Instead, he pulled one of his dad’s old handkerchiefs from his back pocket. Careful of the broken wing, he gathered the tiny bird into his hands and wrapped the unbroken wing against its body. The fractured wing hung limp.
“Shit, shit, shit.” This was his fault for scaring off the hawk. He didn’t want to see the robin eaten, but he knew better than to take sides in the woods. He’d lost a red-tailed hawk her breakfast and maybe killed a robin for nothing.
Cradling the bundled bird against his chest, Rafe began jogging the rest of the way to his cabin. What could he do? Take the robin to the bird center in Morgantown? Would it even survive the trip?
He made it back to his cabin and used his elbow to push open the screen door. He cupped the bird against his chest. Its small warm body beat like a heart in his hand.
Rafe tossed his bow and quiver onto the sofa. With his free hand, he opened the closet door, grabbed a shoebox, and dumped the contents—dozens of postcards—on the floor. He took it to the kitchen and grabbed a clean dish towel. Gently, he wrapped the towel around the bird and placed it in the box.
Still alive. The robin’s black bead eyes were bright and wild. A miracle it hadn’t died of shock. Blood dotted the white handkerchief. Puncture wounds from the hawk’s talons.
Rafe whispered to himself, to the bird, “Don’t die, okay? You’ll fly again,” as he placed the lid on the box.
The robin whistled one small, hopeful note.
With the box steady in both hands, he walked out to his driveway, pausing when he heard tires in the distance. The road to his cabin was gravel, and the scrape and rumble of a car carried for miles out here. It wouldn’t be his mother. She always called before coming. The cops after him for chasing off the poachers? No, not a cop car. A gray SUV.
Holding the box, he walked to the edge of the drive and gazed down his mountain at the road.
The car snaked its slow way up the long S-shaped road just as morning broke over the summit of Starcross Hill and the pink and gray sky turned blue. It appeared on one turn, disappeared on the switchback, and then appeared again.
Rafe backed up as the car neared, backed all the way up to the porch, and waited. The engine turned off. He didn’t recognize the car, but he recognized the driver. He would have known him at five hundred yards in the blinding sun or the dark of night.
Jeremy got out. He paused briefly, then closed the door.
On the porch, the shoebox still in his hands, Rafe watched as Jeremy came toward him and stood at the bottom of the steps. He wore jeans and a black jacket over a white T-shirt and sported a neatly trimmed beard. What was Rafe supposed to feel now? Relief wasn’t right, but if not that, then what?
“What’s in the box?” Jeremy asked, nodding toward the shoebox. No hello. They were long past hellos. Rafe stared at him. He looked like Jeremy, except the beard was new, and his red hair was turning to the same rust color as the robin’s red bib.
“Robin,” Rafe said. “Hawk got him, but I accidentally scared her off. His wing’s broken. No time to talk. He’ll be lucky to make it to the bird rehab place alive.” He stepped off the porch and started for his truck. “Hang in there,” he said to the bird. “You’ll be all right.”
“Let me look. Please.”
It was quicker to give in than to argue, and had he ever heard Jeremy Cox say “please” before?
Rafe gave him the box.
Carefully, Jeremy lifted the lid, dropped it on the ground, and scooped up the bird with one hand. Still alive, Rafe saw. Jeremy tossed the bottom of the box aside and quickly unwrapped the bloody handkerchief from around the bird’s small gray body. Rafe wanted to stop him, but it was too late.
The robin sat calmly on Jeremy’s palm. It shook its head like it was waking from a dream, then spread its wings and flew away into the woods.
“It had a broken wing.”
Jeremy said, “You sure?”
Rafe had been sure. He would’ve bet his life on it two minutes ago. “Probably just in shock.”
“Maybe.”
In a huddle of pines, a robin began to sing.
Rafe looked at Jeremy. “Okay, so what the hell are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“No.”
Without a word, Jeremy turned and walked back to his car. Giving up already? Not likely. He opened the back door, took out a brown paper grocery bag, returned, and set it down at Rafe’s feet like an offering. He even held out his hands, palms up.
“I had a TV gig in Kentucky.”
Rafe toed the bag like a snake might be inside it. Glass rattled. He looked in and saw white bottle caps.
“Ale-8.” Rafe’s aunt lived with her husband and horses outside Lexington, Kentucky, and this was their local swill, as she called it. He’d spent every spring break with her as a kid, took Jeremy with him that one year they were best friends, and they’d drunk the stuff all week like water and wine.
“Remember when we drank so much of it that spring break, your aunt made us start buying our own?” Jeremy asked.
Not an offering then, but a bribe—the chance to taste being fourteen again.
“They make it in cherry now,” Jeremy said. “Wild, right?”
“God damn.” The memory of sweetness made Rafe’s mouth water. But still, he hesitated.
“Rafe,” Jeremy said. Just that. Just his name. But it wasn’t his name. Nobody called him “Rafe” but Jeremy. Bank tellers, teachers, and dentists called him “Ralph.” His mother called him “baby” and always would. And his dad had called him “son” in the same way people said “Mr. President,” because the office mattered more than the person holding it.
But he was Rafe, in his own mind anyway. When Jeremy called him that, it was like hearing his true name spoken for the first time in fifteen years.
“All right,” he said. “You can have ten minutes.”
