hard and eager. She pushed at him, resisting the tingling shock that coursed through her. After a moment he lifted his head, smiling, and murmured, “That didn’t put out any fires for me. Tracy, sweetheart—”

  “Please,” she said, averting her face. “Please, Judd!”

  His hands tightened on her. “Tracy, you’ve got to get that Houston creep out of your head!” Judd’s strong warm hand fondled her throat, seeking out the pulse. “You need a lover, someone to teach you how good it can be.”

  I had one once. Shea.

  Drawing away, she tried to laugh. “You’re mightily persuasive, cousin, but I’m old-fashioned.”

  His eyebrows lifted and he grinned. “Tracy! Are you asking my hand in marriage?”

  “No.” She met his ombre gaze steadily, feeling the magnetic flow between them even as she said, “I’m not in love with you, Judd.”

  “My God, you are an infant!”

  “All the same.”

  Head atilt, he studied her a moment. “Maybe I can change that. Be interesting to try.”

  “I’m in love with someone else.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That makes it all the more interesting.” He started the RV and delivered her to Le Moyne’s ecstatic welcome as twilight was deepening to night.

  “I’ll pick you up in the morning,” he said as he turned to leave.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got my story.” She had also made a decision. Reaching into her bag, she got out the automatic and handed it to him. “I guess I have to put my chips where my bets are.”

  “Now, baby, think it over!”

  She sighed. “I have. Thanks, Judd, but no thanks.”

  He loomed above her in the dusk. For a moment, crazily, in spite of Le Moyne’s presence, she was afraid. Then Judd shrugged and dropped the gun in his pocket. “When shall we take that aerial tour of the ranch?”

  “You name it.”

  He thought a moment. “Wednesday’s good.”

  “Fine. I’ll drive over and we can leave after I’ve seen Patrick.”

  Brushing a kiss across her forehead, he pointed at the door. “Go inside with your behemoth and lock up.”

  She did, grateful that he’d taken her rejection so well. She smiled as he tooted his horn in farewell and set about fixing Le Moyne’s soyburgers.

  That night she was grateful for the big dog’s sprawling guard beside her bed. The training session and her talks with victims, especially the brown-eyed nurse, haunted her.

  Had it come to that in this country, that so many felt compelled to arm themselves? Was it worth surviving a holocaust if you had to kill your neighbors? And what of the thousands of young men like Pardo who’d found no peace or homecoming in America?

  Faces, voices, the sounds of firing all chased confusedly through her mind. Shea’s ironic smile condemned and taunted her. If only he hadn’t come while she was shooting! It was damned unfair. But so was he, drat him! He wanted to think all women were awful and he certainly wouldn’t give her the benefit of any doubt.

  She tossed restlessly. Maybe she was being silly. Maybe she should try to view sex
as Shea did, not mix it up with love. Judd would serve very well in that case. She might even get over her useless longing for Shea.

  But she moaned and her body tautened as she remembered the sweet wild way he’d loved her. It was a long time before she slept.

  Geronimo appeared next morning in time to join her in a second cup of coffee. If Shea had told him about seeing her at Stronghold, he didn’t bring it up. She helped carry over pipe and fittings for her shower, while Geronimo inverted a twenty-gallon tank and carried it across on his head and hands.

  The tank was black-painted to absorb heat and had a black plastic cover. Tracy helped him rig the scaffolding and put up the bamboo surround for the shower, which enclosed most of a big flat rock.

  “Come winter, you’ll need something snugger,” he said, pausing to down three glasses of tea. He added with a trace of disappointment, “I hoped Mary would be here today.”

  “I’ll try to bring her when I go to see Patrick,” Tracy promised. “But I thought I’d give you lunch first.”

  “Lunch? Chica, you go right now!”

  So, laughing, Tracy changed into clean clothes and drove to the ranch. Mary, washing her hair after sleeping late, promised to be ready in an hour. Tracy went upstairs and drank coffee with Patrick, regaling him with the story of her new shower and Le Moyne’s astonishing penchant for soyburgers.

  He chuckled but when she stopped her bright chatter, he said in a halting voice, “Honey, those two bull-headed sons of mine! Is the grazing as bad as Shea says?”

  Tracy hesitated. “I’m no expert, Patrick. But there are big stretches where there’s no grass at all. None of it looks really good.”

  “If Shea weren’t so damn stubborn!” the old cowman rumbled, knotting his good hand into a fist as brown and gnarled as a mesquite root. “His land would carry a thousand head till it rains.”

  “By then he might lose what gains he’s made in restoring the grass.” Tracy hadn’t intended to get mixed up in her cousins’ feud. She had defended Shea instinctively and to her considerable chagrin, but once started she went ahead. “Patrick, it’s going to take more than a good rain to help. Judd knows that. Doesn’t he want to irrigate to grow alfalfa? Unless you want to turn the ranch into a giant feeding lot, it might be a good idea to sell down to the land’s carrying capacity.”