Just as he was about to say something, the room slipped. The couch he was watching yawed and pitched.

  “Seddown,” said Billy Bob, “seddown for Chrissake.”

  But everything was slipping now and he didn’t seem to be able to move his feet. He looked wildly around the room and saw Doctor Leep step through the door. The black bag he was carrying reminded George of Peter Sweet which seemed at that moment a very funny thing. He opened his mouth and told the doctor that he looked like the undertaker but nothing came out of his mouth.

  He was choking on laughter but he could not laugh. His face felt solid as something carved from wood and he slipped comfortably to the floor as he heard the doctor saying: “Did he drink it? He drink the coffee?” and everybody answering at once as the room and all the people were replaced by the tilting ceiling.

  Then the little girl’s face appeared right above his. She had red ribbons in her straw-colored hair and she was smiling sweet as any angel. She had two teeth missing. Her tongue was red and wet and quick as a snake in her mouth. She leaned closer until her pink wing-shaped mouth was against his ear and hissed a soft question.

  “Reckon you’ll leave at goddam hawk alone now?”

  He took wing. Was a hawk. Wheeled under a diamond sky. He knew he was dreaming, but he was a hawk, with a hawk’s eyes and a hawk’s mouth and a hawk’s hunger and he flew on in a bright depthless sky where nothing else moved. I am dreaming, he thought. But still his dandelion eyes searched the waving grass. For a long time there was nothing but the soundless glide under the sky and the frustrating knowledge that this was a dream, that he was caught in it, and there was nothing he could do about it. Not now. Not ever.

  Then he saw something tied in the grass. Naked. Defenseless. His wings folded, he fell a dizzying way through the glittering air and drove his talons into the back of the thing tied in the grass and it was not until he was tearing the bloody flesh with his crooked mouth that he saw that it was his nephew. With his mouth trailing living nerves and the boy mortally wounded, he tried to say that it was a dream, that he could not help himself, that his hunger was too great. The boy screamed only once before the trap fell tangling them hopelessly together.

  Immediately as the trap fell, he was back in the sky again, gliding effortlessly, searching the prairie below him. Then he saw something tied in the grass. But this time he knew it was the boy. He knew it was a dream and he knew it was the boy and knew also that he was doomed to repeat the same sorry action again. His wings folded and he dropped. This will never end, he thought. There’s no way to get out of this but to die. Some part of him, though, inexplicably and hopelessly seemed to know that this dream went on even after you were dead.

  He woke up in his bed. Precious sat on a chair by the door. She was dressed in black. He looked around the room. His neck was sore when he turned his head. He moved under the light blanket covering him and found his whole body ached, was stiff from disuse.

  “How long have I been lying here?”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “How long have I been in the bed?”

  “I bet you’re starved,” she said.

  “How long have I been lying here?”

  “You were exhausted,” she said.

  “Goddamit, Precious …”

  “Since yesterday morning,” she said quickly.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost noon,” she said.

  “Did you already …”

  Her red eyes darkened. “We’ll bury him at four,” she said, and instantly tears were running down her cheeks. She made no sound, seemed not to notice that she was crying. “I’ll get you some food.” She got up, holding her hip with both hands, and went out of the room.

  “Wait, Precious,” he called, but she was gone. He heard her saying something in the hall, heard his mother shout, and then the door was opening. It was his mother. She was all in black too, even wearing a veil.

  “Ma, tell Precious I don’t want anything.”

  “You got to eat,” she said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’re mad,” she said.

  “Ma, I just don’t want any food,” he said. “And I don’t want to talk. I don’t want anything.”

  “You’re mad because we did that to your coffee.”

  He looked at her and refused to speak.

  “You was crazy with grief,” she said. “We could tell. Nothing to be ashamed of. We understand. Just like a son to you.” From her voice he could tell she was on the verge of tears herself. He wished to God she would go cry somewhere else. “… so the doctor said he knowed what to do and …”

  He tried not to listen. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and went to the window. Beyond the curtains, he could see her. She looked good. More than that—Lord, she was beautiful where she sat on the stump in the dappled sunlight falling through the trees.

  “You not gone start with that bird again, are you?” his mother asked.

  He stood at the window wanting to tell her that he was not going to start again because he had never stopped in the first place, that the hawk had not left him even in his sleep. But he knew she would only think him crazy, and knew too how hopeless it was to think he could ever tell her anything about himself and the bird. He came back and lay down on the bed.

  “Thank God,” she said. “You’re gone feel real good after you eat.”

  But he knew he would not feel good until she ate, until he saw her step to his glove and eat and knew she was not going to die, until he knew that she had chosen him over death. But he could not tell his mother that. It was not reasonable. It was not sensible. It made no money. It did not lay something back for a rainy day. It did not get you ahead in the world. So it would only cause her anguish, even though he no longer understood why, any more than he understood why it caused such surges of joy and celebration in his own heart. But he no longer wanted to understand such things. Understanding, like Fred’s vocabulary, simply did not apply. He felt serenely at peace with himself.

  “… she’s going back don’t you?”

  “Who’s going?” he said, coming back to his mother who had never stopped talking.

  “Precious is going with Alonzo when he goes,” she said.

  “Well,” he said. He had not expected it, but he was not surprised.

  “They gone try to make a go of it again,” she said. She sucked her teeth and looked out the window. “It’s a ill wind that don’t blow some good.”

  He sat trying to figure out that about the ill wind.

  “They still got their whole lives before them,” she said. She looked at him slyly. “They still young enough.”

  “Young enough for what?” he said, but he already knew.

  “Your Aunt Clare had a baby when she was forty-three year old,” she said. “It’s only natural.”

  “I guess it is,” he said. “I wish everything good for them.”

  He wasn’t paying attention. He was watching the hawk through the window.

  “Precious said you starved two of’m to death.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But you still went and got another one.”

  “Yes, I got another one.”

  “See, that’s what I mean.”

  But he did not see, and had no idea what she meant. “Right,” he said.

  “O.K.,” she said. “But it’ll be lonely for you with Precious gone.”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said.

  “Son, you ought to marry. You ought to be married.”

  “I guess so, Ma.” He wondered how long they could go on talking like this before he screamed.

  “Miss Right’ll come by one of these days,” she said. “Then you’ll see what you been missing.”

  He had a pretty good idea what he’d been missing, and was pretty sure he wanted to keep on missing it for a while.

  “I think I’ll put on my clothes,” he said.

  “Precious’ll have you some good breakfast by then,” said his mother. “Git you clothes on and come out to the table.”

  “Who’s out there?” he asked.

  “Just family mostly,” said his mother as she went out into the hall.

  He dressed feeling not only light-headed but lightbodied as though his bones were filled with air. He washed his face with warm water, toweled dry, touched his chin and cheeks with a Norelco shaver, and went out to the dining table smelling of talcum. The living room was full, more relatives had arrived. He passed four people in the hall who silently gripped his arm and made little wet sounds with their mouths. It at first reminded him of a lot of people standing about waiting for their pictures to be taken. Some kind of special group portrait. Black was everywhere: dresses, suits, shoes, a veil or two, hats, and ties. Billy Bob was sitting at the dining table sipping a cup of coffee. His mother and three other women stood along one wall. Lurking there, or so it seemed to him. He could hear Precious in the kitchen. As soon as he sat down, one of the seamstresses from the shop came out of the kitchen with an enormous cup of coffee.

  “Precious is almost got it ready,” said the seamstress, whose name was Martha.

  “Thank you, Martha,” George said.

  “Drink it down while it’s hot,” said Billy Bob. “You’ll feel better.”

  George looked at him. “I don’t think I’ll drink any more coffee.”

  “That other was for your own good,” said his mother.

  “It was only what we had to do,” said Billy Bob.

  “Well, what’s done is done,” said one of the women.

  “The sun can’t always shine,” said another.

  “Take the bitter with the sweet,” said his mother.

  They had begun talking in code again, and George was determined not to sit and listen. It would only be a matter of time until they got to God working in mysterious and nobody knowing the day or the hour.

  Precious came in with a plate of eggs and ham. Alonzo, huge, hairy, and concerned, was right behind her. She put the food down in front of George.

  “Eat,” she said. “Eat.”

  “Eat, George,” his mother said.

  “Eat, Brother Gattling,” said the preacher.

  “A good meal’ll do wonders.”

  And he did not doubt it would. He who had not thought of eating was chilled over the surface of his skin with hunger. Waves of trembling spilled across his stomach. He salivated. He felt his tongue sloshing in his mouth. Never in his life could he remember being so hungry and quivering at the thought of food. But he was either going to try to do this right or he was not. Integrity insisted the hawk eat first. All the old austringers said the bird was ruined if the master took food, broke the fast before the hawk he was training. It was just something they believed.

  So weak with hunger he could hardly speak, he said: “I’m not hungry.”

  “You got to keep your strength up,” said his mother.

  “I just can’t,” he said. “Not with …”

  “We understand,” said the preacher. “It’s a tragedy for us all.”

  “When do we have to be at the mortuary?” George asked.

  “By two-thirty,” his mother said.

  “I’ll just get dressed now,” he said. “Maybe I could have a cup of that coffee to take back with me. Black. No sugar.”

  “Why, you sure can now,” said Precious, rushing out to the kitchen.

  She brought him the coffee and George started toward the hallway leading back to his room. He paused in the door. “Billy Bob, you want to step back here a minute?”

  “Sure enough.”

  When they got back to his room, George said, “I want you to do something for me.”

  “Just name it.”

  “I want you to go get me two biddies.”

  “Biddies?”

  “Biddies.”

  “You’re gone feed the goddam hawk,” said Billy Bob.

  “She’s manned. I’ve got to feed her now.”

  “It aint natural.”

  “I’m not going to stand here talking about it. No time.” He took two one dollar bills out of his wallet. “Two biddies. Go.”

  “Where am I gone find biddies?”

  “Go to Brownlee Feed & Seed. Northwest Sixth Street. Just off University.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I bought some there one time.”

  “But they didn’t eat’m.”

  “No, the biddies were on my hand and the ones that starved would never step to it. But this time it’ll be different.”

  “George …”

  “You go get the biddies. Now.” George had shifted into his University Trim Shop voice and Billy Bob responded immediately, but he went through the door mumbling that any man in his right mind would know such a thing was not natural.

  George ran a very hot bath and eased into it to soak. The bath seemed to take some of his hunger away and he lay a long while without moving. By the time he had found his only black suit, a pair of black socks, a black tie, and dressed, Billy Bob was walking back into the room with a small, square pasteboard box. Holes had been punched in the top and along the sides.

  “How many did you get?”

  “Christ, you said two. I got two.”

  “All right.”

  It sounded like a half dozen of them in the box. A steady code of peeping flowed out of the little round holes, along with the dry scratching of their feet. George put the box on the vanity beside his mirror and finished tying his tie. He splashed on a little extra English Leather and checked his shoulders for signs of dandruff. Billy Bob stood on the other side of the room, watching.

  “You knew it was a cop here,” said Billy Bob.

  George stopped and their eyes met in the mirror. “No,” said George, “I didn’t know that.”

  “Routine investigation,” Billy Bob said. “It wasn’t natural.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “The way he went about doing it. Nobody’d ever heard of doing it in a waterbed. Cop said he’d been on the force twenty-some-odd year and had never heard of anybody doing it in a waterbed. Or even trying.”

  “Do they think suicide or accident?”

  “Either way it wouldn’t make sense. Take you pick. They just wanted to make sure it was on the up and up.”

  “The up and up?”

  “That nobody done it to him. That whatever it was that was done was done by him.”

  “And they were satisfied, were they?”

  “Seemed to be satisfied. They experimented with cigarettes and finally got a hole burned in big as the one he burned in but it was hard to do. Fred must a been up half the night getting enough water to drown in.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “The only thing I think is it was a unnatural act.”

  “Yeah, but accident or suicide?”

  “Way I see it is, if it’s a unnatural act, then not much else matters.” He shook his head. “Not to me, anyway.”

  George picked up the box and opened one of the flaps at the top. The two biddies were yellow. They were covered with light fuzzy down. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got to feed the hawk.”

  “Wait until afterwards,” said Billy Bob. “That aint much, wait until he’s in the ground.”

  “No, now. And you have to help me.”

  “I never had any dealings with birds. I couldn’t be no help.”

  “You don’t understand. I can’t have Ma or Alonzo or all of them together come running and screaming down there just when I’m trying to get her to step to the fist.”

  “Gone step to the fist, is she?”

  “Just listen. Now maybe I could get down there and feed the hawk without them seeing me or knowing where I am or what I’m doing. But I can’t risk that because if somebody happens to see me down there and sees what I’m doing and tells everybody and they come screaming down … well, they’ll end up ruining everything I’ve put together.”

  “What can I do about that?” said Billy Bob. “I don’t see how I can help with that.”

  “Go tell them I’m crazy.”

  “What?”

  “Tell’m you think I had a relapse. That way they can all go to the window and watch me down by the creek. But tell’m I said if they came out of the house while I’m down there that I said I wouldn’t go to the funeral.”

  “Goddam, George. Why is that?”

  “Tell’m … tell’m.” He thought about it. “Tell’m I think the bird is Fred.”

  Billy Bob was shaking his head. He was pale. “I don’t think we ought to say anything like that. Why say a thing like that?”

  “Because they’ll accept it. The truth won’t do.”

  “What’s the truth then?”

  “Chicken hawks like biddies best. And I mean to take advantage of it. Now you go on out there and tell’m what I said. Tell’m I said I would go to the funeral if I could feed Fred first. But if anybody comes out and bothers me, I’ll grab Fred and run up into the woods again. And quit looking at me like that, it’s just a story.”

  “Sure, George, whatever you say.”

  Billy Bob left and George got down his machete where he kept it in the top of his closet. He had bought it from some service club that was selling them door to door to raise money for a lady who needed an iron lung. The knife was sheathed in a case on which had been carved a design and the word: BOLIVIA. To keep from running the risk of being headed off and stopped by his mother, he used the door at the back of his room leading onto the terrace. The heavy machete beat against his leg as he walked between ankledeep fern in the path leading down to where he wanted to go.

  On the edge of his vision he saw them lined side by side at the sliding glass door of the living room. As he walked he could feel the collective weight of their eyes on his back. He stopped by a stump about fifteen yards away from where the hawk sat. He carefully avoided looking at her. He put the box down beside the stump and opened it. The biddies stretched their necks and beat their furry wings. George took the machete out of the leather case. The sun caught its fine thin edge. He reached into the box and picked up the biddy by its legs. The legs were thin as toothpicks between his fingers. The biddy hung with its wings splayed, its head arched upward. He bent down and laid the biddy on the stump. He gently put the machete across its delicate neck, carefully measuring the stroke. He knew they were watching and could not help feeling silly and unworthy, because he had too much knife for the job. The handle of the machete alone was three times the size of the biddy. But they were waiting up there, watching him. The hawk was watching from the other side, hungry—starved nearly—and waiting. He had trouble killing the biddies before, when he was trying to tempt the sparrow hawks to eat. He found the only way he could do it was with the enormous knife. He held his breath now and whacked at the biddy, missed its neck and chopped it squarely across the back. He took down the leather gloves from the fork of a tree and picked up the half of the biddy that had fallen to the ground. Its eyes were clouded with nearly transparent lids. He caught the severed biddy between thumb and forefinger. He moved slowly toward the hawk. By keeping his face from the hawk, he looked up the hill and saw them—all dressed in black, all solemn as preachers—staring down at him. Somebody had pulled the door back. They pressed forward in an effort to see better. He lifted the chopped biddy where the sun fell upon it. As he did, a spontaneous and sibilant gasp rose from them where they stood in the open door.

 

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