“Rid of him?” Miss Williams asked.
“Yes,” the reverend said, and, although his voice was steady as he spoke, his glance toward Miss Williams seemed embarrassed, if not apologetic, for his luncheon companions. “We have approached him, in a manner of sorts, so that we might find out who he was, what he needed—to send him back to his family. But he screams, or runs, or disappears for weeks at a time should anyone approach him. He tells us nothing.”
“‘The Hawkman,’ the children call him,” Lady Margaret explained.
“Does he fly?” Miss Williams asked, if not a bit too eagerly. She caught her own impertinence, and tried again, “I mean: what is he, really?”
“He is a scavenger,” Christopher said, with more than a hint of warning in his voice. “Until one day, he will have scavenged all that he can. Then, he will turn predatory.”
“We don’t know that,” the reverend said.
“This reminds me,” Miss Williams began, and perhaps it was only the reverend who heard that a new confidence had entered her voice, but Miss Williams no longer needed to flit through her sentences because in her heart and soul, she was a pedant. She had come to Bridgetonne, at great expense to Lord Thorton, to teach at the women’s college, for in America she had some renown as an author of small fairy stories and little poems. Those who listened to her story at that luncheon had been entranced during the tale: if not by her voice then the pantomime of her hands—the wrists that rose and fell, her palms acting out the shapes and gestures of the characters she created, the obstacles she had them surmount.
Miss Williams said the story she was about to tell had many variants, depending on the region from which it was collected. “In France and Germany, the protagonist is a veteran, starving for lack of work after the war; in Italy, he is a woodsman, wounded by an accident inherent in his profession. In Spain, he is a pirate, shipwrecked after a poorly deliberated decision,” she said. “In all places, he is a man who has lost his faith in God and makes no secret of his apostasy. In some places, he is visited by the Devil; in others, it is a regional deity or demi-sprite, who reaps his satisfaction at recruiting the man by turning him into an animal.
“A bear, a goat, a great ram: this again depends on the setting of the storyteller; the mountainous regions, of course, give rise to rams and goats, and forests to bears. Whatever he becomes, he is a horror with horns or a gruff beard. His body is blanketed in fiendish hair. His breath is hideous, reeking of the lives he had eaten, and his teeth are spikes, like a giant’s. He loses his human hands and feet; they turn into cloven-hoofed appendages or claws. He can find nowhere to sleep, to eat, to be among people, until he comes upon a group of children picking berries. They cannot reach the highest berries on the tallest trees. The beast man gladly picks the berries where the human children cannot reach; when they ask him how they might reward his good deed, he merely says, ‘Pray for me.’
“He wanders to other villages and towns, doing good deeds only a beast can do: finding rings at the bottom of wells, waving away a tide of bees that a storm had dispossessed of its hive, rescuing an infant from a creek, finding a hunter lost among the most dangerous mountains, releasing a maiden held by a pack of wolves. For each of these deeds, the beast asks only that his fellow man prays for him: ‘Pray for me. Pray that I see the err of my ways, and am returned to my once blessed form and soul.’ As more people do pray for him, and more good deeds are done, the horns, fur, fangs, hooves, and claws recede, until, after a period of years,” longest in Germany, Miss Williams noted, and shortest in Italy, “the transformation is complete. He becomes a man again.
“Because of this miracle, the sages and princes of every country want him for their own: as a leader, an advisor, a husband for princesses or noble women. But in every instance, the man declines, saying he merely wants to be a true champion of nature, because it is nature that has saved him: those berries on the distant branches. He wants nothing more than to serve nature and his fellow beings, and never again face the possibility of being so separate, so distinguishable, from them. So he disappears: into a cave, the hollow of a tree. No one can say. Many have gone searching for him, but always he is illusionary.”
At the conclusion of this tale, the reverend, Lady Margaret, the visiting countess, and Christopher applauded. Christopher withdrew his approval, however, once he saw his father, Lord Thorton, draw his mouth into a frown.
“That is not how that story is meant to end at all,” Lord Thorton said. “You are neglecting the original purpose of the tale. This is a libel.”
“One must never neglect the source material,” the president of the historical society agreed. “A soul for a soul, I believe it goes. The man takes a bride, but the Devil—”
“A libel against whom?” Miss Williams interrupted.
“Against God,” Lord Thorton said.
“What his Lordship means,” the reverend volunteered, “is that in disguising the ending, you do God a great disservice,” the reverend offered.
“I can see how that might be troubling, if one believes in God, and the Devil, and such things,” Miss Williams said. Taking a breath, she looked about to see the discomfort of her listeners and amended her statement, “Or by affixing a potential good deed to the Devil, or to man himself, without God’s intervention.”
“Certainly God is in every story,” the reverend continued, for which Christopher and Lady Margaret were grateful; their relief was audible as they exhaled, as if in a kind of harmony. “Particularly a morality tale such as this one, with the Lord’s way set against the heathen’s.”
“There are some who believe Grimms’ to be Christian tales,” Miss Williams acknowledged, “but I cannot count myself among them. Wilhem Grimm himself said—”
“I thought we were to discuss issues of the college,” Christopher offered, “not its curriculum.”
Miss Williams looked into the lap of her modest black dress, which suddenly seemed inappropriate for this event, as if she was attired for a far more serious gathering.
“I think I have had enough for an afternoon,” Lord Thorton announced. As he rose to excuse himself, he was joined by Christopher, who nearly leapt from his chair, as if in deference to his father.
“Right,” said Christopher, who, in his eagerness to second his father, had forgotten to leave his napkin on the table as he marched off behind Lord Thorton.
“It has been lovely,” Lady Margaret said, rising to join them. “We will do this again, I promise. But for now,” she paused, nodding in the direction of her absent family, “good day to you all.”
There had been tea and cordials scheduled, sewing, cards, or possibly a salon. But it fell to the reverend to acknowledge none of that was possible, and he assigned to himself the job of escorting the remaining guests. “Right,” the reverend declared as he stood. As he and Miss Williams exited the manor house, he suggested that the mention of Mr. Grimm, a German, might have proved most upsetting to his Lordship. Or, as one of Lord Thorton’s servants claimed to later overhear, His Lordship was unconvinced the problem of The Hawkman would resolve itself as easily as the beast man of Miss Williams’s tale.
Two
A fortnight later, as it was pleasant enough for a bicycle ride, Miss Williams pedaled around the village and back to the college grounds. She had been in Bridgetonne since the autumn of the previous year, but she had come for the spring. Although it had yet to make its full entrance, the sight of its green shoots and scent of its grasses would have to suffice for Miss Williams for the time being. Miss she believed the season inspired the best stories with their possibilities of renewal. Not that she hadn’t attempted, in the autumn and winter, to think or use such emotion in her writing.
But she had not found the England she expected when she arrived. The place and its people were impenetrable in all aspects: the tart curve in their speech, the defeated fabric of their clothes, the sallow nature o
f their complexions. The war had done just as much in the States, but, in England, the heft of wartime still rode on the shoulders of both people and nature. The very atmosphere of the place, the fields and its pavement, even the space people afforded one another during conversations, was cumbersome, as if everyday tasks had become Sisyphean.
Miss Williams did not like such comparisons, between the contemporary and the patently mythic. The old legends of gods and demi-men were unyielding and afforded too little to transcendence. She preferred folk tales, old wives’ advice, the magic and malleable. It might still be possible for a pauper to become a prince, or for a bundle of poppies or cowslips to loosen an old crone’s embitterments. Those possibilities were all that were left in this rock of a world since the whims of the old gods, set to work on these descendants of Troy, seemed to preclude happiness.
But spring was inevitable; it always was, and winter was unraveling. She could smell it as she rode past the baker’s, the grocer’s, the seamstress’s, and the millinery: the nectar of fresh bread loosening the air’s hold on the dampness. The scent turned the village woolen and inviting. In the combination of warmth and bustle she felt and witnessed, Miss Williams thought she might unearth here what had always been such a font of wonder for her and discover, if not fairies living in the trees, then monarchies of a similar resourcefulness. The flowerbeds she would plant at her cottage; the bark on cedar and oak trees, lined with the impressions of frost and thaw; the soil that would part for roots and fresh stems, and then close around them, just as quickly. Was there a sound, a score of this minute, as when a breath is held in anticipation of joy? Miss Williams was determined to hear it. She must ever be on the alert, now that spring was within a reasonable distance. She pedaled on toward where the roads gave way to gravel, to pebbles, to the paths that were more like berms in the landscape, toward the back entrance of the college.
At a rise of earth she knew she could not surmount on the bicycle, she hopped off and saw him: his posture like that of someone or something trying to conceal itself, as if ashamed at its molting or some other natural process. As she drew nearer, he no longer appeared animal, but strangely human in how he attempted to disguise himself. A man, possibly, his hands and arms behind his back, walking with his head leading, pitched forward to the point of almost falling. He walked stiffly, as though he lacked joints that bent. The sum of this effect was a strange gait that accomplished little movement, other than an arduous shuffling. As a bird might try walking, although Miss Williams did not consider this association until she was much closer indeed, close enough to observe the indignity of this landlocked creature.
From the bundle of clothes, mud, and dust that composed this man materialized a hand, with long, fine fingers. Against the mass of filth from which it emerged, the skin of that hand was brilliant and ghastly, bright and scaly. The hand opened its palm and extended toward her, almost daintily. The man was begging. The skin of his arm was black, as if encased in a miasma. He smelled as a city does during the long, sultry nights: of garbage and excrement. He then leaned and paced, as if shuffling his pain between legs and feet, while supporting a great weight on his back: his wings.
She did not know how long they stood there, together. Miss Williams could have easily fetched a coin to join with his palm, but she was too taken with the skin there, so intricately cracked, a map of wells and creeks. When she placed nothing in his palm he withdrew his hand and offered her the other one, just as a bird ruffles his feathers to air them out, and then appears to have done nothing.
His fingers were like leaves, their reach toward the sun and meaning. She saw no harm in touching him, although she knew the dangers of touching birds, particularly the hatchlings.
Miss Williams had not known her own mother very well; the woman had been taken from her when Miss Williams was still a girl, and in the short time they had together, her mother was often bedridden, unable to show her daughter the acts and places of nature that she wanted her daughter to also adore. But her mother had warned her, once, on an afternoon when they watched the wrens splatter about in the bird bath: never, ever, touch a bird. The human touch permanently marks it as different, separate. The flock will reject it. Mother birds are particularly attuned to the scent of mankind. Should they discover it on their offspring, they leave them to the elements.
“Come,” Miss Williams said as she realized this must be The Hawkman before her. To him she extended her palm. He did not take it, so she tried again, “Come. You must be hungry,” but he remained perched as he was, moments away from her. She could see that the palm was scored and wrapped in calluses. But it was also white as paraffin, and as she took it, it had an almost lifeless quality. “I won’t bite,” she said, and it occurred to her that he might not have been able to hear her. But she did not wish to shout.
“Come come come,” she said. He relinquished her hand, dropped his arm and returned it to its original position, behind his back. He took a step, more like a lunge, as his posture required, but Miss Williams did not balk.
“This way, then,” she said as she stepped back and returned her attention to her bicycle. She would have to walk it all the way home, if he was to follow her. She pushed the bike and took a step but did not look behind her, fearing how he might interpret the move. He might see it as a test of his civility or a measure of her hubris. She listened for the strain of his movements—human movements—the thaw in his knees and elbows, the stress in the soles of his shoes.
She walked the bicycle, and he lurched behind her: she could sense it through the dreadful rhythm of his footsteps. One foot gallantly placed forward, the other following in a tedious attempt to remain upright. He almost hopped. As if trying to avoid tenderness on either side of his feet, only to experience it in both, she guessed. The farther they walked together, the stranger they must have seemed, Miss Williams thought—master and servant or Mary Shelley and the physical manifestation of her imagination. She stopped walking, at uneven intervals, to make sure The Hawkman was truly there and not an apparition of her fantasies.
She got a proper look at him once they arrived at the cottage, and she could lay the bicycle on its side. He was faceless, having concealed his head within his coat, and he shook as if he was nothing more than a defeated husk of corn, waiting either for the wind or the vultures to take him.
“You might have to duck a bit,” she said by way of instruction, as she opened the front door. “It’s an old place, but very comfortable.”
She led him through a short hall to the kitchen that had been added onto the original cottage, but it was hardly a kitchen at all. There was a sink, a washtub, an ice chest for preserving a small amount of food, and a pile of firewood beside the back door, but no stove. That remained within the sitting room, where it also provided heat for the rest of the first floor. Miss Williams explained that she took most of her meals at the college with her students, so the arrangement was quite suitable for her. The carriage of The Hawkman demanded a hot meal immediately.
She could not think of removing her hat, gloves, and coat, so quickly did she feel the need to retrieve the pitcher of buttermilk and pour out a glass for him. A hand and arm darted from his mass to take it; it disappeared in one long, vicious gulp. He wiped his lips on his coat sleeve when finished. His lips were left pale by the milk, and he held out the glass as if for a second drink. But when she motioned to pour into his glass again, he shook his head, and then nodded as she took it away from him.
“Would you like some tea?” asked Miss Williams, but The Hawkman did not respond. She was now confronted with the audacity of what she had begun. He stood oblivious and as still as his trembling would allow. She could hear his breathing, quick; the sway in his shoes; the swallow in his throat. “Please, please, sit down,” she said, motioning to one of two chairs at the small table as if sitting would calm him, help him settle. “I do not keep much here, but I have a bit of chicken they roast for me at the college. I
can make you a sandwich, or a plate . . .”
She left him there as she went to boil the tea. She tried to keep up a stream of chatter over the sounds of her preparations: about the college and the responsibilities of the days awaiting her. She spoke of lectures and luncheons and other meals; poems she had planned for idle moments she could capture; she spoke as if unfurling a blanket of birdsong, what mother birds use to envelop their sons and daughters.
“I keep busy enough so that I am not too homesick,” she said. “The modern conveniences, a cook stove, I do not miss them much. I rather like the fire, as long as I have someone to help with the firewood.”
She listened for any response he might make, but there was none. When she returned with the boiling kettle, The Hawkman remained unchanged except for his coat, which seemed to have been pressed tighter, faster, about his neck and trunk. Her kindness could be killing him.
“Here you go,” she said, once she had served him a plate of chicken and sliced tomatoes. He held the fork not between his fingers but with his fist, as if it were the end of a spear. Miss Williams watched from too short of a distance, she realized, from across the table. She drank her own cup of tea, and wondered if it pained him to hold the fork in such a way that he had to twist his hand into such uncomfortable figurations to deliver the food to his mouth. He shoveled the tomatoes, not necessarily like a starving man would, but as one who had too long lived confined from civilization: in a prison, a hospital, or some other regimented environment.
“Were you,” Miss Williams dared to ask, “in the war?”
He looked up from his plate and now showed her his eyes, the yellow everyone had known and castigated. They moved together, his eyes did, first over her face, and then over their surroundings, as if he was gauging the strength of the walls, their dependability in a storm—or a fire fight. He did not nod or shake his head, but instead returned his attention to his meal.
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