Snow Falcon

by Harrison, Stuart

  Michael avoided crossing the river and heading up to the high ground where he found her. He still wondered about the identity of the hunter who shot her.

  Once she was comfortable with him he began to encourage her to step from her perch to the fist for food. After a couple of days she was jumping the length of her leash, and that was as far as he could go until her brail was removed. He also started getting her used to a hood that Frank made for him. It was constructed from three pieces of leather in a shape that roughly approximated the shape of her head, with the sides that covered her eyes being slightly bulbous. Its purpose was to keep her in the dark (from where the term hoodwinked originated, he discovered from his reading) so that she would stay calm and not be startled by strange sights if he was, for example, taking her somewhere in the car. It was a beautifully constructed thing, the side panels being of red leather, the middle section light tan, and the long leather drawstrings used to tighten it a contrasting black. On the crown an ornate spray of feathers transformed it from something merely practical to a small work of art.

  A few weeks after Michael began training Cully, Tom Waters stopped by to take a look at her wing.

  ‘I think the brail should come off,’ he said after he examined Cully. ‘You should go easy on her though. Don’t have her flying too soon.’

  They were in the woodstore. It was dark and Cully was sleepy and when the brail came off she hardly seemed to notice. In the morning when he brought her food she was flexing both wings while she gripped the perch tightly with her feet. He hung back at the door, startled at how large she was with her full wingspan exposed. He was worried she would aggravate her injury but after a moment she settled again, panting from the exertion of her exercise, but otherwise seemed fine.

  He fed her and retreated. He would give her a few days, and then her training would begin in earnest.

  CHAPTER 15

  With Cully temporarily confined, Michael had time on his hands and his thoughts turned to the need to make a living. One morning his phone rang and to his surprise it was Carl Jeffrey.

  ‘Just thought I’d see how everything is going?’ the lawyer said.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Michael said cautiously. ‘What can I do for you, Carl?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking, it seems like we got off on the wrong foot. I thought if you’re coming into town sometime you could stop by for a cup of coffee.’

  ‘You called to ask me to have a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Well, why not? But I’ll be honest with you, there’s some business I’d like to discuss.”

  ‘I told you, I’m not interested in selling the house, Carl so if that’s what you want to talk about we’d be wasting each other’s time.’

  ‘It isn’t about the house. It’s about the store. I could still get you a good price for it. I imagine you could use the money, Michael. I mean, have you found any work? I heard you were looking.’

  I bet you did, Michael thought. The entire town was probably aware that their least favorite son was looking for a job. He wanted to tell Carl he wasn’t interested, but it was true that he could use the money, and there was no reason to hang onto the store. It was sitting there empty, costing him money in taxes and he hadn’t even been near it since he arrived.

  ‘Why don’t you just come in and talk about it,’ Carl said. ‘What harm could it do?’

  ‘Okay, but not your office,’ he agreed. ‘Meet me at the store.’

  If he was going to sell the place the least he could do was have a look at it first.

  ‘Alright. How does two-thirty sound?’ Carl agreed.

  ‘See you then.’

  He hung up and as he went outside he mulled over the call. Selling the store made sense. It would give him a breathing space. In the woodstore, Cully was standing on her perch. When Michael held out his fist, she saw the meat he was holding between his finger and thumb and, with a flick of her wings, she hopped three feet to the glove. After she’d eaten, he produced the hood, but when she saw it she snaked her head left and right to avoid it. Sometimes she accepted it, other times she acted as if she’d never seen it before. Eventually he managed to slip it over her head, and then he untied her leash and took her to the car where he set her on her perch in the back. Her movements now were accompanied by the oddly flat, but distinctive note of the small bell that was attached to one of her legs. It was made of an alloy that produced a tone that could be heard from some distance away, and was another gift from Frank. Its purpose was to help locate a lost bird if the unthinkable should happen, a last resort.

  When he arrived in town he parked outside the store his father had run for forty-five years. There were few people about on the street and nobody saw him take Cully inside. Inside it was cold and the light was dim. It was like entering a crypt. He tried the light switches, but the power wasn’t connected, so he utilized a shelving fixture as a perch for Cully, and once she was secured he set about ripping down the black paper covering the windows. Daylight filtered through the streaked glass and dust filled the air. He looked around, assailed by unexpected sadness at the neglect he saw.

  He’d once worked here after school and at weekends. On Saturdays he had the place to himself when his father inexplicably drove to Williams Lake to visit suppliers when he could have just phoned with his order. Michael hadn’t questioned it much back then. It was all part of the mysterious routines of his dad’s life, like the way he spent every Thursday evening doing the books at the store and so didn’t come home until late, smelling of booze. When he was at home he spent a lot of his time shut away in his study building intricately detailed models of sailing schooners, inspired by plates from the leather-bound books on the shelves of his bookcase. He always had a bottle of bourbon on the table beside him, which he sipped from a never-empty glass. The books were still in the house, though oddly enough there was no trace of the models. Michael wondered what happened to them.

  The store had wooden fixtures that once ran in aisles parallel to the door, and the counter ran along the back wall. Patches of damp showed in the walls near the ceiling and some of the wooden floorboards were rotten. Here and there splintered holes showed where the fixtures had been carelessly moved. They lay in a haphazard arrangement, like pieces of a puzzle awaiting somebody to put them back together again. He supposed it was from when the stock had been removed after his dad died. The disarray bothered him. His dad always kept the shelves well stocked and orderly.

  A knock at the window startled him. He went to the door to let Carl in.

  ‘Jesus, it’s freezing in here. Does that work?’ Carl flapped his arms and pointed to an old heater.

  ‘No power.’

  ‘Maybe we should go to my office,’ Carl grumbled, looking around, but Michael thought if he was going to sell the place he ought to make the decision here, where he could feel the ghost of his father’s presence. Maybe he was watching. The store had been his world. He spent more time there than he ever had at home. What would he think if he could see it now?

  ‘Funny being in here again,’ Carl commented. ‘I remember fetching stuff for my dad. There was a smell I remember. It was the first thing that hit you when you came through the door. What was that?’

  ‘Linseed oil,’ Michael said, recalling it with sudden vividness. ‘He used to buy it in drums and bottle it himself.’

  ‘You worked here sometimes didn’t you?’

  ‘After school.’

  ‘Did you get on with him? Your dad I mean?’

  There was genuine curiosity in Carl’s tone, Michael thought. Carl probably wondered why he hadn’t come back for his dad’s funeral and why he’d hung onto the house and the store all these years.

  ‘Not really.’ Michael hesitated, thinking back to when he was young. ‘Actually I never wanted to work here at all. I hated every minute of it.’

  ‘Yeah? It’s funny, I used to help my dad after school too. He wanted me to be a lawyer, like him. He was always giving me books to read. Law books.’ />
  There was some note of resignation in Carl’s tone, maybe the taint of bitterness. Michael wondered what secret hopes and ambitions lay buried in him that would now never see the light of day. For some reason it surprised him that Carl might have harbored ideas about becoming something other than a lawyer.

  ‘I guess your dad thought you’d take this place over someday?’ Carl said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ In fact his dad had always encouraged him to go to college. Michael didn’t think his dad had ever wanted him to follow in his footsteps.

  Carl hunched his shoulders and looked down at his feet as he traced a pattern in the dust with his shoes. ‘I thought about going to art college once,’ he said, and uttered a quick self-deprecatory laugh. ‘Good job I didn’t. I probably would have ended up designing labels for canned food or something. Things probably worked out for the best.’ He glanced at Michael as if he was faintly embarrassed by his admission.

  ‘Were you any good?’

  He shrugged. ‘I used to be, I think. Who knows? I suppose there would’ve been plenty of kids who were better than me though.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ Michael wondered what Carl’s dad had thought of his son’s ambitions. Had he even known? ‘It’s never too late,’ he offered.

  ‘I think it is,’ Carl said with faint bitterness. He thought for a moment. ‘You know, when we were kids, I used to think we had some things in common.’

  Michael was surprised. They barely knew each other from what he recalled.

  ‘I guess that sounds funny to you,’ Carl went on. ‘I know what the other kids thought about me. That fat kid whose dad was the asshole lawyer a lot of people didn’t like. But you weren’t exactly the most popular kid in school either, the way I remember it.’

  It was true, but for different reasons. Michael’s habit of keeping to himself was his own choice.

  Cully shifted position and her bell made its curious flat note. Carl saw her standing in the gloom.

  ‘Jesus, what the hell is that?’

  Michael suppressed a smile. Quickly glimpsed, her pale form was startling, more so given the strange silhouette of the hood. ‘She’s a falcon.’

  Carl peered at her but made no move to get any closer. ‘It’s yours?’

  ‘No, not really.’ He didn’t want to talk about Cully and turned to the door at the back. ‘Let’s take a look upstairs.’

  Carl followed him as they poked around through the empty rooms on the floor above. Some contained empty boxes and faded newspapers, but that was all. Once the rooms had been used for storage, but now the evidence of the passing years was everywhere. It was in the badly-fitting doors that sagged on their hinges, the wallpaper faded and peeling in one of the rooms and the floor rotted and dangerous in another.

  Carl tagged along, not saying much, and when they got downstairs again he blew his nose because of the dust that had got into his sinuses.

  ‘This place is falling apart,’ he pointed out needlessly.

  In truth it wasn’t as bad as that. All it needed was a little money and time spending on it. The structure was basically sound and there was only one small leak in the roof.

  ‘Are you still planning on staying in town?’ Carl asked when he’d finished blowing his nose.

  ‘I don’t have anywhere else to go.’

  ‘Personally I don’t know what the attraction is. I mean, if you sold up you could go wherever you wanted. You’d have enough to get started again.’

  Michael looked around at the store, wondering if Carl was right. ‘Have you got a buyer?’

  ‘His name’s Ron Taylor. He’s the same guy that made you an offer before.’ Carl took some papers from out of his coat. ‘He made you another one.’

  Michael looked over the figures. ‘This is just for the store?’

  ‘That’s right. He’ll take the house too though if you change your mind about that.’

  It was a fair price, Michael thought. As he considered whether to accept it, he looked around the store. At the back was the counter where his dad would unpack deliveries, checking each item against the packing note with a pencil, which he kept behind his ear. If he wasn’t doing that, he was often just passing time with one of his regular customers.

  Michael had worked in the store after school. His dad would ask the same questions. How was his day? Did he turn in his English paper? Was he trying out for any sports that year? His dad’s breath carried the lingering sourness of the couple of beers he drank at lunchtimes. His nose and cheeks were shot through with a spider’s web of red veins. Michael would answer in monosyllables and get on with his work, and eventually his dad would sigh and give up.

  It was his mother’s idea that he should work in the store. She said it would be good for him to spend more time with his dad, but Michael soon realized what it was really about. She would quiz him about what his dad said and did, who he saw and talked to. She wanted to know every detail. What did he talk about? Did he say things about her?

  Michael remembered an occasion when she made him get in the car and she drove into town to the doctor’s surgery. Blood streamed from wounds in her wrist. She was wild eyed, her make-up streaked from crying. She told the doctor she cut herself in an accident and Michael had to back her up. He was eight. It wasn’t true though. She did it herself after his dad called to say he’d be home late. She flew into a rage and hurled the phone to the floor, and was screaming about how she was going to kill herself. It turned out the cuts were superficial. His dad arrived to take them home. He stood aside, talking quietly with the doctor. After that his mother began spending a lot of time in her nightgown, often not getting out of her bed until noon. She complained of headaches, taking this pill or that for some imagined condition.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Carl said.

  Michael looked at the offer again, then handed it back. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Carl looked disappointed. ‘This is a good deal, Michael. You don’t have to take our word for it though. Get the place valued.’

  ‘Our?’ Michael questioned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said ‘our’. You don’t have to take ‘our’ word.’

  ‘Did I? I just meant it’s a good offer. Like I said when we first talked, this guy wants to move here and start some kind of business.’

  It didn’t ring true. Was Carl a partner in some redevelopment deal? Is that why he was so keen for Michael to sell? It didn’t matter anyway.

  ‘I’m not selling.’ Michael was surprised by what he was thinking. But then again, maybe he wasn’t. ‘I think I might re-open the store,’ he said.

  Carl blinked in astonishment. He looked around as if he was expecting to see workmen and tools all ready, as if Michael was pulling some kind of conjuring trick. ‘Are you serious? There’s an Eagle store less than thirty minutes from here. You can’t compete with a place like that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to. People would come for the convenience. I’d stick to the everyday lines, stay away from the big stuff.’

  ‘You’d be throwing your money away. I guarantee if you do this you’ll lose everything.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. Who knows? I guess we’ll find out though.’

  Carl shook his head emphatically. ‘No, we won’t find out. I’m telling you now nobody is going to come in here, Michael. Don’t you know that? Haven’t you got it yet? People don’t want you here.’

  Carl was right. Michael’s resolve wavered. What was he thinking anyway? It was a stupid idea, just like coming back to Little River was a stupid idea. He didn’t really blame people for the way they felt. All they knew about him was that he’d shot somebody and held his own wife and daughter at gunpoint.

  Something moved back in the store, a pale ghost of his dad, a man he never really knew and he wondered if that was what this was all about? Was he hoping to find something that couldn’t be found? Answers to questions he didn’t even know how to begin to ask? It was too late. Far, far too late.

  It w
asn’t a ghost he saw, however, but rather the restless shifting of the pale bird standing hooded in the gloom. Blindfolded and damaged, she was his responsibility now.

  ‘Sorry you wasted your time, Carl,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rachel Ellis feigned sleep, waiting for her husband’s deep breathing to turn to snoring. It was dark in their room, but through a gap in the curtains at the window she could see stars. Pete stirred, muttering something unintelligible, and his heavy hand slid from her belly to flop loose. The stubble of his chin scratched against the back of her neck.

  When he was asleep she got out of bed and put on her robe. The kids were sleeping and the house was quiet. She went downstairs to the kitchen and poured a glass of milk from the refrigerator, and tried not to think about the pile of bills on the shelf waiting to be paid.

  Earlier that night she and Pete had argued, which these days wasn’t unusual. It was the same old thing, no money coming in except what she made herself, his drinking, the business going to hell. Lately things had become worse and it had fallen to her to talk to the bank. That afternoon in the Savings and Loan, Richard Wells had looked at her across the desk, and she knew he noticed her skirt that showed off her legs. She saw the sympathy in his expression and felt humiliated. She was angry at herself for thinking a little make-up and fluttering her eyelashes would change anything, but she was also angry with Pete for making her act like a small-town whore. At least that’s how it felt.

  ‘Things have been quiet for Pete lately,’ she’d explained as heat flushed her cheeks.

  Richard looked at their account record. ‘I know business is tough right now, and we’re not talking about a lot of money here,’ he told her. ‘Don’t worry, I think we can work something out.’