Living with the hawk

by Robert Currie

  It was crazy, but with her dragging along against me, I noticed the peonies beside the front porch, and I thought, if they were still in bloom, maybe that would be enough to mask the smell, but they were shrivelled, wasted, their blossoms blown away weeks ago. They looked like old men with shrunken heads, mummified sentinels from an ancient army, left on guard beside a door where there was nothing left to defend. I felt her arm begin to slip from my shoulder.

  The door swung violently open, the peonies caught in the sudden breeze, leaning away from the door, as if something awful was coming, something they didn’t want to see.

  A big man filled the doorway, hair tousled, rumpled grey pyjama top, blue jeans, his mouth twisted in a frown. I stopped when I saw him, almost dropped the girl. He charged toward us, staring at his daughter, a low moan in the air, hers, I thought, but then I saw the way his mouth had fallen open and knew the moan was his.

  He reached for her — no, a fist, I tried to back away, but I couldn’t let her fall, it caught me high on the cheek, hard as a rock on the side of my face, sparks in my vision, but I managed to turn, swung her between us.

  “Bastard!” The word like a cry wrenched from a pet struck by its master.

  “Hey!” I heard a car door slam, saw Ivan, a dark hulk at the curb, wavering, my eye filled with tears. “For Christ’s sakes, he’s trying to help.”

  A sudden hand on my arm, a claw, yanking me away from her. He held her with the other hand, steadied her against his hip, kicked out at me, but I jumped back, the blow just grazing my shin. When I looked down, I saw that he was wearing brown slippers, his pyjama cuffs sticking out from underneath his jeans.

  “Get the hell out of here.” His voice fierce, but human now. “I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

  I backed away, turned and ran for the car.

  Ivan jumped inside, leaned across the front seat and shoved the door open. “Shit,” he said, “I think you better get yourself a new girlfriend.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.” My eye stinging. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. “I never saw her before.”

  He roared away from the curb, tires screaming. “Shit, man, I thought he was going to kill you.”

  “Me too.” I put my hand on the side of my face, the whole side throbbing.

  “Better take you home.”

  I started to give him the address, then realized he’d often dropped my brother off, he knew exactly where to go. I sat there, my fingers just touching my cheek, wondering what it looked like. My eye hurt.

  Ivan drove through silent streets, both hands on the wheel, no longer speeding, nothing more to say. When he pulled up in front of my house, he turned toward me, patted me once on the shoulder, but he did have another comment.

  “That girl,” he said, “I don’t think she peed herself.”

  I was already out the door, starting toward the dark house — thank God, my parents were in bed — but I had to stop and speak to him. “Jeez, I don’t know, don’t know what was going on there.”

  THREE

  Sunday morning at the Russell house was not a time to sleep in. My mother liked to cook a big breakfast, pancakes and bacon usually, while my father went over his sermon one last time in the den. Of course, my brother and I were expected to be up and ready to leave for church when our parents left. That morning, I wondered if my brother would make it. They’d certainly know what happened — my father had heard him, in the bathroom, honking his guts out half the night. Sure, he might’ve gone in there thinking Blake was sick, but right away he had to know what was really wrong. Maybe, in all that uproar, they’d forget that I had missed my curfew too. I might just get lucky.

  As soon as I got into the bathroom, I checked the mirror. Swelling above my cheekbone, the flesh around my left eye a collage of black and blue, a tinge of yellow running through the black, as if some crazy abstract artist had worked it over with a paintbrush. I laid my fingers against the skin. It was tender all right, but it didn’t hurt unless I touched it. What was I going to do?

  I stayed in the shower a long time, just standing there, the water washing over me, the heat working through me. Maybe it would help my eye, take the swelling down a bit, make the colour fade. Sure, and I used to believe in the tooth fairy too.

  When I stepped out of the shower, the bathroom was filled with steam. I could hardly see the towel hanging on the rack. Even after I’d dried myself off, the mirror was fogged up. I wiped it down with the towel, but my face looked exactly the same.

  I swung the mirror open, studied the shelves behind it. Toothpaste, shaving cream, after shave lotion, a bottle of perfume, four kinds of deodorant, rubbing alcohol, talcum powder — that might work. I hauled it out, twisted the cap, shook powder into the palm of my hand, ran my fingers through it, began to daub it on the skin around my eye. I turned my head, and leaned toward the mirror. The colours were still there, a lot paler now, kind of sickly looking, but at least they no longer shone.

  It might work; it was worth a try.

  I got dressed, slacks and a good shirt — I wasn’t required to wear a tie — and went down to breakfast.

  I sidled into the kitchen, my left side away from my mother who said, “Morning, Blair,” and bent to the oven where the pancakes would be warming. My father must still be in the den. I sat in Blake’s chair, where the left side of my face would be hidden from my mother. Maybe, if I ate fast enough, I’d be finished before my father came down to eat. When my mother brought the pancakes, I tilted my head away from her while she slid them onto my plate. I could feel her looking at me.

  “Stiff neck this morning?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, must’ve slept crooked.” I slapped on the butter, poured the syrup.

  “You were late getting in.”

  “I guess I was.” Apologize — that was the best approach. “I’m sorry.”

  “You know about Blake?” she asked.

  Before I could answer, I heard footsteps, my father coming down the stairs, and I got my left hand up against my face, started to shovel in the food.

  “What happened to you?”

  I knew he didn’t mean my mother. I looked up at him. He had stopped halfway to the table, a puzzled expression on his face. I was so stupid, so worried about covering up my shiner, I hadn’t given a thought to what I ought to say. Didn’t have a thing ready. And a fossil, frozen in a rock, could do a better job of improvising.

  “I . . . I got hit.”

  “Who hit you?”

  “Some guy — I don’t know his name.”

  My mother almost ran around behind me, bending down to peer at my face. She reached to stroke it, but then her fingers wavered. “Oh, Blair,” she said, “does it hurt?”

  I shook my head.

  “You were in a fight.” My father too was shaking his head, as if this was somehow beyond his comprehension. I looked down at my breakfast, pancakes soaked and cooling in a slough of syrup, a gob of butter congealing at the edge of a limp pancake. What could I tell him — that Blake had pissed on a girl and I’d been hammered by her ol’ man?

  “Well, was it a fight or not?”

  I looked up at my father and nodded. My mother gasped and took a step away from me.

  His eyes full of pain, my father dropped into his chair. “I don’t understand,” he said. He ran his hand through his hair, as he always did when something bothered him — an old habit, I guess, there wasn’t much hair left. He glanced at my mother, then back at me. “It’s bad enough Blake comes home drunk, but you — you get into a fight. I don’t understand this. Life seems normal, we go to bed the same as usual, and when we wake up, everything’s changed.” He took a deep breath, seemed to steady himself. “What were you fighting about?”

  I looked down at my fork, raking it through the butter, trying to mash it into the pancakes, make the butter disappear. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean — you don’t know?” He was struggling to keep his voice down. “You were there. Of course
, you know.”

  A smear of cold butter, like grease on the soggy pancake.

  What was the use? I looked up at my father. “It just kind of happened.”

  “What happened? That’s what I’m asking you.”

  I had to tell him something. Some version of the truth, maybe that would work.

  “There was this girl,” I said. “She was drunk, throwing up, and I was going to help her, I kind of grabbed her to keep her from falling down, and some guy smashes me in the cheek with his fist.” My father was looking at me, his face hard as stone. “It must’ve been her boyfriend. He was winding up to really let me have it; so I punched him back, nailed him quick before he could hit me again.” I don’t know where that came from; it was stupid. Maybe, I just wanted to knock that granite look off my father’s face, but I made him wince, and then I felt even worse.

  “You said you were going to the show.” My mother, right beside him now, her voice wavering as if she were struggling not to cry.

  “I did. I went to the show. With Evan.”

  “This didn’t happen at the show,” my father said. “Were you drinking?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Listen now,” he said. “I want to know exactly where you were.”

  “I . . . I went to a party. After the show.”

  “Was Blake there?” my mother asked. “Is that where he got drunk?”

  I hesitated. “He was there, yeah. I didn’t see him drinking.”

  “There were kids drinking though, weren’t there?” My father rose from his chair, took a step toward me. “Tell me where you were.”

  I thought of Vaughn Foster and the way he must’ve caught it from his parents. Oh man, yes. But then I thought of Joan, his sister — she didn’t need someone else’s father phoning them, getting them all stirred up again.

  “Come on, Blair. Whose house was it?”

  “I don’t know.” An outright lie. Sooner or later, I’d pay for that.

  “You know where you were. Tell me.”

  “I . . . I — really couldn’t say.”

  “Paul!” My mother reached toward him, but he wasn’t going to hit me, I knew that. He was just angry — angry and frustrated.

  “Go to your room,” he said. “And stay there. Your brother’s grounded, and so are you. Until further notice.” He reached for the coffee perk, then shoved it aside. “You bloody well need to tell me where you were.” His face was red with anger, but he looked embarrassed too. Bloody, I thought, that was as close as he ever got to swearing. When he spoke again, he sounded tired. “You think about it long enough, maybe you’ll come to your senses. I sure hope so.”

  Some people might imagine I’d be glad of the chance to skip a Sunday service, but the truth is I didn’t mind church at all. It was also true that I seldom paid much attention to my father’s sermons, my mind drifting aimlessly, but I liked the way his rich voice rolled over me like a bright, warm river, light pouring through the stained glass windows, Christ lambent with colour, the vivid children gathered in His radiance. I liked exchanging the peace, especially with Mr. Hammond — he was a policeman, lean as a fencepost, a tough cop, some people said, but you’d never guess it in church. He was the one who always led the congregation in singing “Happy Birthday,” who never failed to look for me, striding down the aisle till he found me, taking my hand in that great mitt of his, holding it, that deep voice saying, “The Peace of Christ be with you, Blair.” Saying it and meaning it. And I liked the way we all sang “The Lord’s Prayer,” some of us kneeling, some of us standing, but all of our voices rising together, merging with the booming peal of the organ, the whole church filling with sound, “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and for ever. Amen.” And best of all, that moment before dismissal when my father looked down from the sanctuary, spreading his arms wide, until they included us, everyone, and that familiar voice, which was only partly his by then, extended to each of us “The peace of God, which passes all understanding.”

  Today there’d be no peace for me.

  Nor for Blake.

  As soon as my parents left for church, I went into his room. His window was thrown up, curtains jumping in the breeze, but still the air held a faint smell of vomit. My brother’s eyes were open when I entered, but he closed them right away, his breathing slow and steady.

  I was furious with him for what he’d done, enraged with myself for lying to our father. Yes, and blaming Blake for the lie.

  “We all heard you last night, you know, honking your guts into the can.”

  No change in his breathing.

  “Come on. I know you’re awake.” I wanted him to squirm, wanted to see him suffer. “Nice going there, bro. You made Mom and Dad real proud.” He rolled away from me, but I wasn’t finished. “One good thing about it though, you supplied Dad with enough raw material for a month of sermons. He can talk about the sins of the son for — ”

  “Go to Hell!”

  I looked down at him lying there on the bed, turned away from me, legs curled into a fetal hunch, covers pulled almost over his head, face shoved toward the wall, the bed quivering beneath him. What a sorry specimen, wrapped in blankets and shivering. I wanted to rip the blankets from the bed, make him lie there, shaking on a bare mattress, let him suffer the way he ought to. But I left the room without another word.

  He had no idea I’d been in Foster’s yard that night, no idea I’d seen exactly what he’d done.

  I might have been grounded, but that didn’t get me out of helping my mother with the dishes after lunch. She said the dishwasher was full, she’d wash these and I could darn well dry, it would do me good to help out around the house. While she filled the sink with water, I could feel her stealing glances at the bruise on my cheek. I kept my eyes out the window, the backyard lawn covered with a crust of snow, the sky overcast, as gloomy as I felt.

  “There goes the squirrel,” said my mother, raising a soapy hand to point. Heading for the neighbour’s yard, the red squirrel ran along the telephone wire, a circus acrobat, his bushy flag streaming behind him. He disappeared beyond the pine tree in the next yard.

  “I didn’t see him at the feeder,” she added. I kept my mouth shut. Bloody squirrel was as big a show-off as Jordan Phelps. We’d often find him dangling upside down from the lowest branch of the maple, the bird feeder hanging crooked from his weight, his front paws dipping into the tray, retrieving a single oiled sunflower seed, raising it to his mouth.

  “Must’ve been there,” she said, nodding at the feeder, ignoring my silence. No birds in the tray. It hung motionless, its green plastic roof speckled white with bird shit, its transparent walls revealing that it was still more than half full of seeds. Beneath the feeder the snow was dark with broken shells. I suppose she’d want me to get out there and shovel them into a garbage bag before a wind scattered them across the yard.

  “All the birds are gone,” she said.

  I studied the maple, its branches bare except for a host of pale yellow seeds that hung like miniature propellers on the ends of southern branches.

  Usually when the squirrel was feeding, we’d see the birds perched on higher branches, heads cocked, waiting until the feeder was free, sparrows mostly, but a lot of finches too. Sometimes a pair of chickadees would dart from branch to branch, one of them dropping to the feeder tray, snagging a seed and darting off again, the other following right away, first to the feeder, then flitting out of sight. Often on the ground there’d be juncos, their backs dark as slate, pecking through the mess of shells for seeds spilled by frenzied sparrows. Once a larger bird landed on the tray, its size at least three times that of a sparrow, the feeder tipping beneath it. It was so big it had to sit sideways on the tray. A flicker, my mother said, you could tell by its black crescent bib, the crimson patch on the nape of its neck.

  “The squirrel must’ve made a run at some of them,” she said, “chased them all away.”

  But, no, here was a single bird, hopping fr
om branch to branch, heading for the feeder, no sign of colour on its breast or throat, nothing but a sparrow. It landed on the feeder tray, ducked its head, began to eat.

  “Lucky bird,” I said. I thought I better say something. “He’s got the feeder all to himself.”

  I heard her gasp before I saw what was coming, the sparrow darting off the feeder, flying straight at our window, a hawk right behind it. Just before the sparrow struck the glass, it veered to the right, and I swear its face was so close to mine I could see panic written there. The hawk veered too, and they both were out of sight. A second later they were back, the sparrow fleeing, swerving, wings frantic, the hawk swooping after it, plucking it from the air, flying up into the maple.

  Beside me, I heard my mother moan. Her hand was at her mouth, suds dripping from her chin.

  I heaved the window open, leaned toward the screen. “Hey,” I shouted. “Get out of here.” Immediately felt foolish, the damage already done, the hawk impervious to commands from anyone below. Before I could slide the window shut, I thought I heard a bone snap above us in the maple.

  Part way through Monday’s practice, Coach Conley sent me in to play defensive back. I guess I was angry because everything was going as it always did in practice — Blake working behind the centre, in total control as usual, running the same plays as smoothly as ever — just as if Saturday night had never happened, as if things were still the same.

  I was supposed to cover the slotback on the short side of the field, but I had something else in mind.

  Even before the ball was snapped, I went for him. Nobody between us, and I was going full speed, Blake trying to wheel away, the ball already out of his hand, but I had him, my shoulder in his chest, smashing him backwards, pounding him into the ground, all my weight on him. I felt him bounce beneath me, a great whoosh of air expelled from his lungs.