Dove Season

Dove Season-2

“I’m asking you,” Ted said. “I swear I’ll respect you if you still tell me no, but I’m a psychologist at heart and I can’t just let you leave without trying to understand why.”

“Who says I’m leaving?”

He tilted his head as if to say, Right.

So I got him the water.

Then I let him sit on my six-month-old couch that I bought thinking it might last me a full year.

I perched on my desk chair. Swiveled it a few times while I worked up my nerve. No weapons, no wire, just him. Just a guy. Some government psychology guy who wanted to know how I think. Or how I feel. Same thing, all part of the same story.

Just this once. Tell someone the story just once. Some kind of compulsion of its own.

“When I was nineteen,” I began, still not sure, “I saw an article in a magazine about a place called Willcox, Arizona. It looked so remote and pretty, with all these beautiful rock formations I’d never seen anyplace else. The rocks were huge and round like giant balls of dough. They weren’t jagged like you see anyplace else. And there was so much land. Miles and miles of it. And apple trees—lots of orchards and apple tree farms. I thought it would be a nice place to live.”

Ted sipped his water. I took another breath. Should I tell him this story? Should I tell anyone?

“I got there in late September, and the weather was perfect. I’d been living in the mountains for the first part of the year, and I knew the winter would be hard, so I wanted someplace milder, just until spring. Then I’d look for someplace else.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Ted asked. “Moving around every few months?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “If I can stay longer, I do.”

“What’s your longest?”

“Almost two years.”

Ted nodded. “Go on.”

He wasn’t taking notes. This wasn’t an interview. He was just listening.

“I found a job. I won’t say what. Don’t bother looking, it was under a different name.”

“Do you do that, too? Every time?”

“I’m… not going to say.” He was a government man. I’ve been careful. Cash only, no records. That wasn’t part of the story.

“I was there September, October, November. Until Thanksgiving. I liked it. I liked the people. I liked how barren a lot of it was. I always need trees, but I could still visit all that wide open space and the rounded rocks and there were canyons and streams and it was all like a book. It was the Wild West. It was a beautiful place to fly.”

“Did something happen there?” Ted asked. He probably couldn’t help himself, his psychology training kicking in. It irritated me, because suddenly it didn’t feel like a natural conversation anymore, more like a session of some sort. But I let it go.

To a degree.

“What will you do with this information?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’ll have to report it, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

I scoffed. “You work for people. You don’t get to just come ask me questions and then never tell anyone.”

“We’ll see,” said Ted. “You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want. But I’d really love to hear.”

I bit the inside of my lip. Glanced up at the clock. It had been almost forty minutes, between deciding whether to let him in, letting him in, getting him water, deciding whether to tell, and telling that much so far.

“I have to go soon,” I said. “You know.”

Ted nodded. “Go on. Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving was nice. The diner did a whole spread. I took a plate home. I hadn’t eaten that well in a while. The people in the diner seemed happy. I really liked the waitress who was working. She was older, probably my mother’s age, and she was always so nice to me.”

If he were really interviewing me, he would have perked up at some of that: “Which diner? What was the waitress’s name? How old is your mother? What’s her name?” But he just kept listening.

“But it was the day after,” I said. “That was the thing.

“I flew out right at dawn, the way I always love to. Out over all those wide open spaces.

“I heard gunfire. Lots of it.

“Up ahead, over the grain fields, I saw shapes of things falling out of the sky. Bam! Something fall. Bam bam! Something fall. I landed a ways away because it wasn’t safe to be in the air right then, and I ran to where it was happening to see what it was.

“It was dove season. I didn’t know. Hunters and their dogs all combing the grain fields and shooting at all the birds who had come there to eat.

“Dozens and dozens and probably fifty or more dead by the time they were done. Just a few hours right after dawn and all these men and women shooting at those poor innocent birds.

“I’m telling you,” I said, tears stinging my eyes, “I was broken. Something broke in me. All those pretty, innocent birds.

“No, but here’s the thing,” I said, swiping beneath my eyes, “it wasn’t just that. It probably would have been, but then it got worse. At dusk, they all came back.”

“The hunters.”

“The birds. Even though they’d been shot at already and so many of them were killed, the flocks still came back to that same grain field for dinner. And the same hunters, or maybe all new ones, didn’t matter, blam, blam, little gray bodies twisting in the air, feathers exploding with the shot, dogs racing out and chasing down some of the birds who were still trying to flap on the ground with still one good wing, and the dogs chomped down on them and then carried them back so proud to their owners…

“And I know the birds would have come back the next morning. And the next night. And do it day after day until dove season ended, dying and not able to help themselves, because they just had to do it.”

I stopped talking. It was enough. If he got it, he got it. If he didn’t, he couldn’t.

Ted seemed comfortable with the silence. He leaned back on my couch and stared at some speck on my rented ceiling. Minutes ticked by. I had to fly soon.

Finally he asked, “What is your concern?”

“My concern?”

He looked me in the eye. “Yes.”

I blew out a breath. (“Don’t you want to serve your country, Miss Stemple? Don’t you want to fulfill your purpose?”)

“Look at me,” I said, gesturing down to my bird-thin body and scrawny arms and wispy legs. “I’m not tough. I can’t fight. I don’t know martial arts. I hate guns. I hate violence of any kind.”

Ted listened. And waited.

“You can’t send me up there,” I said. “Not for some military mission. Not for some… secret government work. I’m defenseless. I’m useless. Yes, I can fly. But that’s all. Nothing else. I’d be dead the first day.”

Ted nodded. “I understand.”

“I have to go,” I said hurriedly. “Can I go?”

“Of course.” He stood politely. But he didn’t move toward the door.

I hesitated. Should I wait? See him out? Lock the door before flapping away?

He seemed to understand my discomfort. “How long?”

“I can… just ten minutes.”

“I’ll wait if it’s all right.”

The buzz was inside me. I had to go. Fly, fly now.

“Don’t look at anything, don’t snoop—”

He held up his palms and sat back down on my couch. “Maybe another glass of water, but nothing else. I promise.”

I opened the door and ran out. It wouldn’t matter if he snooped anyway. I’m used to leaving everything behind. There’s nothing for anyone to see.

I ran to my favorite tree, skip, leap, flap, and I was up there before anyone could see me. Just a taste of it, a ten-minute smoke-break taste. Enough. I needed to get back.

He was still sitting on the couch, but he was right, he was drinking more water. I got some water, too. Flying is dehydrating.

“And if someone caught me,” I went on as if there had been no break. “You saw how I was today. If someone tried to keep me locked up…”

“If we could address your concerns,” Ted said. “All of them.” He stopped there and waited, as if that were enough.

My mouth felt dry. I tried to swallow just the same. But my voice sounded croaky and weak. “I can’t help myself,” I said. “Just like the doves. I’d know it was dangerous, but I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

Ted stood. He offered me his hand. The flesh was warm and dry. The pit stains on his shirt were dry now, too. He smelled like he had worked a full day. I didn’t mind it so much.

“Please don’t leave,” he said. “I know you want to, but just give me a day or two.”

“Until what?”

“We know people,” he said. “We can do things. We can make things. I understand your concerns. I really do, Marnie. Is that your real name?”

I hesitated, then nodded.

“We won’t try to make you do anything. That doesn’t work. We know that.”

He was back to sounding like a government man. We we we…

He handed me his card. Ted Whitling. Just his name and a phone number. No address, no email, nothing else. If I had met him anywhere else and he had handed me that card, I would have thrown it in the trash. You have to let people look you up these days. People need to be able to do their research.

But I already knew he worked in a two-story gray brick building with a flat roof and no trees nearby, and he had a security pass that let him in and out of a tiny windowless room where they interrogate prisoners like me who haven’t done anything wrong. That was his job. Here he was in my tidy rented living room, but he belonged back there where everyone in the building from the agents to the janitors knew I was a flier and had watched me do it.

If I stuck around, how was I any smarter than a dove flying back to the grain field?

“Marnie?”

Fifty more minutes, and I’d fly again. Just fifty more minutes.

The question was, fly how? Fly where? Just a ten-minute flap up into some trees and a few glorious strokes of butterfly, or flying for distance and speed with a light pack on my back, searching for my next life to lead?

“We can do things,” he repeated. “Just wait for me. Please.”

It was the please.

“Sure you don’t want to eat here, honey? Everyone needs people around them for the holidays. You’re gonna just take a plate home? Sure I can’t get you more pie?”

“Yes, please,” I told the motherly waitress. “That would be nice.”

“I love a young lady who says ‘please,’” she said. “We’re a world without manners. You just wait right there ten more minutes. Fresh pie is almost out of the oven.”

But I didn’t have ten minutes. I barely had five. I had to grab my food and drive off so I could get in my afternoon flight. Even on Thanksgiving. A compulsion is a compulsion. The holidays don’t change that.

“Can you get rid of it?” I suddenly thought to ask Ted. It had never occurred to me that it might be possible. We can do things. Do this.

“I would never want to get rid of it,” he said. “I hope I can make you feel the same way.”

He gave me a polite nod and stepped toward my door. He was about to open it when he turned to me.

“I do understand,” he said. “About the doves. About you flying around out there and seeing that. It must have been terrible.”

Maybe it was just a psychology trick, but it seemed like he meant it. I swallowed dry air and nodded.

“But maybe we can find a way for you to be safe and not just have to fly ten minutes at a time,” he said. “Maybe you can fly anytime you want, for as long as you want. If we can give you that, will you take it?”

I stared at him, wide-eyed and alarmed. Here’s a warehouse full of your favorite drug, junkie. Here’s all the nicotine in the world. Here’s a bottomless barrel of booze. Fly all you want. You never have to stop. We can make it your job to fly…

“Two days,” Ted said. “Can you wait for me two days?”

My heart was speeding again. Dammit, my heart was yearning.

What if we could protect the flock feeding in the grain fields? What if the hunters had no guns? What if the doves wore protective flight suits? What if what if what if?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to think about it.” Forty-three more minutes to flight.

“There are thousands of people with gifts and powers of their own,” Ted said. “But you don’t know about them, do you?”

“No,” I had to admit.

“We’re very good at keeping secrets. We’re very good at helping people use their talents. Let us help you, Marnie.” He shook my hand again. I’m sure he could feel me trembling. No better than a junkie. But if there really were some way…

Fly any time I want. Fly as long as I want. Fly protected. Fly forever.

“You’d probably make up some name for me,” I said sarcastically, trying to sound both tough and brave. I could already feel my resolve fading. I was losing my edge. I was stepping into danger. I knew it but I couldn’t help myself.

“We generally let people name themselves,” he said.

The Dove, I thought automatically. That would capture both the stupidity and the compulsion of it. Maybe I’d wait the two days. It was just two days. But in two days he had to convince me. I didn’t see how he could do it.

“Let me get to work,” said Ted. “I won’t disappoint you.”

He left and closed the door. Thirty-eight more minutes until I needed my fix.

What if I could go any time I wanted? Would I ever stop flying? When would I eat? When would I sleep? When do the doves sleep? Heads tucked under their wings on some branch? That didn’t sound bad. Just a quick nap on my couch, then back up in the air.

I exhaled a long, slow breath. Danger, and already I was getting used to it. I started packing a light pack anyway, just in case. My laptop, my sleep shirt, the comfy shoes.

You can’t trust the feds. Well known.

But I’m a flier. No one can catch me once I fly.

The doves probably think that, too.

Thirty-six more minutes.

Heaven help me, I have to fly.

Analyst