Pond D. The road’s not paved. It’s dirt, almost identical to everything else around here, except that it’s packed down. There aren’t any trees, so it’s easy to spot the high wire fence ahead. We walk toward it. Silently. It’s my grandfather’s way.
“Frank is so mean sometimes,” I say.
My grandfather sighs, our footsteps falling in unison on the rutted road. “He didn’t have the best start in life,” he says. “Try to give him a break.”
I laugh aloud. “Like you do?”
My grandfather laughs too, briefly. Then his face falls. “Rose went to residential school, you know. It changed her. Bottom line, we didn’t do a very good job of raising Frank. He didn’t get the love he should have.”
I can’t imagine my grandfather not being loving to his own son. He’s not that way with me. It doesn’t make sense. Before I can get to the bottom of it, we reach a gate. It should block the road, but it’s wide open. A sign says No entry to unauthorized personnel.
I grab my grandfather’s shoulder as he walks through the opening. “We can’t go there!”
He shrugs and keeps walking.
We follow the road up the slope to the brow of the hill and stop dead. A black lake stretches into the distance. We stand and stare, speechless. We don’t notice the bird at first. It’s well camouflaged in the sludge at the edge of the lake. But then it flaps its wings in a pathetic attempt to fly away. Immediately, my grandfather takes off his plaid jacket and walks toward the bird. It screams, dragging itself along the ground, flailing its enormous sludge-covered wings, trying to get airborne to escape the jacket that sails over its head.
“If it can’t see us, it’s less likely to panic,” my grandfather says, poking the bird’s head into one of the sleeves. “And I need to make sure it can’t get at me with its beak. It’s razor-sharp. It could take my fingers off.”
My stomach flips at the thought. “Why can’t it fly? Does it have a broken wing?”
“It can’t fly because its feathers are stuck together with oil.”
“Is it an eagle?”
“I don’t think so. It has talons like an eagle, but it’s too small.”
“It could be a baby eagle,” I suggest.
My grandfather shakes his head. “It’s a hawk. Probably a fish hawk. Some folks call them osprey. But we won’t know for sure until we see the colour of its feathers. Who knows what’s under all of this sludge. We’ll take it home, clean it up, and then let it go.”
“How do we clean it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. We have to do something, though.”
My grandfather’s enthusiasm suddenly vanishes. “What’s your father going to say when we tell him we want to put an oily hawk in his precious new truck?”
A loud boom almost makes us jump out of our skin. Then another and another.
“They’re shooting at us!” my grandfather yells. “Run!” He grabs the bundled bird, holding it firmly against his chest.
We race down the embankment, glancing over our shoulders, expecting to see men with rifles chasing us. But no one’s there. Once we’re through the gate, the noise stops. I’m more shaken up than I’m prepared to admit, even to my grandfather. My heart almost pounds out of my chest! We head back to the car park — fast — only stopping to catch our breath and rewrap the bird so its sharp claws won’t rip into my grandfather’s chest.
By the time we get to the truck, my grandfather barely has the strength to climb into the flatbed and arrange the bird in a corner. I’m tired too, but I fuss over it for a while, letting in air so the poor thing doesn’t suffocate and padding its legs to protect the bed of the truck from the sharp talons.
“What are we going to tell Frank?” I ask.
“Nothing! There’s no point in getting into a fight unless we have to. We’ll just leave the bird here and wedge it in with the toolbox. Let’s hope it keeps quiet. And let’s hope your parents finish up soon. This bird’s in a bad way.”
“I can go fetch them, tell them I’m sick and we need to go home?”
My grandfather scoffs. “Best to tell them that I’m sick. That would be more believable. But let’s give them ten more minutes.”
He sinks into silence, and we wait.
Suddenly he seems to have a light-bulb moment. “It wasn’t just chance that you rescued this bird. I called you Hawk when you were a kid, remember?”
I nod. “It’s way better than Adam. How come they called me that?”
“Frank and Angela didn’t have much time to think about a name! You were early — a whole month early — and so little! Nobody thought you’d be around for long. The priest came right away, baptizing you, so that you’d have a place in Heaven.”
He shakes his head and gives that little lip- sucking thing of his, telling me, without words, that he has no time for the Catholic faith of my mother.
“They needed to come up with a name straight away, so they called you Adam.”
One more reason for me never to forgive my parents. They couldn’t even be bothered to choose a name for me during the eight months that I lived inside Angela. I can just imagine the priest arriving the day of my birth, baby-name book in hand, opening it to the first page … and there you go … Adam.
“You never looked like an Adam to me,” my grandfather continues. “You looked like a bird! A newly hatched one. Scrawny! Arms and legs like twigs! And a mouth that opened wide, looking for food.” He opens his mouth and chirps in a fair impression of a baby bird. I can’t keep myself from laughing.
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