Мэри Элис Монро – Skyward (страница 17)

“I confess,” Lijah said, that wry smile playing at his lips again. “A couple of those nights near froze my vitals off. But we’re heading toward spring, so I’m hopeful.”

“You won’t freeze another night, not if Miss Majors has anything to say about it. She’s the one saw you creeping out of the cabin at dawn and has been worrying about you ever since. Knowing her, she’ll have that place in right order before nightfall.”

Lijah’s brows rose. “Miss Majors? That your new lady friend?”

“Good God, no! She’s the nanny. She only just arrived yesterday and will be staying in the house with us, looking out for Marion, cleaning, and—heaven help us—cooking our meals. Speaking of which, what have you been eating these past few weeks?”

“I’m an old man and the appetite ain’t what it used to be.” Amusement sparkled in his dark eyes. “I been making good use of the microwave in the clinic to heat up a can of soup or stew. And from time to time I stay with a relative or a friend I know lives nearby. They can’t stop feeding me. ’Course, there’s biscuits, jerky, the kind of things I can pack up. Oh, and I come to like that Slim Fast in a can. Tastes pretty good. Only thing I miss, though, is a good hot cup of coffee in the morning.”

Harris released a smile, amazed—as he often was in life—at how things sometimes came around full circle. He put his hand on Lijah’s shoulder.

“Today’s your lucky day. I happen to know just where you can find one.”

Brady Simmons traveled to the Coastal Carolina Center for Birds of Prey vowing to make everyone at that rehab joint as miserable as he was.

He sat in the passenger seat of the family’s Ford pickup that belched smoke and whined like a tortured animal every time it shifted into high gear. If being seen in that sorry-ass piece of tin wasn’t embarrassing enough, his mother was driving him.

Not being allowed to drive was all part of this mother lode of punishments that had been dumped on him since the police pinned the shooting of that eagle on him. That bird wasn’t even dead and his own life had been wiped out, as far as he could tell. It was bad enough that he had to spend every Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning for six long months doing so-called community service hours. He’d a done that without complaint. He deserved it. He shouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

But why did they have to go and punish his whole family? Just on account of him doing something so stupid? The authorities told them they was lucky to only have to pay 1,800 in fines. Lucky? They weren’t no wealthy family that could just write a check for that amount. That was about every cent the family had put away, and then some. Mama had cried for days about that and wouldn’t talk to his father, blaming him for being so pigheaded as to trespass on government property and to drag his son right along with him. And if trespassing weren’t bad enough, she’d hollered, he had to go tell him to shoot the goddamn national emblem!

All of that was true. Brady wouldn’t have fired if his father hadn’t pushed him to do it. But he’d do it again if he could stop the nights of fighting between his parents.

Always the next morning, his mother would tell Brady that his father was a good man and only drank when he was worried. Problem was, he was worried all the damn time since the authorities banned both of them from hunting and fishing anywhere in the United States. Brady couldn’t care less about himself. But that was a lethal blow for Roy Simmons. Let them do what they will to his son.

Though Brady doubted his father would obey it, anyway. And he had the nerve to tell Brady to act like a man? God, he hated him and all he stood for. There was a time Brady had looked up to his father. Roy Simmons always told his sons that a man had to live and die by his honor.

What a crock, Brady thought as he swallowed down the ball of hurt that bobbed in his throat. He turned and looked sullenly out the window at the blur of green pine along Highway 17. Good ol’ Roy Simmons had caved at the first threat of trouble. And look what honor got me, he thought.

As far as Brady could tell, all that honor had brought him was having to stand in shame before a judge while he called him every kind of vile snake that crawled upon the earth before laying down a sentence that sounded like a living hell to Brady, but that everyone claimed was lenient on account of him being a minor. He’d been branded a delinquent and forced to serve time at some godforsaken outpost for birds.

“We’re here,” his mother announced as she turned off the highway onto a narrow gravel road in the middle of nowhere. When she stopped at the gate, she waited for him to climb out and open it, watching him like a hawk each step till he climbed back in the truck. When he settled in she reached out and slapped the back of his head.

“What?” he asked with a scowl.

“Sit straight and do something with your hair,” she said, her mouth turned down at the corners. “You look like you just fell out of bed.”

“I’m gonna be scrubbin’ bird shit, Mama.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she warned, her voice rising. “You just change that attitude, hear?”

Brady rolled his eyes and slouched farther into the seat. He’d heard that expression so many times it blew right over him like the wind.

“You want to do right in there so there’s no more trouble. We’re counting on you, son, to get this whole incident behind us.”

Brady kept his lips tight, horror-struck that he felt a cry about to burst out and tears stinging his eyes. They were counting on him…. Didn’t she think he knew that? Didn’t she know what this was all about, anyway?

He turned his head away from her, crossing his arms and leaning against the door. As his mother shifted into First and began pulling off, he caught sight of a big ol’ white rooster sitting up on a pine bough. It seemed to look him straight in the eye as Brady passed.

Flocks.Most birds of prey are considered solitary and breed in single pairs. Sometimes, however, raptors will come together to form large, cohesive flocks for migration or to form communal roosts in winter. Flocking is also a means of protection for smaller raptors as well as a means to gain information about food sources.

6

The Coastal Carolina Center for Birds of Prey was a small five-acre sanctuary surrounded by the 350,000 acres of wildlife refuge. All that protected land was seen by many folks to be too much to set aside. Others believed it wasn’t near enough.

Harris was of the latter frame of mind. Not that many years ago, Harris could drive for miles without seeing much beyond salt marsh, pine woodlands and scattered homes burrowed along black-water creeks. It was a bird heaven. Raptors, shorebirds, songbirds—they all could migrate through the free coastal Carolina skies, find plenty of food sources in the maritime forests, perhaps even decide to take up residence, if only for a breeding season. Now, new subdivisions littered the highway, bringing with them high wires that crisscrossed the sky, speeding cars, noise, trash and the destruction of natural habitat.

His work could be pretty discouraging. Every day there were calls for help. He’d gone to pick up hawks whose wings were broken from flying into electric wire while in fast pursuit of quarry; picked up countless owls and vultures with head trauma after being hit by a car while eating roadkill; treated ospreys whose chests and talons were ripped open by improperly disposed of fishhooks and line; put down a suffering raptor shot needlessly from the sky or poisoned by the misuse of sprays and insecticides. Over the years, he’d come to realize that most people weren’t even aware that there was a lot society could do to prevent these senseless casualties.

Truth was, most people didn’t know what the heck wildlife was. Folks—good folks—moved to big, new homes carved out of the wilderness, eager and excited to live among all that natural beauty. They lived day after day right smack next to a black-water creek or a vista of marsh, maybe even had a dock, and didn’t have a clue what to do with it. They’d never learned how to cast a net or a line in the creek, or pull up a crabpot from the dock loaded with the most succulent meat God put on earth, or squished their toes in the pluff mud searching for hidden clams. Rather, they walked in clean-soled shoes along tended paths in a park, peeked at nature and breathlessly declared it wild.

But Harris figured if they learned to play with what lay in their own backyard, they’d learn right quick what wild was and what wild did and be eager to protect it. Education was the key.

Today, however, his commitment to education was being sorely tested. Harris placed his hands on his hips and waited at the edge of the parking area at the raptor center while an old Chevy truck rounded the bend and whined to a stop. He wasn’t happy about this young hooligan coming to the center, but the court had argued that allowing Brady Simmons to do community service in support of the raptors he had defiled was an important form of education, perhaps even a message to the community.