The Snow Falcon (22 page)

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was for her to take charge again, the way things had once been, only this time she would have to devote herself full-time to the task. The question was, did she want to?

It kept her awake at night, thinking about it. Did she want to spend the next ten years of her life carrying the burden of keeping the family together? Whatever happened, it looked as if they would lose the house. Pete would have to accept that she would make all the decisions, would talk to customers, would try to win back lost business. He would just be a hired hand, in effect doing the manual work. That would be hard on him, adding to his sense of failure. She would have to buoy him up, sometimes be hard on him, remind him of what his dad had been like when he’d given up on himself. Did she want that? Did she want to be responsible for him?

She didn’t know the answer. So she sat at the kitchen table at night, drinking milk and smoking cigarettes, and wondered what to do with her life.

IN THE MORNING, she was tired. She hadn’t gone back to bed until three A.M., and even then she hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours. Her job at the grocery store had become full-time, for which she was grateful because of the money, but it depressed her to spend her days stacking shelves and working on the register—this only added to her sense that she was wasting her life. She’d graduated from high school and could have gone to college if she hadn’t got married, and though she didn’t kid herself that she was any kind of genius, she knew she was smart enough to do more than count change and pack orders.

When she took a break at lunchtime, she had to get out for a little while, just to clear her head. Maybe this would help her to think. She was heading along the sidewalk, going nowhere in particular, turning her problems over in her mind as if by thinking long and hard enough some solution might make itself known to her. She was hardly aware of people moving around her, now and again brushing her as she almost walked into them. Then somebody was right in front of her, and she looked up just as she collided into Michael Somers as he came out of a doorway with a stack of splintered wood cradled in his arms. He stumbled, and the wood scattered all over the sidewalk.

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“I’m sorry,” she said, bending down to help him pick it all up. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Forget it.” He barely glanced at her.

She helped him carry it over to his car, where he shoved it into the back, and when they were finished, he turned around and looked surprised to find her still there. He was a couple of years older than her—maybe four or five, she thought, about the same age as Pete. Right there, however, was where any similarity ended. He hadn’t run to fat the way Pete had, and though his look was kind of chilly, it wasn’t desperate and mean the way Pete had begun to appear to her these days. She could see he had no idea who she was—which, she guessed, shouldn’t surprise her. She would have been little more than a kid when he’d last seen her, and now she was wearing her hair tied back to save her taking any trouble with it, and she had on old Levi’s that were about worn through in places and a thick sweater that had once belonged to Pete. She touched her hand to her forehead, brushing back a strand of hair that had come loose. The wood was all picked up.

“Thanks,” he said before going to fetch a thermos from the front of his Nissan.

“Are you always this talkative with people?” she said when he came back. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

He looked at her blankly.

“I’m Rachel Laine.” She shrugged. “Actually, it’s Ellis now, my married name.”

He looked uncertain. Then it came to him, and he smiled. “Rachel? Sure, I remember you.” He looked her over, which made her feel self-conscious. “I guess I’m getting antisocial. I’m not used to people around here stopping to pass the time of day.”

She’d heard he was back in town, of course, and just that morning somebody had mentioned something about the old store his dad had run, but with her own problems crowding her thoughts, she hadn’t paid a lot of attention. “They’ll get over it,” she said. “Something else will come along and you’ll be yesterday’s news.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

An awkward silence fell between them. Rachel was about to smile and go on her way, but she realized she had nowhere in particular to go; she was just killing time. She gestured instead to the store. “You look like you’re busy in there. What are you doing?”

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“Fixing the place up. I might reopen it.”

“Good for you,” she said.

He looked surprised, then held up his thermos. “Want to take a look around? I can offer you coffee.”

“Sure,” Rachel said. “Why not?”

Inside, the store was a wreck. The counter was half ripped to pieces, and the floor had gaping holes in it. Michael poured her coffee into a paper cup.

“Sorry, I don’t have sugar or milk.”

“Black’s fine.” She looked around a little sadly. “I remember this place when your dad ran it,” she commented. “I remember when you worked here, too.” He looked surprised at that. “My dad was a builder. He ran an account with your dad, and he used to send me in to pick up things.”

“I think I remember you,” Michael told her.

“I doubt it. I was just a kid then.”

“No, I do,” he insisted. “I mean, I admit I didn’t recognize you at first, but now I do. You look the same.”

She laughed. “Either you’re flattering me or you’re lying, but thanks anyway.” She remembered back to when she’d been at school. “It all seems a long time ago now, doesn’t it? Sometimes I can hardly believe I’m the same person. Things don’t always work out the way you plan them.”

“No, they don’t,” he agreed in a quiet voice.

She’d been thinking about herself, but now she silently told herself she had a big mouth. What was she thinking of? She imagined the last thing he needed reminding about was the way life gets screwed up. She changed the subject, bringing up the name of a girl she thought he might remember. He took the cue and said he did.

“She’s a model now,” she went on. “She works in New York—can you believe that? Her folks still live in the same old house, though, and her brother lives in Bakerstown.” She chatted on for a while, keeping to innocuous reminiscences about people they both knew from school, filling him in on the occasional funny story, which made them both laugh. She finished her coffee and stayed until it was time for her to get back to work.

“I should go,” she said, checking her watch. “It was good seeing you, though.” She meant it, too. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. Maybe it had done him some good, too, she thought.

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He seemed a little less withdrawn than he had a half hour earlier. He looked different than when she’d bumped into him on the street. She tried to think in what way exactly. It was his eyes, she decided in the end. He looked a little less sad.

“Good luck,” she told him at the door. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

They smiled at each other, and she turned away.

MICHAEL CLOSED THE WOODSHED DOOR BE-hind him and took down the gauntlet hanging from a nail in the wall. It was early. Overnight the temperature had fallen and the wind had risen. He’d lain awake in bed listening to the creaking of the house and found it comforting. When a strong-enough gust blew, it rattled the panes in the windows. He liked the feeling of having the house to himself. After St. Helen’s, it was a luxury not to hear the moans and deluded mutterings of men in their sleep. Sometimes he liked to get up and wander around at night, just for the feeling of solitude and space. The only room he avoided was his mother’s, not because he feared her presence—he knew she wasn’t there—but just because he wanted the memories to come slowly, at a pace he could make sense of. He thought going into her room would pull him too far forward, to the time she’d died.

It had snowed during the night, and the wind had caused the snow to drift onto the porch. The clearing was newly covered with an eight-inch layer of fresh snow that concealed the tracks he’d made over the last few days and subtly altered the contours and dips of the ground. Trees that had been bare now held a ridge of white along their branches, and the evergreens and undergrowth were dusted with frost.

Up high, across the river and above the woods, the mountains appeared forbidding without blue sky and winter sun. Heavy gray cloud looked ominous and immovable, and the wind had died. Some

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crows called from just beyond the clearing, but their cries were muffled, the landscape soaking up the sound.

Cully stood on her perch, watching him, plumage ruffled against the cold, one leg raised in the attitude of rest. She appeared content to remain where she was.

He held out his fist to her from a distance of twelve feet, his glove garnished with a strip of gray fur and red meat. “Come on, Cully,” he said softly.

She tilted her head at the sound of his voice, her look childlike. She appeared to be contemplating whether or not she felt like playing this game. Hunger got the better of her and she lowered her clenched foot and roused her feathers, shaking herself from head to tail like a dog drying itself. With her plumage then lying sleek, she clenched her feet and leaned toward him.

“Come, Cully,” he coaxed.

Her wings flicked open, and in a second she was there, looking at him, the glove, the meat. Then she bent to eat.

“Good morning,” he said quietly, and while she fed, he attached jesses, swivel, and leash, then took her outside.

In the morning air, she bobbed her head with keen pleasure, taking in the changes in the landscape that had occurred overnight. Her perch in the clearing was half buried in the snow, and instead of putting her there, he let her stand on the porch railing and tied her leash. He’d been feeding her four or five times a day, just small amounts each time, and persuading her to come to his fist for her meal, extending the distance each time. She would come thirty yards on a line without any hesitation.

Fetching the scales from the house, he weighed her; she was exactly three and a half pounds. He’d learned that at that weight she watched his movements avidly, waiting for food. This was called “being keenly set.” He looked at his watch and started to tie a fifty-yard nylon line to her swivel. The remote end was attached to a wooden handle that, with the drag of the line, was too heavy for her to carry off. He checked his watch again, then set about tying meat to the lure he’d made from a weighted pad of leather and a pair of duck’s wings. The lure was joined to an eight-foot length of cord that ended in a heavy wooden handle.

The sound of a vehicle turning off the road above reached him,

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and he heard its careful descent down the track. Tom Waters’s Cherokee nosed into the clearing past the trees, where Torn killed the engine and raised a hand in greeting as he got out.

“Sorry I’m late. The roads are bad.”

“It’s okay,” Michael said.

Torn stopped before he reached the porch, observing Cully on the rail, who in turn observed him. His expression was contemplative, thoughtful.

“I give up,” he said at last. “What is it? I mean, I know she looks great, better than ever, but what is it?”

Pleased that he’d noticed, Michael pointed out that the improvement was in Cully’s feathers. When she’d been confined in a cage for a few days, the wire mesh had bent half her tail out of shape and shredded the primaries on her good wing. When he’d taken a closer look, he’d found some of the shafts actually broken. Later in the year she would molt and replace damaged plumage, but until then her flying ability would have been impaired if he hadn’t done something about it.

He showed Tom how he’d repaired the broken shafts by cutting them off and fixing them together again using glue and small wooden needles he’d shaped with a knife. “It’s called ‘imping,’ ” he explained. The bent and frayed feathers had been straightened just by dipping them in hot water. He’d had to bind Cully again in a sheet to accomplish the task, but she had quickly recovered her dignity.

Tom eyed Michael speculatively. “You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?”

Michael shrugged. “I enjoy it.”

“Well, I better do my part then,” Tom said. “Let’s take a look at that wing.”

On the phone the day before, Michael had explained to Tom that Cully’s stiffness seemed to have eased a little in the last few days, but he was still concerned that the injury was bothering her.

“I can’t feel anything obvious,” Tom said.

“Watch this.” Michael walked back into the clearing, unraveling the line tied to Cully’s swivel as he went. His feet sank through fresh snow, halfway up his shin with each step. He went a good twenty yards more than she’d flown before, so that Tom would have a chance to observe her properly.

When he’d gone as far as the line allowed, he kept his body turned

away from her—so that she wouldn’t come too soon—and took the lure out of the bag at his side. He knew she was watching him, waiting for him to call her. The air was cold and quiet, and as he shifted position, he broke the crust on new snow, the sound like crumpled cellophane. His breath came in frozen clouds; the fingers on his unprotected hand were already numb from the cold. As always, he experienced a slight thrill of anticipation, a degree of nervous expectation. There was always the question of whether she would come when he called her, and on other occasions, when she had, he was always mildly surprised. He felt privileged. Today there was the added element of having a spectator. Michael’s excitement was partly the feeling of showing off some treasured thing, like a child with a secret, but it was also the pleasure of sharing an experience that never failed to move him. If he wanted for anything, it was for this sharing—a very human trait, he’d thought. Something is added to the appreciation and wonder of beauty in this way.