And I knew Amos did because the two songs he had shown me, humming them quietly during our last session, were beautiful and had so, so much potential.
“Why not?” I said instead, plastering a smile onto my face so he couldn’t read my mind. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
He gave me another one of his dubious looks. “Do you think I should?”
“If you really want to.”
“Would you?”
I was busy trying to come up with some polite way of saying no when Amos sat up straight and his eyes went wide.
He was looking at something behind me.
“What is it?”
His mouth barely moved. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”
I wanted to get up and run, his face was that serious. “Why?” Should I turn around? I should turn around.
“There’s a hawk behind you,” he said before I got a chance to.
I sat up even straighter. “A what?”
“A hawk,” he kept on whispering. “It’s right there. Right behind you.”
“A hawk? Like a bird?”
Bless Amos’s sweet soul, he didn’t make a sarcastic comment. He said, calmly, sounding very much like his dad from how serious he was speaking, “Yes, a hawk like a bird. I don’t know them like my dad does.” His throat bobbed. “He’s huge.”
Slowly, I tried to look behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small figure just right outside the garage. Even more slowly, I turned the rest of my body—and the chair—around. Like Amos had warned, there was a hawk right there. On the ground. Hanging out. He was looking at us. Maybe just at me but probably both of us.
I squinted. “Am, is he bleeding?”
There was a squeaking sound before I felt him crawl over to sit on the floor beside me. He whispered, “I think so. His eye looks kinda swollen.”
One eye did look bigger than the other one. “Yeah. Do you think he’s hurt? I mean, he shouldn’t be hanging out like that, right? Just standing there?”
“I don’t think so.”
We sat there quietly together, watching the bird watch us. Minutes passed, and he didn’t fly away. He didn’t do anything.
“Should we see if we can get it to fly away?” I asked quietly. “So we can tell if it’s hurt?”
“I guess.”
We both started to get up, and reasoning hit me. I patted him on the shoulder to get him to stay down. “No, let me. Maybe he’s a Navy SEAL hawk that doesn’t give a fuck, and if we scare him, he’ll attack. You can drive me to the hospital if he gets me.” I thought about it. “Do you know how to drive?”
“Dad taught me a long time ago.”
I eyed him. “Do you have a permit?”
The expression on his face said it all. He didn’t.
“Oh well.”
I was pretty sure Amos snickered a little bit, and it made me smile.
Not going too fast or too slowly, I got to my feet. I took a step forward, and the bird didn’t give a shit.
Another and then another step and still, he refused to do anything.
“He should’ve flown off by now,” Am whispered.
That’s what I was worried about. Ready to cover my face if he decided to go crazy on me, I kept going closer and closer to the bird, but he didn’t care. His eye was definitely swollen, and I could see the discoloration of blood on his head. “He is hurt.”
“Yeah?”
I got two feet away from the hawk. “Yeah, he’s got a gash on his head. Aww, poor little baby. Maybe his wing is hurt too since he’s not going away.”
“He should’ve by now…，” Am whispered.
“We have to help him,” I said. “We should call your dad, but my service doesn’t work down here.”
“Mine neither.”
I wanted to ask him what to do, but I was the adult. I had to figure it out. I’d watched a show about game wardens before. What would they do?
Put it in a crate.
“By any chance do you have a crate in your house?”
He thought about it. “I think so.”
“Can you go get it?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to put him in it.”
“How?”
“I have to grab him, I guess.”
“Ora! He’ll rip your face off!” he hissed, but I was too busy being focused on him worrying about my safety to focus on anything else.
We were becoming friends. “Well, I’d rather have a few stitches than he get hit by a car if he goes off by himself,” I said.