The Sellout

The first time they eat in your possession is on your gloved hand. A day or two is normal, but five or six gets to be nervewracking. They stand there on your glove and you work a piece of beef or chicken up through fingers and thumb with your ungloved hand. You wiggle the meat around, brush it up against their talons. Eyes drift down, but the head is still looking at you. This can go on for a long time. It's boring at first, then you think you're starving the hawk. You get a little panicky. Maybe you cheat- pick off a little piece of chicken and rub it along their beak to give them just a taste. You never look them in the eye. It is a sign of moral superiority and they know it. But your goal is always to get them to sell out. You'll proceed no further if you don't get them to bend over, expose the back of their neck to you, and eat off your gloved hand. A hawk is down with a field mouse in a dusky field at the edge of a wood in late summer. A Great Horned Owl comes swooping out of the trees...puff of feathers, it is over quick. This is what the blood remembers when the hawk bends over and exposes the back of his neck. They have nightmares about it.