“Thank you, sweetheart.” He sat up, heaving his own weight. “You’re so good to me.”
He liked when she sat beside him on the couch and told him what she’d learned in school. She had trouble remembering anything—each school hour felt slow and blurry—so she invented stories the way he had once done at bedtime. She mentioned books she hadn’t actually read; projects she hadn’t actually completed; tests she hadn’t actually passed. She didn’t mind telling lies, but hated that he believed them.
“That’s wonderful.” He patted her knee. “That’s my girl.”
Anything he left on the tray she carried up and ate herself. She was eating the rest of a cold grilled-cheese sandwich, dipping it in ketchup, when the Hawk Man showed up.
She hadn’t seen him in years, not since she was a child—her father and the Hawk Man, she supposed, had simply drifted apart. But she recognized his truck when it pulled up in front of the house, then that lanky gait as he walked toward the door. His beard had thinned and darkened to a burnished gold. He didn’t seem as tall as she remembered, but he still carried a bird on his arm.
“Shiri.” He spoke to her through the screen door, as he’d always done. “Is Hirsch in?”
“He’s downstairs.” She stared at him. “He doesn’t want to see anyone.”
“I heard about your brother.”
She pointed to the bird. “What’s that?”
“You’ve already met.” He looked down as though he’d only just noticed the hawk’s presence. “This is Rose.”
Even with the leather hood covering her eyes, the bird looked proud and stubborn.
“If you took off her blindfold,” said Shiri, “would she kill us?”
“She wouldn’t bother.” He laughed. “She finds us absurd at best.”
“What does she eat?”
“Insects. Rodents. Small birds. Tears the wings off those and tosses them on the ground.” He winked at Shiri. “They eat the way we’d eat, if we were allowed.”
She smiled at that.
“You should come by sometime,” he said. “Meet the others. You’d like the owl. She looks like she’s made of snow.”
Shiri looked at his leather glove and remembered the stories Dann used to tell about the Hawk Man. “Maybe,” she said.
He shrugged as if to say, Do what you want, and she liked that. Since her brother died, people watched her too closely. Teachers at school gave her concerned looks and other students stared like she was somehow changed. Even her best friend, Marla, acted shy around her.
“Give my best to your parents.” He didn’t pat her shoulder or try to tell her that time heals all or that Dann was in a better place now or that everything would be okay. He turned and strode back to his truck.
She next saw him when she sat on the curb outside Eve’s Fashion Shop. She’d trailed around touching the clothes—slippery polyester, staticky acrylic—until her mother slapped her wrist and said, “Hands off.”
“Can I have two bucks for a snack?” Shiri wanted to sit at one of the plastic tables in the Copper Grill and eat fries with gravy, looking at the tiles the way some people watch clouds.
“Do you think we’re made of money?” Her mother whispered so customers wouldn’t hear. “There’s food in the fridge at home.”
And now Shiri was on the sidewalk, staring at the pavement, nearly crying. She was bored and hungry and wished she had money to buy a hair dryer—she wanted soft, shaggy waves instead of the dark curls that frizzed around her face.
The Hawk Man pulled up and rolled down the window of his truck. He had a hawk perched on the back of the bench seat. “Hey, Shiri. You need a ride?”
She hated him for seeing her like this. “Why are you here?” She gestured to the mall, the parking lot. “I thought you liked nature.”
He pointed to three women on their smoke break outside Fields Department Store. “You don’t call this nature?”
The women looked at him like he was a predator, and at Shiri like she was something worse.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
She would have to sit right in front of the bird, its talons near her head. “Will that thing claw my eyes out?”
“You’re just like your dad, you know? ‘That thing’ has a name.”
“Rose,” said Shiri. “I don’t like her.”
“I’m sure she can live with that.”
Shiri lifted her bike into the bed of his truck, then climbed into the cab. The vinyl bench, warmed by the winter sun, felt soft and sticky and intimate under her thighs. It struck her that no one knew she’d gotten into this truck, that she could disappear.
“You said I’d like the owl,” she said. “Maybe I want to see it.”
“Maybe you do? Or you do?”
She turned to look at him, his sun-beaten face and the glint of gold in his mouth. He had mud splattered up the legs of his pants and there seemed to be dirt—later, she would learn it was blood—under his nails.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
He lived in a place he’d built himself, on a soggy property near a patch of trees. It was more cottage than house, with wood beams and a simple porch. That’s where he left her, standing on the porch while he went inside to tidy up.
“It doesn’t matter.” She’d never made a man nervous before. “I don’t care if it’s not clean.”
“You might care,” he said, “if you saw the place.”
He disappeared into the house and she could hear him walking on what must have been a wooden floor. She didn’t feel like waiting.
“You’re not as shy as you used to be,” he said when she stepped inside.
The house was as dim as a basement, the walls and floor bare of paint or varnish. She was in the kitchen now and it had a table, two chairs, a stove, fridge, and an upright freezer. Rosemary and mint were drying on the counter, laid out on sheets of newspaper.
Dead birds were mounted on every wall. Robins, starlings, falcons, and other kinds she didn’t recognize. They stared, dead-eyed and caught, forever in mid-flight. And on the table there was a taxidermy-in-progress: the feathered skin of a headless bird, its flesh scooped out, wire jutting from its neck. Beside it were a knife, a needle and thread, cotton balls, antiseptic. A chipped jar full of glass eyes.
He followed her gaze. “A grouse. Found him on the road. If I’d known you were coming—” He pushed the knife and wire cutters to one side of the table.
So her brother had been right: the Hawk Man could bring dead birds back to life.
She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb, tried to adopt the tough, indifferent stance she and Marla perfected in front of mirrors. “Where’s the owl?”
“The birds are outside. Their quarters are much more comfortable than mine.”
He brought her to the aviaries behind the house, large wire-mesh cages. Inside were branches for perches and plastic pans filled with water for baths. He first introduced her to the vultures, Hansel and Gretel. Hunched together on the same branch, they looked like old men in overcoats, but the Hawk Man said they were, in fact, both female. Their heads were covered in rough, red skin that looked like a bright scab.
“Wonderful creatures,” he said. “I thought I’d become a better man if I owned vultures. Reminders of mortality and all that.” He carried a shoulder bag full of raw meat and took a chunk out, opened the cage, and fed them from his gloved hand. “What’s bad for us is manna for them. They can digest arsenic. It’s almost enough to make you believe in God. Do you believe in God?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good answer. It’s the only truthful one.”
“Do you?”
“Almost.” He squinted and leaned against the wire mesh of the cage. “I often wonder, a god in man’s image? Why would God want to be like us when He could be a turkey vulture?”
“Are you kidding?”
“If you could soar through the air or crawl around like a grub in the dirt, which would you c
hoose?”
“I guess—”
“Exactly. You would fly. Who wouldn’t?”
Rose was in the next cage, on the ground in a patch of sun, her wings spread.
“She likes to suntan. Belongs in Malibu.” He squatted down so he was eye-level with the hawk. “Isn’t that right, love?”
She made a growling, coughing noise, rolled her eyes toward the back of her head, then regurgitated what looked like a large wet pebble.
“She has no manners,” said the Hawk Man. Then he picked up the soft pellet and crushed it between his finger and thumb. Inside was part of a skeleton, a small backbone. “This used to be a bat,” he said.
Next he showed Shiri the noisy dovecote, where he had five mourning doves. Last week there had been six, he said, but doves were less peaceable than their reputation suggested; yesterday he found Victoria pecked to death in a corner. The doves’ coos sounded like laments, and a fine gray powder from their feathers silted the air.
Lastly, he showed her the owl, putting on his glove and opening the cage. “A barn owl. Or a heart owl, because of the shape of her face.”
He held out his arm and the owl stepped onto his wrist. He clipped leather straps—he called them jesses—onto her legs, then tied a thin leash to his glove’s metal loop.
“This is Eugenie.”
The owl turned her flat, open face toward Shiri.
“You can touch her if you want. Here—” He took her hand and placed it on the soft tips of the owl’s feathers. Her wing felt like a fraying hem of silk.
“No oils on the feathers. Helps her fly more quietly.” The Hawk Man untied the leash. “Listen.”
Then the owl flew from his arm, edging into the stand of trees, and Shiri heard exactly nothing.
When he drove her home, he didn’t bring any of the birds. They were alone in the truck and Shiri searched for something to say, more questions to ask. “Is Rose your favorite? It’s like you’re married or something.”
“We’ve known each other the longest. We’re used to each other.” He was quiet for a moment, and Shiri listened to the rattle of the truck’s engine. “I had a goshawk once,” he said. “A passage bird. She was probably my favorite. She was terrifying.”
“Passage?”
“From the wild. I was in love with her. Helen. I could admire her all day.” He turned onto the Sea Island Bridge. “She had gold eyes. And she was totally indifferent to me. ‘Musée des Beaux Arts.’ The Auden poem—do you know it?”
Shiri shook her head.
“You’d like it. A boy falls out of the sky but no one pays attention. The white legs disappearing into the green / Water. We need that sort of reminder. Of how unimportant we are. Helen was my reminder.”
“How did you get her?”
“Same way I met you. By chance. By luck.”
“What happened to her?”
“You ask a lot of questions. Shows you’re clever.” He had one hand on the wheel, the other dangling out the window. “She might still be around somewhere. Every time I see a hawk overhead, I wonder if it’s her.”
“She escaped?” That pleased Shiri.
“I released her. Fed her and set her free.”
They pulled up in front of Shiri’s house, and she felt like she was in two places at once. She was here, in the truck, fourteen years old. And she was still six, inside the house with her brother, their hands pressed to the window. The Hawk Man! The Hawk Man!
She turned to face him. “You just let her go?”
“She was done with me, that’s all.”
“She didn’t like you?”
“I’m not sure any of them like me. I’m not sure that’s how their minds work. The best you can hope for is that they tolerate you and get used to you.”
“They don’t love you?”
“Love is something humans impose on them.” He shrugged. “You never really own birds. Just get to be their companion for a while.”
“That’s dumb.” Shiri crossed her arms. “I would have kept her.”
He laughed, showing his gold teeth. “You’re clever and you’re honest,” he said. “But who knows?” He reached past Shiri to open the passenger door, his arm brushing against hers. “Maybe she’ll come back to me.”
The next week, Shiri made pasta covered in a can of mushroom soup and egg-salad sandwiches. She fed her father, herself, and left the rest on the stove for when her mother got in. She couldn’t focus on her schoolwork and didn’t feel like going to Marla’s. Everything they used to do—choreographing dances to David Cassidy or smoking filched cigarettes in the basement—seemed uninteresting. But she couldn’t stay in this too-quiet house.
She thought of going to see her mother at the store, but knew she’d just be in the way. Eve’s Fashion Shop was her mother’s first job, unless you counted doing labor at Ravensbrück, and Ruth treated the work like it was her key to life. Maybe it was the racks of skirts and blouses, organized by color and size, or the mirrors wiped spotless—the clean predictability of retail. Ruth worked split shifts and overtime and never complained about being on her feet all day. Tough bones, a strong heart—those had helped her to survive before, and would get the family through now.
So Shiri rode her bike until it got dark, even in the rain. Raced as fast as she could, then raised her feet off the pedals and soared down hills, wind sweeping her hair from her face.
She ended up at the Hawk Man’s house. It was dusk and she could tell he was home by the light through the window and smoke from the chimney—his rooms were heated by an old potbelly stove he’d found at an estate sale.
She rested her bike on the grass and heard the plaints of the doves, the owl’s haunted and hollowed-out voice. She stepped onto the porch and the Hawk Man opened the door before she knocked. “Shiri. This is a surprise,” he said, though he didn’t seem surprised.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His skin was tanned and hair grew over his chest and down his stomach, toward his belt.
“Are you hungry?” He gestured for her to come in. “I’m just about to eat.”
There was a good smell coming from inside and she saw a pot bubbling on his gas stove. Lentil soup. The Hawk Man, she learned over dinner, was a vegetarian. “Well,” he corrected, “I only eat the meat my birds catch.” He drank his soup from a metal cup. “So sometimes I literally eat crow.”
She looked at him and blinked. “You’re insane.”
“You are not the first woman to point that out.”
After dinner, he worked on the grouse. He told her that he’d used a knife to scrape the innards out, then sprinkled the skin with a mixture of borax and cornstarch to dry it. Now he wired the wings so they stayed open as if in flight.
“Made of the same stuff as human hair.” He held one bent feather to show her. The grouse had probably run into a car’s windshield, he said. Some of its feathers needed repair.
“Have you ever been on a plane?” Her mind was drifting. “I’d like to go somewhere. To Europe, maybe.”
He seemed not to hear her—she would get used to the way his focus was always to the side of her, on the birds. One of his hand-rolled cigarettes dangled from his mouth and he explained that each feather locked into the next, each one was necessary. A perfect architecture of flight.
“It’s enough to make you believe in God,” he said.
“Almost,” she corrected him.
She started spending every evening with the Hawk Man, riding to his place after she’d prepared a meal for her father. It didn’t take long to get used to the wooden walls, the fridge full of exotic cheeses and leafy vegetables, and the stand-up freezer where he kept food for the birds. Raw turkey necks, frozen mice, bags of yellow chicks.
And she became familiar with his face. The scar along his jaw where his beard didn’t grow, the cluster of wrinkles that spread like sun rays from his eyes, a jagged tear in his left earlobe. The scar and the torn earlobe were gifts from Rose, he said. “She likes to remind me of who’s in charg
e.”
Shiri wondered how old he was. Older than her brother, younger than her parents.
She went with him when he flew his birds, releasing them and luring them back with raw meat that he held in his glove. The birds got smaller and smaller in the sky, the chime of the bells on their legs fading. Sometimes they disappeared and she thought they were gone for good. Then, as if by magic, they swooped toward him and landed magnificently on his arm.
“Beautiful,” he always said when they alighted, and she pretended he was talking about her. It was possible—he’d started talking to her in the same gentle voice he used to address the birds. And sometimes he let her wear his glove, so it was easy to imagine she’d slipped her hand into his.
He taught her to tie a falconer’s knot: hitch the loop, under, over, through, and tight. She used her right hand to secure a leash to the glove, and soon the birds would perch on her wrist. The owl was lighter than seemed possible, a cloud of cotton. But Shiri spent the most time with Rose, the two of them sitting on the grass, the hawk spreading her wings to warm herself. Then she practiced flying the bird on a creance, whistling to call her from a close perch. Each time the bird landed on her glove—twack—Shiri rewarded Rose with food. Soon the hawk flew to her from twenty feet, then thirty, then fifty.
Soon, she stopped eating lunch with Marla, then stopped going to class altogether. She rode to the Hawk Man’s place in the morning and stayed there all day, even when he worked at the airport. Then she went home to make dinner and returned as soon as she’d brought her father a tray of food.
She was browned from the spring sun and she wore a necklace the Hawk Man had made her out of wire and one of the hawk’s tough feathers. Her sneakers were dirty; her clothes hardly got washed; the powder from the doves’ feathers left a pearly film over her hair.
The Dark and Other Love Stories Page 6