by Anne Valente
Billie plugs in the coordinates. Cañon City, she says. Colorado, south of Denver.
Should I stay on 70? How far is it?
Billie pushes the map icon on Rhiannon’s phone and types in the town’s name. We stay on 70 into Colorado then veer south on Highway 24, she says. Looks like we won’t go through Denver, but at least we’ll go through Colorado Springs. Two hundred thirty-five miles. This is showing a four-hour drive.
Rhiannon glances at the dashboard clock. Four thirty, she says. If we don’t stop anywhere, we can be in Cañon City by sunset.
Or we could stay in Colorado Springs for the night.
Or we could just camp in Cañon City.
Billie wrinkles her nose.
Oh, come on, Billie. You’re not paying for any of this.
Because I can’t.
Your counselor can help you find a job when you get back.
Yeah, that will be easy. At least in the state of Illinois I can still vote.
I’d rather save money, Rhiannon says. It should be beautiful camping out here.
I’m sure it’s beautiful in Colorado Springs, too.
Why don’t you live a little? When was the last time you camped out under the stars? When was the last time you even had the chance to do that?
Billie watches the fields of sunflowers whip past the window. She lets Rhiannon listen to the radio. She holds the locket in her hands and wonders where her mother even learned about geocached boxes, one more secret she didn’t tell her daughters. She lets Rhiannon hurtle them across the state line into Colorado where the sunflowers recede and the sun sinks fast ahead of them over waves of mountains that begin to rise.
KIM, MARTHA. “RED-TAILED HAWK.” NORTH AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY: A GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF AMERICA. ED. JAMES BURCH. NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1994. 223–229. PRINT.
CALL NUMBER: QL670 .G520 1994
THE RED-TAILED HAWK (BUTEO JAMAICENSIS)
The most common bird of prey in North America, the red-tailed hawk has a wide habitat range and can be found in every continental state year-round. Red-tailed hawks are broadwing birds, with wingspans approximating four feet in length. They boast wide, short tails and brownish-red feathers with gray or white chests. Often spotted soaring high above fields or perched along fence posts, red-tailed hawks seek open country for the purposes of hunting.
Red-tailed hawks typically reuse their nests, which they build at the tops of trees or on the ledges of tall cliffs. Made of branches, foliage, and dry leaves, their nests are typically up to six feet high and three feet wide. Mothering hawks incubate clutches of one to five eggs for up to forty-five days, and mated pairs often stay together for life.
Because red-tailed hawks are so common in the United States, they are the most widespread choice in America for work with beginning falconers.
38.8673° N, 104.7607° W:
Colorado Springs, CO
The Rockies: crests protruding off a rolling landscape.
The Rockies: plates of armor sloping across a stegosaur’s back.
Rhiannon sees the resemblance as they drive west and the Kansas hills sharpen into Colorado ridges. The sun drops toward the rising mountains and breaks across the horizon line and Rhiannon watches the peaks take the shape of the Jurassic spine her mother knew so well.
A spike-studded herbivore, meant to hold its own in an age of predators. Rhiannon remembers every bit of information their mother shared, every bone and spike she brought home chiseled into relief from dust and rock. She knows the controversy over the stegosaur’s plates, what her mother was still trying to research from her hospital bed. Whether the ridges were meant as armor or temperature regulation in trapping air that would have cooled the dinosaur’s blood, or if they were meant to enlarge the size of a small herbivore among so many carnivores. Or if they flushed with color to warn off predators, the very reason her mother argued across her career that the plates were intended to attract mates: that if they were vascularized to regulate temperature and signal environmental dangers, then they could have blushed red to announce an invitation, the same as cardinals and bowerbirds, the dinosaur’s direct descendants.
Do you remember your trip to the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry with Mom? Rhiannon asks.
Billie shifts beside her in the passenger seat. What, in high school?
Is that when you went?
Yeah, while you were on that spring break road trip to Atlantic City.
How do you even remember that?
Because it’s the only reason you didn’t come too.
Atlantic City: Rhiannon’s senior year of high school. A trip she hasn’t thought of in years. Four girls in a car traveling from Illinois to Ohio to Pennsylvania to New Jersey, Rhiannon already racing, the future spread out before all of them. Rhiannon still dating Robert, the goalie of the varsity soccer team, a relationship across all four years of high school readying to break across the finish line of graduation. What brought them together in the first place, Rhiannon knows: a shared love of sports and nothing more.
Atlantic City: the first time Rhiannon ever kissed another girl.
No nameless faces, no underage bars, just her friend Mandy along for the trip. Cheap motel, threadbare sheets. Mandy beside her getting dressed, their other friends Geneva and Lauren already down the street at the bar. Mandy sitting on the double bed half clothed in a nude bra and ripped jeans and Rhiannon leaning across the bed and brushing her mouth against hers, the taste of watermelon Puckers, what they’d been drinking all afternoon. Mandy pulling back. Mandy staying quiet the rest of the trip. The two of them drifting apart as they slid toward graduation and into the humidity of an Urbana summer and Robert leaving for Indiana University in August without saying goodbye. Regardless of Mandy, regardless of reciprocation: that moment in the motel room felt wide open.
That was the last road trip I took, Rhiannon says.
Yeah, but you’ve been on the road so much for races.
That doesn’t really count.
You never went to the quarry? Billie asks.
When would I have gone? I was racing so much already in high school. Just small circuits, but I don’t even remember when Mom started making regular trips out there.
Ninth grade was the first time I went out there. The only time.
Do you remember anything?
Not much. A lot of dust and red rock. And wind. Billie hesitates. I remember her wanting me to feel something.
Rhiannon glances over. What do you mean?
I don’t know. Like a trip out there would give me the same passion she had. For anything. How the desert lit her up. I think she wanted me to feel that too.
Rhiannon pulls down the driver’s-side visor against the low western sun. I’m sure she just wanted you to see her work and take you on a vacation. To someplace completely different from Illinois.
Maybe. But you were already racing. It was clear you had a path ahead of you. I think she worried about me. Dad clearly did too.
Rhiannon says nothing. This brief silence the same tension between them when they were growing up. Billie’s bird books and ocean atlases so much closer to their mother’s interests, a language Rhiannon thought they shared and she couldn’t breach. Their father taking her under his wing instead, a disciple of diesel and speed. And his six years of not visiting Billie: what Rhiannon assumed was disappointment in her prison sentence and not passive aggression for her to find a passion like he had.
Thirty-five miles to Colorado Springs, Billie says as they pass an iridescent green highway sign. Rhiannon imagines Interstate 70 north of them, veering off toward Denver, Highway 24 the exit they took somewhere back near Limon. Highway 24 more desolate, fewer gas stations. A two-lane highway that widens to four as they approach Colorado Springs, the largest city for miles.
Want to stop? Billie says.
I told you. I’d rather camp.
But we’re still nearly two hours from Cañon City and I’m starving.
Rhiannon glances in the rearv
iew mirror, the flatlands of eastern Colorado a wash of navy dark disappearing behind them. She knows Billie doesn’t want to camp, even the cheapest of motels more comfortable than the hard rungs of a prison cot. The overcast skies of Illinois, a kind of claustrophobia. Rhiannon imagines how uncluttered the Colorado wilds will feel, the stars a splattered canvas above them.
I’ll make you a deal, she says. We camp. But you can choose whatever you want in Colorado Springs for dinner.
It’s not like I know what the hell is there.
I’ve been there a handful of times on race routes. There’s a nice downtown.
Billie rotates the gold locket in her hands, what she’s been holding since they crossed the state line. A locket Rhiannon’s mulled over from the Kansas plains into Colorado. Billie leans down and picks up the journal from the passenger floor.
We could always look ahead, Rhiannon says. It’s not a crime to know where we’re headed.
I know. But she made it clear that she wanted us to be surprised by each stop.
Why? What difference does it make?
What, you think I have answers? We found a locket today and we don’t know what it means. We didn’t even know there was anything in St. Louis. Geocaches. Whatever the fuck you called them. I don’t know what they mean, but I know Mom. I know she wanted us to follow these points, one by one.
Fine, Rhiannon says. We’re making good time anyway. It’s only Monday. We can be in Utah by tomorrow if we want.
If we want. We’ll see where we’re headed next.
Rhiannon glances to the side of the highway as they pass signs for Falcon. Population: 10,500. Highway 24 a route she’s never driven despite knowing America’s roads, even blue highways beyond every major interstate, Falcon a town she’s never seen.
Did you ever come across books on falconry in the prison library? she says. Were you able to keep up your practice at all, even if just by reading?
No one donated any. We had one book on a bird refuge. And one on North American birds, with a single entry on red-tailed hawks. Barb wouldn’t buy a falconry book for us. It’s not exactly a marketable trade for repatriating.
Do you ever think of flying hawks again?
I don’t know if I’d even know how to land one now.
Rhiannon watches wide swirls of clouds catch the last of the sky’s salmon light and pictures her sister with the leather glove on her arm, how her red-tailed hawk somehow knew to return. Alabama. Billie never hunted, what Rhiannon knew was the intended purpose of falconry. Billie never explained what it was that drew her to birds of prey though Rhiannon suspected she only wanted to watch them take flight, to feel the heavy weight of talons leave her arms.
The map says to just keep taking Highway 24 straight into town, Billie says.
Rhiannon glances down at the locket in Billie’s hands. I’ll call Aunt Sue while we’re there and have guaranteed cell service.
Billie nods and Rhiannon presses the Mustang onward toward Colorado Springs and straight into the first line of mountains they’ve seen.
RHIANNON PARKS NEAR Colorado College, the streets empty of liberal-arts students gone for the summer. Liberal arts a world still so foreign to her despite working in textbook sales, an in-state public school always the implied option for her and Billie due to their mother’s tuition remission working for the University of Illinois. She and Billie walk south toward downtown through growing clusters of June tourists. People with fanny packs, with hiking shoes, with wide-brimmed sun hats and Garden of the Gods T-shirts. They walk the downtown streets until Billie stops in front of a local brewery, live music billowing from a rooftop patio above them.
How about this place? she says. We could sit outside.
Rhiannon nods. Your choice. Lead the way.
The host seats them at a small corner table on the rooftop and asks where they’ve traveled from. High tourist season. An educated guess that they’re not locals. Billie tells them Illinois and the host says they’ve chosen the right night to come through. Monday evenings: happy hour until close. Rooftop music until 9 p.m. Billie takes the draft list and Rhiannon scans the menu as the host walks away.
They have sweet potato tots, Rhiannon says. And a mushroom po’boy.
And a mile-long beer list, Billie says. One of my bunkmates warned me about this. She was in and out of prison three times. She said you want to eat everything when you get out. She said she gained fifteen pounds the first time and twenty the second.
Billie has hardly ever mentioned any of her prison mates and Rhiannon wants to ask more but doesn’t. The view from the rooftop scans a panorama of the Rockies. Their server comes and Billie orders an IPA and the po’boy, Rhiannon a burger and a summer-seasonal apricot ale. A bluegrass trio serenades the crowd from the opposite corner of the patio, the soft plucking of mandolin and guitar floating across the tables. Rhiannon sips her beer and watches the last of the sun’s light lean on the mountain peaks to the west.
Nice view, she says.
I haven’t seen the Rockies since high school, Billie says.
When you came with Mom to the quarry?
No, we flew. I came to Boulder sophomore year on that awful annual ski trip.
Rhiannon smiles. I passed on that one.
Yeah, who needs a charter bus full of teens with raging hormones when you can race across the country on your own?
Rhiannon remembers the spring break trip sponsored each year by Urbana Public High, an overnight chartered bus from Champaign to Colorado. Her friends went junior year while she stayed behind to train with her father, an embarrassment at the time that she chose to spend vacation on a racetrack, and that so many of her friends had ski equipment while she and Billie would have to rent. The start-up expenses of racing taking any extra income her parents had, Rhiannon borrowing her father’s gear but still needing her own suit, a helmet in her size. She doesn’t know if Billie felt similarly embarrassed on her class trip to Colorado. Once Rhiannon left for Chicago, Billie still in high school, she lost track of her sister’s relationships, her friends. That she’d ever gone to Boulder.
I blew Mike Steffen on that trip, Billie says. The back of the bus. Once everyone else went to sleep.
The kid with the platinum hair? The one in that Rancid rip-off band?
He had a horrible goatee. No band.
He sounds like a charmer.
Billie smiles. No one said we make good decisions when we’re fifteen.
Or when we’re thirty-five.
Rhiannon’s words slip before she can catch them.
Billie looks up. You think of Beth as a bad decision?
Rhiannon sighs. I don’t even know if she’s what I mean.
Then what? God, Rhee, you did it. You race cars. You did want you wanted to do. What bad decisions could you have possibly made?
Rhiannon watches the sun slide against the Rockies beyond the rooftop, thick light that as it disappears takes with it the day’s warmth. What Rhiannon’s forgotten about the west: that the nights bring a chill. The bluegrass swells across the patio and all at once she feels tired. A six-year charade. Billie still believing she drives. And what for, a lie she made her mother keep every time she visited the Decatur Correctional Center, an omission in her own conversations with Billie that here in Colorado, the mountains before them, seem completely meaningless.
I’m not racing anymore, Rhiannon says.
Billie sets down her pint glass. You mean this summer.
No, I mean I’m not racing anymore, Billie. Not since you left for prison.
Rhiannon watches her face change as the server approaches with their food.
What do you mean, not since I left for prison? Billie says when the server walks away.
I mean I haven’t raced, Billie. Not at all. I haven’t raced since you left.
Are you kidding? she says, the pitch of her voice rising.
Keep your voice down.
You’ve been lying to me?
You lied about this trip, Rhiann
on says, an argument she knows will go nowhere. You lied about the coordinates. The journal.
Jesus Christ. I lied for one day.
Four months. You’ve known about all this for nearly four months.
And you’ve been lying to me for six fucking years.
Rhiannon sits back. Look, you had other things going on. So many other things.
Yeah, you lied for my sake. You’re the saint at this table. Jesus, Rhee, you make it sound like you stopped racing because of me. Not since I left?
The bluegrass band wails and the sun sinks behind the mountains and Rhiannon feels her chest ignite with heat. I didn’t want to upset you by telling you while you were there, she says. You had your hands full.
My hands full? You’re a fucking coward. Do you even know what prison is like? Some days I just sat for an entire afternoon watching the light change on the walls and you visited every month for six full years and you never once said a word. Billie stops speaking, her palms pressed to the table. Oh, Christ, and Mom. You made her lie, didn’t you? Every fucking time she came to visit?
Lower your voice. And calm the fuck down.
Stop telling me to calm down. Stop trying to control this conversation. This is one thing you can’t control. Did you make her lie?
I didn’t make her lie.
Fine, let’s split hairs about this. You made her omit.
What do you care? Rhiannon says, loud enough that two women at the next table look over. Yeah, I lied. But what difference does it make what I did or didn’t do while you were in prison?
If it doesn’t make a difference, then why didn’t you tell me?
Because it was my decision. Mine. My career has nothing to do with you.
Well, you sure as shit made it sound like this had something to do with me.
It was a hard time for all of us, is all Rhiannon can think to say.
For all of us. Billie pushes her chair back from the table. Right. I was the one in Decatur. I was the one sleeping in a dorm room with cockroaches and eating shit food and staying confined to a quarter-mile radius for the six longest years of my life. I’m sure it was a real fucking hard time for you.