Sometimes the noise from Rick’s trailer will end with the door crashing open and the sound of a car starting and then that car blasting off the gravel and onto the asphalt and screeching away. The following day Rick will not tell you what happened, not ever, but you know that Rick’s father hits him sometimes, hits him and hits his mother as well, a fact you will learn only by accident when you playfully slap Rick on the back and his response is to howl in pain, his back covered in a patchwork of purple bruises.
But all of that—the yelling and the beatings and the screeching away of the car in the dark of the night—all of it ends soon after you learn of Rick’s bruises, for Rick’s father simply drives away in the family car one night not long after dinnertime and does not return, not to the trailer and not, Bill tells you later, to his job at the Duval mine. He is simply gone. You try once to ask Rick about it but in response Rick only tells you that his father had to go do some work stuff out of town, that he will return, that his absence is only temporary. So that becomes both the story and the waiting game, Rick believing—or at least telling you that he believes—that his father will return at any moment. You have no reason to argue with him even though Bill has told you Rick’s father is not likely to return to Battle Mountain at all, not after what he has done. What did he do? you ask him but Bill only says, Maybe when you’re older, Champaign, and will tell you no more.
DURING THE bicentennial summer your brother takes you and Rick shooting for the first time. You are thirteen now. Your brother has a rifle, an old Savage 99 lever action, and Rick is able to borrow his absentee father’s .38 Special from his mother so there are two weapons between the three of you. Your brother takes you out into the sagebrush country, much farther than you have ever been able to explore on foot, and you set up some cans on a rock and Bill teaches you and Rick how to hold the guns, how to check to see if they are loaded, how to sight, how to squeeze the trigger. You will never get accustomed to the sound—each time you wince—but you love the way a can jumps when hit, the sound like a baseball bat striking a metal plate.
Hoo man, Rick says. You nailed that one.
Bill smiles. You’re up, Nat, he says.
You stand and take the rifle and aim and squint and squeeze the trigger.
It’ll be easier to hit if you keep your eyes open, Bill says.
They just kinda close automatically, you say. You squeeze the trigger and again your eyes squint closed but not all the way this time, the light there a sliver as the firearm barks in your grip.
My turn, Rick says.
Hang on a minute, your brother says. He’ll get it.
Shoot, Rick says.
And you aim again and hold your eyes open and miss but this time you know that you were close to hitting your mark and with the next shot the can twangs off the rocks, the sound of it loud and metallic.
Hey! Rick says, clapping his hands together.
There you go, Champaign, Bill says. He has been drinking beer all afternoon and you can see the gloss of it in his eyes and in the roughness of his hand as he claps you on the shoulder.
I can’t believe I finally hit the dumb thing.
Just gotta keep your eye on the ball, he says.
It is when you are returning from that trip that you come upon the hawk. It hops in the dust just beside the roadbed. You think at first that it must be capturing some prey—a kangaroo rat or a grasshopper mouse—and you expect it to fly away at the approach of the truck but it does not, only struggling there in the dirt.
Check it out, Rick says, pointing.
Red-tailed hawk, you say.
Bill has already slowed the pickup and draws it to a stop and the three of you step out of the truck again. The hawk still does not fly, instead hopping beside the road in a manic fury at your approach. A great brown bird, its chest lightening to pale cream, tail dark and red in the sun, its hooked black beak open and tiny red tongue testing the air. One wing is angled down as the bird moves, its long thick primaries dragging in the dirt.
Something’s wrong with it, you say.
Broken wing, looks like, Bill says.
You stand there in silence, watching next to your brother, and then a small stone strikes the bird in the side, the hawk jumping at the contact and emitting a brief sharp squawk.
Jesus Christ, don’t do that, Bill says.
I just wanted to see if it would take off, Rick says.
It’s got a broken wing, Bill says. I just said that.
Sorry, Rick says. Jeez. It’s just a dumb bird.
It’s a red-tailed hawk, Bill says.
Whatever, Rick says, his voice low and sullen now that he has been chastised.
What do we do? you say.
You are afraid of what your brother will say in response but you have to ask the question, you have to know. And to your relief, Bill says, I think we’d better get her into the truck.
Really? you say. How?
Bill returns to the cab and emerges holding his denim jacket out before him. Let’s get around her, he says.
The three of you form a triangle beside the road, the raptor hopping in a tight circle at its centerpoint, its eyes hard and wide, trying to watch all of you at once, one wing held out and the other limp at its side. It seems miraculous to you: something you have seen fly above the trailer, the town, the desert, now there before you in the stirred dust beside the road.
Let’s just move toward it really slow and I’ll try to drop my jacket over its head so it can’t see, Bill says.
And then Rick: Goddamn.
You move forward then, all of you, so slowly, and when Bill is four or five feet away, he heaves the jacket toward the bird. The hawk is facing you now so that the jacket comes from behind and drops all at once over its head and back. Immediately the hawk is in motion and it is you who grab hold of it, Bill’s coat jerking everywhere beneath your hands.
Holy shit, holy shit, you got it, Rick calls out, smiling and laughing.
Bill is beside you now, kneeling next to the hawk, the raptor calming and then becoming quiet and still. The jacket’s denim has made its shape rough and imprecise but you can feel the heat of it rising up into your hands.
Awesome, Bill says. Let’s get her into the truck.
Do you want to do it?