The Ford Expedition climbed a rise in the dirt driveway. The trees thinned, the sky widened, and the moon hovered above an expanse of open land. To the right was a weathered old Cape with a porch. To the left were massive slatted flight cages.
“Jesus,” said Roland.
“No kidding,” said Warren, in the driver seat beside him.
Ned sat in the back, his arm around a sleeping Luna. That night the town of Port Clyde had experienced an almost unprecedented crime wave: a shootout at a local bar. Backup arrived shortly, but it delayed Luna’s police escort long enough for Paszkiewicz to pull her from the car.
Ned had called Warren. Chris and Philipe called Hélène and the police. They drove down the sanctuary’s driveway, stopped behind Adam’s and Roland’s cars, and moments later the first police cruiser screeched to a halt. Two uniformed officers jumped out, spotted the cairn, and both of them vanished down the trail. Soon another police car appeared, siren wailing. A black-haired policewoman barreled out, sprinted by, and Ned followed her into the woods.
They all emerged from the forest long after Chris and Philipe took the eagles to the sanctuary. They found Ortega and Paszkiewicz seated in the back of a cruiser, a fourth officer standing guard. Undeclared firearms, Sergeant, said the officer.
The black-haired policewoman glanced coldly at Adam. Mr. Matheson and his employees will accompany us to the station, she replied. Ned’s eyes dropped to her nameplate. DE LA CROIX, it read.
Adam watched grimly as Ned helped Luna into the back of Roland’s car. Roland slid into the passenger seat without a backward glance. Warren stood for a moment, his eyes on Adam, and Adam felt a chill.
“I don’t get this animal thing,” said Roland, as Warren pulled up in front of the weathered Cape.
“That’s because you haven’t seen mine,” said Warren.
Luna stirred, awakened, and saw the house. She slid out of the car and Ned followed, steadying her as she paused dizzily. Chris, Philipe, and three other volunteers sat on the front steps. Above them, a woman stood regally on the porch.
She was small and wiry. Her feral eyes slanted over high cheekbones. Her thick white hair was swept into a chignon, and her hand rested on the head of an eagle carved into a wooden cane. When her eyes met Luna’s, she looked at her with a love so fierce Ned felt its heat.
“Luna,” she said, in a husky half-whisper.
Luna rushed up the stairs and wrapped her arms around Hélène. They stood together, then Hélène held her at arm’s length. “Mon Dieu, oisillon, look at you,” she rasped, taking in Luna’s bruises, the dirt in her hair, her torn and bloody clothing. “Go with Sharon,” she added, gesturing to a young woman on the stairs. “She is a nurse.”
In the driveway, a door slammed. Gunderman stood beside his car, his shoulders slumped, his expression unreadable.
He had found his way to the Port Clyde Eagle Sanctuary, not knowing what he would do when he arrived. He spotted three vehicles on the driveway, the last one a green SUV with a graceful eagle logo. The police cruisers arrived, the dark-haired policewoman sprinted into the woods, and Harrelson rocketed after her. Gunderman hurried out of his car and trailed them to the old stick fort. Hidden by darkness, he saw it all unfold. Afterward he was the last to leave, hanging back and walking alone.
Now he stood facing the group. Hélène narrowed her eyes and stepped to the edge of the porch. Gunderman waited, feeling the heavy gaze of those who believed, despite his life’s work, that he was the enemy.
Slowly Hélène raised one hand. Luna raised hers, as well, and the others followed. Haltingly, Gunderman raised his in return. He straightened his shoulders, gave them all a single nod, then he climbed into his car and drove away.
“Gentlemen,” said Hélène. “Merci. You have my gratitude. Come, you look like you could use a drink.”
Luna went inside with the nurse. Roland followed Chris and Philipe into the house. Warren started up the stairs, and stopped when he reached the porch. “Ma belle Hélènnne!” he rumbled, eyeing her with a grin. “The patron saint of wild things!”
Hélène tilted her head and gazed up at him, her brows drawing together like storm clouds. Suddenly she smiled, and Warren cradled her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips. Ned, two steps behind him, let out an audible gasp. Hélène turned, pinned Ned with her dark eyes, and nodded at Warren. “This little bastard didn’t tell me he was seventeen!” she said.
“’Course I didn’t,” Warren retorted. “What do you say, Ned? You’re thumbing rides across Canada, and a black-haired bird sorceress picks you up — would you tell her you were seventeen?”
• • •
Ned opened his eyes, sat up, and found himself alone in another unfamiliar bedroom. Light seeped through the edges of the blinds.
The night returned in hallucinatory pieces. He had shared a drink with Roland Edwards in the living room of Hélène de la Croix. Volunteers scrambled eggs as the sky turned lavender. Luna emerged, pale and bandaged, and fell asleep on his shoulder. Roland carried her effortlessly up the stairs to one of the bedrooms. As he slid in beside her, Ned thought, this time it’s really over.
He dressed, went downstairs, and found three-quarters of a cup of coffee left in the pot. The house was empty. He wandered to the office, to the clinic, and to the small auditorium, but no one seemed to know where to find Luna. Eventually he ran into Philipe, who led him to one of the flight cages. In the far corner, Hélène sat in an ornate wicker chair.
“They’re unreleasable,” said Philipe, gesturing to the great dark creatures watching him from various perches. “Half of them are education birds. They’re used to people. You can walk right through.”
Ned thanked him and regarded his latest obstacle course: a slatted airplane hangar filled with a dozen free-flying eagles. He snorted, closed the door behind him, and walked determinedly toward Hélène.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” he replied. “I’m having trouble finding Luna.”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“She left.”
“What do you mean, she left? Where did she go?”
Hélène regarded him steadily. “She needs some time.” She shifted her eyes to the eagles, as if signaling the end of the conversation.
“But I need to talk to her.” When he received no response, his voice rose. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Are you hiding her from me?”
A flash of contempt crossed her face, and Ned felt a swirl of disorientation. “I just want to make sure she’s all right!”
The contempt disappeared. “You are a good man,” said Hélène. “You have my respect and support. You are welcome to stay here as long as you like. Whenever you wish to leave, one of the volunteers will drive you to the airport.”
“But what about Luna?”
“I’m not hiding her, Ned. I am respecting her wishes. You would do well to do the same.”
• • •
Gunderman sat in the Falls International Airport, waiting for his flight home. Ned entered the room and stood uncertainly, his clothes rumpled, his taped glasses at a slight angle. When he saw Gunderman he sighed, trudged over, and sat beside him.
“Matheson’s plane was here, but now it’s gone,” said Gunderman. “Is she staying at the sanctuary?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
Roland appeared, carrying a leather overnight bag, and spotted the two of them. He frowned and glanced around, as if searching for alternatives, then he crossed the room and sat on the other side of Ned. “Where’s Luna?” he asked.
“He doesn’t know,” said Gunderman.
“Where’s Warren?” asked Ned.
Roland shrugged. “I don’t think he uses public transportation.”
They sat in silence. “Thanks to this, I’ve got no job,” said Gunderman finally.
“I’ve got no job and no family,” said Roland.
“I’ve got…” Ned began, then stopped as two uniformed marshals appeared before him.
“Ned Harrelson?” said one. “We are authorized by the government of the United States of America to return you to the State of Wisconsin, where you are wanted for crimes against the persons and property of both state and federal officers.”
Ned rose, and the second officer pulled his hands behind his back and snapped the handcuffs shut.
“I’ve got nothing,” Ned finished, as they escorted him toward the door.
• • •
The plane touched down in Chicago. No town car, SUV, or limousine waited for him, so Roland waited in line until a battered cab pulled up. He climbed into the back seat. The springs were shot.
A block from his building, he told the driver to stop. He entered the park, sat on a bench, and stared at Lake Michigan. He had been sitting on the same bench, swigging Jack Daniels and replaying his doctors’ words, when Adam called him for the second time. He pulled out his phone and turned it off.
Nearly an hour later he picked up his overnight bag and walked to his building. He rode the elevator to the top floor, and pulled out his keys. The door was unlocked. Instantly he tensed and pictured his Glock, disassembled and in a case in his bag. He turned the knob slowly and silently, until the slimmest beam of light shone through.
“Yeah, finally!” came Lyllis’s voice. “He’s been sitting on that goddamned bench for an hour. Yep, okay! I’ll tell him.”
He opened the door and found Michael sitting on the easy chair, grinning, his sister Selma dabbing her eyes. Lyllis leaned on her crutches, trying to look happy instead of triumphant. “Warren wants to know wassup?” she said, and tossed her phone onto the couch.
• • •
The air was warm and humid. Gunderman stood in his cabin, wondering what breathing would be like in the next place he lived. Maybe his lungs would burn in the dry heat. Maybe they would smart from the sharpness of the cold. As long as they don’t ache from air conditioning, he thought, as he tried to be pragmatic.
The television chattered in the corner. The news shows were grasping at straws, churning out increasingly outlandish stories about Adam Matheson, his runaway wife, and his shadowy trip to Canada. Gunderman started toward the television, intending to turn it off. “In a related story,” said the newscaster, “we go to the Western Pennsylvania Wildlife Center, where this story began.”
Celia appeared before a bank of microphones, even paler than usual, flanked by Wizzie and Elias. Wizzie reached out and tapped one of the microphones. “Is this thing on?” she asked.
Celia bit her lip, and Elias placed a hand on her shoulder. “Last night our missing eagle was returned to us,” she said determinedly. “Our bonded pair of Bald Eagles are together again, and it is thanks to…to the outstanding work of Wildlife Officer Erik Gunderman. We want to thank him. And we want to thank Daniel Whittaker, Chief of Law Enforcement for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In this day and age, it’s rare to find such dedicated public servants. Both of them have the grateful thanks of all of us who care about the wild creatures of America.”
Everyone smiled and clapped. Gunderman stared at the screen, confounded. She might have just saved my job, he thought.
• • •
Ned sat in his office, staring unseeing at his computer screen. He had been in variants of the same position for a week. Once again, he reached for his phone.
bluestreak@juno.com Baby you all right? We’re still up here in Tallahassee if you want to visit
stanleykw@outlook.com Hang in there Ned. Come help with the turtles if you need a break
chiroptera@gmail.com I have a bottle of bourbon with your name on it.
iris@bluemoonwildlife.org hello sweetheart why don’t you come back and let me give you another makeover? You probably need a touch up by now LOL
Ned had arrived at the airport in Wisconsin flanked by marshals, wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles. His mother stood at the gate with tears in her eyes. He could read his father’s lips: No, Neddo, no.
An op-ed piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal wove a Shakespearian tale of forbidden love, corporate tyranny, and freedom in America, and was picked up by media outlets all over the country. This is what you want me to spend the taxpayers’ money on? shouted the prosecuting attorney, an avowed enemy of Adam Matheson, pushing Ned’s case to the top of his list. You have a rich and powerful figure who routinely pays fines instead of following the law, who started this whole thing by stealing a protected eagle, and you want me to try to max out a kid with an otherwise spotless record? I won’t do it!
Ned had been given fines, probation, and community service. He spent two days with his parents, then returned to his empty apartment. At work he found a large framed photo of himself wearing shackles, “Employee of the Week” emblazoned above it.
The sequence he was working on might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. He rose from his chair and looked out his window. He returned to his desk and typed Luna Burke into his search engine. There was nothing new. He typed Port Clyde Eagle Sanctuary. Nothing. He envisioned the afternoon Gunderman and the police had closed in, and felt a small, blessed surge of adrenaline. He thought of Trish and Angelica’s house, with its undulating hobbit roof.
They left me the house but I couldn’t live in it, Luna had said. I had nowhere to go.
He typed Prattsville PA real estate, and an hour later his office manager looked at him in surprise. “What?” she said. “You’re leaving again?”
• • •
Ned drove steadily, his arm out the window of his rented car, listening to the swell of cicadas in the afternoon heat. He drove past rolling, sun-drenched fields, glancing into the rearview mirror at the clouds of dust swirling behind him. He turned off a country road and passed a mailbox.
At the top of the hill stood a farmhouse, and behind it a barn. Ned pulled up by the house and turned off the engine.
The front door was covered with graffiti. Three windows were broken. The barn’s sliding door hung haphazardly from its hinges, held in place by a large padlock. Of all the fool’s errands he’d been on, he thought, this was by far the most idiotic.
“I can work remotely,” he said into his cell phone, as he sat on the top step of the back porch.
“Are you out of your mind?” demanded Earl, leaning against a ’74 Trans Am in his garage in South Carolina. “You haven’t even talked to her! She’s officially a Missing Person! And she already told you she didn’t want to live in that house!”
“I know. But she left it a long time ago. Maybe if I changed it around a little, she’d feel…”
“What’s wrong with you, man? Why don’t you go out and get laid? You’re a celebrity — you can have anyone you want!”
“I’m not a celebrity, and I don’t want anyone else!”
“What do you think the odds are of this working?”
“The kind I’m used to,” said Ned. “Two hundred billion to one.”