Skyward - Mary Monroe Alice

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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.

      Well, maybe, he thought as he watched the disheveled teen in baggy jeans, sweatshirt and torn jeans jacket slink from the truck and slam the passenger door with force. There was work that needed doing, but he’d sure as hell not let that kid anywhere near his birds.

      The driver was a stout woman, pale and pasty, dressed in faded black slacks, a cable-knit green sweater and tennis shoes. Her blond hair was the same color as the boy’s, only streaked with gray, so he figured she was the boy’s mother. But that was where the comparison ended. Brady Simmons was tall for his age, with a boy’s leanness and a man’s broad shoulders. A troublemaker, he thought, tightening his jaw when he spied the spiked hair and pierced ear.

      The woman led the boy along the dirt path with a rolling gait. “Mr. Henderson?” she asked in a rural drawl. When he nodded she said, “I’m Delia Simmons, Brady’s mother. This here’s my son.” She turned to locate him.

      The boy came up behind her, hands deep in his pockets, head ducked and eyes averted.

      “Brady,” she said sharply. “Say hello to Mr. Henderson.”

      Brady raised his eyes and shot out his hand so fast it barely touched Harris’s before he retracted it back to his pocket, mumbling “hello.”

      Harris could see the frustration raw in the mother’s eyes at her son’s lack of manners. But he remained silent, doing nothing to make either of them feel more relaxed or welcome. His resentment against the boy and his father, and thus this woman by association, was like an unhealed sore on his hide.

      “He’s here to do whatever you tell him to do,” Delia Simmons declared. “He knows what he done was wrong and he’s here to make amends.” She nodded her head several times, as if adding exclamation marks to her statement.

      “We’ll keep him busy enough.”

      “Uh-huh.

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