Hawk. Jennifer Dance
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sky. I’ve never seen anything like it.
My grandfather laughs aloud, his humour genuine. “You people really have got things wrong side up.”
The supervisor laughs too. “It looks that way, I have to agree! But the roots provide a great platform for bigger birds to build their nests. We’re hoping that osprey, maybe even eagles, will make it home. And once the trees have grown up a little, animals will come back. It’s already happening over at the East Mine. They have a herd of bison grazing there.”
“Wild?” my grandfather asks.
“Not exactly. They’re fenced in. We’re concerned about overgrazing.”
“You mean you let them out now and again for photographs to put in the newspaper,” my grandfather says.
I scowl at him, trying to tell him to shut up.
“Fifty years from now,” the supervisor says, sweeping his arm across the horizon, “all of this land will be covered with trees, and the area will be productive.”
“Productive?” my grandfather queries.
“Yes. It’s a great opportunity for the logging industry.”
I hear my grandfather’s quick intake of breath. “I can’t listen to any more of this,” he tells me. “Let’s walk.”
I don’t much want to go with him, but it beats planting trees. Frank raises his head as we trudge past. “Don’t go far,” he warns. “And keep out of the restricted areas.”
“Restricted areas? This is the land of my ancestors. How can it be restricted to me and my grandson?”
Frank glares at my grandfather. “I’m serious, Dad. It’s dangerous around here. I don’t want you and Adam getting into trouble. And I don’t want you making me look bad, either.”
“Okay, okay,” my grandfather replies. “We’ll behave!”
CHAPTER NINE
The white-chested male is exhausted. He needs to eat in order to keep searching for his home. He spots a pond. The morning sun bathes it in golden light, convincing him that a shoal of small fish swims just under the sparkling surface. He pins his wings and dives. By the time he realizes his error, it’s too late to turn back, and he splashes into the water. He bobs up quickly, flapping his wings to get airborne, as he always does. But this time his wings refuse to lift him more than a few inches from the surface. He struggles, as if carrying a fish more than twice his weight, but his curved talons hold nothing. Barely skimming the surface, he flies in a ragged pattern, his wing tips splashing frantically and his feet paddling wildly, until he reaches the shore. Immediately, he begins teasing his feathers with his beak, trying to clean his plumage, but it doesn’t work. The blackness sticks to his beak, and when he tries to rub it off by dragging his head along the ground, it just gets worse.
The white-chested fish hawk is covered in oil.
My grandfather’s anger seems to be propelling him faster than usual, and I can barely keep up, which is crazy since I’m a runner and he’s fifty-something. I stop at the silver F-350 pickup, Frank’s newest baby. The shiny paint that he takes such pride in is covered in a haze of dust. He’ll be ticked about that. I smile at the thought and then write wash me on the tailgate. When I look up, my grandfather is far ahead. I run after him, following the sign to Tailings Pond D. The road’s not paved. It’s dirt, almost identical to everything else around here, except that it’s packed down. There aren’t any trees, so it’s easy to spot the high wire fence ahead. We walk toward it. Silently. It’s my grandfather’s way.
“Frank is so mean sometimes,” I say.
My grandfather sighs, our footsteps falling in unison on the rutted road. “He didn’t have the best start in life,” he says. “Try to give him a break.”
I laugh aloud. “Like you do?”
My grandfather laughs too, briefly. Then his face falls. “Rose went to residential school, you know. It changed her. Bottom line, we didn’t do a very good job of raising Frank. He didn’t get the love he should have.”
I can’t imagine my grandfather not being loving to his own son. He’s not that way with me. It doesn’t make sense. Before I can get to the bottom of it, we reach a gate. It should block the road, but it’s wide open. A sign says No entry to unauthorized personnel.
I grab my grandfather’s shoulder as he walks through the opening. “We can’t go there!”
He shrugs and keeps walking.
We follow the road up the slope to the brow of the hill and stop dead. A black lake stretches into the distance. We stand and stare, speechless. We don’t notice the bird at first. It’s well camouflaged in the sludge at the edge of the lake. But then it flaps its wings in a pathetic attempt to fly away. Immediately, my grandfather takes off his plaid jacket and walks toward the bird. It screams, dragging itself along the ground, flailing its enormous sludge-covered wings, trying to get airborne to escape the jacket that sails over its head.
“If it can’t see us, it’s less likely to panic,” my grandfather says, poking the bird’s head into one of the sleeves. “And I need to make sure it can’t get at me with its beak. It’s razor-sharp. It could take my fingers off.”
My stomach flips at the thought. “Why can’t it fly? Does it have a broken wing?”
“It can’t fly because its feathers are stuck together with oil.”
“Is it an eagle?”
“I don’t think so. It has talons like an eagle, but it’s too small.”
“It could be a baby eagle,” I suggest.
My grandfather shakes his head. “It’s a hawk. Probably a fish hawk. Some folks call them osprey. But we won’t know for sure until we see the colour of its feathers. Who knows what’s under all of this sludge. We’ll take it home, clean it up, and then let it go.”
“How do we clean it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. We have to do something, though.”
My grandfather’s enthusiasm suddenly vanishes. “What’s your father going to say when we tell him we want to put an oily hawk in his precious new truck?”
A loud boom almost makes us jump out of our skin. Then another and another.
“They’re shooting at us!” my grandfather yells. “Run!” He grabs the bundled bird, holding it firmly against his chest.
We race down the embankment, glancing over our shoulders, expecting to see men with rifles chasing us. But no one’s there. Once we’re through the gate, the noise stops. I’m more shaken up than I’m prepared to admit, even to my grandfather. My heart almost pounds out of my chest! We head back to the car park — fast — only stopping to catch our breath and rewrap the bird so its sharp claws won’t rip into my grandfather’s chest.
By the time we get to the truck, my grandfather barely has the strength to climb into the flatbed and arrange the bird in a corner. I’m tired too, but I fuss over it for a while, letting in air so the poor thing doesn’t suffocate and padding its legs to protect the bed of the truck from the sharp talons.
“What are we going to tell Frank?” I ask.
“Nothing! There’s no point in getting into a fight unless we have to. We’ll just leave the bird here and wedge it in with the toolbox. Let’s hope it keeps quiet. And let’s hope your parents finish up soon. This bird’s in a bad way.”
“I can go fetch them, tell them I’m sick and we need to go home?”
My grandfather scoffs. “Best to tell them that I’m sick. That