Drought Hawks

Chapter Two

"This line, this line, and this line," the woman said. Her badge read Melissa, and Reggie kept having to glance at it to remember. She looked like a Marge or a Gertrude. Reggie wondered if the woman had a headache from having her hair pulled back so tightly. "And initial here, here, and here."

"I'm sorry, where?" Reggie asked, looking back down at the stack of 15 pages on the clipboard.

Marge/Gertrude née Melissa let out a harsh sigh that said, "You're an idiot," better than words could have. Then she jabbed her finger at the appropriate places, where Reggie obediently marked despite not having read the paperwork.

Her mind was already on all the things that needed to be done at home.

She needed money to keep the electricity on and to get her Internet service reinstated. The recession had been hell on everyone, but this was never a place where she imagined she would be. The $5,000 to be a part of this experiment was going to go a long way though. She could get back on track with getting her life together. It wouldn't take a lot to find her footing. She didn't need much and it didn't seem to her that this experimental project was asking for much either.

There would be some very minor surgery. They were just going to slip some sensors under her scalp to read her brainwaves. They just needed a sample of her DNA. Then there was just the small matter of gathering all the digital detritus of her life.

She was a writer. All of the books she had written and her social media were already public. No one was reading them now. Why would anyone care later?

I don't matter and none of this matters, she thought. And dead is dead. Then she scrawled her signature across the final page.

There were things to do at home. The Brittany would expect to be fed at six and she should have fed the grey parrot before she left. She hadn't because she needed to pick up vegetables from the grocery store and there was only $20 in her bank account. She needed take the red-tailed hawk for a quick flight in the hills. The Cooper's hawk would need to be moved inside. Reggie took three slowly breaths, counting and calming. This was a quick paycheck. Everything else would get done.

"I'm going to move you into room 2," said Melissa.

"I'll be out by..." Reggie asked this with tinge of anxiety that was met with dismissal.

"Probably three."

Reggie pressed her lips together at the uncertainty of the answer, but simply nodded. It was $5,000, after all.

She was out by 3:30 with a slight pressure at three points in the back of her head and a check in her hand. She should be relieved and maybe excited. Instead she felt hollow and exhausted. She paused next to her truck to watch a raven wing its way to the light post above her. The afternoon sun glossed across its feathers and lit up one eye as the bird tilted its head and they met each other's gaze. The raven offered a gravel-rattled croak that had the inflection of a question and its attention shifted to the flash of white in Reggie's hand.

Reggie lifted the envelope, trying to find the fascination in it. Maybe she could use some of the funds inside to take a road trip. Sometimes you could drive yourself to a brief inner peace on a long stretch of desert road. She could tuck dog and hawks into the truck and drive a straight line for four hours through the pale shades of shifting sand, watching the thirsty creosote give way to prickly pear and a palette of jutting rose tone rocks. She could disappear in Nevada for a short while.

Falconry had a way of refocusing her mind on what really mattered. The bad reviews on her last book, the lack of progress on her next one, and her broken heart could be set aside for a while in the desert. When she was hunting there was nothing but focused hope in the horizon before her and the comfort of a hawk's brief shadow as it followed her path. She looked up to thank the raven for the thought, but it had already flown off.