Of a Feather Read online

  “Yeah, I guess.” I’m not really focused on the hunting part. How can anyone focus on the hunting part when I mentioned a real live red-tailed hawk?

  “Hunting is mean.” This girl—Peyton, I think—crosses her arms.

  “Are you vegetarian?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Then somebody’s hunting your meat for you. So I guess you’re mean, just once removed.”

  Her face curls into a scowl. “That’s not very nice.”

  The other girls look at me like I’ve called Peyton a mud-sucking pig. When she slinks away, they follow her toward the swings. It’s not like I wanted to be friends with them anyway. I mean, I’m here for a couple weeks, a month maybe.

  “I hunt.” The only boy in our group sits at the table under the pavilion. He’s the one who moved because his parents got divorced. He’s wearing a camouflage shirt and Carhartts with grubby sneakers. I think his name is Jaxon.

  “I don’t,” I say. “But the hawk is pretty cool.”

  “I’ve seen one up close once,” he says. “My dad’s a game warden back in St. Johnsbury. He brought home a hawk who’d been hit by a car.”

  He seems a little too laid-back about something as egg-crackingly awesome as having a hawk in his house.

  But then he hitches up a corner of his mouth, half smiling, and says, “I held its wing while my dad examined it.”

  And I see that he gets it, that he knows.

  I want to grab him by the shoulders and have him tell me what kind of hawk and hit where and did he get to have it perch on his glove—basically everything about his hawk. I want to tell him everything I’ve learned about hawks. To scream with him about how amazing it is to just be near a hawk!

  But the buzz crackles: Dangerous.

  I know better than to let my feelings out. I decide not to get into it.

  “Cool,” I say.

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  And we sit there in the shade, not talking, until the bell rings and we all file back into the classroom.

  “See you tomorrow,” he says to me as we grab our stuff to go.

  I glance up at him through a frizz of hair, nod a little, and shuffle out the door.

  * * *

  Beatrice takes me back to work with her. She’s a vet technician, which means she gets to pet a lot of animals from what I can tell. I hang out in the back of the office with the dogs and cats left for medical stuff or boarding. They all kind of look how I feel, like they’re full of questions and a little lost.

  It’s weird how Jaxon saying he’d see me tomorrow kind of deflated me. Shouldn’t a person saying they’d see you tomorrow, speaking to you at all in a friendly way, make you feel good? But he was being friendly to the half girl I pretended to be. The quiet one who enjoys sailing on lakes and has never had to beg a gas station attendant for an extra hot dog. That’s who he wants to see tomorrow. Not like this should surprise me. No one looks at the whole me and sticks around.

  Mom tried to do a fancy friends’ birthday party for me in kindergarten at one of our old apartments. One of the kids’ moms called social services after finding bugs swarming some dirty dishes in our kitchen. That ordeal was the first time I remember Mom locking herself in the bathroom for a night. Next day at school, no one sat with me at lunch. Cooties, I heard whispered as I passed. I was about ready to lock myself into a bathroom stall, but instead, I smiled. Teeth bared and blinding white, I walked right past that whisper and every other one I’ve heard since.

  Friends are dangerous. But no one can hurt you if you don’t let them see you, if they only see the smile.

  One of the dogs whimpers this pathetic little yowl. I drag a chair over to his crate, pull out the hawk book, and read him the biological facts of the red-tailed hawk. Crop, gizzard, mantle, crown, primary feathers, secondary feathers. The dog quits yowling and starts snuffling at my neck. I pet his wet nose. He licks my finger like he’s hungry.

  I’m definitely getting hungry.

  Beatrice slides open a pocket door and sighs. “I think we’re done here.”

  I hop down and slip the book into my bag. “Red’s probably getting hungry.”

  Beatrice’s eyebrows rise slowly. “Oh?”

  “Definitely,” I say. “Her gizzard’s growling.”

  She snorts a little laugh. “I’ve never heard a gizzard growl.”

  “They do,” I say with authority.

  “Then I guess we need to get a move on dinner.”

  When we get home, I start poking through the pantry. When I live with Mom—even Gram, some nights—if I’m hungry, it’s up to me to figure out something to eat. On Beatrice’s shelves, I see cans of beans and jars with vegetables floating in them. What am I supposed to do with these?

  The aunt appears like a ghost behind me. “Do you eat soup?”

  I shrug.

  “Soup it is.” She scoops up two cans and three jars. An hour later, she serves soup. It’s not bad.

  “How was school?” she asks me.

  “Fine.” I try to avoid all personal questions as a matter of policy.

  “Meet any nice kids?”

  For a hot second, I think about Jaxon, but the buzz warns, Dangerous. “A few,” I say. This is the kind of vague response that stops adults from further prying.

  It works like magic. The aunt doesn’t ask another question. I feel only a little bad about it.

  We eat in silence. A clock somewhere ticks. A car drives by. A bug outside starts grinding its wings.

  “I’m done,” I say, standing. I put my bowl in the sink. “Can you start teaching me about Red now?”

  Beatrice’s eyebrows crimp like she’s calculating something, but then she’s up and tugging on her boots.

  She shows me how to clean the aviary, how to cut up the dead mice—gross—and how to clean the leather gloves. Then she hands me a new glove, kid-sized and everything.

  “Thought you might need this,” she says. “It’s called a gauntlet.”

  I slide it over my fingers. It’s thick and heavy. It must have cost a fortune.

  It’s mine.

  I probably should have talked more at dinner.

  “Thank you,” I say, finally.

  She smiles and nods in response, then calls Red down from a nearby tree. The hawk swoops and lands on Beatrice’s glove, snaps up the tidbit of meat from her fingers. Then Beatrice turns to me.

  “Lift your arm, straight and strong.”

  I lift it. Try to be strong.

  Beatrice moves my wrist into position, holds my glove against Red’s legs, and then it happens.

  Red steps onto my glove.

  She’s feather-light, but the weight of her—not the “pounds” weight, but the power she gives off—nearly sends me sprawling.

  It only lasts a moment. Red realizes pretty quick I’m not Beatrice and flaps off to a perch. But that moment.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so special.

  The sun has made the trees all golden, and I have that feeling they use to sell packaged cookie dough: like I’ve come home. I let myself soak it in it for one whole second before ripping the feeling off like a Band-Aid.

  I can’t be sucked in by this. This whole life is a placeholder. I have to remember that. No matter how nice, no matter if the hawk lets me hold her, this home is not mine.

  * * *

  Beatrice wakes me up early so I can make the bus. I must look as happy about school as I feel—which is not—because she offers me a gift: “This weekend,” she says. “We’ll start this weekend.”

  I pause midbite of my cereal. “Really?” I say, mouth dripping milk.

  “Do you need a napkin?”

  I wipe my face on my arm. “We can start trying to catch my—a—passage hawk this weekend?”

  She smiles. “Season opens September first.”

  My heart revs right up to full throttle. “What do I need to do to get ready?”

  Now Beatrice is actually laughing at me. “Nothing,” she says.
“I have everything we need.”

  “So I just have to wait?”

  “Falconry is eighty percent waiting.”

  I jam my spoon back into the bowl. “I know,” I say.

  I’ve been reading. I got barely six hours of sleep because I was up so late reading the new falconry book I found in the living room alongside the apprentice manual—I have to keep switching between the two just to fill in all the stuff I am completely clueless about. There isn’t enough time in the day to learn everything I want to know about hawks.

  “I’ll pick you up after school,” she says, standing to put her bowl in the sink.

  “I can take the bus.” I don’t need special treatment.

  “You have visitation,” she says.

  “Oh.”

  All the excitement drains out of me like someone pulled the plug in a bathtub. What kind of terrible kid am I that I’m more excited to catch a wild bird than I am to see my mother?

  “We can feed Red when we get back.” Beatrice continues shuffling through her morning routine as she talks. It’s cool that she’s not all over me, trying to make me feel good about things that there’s nothing to feel good about. Gram would be barking at me to stop frowning, that I’m lucky to have a mom at all, and can’t I show some gratitude for everything I’ve got by doing a load or two of laundry?

  “Okay,” I say, and slurp the last of my milk.

  * * *

  School is school. In the cafeteria, I grab lunch and take my tray to a table in the corner. I brought the paperback novel from home for company and start to read. Sam has stolen a baby peregrine falcon from its nest. I’m half horrified and half jealous.

  “Can I sit here?” A girl with straw-colored hair and green-brown eyes hovers over the seat opposite me.

  “Whatever,” I say, and keep reading.

  I get another paragraph in—Sam’s calling his falcon Frightful—before the girl interrupts me.

  “Are you new here? I’ve never seen you before. My name’s Jamie Hendricks.”

  “I’m reading,” I say without looking up.

  “Oh,” Jamie says. She eats her sandwich from a fancy insulated lunch box with her name embroidered on it. She probably lives in a mansion with a golden retriever and parents who tuck her in with a lullaby every night. I scoop the last of my stew into my mouth, shove my book into my pocket, and get up to dump my tray.

  “I’ll see you in class,” she says. Her words are like hooks, catching me before I can escape.

  This girl does not take a hint. “Yeah,” I say, and run out the doors to the playground.

  I find a bush near the school wall and sneak behind it. I’m only half surprised to find that Jaxon’s already shoved himself back there. He’s using a pen to scratch a piece of wood.

  “Hey,” he says, not even looking up.

  “Hey,” I echo. Then, “Whatcha doin’?” escapes before I can stop my mouth.

  “I whittle,” he says. “But you can’t bring knives to school.”

  “Yeah,” I say, though I’ve never really thought about it.

  “Pen does an okay job,” he continues, “if the wood is soft.” He pulls out some plastic knives. “These help with the bigger cuts.”

  I pick up a knife. “From the caf?”

  He shrugs, half smiling. “Use what you find.”

  He pokes around under the bush and pulls out another hunk of wood. He holds it out to me. I take it.

  I fish a pen from a pocket and begin scratching at the wood. It makes a small gouge. I try the knife; a long chip peels off. And that’s how we spend the whole of recess. Scratching the wood, alone, together.

  Jaxon’s piece looks like a lizard.

  Mine’s going to be a hawk.

  After school, Beatrice drives me down to Rutland. She listens to public radio, some talk show about a tax bill in the legislature, and I scratch at my wood. It’s not good, but it does look kind of like a bird. When we get to visitation, I hand the wood to my mom.

  “I made this,” I say.

  She takes it in her fingers like I’ve just handed her a bomb. Her eyes tear up and her lip trembles.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know it’s awful. It’s supposed to be a hawk, but—”

  She wipes her hands over her face and fake smiles back. “I love it, Reens. It’s beautiful.”

  Nothing I do is right. Even my gifts make people cry. “Do you have the sparkle cards?” I ask, trying to move on. And then Mom is crying even harder, mumbling that she forgot, she forgets everything, how could she be so stupid?

  I tell her it’s nothing, not to worry, because it is nothing, it has to be nothing, even though a tiny voice inside asks, How could she forget? But I crush that voice and grab a deck of cards from the shelf like they’re a life raft. We play a bunch of games of hearts. I let her win every hand.

  * * *

  In math on Wednesday, the teacher has us turn our desks around to work in pairs, and I discover Jaxon behind me. “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.” He pulls his pen and wood out from the desk as though the whittling and not the work sheet is what’s been assigned. But then I notice he’s already finished the work sheet.

  “You can copy,” he says, not looking up.

  “I don’t do that,” I say.

  He smiles. “Good.”

  I hunch over my paper; he hunches over his wood. The briefest glance at my school file would reveal that I am not a great student, particularly in the math department. This algebra? Algibberish . . . When I get stuck on the second problem, Jaxon—without appearing to even look up from his whittling—says, “You forgot to subtract the six from the other side.”

  “I don’t need help,” I snap. Jaxon hunches farther down and keeps whittling. I feel a little bad but also a little freaked out. Do I look like I’m having that much trouble with this work sheet?

  And then it sinks in: I have no idea what six he’s even talking about.

  “What six?” I finally allow myself to blurt out.

  Jaxon puts aside his pen and wood. “Here,” he says, pointing farther up on my paper. “You just left this part out.”

  It takes a second, but I see it. That rat of a six was hiding all the way over on the other side of the equation! This odd calm comes over me as I get to x = 2. “Thanks.”

  Jaxon nods. “Sure.”

  At lunch, I scarf down my food before anyone can ask to sit with me. I rush outside and find Jaxon behind the same bush. My whole body kind of sighs with relief as I sink down next to him.

  “Hey,” he says, already whittling.

  “Hey.” I pull out my book and read.

  * * *

  After school, Beatrice and I work on this bal-chatri trap. It’s a safe trap that won’t hurt the bird, Beatrice promises. It looks like an upside-down colander with a mouse stuck under it, and it’s covered with wispy little strings. The hawk’s feet get tangled in the loops of string when it flies down to get the mouse in the trap, but nothing else will happen. The trap has weights around its edges so the hawk will be grounded once its feet are caught. Even the mouse will be okay because it’s protected by the wire mesh.

  Beatrice has an old trap that we’re fixing. We’re using new wire to patch some holes in the mesh and then we have to add more weight—Beatrice said that the last time she used it, the hawk was able to fly off with the trap, which is how the mesh got kind of beat up. And then we have to make all the loops out of these tiny little strings to tie onto the trap.

  “I need a break,” Beatrice says, putting down the roll of fishing line.

  I shake my hand, trying to untangle my fingers from a failed attempt at a knot. “I’ll keep working.”

  “You need a break,” she says, pointing at the deep red dents in my fingers from the pressure of the plastic string.

  I shrug. If we take a break, the trap might not be finished in time and then it’ll be a whole other week before we can start with my quest for the passage hawk.

  “Red needs a w
alk,” she says, and heads out back.

  I sigh, drop my failed loop, tie on the work boots Beatrice found for me—she hit a thrift store on her lunch break and came back with treasure—and follow. She’s already gone into the aviary. I find her with Red on her fist, standing in front of the little table in the tiny room between the doors leading into Red’s open flight space. She holds her fist near this weird contraption on the table: it looks like a scale, except it has a perch instead of a flat plate on top.

  “She’s good,” Beatrice says, marking something in a small notebook on the tabletop.

  I know what she’s doing from all the falconry books I’ve read—every bird has its flying weight, which the falconer needs to keep the bird at to fly it. If the hawk is too heavy, it might not hunt. Too light, it isn’t getting enough food or might be sick. Falconers figure out what the flying weight of their bird is and try to keep them in that condition. But still: it’s a little creepy, weighing an animal.

  “Isn’t it kind of cruel,” I suggest, “to keep Red hungry?”

  Beatrice arches an eyebrow at me. “Keeping her motivated by the food is a part of it. But it’s not starvation. Think of Red as an athlete. I’m helping her stay in top form.” She hands me my gauntlet as she steps out of the tight room and into the golden afternoon. She throws Red off the fist and the hawk disappears, the jingle of her bells the only evidence of her presence.

  “Give me your left arm,” Beatrice says, and I lift it. She grabs it and curls my gloved fingers into a fist. “Hold still.”

  Is she . . . is she really . . . ?

  “Now, whistle,” Beatrice says, shoving a chunk of meat into the space between the leather of the thumb and index finger of my gauntlet.

  I do, and Red comes diving down from the branches, her bells warning of her approach. I turn my head and see her just as she swoops up and alights on my glove.

  She’s never flown to me before.

  Red devours the morsel, then stands, peaceful.

  “You have to hold these between your middle and ring fingers,” Beatrice says, tugging the two little leather strips that hang from Red’s legs and jamming them into my hand. “They’re called jesses, and they’ll keep her from flying off.”