The hawk is dying, p.5
The Hawk Is Dying, page 5
But Billy Bob only said: “Knew a man once et dog. He just liked it. Raised his own and kept the smokehouse full all the time. Liked hound the best.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing after deliberately putting rat all over your hands,” said Precious, “was eating a throw-up ball. I wouldn’t be surprised a bit.”
“Hammer,” said the boy.
“Shit,” said George, dropping the binoculars on the waterbed. “Now give me a drink.”
“I wish you’d try to watch your language around Fred,” said his sister.
Precious, holding the hip she said was arthritic, brought him the drink. George turned it up and poured it down. He ordinarily did not drink. There would be months sometimes when he would not so much as touch a beer. But when he felt himself driven to it—as he did now—he would usually drink himself into unconsciousness. Precious took the glass out of his hand and refilled it, saying as she did: “You ought to be careful with this drinking.” She brought it back and watched him drink half of it off in a single swallow. She always told him to be careful with his drinking, and she always filled his glass promptly and tirelessly for him when he started.
“A little of that’ll make you better’n you are,” Billy Bob said.
A little of that and he’d be on his ass is where he’d be, but he didn’t care. Precious had poured him another—his third in about four minutes—and awful Sunday afternoon was draining from the room like dirty water from a tub. He suddenly decided he wanted to see the hawk without the binoculars. Taking his drink with him, and without a word to anybody, he went out of the room and through the door leading down to the creek where he had the hawk jessed.
It was only a little later than mid-afternoon, but the woods were already in shadow here in the deep ravine beside the trickle of water called Hogtown Creek. George walked down the steep slope from his house and sat in a cluster of palmettos. Through the screen of green fronds, he watched the hawk. She was off the stump now, flying against the leash, her wings—over a yard in span—rhythmically beating the ground. It was both a good sign and a bad sign. A good sign because the hawks that quieted down too quickly were never any good much. But a bad sign too because the hawk was already bleeding when she was jessed, and she could easily beat herself to death. Hawks often did. The very best ones simply battered themselves to pieces.
A noise made George look up and there stood Billy Bob and Precious and Fred. Billy Bob had brought the bottle. George held up his glass. Billy Bob poured. It was George’s only defense against them. Or at least he felt it was at that moment. He wished to God they had stayed in the house. They watched him where he sat in the palmettos. Even with the whiskey burning in his stomach, he felt like a fool. Then Fred came forward and sat beside him. Billy Bob followed, half falling, looking back at Precious, saying: “Come on. Seddown here.”
Precious held her hip and got down in the palmettos with them. And there they sat, peeping through the fronds and pouring whiskey. The mosquitoes were getting awful. They swarmed in little dark puffs about their arms and necks. But Precious was the only one who seemed to notice. She held the bottle, no longer putting the cap back on it, but holding it at the ready, tipping it first to Fred and then to George and Billy Bob.
George finally looked around and said: “I’m not going to sit here with a bunch of drunks.”
But the last three words came out of his mouth runch of bunks. And his drunken voice humiliated him. They asked him what he said, but he was ashamed to tell them. Billy Bob insisted.
“I’ve got a right,” said Billy Bob. “You said it to me and I got a right to know.”
George refused. Billy Bob insisted. He wouldn’t leave it alone until George couldn’t stand it anymore and he screamed: “Bunch of drunks! Bunch of drunks!”
“Shit, why didn’t you say so,” said Billy Bob, still not understanding. He took the bottle out of Precious’ hand and poured George a long drink. George drank it in black despair, thinking: This is the end of the road, I can’t even talk.
He turned his head, and the whole world swung. Through the green fronds he watched the hawk. She was preening herself. No longer flying against the leash, or pecking at the jesses, she was now cleaning and stroking each long flight feather individually. She bent to the oil gland under her tail and then came back to draw a single feather through her crooked mandible in a long, gracefully sensuous sweep of her head.
Joy, sharp and great as pain, moved in him. He turned to the others, and the joy was instantly dead. Nobody was watching the hawk. Fred was looking at the tops of the trees, still apparently searching for squirrels. Precious puffed and sputtered at a cloud of mosquitoes that hovered over her face. Billy Bob looked as though he had passed out sitting straight up.
George got tiredly to his feet, not nearly as drunk as he thought he was, still able to walk well enough. Fred came off the ground like something growing. He floated at George’s elbow. The world tilted, and George had to close one eye to right it. It swung and held in place. He would be all right.
Back there in the palmettos, he heard Precious getting Billy Bob to his feet. They would go through their little ritual now. Billy Bob could drive his Datsun pickup truck when he was so drunk he couldn’t walk. But he had to be helped to it. That’s what Precious would do, and while she did it, Billy Bob would give her a few lingering feels which were sad enough to break George’s heart and which she would pretend she did not notice, even though George had seen her arch her skinny arthritic pelvis against Billy Bob’s brutal tack-and-hammer fingers. George didn’t know whether Billy Bob ever knew what he was doing or not. If he did, he never mentioned it, limiting as he did any talk of Precious to how it was too bad she dried up so early.
George went into the living room and sat in a chair. The boy sat on the couch. Through the window, he watched Precious put Billy Bob in the Datsun. Just before she closed the door, it looked like Billy Bob was trying to tear her rump off. Her expression never changed and she finally got him in and closed the door. George leaned back and closed his eyes.
But in his darkened eyes soared a beautiful hawk, wheeling and turning in the blue fastness of a winter sky. The flying hawk was an extension of himself, was himself. But nobody looked. Nobody knew he was there. No matter what he did, no matter who had put him there, nobody ever knew or cared.
The front door closed and he heard the slap of Precious’ slippers. She came to his chair. “Will you be all right for the party?”
It was the first time it had occurred to him all day that they were supposed to go to Professor Hill’s house for cocktails. Professor Hill had an independent income, a large family, and most importantly five cars, not one of them a Volkswagen. He liked to keep the upholstery on all his cars in good condition.
“Sure,” said George. “I’ll be fine.” It was as well that as anything else.
But by the time he’d had a shower, and his head had cleared a little, he still wanted somebody to see his hawk. Really see her. And it was Betty he wanted. He knew now that it had been the girl all along he’d wanted to bring close to the hawk. He just hadn’t known it. Or maybe been able to admit it. She of the longhaired friends, she of the drugs, and indiscriminate suckings, let her look at the hawk and know he caught her, know he controlled her. Let her laugh then.
Still, there was a problem. Precious didn’t know about Betty. If he brought a nineteen-year-old coed to the house, Precious would surely be suspicious. There was no way to do it. Unless … He turned from the mirror where he had been shaving and went down the long hall to Precious’ room where she was struggling into a corset in front of a full-length mirror. It wrung his heart to see her pulling at the thing. The corset would smash her flaccid ass cruelly flat. Make it flat and hard as a cement wall. It would even turn Billy Bob’s eyes.
George waited until she had all the stays in place. Over the years they had fallen into an easy domesticity, not unlike husband and wife. He zipped her. She brushed him. They came and went in friendly semi-nakedness.
“You know,” said George, “I’ve been thinking.” Precious cut her eyes to his in the mirror. “Don’t you think it’s about time that boy had a girl friend?”
Precious’ hands stopped where she was hooking her stockings up to her corset. Her breathing went shallow. “Well, you know I do,” she said.
And he did know it. It was her fondest hope. She thought a girl might be able to bring the boy out of himself. But all her best efforts had thus far failed. She had been able to get a few girls to say hello to Fred, but as soon as he said his single word to them, they became quieter and more introspective than Fred, and the relationship died before it could get started.
“You know somebody?” she said.
“I’ve had a girl in mind for some time,” he said. “A girl from the university.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said softly.
“This girl is qualified to handle him.” He paused. Precious had ultimate faith in education. “She’s a psychology major. Her name’s Betty. I met her through one of the professors who comes to the shop.”
“Oh, I wish, but …”
“She knows how he is,” George said quickly. “And she’s interested in him the way he is.”
That much was the truth. Betty did know about Fred. Billy Bob had told her. She was fascinated. She had wanted to meet him from the first time she had heard about how he was.
“I thought I’d call her and tell her to come on over this evening while we went to the party.”
“You think she’d do it?”
“In a minute.”
“Well, call’er, call’er.”
George had her on the telephone in two minutes.
“I want you to come over tonight,” he said.
“What? Who is this anyway?”
“George.”
“Oh.”
“Can you?”
“What?”
“Come over here.”
“For what?”
“I want you to meet Fred.”
“Fred?”
“You remember Fred. The one Billy Bob told you about.”
“The retard?”
“He is not natural.” Billy Bob’s word came first to his lips. “That’s the one.”
“What about your sister?”
“She just knows you know about the boy and that you’re interested in him. She thinks I met you through a professor who comes to the shop. We’re going to a party tonight and I said it might be nice if you came over and got acquainted with the boy while we’re gone.”
“You’re going to a party?”
“Right.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Precious was standing in the middle of the dining room waiting for him when he came out.
“She’s coming,” he said.
“God,” Precious said, “a girl for Fred.”
It wasn’t even ten minutes before Betty’s red Volkswagen came sliding and squealing into the driveway. George met her at the door. She came right past him, stretching her neck to left and right, obviously looking for the boy. George took her elbow and led her into the living room. Precious got up to receive her.
“This is Precious, my sister,” said George. “Precious, this is Betty, the young lady I told you about.”
“I’m so glad you could come,” said Precious.
But Betty was looking at the boy where he sat beside the fireplace. Fred and Betty balanced each other in a long deep stare.
“Hi,” said Betty.
“Light,” said Fred.
“Groovy.”
“Lump.”
“Peace.”
“Teeth.”
“Heavy.”
George took Betty’s elbow again. “Come here,” he said, “I want to show you something.” He took her to the wide glass window at the back of the room overlooking the creek. “I trapped a redtailed hawk. There she is, jessed to the stump.” The hawk was only a shadow where she sat under the trees. “I’m going to man her the hard way,” he said. Something was getting tight in him, a kind of rage building. For the first time, he knew how he was going to man the bird. And it wasn’t either of the ways he had told Billy Bob and Precious about. “In seventy-two hours she’ll be manned. I’m going to watch her. That’s what it’s called—watching her. I’m going to put her on my wrist wild. Just like she is now. I’ll tie the leash to my hand. She’ll fly off. I’ll put her back on. She’ll fly again. I’ll put her on again. And I won’t let her sleep. That’s the point. I won’t let her sleep, but I can’t sleep either.” He felt the way he’d felt the night he’d stuck the sparrow hawk’s head in the grinding blades of the disposal, the night he’d wanted to follow the hawk into the blades with his own hand. “I’ll have to stay awake until I break her. Or she breaks me. It’ll be as bad for me as it is for her. It sometimes takes five days. Sometimes even longer.”
“When are you leaving for the party?” Betty asked.
He looked at her. She had not heard a word he had said. She had not been listening, was not listening now. Her fine firm neck was twisted to look at Fred where he sat smiling wildly in his chair.
“Now,” he said.
Part Two
TRAINED
7
Apparently Fred had been smoking in bed and drowned. That first night of the day they brought the redtailed hawk home. It was impossible. It could not happen. But it did. The man at the store had assured his sister that you could not burn a hole in the waterbed.
“One of the advantages of having this kind of water-bed,” the man had said.
“Well, my son … Fred here … he smokes a lot. Sometimes in bed.”
“The water,” said the man, “keeps the plastic too cool to burn. Lay a cigarette right on this waterbed and it won’t burn a hole in it.”
Fred, standing there in the store, had examined the bed carefully and said: “Tape.”
That’s why Precious remembered the whole incident, word for word: “You can patch a hole with tape,” she had reported to George, “And that’s what he said—tape. I believe that boy’s improving.”
And now he was dead. Drowned in his own bed. But Precious would still explain to anybody who listened just what the man had said in the store about waterbeds and how safe they were. She even tried to explain it to George. But he would not listen. He did not want or need any explanations. It seemed all of a piece to him. That’s why he was determined to put the hawk on his arm, even though he knew everybody would think he was crazy, or at best disrespectful to the dead. But he didn’t care what they thought. Maybe he was crazy, and if he was, he didn’t care about that either. He’d made his peace at last.
He walked into Fred’s room that morning and stood for a full minute watching the boy floating face down in the water that was almost a foot deep in the black lining of the bed. The little duck floated serenely at his head. George was not shocked or terrified or stunned or anything. He simply did not believe it. The plastic could not have burst or leaked, and if it did, the black lining—which was designed for just that purpose to prevent water damage—would not have held two hundred and fifty gallons inside the wooden frame, and if it did Fred would not have drowned in it. The boy had been through five Red Cross Senior Life Saving Courses, and so perfectly coordinated was he that he could have been a champion swimmer if he could have ever understood why it was important to beat other boys in swimming races. But he steadfastly refused to understand the nature of competition. By himself in the pool he was an amazing whirlwind of power, but when other boys were swimming against him, Fred would simply stop and watch the race.
So in any event, he could not have drowned. But in any event, he was drowned. George had walked over to the bed and softly touched Fred on the foot. The water went out in concentric waves. The boy’s pale hair moved in a ragged halo. George stood watching the water until the waves died in it, until the boy no longer moved. Then he did what he would surely not have done if he had not been to the party the night before, which had been an unrelieved disaster, and if he had not been hungover, and if he had stopped to think. But he still heard the bony gray lady of the night before shouting You have no right You have no right and his head pounded and he could not think even if he had stopped, so he went down the hall as in a dream and said to his sister, Precious: “He’s dead.”
Precious moved only the slightest bit on the queensized Posturepedic and mumbled that her hip would not work. It was Monday morning and she thought he was trying to get her up to make breakfast. When he tried to get her up too early, she always said her hip would not work. George sat on the side of the bed and put his hand on her shoulder.
“He’s gone, Precious,” George said. “He’s dead.”
Her sticky eyes opened, blinked. A quick and sour little anger settled in the matted corners on either side of her nose.
“You’d be dead too,” she said, “if somebody tied you by the feet to a stump all night.”
She thought he was talking about the hawk.
“The boy,” he said. “It’s Fred. Dead.”
She looked at him, raised on one elbow, and actually yawned. There was a quality of dream about it, as though he were talking through a plate glass window to her. She saw that his mouth moved but could not know what he said. He sat there beside her, watching her yawn and rub her sore hip. And in the other room, Fred floated quietly face down in two hundred and fifty gallons of water. George leaned down until their noses almost touched. Her breath, cheesy with the odors of sleep, blew warmly into his face.
He said softly and very slowly: “Your … son … is … dead.”
She blinked. Then she screamed. When she bounded out of the bed, she knocked George to the floor and went flapping and hopping down the hall, her pink cotton gown flying at her heels. George got off the floor and followed, the horror finally breaking through into his skull and the ends of his fingers. He was gagging and screaming himself when he heard an awful splash and burst into the room to find his sister in the water with her drowned son. She didn’t apparently know what she wanted to do, or maybe she didn’t want to do anything. She had the head of Fred’s corpse locked into the crook of her arm and she was screaming his name and crying and pressing her face into the matted strands of his long wet hair.
