William H. Hallahan - (16 page)

It was a man and with him was a large white dog. She dived closer
and her shadow passed over the man. He looked up. It was Timothy. He
was streaming with sweat as he leaned into the long painful grade.
Repentance was panting heavily. Only urgent business would impel a
man to walk the desert at the peak hours of heat.

Timothy paused to study the hawk. Then he drank from his canteen
and poured the last of the water in a cup for his dog. Afterward he
resumed his urgent pace up Baker Grade.

The hawk wheeled right and glided, effortlessly above him toward
the crest of Baker Grade. Was this his destination? Something that
made him walk at high speed up a grade on one of the hottest places
on earth?

She circled above the Halloran Springs service station. Here? She
felt confused. She alighted on the service station sign, searching
the faces. Was Father Joseph here? Then her eyes saw the mobile homes
that were standing near the service area. The air conditioning units
were humming; inside slept the men of the evening and night shifts.

Joseph had to be in there. She flapped around the mobile homes,
landed on a television antenna and studied the metal structures.
Where could he be? In which one? It took only a few minutes for her
to determine that Father Joseph was in none of the mobile homes. She
flapped off and let an air current carry her up higher, restlessly
searching. Then, beyond, she saw the building.

Inside was a monk. He lay on an old cot with an arm over his eyes.
The hawk recognized him: It was Father Ambrose, assistant to the
abbot, Father Joseph. He was very old. And at a glance she saw that
he was dying.

In the guise of Father Aiden once again, Satan entered the
building. In spite of the great heat inside, Father Ambrose was not
perspiring. He seemed as dry and old as a wood chip.

"Father Ambrose," Satan said solicitously.

The old priest drew down his arm from his eyes. An overjoyed
expression spread across his face. He tried to speak but his mouth
was too dry. Carefully Satan raised his head and poured some water
from a glass into his mouth.

The dying priest clutched Satan's sleeve. "Father Aiden, is
that you?"

Satan nodded. "How did you come here?"

"We are searching for a home for--" His voice failed
him.

"For the one with the purple aura," Satan said to
encourage him.

"Yes. Yes. Exactly." The old priest signaled for more
water. When his mouth was wet again, he said, "Father Joseph and
I crossed over from Asia, then I fell ill. The desert and the
walking, you see."

Satan nodded. He could hear footsteps on the crusty desert outside
the building. "Where is Father Joseph?"

"I made him go on."

"Where?"

"To New York to get the young man. What's his name--Brendan
Whatever."

"Yes. Brendan." Satan touched the old priest's shoulder.
"Brendan what?"

"Brendan Davitt," the old priest said.

The door to the shack opened in a flash of sunlight, and the
mastiff leaped into the room. He snapped at Satan's black gown. In an
instant the figure was gone and the dog was slashing at a mass of
feathers. The hawk was beating her wings on the dog's skull like two
great clubs. When the dog leaped to seize the bird in his teeth she
wheeled and burst through the glass window. The dog leaped through
the window after her. The bird, fluttering lamely, made it to the
roof and stoically, in great pain, gazed down at the barking,
circling dog.

At the corners of his mouth she could see remnants of
feathers--her feathers. She opened her beak and hissed with hatred at
the dog. The main joint of her left wing was bleeding and torn. And
there was a deep wound in her left thigh from the dog's teeth. She
looked at the naked patch of skin on her thigh where the feathers had
been torn out. Blood was coursing from the multiple teeth wounds. In
a moment the furious dog would be on the roof. Already he was
scrambling up onto the low pantry. Also, the heat on the tin roof was
burning her claws.

Fighting the great pain, she spread her wings and with a few flaps
sailed away. The dog chased her for less than a half mile, then
stopped. As soon as she was safely away from him, she landed on the
desert, and in the poor shade of the ocotillo she folded her wings
and concentrated on her pain.

Shortly later, the hawk watched Timothy emerge from the shack. He
paused long enough to fill his empty canteen with water from a pump.
The dog lapped up a large quantity from a pan, then master and dog
set off eastward under the beating sun.

The hawk could tell that Timothy knew what she did. There was a
grown mortal with a purple aura and his name was Brendan Davitt and
he lived in New York City. And Father Joseph the abbot was on his way
there to take Brendan Davitt to a hiding place.

She watched the Magus and his dog walking under the merciless sun,
each step taking them closer to New York and Brendan Davitt. And she
was unable to follow, unable to fly two feet. She could only sit and
wait until the wing was strong enough to use. If she survived the
heat and predators of the desert. Meantime Timothy would walk on. If
he found Brendan Davitt first, he would return to heaven. And her
master, Satan, would face his final punishment.

The figures of Timothy and the dog became smaller and smaller
until they were two shimmering dots that at last disappeared. She was
alone. And helpless.

For the first time in her very long life, she was looking at
defeat. How could she prevent Timothy from meeting the man with the
purple aura?

Her immediate problem was survival. Injured as she was and trapped
in the lethal environment of the desert, her chances of living more
than a day or two were extremely low. If heat and thirst didn't kill
her, any one of a host of predators would.

After all the thousands of years of remorseless warfare with
Timothy, she'd made her first error.

And even if by some great stroke she managed to feed and water
herself until her wing healed, she would by then have given Timothy
too great a head start--wherever he was bound. He would surely locate
Father Joseph while she was still mending. And through Joseph he
would find the man with the purple aura.

In the desert the daylight heat is punishing, soaring to 150
degrees, and the shadows few. As the afternoon wore on, the hawk
began to feel the need for water. She watched the sun cross the sky
with her beak parted by thirst. Her tongue adhered to the roof of her
mouth, while all about her the desert creatures comfortably outwaited
the sun in their selected niches. The hawk panted and waited for
night.

But the night was no sanctuary. The scorpions prowled from their
cracks, the sidewinders and the rattlesnakes slithered into the
moonlight for their nightly meals, coyotes crept from their arroyos
and hunted in packs. The owls moved across the silvered desert with
extraordinary silence. There was a brief phantom glide and a sudden
pounce, and the owl would take a kangaroo rat or a mouse, a scorpion
or even a snake.

But the greatest torment for her was looking up at the dusk or at
first light and seeing a red-tailed desert hawk circle high above. It
would stoop suddenly, wings held close to the body, and strike--in
midair a bird, on the ground a jackrabbit. The blood lust in her
would make her salivate. She knew that soon if she did not mend, one
of those redtails would stoop and kill her with a single blow to the
back of her neck. What a way for a monumental battle between heaven
and hell to end, in the gut of a wild hawk. For without her, Satan
would never locate children with purple auras.
 
 

Her first problem, when darkness came, was to find water. She
attempted at first to scrape away the dirt at the base of an ocotillo
bush. But the surface was as hard as concrete, and the pain in her
thigh was unendurable. Even if she could dig, the water would be very
deep.

Looming before her was the silhouette of a lofty saguaro cactus.
It was soft and pulpy-looking. Where did it get its water? With great
effort and in spite of the pain she hopped over to it. She sniffed:
There was an odor of water about it. Tentatively she raked her beak
down the thick tough hide. She raked harder and tore a long wound in
it. The inside was fleshy. She pressed her beak into the wound to
taste it. She was astonished when she felt a drop of water flow into
her mouth. Then another. She'd started a trickle. Patiently she
waited with her beak plunged into the cactus. Slowly water filled her
mouth. Soon she'd had her fill. At least she wouldn't die of thirst.
She'd overcome the first barrier to her survival. She now considered
food.

There was none; unable to fly, she was unable to hunt A crippled
hawk is no hawk at all. She settled down to a long wait--a race
between healing and starvation. The issue was to take days. Luck
helped her occasionally. She would hop after a heedless scorpion or
other crawling insects. Sometimes she came upon the remains of a kill
and raked her beak along the still-moist bones, humiliated, sullen
but fending off starvation for a while longer.

One night the moon rose early and sat, in its immensity, on the
horizon above a distant line of barren hills, a spotlight on the
nocturnal drama. Creatures soon were busy all over the desert,
hurrying during the precious hours of darkness to get their work
done, hunting, mating, fighting, training the young, dying.

She heard them before she saw them--a pack of coyotes, four adults
and a pack of reckless pups. One of the pups toyed with a tarantula
and soon all the pups were in a silent battle that ended when one of
the adults stepped in and swallowed it.

The hawk remained perfectly still behind an ocotillo bush, waiting
for them to pass. But they didn't. One of the adults saw her and at
first was so surprised he just stared at her. His hunter's eyes read
her plight in an instant and without a moment's consultation the
entire band assumed hunting formation. They surrounded her. Then
slowly they closed the ring. One of the pups couldn't restrain
himself. He charged. In an act of despair she raised her wings and
flapped. The pain in her wing was so great she nearly crashed, but
the joint held and with another flap she just cleared the coyote's
snapping teeth. She felt his jaw graze her thigh.

She was barely able to hold her altitude of five feet, gliding
away from them, her wing threatening to quit on her, the pain almost
unbearable. She gathered her will and flapped some more. But the
coyotes were in full chase now, running with tireless speed under her
and leaping with open jaws at her. They would chase her for miles,
for hours, forever. She pumped harder. The wing screamed at her. And
she pumped again, got up to ten feet and flew straight ahead toward a
huge saguaro cactus. A little higher and she would be able to perch
on it. She pumped harder. Harder. The pack of coyotes was actually
ahead of her, almost playful in their murderous chase. She flapped
once more and felt the wing give. It would hold her no longer. As she
felt herself slip sideways, she clawed urgently at the saguaro and
sank her talons into its fleshy hide. She hung there momentarily
almost upside down. The coyotes were leaping up the trunk after her.
She heard their terrible jaws snapping in the moonlight inches from
her tail feathers. She made a mighty struggle and wiggled up on the
extended arm of the cactus.

Then she looked down at the panting pack below her. Maddeningly
they sat down in a circle and watched her. They had plenty of time
and she might fall at any moment. She sat and stoically endured the
screaming pain in her wing, the trembling of the muscles in her
injured thigh where the mastiff had bitten her. One little fall into
those waiting jaws, one or two snaps of the teeth and she'd be
released from this eternity she'd been living through. No more war.
The ground beckoned hypnotically. But no more wars meant no more
victories. She drew herself up and regarded the animals with a
restoring rage.

After a while the call of the belly grew too strong, and the pack
trailed off to find easier prey. As she watched them lope away, a
band of shadows quickly lost in other shadows of the desert, she
knew, pain or no pain, she could glide short distances. Gliding meant
hunting and hunting meant food. She stroked her hurt wing with her
beak and bided her time.

Soon, she told herself, she would be racing after Timothy--unless
he found the purple aura first. Could it be that this whole
improbable drama, starting with a war between the gods on high,
should depend finally on the injured wing of a small bird? No final
cosmic battle? No Armageddon between good and evil? That was absurd.
But quite possible. For only the hawk could find the purple auras.

Each morning she watched the return of the pitiless sun in the
east, amazed that she was still alive, that hell remained intact. At
any moment, Timothy with the aid of a purple aura could have his
prayers answered. In the days that followed food remained scarce for
her. Hunger and heat were draining her strength, and as she lurked in
sparse shadows out of the cruel sun, she also endured stabbing pain
in her belly.

Worse: Food was not only scarce; it was even harder to catch. Too
hard. One night she sat immobile beside a kangaroo-rat hole. She kept
her eye on the dark smudge of his hole while her keen ears listened
for enemies moving across the desert floor.

At last her great patience succeeded: The rat's nose emerged. She
was so eager she almost struck too soon. Then he withdrew his head.
She waited a few more minutes, then a few minutes more. The nose rose
up once again, sniffing. Two eyes emerged and two circular ears, then
the neck. She struck. And missed. She hadn't waited for the rest of
his body to come out. Her timing was off; her speed gone.