Creatures, Rifle, Red

Abstract

Creatures, Rifle, Red Cate Hennessey (bio) I There’s been a red-tailed hawk stalking the hens all week. It arrived over this January weekend, when the hens were out of their run and scratching under the pines. Then the dog noticed and barked, and the hawk, startled, veered away from its prey. Every day since, that creature (or perhaps another of its kind) has haunted the locust tree near the henhouse; it watches for hours the fat, fluffy biddies as they cluck and scratch in their locked enclosure. When I came home from work the other day, the hawk flew down from the locust branch and settled near the creek, where it was nearly invisible in the gray-brown leaves. I doubted for a moment I’d even seen the hawk, the camouflage was so complete. But then I walked toward the creek, and the hawk spread its wings and rose into the air. It didn’t go far. Later on, my daughter took the dog for a walk around the pond, and there on a pine branch in front of her sat the hawk. Startled, she ran back to the house. It was huge, she said, and unafraid. Disinterested in leaving its perch. Then she asked if the hawk might attack her. I said, No, it’s winter, it has no young to protect. [End Page 103] Emboldened, she and the dog trotted back to the woods where they hollered and barked and stomped around like mad creatures. But by the time they reached the pine, the hawk had gone. I know what my daughter means about the hawk, her wondering if it might swoop down into her face and hair. Sometimes a raptor fixes its stare on you, and you feel like the prey. That gaze is intense. Singular. The beak hooked and powerful. The talons curled around a branch, and the feathers a pattern that is and isn’t a pattern. The hawk belongs to any place it settles, and I have always felt unsettled when one looks at me, as if I have somehow made a mistake without knowing ahead of time the possibility for error. II Other things unsettle. Guns. The bodies of dead things. People who drink too much. My dog’s mistrust of strangers. Men who write gratuitous rape scenes. The color pink. Making a quick decision. The goddamn lime green of my car. That I talk to my brothers rarely despite a large and almost painful love for them. How I pretend sometimes to listen. Poems that use the word bone. A loose horse ambling along the road—saddle empty, reins snapped. That should something terrible happen to my husband, financial ruin would drive me and the children god knows where. That should something terrible happen to me, the same uncertain future would surround the girls and him. Yesterday the swamp was frozen through, and everywhere, the angled marks of beaver teeth on saplings. What unsettles a beaver? I do, I’m sure. My big feet and loud voice. Who and what else, other than a beaver, is unsettled by me? My students in their chairs? (I hope not.) A cashier at the grocery store? My colleagues? Someone once said I come across as serious and unforgiving. Demanding. Self-confident and independent. Ach, it’s not the person I feel I am. I am always second-guessing myself. It’s unsettling when others can’t see what we see. All of this looking. Perception. Misperception. Eyes. And color. My brother’s brown eye, [End Page 104] the one I nearly shot out with a BB gun. I must have pulled the trigger, but I don’t remember doing so. Our father had been teaching us to shoot when we were children, and while I waited I held the gun like he’d told me, its muzzle straight in the air, so I wouldn’t put an eye out. When the gun cracked, I startled—what was that noise? What made it happen? My father snapped his head to where the gun pointed, and it was pointed at my brother’s eye. The gun was unloaded, so no physical damage done. But...