Peregrine

by William Bayer

  The bird was actually in the air for a full minute before Jay pointed her out.

  He was standing in the middle of the Great Lawn with his binoculars, scanning the sky. “There she is,” he said casually into his walkie-talkie, and at once Pam ran out to stand with him, took up her own binoculars, and stared where he pointed with his hand. She saw the bird, a tiny speck, circling slowly at a tremendous height.

  Peregrine looked like a sea gull. She couldn’t see how Jay could recognize her. “From the silhouette,” he explained. “Remember—falcons are my specialty. She’s very high now, so she doesn’t look bigger than anything else up there, but that’s her for sure. She’s just circling, wheeling, round and round and round.”

  Nakamura came out of his truck, took up his own binoculars, checked the sky, and nodded his head. The Japanese was pleased, though his eyes remained cold. He went back into his truck to fetch Honorable Kumataka, then reappeared with her on his wrist. She was unhooded and bristling now, standing vertically, her beak tightly closed, her wings loose and hovering, eager and alert.

  “Now she’s in yarak,” Jay explained. “She knows the peregrine’s there.”

  “How does she know?”

  “From the way Nakamura is acting. They have a wonderful rapport. Now he’s going to launch her. Watch his technique. I hope the cameras catch everything he does.”

  Pam didn’t have to worry about the cameras. She could tell by the crosstalk on her radio that the crews were covering everything going on. She watched Nakamura untie the jesses wrapped around his glove, move back and forth on the balls of his feet, then launch Kumataka by thrusting out his fist at the sky while at the same time leaning forward so he stood balanced on a single foot. Honorable Kumataka took off, flew up a couple of hundred feet, then looked back at Nakamura, who shouted to her in Japanese. She flew a low circle then came back down to settle in a large maple tree that stood beside Belvedere Pond.

  “They’ve each seen the other,” Jay explained. “Now they’ll watch for a while, Kumataka from the tree, Peregrine from way up in the sky. It will be interesting to see who makes the first move, whether Peregrine makes some provocative dives or Kumataka starts to climb.”

  “How long will this inspection go on, Jay? You’re sure they’re going to duel?”

  “I’m sure of it. And it won’t be too much longer—it’s getting near sunset. Something will happen fairly soon.”

  Herb arrived, breathless. The six o’clock news was in progress, but he’d left the station anyway. “Peregrine’s too damn high,” he complained to Hollander. “Even with the telephoto we can barely make her out.”

  “Can’t be helped,” said Jay.

  “They’re going to fight, maybe up there, maybe closer to the ground. I promised you a duel, but these are animals, Herb—I can’t make them perform. You’ll just have to do the best you can.”

  Herb, undaunted, began to improvise.

  Pam and Jay would stand on the lawn before a camera and together they’d call the fight. Everything they said would be taped for broadcast at eleven. “That way,” Herb explained, “we can cut away to the duel or whatever we can shoot of it, and we’re always covered—we got our star reporter and our expert telling us what’s going on.”

  Pam protested. “I’ve never covered a bird duel, Herb. I’m not sure I know all the moves.”

  “That’s why we have Jay, to explain it. If he gets too technical, just ask him what he means. You’re the conduit between our expert and”—he waved his arm toward the Bronx—”the element out there in television land.”

  Microphones were attached to their shirts. Reflectors were set so that light was on their faces. Pam, concerned over how she looked, almost forgot about the birds. But then Jay startled her. “It’s beginning,” he said. She saw Nakamura speaking in strange, high-pitched Japanese, and then she saw Honorable Kumataka ascending into the sky.

  The peregrine had dropped a thousand feet in just a few seconds, and now she recognized the falcon from that first day at the skating rink— huge, enormous, graceful, and serene, as Jay had said, circling clockwise while the hawk-eagle circled counterclockwise at a lower altitude, a tactic by the hawk-eagle to keep the peregrine from using her height advantage, since there were only a few moments when the two birds were vertically aligned.

  Pam watched, mesmerized. She spoke into her mike from time to time, but she wasn’t terribly conscious of what she was saying, was concentrating on what was happening in the sky. And then she had a vision of this duel that she imparted to her microphone: that the great rectangle of Central Park, this green oasis in the city surrounded by tall buildings, which stood around it like fortress walls, was a modern coliseum, a great arena of combat, and that these two monstrous predatory birds were a pair of medieval knights preparing to joust, circling each other warily, their pewter breasts burnished by the rays of the setting sun, their perfect mail of hard feathers reflecting the dusky light which burned across the tops of apartment houses on Central Park West and made their bodies glow.

  Each bird was trying to gain advantage over the other, and now their aerial displays filled Pam with awe. They would feint toward one another as if they were going to attack, and then the one being threatened would take evasive action, and the one doing the threatening would suddenly slip back into a glide. They changed altitudes often. Sometimes they were very high, tiny specks she could barely see. A few seconds later they would scream by just above the trees, their wings gleaming, their tail feathers reflecting, so fast Pam couldn’t keep them framed.

  There were dives and forays, reckless pursuits at enormous speeds, so fast she was left with only impressions: a wing, a tail, a sight of talons, a flashing head, a beak. They were like fighter planes, she thought, kamikaze planes. She spoke her impressions, no longer conscious of the cameras and the equipment, speaking instinctively, so caught up was she in the duel. Then she looked at Jay and saw him totally engrossed, feinting with his head, moving his lips as if to urge on the birds. He had as great a stake in this as anyone—the duel was his idea, she remembered, his concept of a defense against Peregrine.

  “It’s almost like a courtship flight,” he whispered to her softly, and though she didn’t know exactly what a courtship flight was, she felt the anomaly of that, since both the birds were females and they were dueling to the death.

  They spiraled upward, entwined helixes, then they seemed to close. They did triple loops resulting in passes and near collisions, then flew off in opposite directions so that both were lost from sight. Again Pam lost track of where she was, conscious only that she was witness to a great event, something primitive and pure played out of instinct, the instinct of each bird to attack and kill the other and survive.

  There was something reckless about them now. The duel had been in progress several minutes, and she could feel a growing intensity, a murderous rage brewing up there in the sky. The fierceness, the burning obsessiveness of these gigantic birds flying at each other, trying out tactics, feeling out each other’s weaknesses, made her feel weak herself. Rush-and-turn, strike-and-pass, flash-and-twist.

  Each bird turned its head to regard the other after one of their misses, then they changed altitudes again. The peregrine needed height for her stoop.

  The hawk-eagle wanted to corner the falcon against the clouds. And there were sounds, too, not just the “oohs” and “ahs” of the observers on the ground, the high-pitched cries of Nakamura, Jay Hollander’s excited pants, but the cries of the birds themselves, the “heee, heee, wheeoo” of Honorable Kumataka, the “aik aik aik” of Peregrine. Sometimes she was sure they would collide, and in those moments their cries merged into one, a dissonant screech that conveyed the fierceness of their struggle, a deep raw sound, haunting, wild.

  “They’re ready now,” Jay whispered. “The fencing’s done. The fight begins. It will be quick, too,” he said, not even glancing at her, keeping his eyes fastened to his binoculars, swinging them north and south, east and
west, so he could keep the entire airspace in view.

  Pam watched carefully. The two birds were at opposite ends of the park. And then they started moving toward one another, the hawk-eagle picking up speed as she went into a long slow descent, and the peregrine descending at a much more severe angle as if they’d chosen some invisible point between them where they intended to meet and clash.

  The hawk-eagle was fast, but the peregrine was faster. The hawk-eagle began to waver, zigzagging like one of those heat-seeking missiles that continually change direction while pursuing a fleeing jet. And the peregrine was changing her motion, too, twisting slightly in her stoop, turning on her wing, reaching out with her feet. They were still moving toward one another. It looked as though they would collide. But then, just as they passed, or possibly a split-second before, Pam heard Jay whisper, “Look out! Look out!” and saw Kumataka’s body catch the light as she twisted slightly and ripped out at Peregrine.

  “Oh! Got her!” Jay said, and Pam could see that Peregrine was injured, for her wing motions were less smooth and she seemed much less stable in her flight. “Touched her. Hurt her wing!” Jay said, and then she heard Nakamura shouting, calling out with glee. When she looked back up at the sky, she saw Kumataka circling and Peregrine gone from sight.

  “Where is she? Did Peregrine go down?”

  Jay didn’t answer for a moment, and then he said: “She’s still up there, hiding, trying to recover. It’s not over yet. She’s hurt, but she’s far from finished off.”

  Honorable Kumataka was circling, looking down at Nakamura shouting encouragement, flying with pride, Pam thought, victorious, dominating the sky.

  And then Pam saw Peregrine coming out of the west, invisible to Kumataka, going into a steeply angled stoop, painted red as she emerged from the setting sun.

  Nakamura saw her, too, for the tone of his shouts suddenly changed. It was as if he was crying to his bird to look out, be careful, watch what was coming from above. But Kumataka must not have understood him; she did not turn. Perhaps she was confused by the disappearance of Peregrine, or perhaps she thought she’d won.

  Nakamura became even more frantic.

  Peregrine was screeching down now—Pam could hear her “aik, aik, aik.”

  Kumataka finally heard it, too, for she turned, looked up, but then it was too late. The falcon came right down upon her; like a knife, a great cleaver, she seemed to split her opponent in two.

  The attack was so violent, so swift and savage, so utterly destructive that Pam was tempted to turn away. But she held her eyes on the two birds by force of will, saw feathers, a piece of wing floating down, the hawk-eagle in a tailspin trying to regain herself, but failing and falling to the earth.

  “She’s dead,” whispered Jay. Pam glanced at him; he sounded almost relieved. Kumataka had fallen not a hundred yards from where they stood, and everyone was running toward her now, Nakamura ahead of the pack, Pam, too, and Jay, forgetting their microphones, then ripping them off their shirts.

  It was a gruesome sight. The bird was bleeding. There were deep cuts all along her body. One wing had been totally dismembered, her head was nearly torn off, and, Jay pointed out, her spine had been severed by Peregrine’s beak. Pam looked up. The great falcon was very high now, circling in a great loop above the park, wheeling there as if to state that once again she was queen of her domain.

  And then Nakamura was weeping, or he was trying to weep, for though he sobbed, Pam could see no tears. This proud, arrogant, wiry little Japanese was cuddling the remnants of Honorable Kumataka in his arms, rocking back and forth, and for the first time Pam did not see fierceness in his eyes but the agony of a man broken by defeat.

  She lost track of him. There was a mad dash back to Channel 8. Jay went home and Pam hopped into the command truck and rode back to the station with Penny. The camera crews packed up and left. Bystanders, spectators who’d happened by, dispersed. Night was falling, and when darkness came, Central Park was not considered safe.

  It was only late that evening, around ten-thirty, a half hour before the eleven o’clock broadcast, when the film of the duel and Pam’s commentary had finally been edited and Herb had declared himself satisfied, that Penny mentioned that Nakamura had not returned, had evidently been left behind.

  “He’ll find his way home,” said Herb. “Can’t worry about him now. Don’t suppose he’ll want to make a statement anyway. Kind of humiliating to have lost like that after everything he said.”

  And then they forgot about him, the eleven o’clock went on, and afterward Herb ordered in champagne and they held an enormous party on the set.

  They’d done it. They’d created their own news event and scooped everybody else. They’d staged a duel between gigantic birds, and somehow it didn’t matter that the frightening Peregrine had won. They’d seen her in action, they’d seen she had the guts to fight and not just kill innocent people on the streets. They respected her for that and felt sorry about Honorable Kumataka, too, but that was life—”bird eat bird,” as Herb had said; like being in the news business, he’d said, a battle to survive. They were all quite drunk, bumping into each other and saying crazy stupid things like that when Janek showed up looking serious and distraught, and he called Herb aside and Pam watched them talk and then she saw Herb frown.

  A minute later the party was over.

  Sobering news hit them, and after they’d heard it, they didn’t feel like celebrating anymore. As Pam was finally able to piece the story together, it went, she reported, something like this:

  After they’d all left the park, Nakamura found an old carton, gathered up the remains of Honorable Kumataka, and then checked into a seedy hotel on a side street off Times Square. He spent some hours in his room alone with the dead bird, brooding, most probably, for when he went out again around ten o’clock the desk clerk noticed that he looked drawn and under strain.

  He must have walked the streets awhile until he found what he was looking for at an all-night appliance store, one of those flashy camera-binoculars-TV-calculator stores around Times Square. The clerk saw him come back with his package, and an hour or so later a longtime resident of the hotel, a retired striptease queen named Sheila “The Peeler” Kelly, came running into the lobby saying she’d heard moans and screams from the room adjoining hers, and when she’d gone to the door to listen more closely she’d inadvertently pushed it open and “there’s some Chink in there and a terrific mess.”

  The clerk went upstairs to investigate. He found Nakamura sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the carcass of his bird working a chef’s knife back and forth in his stomach, trying to open an already enormous and profusely bleeding wound. The TV was on, set to Channel 8; Sheila Kelly recognized Nakamura and began to scream, “It’s him! It’s him!” By the time the police arrived, Nakamura lay dead across his mutilated bird. There was a huge amount of blood, and, according to the Japanese vice-consul who handled the return of the bodies to Japan, it was a most inelegant commission of ritual suicide, performed, no doubt, out of shame and loss of face, but meaningless in that Mr. Nakamura was not of the samurai class, and because no piece of commercial cutlery, no matter that it was Japanese-made, could possibly take the place of a hallowed ritual sword.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hollander had no regrets. His bird had fought heroically, vanquished her enemy by force of will and guile. Even after she’d been injured, she’d proven her superiority. Now she lay wounded, a wounded gladiator returned bleeding from the ring.

  The night air clung to the triangular window of the aerie. Peregrine was brilliantly illuminated by an architect’s lamp clamped to the table’s edge. She lay on her side, dosed with a tranquilizer, breathing heavily in sleep.

  Hollander sat in semidarkness. He’d wiped away her blood, cleaned her wounds, dusted them with antibiotics. Now, as he inspected her broken feathers, he thought back upon the duel.

  He had hated Nakamura from the moment he’d first heard of him, a satan who�
��d nurtured ugliness to destroy beauty in the sky. And so he’d lured him to New York, and now beauty had prevailed; art had vanquished artifice, and Nakamura was disemboweled, a fitting end to an ugly life.

  Hollander pulled his chair forward, opened the drawer of the table, pulled out a leather case, opened it, lay it down beside the bird. It was a portfolio of feathers, each wrapped in clear plastic, arranged by shape and size. He had primaries, secondaries, tail feathers, and coverts collected over a period of years from birds that had molted them off. He’d kept them, as experienced falconers do, as replacements for feathers broken off in flight. But now he had a problem: five of Peregrine’s left primaries had been broken by the hawk-eagle, and the peregrine feathers Hollander had saved were too small to take their place. He would have to use others collected from bigger birds, gyrfalcons, prairie falcons, and eagles.

  By trimming and shaping, he would be able to restore the broken primaries, though he knew it would not be possible to obtain a perfect match. The method of replacement was known as imping. In theory it was simple, though in practice it was not.

  The feather to be repaired was cut off at an angle just below the break. A replacement feather of the same size and shape was then cut to match the severed feather on the bird. A small wooden stick was inserted into the shaft of both feathers in order to provide a link, and, finally, when the feathers were fitted, they were joined together and glued.

  It was after midnight when he began, concentrating on his task, and though he despaired that the feathers he was using were of different colors and would thus mar the beauty of his bird, it was her ability to fly that concerned him now: To fly brilliantly and powerfully, she needed a perfect balance between her wings. She was an aerodynamically perfect living creature whose every part served a purpose in her flight. She could compensate for losses and deviations, as she had when she had made her final circle that afternoon, but to Hollander, something intangible had been lost, a fraction of acceleration, a millimeter of reach, her special quality, her edge, which he now wanted to restore.