Kendra shoulders the door closed and hoists the jars on the table next to his dyes and today’s work. He’s only finished two hoods, but they’re quality. The first has a polished brown leather crest and snakeskin side panels. A bead and plume on top. The second is dyed royal blue, no trimmings. The boy sits across from him and pulls the hoods across the table. Axel sweeps loose snake scales into a pile. “Get your truck out?”
She looks at him like she’s sizing up the challenge. “That falcon was shit today.”
The kid sets down the hoods.
“What falcon?”
Kendra seals the rabbit in Tupperware. “The white.” She washes her hands. “What else?”
“You took her out?”
“Nah.” She opens a cupboard and pinches three jiggers. “Only in the training yard.”
“Well?” She’s stringing him on. Get on with it. He grips the edge of the table. “They’re always shit the first time out.”
“Shit like couldn’t hit a fist? Couldn’t find the fist.” She sets the jiggers down and picks up the blue hood. “Nice stitches.”
“First time out. Should’ve stayed in the pen.”
“Told you we did. Kept landing sideways in the snow. Lost the mark with the chick in full sight, then got tangled in the netting.” She pulls up a chair and tilts it back on two legs. She wipes her palms over her hair — a darkened, wet auburn — and squeezes drips out of her braid onto the carpet. “Fine, not tangled. Flew into it. Flew being generous. Flapped.”
Axel takes the blue hood from next to the jiggers and sets it back beside the brown. “How’d it hit a rabbit then?”
“Am I on trial here? Lola did that.”
Why is she saying this? There is no way that bird is bad. All the photos and records in the hatchling barn back him.
“Course she still might breed well.” Kendra tilts a jar of Milo’s home-still. She says that out of spite. She knows — she knows — that if there was a wrong bristle on the bird, which there is not, of course he wouldn’t breed it.
He slams his hands down on the table, rattling the dye jars. The boy jerks back. “You listen.” He grabs Kendra’s arm.
“You want me to listen?” Kendra leans in and scans him. “You listen. That bird is overlarge. And some recessive pigment. It’s off. Fly it yourself.”
He lets go of her and reaches for his prosthetic. He will fly the white, he’ll take her out now.
“What?” Kendra spreads her arms and gestures to the leg he’s holding by the knee. “What? You gonna hit me with that? Slap me like you slapped that girl?”
Axel sets the leg across his lap. That hit bothered her? Hadn’t thought it would bother her. Hadn’t thought about it at all.
She drops her gaze and pushes her fingers into her eyes. “You know, there’s bottles everywhere. And he claims he’s quit.” She pours all three of them a shot. “Like that’s possible.”
He hasn’t given a thought to what’s going on at the dairy either. Would rather not think of Austin. Saw him once after the stroke. Swaying mess carted into the house. Once was enough. He turns his jigger. The quality of the home-still dropped when Milo took over, that’s certain.
He downs his home-still the same time the power cuts.
“The lights are out,” the kid says.
“Snow’s heavy.” Axel slides the kid’s shot to him. “Gonna need more than a thimble.”
The kid doesn’t touch the jigger. “When will the power come back on?” He tugs the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands.
“Not tonight.” Kendra pushes her chair back and goes to the spare room. She comes back with a deck of cards, a crib board, and a candle. “Game?”
“Why not?” Pours another jigger.
“That sure you’ll win?” She deals.
Look at her. She bates — tugs at her jesses — she’s restless. But it’s more than that; her discomfort is muscular. He has what she wants, a bird, and she can’t see how to get it. What she thinks she needs. She scratches her neck and tugs her braid to her lips. By her age — no, younger, he’d been younger than her — he’d already travelled south through Chile, then Argentina, and been hired on at a convent to hawk pigeons off the church. He sorts his cards. Jack of diamonds and eight of spades to her crib. Cut is a two of diamonds. He opens the play. “Three.”
Kendra lays her card. “Six for two.” She pegs.
The way mountains bit the sky. The flock of dove-grey nuns that crossed by him daily on the stone garden path. The coos and strutted challenges from the pigeons up the steeple. Orange trees. Sugarcane — he chewed a stick like a child until the gardener christened him Sweetie. Dulce, Sweetie, dig the yams. Sweetie, over here, help tie up flowers.
“Taking your sweet time.” Kendra tops their jiggers. Snow whisks the window and sticks.
“Nine for six.”
“Fifteen for two.”
“Nineteen.” He’d been too spirited to stay put, despite the draw that country had, how it urged one to settle. Girls there married Christ as fledglings, and even the glaciers deemed the mountain crevices home-worthy. After a year he jumped a freight ship and pitched up the Atlantic to Greenland, to Iceland, where he first saw gyrfalcons, and hurried back to the north of North America and the nesting grounds.
“Twenty-nine.” Kendra lays a king. She hasn’t been anywhere. She comes from an hour’s drive away from this place, from a town of semi drivers whose highlight is racing a rig on logging roads after coyotes. Sure she’s been to falconry meets, but what does that mean? Everyone there has a purchased bird. Not the same if you buy it.
“Go.” The rim of the candle melts and wax spills down to the holder. The wick curls and the flame lengthens. He found the birds nesting in the cliffs and climbed. Dried mute came loose under his fingers, crumbled over his back, and dusted away behind him. After half a day he reached into a hole in the rock and lifted a pin-feathered eyas. He held the falcon to his chest and descended single-handed until his foot slipped on the dusty rock and his leg broke badly. Still he managed to kayak back with a splintered calf.
“One for the last. Nine.” She pegs.
“Fourteen. One for last.” He paddled into camp with the bird in his shirt keeping him awake — its flurried heartbeat racing faster than his own. After that, hospitalization, where the doctor took his leg. Immobile, he begged them to bring the bird in and prove it was fine. Hired a kid to keep it in a toolshed. Trained the child to catch mice and rats to feed the falcon. His first apprentice, he supposes.
Kendra pegs for him. “Show already.”
Cody fiddles with the damper and sits between them at the table. He pushes his jigger Kendra’s way.
Axel lifts his leg off his lap and hands it to the boy. “Your mother’s father, my brother, drove to the hospital when it first came off. A self-proclaimed priest. Not a real priest. An asshole. Don’t know how he found a woman who could stand him. Always beating on everyone. Including himself.” Not beating, berating. He remembers the visit as a film, as if it wasn’t him it happened to, as if he’d been the bird the child held in the corner as his brother shook his head, disgusted at the stump — disgusted by the waste — and by the joy of the man in the hospital bed.
He spreads his cards. “Fifteen two, plus two runs plus a pair. Twelve.”
The kid clutches the leg at the top and lets the foot dangle. His face is round and his hair, dried in the heat of the fire, fans with a slight curl over his forehead into his eyes.
Kendra rubs her neck and lays her hand. Three, six, nine, king, all diamond. Flush. He could have seen that coming during the play.