Skyward. Mary Monroe Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ with helpless horror as the eagle’s great wings fluttered against the bruise-colored sky. His breath choked in his throat as the bird seemed to hang in the air. Then the wings crumpled and the eagle dropped like a stone to the earth.

      His cry of anguish mingled with the shrieking wind that streaked across the wetlands, whisking away the old man’s hat to reveal a head of snowy white hair. Spurred forward, he took off at a stiff-legged gait across the frosted fields straight for the fallen bird.

      Buteos: The Soaring Hawks.Buteos are medium-to-large hawks with broad wings and a short tail. Although slow flyers, they excel in soaring and hunt on the wing. They are a diverse group with a wide range of habitats and prey. Buteos include red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks, broad-winged hawks, Swainson’s hawks, rough-legged hawks and ferruginous hawks.

      2

      Harris stood in the brisk wind watching the sky until the tiny speck of brown that was the hawk disappeared from view. Scanning the horizon, there wasn’t another hawk in sight; only a broad-winged vulture coasted over the treetops.

      He could remember his grandfather telling him of the days when he could walk a mile through a country field like this one and see every kind of hawk: sharp-shinned, Cooper’s, red-tailed and red-shouldered, kestrel and harrier—though his grandfather called those small but quick birds “marsh hawks.” Harris was no older than five when his grandfather began walking the fields with him. His grandfather would pause, point to the sky and ask, “What’s that?” Harris would shout out an answer with boyish confidence and never feel rebuked when his grandfather, more often than not, gently corrected him. Those walks were some of the most memorable in his life and fired a lifelong devotion to birds of prey. His grandfather had loved raptors, hawks especially, and taught him that identifying a hawk in the air was not as much a skill as it was an art. Color of plumage wasn’t a key, as it was in smaller birds. He was a shrewd and patient teacher, instructing Harris to take his time to read the subtle signs—the cant of a wing, the speed of the flap—and to trust his intuitive sense of how a bird appeared in flight before making his call. By the time his grandfather passed away Harris was only twelve years of age, but he could unerringly spot and name a raptor from a distance.

      Harris was born in the early 1960s, a decade that recognized the devastation DDT brought to the environment. Since his boyhood he’d worked to help rebuild the birds of prey population from near extinction. They still had a long way to go before the skies would be as filled with raptors as his grandfather remembered, but they were on the right track. Each time he released a bird back to the wild he felt his entire being stir with hope.

      “Harris!”

      He reluctantly turned from the sky to see a young, black, teenage girl neatly dressed in jeans and fleece trotting toward him from the edge of the open meadow. He waved an arm in silent acknowledgment, then cast a final glance toward the sky. The hawk was long gone. Beyond the circle of meadow, the fog was closing in.

      “Mr. Henderson?” the girl called again, breathless from her run. “I’m supposed to tell you that Sherry needs you back at the clinic right away. Someone’s brought in a bird what’s been shot.”

      Harris cursed softly.

      “I’ll take this one,” Maggie said, bending to pick up the gear. “Aren’t you supposed to take Marion Christmas shopping? That little darling’s been talking about nothing else all week.”

      He nodded with acknowledgment as he helped gather the gear. His five-year-old daughter had woken him at dawn that morning, already dressed in her best pants and sweater, her hair haphazardly pulled back with a pink plastic headband. She was so excited about their holiday outing that she only nibbled at her breakfast, preferring to drink several glasses of orange juice that kept her running back and forth from the bathroom. He chuckled quietly as he walked, recalling how he’d asked if she had a valve open in her plumbing. His last view before leaving the house was of Marion’s forlorn face staring back at him from the front window. He’d waved and called out that he’d be back soon, but she hadn’t smiled. He’d had to go to release the hawk, but the memory still tugged at his heartstrings.

      “You haven’t bought a thing for that child yet, have you?” Maggie asked in response to his long silence. They’d walked across the field to the truck and she was regarding him skeptically. When he didn’t reply she added, “Good Lord, Harris. Do you even have a Christmas tree up?”

      “Yep. The tree’s up and it’s even got lights on it, so don’t you worry, Mother Maggie,” he said with a teasing grin, and was pleased to see her face soften in response. Once Maggie got going, it was hard to derail her. “Marion and I amble into town every Christmas Eve, just the two of us, and she gets to pick out something special. It’s kind of our ritual.”

      “Ritual?” Maggie looked at him disbelievingly. “Come on, Henderson, you can’t fool me. I’ve known you too long. You’re a hermit who’d never leave the woods if you didn’t have to, and this so-called ritual is your excuse for not having to face going into stores more than you absolutely have to.” She was nearly as tall as he was and her green eyes were fiery as they bore into his. “No more excuses today. You go on and leave that bird to me and give that poor child a Merry Christmas.”

      Harris held up his hands in mock defeat. “All right, all right, I’ll go. You can take this one.”

      “But Sherry said she needs you, Harris,” the young girl interrupted. “It’s an eagle. She said for you to hurry.” The cold wind puckered the volunteer’s lips but her brown eyes were soft with worry.

      Harris gave Maggie a knowing look and took off at a trot for his truck parked at the edge of the field. He treated all kinds of raptors at the center: hawks, owls, ospreys and falcons. But it was the eagle that he had the greatest affinity for. In his opinion, no other raptor could compare with the eagle’s grace and power. And it was that very power that made them so dangerous to handle. Unlike substantial Maggie, Sherry was older and as small and delicate as a peregrine falcon. And though just as clever and quick, she didn’t have the physical strength to handle eagles. When an injured one was brought in, Harris took the call.

      Silenced by duty, Maggie jumped into the cab beside him. The gravel flew as his wheels dug in and he took off down the dirt road. The bird-flying field was only a short drive down the main road from the Coastal Carolina Center for Birds of Prey. He parked his truck at the house and trotted through the small tangle of trees straight toward the small white frame house mounted on cinder blocks that was the clinic. Immediately, he spotted Sherry Dodds, his senior volunteer, in full leather protective gear hovering uncertainly near a tall, slender black man with snowy white hair. Harris’s eyes fell to the man’s arms and his step faltered.

      Maggie grasped his arm tight. “Oh, my God…”

      Harris swallowed hard. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The old man carried a full-size bald eagle in his bare arms. That eagle’s talons could rip apart the man’s thin coat and arms, and its razor-sharp beak could slash his face with the speed of a bullet.

      “Slow down,” Harris said to Maggie as they approached. They didn’t want to startle the eagle. It seemed to be in shock, not moving a muscle save for its glaring yellow eyes that followed their approach with typical intensity.

      “Thank God you’re here,” Sherry exclaimed, straining to keep her voice down. It was rare to see her flustered. “This man…he just walked in here with the eagle…in his arms! I got the gloves out, but with him holding it like that, unprotected…I didn’t know what to do!”

      Harris СКАЧАТЬ