Raptor Read online

  The captive is “manned” (trained to endure the presence of its captor) by being carried on a gloved hand, spoken to and softly stroked. This process works best when the bird and the trainer stay awake together until a bond is formed in mutual exhaustion and the captive learns to accept the captor. The purpose is to control the bird’s anger and put it to use, not to break her spirit. A portion of her life thereon is spent in the darkness of the hood, and then there are the exhilarating moments when she is released to be flown at prey.

  The falcon is kept hungry and fed only from a lure, a padded weight with pigeon or other food attached, which it becomes accustomed to returning to. Albertus Magnus said: ‘in order to be sure that your falcon will be fond of you and never leave you, grind together equal quantities of ache, black mint, and parsley and give this to the falcon on warm meat.”

  Eventually, a falconer can trust his bird to go out and hunt for game yet return to him and the lure to be fed. Although there is always the possibility that she will fly higher in her gyre until she spots some far distant quarry and never comes back. Falconry is romance, not science.

  The Lean Cuisine was done. There were no dishes in my efficiency, so I ate my zucchini lasagna from the metal tray, pulled open the plaid sofa and closed my eyes. I imagined being kept hooded in darkness and in hunger, being held and stroked and forced to tolerate a dreaded enemy’s voice and leather-gloved touch. I imagined bating and waiting and then finally being released on a hunting expedition, circling higher and higher and higher.

  6

  THE NEXT MORNING there was a note for me at the Aspen Inn desk typed on plain white paper. It had been dropped off by an anonymous person at dawn. “I must talk to you about your client, March Augusta,” it said, not bothering to mention who “I” was. “Be in Ampersand 10 o’clock tomorrow Sunday morning alone.”

  “Why Ampersand?” I asked March as he pointed it out to me on the road map, a dot on the plain, about three hundred miles from where we sat in the visiting room of the Fire Pond County Jail. As jails go, it was top of the line, a massive stone building from the same Indian-slaughtering era as the courthouse. They thought so well of their prisoners in Fire Pond that they had built a residential neighborhood around them. There were condominiums for sale across the street.

  “Did you know,” March said, “that there are no straight lines in nature?”

  “Or in conversation.”

  He laughed, a sound that was good to hear. “There are no straight wounds, either. If you find one on a man or an animal, you can be sure it was not come by naturally. But look at this. Highway 510 in and out of Ampersand, and put there by the Highway Department, is absolutely straight for eighty miles. If anyone’s following you out there, you’ll know. The country is so open and empty, you’d notice if a plane flew overhead. Except for that, I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to meet in Ampersand. It’s another prairie town, some people work for the highway department, most are ranchers. Nothing special going on.”

  “Did Sandy Pedersen hang out there?”

  “I doubt it—there’s only one saloon.” He looked down, embarrassed by what he had to ask. “Are you going to go?”

  Was I? Into the Great Plains on behalf of an imprisoned client who was afraid to meet my eyes because I might see him beg? “Yup.”

  He began picking at a tear in his jeans. “It could be dangerous.”

  “It could.”

  He looked up quickly, looked down again.

  “But it’s highly unlikely,” I said. “You’re the accused. What good’s it going to do anyone to harm me?”

  “I don’t know, but be careful.”

  “Just don’t tell anyone that I’m going.”

  “I won’t,” he replied.

  “Can you think of anything you’ve forgotten to tell me?” I asked, picking mentally at my own jeans. “Any reason why Betts is so overzealous?”

  He shrugged. “No. As far as I know, he doesn’t even dislike me.”

  “Your wife seems to feel strongly about him.”

  “Katharine’s not my wife. We live together but we’re not married. She’s been through some bad times, she tends to get emotional about things. She’ll be here any minute, by the way, if you want to talk to her.”

  Reason enough for me to be on my way. “Maybe later. Let’s see what’s waiting in Ampersand first. You doing okay in here? Sorry I wasn’t able to get you a phone and a color TV in your private room.”

  “I’m surviving. They took away my belt and shoelaces just in case I got the urge to hang myself. If I’m here long enough I’ll make you some beaded earrings—that’s what the prisoners do to keep busy. Thanks for getting me my own cell by the way. Some of the guys in here aren’t too crazy about rangers, even ex-rangers.”

  “I’ll get you out, don’t worry. If I can’t prove you didn’t do it, I’ll find out who did.” I stood up.

  “Be careful, Neil, and … thanks.”

  If I had left one second sooner, I would have been struck down in the doorway by a heat-seeking missile. The guards here were pretty casual about visiting hours, particularly when it came to Katharine. She burst into the room with her black hair flying. At least I knew she hadn’t been eavesdropping—she couldn’t sit still long enough. I wondered what fuel she was running on, high octane, low lead?

  “You got anything yet?” she asked me.

  “Working on it.”

  She looked at me quickly, with all the attention of someone who glances at the face of their watch and two minutes later can’t remember the time.

  “March’s life is in danger here.”

  “I’ll get it solved by Thursday—I don’t want to lose my discount fare. See you soon,” I said to March.

  “Good luck,” he replied.

  ******

  Three hundred miles. There are probably people who go that far for lunch in Montana or a drink, but I wouldn’t do it for breakfast, so I left Fire Pond early Saturday afternoon. I checked the AAA guide in March’s glove compartment for a place to stay. Ampersand, caught in a time warp, still had one of those dwindling bits of rural Americana, a hyphenated motel known as the Y-Go-By. I didn’t think reservations would be required.

  Avery and Cortland James, who happened to be sitting together in the coffee shop discussing their life lists perhaps, spotted me on my way out of the Aspen Inn. I’d have to talk to John King; he wasn’t keeping his birders busy enough.

  “Neil, wait up,” called Avery. “Where you off to?”

  “The plains,” I said.

  “East?” Cortland perked up, that being his preferred direction. He’d taken to wearing socks with his Top-Siders, I noticed. At least his feet were warm.

  “How far?” asked Avery, his white mane sending feelers in my direction.

  “I can’t say, Avery, I’m following a lead.”

  “Somewhere east of Fire Pond,” Avery punched that into his memory bank to see what came up. As he went into receptor mode, his antennae quivered. “Ah, if you are going east of Fire Pond you will be entering the Crazy Woman Mountains. There was a wagon train that passed through that area back in the days before the West was won. It was attacked by Indians and everyone was killed but one woman. It was a superhuman feat, but she managed to survive alone in those wild mountains for years, attacking and killing Indians. They had a lot of respect for her.”

  “No doubt.”

  “They named the mountains after her, the Crazy Womans. They say her spirit haunts the place to this day and Indians still don’t like to go there.”

  “Avery is quite a historian,” Cortland said.

  Maybe these two had struck up a friendship based, like some marriages, on similar interests, different personas: the visionary and the prep; the youthful old man, the aging boy. One of those relationships where the participants are attracted one day, repelled the next.

  “It’s interesting talking to you two, but I have to get going.” I looked at my wrist. There was no tim
e written there for me to forget because I don’t wear a watch, but I can fake it. In their own way, each of these men wanted to come with me. They didn’t say so, but I could see it expressed in one’s eyes, repressed in the other’s. Avery would follow like an owl seeing all, hearing all. Cortland would come with a tape recorder in his hand, seeing nothing but recording it anyway.

  Avery accepted the inevitable. “It’s good to be alone sometimes,” he said. “It sharpens the perceptions.”

  ******

  Compared to the Rockies the Crazy Womans were gentle hills, but still no place a woman or anyone else would want to winter alone. Highway 510 passed through the foothills and entered the plains. Straight as a line, it cut through space like a knife through water, in nature but not natural. There was space in front of me, space around me, space inside me. Space is no stranger in New Mexico, either, but at home I knew what to expect. There I could be alone between destinations, alone with my thoughts, alone in a crowd. Here I was alone in the alone and rapidly putting the mountains behind me. March’s side-view mirror had a blind spot big enough to hide a semi in, but beyond that I could see the Crazy Womans. Mountains are something you should be driving toward or beside, not away from.

  In New Mexico even when they are behind you they are in front of you or beside you, too. March was right about no one sneaking up on me on Highway 510. If anyone was, I would have seen them coming for miles. Once the Crazy Womans disappeared from the mirror, the view from the rear and the front became exactly the same: gray road, yellow line, blue sky, except for the dips in the middle distance that were filled with the illusion of water. When the sun caught the chrome on a rare approaching car it sparkled like a diamond as it entered the water: the fire, the pond. As I passed through an Indian reservation square white crosses began to appear beside the highway. Sometimes there were several crosses attached to each other like paper doll cutouts, always at a point where the road was absolutely straight with no curves to throw a driver off. Something else was causing these cars to wander off the road and flip the drivers into oblivion.

  If nature doesn’t understand a straight line, it abhors a vacuum. In the emptiness, other dimensions stumble in; I began to think about the crazy women who haunt our nation’s highways. In New Mexico we have La Llorona, the weeper. She has many manifestations, appears on many different roads, always has something to cry about. We also have the hitchhiker, a young girl in a summer dress thumbing a ride. You pick her up. It’s cold and she’s shivering, so you lend her a coat. She lives on a bumpy dirt road and, as you take her home, you can see a light shining in the distance. The next morning you realize the girl still has your coat. You drive back up the road, the light is still burning, the girl’s mother comes to the door. You ask to see her daughter, tell her you need the coat. “That’s impossible,” the mother replies. “My daughter’s car crashed on the highway. She died there last summer.”

  ******

  In the distance sometimes, I saw someone beside the highway, a woman, not weeping, but angry or crazy, shaking a fist, but when I got closer it became a tree or a fence post. Could it be Katharine waiting for me in Ampersand? But why there and why would she have sent a note?

  About one hundred miles from my destination a sunset began and it wouldn’t stop. I’m no stranger to sunsets, but this one was a phenomenon. I’d never seen the sun drop off such a flat horizon and it took a long time doing it. At first the colors were subdued, green tea, teal blue, soft rose. A smoky gray cloud slipped over the sun and then suddenly it burst open like a trap door to the beyond and the sun’s radiance beamed through. It was a radiance you could get lost in, so I stopped the van, got out and leaned against the door, the better to appreciate the performance. The wind picked up, tumbleweeds flew across the road, birds chattered in the dead weeds. It had been a dry year in Montana and the dust that hung in the air refracted the sun’s light and added to the brilliance. With no mountains to frame it, the sky was enormous and the sunset filled most of it. Where it wasn’t setting directly it was bouncing off clouds. I noticed something circling high above me, looping circles around the straight line that was the road, a predator, maybe, in a playful mood, not hungry enough for a kill, toying with the prey. I became conscious of a drone, saw a flash of silver. The sun dropped out from under the cloud, shot its rays upward and turned the airplane into a dazzling gold enticement that would have sent the conquistadors off to conquer and brutalize the skies, had they only known. The gold leapt higher into the clouds, bouncing off peaks of cumulonimbus. The plane turned and went back whence it had come. The sky shifted to mauve and apricot and peach and still showed no signs of quitting. I was out of the mood, though, so I got in the van. “If anyone is following you out there, you’ll know.”

  It was dark by the time I reached Ampersand but my headlights picked out the welcome sign that said BOYS STATE BASKETBALL FINALISTS, 1969, and found the Y-Go-By, which offered quality, service and honesty at its best. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The owner, Henry, a thin, gawky fellow, was very glad to see me, his first customer of the evening, if not the year. He took my name, license number, checked me in.

  And then he leaned over the counter and whispered, “You believe in the debil?”

  “You mean the … ‘devil’?”

  “That’s him.”

  Ghosts, sure, but the devil? Well, it was his place, I was his guest for the evening.

  “I saw the debil once, out in the prairie alone at night. I saw a red glow, but there weren’t no fire there. It was the debil. I saw him as clear as I’m seein’ you now.”

  I took a look at my hands, my dusty running shoes, my dirty jeans. How clear was that?

  “The debil tempted me. ‘Here,’ he says, handing me the bottle, ‘jus’ take one little drink.’”

  “Oh, you mean that little guy in the sombrero.”

  “He weren’t wearing no sombrero. He had horns and a long tail. ‘Jus’ one,’ he says. ‘Jus’ one little drink.’”

  Henry’s wife was probably watching but not listening to Vanna White in the next room. I could hear a TV blasting, and it sounded like a game show. I lowered my voice. “Did you do it?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I saw him, too. He rescued me from the debil.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “A light, a yellow light. The debil was red.”

  “Was that your last drink?”

  “Nope, but close to it. I’ll tell you a secret. You got to get empty, real empty, to leave room for God to come in.”

  “Suppose the devil gets there first?”

  “Then you ain’t empty enough. God is faster than the debil.”

  I was pretty empty. “Thanks, Henry. I’ll think about what you said, but in the meantime, do you know where I could get something to eat?”

  “The Ampersand Cafe right down the street. We’re having a service tomorrow, Sunday, at the Baptist Church, you want to come?”

  “Can’t. Have an appointment.”

  “Watch out. Debil makes appointments, too.”

  The Ampersand Cafe was a bright light on the dark plain, with plastic flowers on every table and a mimeographed menu in a gravy-stained wrapper. It looked like the same gang of cowboys, highwaymen and welfare recipients ate there every night. It was clear to them that I didn’t fit into any of the above categories.

  They were into the two major food groups at the Ampersand Cafe: fat and sugar. No one was worried about too much cholesterol or too little fiber here. There wasn’t a sprout or a whole grain to be had, just plain, unwholesome American food. Meat with potatoes and gravy, balloon bread with butter, iceberg lettuce, three bean salad and Jell-O. There have been days when I’ve whipped up a batch of black-cherry Jell-O and, the minute it stuck together, eaten the whole thing, but I wouldn’t let anyone see me doing it.

  I ordered the meat, mashed potatoes, gravy. The remains arrived gray and desolate on a white plate—road kill.
The highway was the top of the food chain in Ampersand. Take away the varmint, I wanted to say, take away the gravy, take away the plate, but that would have been rude, so I cut it up and pushed it around and tried to make it look like I had taken a bite.

  When I got back to the Y-Go-By, starved, I said “please” before the devil even had to ask. The next morning Ampersand sparkled in the sun, or at least the cars in the parking lot of the Baptist Church did, which is where everybody seemed to be. I was feeling removed from my body, a sensation caused, perhaps, by trafficking with the devil and an absence of food.

  Under the big sky and crystalline air the town had a hallucinatory quality, like a mirage or a movie set where the buildings were wooden fronts, six inches thick, propped up from behind. The only building that had substance was the bar—Lucy’s Wildlife Sanctuary. That looked like a place you could step right into, put your foot up on the rail and challenge everybody to a drink. I began walking down Main Street, the lone gunslinger, but the gun had no bullets. Exactly where this encounter was to take place I didn’t know, but I figured that when the prey gets conspicuous, the predator appears.

  I had walked past the general store, the hardware store, the garage and that was it, so I turned around and started back. A car appeared at the far end of town, sparkling like a red diamond before it got covered up by its own dust. The car stopped and the dust settled to reveal a red Mercedes-Benz. I watched warily while the door opened, and something white flapped and fluttered out. An Indian in ceremonial feathers, a bating bird, the ghost of a crazed woman, the devil in disguise? This was beginning to go beyond your run-of-the-mill hallucination to the place where devils danced and weepers wept. As the apparition walked toward me, the flapping white wings settled down, draped and turned out to be robes. Just how empty had I become?

  The robes were inhabited by a man, or maybe a boy—he was pretty enough with velvety, dark eyes and an aquiline nose.

  “Prince Sahid,” he said, offering an elegant manicured hand.