Jamie’s eyes grew wide and he took a wary shuffle backwards.
‘You don’t have to be scared. You’ve seen how to do it. Don’t you want to give it a try?’
Jamie shook his head, but perhaps not as adamantly as he might have. Michael crouched down. ‘Come on, she won’t hurt you. She knows who you are. She trusts you.’
He could see Jamie thinking about it, then at last he nodded hesitantly and took the glove. Michael showed him how to bring his hand around behind the perch. ‘All you have to do is press against the back of her legs and she’ll step back.’
Jamie followed his instructions. He seemed surprised when he suddenly found Cully standing on his fist. ‘Now hold your arm steady and thread the jesses and leash through your fingers so you’ve got a solid grip and then you can stand up.’
He stepped back and watched, letting the boy and the falcon get used to each other. Cully shifted her feet, looked at the glove and then at Jamie and roused her feathers. ‘See, she’s fine.’
Jamie stared at her, wide eyed and nervous. Then gradually he smiled, and Michael thought he was like a different kid.
‘Okay, we’re going to fly her now. What I want you to do is just stay like this, okay? Let Cully stand there while I move away and then I’ll call her. Think you can do that?’
Jamie nodded. ‘Good. First let’s take off that leash and her jesses.’
He removed them so that she was free, and then he started walking away. He knew it wouldn’t take long for Jamie to feel the strain of the weight he was carrying. Cully’s bell sounded as she shifted restlessly, the strange flat note it made carrying clearly in the thin air.
He was going to do something different this time. Cully knew to fly to his fist and she was used to the lure made from crows wings and leather that he tied her meat to. Now he needed her to work a little harder. He’d watched videos online of what he was about to do, so he had a pretty good idea of how it was supposed to work. He just hoped Cully would figure it out too.
At fifty yards he turned and called her. Jamie ducked as Cully’s wings brushed his face, then his arm dipped and she flew across the snow. When she was three-quarters of the way there Michael did what Frank’s manual instructed. He tossed the lure to the ground and lowered his arm. For a second Cully faltered, confused by this unexpected change and he was sure she was going to fly right by, rising and rising while he called futilely after her. But her eyesight was ten times clearer than a man’s, and her focus was fixed on the meat attached to the lure. She changed direction, threw back her wings and tail as a brake and landed on the lure as if she’d been doing this for ever.
He called Jamie over, and when Cully had finished eating he told Jamie to pick her up like he had before.
‘I’m going to do that again,’ he said. He could see Jamie was puzzled. In The Goshawk, the author was training a hawk, which were only trained to fly to the fist. They were stealth hunters, adapted to forests and woods unlike falcons. What he was about to do with Cully required a different method, more suited to her natural style of hunting.
The second time he called her he threw the lure down as he had before, but this time just before she reached it he was going to yank it from her with a jerk of the line it was attached to. She came quickly, but nerves made him miss his timing. She was already poised to land when he jerked the lure away from her. She was supposed to keep going, to rise up and circle as he called her and swung the lure at his side, and then dive towards it as he threw it out for her. But she didn’t know any of that, and instead when the lure was abruptly snatched away she landed on the snow looking both startled and annoyed. The lure landed ten feet away and before Michael could react she started to run after it with a waddling gait, her wings folded like a strange kind of penguin. For a second he didn’t know what to do, then impulsively he jerked it away from her again. She stopped, bewildered, and then ran after it again. He was dismayed. This wasn’t the soaring flight he’d imagined.
He finally had the presence of mind to let her catch it. Jamie was looking on with an expression of astonishment, as if he was wondering if this was really the way to train a falcon? Until then everything had gone well and Cully had looked every inch the graceful predator she was. Now Michael felt like he’d reduced her to farce.
He let her eat, then called Jamie over to pick her up again. A part of him warned that he should leave it for the day, but another part wouldn’t let him finish on that note. He checked that she was still hungry, and though she wasn’t quite as eager as before he thought it would be okay. He walked away again and called her.
This time he got the timing right and pulled the lure from her when she was still several feet away. Instead of letting it land in the snow he swung it at his side and Cully flew past and began rising rapidly as she headed away from them. For a moment he was stunned, and was certain she wouldn’t respond to his call, but would simply keep going, becoming smaller and smaller until she was reduced to a distant speck. He had no idea if she could survive in the wild again, but doubted that she was strong enough.
Jamie looked on anxiously, waiting for him to do something, and Michael finally remembered to call her.
‘Cully!’
His voice carried across the snow and echoed faintly off the cliffs, but she continued to rise. He called again, this time with a note of faint desperation. He thought she was too far away to hear him and cursed himself for flying her when he knew she wasn’t as hungry as she should be. She was beyond the ridge now, high above the valley that lay out of their sight beyond the bluff. If she dropped down to the valley he would lose her. He called one last time, summoning everything he had to shout her name and at last she turned.
He kept calling her all the way back while he swung the lure at his side. As she drew near, two hundred feet above him he threw the lure up as high as he could, the line trailing behind. Cully folded her wings and dived. For a moment she appeared to corkscrew and he thought she would miss, but then she righted herself and caught the lure and carried it down to the snow.
She began to eat, oblivious to the scare she’d given him. He looked over at Jamie.
‘It’ll be better next time,’ he promised.
***
After dropping Jamie back home, Michael drove to the veterinary surgery. He put Cully’s hood on and carried her inside on his fist.
‘I’m worried about her wing,’ he explained to Tom Waters and related what happened earlier.
‘So you didn’t notice anything until she dived for the lure?’ Tom questioned.
‘Now that you mention it, no. Everything was fine until then. Is that significant?’
‘Could be. When she dives there’s a lot of stress on the wings. Think of a jet plane. If there was a fault in the construction somewhere the combination of speed and gravity in a dive would probably cause it to disintegrate. A falcon hunts by diving. Without that ability she wouldn’t survive in the wild.’
He examined her, probing the site of the fracture. ‘No sign of grating,’ he observed. ‘The callus is still there.’ He felt around the edge of her wing and shook his head. ‘And I can’t feel any sign of inflammation.’ He let her go, and watched while Cully flicked the wing back into position then repeated this a couple of times.
‘What are you looking for?’ Michael wondered.
‘Any sign that she’s uncomfortable. Does she ever carry this wing lazily when she’s at rest?’
‘She did after I flew her, but only for a little while. Why?’
‘It can be an indication there’s something wrong, but she seems fine right now. I can’t tell much more from my exam. Let me take some X-rays.’
He was gone for twenty minutes, and when he came back he put the film up against a light box. There was a smudge of darkness against the skeleton of Cully’s wing where the fracture had healed.
‘There’s a sign of infection there,’ he said, pointing at the ulna. ‘We’ll try her on a course of antibiotics. Keep the wing rested for a
few days and see how she does. When you start exercising her again go cautiously.’
‘What if the antibiotics don’t work?’ Michael asked, although he thought he could guess what Tom would say.
‘I hate having to say this, but I don’t think we’d have many options left. There’s no operation I can do that’ll help.’
‘When we talked before you mentioned you could amputate,’ Michael said.
‘I could.’
The rest was left unsaid. Michael tried to imagine Cully with one wing. She would survive but without the ability to fly and hunt, what would she be?
Perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Perhaps the antibiotics would work.
CHAPTER 22
Forty minutes out of Little River, heading up into the mountains, the county road passed through a valley. A man from Seattle had bought some land beside the lake there twenty years earlier, where he’d built a cabin he used occasionally for fishing. When the man died his brother wanted to sell the land and Susan thought she might have somebody who was seriously interested.
His name was John Softly and he was looking for a place to build his dream holiday home. Susan pulled over at the side of Falls Pass Road just before it crested the brow of a hill. They’d been climbing steadily for fifteen minutes, the road hemmed in by forest on either side so there wasn’t much to see.
Softly looked bewildered. ‘What are we stopping for? Is this the place?’
‘No, we’re almost there, I just thought there’s something here you’d like to see.’
They got out and walked to the brow of the hill. Below them lay the valley. The slopes were forest-covered, but down on the valley floor there were meadows alongside the river. At that time of year the ground was snow-covered, but Susan described how it looked in the spring when the snow was melting and the colors were turning. The meadows would be rich with cotton grass, lit with flares of orange hawkweed, yellow goldenrod and the blue bell-shaped flowers of Jacob’s ladder. The lake itself was directly below, the color of the ice blue sky.
‘Wow,’ Softly breathed. ‘This really is something.’
She pointed to the eastern shores of the lake, where forest gave way to lightly wooded ground. ‘There are a few cabins over there. The people who own them come up here maybe two or three times a year. Otherwise your closest neighbors are down towards Little River.’
They talked about where he would position his house and Susan thought Softly was already imagining himself there, drinking a beer or a glass of wine on a summer’s evening as the sun went down.
‘Shall we go down?’ she suggested.
They went back to her car and drove down into the valley, where she pulled over by the side of the road close to the lake. Softly got out, his mind in the future. He told her he’d been looking for a place like this for quite a while. He talked about getting away from the city, enthused by the idea of the wilderness, breathing clean air, fishing for breakfast and generally communing with nature. A lot of Susan’s clients from the city shared the same vision; so long as they had their microwave ovens and a supermarket within driving distance where they could stock up on beer and pizza.
When Softly had seen enough she drove him back to the turn-off where they’d left his car. As she headed back to town she saw a car on the side of the road and somebody in the process of changing a wheel. She slowed down and pulled over to see if she could help and only then did she realize it was Michael Somers.
‘Hey,’ she said getting out. The back door was open and she saw the falcon there standing on a perch. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Just a flat.’ He straightened up and rolled the wheel around the back.
‘She’s beautiful.’ Susan gestured to the falcon. ‘I gather from Jamie you haven’t been training her lately.’
‘I’ve been giving her a rest, but I think she’s about ready to start again. You could tell Jamie for me. I was going to come by later.’
‘He’ll be thrilled.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Good,’ Susan said. ‘Actually, really good.’
‘It must be difficult for you sometimes,’ he said tentatively.
‘Yes, it is.’ The conversation faltered like they were edging into uncertain territory. ‘I can see why Jamie’s so fascinated by her,’ Susan said. ‘Are you planning to keep her?’
‘No. I’d like to release her when she’s strong enough.’ He reached into the car and stroked the falcon’s breast feathers gently. As she looked on, Susan tried to reconcile this man with the person she’d read about in old news reports.
‘Listen, why don’t you tell Jamie about her yourself? You could stay for supper.’
‘You don’t need to do that.’
‘I’d like to. I’ve got some work I have to take home tonight, but how about tomorrow evening?’ She sensed his hesitation. ‘I promise I’m not a bad cook.’
‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Thanks.’
‘Great. Come by around seven?’ She looked at her watch, remembering she had to get Jamie from the bus. ‘I should go. See you tomorrow.’
‘Okay.’
As she drove away she looked in the mirror and saw him raise his hand.
***
On the way back to town her phone rang and when Susan answered it was Coop. She felt guilty hearing his voice, though she reasoned she had no reason to. He told her he was passing the school bus and saw Jamie, so she needn’t hurry because he was at his office.
‘Okay, thanks,’ she said, though after she hung up she wondered if Coop really had just happened to be passing.
When she got there Coop’s cruiser was parked outside and his deputy, Ben Miller, was on his way out.
‘Hi, Ben, is Jamie inside?’ she asked.
‘Coop brought him in about half an hour ago, Mrs Baker.’
‘How are they getting along?’
He hesitated. ‘Well, it’s sort of strained, I’d say.’
She formed a mental picture, the two of them sitting in silence. ‘Well, have a nice evening.’
‘You too. Bye, Mrs Baker.’
She went inside, and when Jamie saw her she could tell he was relieved. ‘Hi there,’ she said, way too brightly. ‘Thanks for this, Coop, you didn’t have to.’
The desk where they were sitting was strewn with an array of stuff that should have captured any kid’s interest. There were crime sheets, and a set of handcuffs along with a nightstick, but Susan knew Jamie would have sat there sullen and withdrawn, ignoring it all.
‘How’d the sale go?’ Coop asked. ‘Linda said you had a client.’
‘Too soon to tell.’ She told him about the guy from Seattle. Jamie got his bag and she told him to go ahead to the car. ‘How was he?’ she asked after Jamie left.
‘He was okay.’
She felt a tender sympathy for Coop, knowing all his patient efforts would have been rebuffed. ‘He doesn’t mean it personally,’ she offered.
‘It’s no big deal.’ He walked her to the door. ‘Maybe we should go fishing or something,’ he said suddenly.
‘Fishing?’
‘Yeah, I know a guy who’s got a cabin on the river a couple of hours from here. I could get it for next weekend. It might make a difference, you know, if it was just me and Jamie together for a couple of days. What do you think?’
She tried to picture it and couldn’t. Sometimes, David had taken Jamie fishing for the weekend, and Jamie would be excited for weeks before they went. Coop was waiting for her reaction, she could already feel his disappointment at her hesitation. Perhaps it would be good for Jamie, she told herself, and when she thought about it she imagined a weekend alone and was surprised by how much the idea appealed to her. Even if Jamie wouldn’t like it, and she knew he wouldn’t, she didn’t know how she could tell Coop it was a bad idea.
‘Sure, why not?’ she said brightly.
‘Great. I’ll call this guy I know.’
She wondered how she’d break it to Jamie.
***
Michael sat in the chair in the den where his dad had spent a lot of his time. The surface of the old wooden desk was scarred with a lacework of razor slits and tiny globules of hardened, ancient glue. He ran his hand across the top and felt the rough texture against his palm. This was where his dad spent countless evenings sipping bourbon and working on his model ships. His mother, with bitter inflection, called it his drinking room.
He picked a book off the shelf and leafed through the pages. Mildew had marked the edges and the leather bindings smelled of damp and mold. Some of the pictures were still in good enough condition to make out all the fine detail of the rigging and decks of seventeenth and eighteenth century schooners and warships. Some were graceful, some blunt and heavy. His dad had built replica models to scale from scratch, and without any plans except those he drew up himself. Each model took him hundreds of hours to complete. He would sit in this room, night after night, cutting and shaping pieces of wood for hull or deck planking or masts with a hobby knife.
Michael had searched the house for the models, but they were gone. He had no idea where. His dad never displayed the ships he built. Nor did he talk about them or take trips to see the real thing, though he must have been aware that occasionally restored vessels or replicas would call in at Seattle. It was a puzzle that Michael never gave much thought to until now. He suspected it was because his dad was never really interested in the ships or their history. Building the models was a challenge. The work was intricate and detailed and gave him a reason to be alone in his den for long hours at a stretch.
He opened a drawer where he remembered there was always a bottle, but the drawer was empty. It occurred to him that he hadn’t come across any booze in the house at all, and yet the place was just as his dad left it the morning he left, never knowing he wouldn’t return.
Later, Michael drove into town and parked across the street from Clancy’s bar. Lights shone from the window and figures moved about inside. At St. Mathews, the residents, as they were referred to, would gather in the common room in the evenings to watch TV or play pool or else to talk. They were all recovering from something. A few were psychiatric cases in the sense that their experiences had affected their minds to the point where they suffered an episode that was sufficiently debilitating to require residential treatment. He fitted into that category. Most however, were suffering from physiological conditions. Manic depression and schizophrenia were the most common. Even among the damaged and the deranged there was a sense of camaraderie. They were fellow casualties, and many acknowledged their particular conditions with grim humor.
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