by Mich Moore
* * *
The weekend passed ever so slowly. The block was in lockdown until Juggy's cause of death could be determined. And that would not happen until the county coroner did an autopsy. And that would not happen until the county coroner returned from his fishing trip to Texas.
Inmate Martinez's system was fighting hard against his tranks, and he was back to his old frantic self. On Saturday night he cried and screamed for two hours straight, and by the time the doctor-on-call showed up, practically everyone on B-7 was crying and screaming. They dragged him kicking and biting out of his cell and moved him to what was hoped would be his final resting place, but was probably the infirmary. Broussard waited for the sun to come up. In between those two events he learned that Juggy was only forty-two years old. Whoa! He had looked a heck of a lot older than that. More like sixty-two. He scorched some gray matter on that one. Is that what prison did to you? Made you an old man before your time? Broussard made some calculations. Even if he were somehow miraculously pardoned in ten years and allowed to re-enter society as a forty-three-year-old man, for all intents and purposes he would be sixty-three. Old and unemployable. Unimportant. He would have an Unlife. The life of an undead engineer. A clever vampire! Yes, a clever and barely ambulatory vampire. Aaack! It was during moments such as these that Broussard felt that he could literally gnaw his way out of Lincoln Hills with his bare teeth. Instead he pummeled the walls with his fists, but smartly padded them with two old towels first.
Don't panic, he told himself. Juggy would have advised him to count his blessings. He still had a few. His youth, his intellect, and his body were still serving him well. Even here in the butt crack of the west. He had applied to work at the Lab twice before they had accepted him. It took a face-to-face meeting with its civilian sponsor, Dina Hodges, for them to finally accept his application. He suspected that Dina had taken a fancy to him. He took solace in that major victory. But nothing (good) lasts forever. He had maybe five more productive years left before accelerated aging and gravity would begin to muddle his thinking and permanently distort his body. Prison and age would conspire to fashion a new cocoon for him, drab and paper thin. And he would be forced into it not by the tantalizing expectations of a beatific afterlife as a winged confection, but by inexorably true prophesies of disintegration by old man-dom. And he and his cocoon would soon pucker and dry and shrivel up and blow away and merge with a chance dust bunny emerging from some anonymous corner of some unremarkable room, and they would just roll around the floor for hours until they either blew into another corner or were swept up into some tidy person's dirty dustpan ....
And that was the fourth lesson that he learned while at Lincoln Hills: He had to get out of prison.
Sunday afternoon found him standing in the bird sanctuary with five other worker inmates under grey skies. Every other week he participated in Lincoln Hills' Raptor Rescue program. About once a month someone would dash to the local fish and wildlife office with a sick or injured hawk or eagle that they had found. These birds would be redirected to the Raptor Rescue program and, if possible, restored to full health, rehabilitated and released back into the wild. They had ten permanent residents and, on average, five temporary guests.
A couple of the inmates were really into it: they had devoured all the library's books and videos on falconry and had even convinced the program director, Kevin, to bribe a local bird handler to drive out and conduct mini classes about their charges. And that was all fine and dandy. But for Broussard, it was another opportunity to breathe in fresh air and get a glimpse of the outside world again.
Today they were working on strengthening mental acuity. That evoked more than a few chuckles amongst the men at first. Some of the birds had been living at the sanctuary for months, and the sharp decision-making skills that nature had honed within them had all but evaporated. Correction: Evaporated at times. Normally it took about an hour to convince a bird to open a cage door or fetch a rubber rat carcass from across a field. But around ten minutes before Kevin came outside with the grub bucket, avian IQs would suddenly triple and you might find a previously near-comatose red-tailed hawk suddenly almost capable of operating heavy machinery.
He was working with Rosy today. Rosy was a peregrine falcon who had been brought in by a visiting Boy Scout troop. Peregrines usually lived near water, so how she had ended up in the Nevada desert was a real mystery. She had been shot through her left wing by a small caliber gun and left for dead. She was also severely dehydrated and on the verge of starvation. But Rosy was one of the fortunate ones and had recovered quickly. Having defeated death, she confidently began to prove herself quite the coquette, and so convincingly charmed the inmates that they pleaded to have her stay at the center as their mascot. Within weeks she had crowned herself queen of the aviary and, by fiat, the employees her slavish subjects. She was moved from the quarantine area and into the largest hutch at the sanctuary. Two boys from the Scout troop that had found her came by with a Catholic priest to bless her and her "new friends" and to make sure that all of this wholesome goodness was captured by a reporter from the Port Arthur Times. Rosy the Falcon had ostensibly come into her own.
Under the guidance of Chris, one of the state licensed falconers working at the sanctuary, Broussard had successfully calmed her enough to remove her training hood. She took one look at the overcast skies and immediately fell into an agitated state.
"Give her a bit of meat," Chris suggested.
Broussard held out a morsel for her to take. She begrudgingly accepted the bribe and then proceeded to fidget and fuss her way through a very basic prey hit from a high-pitched stoop routine, feigning ignorance and fatigue at every opportunity. She even allowed her damaged wing to hang limp for special emphasis. There were more morsels, and more half-hearted bird work until finally both human and bird had had enough and she was brought out of the flight cage and placed back inside her own mew.
Chris was grinning. "Well, at least we tried."
Broussard looked around. After he tended to the blind owl next door, he would have to come back and replace Rosy's soiled hay. More good times!
Chris waved bye. "Catch you later."
Broussard sighed over his life. "Whatever."
The falcon gave him a parting hiss and he threw her the finger.
Kevin, the other falconer, strolled by at that moment. "How'd she do?"
"Terrible."
The falconer gave a cheery thumbs-up and quickly moved on.
Walter, another inmate, sidled up beside him. "That bitch would just as likely rip your eyes out than catch that rat over yonder."
Broussard spat on the ground. "Well, you're one of the geniuses who wanted her to stay."
He gave a "don't-blame-me!" shrug. "She was a sweet little thing back in the day. Remember?"
"Right." Broussard was not ready for an apologist rant. He had better things to pretend to do. At that moment a shadow flitted across Walter's face. He knew what caused it, and his mood brightened immediately.
"Hey!" he sang out. "Vicky's here!"
The others emerged from the various sheds and hutches that formed the sanctuary to make a wide semi-circle around the main rotating perch. Their eyes were fixed upon the sky directly above them as they watched two distant specks spiral down. Within seconds, two huge raptors thudded into their midst with a flurry of wild shrieks and flapping wings. The men all but let out a "Hurrah!" as they showered the pair of golden eagles with as much verbal affection as a gang of miscreants could create.
Vicky and her mate, Bob, would fly up from the Truckee area about once a week and visit. They were not banded and appeared to be a wild, mature nesting pair. How they got it into their heads to make friends with a group of stinky desert men was something that neither Kevin nor Chris could explain. Of course, the always full grub bucket might have been a powerful incentive for them.
Vicky, the female, was the larger and more vocal of the two. Bob would just quietly stay back and let her do all th
e squawking ... until the food was presented. Then he was all action. A person might call him the dimmer of the two, but Broussard knew better. Vicky was the star and Bob knew it. Why not let her shine long enough to get a hassle-free meal and clean water out of it? And apparently this arrangement worked very well for them. Kevin had once mentioned that he had heard stories about a pair of super-friendly eagles getting handouts from people as far away as South Lake Tahoe. Vicky and Bob were not only brilliantly resourceful but famously so!
As the men jockeyed about for better viewing angles, Vicky happily beat her huge wings with loud whuups, sending out large gusts of air into their midst. She was enormous, with a wingspan of at least two meters. Broussard's first thought when he first saw her was that if she were just a wee bit larger and he just a wee bit lighter then she could fly him out of there. But he soon discovered that the idea was sheer folly. For all that volume, an eagle her size would only weigh about nine kilograms (under twenty pounds). Hardly enough to lift a man who weighed close to two hundred pounds. Still, it was an intriguing idea.
Walter held up one of his dirty hands towards Bob, the less excitable of the two. It was the customary greeting for them. Kevin had warned the workers to never try and touch them or get too close. They might misinterpret the attempts at communication as threats. And he assured everyone that they really did not want to tangle with two golden eagles on the attack.
The raptor tilted his head slightly and looked directly at the man. And not with the unfettered deference that most animals felt compelled to display towards humans, but with careful regard. In essence, "You respect me and I'll respect you." A person, even a prisoner, could appreciate that.
One of the other inmates, Rick, clucked his tongue to get Bob's attention. The bird's huge head ducked in his direction. "You are fuckin' beautiful," Rick said with raw admiration.
Broussard thought of the peregrine falcon and the other no-goodniks taking up time and energy at the aviary. He agreed. "They sure beat anything around here."
Bob stared hard at Rick and then looked back at Broussard. Briefly.
Kevin appeared carrying a small chum bucket. They would not be feeding from that. Since they were still basically wild and unschooled, he would have to "chum" them over to the new feeding enclosure that had just been completed. There plump rabbits roamed freely, blissfully unaware of the terrors from the near skies lurking around the next bend of time.
The eagles followed Kevin over to the pen and perched on two nearby posts, watching. Kevin set the chum bucket down and gestured towards the eagles. The pair needed no urging. They simultaneously took to the air, swooped down in low, talons extended, and yanked two placid rabbits into the air. They then circled one of the portables a couple of times before momentarily disappearing behind a water tower. Broussard watched them go, feeling envious of their freedom. Oh, well. He trudged back to the bird hutches. Ollie, the blind owl, was patiently waiting for some attention. Broussard walked into his enclosure making what he thought were soothing sounds so as not to startle him. Ollie responded with a frantic dance of violent wing flapping and hissing.
Walter stepped in, carrying a large black hood.
Broussard shook his head. "I don't think that you're going to be able to get it on him, Walter."
He looked at the crazily thrashing bird. "He'll hurt himself."
Broussard sighed. "Okay. I'll go get the net and—What the hell?"
Something huge streaked by between them and thudded into the opposing wall.
Walter dropped the hood. "Whoa!"
Vicky shook off any effects of ramming her head into a wall at sixty-five kilometers per hour and flew to the highest perch in the hutch, which also happened to be where Ollie the owl stood. She promptly knocked him off. The owl fell like a stone to the floor below. With a fierce cry, Bob flew in after her, still clutching a now limp rabbit.
Broussard was momentarily speechless. Think fast.
"Walter, go get the net and grab Ollie."
Walter looked at him bug eyed. "What about the eagles?"
"Leave them!"
The golden eagles thrust out their chests and edged closer to each other, presenting a unified display of force. They obviously had no intention of leaving.
Walter ground his palm against his forehead. "Well, that's a first. Someone actually breaking into prison." He sighed and headed for the door. "But then life on the streets can be hard ...."