The Monk

by Hallahan, William H. ;

  In time she passed over Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. The great western desert awaited her.

  The desert terrain was beige and undulating. In all directions to the far horizon, the ocotillo bush raised its wiry arms. In burrows and in shadows, the desert life lay in immemorial panting patience, waiting for the evening and the cooling of the desert’s surface.

  The hawk needed only to keep her wings outspread to be carried by the hot rising air thousands of feet above the desert floor. Her eyes could sweep over dozens of square miles at a time. But nothing moved. And as the days passed she drifted rapidly westward into California, watching intently now for this was a favorite route of Father Joseph.

  It’s called the Baker Grade. It’s a strip of roadway on the Mojave Desert of southern California, a part of Route 15 that slithers across the desert from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

  The Baker Grade is an imperceptible rise of land that stretches over many miles. Most cars and trucks are unaware of the slow ascent the road is making under their wheels as they race across the desert, air conditioning units on high, tape decks filling the cool interiors with pleasant music. But the vehicles feel it, and many of them find the combined strain of heat, grade and air conditioning too much. They overheat. Without warning, a gush of steam bursts from under their hoods.

  Baker Grade has made one man rich. Near the top of the rise at a place called Halloran Springs is a gasoline station. It is just at the point where most water hoses and radiators finally burst. The driver in a panic sees the service station looming before his grateful eyes and quickly rolls in behind dozens of other cars.

  The first thing the attendant does is hose down the superheated engine. When things are cool enough, he replaces split hoses and clamps, then refills the radiator with gallons of engine coolant. The driver races off, dollars poorer, far wiser, with a story to tell back home about the fiendish Baker Grade.

  The hawk cruised over Route 15, watching the cars in the blazing daylight. She could see her own triangular shadow rippling across the desert surface. Midway across the Baker Grade she saw movement. She dipped her right wing and dropped in a diving spiral for a closer look.

  It was a man and with him was a large white dog. She dived closer and her shadow passed over the man. He looked up. It was Timothy. He was streaming with sweat as he leaned into the long painful grade. Repentance was panting heavily. Only urgent business would impel a man to walk the desert at the peak hours of heat.

  Timothy paused to study the hawk. Then he drank from his canteen and poured the last of the water in a cup for his dog. Afterward he resumed his urgent pace up Baker Grade.

  The hawk wheeled right and glided effortlessly above him toward the crest of Baker Grade. Was this his destination? Something that made him walk at high speed up a grade on one of the hottest places on earth?

  She circled above the Halloran Springs service station. Here? She felt confused. She alighted on the service station sign, searching the faces. Was Father Joseph here? Then her eyes saw the mobile homes that were standing near the service area. The air conditioning units were humming; inside slept the men of the evening and night shifts.

  Joseph had to be in there. She flapped around the mobile homes, landed on a television antenna and studied the metal structures. Where could he be? In which one? It took only a few minutes for her to determine that Father Joseph was in none of the mobile homes. She flapped off and let an air current carry her up higher, restlessly searching. Then, beyond, she saw the building.

  Inside was a monk. He lay on an old cot with an arm over his eyes. The hawk recognized him: It was Father Ambrose, assistant to the abbot, Father Joseph. He was very old. And at a glance she saw that he was dying.

  In the guise of Father Aiden once again, Satan entered the building. In spite of the great heat inside, Father Ambrose was not perspiring. He seemed as dry and old as a wood chip.

  “Father Ambrose,” Satan said solicitously.

  The old priest drew down his arm from his eyes. An overjoyed expression spread across his face. He tried to speak but his mouth was too dry. Carefully Satan raised his head and poured some water from a glass into his mouth.

  The dying priest clutched Satan’s sleeve. “Father Aiden, is that you?”

  Satan nodded. “How did you come here?”

  “We are searching for a home for—” His voice failed him.

  “For the one with the purple aura,” Satan said to encourage him.

  “Yes. Yes. Exactly.” The old priest signaled for more water. When his mouth was wet again, he said, “Father Joseph and I crossed over from Asia, then I fell ill. The desert and the walking, you see.”

  Satan nodded. He could hear footsteps on the crusty desert outside the building. “Where is Father Joseph?”

  “I made him go on.”

  “Where?”

  “To New York to get the young man. What’s his name—Brendan Whatever.”

  “Yes. Brendan.” Satan touched the old priest’s shoulder. “Brendan what?”

  “Brendan Davitt,” the old priest said.

  The door to the shack opened in a flash of sunlight, and the mastiff leaped into the room. He snapped at Satan’s black gown. In an instant the figure was gone and the dog was slashing at a mass of feathers. The hawk was beating her wings on the dog’s skull like two great clubs. When the dog leaped to seize the bird in his teeth she wheeled and burst through the glass window. The dog leaped through the window after her. The bird, fluttering lamely, made it to the roof and stoically, in great pain, gazed down at the barking, circling dog.

  At the corners of his mouth she could see remnants of feathers—her feathers. She opened her beak and hissed with hatred at the dog. The main joint of her left wing was bleeding and torn. And there was a deep wound in her left thigh from the dog’s teeth. She looked at the naked patch of skin on her thigh where the feathers had been torn out. Blood was coursing from the multiple teeth wounds. In a moment the furious dog would be on the roof. Already he was scrambling up onto the low pantry. Also, the heat on the tin roof was burning her claws.

  Fighting the great pain, she spread her wings and with a few flaps sailed away. The dog chased her for less than a half mile, then stopped. As soon as she was safely away from him, she landed on the desert, and in the poor shade of the ocotillo she folded her wings and concentrated on her pain.

  Shortly later, the hawk watched Timothy emerge from the shack. He paused long enough to fill his empty canteen with water from a pump. The dog lapped up a large quantity from a pan, then master and dog set off eastward under the beating sun.

  The hawk could tell that Timothy knew what she did. There was a grown mortal with a purple aura and his name was Brendan Davitt and he lived in New York City. And Father Joseph the abbot was on his way there to take Brendan Davitt to a hiding place.

  She watched the Magus and his dog walking under the merciless sun, each step taking them closer to New York and Brendan Davitt. And she was unable to follow, unable to fly two feet. She could only sit and wait until the wing was strong enough to use. If she survived the heat and predators of the desert. Meantime Timothy would walk on. If he found Brendan Davitt first, he would return to heaven. And her master, Satan, would face his final punishment.

  The figures of Timothy and the dog became smaller and smaller until they were two shimmering dots that at last disappeared. She was alone. And helpless.

  For the first time in her very long life, she was looking at defeat. How could she prevent Timothy from meeting the man with the purple aura?

  Her immediate problem was survival. Injured as she was and trapped in the lethal environment of the desert, her chances of living more than a day or two were extremely low. If heat and thirst didn’t kill her, any one of a host of predators would.

  After all the thousands of years of remorseless warfare with Timothy, she’d made her first error.

  And even if by some great stroke she managed to feed and water herself until her wing he
aled, she would by then have given Timothy too great a head start—wherever he was bound. He would surely locate Father Joseph while she was still mending. And through Joseph he would find the man with the purple aura.

  In the desert the daylight heat is punishing, soaring to 150 degrees, and the shadows few. As the afternoon wore on, the hawk began to feel the need for water. She watched the sun cross the sky with her beak parted by thirst. Her tongue adhered to the roof of her mouth, while all about her the desert creatures comfortably outwaited the sun in their selected niches. The hawk panted and waited for night.

  But the night was no sanctuary. The scorpions prowled from their cracks, the sidewinders and the rattlesnakes slithered into the moonlight for their nightly meals, coyotes crept from their arroyos and hunted in packs. The owls moved across the silvered desert with extraordinary silence. There was a brief phantom glide and a sudden pounce, and the owl would take a kangaroo rat or a mouse, a scorpion or even a snake.

  But the greatest torment for her was looking up at the dusk or at first light and seeing a red-tailed desert hawk circle high above. It would stoop suddenly, wings held close to the body, and strike—in midair a bird, on the ground a jackrabbit. The blood lust in her would make her salivate. She knew that soon if she did not mend, one of those redtails would stoop and kill her with a single blow to the back of her neck. What a way for a monumental battle between heaven and hell to end, in the gut of a wild hawk. For without her, Satan would never locate children with purple auras.

  Her first problem, when darkness came, was to find water. She attempted at first to scrape away the dirt at the base of an ocotillo bush. But the surface was as hard as concrete, and the pain in her thigh was unendurable. Even if she could dig, the water would be very deep.

  Looming before her was the silhouette of a lofty saguaro cactus. It was soft and pulpy-looking. Where did it get its water? With great effort and in spite of the pain she hopped over to it. She sniffed: There was an odor of water about it. Tentatively she raked her beak down the thick tough hide. She raked harder and tore a long wound in it. The inside was fleshy. She pressed her beak into the wound to taste it. She was astonished when she felt a drop of water flow into her mouth. Then another. She’d started a trickle. Patiently she waited with her beak plunged into the cactus. Slowly water filled her mouth. Soon she’d had her fill. At least she wouldn’t die of thirst. She’d overcome the first barrier to her survival. She now considered food.

  There was none; unable to fly, she was unable to hunt. A crippled hawk is no hawk at all. She settled down to a long wait—a race between healing and starvation. The issue was to take days. Luck helped her occasionally. She would hop after a heedless scorpion or other crawling insects. Sometimes she came upon the remains of a kill and raked her beak along the still-moist bones, humiliated, sullen but fending off starvation for a while longer.

  One night the moon rose early and sat, in its immensity, on the horizon above a distant line of barren hills, a spotlight on the nocturnal drama. Creatures soon were busy all over the desert, hurrying during the precious hours of darkness to get their work done, hunting, mating, fighting, training the young, dying.

  She heard them before she saw them—a pack of coyotes, four adults and a pack of reckless pups. One of the pups toyed with a tarantula and soon all the pups were in a silent battle that ended when one of the adults stepped in and swallowed it.

  The hawk remained perfectly still behind an ocotillo bush, waiting for them to pass. But they didn’t. One of the adults saw her and at first was so surprised he just stared at her. His hunter’s eyes read her plight in an instant and without a moment’s consultation the entire band assumed hunting formation. They surrounded her. Then slowly they closed the ring. One of the pups couldn’t restrain himself. He charged. In an act of despair she raised her wings and flapped. The pain in her wing was so great she nearly crashed, but the joint held and with another flap she just cleared the coyote’s snapping teeth. She felt his jaw graze her thigh.

  She was barely able to hold her altitude of five feet, gliding away from them, her wing threatening to quit on her, the pain almost unbearable. She gathered her will and flapped some more. But the coyotes were in full chase now, running with tireless speed under her and leaping with open jaws at her. They would chase her for miles, for hours, forever. She pumped harder. The wing screamed at her. And she pumped again, got up to ten feet and flew straight ahead toward a huge saguaro cactus. A little higher and she would be able to perch on it. She pumped harder. Harder. The pack of coyotes was actually ahead of her, almost playful in their murderous chase. She flapped once more and felt the wing give. It would hold her no longer. As she felt herself slip sideways, she clawed urgently at the saguaro and sank her talons into its fleshy hide. She hung there momentarily almost upside down. The coyotes were leaping up the trunk after her. She heard their terrible jaws snapping in the moonlight inches from her tail feathers. She made a mighty struggle and wiggled up on the extended arm of the cactus.

  Then she looked down at the panting pack below her. Maddeningly they sat down in a circle and watched her. They had plenty of time and she might fall at any moment. She sat and stoically endured the screaming pain in her wing, the trembling of the muscles in her injured thigh where the mastiff had bitten her. One little fall into those waiting jaws, one or two snaps of the teeth and she’d be released from this eternity she’d been living through. No more war. The ground beckoned hypnotically. But no more wars meant no more victories. She drew herself up and regarded the animals with a restoring rage.

  After a while the call of the belly grew too strong, and the pack trailed off to find easier prey. As she watched them lope away, a band of shadows quickly lost in other shadows of the desert, she knew, pain or no pain, she could glide short distances. Gliding meant hunting and hunting meant food. She stroked her hurt wing with her beak and bided her time.

  Soon, she told herself, she would be racing after Timothy—unless he found the purple aura first. Could it be that this whole improbable drama, starting with a war between the gods on high, should depend finally on the injured wing of a small bird? No final cosmic battle? No Armageddon between good and evil? That was absurd. But quite possible. For only the hawk could find the purple auras.

  Each morning she watched the return of the pitiless sun in the east, amazed that she was still alive, that hell remained intact. At any moment, Timothy with the aid of a purple aura could have his prayers answered. In the days that followed food remained scarce for her. Hunger and heat were draining her strength, and as she lurked in sparse shadows out of the cruel sun, she also endured stabbing pain in her belly.

  Worse: Food was not only scarce; it was even harder to catch. Too hard. One night she sat immobile beside a kangaroo-rat hole. She kept her eye on the dark smudge of his hole while her keen ears listened for enemies moving across the desert floor.

  At last her great patience succeeded: The rat’s nose emerged. She was so eager she almost struck too soon. Then he withdrew his head. She waited a few more minutes, then a few minutes more. The nose rose up once again, sniffing. Two eyes emerged and two circular ears, then the neck. She struck. And missed. She hadn’t waited for the rest of his body to come out. Her timing was off; her speed gone.

  The failure left her no choice. Desperation called for desperate measures. Half leaping and half gliding, she made her way to a long sandy stretch of the desert. The sand still held some of the day’s heat. And she knew she would find snakes there. At the perimeter she stopped and took up her position. She didn’t need to wait long; a rattler slithered across the sand toward an ocotillo bush, hunting rats. When he saw her he paused, his darting tongue testing for odors and sounds. Tentatively he drew up into a partial coil and raised his head. He made a few hesitant rattles. He had no interest in her; he just wanted her to fly away. They were two fellow predators with a whole desert to share. Hunger prodded him and he conceded the point. He undulated around her. When he crested the
rim, he paused once more to look at her, then crawled away. She struck.

  It was a sharp blow behind his eyes and it should have stunned him. In fact, she’d killed many times with that same blow. The snake was enraged and he drew up into a tight coil, his rattle sounding its deadly song. He opened his mouth to show his fearsome fangs as his head rose to strike. One bite had enough poison to kill her six times over. But she was just beyond striking distance and he waited. She ruffed her feathers and fluttered her wings but she couldn’t draw him. She had to move within his range. She stepped closer and shook her wings, emitted a soft cree-cree call. He hesitated still. She grew impatient. She abandoned caution and stepped closer, her breast well within his striking range. He struck. She leaped.

  His nose struck her breast as she left the ground and slid down her body, the fangs just barely missing. He fell flat on the ground and she jumped on him with both talons. She struck him again on the head and again. Then leaped away as his body began to coil around her feet.

  He was hurt and furious. This time he didn’t wait for her to come within range. He moved after her, coiling as he crawled, eager to hit her anywhere. She hopped back several times to watch him pursue her. He wasn’t going to make the same error. He would strike higher to catch her as she leaped in air.

  She hopped back to more solid ground and waited. His pursuit was eager. As soon as she stopped, he drew up in a coil and began to elevate his head, his rattle calling to her in a lofty rage. She let him get far too close again, and as soon as he raised his head he struck. She felt his left upper fang hit her. It penetrated her feathers and slid down her body like a needle trying to puncture her skin. Her luck was enormous; the fang failed to catch her. When he struck the ground again, she delivered a series of sharp blows. And this time she hurt him. But her strength was ebbing. She had to finish him now. The next time he would surely hit her. Quickly she seized his neck in her beak and with beating wings raised him in air. He was too heavy for her and he was coiling his body in midair to wrap around her. She seized his body with a talon to hold him off a moment longer, then just before he enwrapped her legs, she dropped him. When he hit the ground, he hit flat, and the whack sounded all over the dark desert. She dropped on his neck and landed on his body with both talons. He was stunned and she showered blows on his head again but she couldn’t finish him off. He began to gather himself. Quickly she seized his head and neck in her talons as she felt the rest of his body entwine her legs. He had her now. His head reached around a talon and the mouth opened to sink the fangs into her thigh. With a surgeon’s motion, she hooked her beak through the tough snake skin into the spinal column and raked him open to the skull bone. His head arched in pain. Her beak probed into the open wound to his brain and raked again. He died writhing around her legs.