Raptor Read online

  “What difference does it make? I’m not going because of him, I’m going because I feel guilty that I never paid any attention to Joan while she was alive and because this trip was her unfulfilled dream and you shouldn’t just trash people’s dreams when they go.”

  The Kid mulled that over for a minute, or at least I thought he did, but when he spoke it turned out his mind was on birds, too, and dreams. For small creatures, lighter than air, birds carry a lot of symbolic baggage. They always have.

  “I used to keep pigeons, Chiquita, when I was a boy on my rooftop in Mexico.”

  I never knew that, as the Kid rarely talked to me about his childhood; when he did there was a faraway light in his eyes.

  “I had a pigeon once, Blanca. She was bigger than all the birds. She won a lot of races, all the way from Querétaro, one hundred and fifty miles.”

  I had a vision of Blanca flying over purple mountains, flat mesas, high above the route so treacherous to buses and burros and people. The white pigeon and her black shadow, circling the plaza in colonial Querétaro and returning to her Kid on the edge of the biggest slum in the Western world.

  “When I come up here my brother go up on the roof and break their necks—like that.” The Kid snapped his black-tipped mechanic’s fingers.

  I flinched. “That’s terrible.”

  He shrugged, but the faraway light had gone out. “He killed her, too. There was no one to feed them or fly them after I come here. So you going?” He gestured north toward Montana, the bigger sky, the wilder West.

  “I guess so.” It wouldn’t be the first week that we hadn’t met. What was bothering the Kid? I took one last sip of my tequila and put the glass down. “Why don’t we go to bed,” I said.

  We were deep in the retrograde eighties and there was a killer virus on the loose aimed at the gay, the addicted, the black, the Hispanic, the alien, the adventurous. Responsibility was the only sane response. No more unsheathed love, no more diaphragm and cream. The sunset box was on the bedside table. “Both you and your partner will be more relaxed knowing you are protected by Trojan brand condoms…” it said. Protection from disease, 99.67 percent reliable when used properly, perfect for those who can or will not remain monogamous.

  I sat down on the unmade bed. My speech had been prepared, revised, rewritten, revised again. I am a lawyer after all, careful, precise. Here’s how it went: “Look, Kid, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. We don’t see each other all the time. I never ask you about the rest of your life, you don’t ask me about mine. I don’t want to know. But, maybe, it would be better now if we, um, took precautions, and…”

  “You mean you want me to use these things?” He picked up the box with the tips of his fingers like it was something slick and dead.

  “Well…”

  “I never.” He put the box down.

  “Me neither.”

  Timing is of the essence in law and in life, only there’s an inner clock and an outer clock. The outer clock is digital, relentless, flashes red numbers, makes appointments, shows up in court on time. It’s the clock that lawyers follow. The inner clock is a pendulum blown off track by every vagrant wind, a lovers’ clock, a poet’s clock, the clock that Latin America runs by. It tells you when things feel right, when they don’t … if you’re willing to listen. I’d planned this speech and scheduled it for tonight, but it had been blown off course; I hadn’t noticed.

  “Now you’re going to Montana with this April, so you want me to start using these things?”

  “It has nothing to do with that, I was going to ask you anyway.”

  “Yeah, I think about it,” he said, taking off his clothes, getting under the covers and turning his back to me.

  “Kid . . .”

  “I’m tired, we talk in the morning.”

  The Kid has a soft spot on the back of his neck, a downy spot, a place to press a cheek on and dream away. He pulled the covers around his head and covered it up. As far as I could tell he went right to sleep, but after a few minutes of staring at a wounded back I said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, you’re really being unreasonable.” Since he didn’t answer, I got up, went into the living room, lit a Marlboro, poured a drink and took out Joan’s journal, thinking that would put me to sleep.

  It was the record of a biologist’s life and her love—birds. Each section was labeled and neatly organized, a scientific treatise, but a romance, too. There was a Personal section and I wondered briefly what could be in there. Joan had never had a lover as far as I knew, few friends and not much of a family either. I skipped it and went to Raptor. By a warm lamp and a cold tequila, I read:

  Raptors are the fiercest of birds. They are predators, but most birds are, strictly speaking, even those that eat insects and worms. What distinguishes raptors is that they use their powerful talons to seize or stun their prey and their hooked beaks to tear that prey into bite-sized pieces. Some falcons’ talons are so strong they can snap the head off a wooden duck decoy. Raptors have excellent hearing and their eyesight is the best in the animal kingdom.

  Hawks are diurnal raptors, most owls are nocturnal. Falcons are members of the hawk family. They hunt during the daytime and their preferred prey are other birds which they like to catch in flight. The female hawk is dominant, the largest and strongest of the pair, which is known as reverse physical dimorphism. As the female peregrine falcon is one third larger than the male, she is called (technically) a falcon, and he is called a tiercel.

  The largest and, I think, the most beautiful falcon is the Arctic gyrfalcon, which is native to the polar region, although known occasionally to migrate south into the northern U.S. Once one wintered in the Customs Tower in Boston. Gyrfalcons have a grey morph and a white morph, but even in the white phase they are not pure white—like a snowy owl they have dark streaks on their heads and backs. They will eat mammals, including hare, weasel and mink, but they like ducks and ptarmigan best. It may be ptarmigan shortages that bring them south.

  That was the prose. And then there was the poetry. Joan quoted from one of her favorite bird books, The Peregrine Falcon by Robert Murphy:

  Even in [the falcon’s] quietness, sitting relaxed and with his breast feathers loose, he gave an impression of spirit, compactness, strong bone, and hard-muscled power: a rapier quiet in the scabbard.

  He was the hunter that men had caught and trained to catch ducks and other birds for them long before gunpowder was used or thought of: for that and for his great style and spectacular powers of flight, which as groundlings bound to the earth they could watch with a lift of the heart.

  It is beautiful to see a living creature … that is the master of the element in which it moves; beautiful to see the lightning swift co-ordination, the apparent wild reckless abandon that is not abandon but perfect control, and think of the spirit that moves it. …it is a spirit of ice and fire, steely hard … and marvelously equipped to play with storms and great winds and do the killing that is its function and by which it lives.

  And from The Treatise on Falconry of Albert us Magnus:

  Girofalcon or gyrfalcon means ‘whirling falcon’, for it is her nature to fiercely pursue her quarry, such as cranes and swans, with a whirling and spinning motion. … Other falcons do not fly readily with this species, and even the eagle hesitates to attack her. She likes to be fed delicate meat, so freshly killed that the warmth and natural movements are still present; most of all, she likes the heart and the meat around the heart.

  Joan was enraptured with that embodiment of the American West, a cool and efficient killer. Only in her case, instead of a dark gunslinger, it was a white female, one who liked the meat around the heart. Who would have thought it? The falcon was a creature of myth and legend, no ordinary bird. Well, at least I wasn’t pissing the Kid off and going into the back of beyond in search of a sparrow.

  I got back into my side of the bed. The Kid was gone when I woke up in the morning. He’d left a yellow stick-on note on the door. “S
end me a postcard,” it said.

  2

  I KNEW A man from Montana once, an angry man. He came from someplace in the western part of the state, where high mountains led to higher mountains, where the prevailing winds climbed up and hung a canopy of clouds over his town. The big sky was a big gray sky where he came from. He wandered down to New Mexico to get some sun, because there’s one thing you can count on in New Mexico, the sun. It trails you like a faithful dog. Maybe this man didn’t get to talk much in Montana, maybe no one was listening; he never shut up when he got here.

  I drove up to Santa Fe one night to visit the people who had rented him a room, and I heard his voice as I opened my car door, loud, complaining. New Mexico was corrupt; the Indians sold fake turquoise, bombs were made in Los Alamos and warehoused outside Albuquerque, Santa Fe was overrun by rich Texans, Tiny Annoya was still our governor. He was talking to someone, or was he? When I opened the door, I could see everyone else had gone to bed, probably with their pillows over their heads. He was alone, with a phone in his hand, screaming into the night. The pebble in his psyche became a boulder as it rolled away.

  What was there to get angry about in Montana? I wondered, en route. It was another poor Western state, but there was room and beauty to be poor in, not too many rich people to remind you just how poor you were and not too many minorities competing for a piece of the poverty pie.

  Coming into the Fire Pond airport reminded me of Albuquerque, wide open, wider because the mountains are farther away. Fire Pond is on the edge of the Great Plains and the Rockies aren’t yet casting their jagged shadows. In the emptiness you can see what’s below you, what’s beside you, what’s coming at you. I saw a lot of blue sky and brown earth and the white letters FP plastered on the side of a hill. There were patches of snow on the mesas and foothills, this being the time of year when the Arctic gyrfalcon sometimes wanders south. South to them, north to me, but I was ready for it in a down parka. I was going into the wilderness chasing one bird, wrapped in another bird’s feathers, a naturalist’s trip, a little old lady’s dream, not mine. Joan’s journal was on my lap.

  “The DDT devastation began in the late ’40s,” I read.

  The Arctic birds weren’t hurt as badly, but the peregrine falcon population was decimated in some areas of the U.S., extirpated in others. There were approximately 600 in the East in 1942, close to zero by 1964, which earned the peregrine the unfortunate distinction of a place on the endangered species list. The use of DDT was an ill-conceived disaster. Once it gets into the food chain, it keeps moving up, becoming more concentrated as it does. Falcons are at the top of the chain and the DDT got into their eggshells and made them so thin they broke before the eggs could hatch.

  Falcons are the world’s primary feathered dive bombers. They gain altitude by flying upward in ever widening circles. With their spectacular vision they can spot a prey from 8,000 feet away. In pursuit peregrines fold up their wings and dive straight down in a magnificent stoop, which I have had the privilege of observing. The story is often repeated that a peregrine passed a plane diving at close to 200 miles an hour. Falcons stun with a blow from their talons or swoop underneath and gracefully pursue the prey upward in a death dance. The falcon eats often and this dance is repeated over and over again.

  As the plane began its descent into Fire Pond, the rancher dozing in the seat next to me woke up. His full belly had popped open the snaps on his plaid shirt. He buttoned up, straightened his string tie, shook his head, rubbed his eyes and grinned.

  “Hey, get a looka that,” he said, pointing out the window. “A Sparhawk.”

  “A hawk? Where?” I asked, new to this sport of birding, but already competitive about a sighting. Was this the moment to begin my life list, to reach for my binoculars and field guide?

  “Right down there,” he said. “The jet.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “A plane.” A sleek, elegant little jet, privately owned probably as there didn’t seem to be any markings on it, was coming in for a landing. It glistened alone and silvery in the brilliant sun, and its shadow danced down the runway behind it.

  “I useta fly when I was in the Air Force,” he said, leaning enthusiastically across my armrest. “Wish I had a crack at one of them beauties. That little jet there is top of the line, the razor’s edge of the performance envelope.”

  How sharp can you get?

  “A beauty, ain’t it? Wish I owned one, but I ain’t got one of them ranches that’s bigger than a country. I only got a little spread, not big enough that you need a jet to get across it, but if I got in my car in the morning and started driving, I probably wouldn’t hit the western boundary by nightfall.”

  “I’ve got a car like that,” I said. “You want to buy it?”

  “Ha, ha,” he replied. “And what brings you to Montana?”

  To see the rare and seldom-sighted gyrfalcon, I told him. Why not?

  “Well, like I jus’ told you, I’m a rancher,” he said. “That pretty bird you’re comin’ here to look at is a raptor and raptors are killers. An eagle’ll take a lamb in its talons and fly away with it. You ever seen a lamb killed by an eagle? It ain’t a pretty sight.”

  “Animals kill each other. That’s nature, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the way nature useta be. Don’t have to be like that no more now that man’s got the power. The way I see it those birds are vicious killers. There ain’t enough room in Montana for them and ranchers both. Now they want to bring back the wolves. I’ll tell you one thing, I see a falcon or a wolf, I’m gonna shoot.” He pointed a finger into the air and cocked an imaginary rifle.

  In some circles it’s sport for humans to kill animals, but cruel and vicious for animals to kill each other. “Some falcons are endangered species,” I said. “There are very few left. You kill one, the chances of the species’ survival are that much slimmer.” Joan would have been proud.

  “Good,” he said, pulling down hard on the trigger finger.

  That was one thing to get angry about in Montana.

  “Even in November temperatures can drop below zero here,” the Falcon Fund brochure read. “Dress warmly.” I’d done that. “Bring a day pack and broken-in hiking boots.” Those I had, New Balance, fabric uppers, cleat bottoms, used three times in the Jemez, not exactly broken in, but not unworn either. “Bring a good pair of binoculars.” I had Joan’s, a pair of Zeisses.

  “State of the art, can’t buy any better than Zeiss,” a guy at Harry’s told me when I took them to be appraised and found out they were worth more than my car. You can buy better than that. “I could see all the way into the Beach with these,” the guy said, fondling the Zeisses, then blushing into the roots of his thin blond hair because the Beach he was talking about wasn’t in California and I knew it. The Beach was the apartment complex on Tingley Drive.

  There was a disclaimer attached to the Falcon Fund brochure (a legal scarecrow), which I signed. “My health is good,” it said. “I don’t have any medical condition which would endanger the welfare of myself or others on the trip. I am able to hike strenuously. I understand the hazards and responsibilities of wilderness hiking, and I will not hold the Falcon Fund responsible for any injury which results from the hazards of such travel.”

  The back page of the brochure had a description of our leader, March Augusta, but no picture. “March has a BS degree in biology, specializing in ornithology. He is also a knowledgeable wilderness guide with extensive experience in mountain search and rescue. Before he started his own guide service, he was a ranger at Freezeout National Park for several years.” That was unusual because, in my experience, once people get in bed with the federal government they stay there sleeping comfortably until the heavy blanket smothers them.

  “Birders will gather under the elk antlers in the waiting room of the Fire Pond Airport at 3 o’clock,” the letter that accompanied the brochure said. “You will be met by your guide, March Augusta, who will escort you to your hotel in Fire Pond. Happy birding.”


  Would I know an elk antler when I saw one? Would it look any different from any other horn? Well, I’d know a birder, I figured, a little old person with silver plumage, running shoes, expensive binoculars dangling from its neck. Was this any place for Neil Hamel? I wondered, walking down the exit ramp. I felt like I was going off to camp with dirty underwear and was more than a little embarrassed. I might have climbed back on the plane except that the next and last stop was two hundred miles west in Bullhorn and that’s where the rancher was headed. Damn Joan, I thought, dreams have to be acted on, you can’t expect someone else to do it for you.

  The not-so-far West is usually a friendly place. When there are fewer people around, they’re happier to see you. Montana has half the population of New Mexico with more land, and, except for Bernalillo County, New Mexico isn’t even what you would call sparsely populated. There are places where you can drive all day and the one or two vehicles you see are pickup trucks and the drivers wave. There were signs in the Fire Pond Airport, WELCOME TO MONTANA, and a booth that passed out brochures.

  Five or six birders were flocked under an impressive set of horns. I introduced myself.

  “Neil, isn’t that a man’s name?” said a little gray wren.

  “Not when I’m wearing it,” I said. “I’m taking the place of my aunt, Joan Hamel, who died recently. Did any of you know her?”

  “Not I,” hissed a blue jay.

  “I did.” It was an owl in deep and sonorous voice. “I met her on a piping plover field trip to Rhode Island. A lovely woman. Very sorry to hear of her death. Very sorry indeed.”

  He was a small, fine-boned gentleman with snowy hair. His blue eyes were magnified to epic proportions by the thick lenses he wore. All of the expedition members, I noticed, had a certain zinginess about the eyes. The eyes were quick and intense, and, although some of their bodies were beginning to shrivel, none of them were slouches in terms of energy, either, I learned.

  “My name is Avery, Avery Wells,” the man said.