Unflappable

by Suzie Gilbert

  Wizzie led him to the top of the field. Gunderman sat on the grass beside her, looking down at the wildlife center. “I like it up here,” she said. “You can see everything, and the woods are right behind you in case you need them.” She split a thick blade of grass down the middle, held it between her thumbs, and blew on it until it whistled.

  “So where is your dad?” said Gunderman. “Does he live near here?”

  “Dead,” said Wizzie.

  “Oh! I’m sorry. Do you miss him?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Um. When did he…pass away?”

  “When I was five. Three years ago.”

  “What was he like?”

  “‘Blah, blah, blah!’ That’s what he was like. My mom would try to say something, and he’d get all red in the face and shout, ‘Blah, blah, blah!’ That big guy with the sunglasses who was here? He said I was rude, but my dad was way ruder.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Kicked by a horse. Right in the head.”

  “Really? Gee. Your mom must have been…sad?”

  Wizzie raised her eyebrows and slipped into her best detective voice. “She said she was sad…but the evidence tells a different story.”

  She pulled out her phone and found a photograph of Celia, taken from a distance and enlarged, delivering a big kiss to the nose of a grey horse. “That’s the horse,” said Wizzie. “Her name is Battle Axe. She belongs to my uncle Rick. Scroll through.”

  Gunderman flipped through the photos: Celia grinning joyously, her arms around Battle Axe’s neck; feeding her an apple; industriously brushing her coat; weaving garlands of flowers into her mane and tail.

  “My cousin Bobby took the pictures,” said Wizzie. “Uncle Rick said kicking my dad in the head was the last straw and he was going to shoot that damned horse, but my mom wouldn’t let him. She drives over there to visit her once a week. Mom doesn’t know I know this, so don’t tell her.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t.”

  “Bobby takes lots of pictures. He put one of his aunt on Instagram, and a week later a friend his aunt hadn’t seen since she was 10 years old called her up! Out of the blue!”

  “Really? Wow!”

  “I have to go help my mom,” said Wizzie, rising. “See you later.”

  “See you later!” called Gunderman, his mind racing. He pulled his phone from his pocket, and began to text.

  • • •

  Cole stood in the center of the field, his eyes on the blustery sky. He whistled, then waited.

  Sean, Bailey, Ned, and Luna sat on a rough wooden bench at the edge of the field. Bailey’s arm was linked firmly around her father’s, their eyes glued to the sky. “Is that him?” asked Bailey, squinting.

  Sean shrugged. “Peregrines!” he sighed.

  “There he is!” said Bailey, pointing to a moving speck on a cloud. “When he first came here, his name was Darth Vader,” she told Ned and Luna. “He tore part of Cyrus Miller’s face off,” she added casually.

  “The guy deserved it,” Sean explained. “He’s a jerk.”

  “So Cole… like…trains them not to tear people’s faces off, somehow?” asked Ned.

  “You’re either born to be a falconer, or you’re not,” said Sean. “The bird has to be your partner. Your friend. Your trusted friend. You make a mistake and maybe they’ll forgive you, maybe they never will. Some of these falconry birds get passed around. They get treated worse and worse, they get madder and madder, and finally they rip someone up. If they’re lucky, they land here.”

  “Cole’s famous,” said Bailey.

  “It’s one thing to raise a bird right,” said Sean. “It’s another to take one who’s been ruined, and change his view of the world. Like with Mars, right, Luna?”

  “Right.”

  “Some people just drop off their birds and come back in a few weeks, because they can’t deal with taking lessons from a 12-year-old kid.” He frowned. “Some people are never going to change the way they treat their birds, so we don’t give them back.”

  “Like that one,” said Bailey, nodding at the sky. “We changed his name to Shiva — the Hindu god of destruction, transformation, and rebirth. Wait until you see him with Cole. There’s a falconer in Easton, she’s been coming here almost every day. In a couple of weeks, we’ll send Shiva home with her.”

  “Look!” said Ned.

  The speck in the sky metamorphosed into something slender and horizontal, and streaked over their heads like a rocket. Cole whistled again, and swung a thin dark line over his head. In a flash the peregrine changed direction, hurtled back, and struck the small leather lure at the end of the line. Bird and lure dropped to earth, and Sean and Bailey exchanged grins. Cole walked to the grounded bird. He offered his glove, and the falcon hopped up and dug into a snack.

  At the far end of the field, a car pulled up in front of the house. Sean and Bailey rose. “You know Dina Pontillo in Illinois? She’s clearing out one of her flight cages today,” said Sean. “She’s your next stop.”

  “But she could lose her license!”

  “She said to let her worry about that. You can spend another night here, and set off first thing in the morning. It’ll be good for your bird to rest another day.”

  “And I’ll make you another poultice,” said Bailey to Ned.

  “Thank you,” said Ned. “You have an amazing talent. Or maybe it’s a gift.”

  Bailey blushed and ducked her head.

  “Honestly,” said Luna. “We can’t thank you all enough.”

  Ned watched Sean and Bailey walk across the field and join Cole. Luna leaned back against the bench and closed her eyes, her face tilted toward the sun. He remembered her asleep on Esther’s barn floor, the eagle delicately preening her hair. “Harry?” she had said, then the shadows crossed her face. Ever since then he had pondered Harry’s identity, and debated how to bring it up.

  All women do is talk, Earl once told him. If you want to find something out, just wait till they pause for breath and ask it like you don’t care. Sometimes they’re so busy talking they don’t even realize you’ve asked a question.

  Ned had always thought of Earl as a woman whisperer, like Cole with his birds. After all, Earl had landed one as hot as Julie Marie. But Luna was nothing like Julie Marie. Neither was she like any of Earl’s previous girlfriends, nor like either one of Ned’s. She was perfectly comfortable with long silences, so if he asked her a question, she’d know it. There had been several times on the road when he tried to quiz her about her life, but each time she tensed, her eyes clouding over, and he had lost his nerve and turned on the radio.

  “Luna,” he said. He opened his mouth to begin the carefully rehearsed query he’d been practicing for the past 650 miles, then blurted, “Who’s Harry?”

  Luna’s eyes opened. She leaned forward as if she were about to rise, but then she paused and eased back against the bench.

  “He was my dad,” she said. “Rose was my mom.”

  Ned didn’t want to appear astonished, so he glanced at her with what he hoped was a mildly encouraging expression.

  “I don’t know what happened to my biological parents,” she said, looking at the sky. “My dad left my mom, my mom left me. I guess it was a domino effect. What I do know is nobody checks the references of foster parents very well. When I was fifteen I decided to hitchhike out west, and a guy picked me up but he was drunk, so after awhile I made him let me out. It was night and I was tired, so I slept in a barn. In the morning, Harry woke me up.”

  She hesitated, and he wondered if she would continue. “Harry said I could stay a few days and have some food and maybe help with the animals. And Rose said I was too smart not to be in high school. Mars came to the wildlife center where we were volunteers. And Rose and Harry sent me to college.”

  Ned glanced at her lowered eyes, at her look of resignation. “We talked about me going to vet school, and then they died in a car crash.”

  The only sound was
the wind rolling across the field. “I’m sorry,” said Ned.

  The flush rose from her throat, staining her cheeks and filling her eyes with tears. She swallowed, her tears disappeared, and her expression of despair darkened to anger. “Don’t feel sorry for me!” she snapped. “Worse things have happened to people!”

  “Like what?” he asked incredulously.

  She stopped and gazed at the horizon, and he watched her facial alchemy transmute grief and hostility into a desperate determination. “Will you promise me something?” she asked urgently, and grasped his hands. “It has to be a real promise! You can’t just say ‘I promise’ and then not do it!”

  “Uh…” he stammered.

  “If anything happens to me — anything — will you promise to get Mars to Hélène’s?”

  “I don’t even know where Hélène’s is!”

  “You’ll find it!”

  “Bu t what about Banshee?”

  “Once you get Mars there, you can come back for her.”

  He searched her features for any hint of humor or irony, but saw nothing but unblinking resolve. She’s one of them, he thought. All she needs are the wings.

  “Do you promise?”

  Once again, Ned was nine. Fighting terror, vertigo, and common sense, he peered over the edge of the quarry to the glowing green water below. Go on, you chicken! shouted his brother. It won’t kill you unless you land flat!

  “All right,” he said. “I promise.”

  Luna exhaled, her face suffused with relief. “Thank you,” she said. She relaxed her grip, but didn’t let go of his hands. “Ned?” she asked. “Do you know why we name some of them after gods?”

  “No.”

  She let go of his hands, leaned back, and stared at the sky. “Because they might be as close as we’ll ever get.”

  • • •

  Stew and Selma Lawler sat on the edge of their living room couch, silent and apprehensive. Gunderman sat on a nearby easy chair, wearing his formal summer uniform and a grave expression. Stew passed a hand over his ample belly and winced. “I’m afraid this all’s givin’ me some indigestion,” he said.

  Selma patted his knee. “I’m gonna kill that girl,” she muttered.

  The room was small and cluttered with knickknacks and plastic flowers. Gunderman sipped his lemonade, silently appreciating the invention of facial recognition software. Can you help me? he texted his brother’s teenaged daughter in Sacramento that morning, along with two photographs. Sure Uncle Erik! she responded. Eventually sent him five photos taken at a party in Allentown, Kentucky and posted on Instagram, all featuring a handsome young man in horn-rimmed glasses and a white linen shirt.

  Gunderman had been surprised at Harrelson’s transformation. You are very good at this! he texted. Can you tell me who posted them? Her response contained two hearts, three smiley faces, and Savannah Lawler, otherwise known to her friends as Savvy.

  The front door swung open, and a 16-year-old girl dressed in a tank top, miniskirt, and heels burst into the room. She took in the uniformed officer and the look on her parents’ faces, and stopped abruptly.

  “You better siddown,” said Selma, “ ‘cause I’m aimin’ to burn your bacon.”

  Savannah sat on the couch between her parents, all three wide-eyed and silent. Gunderman had quickly ascertained that the elder Lawlers appreciated the Blue Moon Wildlife Center not because of its charitable work, but because so far the four-legged varmints in cages and pens had kept their daughter away from the two-legged ones in bars and pool halls.

  “So you see,” he concluded, “unfortunately, we’re dealing with a federal offense. Everyone involved in this case is facing both heavy fines and jail time.”

  He was rewarded by three looks of horror, all badly concealed, so he continued. “I know Savannah was not directly involved, but some of these prosecutors can get a little overeager, if you know what I mean. What I want to do is find the responsible party, so innocent bystanders don’t end up with serious problems.”

  When all three Lawlers nodded their heads in unison, Gunderman began to fish.

  “Adam Matheson removed a federally protected bird from a licensed wildlife center. He said he didn’t realize it was a crime, but that’s no excuse. He broke the law.”

  The Lawlers regarded him silently.

  “And now Luna Burke is in possession of the bird. I don’t believe she’s a hardened criminal. She used to work in a wildlife center just like Blue Moon. She may just be a naïve girl who wanted to protect a bird she was emotionally attached to.”

  Stew and Selma remained impassive but almost imperceptibly, Savannah’s eyebrows lowered. Her chin moved a hair’s breadth forward. The second finger of her left hand pressed down on her knee. Gunderman fastened his eyes on hers.

  “The thing is, you never know with a woman like that. There’s a good chance she knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s just dragging Ned Harrelson along with her.”

  The faintest trace of a blush rose in Savannah’s cheeks. Gunderman shook his head, as if he were stymied. “He’s never been in any kind of trouble before.”

  Almost indiscernibly, her eyes narrowed. Her lips tightened. One more ought to do it, thought Gunderman. “I’ll bet that poor guy doesn’t even know what hit him,” he added.

  “He doesn’t!” Savannah burst out. “He doesn’t know anything! It’s her fault!”

  Stew and Selma both snapped their heads toward their daughter. “Are you messin’ around with him?” demanded Selma. “Because I swear…”

  “I’m not! I promise, I’m not! I just met him once at Iris’s party!”

  “Ms. Lawler,” said Gunderman, regarding her in a kindly manner. ”All I want to do is find the eagle, return it to its mate in Pennsylvania, and make sure no one gets in trouble who doesn’t deserve it. Can you help me? You sure don’t deserve it, and neither does Paul or Anna Lee. And neither does this poor guy Ned Harrelson, who could be looking at a long prison term. I’ll bet you he’s out there right now, wishing someone would come to his rescue.”

  Gunderman could see her wheels spinning. Her parents held their breath.

  “I know if I were him, I’d be awfully grateful for some help. I sure wouldn’t want something like this to ruin my life.”

  Savannah swallowed, blinking rapidly. Gunderman gave her a sad smile. “Here’s the thing,” he said finally. “I wish I could help him. I wish somebody could help him. But I guess he’s just going to have to go to jail, because I don’t know where he is.”

  “He’s at Sean Callahan’s in Indiana!” cried Savannah. “They’re drivin’ a gray van belongs to Iris Beemer’s brother Ollie!”

  Gunderman rose and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve done a very good thing, Savannah,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself. Now, I just need you to promise me not to tell anyone about this for at least two days, until I can help Mr. Harrelson. All right?”

  “All right.”

  He smiled at Stew and Selma. “Mr. and Mrs. Lawler, I want to thank you for your assistance. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

  • • •

  Luna placed the last fork on the dinner table as Ned uncorked a bottle of wine. Sean closed the oven door, then glanced through the window at the yard. “Look!” he said. “She’s up!”

  Cole sat on the ground, his back against a hackberry tree, resting a glove on one knee. Perched upon it was a Northern Goshawk. Her wings were blue-grey, her chest pale and delicately streaked, and her eye bands gave her the look of a highwayman. She shifted from foot to foot, her brilliant red eyes fixed on Cole.

  .

  “He’s still out there?” asked Ned, surprised. “It’s been almost four hours!”

  The soft leather jesses around the goshawk’s legs were attached to a five-foot line. The line was knotted to a stake in the ground, which gave her the freedom to move around but not to fly away.

  “Depending on the bird, sometimes he’ll stay out there all day,” said S
ean. “That goshawk doesn’t trust anyone, so he’s just letting her know that dealing with him is her choice. No bird wants to be on the ground at night, though, so when the sun starts to set that glove looks pretty good, even though it’s attached to a human. Bit by bit, he’ll go from her enemy to her safe place.”

  “Dad, you left this in the barn again,” said Bailey, entering the kitchen and handing him a ringing cell phone. “There’s 32 calls from the same number.”

  “Hello?” said Sean.

  Anna Lee’s voice was audible to everyone in the room. “God dangit, Sean, git ‘em outta there! Fish and Wildlife guy is on his way, and he knows they’re drivin’ the van!”

  For a moment, no one moved.

  “Pack up,” said Sean.

  The van’s engine was running, its side door open. Luna and Bailey slid Mars’s crate into the back, and Cole shut the door. “Don’t go out the front,” said Sean, as Ned climbed into the driver’s seat. “Over there, behind the barn — see those tracks? It’s the old hay trail. It’ll put you out on 52.”

  “Thank you,” said Luna, grasping Sean in a quick hug. She threw her arms around Bailey, and was heading for Cole when she saw his expression. She turned and saw a pair of headlights shining through the twilight.

  Luna gasped. “He can see us,” she said. “He can see the van!” A flash of panic crossed her face, then she turned her eyes on Ned. “Get out of here!”

  “What?” said Ned. “I’m not leaving you!”

  “We can’t outdrive him in an old van with an eagle in the back!” she cried, her expression as ferocious as the day he’d met her at Starfish Key. “Go! You promised! You promised!”

  She grasped his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips, then she turned and ran toward the oncoming lights. Ned groaned in frustration, and threw the van into gear.

  Chapter 13

  The loft was spacious and filled with late afternoon light. Two tables stood in a corner, one piled with multicolored fabrics, sequins, beads, and spools of thread, the other littered with tape measures, scissors, and containers of needles and pins. An ornate sewing machine rested on a stand, surrounded by a half-dozen manikins draped with garments in various stages of completion. Tacked to three bulletin boards were sketches, photographs, newspaper clippings, and a banner emblazoned “Amaryllis” in loopy, florid script.