I wanted something that could fly, could cover a lot ofterritory, and could sense magic. Even if I dared to reach into a cat’s headand look through her eyes, listen with her ears, she wouldn’t have the range Iwanted. Kratz could be hiding anywhere in the city. That’s a lot of ground tocover on four small paws.
I wanted a bird. I wanted wings.
~~~
The fall migration had nearly hit its peak, birdernirvana, all sorts of northern strangers wandering through on their way toplaces with warm winters and lots of bugs to eat, nectar to sip, even wormsthat weren’t frozen stiff and mice or frogs or fish that weren’t hiding underthree feet of snow and ice. The weather, that storm two days before and thesouth winds after it, would have stalled most of the flyers and left themgleaning berries from the trees and bugs from the ground and tasty rats out atthe dump, refueling for the next leg of their flight plan.
Prime day to find birds, is what it boiled down to. I wasn’tlooking for a migrant, no point in sending my time and energy and part of my braindown to the Caribbean for the winter, but I didn’t tell Sandy that.
I got up at an ungodly hour — the early worm gets the bird —went downstairs to Sandy’s apartment and let myself in, and fried up a pound orso of maple-smoked ham and a dozen eggs and made whole-wheat toast and servedher breakfast in bed while I gorged companionably nearby. Like I told you, wedidn’t actually sleep together, notin the sense of sleeping.
Anyway, we fueled ourselves and gathered gear, binoculars andfield guides and a few pounds of snacks in case we wandered more than fiveminutes away from civilization. And our weapons, of course, my SIG and Smith,her stainless Ruger auto and snubbie Colt. I’d told her about that warning notefrom Kratz, showed it to her. Besides, going armed had been second nature forboth of us for decades.
I’d warned her about Bycheck, too, that the arrogant gimpyBureau Boy would be after her. She’d said he had left a message on heranswering machine already, but she hadn’t rushed to call him back.
I mentioned binoculars. Sandy owned three pairs, all high-rentGerman models, different types. I swear, each pair was worth more than most ofthe cars I’ve owned. I remembered Maggie when I picked up the pair I was goingto carry — Maggie, Sandy, me, we were all tightwads. Don’t know if that is auniversal wizard trait, not wasting money, but Maggie used to say that the onlyreason people could call us penny-pinchers was because the US had quit mintinghalf-cent coins over a century ago. That’s how tight we were. But we’d spendmoney where it mattered.
I picked up the 8x50s I’d be using, adjusted the left eyepiecefor my different vision, and focused across the room. They felt good in myhands, balanced, just enough weight for a steady image. Sometimes you get whatyou pay for. Sharp, bright image, waterproof, focus smooth as silk — I’ve usedpolice-issue optics on a stakeout, good glass, but not great. It was thedifference between night and day, literally. I could pick out details throughSandy’s binoculars that would have been a gray blur with lesser glass.
We made the rounds of her birder hotspots, starting with asalt marsh and connected coastal forest. Cold wind off the water brought thereek of black mud at low tide. The place was full of migrants, thousands ofshorebirds and ducks and geese and waders in the marsh, a gazillion differentfall warblers in the forest, all brown and gray and faded yellow andindistinguishable to me but she spotted a couple of rarities that had herbabbling to the other fanatics.
And while she oohed and ahhed and pointed out things onlyapparent to the hardcore birder, I followed a harrier skimming low across thetan and brown of the marsh grass, rising and falling, death on wings, andreached out to it and slipped into its head and called it near. And it focusedon me, on Sandy, and felt us, felt our magic, and I tasted Sandy’s aura andrecognized it. Yes, that bird would fit my need.
Fit my need if Kratz ever wandered into a wildlife refuge,that is. I needed a city bird.
We spent two hours out there on the marshy point, and thenSandy took pity on my short attention span and we moved on. She could havestayed all day and not been bored. We poked at a fresh-water marsh for a while,cattails and reeds and a different set of wet-land birds. We moved on to anoutlying forested park, more kinds of trees, still more cryptic warblers, thenscanned the waves from a breakwater jutting out into the bay and spray and icywind to pick up some sea ducks and diving birds and gulls and a parasiticjaeger that Sandy said had no business in our neighborhood but was chasinggulls and terns with a fine disregard for range maps, and I found that loons,too, could sense magic. No wonder some Native American tribes thought thatloons were sacred.
Anyway, after lunch and the arboretum for another bird or two,we ended up in the park a few blocks from our apartment building, walkingdistance from my office, downtown in the hustle and bustle and diesel stink, ahundred acres of grass and trees and flowering shrubs in the spring and windingpaths and water and hidden dells for lovers, an oasis of nature walled in byasphalt and high buildings. And there I found my wings.
I’d been thinking of a peregrine — Sandy told me we hadseveral pairs that nested on high ledges and cornices and terrorized thepigeons, she even spotted one but I couldn’t focus fast enough to catch it.What I did find and meet and slipinto was a hawk, a female red-tail, perched on some ornate stonework at thefourth-floor level of an older office building and gazing around for a littlesnack. She liked to sit and lurk rather than chasing down dinner on the wing,making her a better choice for what I wanted.
I stared at her through the binoculars.
