“Mama? What are you doing?”
“Just playing around, honey,” she said with a giggle, tossing the towel into the trash can. She already felt light-headed, sort of like she was drunk. She wiggled her fingers and toes. Yeah, they were feeling kind of numb, too. She tried to walk toward Marion, but her knees felt watery. “Whoa,” she said, holding on to the counter. “That sure packed a punch. You go in the other room, sugar. I don’t want you smelling this stuff.”
Her legs were starting to feel like jelly so she slipped down to the floor, stretching them straight out in front of her like she did as a child, laughing at her feet, which suddenly looked very funny to her. What time was it, she wondered, looking at the clock? Even squinting, she couldn’t see the numbers through her blurry eyes, then found she really didn’t care what time it was, anyway. This stuff was really beginning to kick in. Okay, no panic, she told herself, leaning back. She had enough time to wait until the stuff wore off.
She felt herself letting go. Everything around her seemed shrouded by an impenetrable haze and she felt safe. One snug little bug in a rug, she thought with a short laugh. She sighed deeply and let the drug flow through her system. Oh, how she’d needed this. Craved it with a physical ache that was all-consuming. Harris had said that she loved her addiction more than him. More than her daughter. And though she’d shaken her head no, she knew in her heart that it was true. It pained her to recognize this flaw in herself. She hated this need.
Fannie closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall. She’d had to turn away from the bruising intensity of Harris’s gaze this morning when he’d asked her why she always chose drugs over him or Marion. She always managed to hurt him, she thought, and that made her sad. Sad, sad, sad.
I don’t know, she’d replied. But that was a lie, told to him with love. He’d find her heartless if she’d told him the truth. Though he’d named it—she loved her addiction—he could never understand why. How could she tell him, how could a man like him understand that the only intimacy she’d known in her life was with drugs?
She shook her head woozily. It was the ol’ moth to the flame, she thought, and laughed again as she groped for her purse. Now, where were her cigarettes? Talk about addictions… She felt groggy as she tugged one out from the pack in her pocket, fumbling with her numb fingers. After a few misses, she finally was able to light up. It was so weird, she thought, because her lips felt a little numb, too. She giggled and waved the flame out, then tossed the match into the trash.
The whump of a plume of fire stunned her. Fannie could only sit on the floor and stare as the fire hissed outward, flying like dozens of golden and orange birds to alight on bits of paper, curtains, towels, anything it could devour.
“Mama!”
The scream penetrated her stupor. Marion. Her baby! Maternal instinct pushed her to her knees and she half crawled, half dragged herself to the small office across the hall where Marion huddled under the desk.
Lijah heard the birds screaming in alarm. He ran out from the med pens to see the glow of orange flames and plumes of black smoke spiraling from the clinic.
“Lord have mercy,” he muttered. He sprinted to the door of the treatment room but the flames were already blocking the entrance. A window burst to his left and he ducked, putting his arms up to cover his face from glass that flew like shrapnel. Coughing, he backed away, studying the building for a way in. He could readily see the way it would be. The grass and leaves were so dry and brittle the fire could spread to the other pens like greased lightning. Another window burst from the treatment room and he knew there was nothing he could do for the few birds in the intensive-care kennels. He turned and ran for the med pens.
Brady came running from the parking lot. He was late coming in because he’d found Maggie on the side of the road with her car hood open. The car had to be towed and he’d waited with her, then drove them both to the birds of prey center. They saw the thin streak of smoke rising from over the trees when they pulled up. Brady took off for the clinic while Maggie headed straight for Harris’s house.
“I’ve got to check on Marion. I’ll call the fire department,” she cried as she ran.
Across the yard, Brady spotted Lijah coming out from the med pens with Santee in his arms. It looked to him like the old man was talking to the bird. The large eagle’s eyes were more yellow and fierce than the glow of the fire. She jerked her wings in his arms, restless to be off.
Maggie ran up to Brady’s side, breathless. “What’s he doing? Is he letting her go?”
“Let him be,” Brady told her, holding her back. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Lijah turned to face the wind, his white head tilted upward. He lifted his long arms and, with a firm lift, spread them open in release.
The eagle stretched out her mighty wings, slicing the air with powerful strokes, her proud, massive white head arched forward in determination.
Brady held his breath and Maggie’s grip tightened on his arm, knowing that the eagle had not yet tested its wings for any real distance. Santee cut through the air with aggressive purpose, lifting higher and higher till she caught the wind at last and flew a slanted path high into the sky. Soaring, she banked once, then turned in a stately manner. The last they saw of her was the flash of white on her tail.
“Lijah!”
He heard the shout over the roar of the fire and saw Brady running toward him with Maggie right behind.
“Where’s Marion?” Maggie said, her eyes wild with worry. “She’s not at the house!”
“Don’t know. Reckon she’s with her mother. She be all right.” Lijah looked back at the flames engulfing the treatment room. “We can’t save the birds in there. That wood so dry it going up like tinder.”
“Oh, my God,” cried Maggie.
“The wind’s blowing toward the med units,” Lijah said, coughing as the stale stench of smoke stretched toward them. He waved his hand as he turned toward the wood building. “Let’s go! We have to hurry and save those birds first.”
From the corner of his eye he caught sight of the two vultures in the wire pen, not fifty feet from the burning clinic. They hunkered together in the far corner, mute with fear. Lijah detoured toward the pen, waving away thick black smoke that billowed from the clinic.
“Come on, you two,” he said as he undid the latch and opened the gate wide. “Go on, git. You ain’t children no more. It’s up to you to find a safe place. Go on, now.”
He shuffled inside the pen, waving his arms and shooing the Tweedles out to freedom. Lijah didn’t wait to see where they were headed. That fire was some devil-beast belching hellfire—and it was hungry. Lijah shook his fist at it and trotted across the field to the med pens, damned determined not to let the beast devour any more of his birds.
Harris was standing in the middle of the flying field with Cinnamon relaxed and perched on his glove. Eighteen men and women, all corporate rollers with a keen interest in conservation, clustered around him, listening avidly. This was the kind of group he felt excited to talk to. Interested people who, once shown that they could make a difference for their families and the world they left behind, became dedicated men and women of action. As he was talking, Cinnamon suddenly opened her wings, flared her head and tail feathers and hissed defensively.
Harris saw a large black shadow cross the field and, looking up, caught his breath as an eagle flew directly overhead. He was stunned by its unexpectedness and his heart expanded as it always did when he witnessed the eagle’s majesty of motion. All around him he heard the “ahs” of wonder and thought with a soft chuckle that the eagle’s timing couldn’t have been better.
Then the eagle banked and circled again, a rare treat, calling out in its high-pitched cry. All eyes were focused on the massive, long-winged bird as it led their gazes to the smudge of billowing gray smoke against the azure sky.
Santee.
With a sudden bolt of clarity, Harris knew. His face drained of color.
&n
bsp; He handed the hawk to his assistant. “Bring her home,” he shouted, then grabbed the shoulder of Adam Pearlman, the man who’d organized the day’s presentation. “Can you drive me back to the center? Now!”
“Marion, honey, listen to me. You’ve got to climb out!”
“No, Mama!” The child clutched her mother, burying her head in her neck, trembling.
They were huddled under the desk in the office, unable to leave because of the flames behind the door that blocked the hall. The heat was oppressive and smoke began billowing under the door into the room, burning their eyes and choking their lungs.
“Marion,” Fannie said, shaking the child loose. “You can do this. You’re Mama’s big girl. All you have to do is climb out that window the same way you came in.” The child whimpered and shook her head no. “We’re spies, remember?”
“You come, too,” she cried in terror.
“’Course I will. Come on. Now hurry!” Fannie dragged herself to her feet, the numbness in her legs making her movements clumsy. The fire was like a living thing, sucking up the air from the open window, licking its flames toward them. Fannie felt a terror that broke through the fog of ether and she clawed her way through the thick, rancid smoke, feeling with her hands the hard wood of the furniture. She dragged her daughter up from under the desk. Marion coughed and spit, but Fannie urged her to climb up onto the desk. She leaned forward, pounding against the frame to open the window so that they could climb out. The old, swollen wood wouldn’t budge. She felt her strength ebbing, but her brain kept screaming, This is my baby. I have to save my child!
“The top,” she cried, gathering her strength. “Climb out the top!”
Fannie cursed her numbness, then took a breath of the fetid air. She pushed Marion forward with all her might as she did her best to guide her useless hands to shove Marion’s bottom up and out the top half of the window. The sweat poured down from her face and she grunted with the effort. She felt Marion wiggle, then the sudden lift and shift of weight as Marion grabbed hold of the tree limb.
“Climb, Marion!” Fannie screamed breathlessly. She inhaled the smoke and coughed, spitting out the foul taste. “Get away and call for help!”
Fannie’s last sight of her daughter was of her scrambling up the tree like a little monkey. She choked a cry in relief and said a prayer of thanks. She didn’t know if God listened to sinful women like her, but she prayed, anyway. Then she gripped the edge of the desk and tried to lift her leaden legs and climb up on it. The black smoke swirled in the room, swallowing up the oxygen and burning her eyes. She commenced coughing again and her legs weakened, dropping her to the floor. The smoke was less down here so she flattened herself till her lungs could catch some air. Behind her, she heard the sound of sizzling, like bacon frying on the griddle. She looked over her shoulder. Through the foggy haze, it looked like the room was blossoming into one enormous, yellow bird, its wings outstretched, wide and shuddering, tipped with brilliant orange feathers. It was a hissing, heartless, ravenous beast with black, fathomless eyes.
And it was staring directly at her.
They swerved and skidded up the gravel road as Adam accelerated the car toward the center. Harris could hear the sirens of fire engines right behind him. He clutched the handle of the door, muttering, “Come on, come on, come on,” and leapt out as soon as the car careened to a stop.
All was mayhem and he had to stand for a second to take in what he was seeing. Flames were shooting from the windows of the clinic and Lijah was standing not far away with the hose pouring water through the windows. Brady was running like some wild football quarterback across the field with buckets that Maggie was filling from the other hose near the med pens, dumping them one by one in a pathetic effort against the mounting flames. Soot blackened their faces and perspiration drenched their hair flat against their heads.
He ran straight to Maggie, calling her name. She looked up and gasped with relief, dropping the hose and running frantically toward him, meeting him midfield.
“Harris!”
“Maggie, where’s Marion?”
“I don’t know!” she screamed, her eyes pools of despair. “She must be with Fannie, but we haven’t seen them.”
Harris paled and jerked his head toward the burning clinic while a wild, mad fear howled inside of him. The howl burst from his lips, a deep guttural roar that seemed rent from the scorching furnace in his chest. “No-o-o-o!” She was in there. His baby was in that hellfire. He knew it. He’d thought he had faced the worst in the emergency room. Then again last night when Marion was ill. But he was wrong. He’d committed the fatal error; he’d left Marion with Fannie. He couldn’t lose her to another bad decision.
Harris felt a sudden shift, as though he were detached from his body, watching in a dispassionate manner the actions of a desperate, determined man. The noises of the world seemed to muffle around him and he saw everything through tunnel vision. Releasing his grip on Maggie, he ran directly to the clinic, pushing aside Brady when he tried to keep him back. He couldn’t feel his feet as they hit the earth, couldn’t feel the heat of the fire as he circled the building, looking for a way inside. He was vaguely aware of the fire engines roaring to the site as he turned the corner to the back of the building, calling Marion’s name.
One voice penetrated his focus. It sounded like a bird calling from somewhere high in a tree.
“Mama! Mama! Mama!”
His gaze flew to the mature longleaf pine at the rear of the clinic. It stood close to the building where smoke poured from the open window. Following the tree’s skyward path, he found Marion clinging tight to a high branch with one arm. The other was outstretched toward the office as she screamed hysterically for her mother.
He mounted the tree and watched himself move his hands, one over the other, past the plumes of smoke, higher up the tree, climbing steadily toward his daughter. When he reached her at last he spoke to her in a low, calm voice, gentling her as he wrenched her rigid fingers from the branch and guided her trembling arms to cling, instead, around his neck. He took it limb by limb, hampered by the smoke and Marion’s hysterical trembling and crying.
“Where’s Fannie?” he asked her.
Marion’s eyes were round balls of terror. He couldn’t get through to her. When they reached the lowest branch of the tree she reached out with one arm toward the open window and screamed, “Mama! Mama!”
“It’s okay, honey,” he replied, and understood with the same cool detachment what it was he had to do.
Lijah miraculously called up from below the limbs of the tree.
Harris looked into the face of the old man. “Take care of her,” he shouted as he lowered his daughter from the tree into Lijah’s waiting arms.
Firemen came running around the corner, calling out to him to stay put. Harris waited until he saw Lijah carry Marion to safety, then turned and leapt through the window into the burning building.
He found Fannie lying on the floor near the window, struggling to breathe in the few inches of air. He crawled be side her and gathered her in his arms, alarmed by the streaks of black smoke across her face. Her eyes fluttered open and he knew the moment she recognized him through the haze of smoke because she shrank back with a hoarse whimper.
“Don’t be afraid, Fannie,” he told her. “I’m here.”
She moved her cracked, parched lips, but Harris couldn’t hear what she was saying against the roar of the fire. He tilted his ear close to her mouth.
“Marion?” she rasped from her ravaged throat.
He met her gaze. “She got out. She’s okay.”
Fannie’s eyes were consumed with relief, then she closed her lids.
An explosion in the next room rocked the house, as though the beast had risen and roared in fury. The power of its fiery breath rattled the rafters, shaking loose chunks of ceiling and shattering glass as beams collapsed around them. Harris felt the foul plumes of heat hiss past him, sucking the air from his lungs and singeing the hair
s on his body.
Fannie clutched his shirt and choked out a scream.
Harris put his back to the flames that were lapping the walls and, crouching to shield her from the heat, lifted Fannie into the black smoke. “Hold on,” he shouted.
He never would remember how he managed to carry her through the wall of murky smoke to the window. Firemen in yellow-and-black coats swarmed like worker bees at a hive, cutting out the shards of glass and wood from the window while shouting out instructions. As he lowered Fannie into their arms, she looked back at him with red-rimmed eyes. He froze, transported back in time. In those eyes he saw again the same amalgamation of raw fear, deep-seated sorrow and haunting regret that he’d seen in the eyes of the eleven-year-old girl who had come to his house many years before, seeking a safe haven.
The house shuddered and wailed once more. Then all was blackness.
Survival. Because birds of prey are numerous and conspicuous, many people are unaware of their struggle to survive. They all have many natural predators, yet their defensive behavior is highly variable. Some fly away at a threat while others defend their nest aggressively. The beautiful plumage of most raptors acts as camouflage in their natural environment. Still, disease, lack of food, human threats and, most of all, the loss of their habitat make each day a challenge to survive.
24
ELLA SAT AT THE NURSES’ STATION LOOKING out the front plate window at another sultry summer day. There’d been a long string of steamy days this July and she’d been looking to the sky for signs of clouds and rain that would break this monotonous hot spell—like everyone else in Charleston.
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