Skyward (29 page)

He barked out a laugh. “Shouldered or Tailed?”

Ella wiggled her brow. “I’ll have to look again.” She tilted her head and searched for the hawk in the foliage. “I don’t see her. Aren’t you afraid she’ll fly off?”

“No. She knows the routine, and every once in a while I give her a little treat, just to remind her.” Saying that, he released her hand and reached into his canvas bag to pull out a small chunk of meat. He whistled, sharp and clear, and, ex tending his arm, tapped the meat against his fist. Ella saw Cinnamon check out the food on the glove, then spread her tail feathers with a jingling of the bell and emerge from the cloak of trees, straight to his fist.

“See?” he asked her as they watched the hawk tear at the beef with her sharp beak. “She knows on which side her bread is buttered.”

He lifted his arm again and the hawk flew off. He then hooked his arm in hers and they walked together, talking not of the past, but of things they wanted to do that day, tomorrow and in the days to come. Ella couldn’t stop smiling. She had never known such happiness.

When they neared the gate, Harris stopped short and peered at the sky.

“Vultures,” he said. “Something is dead.” Immediately he whistled for his hawk.

Cinnamon did not return to his fist and Ella could see his face grow taut with worry.

Harris took a breath to calm himself, waited another moment, then whistled again with authority. The plaintive sound pierced the early morning quiet. From several trees back they heard the faint jingling sound of her bell, then Cinnamon burst from the foliage to come to his fist. Harris gave her a large piece of meat and ample time to eat it undisturbed. When the hawk was finished, he laced her jesses and kept her to his fist until they could find out what had caught the interest of the vultures.

They approached the gate, and the first thing both of them noticed was that the rooster wasn’t around.

“Sometimes he goes off,” Harris said, looking from left to right. “But I don’t like this. Last night on my walk I came across a couple of young boys hunting. I chased them off but I didn’t like their attitude.”

“They had no business hunting here. This is private property.”

“That doesn’t stop them. It’s worse in the fall. You take your life in your hands just walking in the woods.”

“Harris, you don’t think…”

His face was tight. “Nothing would surprise me.”

She looked up in the sky to see a third vulture join the others circling overhead. “You stay here with Cinnamon,” she said. “I’ll look around.”

The ground crunched beneath her feet as she opened the gate and explored the area under the loblolly pine where the rooster usually could be found. The foliage was dense and a green anole was warming itself on the leaf of a neighboring magnolia. She pushed back a pine branch and carefully trod a short ways from the road, scanning the area. A white feather in the mud caught her eye. With a sense of dread she moved several steps farther into the woods.

“Oh, no,” she uttered when she found him.

The rooster lay lifeless in a tangle of weeds. Blood as bright a red as its wattle stained its snowy breast.

The following day Brady turned off the highway onto the road of the center with a roar of his engine. The music was blaring and his elbow was hanging out the window. His parents had been so pleased with the upswing of his midterm grades that they’d relented and let him drive again. Brady was flying high these days. He’d passed all his courses and he thought he did a decent job on the SATs. Best of all, he was a member of the resident bird team. Today he was wearing his official Coastal Carolina Center for Birds of Prey T-shirt, given to him by the team at the last meeting. It was kind of a minigraduation ceremony and it had meant as much or more than any graduation he’d had before.

He pulled up to the gate and hopped out of the car to open it. Looking from left to right, he noticed that the rooster was gone. Where was that goofy bird? he wondered. It was the first time he’d not seen it watching him as he drove by. He kept his eyes peeled as he drove through and closed the gate after himself, but still no rooster.

“Hey, Harris,” he said with gusto as he walked into the weighing room. “Lijah.”

He clasped his hands on his hips and smelled the air. He loved this room best of all. Loved the smell of leather and the sight of all the falconry equipment neatly lined up on the walls. One glance at the large dry-mount chart gave him an instant overview of the weight and status of each resident bird. He felt at home in here and smiled openly, excited to begin his first day as a team member.

“Anybody see that crazy rooster this morning?” he asked, dropping his book bag to the floor. “He wasn’t down by the gate.”

Harris’s brows gathered in concern and he cast a loaded glance across the room at Lijah.

Damn, Brady thought, catching the glance. Instantly, he felt deflated. What did he do wrong now? He shifted his weight, uncomfortable with the awkward silence. “What’s wrong?”

“We had some bad news over the weekend,” Harris began slowly. He paused. “We found the rooster lying in the woods near the gate. Somebody shot it.”

Brady went still. “What? When?”

“We found him yesterday. My guess is he was shot sometime Saturday night.”

“I don’t believe it! Who’d shoot that rooster? He didn’t hurt nobody.”

“I don’t know.”

“But…why?” he blurted with pain and frustration.

Harris’s lips were white with fury. “Because they can. I saw a couple of kids hunting around here on Saturday, but I can’t be sure it was them.”

Brady’s gaze darted up. “How old?”

Harris shrugged. “I’d say about your age.”

Brady felt anger surge through him like hot lava. He had to close his mouth tight before he spoke out the names hovering at his lips. He brought his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose, surprised to find tears pooling.

“I’m sorry,” Harris said, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We all know how much that bird meant to you. He meant a lot to all of us. We’ll never know what brought him here or why he stayed. It’s just not normal for a rooster to live in a loblolly pine like that.”

“Where’s the rooster now?” Brady asked, dropping his hand. His voice was thick, but he’d brought himself under control.

“I buried him,” Lijah said in his deep voice. “Put him down by the loblolly. Thought he might like it there.”

Brady met Lijah’s eyes and saw the sympathy there. He nodded his head. “Yeah. That’s good.”

Clarice walked into the room, a worried look on her face and a large green potted plant with white bloom spikes in her arms. “Hey,” she greeted them in a tentative manner, looking from one to the other.

Brady turned toward her. One look in her eyes and he knew that she’d come for him.

“I brought this,” she said, indicating the pot in her arms. “It’s a yucca plant. It blooms this proud, fine-looking white flower that sits high on a tall stem.” She ran a finger along the pot’s rim. “I thought, you know, it might be nice to plant near the gate where we laid Buh Rooster. To remember him by.”

No one said anything.

“It was only an idea,” she hedged, embarrassed.

“It’s a fine idea,” Harris replied. “I think we were all just moved by the suggestion.”

“I’ll plant it,” Lijah said obligingly.

“If you don’t mind,” said Brady, “I’d like to do it.”

Brady and Clarice drove down to the gate in Brady’s car with shovels and the plant. It was a beautiful day, clear and breezy. Brady looked up and saw a long line of white puffy clouds in the sky.

They’d decided to plant the yucca directly over Buh Rooster. Brady worked real slow, careful not to dig any deeper than he had to. He didn’t want to see no white feathers down in the earth. They got the yucca plant in, poured some water on it and stepped back. Brady leaned against the shovel pole and looked at the yucca plant. It looked so much smaller in the ground next to the tall loblolly than it had in the container. He hoped it would grow fast in the sandy, sunny soil and not die. Brady liked to think that the white flower would someday grow right from that ol’ rooster, and in that way, he’d still be here. Next to the gate.

“You okay, Brady?” Clarice asked.

He shook his head. “Crazy bird. I didn’t know how much he meant to me.” He exhaled hard, clenching his fists at his thighs. “And now all I want to do is beat the crap out of Manny and Nate.”

Clarice sucked in her breath. “You think it was them? How do you know that?”

“I don’t. But I’m aiming to find out.” He looked sharply at her. “Don’t you be tellin’ nobody about this, hear? This is
my
business.”

“
Okay,
I won’t.”

He tightened his lips. The anger was so hot he couldn’t reply.

“Don’t get into any trouble about it, though,” she cautioned.

“Don’t matter. Trouble’s never had a hard time finding me.”

“Brady, you’ve been doing so great. You don’t want to mess with that. Please. Don’t make me worry about you now.”

He turned his head to look at her, his feelings for her raw and exposed in his eyes. He let go of the shovel handle. It fell to the earth with a muffled thump. Slowly, cautiously, he took a few steps toward her.

Her eyes were soft, limpid with concern and a kind of surrender. When he drew near, however, she raised her beautiful, long-fingered hands and spread them out against his chest.

“Brady—” she said, stopping his advance.

“Clarice.” He wanted to hear her name aloud. “If I did good, I did it all for you.”

“Oh, no. Don’t say that.”

“It’s true! I did it all for you,” he repeated.

“Well, you shouldn’t have!” she retorted, backing up in pique. “That’s not right. Don’t you get it? You can’t make it out there working to please me, or your parents, or Harris or anybody. You’ve got to do it for yourself. Want it for your self.”

“But you got to know how I feel about you.”

She shook her head and said fervently, “Don’t go there. Please.”

“You can’t deny there’s something.”

Clarice took a long, pained breath and dropped her hand. “No, I can’t.”

Then, just when his heart jumped in hope, she dashed it quickly.

“But be real, Brady. There’d be so many problems and hassles that I can’t even begin to list them. And why even bother? I’m graduating next week and then I’m going straight to California. I’ve got my own life. My own plans. Plans that don’t include you.”

“Oh.” He stepped back, his face flaming, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Forget it.”

“Brady, it’s not like I don’t care.”

He twisted his mouth.

“Don’t do this. Not now. Let’s just leave it the way it is.”

“Yeah? And how’s that?”

Her brows furrowed in her customary manner as she offered a tremulous smile, asking him with that smile to please try to understand. She took a step toward him and rested her hand on his arm. “Two people who worked together at something they loved. Who had some good times. Friends. I like to think good friends.”

Brady exhaled hard, trying to get his feelings straight in his mind. Deep down, he’d always known nothing would come of his feelings for Clarice. He’d tried so hard to make a difference in his life these past months and she was always there to encourage him. Her smile, her tutoring, her belief in him. He’d actually started believing he could turn things around for himself.

Buh Rooster was there, too. Watching him. And even if it was weird, he thought the rooster
was
his totem. He’d never dare say it to anyone, but whenever someone wondered why the rooster just showed up at the gate, he wanted to say, “It was because of me. The rooster came for
me!
”

Now he knew he was just stupid and wrong about that, just like he was wrong about so many things. He was a dumb loser and he might as well accept that and stop thinking things would be different. Because no matter how hard he tried, things always seemed to end up the same. Dead and buried in the dirt.

“Brady? Tell me we’ll still be friends?”

He looked at Clarice, shuttering his face, and shrugged. “Sure,” he said. He bent to pick up the shovel and hoist it over his shoulder. “Whatever.”

Soaring.
When the sun warms the ground unevenly, bubbles of warm air rise in columns known as thermals. Raptors seek out thermals for lift, allowing them to fly upward with minimum effort. Raptors stretch out their wings and tails, catch a thermal and literally ride the wind.

18

MAY WAS IN FULL FLOWER. THE SUN SHONE warm and both the earth and Ella Elizabeth Majors bloomed—sweet smelling, slow moving, swaying, glistening, opening to the pink light that shone across the Lowcountry. Seemingly over night, the grounds of the Coastal Carolina Center for Birds of Prey crept from pastoral hazes of soft green and pastel blossoms to a sultry, lush jungle. Ella marveled at her first Low country spring. She could no longer peek through leggy branches at the mews or the pens. She had to meander around thickets of tangled crepe myrtles and oleander, towering magnolias dramatic with eight-inch white flowers, twisting vines of flowering jasmine and, most exotic of all, stubby bushes bursting with delicate, waxy gardenias.

The women at the center were intoxicated by the sweet-scented breezes. They smiled more frequently and collected blossoms by the armfuls into vases, glass jars and bowls. They placed them on counters, tables, beside their beds, on any empty surface they found in an age-old attempt to bring a bit of springtime indoors.

On this morning, Ella opened the clinic’s refrigerator to find gardenia blossoms lying beside plastic bins filled with fish, mice and rats. She chuckled at the delicious irony as she pulled out breakfast for the black vulture orphans. This was a big day for the pair. She and Maggie were moving them to an outdoor pen a distance away from the clinic. It was the last step toward their reunification with the wild.

Most of the orphans that had filled the pens were already freed. Harris had climbed up the tower to place the pair of bold young eagles in the hack box. Volunteers had released the great horned, barred and screech hatch-year owls in woodlands all around South Carolina. All that were left were the two vultures, dubbed by Maggie Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

“They certainly are tranquil about the whole thing,” Ella commented when they finished weighing each vulture for the last time and affixing ID bands on their legs.

“I’m worried about that,” Maggie admitted. “They should be picking and hissing. They’re entirely too comfortable with us. You know, every darn time I fed them I stomped my feet and clapped my hands to make them afraid.” She shook her head in worry. “Didn’t make a dent.”

“Well, there’s nothing left but to keep our fingers crossed and give them a chance to go home. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are good to go.”

“Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, is more like it,” Maggie muttered in feigned disgust as she lowered them into transport boxes. The pair looked up at her without fear as she closed the top over them. “Let’s go.”

Ella laughed again. Maggie wasn’t fooling anyone. Everyone knew she doted on those two vultures. “Where are we taking them, anyway?”

“Down the road a ways, to The Restaurant.”

“The Restaurant? What’s that?”

Maggie smirked and bent to pick up the towels and a transport box. There was a skittering inside when she lifted it. “You’ll see. Come on.”

Ella carefully lifted her transport box with its traveler and followed Maggie out. It was another sunny day, clear and without humidity. They walked down the road at a companionable pace, turning at the fork that led to the creek. The bramble was thicker on this narrow path, and now that spring was in full flower it was slow-going. They wore jeans despite the heat to prevent scratches from the prickly stems of coral bean plants, briars, swamp roses and thistle.

“Mind your step!” Maggie warned.

Ella zigzagged around a large, bustling anthill.

“I swanny, you can always tell if a person’s a Northerner by the way they walk through a field,” Maggie told her. “They’re looking at the trees and the flowers. A Southerner knows to keep eyes on the ground for fire ants. You only have to step on a hill once to never do it again.”

“Harris is always telling me to keep my eyes on the sky.”

“Yeah, well, he would. He wears thick boots, too, if you notice.” They walked a bit farther before Maggie tilted her head and asked, “So, how’re things between you two?”

“Things?”

“You know, are you getting along?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

“You seemed a little put out when you came back from the river. I figured you had a fight of some sort.”

That seemed like years ago to Ella now. “We did. But we worked it out.”

“I’m glad to hear it. What with everything being off-kilter with the rooster getting shot and Clarice leaving, I couldn’t really tell.” They walked a little farther in silence. “So, everything is fine between you, then, right?”

Ella sighed and watched the ground. She knew Maggie sensed something was going on—was just dying to ask—and had held off as long as she could. Ella and Harris had done their best not to be obvious in the week since that fateful river trip, for Marion’s sake, especially. Everything was too new, too sensitive, and she still felt too vulnerable. Her love filled her, suffused her with happiness, and she felt sure any one who looked at her could see the glow. She didn’t want to share it lest, like a wish, once spoken the spell was broken.

“We’re very happy,” she replied, hinting at the truth.

Maggie turned her head and studied her. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way—”

That phrase never heralded good news. Ella tensed as she walked.

“Be careful, Ella.”

“What about? Ants?”

“I’m not joking.”

Ella bristled. “Are you still worried about Harris? Do you think he’s going to get hurt? By me?”

“No!” she said, stopping. “I think you are.”

Ella’s step faltered and she stopped walking.

“He’s married,” Maggie blurted out. “It’s not a normal marriage, but he’s still got a wife.”

Ella hesitated before saying, “I know.”

“Oh,” she replied with a blank look. Then, focusing intently, “You do?”

“Harris told me that day at the river.”

Maggie readjusted the transport box in her arms, but her face was drawn in private thought. They began walking again along the path.

Ella struggled to find a way to ask the question that was preying on her mind. Finally, she asked hesitatingly, “Do you think he won’t leave her?”

Maggie swung her head around and said boldly, “I wish to God he would.”

Ella faced her and the two women shared a smile filled with commiseration. Ella saw a woman who could give to her family, to the birds at the center, to a friend and still have compassion left to share. And despite her generosity—or because of it—she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.

“What’s she like?” Ella asked, needing to know.

Maggie clamped her lips in thought. “Beautiful is the first thing that pops to mind,” she replied after a moment. “Manipulative is the next. Why he can’t see that she’s using him, and that he’s wasting his time hanging on to that disaster he calls a marriage, I’ll never know. He should cut her out of his life like a tumor instead of always being there for her when she’s broke or needs a place to stay or whatever. I see the way he is with you. How happy he’s been. Ella, this is a guy who hasn’t been happy in a very long time. I’m sure he loves you.” She paused again. “But mark my words. Fannie will return. And when she does, I just don’t know what he’ll do. Some patterns are hard to break.”

Hearing it, Ella knew it to be true. “It’s a chance I’ll have to take.”

“So, you love him that much?”

“I do.”

Maggie shook her head with foreboding. “Then I hope it all works out for both of you. Just know that I’m here if it doesn’t. For Marion, too.”

“Thank you, Maggie. That means a lot to me.”

A few steps on Maggie added, “My house isn’t too far from here, you know. We live just minutes away. You should bring Marion by more often so she can play with Annie. We’ll drink coffee or have lunch. It’d be good for both of them.”

Ella understood the unspoken offer implied in this invitation. It occurred to Ella that Maggie was very good at listening and was good at keeping secrets, too. Both good qualities in a friend. She hadn’t had a friend in a long time and confidences did not come easily for her. Harris she could talk to, of course, more and more each day. But should a Problem rise between them, she might need someone who would understand and have her interests at heart.

“I will. I promise,” she replied.

There was nothing more to say on the topic so they walked in silence until they came upon a large clearing in the woods surrounded by trees, some of them gray and scarred with death. In the center was a ten-by-ten chain-link dog pen, and in the center of this was a blue dog kennel. Clustered around the fence, peeking inside, were five vultures, both turkey and black.

“Well, here we are,” Maggie said.

“What are the vultures doing around there?”

“They smell the food. Did you know that vultures have an acute sense of smell? At least turkey vultures do. The black vultures kind of come along for the treat. It evolved to help them find food. Those hungry guys over there are sniffing the leftovers I brought down earlier. We dump them here every week. The vultures, being smart, know this and are waiting to be served. Take a look,” she said, pointing to the surrounding trees.

Sitting in the tops of trees, hunched with their black wings partially spread to the sun like kites, were another six to eight vultures. Waiting.

“Now I see why you call it The Restaurant.”

“Yep. Vultures are communal. That’s what makes this setup so perfect for these babies to learn about their own kind. We’ll put the Tweedles in the kennel for a while where they can look out and identify with the other vultures. Then we’ll wean these babies from the kennel to the wild. They’ll have to learn, or else.” She grinned. “It’ll be a heck of a thing to get that kennel in the trees!”

“It’s kind of unnerving seeing them all up there,” Ella said, looking at the vultures gathered high in the surrounding trees.

“Nah. Think of them as just lining up, waiting for The Restaurant to open. It’s a shame that vultures have a bad rap. My grandmama used to tell me to beware of being touched by a vulture’s shadow on account you’d be touched by sickness or death.”

“I was told that if I was bad, a vulture would catch me and peck my eyes out.”

“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Most people think of vultures as these disgusting birds that only eat dead things. But what they don’t know is that they aren’t killers at all. They clean up those dead things that otherwise would make this a pretty dirty planet.”

“A lot of dying happens in the wild.”

Maggie nodded in agreement. “Did you know that vultures still gather at Gettysburg?”

“As in the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania?”

Maggie nodded again. “Fifty thousand men died in that battle,” she began. “And countless horses. They say the fields were flowing in rivers of blood and the carnage of men and boys littered the field. After it was all over, they did their best. Eventually, the army buried the men, but the corpses of the horses were left lying where they fell. So the vultures did their job and cleaned the fields. They began appearing the day after the battle ended. More came every day, from all over. That winter they didn’t migrate but stayed on, probably because there was a steady food source. Since then, more than nine hundred black and turkey vultures have returned year after year to the Gettysburg National Park.”

While Ella listened, she watched as several more vultures gathered overhead, their black, broad wings gracefully circling, checking out the action below. When Ella and Maggie reached the dog pen in the middle of the field the vultures dispersed to a safer distance but watched carefully in their hunched-shouldered stance.

“Okay,” Maggie said, opening up the chain-link gate. “Let’s see how the Tweedles like their new digs. Welcome to your new home, guys.”

It didn’t take them long to prepare the kennel and lay a meal for the orphans, then to lock them inside the fence. Before they left, Maggie and Ella emptied the bucket of leftovers on the ground a few feet from the kennel.

Ella wrinkled her nose. “If those vultures have any sense of smell at all, they’ll catch a whiff of that.”

“Oh, they know,” Maggie said, looking at the rustling of feathers in the trees.

They had not even left the clearing before the vultures flew to the carrion and began feeding. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the two orphans inched their way closer to the fence, closer to the adults, curious as to what the furor was all about.

Maggie and Ella smiled with satisfaction.

“Nature will out,” Maggie said.

Harris received the phone call from a counselor at Lincoln High first thing the following morning.

“Hello, Mr. Henderson? This is Madeline Dreskin. I’m a counselor at Lincoln High School. I’m calling about a student who has been referred to me because of a fight that broke out on the school grounds. I was hoping you might find the time to come to my office and talk? The student’s name is Brady Simmons.”

Harris arrived at Lincoln High before noon. Ella had convinced him to wear a tie and it felt like a noose around his neck as he sat in a hard-backed plastic chair waiting for Miss Dreskin to finish with her appointment. Harris hadn’t been in a high school in more years than he could remember. Were the boys always so big and muscular? he wondered. And the girls… Some of them looked like fully grown women and dressed like it, too. He felt like an old man in his tie and pressed shirt among all these kids in jeans, T-shirts, tattoos and body piercings.

The office door opened at last and a slight, fair-skinned young boy with acne slunk from the room with his eyes averted, as though embarrassed to be seen coming from the counselor’s office.

“Mr. Henderson?”

He stood to meet her. Miss Dreskin didn’t look much older than the students. She was small-boned and had an athletic prettiness. However, her suit and oxford shirt marked her as “the other” as clearly as his tie did, and coming close to shake her outstretched hand, he saw fine lines in her deeply tanned skin. Still, he bet she had her share of lovesick boys in the high school to fend off.