i, the falconer

by Gavin Miller

EVERGREENS TOWERED over the estate. The road to the location—marked by my Maps application—dizzied drivers with its bumps and sudden shifts. Once outside the car, the air felt foreign; it was too clear, even for the Pacific Northwest. I trekked over a gravel path toward the residence and gave the door a friendly set of knocks, the kind I learned from years of knocking on doors for various landscaping projects.

But this was no landscaping project. This job, discovered on a Craigslist-style neighborhood connection page, was a karmic punishment. After not securing a summer internship following my freshman year of college, I returned to odd jobs—getting my hands dirty, using my body, appeasing my self-obsessed work ethic.

The Falconer was a wide, hairy man who ended his seemingly serious sentences with a deep chortle. His wife answered the door. She was a small, soft-spoken woman who wore a quaint blue-and-white dress and barely introduced herself before the Falconer came rushing over, hand outstretched.

When he shook my uncalloused palm, I felt a rush of sudden responsibility. His house was not a home but a sprawling multi-acre complex with a large, red barn, three sets of quail cages, and a massive, modern-farmhouse-styled residence. For the next seven days, I would be the sole man at the center of this multistage operation, an operation which revolved around one creature: the Falcon.

The Falconer first showed off the third story of the residence, which featured an extended hallway with far too many doors. His daughter—a young, shy child who looked remarkably like her mother—watched me. Her gaze said Don’t mess this up in a subtle, harsh way. Behind her, the house cat slipped past a bathroom door.

“Feed the cat and stuff obviously, or don’t,” the Falconer said, and again came that stubborn chortle. The comment seemed to hurt his daughter, who pouted. Ignoring her, the Falconer continued, “Just dump two scoops a day or whatever—make sure the water’s clean.”

The water was not clean.

The Falconer’s wife came up the stairs and stood before her laughing husband and sniffling daughter.

“No, honey, show him.” The Falconer’s wife rinsed out the near-empty, stinking water bowl and filled a separate plastic container with two-and-a-half scoops of fresh food. The cat watched from behind a door but didn’t eat.

“Oh, come on, I was kidding,” the Falconer said and looked at me and rolled his eyes. He led me into his daughter’s pink bedroom, where animals—particularly horsies—were a central theme.

The Falconer’s daughter, despite her annoyance, seemed fascinated with me and eager to explain the names of her fish through a lisp. But her bright explanations were cut short. “There’s fish in there, you should probably feed them a few scoops,” the Falconer interrupted.

The daughter’s eyes overflowed, and she stormed off. The Falconer shrugged and yawned. “Now for the real stuff.”

In the estate’s basement, misshapen chicks lunged over each other, their cute feet smothered by white, hot, dry shit on the paper towel floor. The Falconer poured piles of feed into their enclosure, sometimes directly on to the chicks’ heads. Their eyes, beady with life against the limited burn of a small heat lamp, watched the food pellets fall. Many of the younger chicks had broken legs but still struggled on toward the feed as it hit the grimy ground. Each twitch of the chicks’ beaks pierced my heart. I blinked and blinked again, bringing myself back to the moment, the residence where I was getting paid, where I had been told there was a pet-sitting job.

Yes, that is all this was: another pet-sitting job.

The quail chicks in the barn were a bit older, and the Falconer told me they were more rambunctious too. The barn stank of feces, and the minute after the grand door swung open, it shut fast behind me. “The chicks are dying to escape. They’ll jump as soon as they see a crack of light other than a lamp. So you’ve got to be fast,” the Falconer instructed. I nodded.

Unlike the birds in the basement, the barn quail could fly. Accordingly, their enclosure was a dark, wooden cube. The Falconer, diligent in his desire to preserve every quail for the Falcon, cracked the entrance and flung one rough measurement of feed from a plastic red cup at the quail with a strict intensity. The enclosure was then slammed shut. No chick escaped.

“Okay, now I want you to try,” he said. I nodded. Red cup, one scoop, crack the top, and—

A scurry of quick, tiny steps echoed over the barn, startling me before I could toss the feed.

“Oh, fuck!” said the Falconer. “I thought he was dead.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“A little one that escaped weeks ago. Don’t spill any of the feed, he’s quick and I haven’t been able to catch him. I’m trying to starve him out. Maybe then I can still use him.” Before I could react, the rambunctious chick emerged from behind a lawnmower, trying to flap his injured wings.

“Quick! Help…help me grab that, uh, just, go there!” The Falconer pointed across the barn. I scurried my little feet to corner the chick. The Falconer ran at the terrified bird, who fled behind another corner.

The Falconer sighed, appearing frustrated with me. “Just try the feed again,” he told me. And I did. My hand flung the food. The latch shut. I felt chicks’ furry heads pound against the roof of the cramped coop. When the Falconer turned around, I grimaced.

In the third and final quail enclosure were the older quail, who were to be put to death in the coming months. After they laid their eggs (which were brought to the basement for incubation), the quail, no longer able to reliably reproduce, were killed. The adult quail had the cleanest enclosure but were still set up to drink out of brown, shit-stained bowls of what the Falconer referred to as “water.”

“Okay, now for the main event,” the Falconer said. He walked me back to the residence, where his wife was washing the cat bowl along with several bowls from the adult quail cages. She stood straight in her tight apron and looked at the Falconer with a numb, blue-eyed gaze.

“Honey, can you stop putting the dirty quail stuff with the rest of my cooking stuff in the sink,” she asked him.

I don’t remember how he answered, but the Falconer was frustrated; he might have bellowed one of his signature grunts. He later told me not to put anything with poop on it in the sink, unless I chose to wash it. “It’s up to you, but you don’t have to wash anything if you don’t want to. The chicks actually like the dirt, I think. It’s natural.”

The feeding ritual for the Falcon began in the basement, where the skinned bodies of the oldest quail dried in a nondescript minifridge. The Falconer took one bird corpse in a thick leather glove and held it in the casual manner that a real American man holds an iPhone, or a debit card, or a gun.

I followed the Falconer outside again and had a sudden urge to break the silence, so I asked, “Do you ever sell the extra eggs? Or eat them yourself?”

“Nah, but Asian people love that shit, it’s like a delicacy or something, in Vietnam or China or somewhere, I don’t know. I don’t really give a shit. It’s too much work to sell, and I always have too many, so they usually get tossed but—oh, here’s the Falcon.”

Perched in a large wooden prism with medal bars rigged along the border was the Falcon, in His arena where, with wild eyes popping at me, His sharp beak pointed in a slick curve toward the floor. The Falcon, ruthless, unforgiving, and given no name, was strapped at the foot with a tag. The Falconer laughed and handed me the quail meat.

I was asked to go directly into the enclosure through a double door, but after a floundering entrance, the Falconer preferred that I feed the Falcon from the outside. Once the meat slid a centimeter past the metal bars, the Falcon swung His body’s force toward me and, with a screeching caw, snagged the meat between His talons. He extended His wings and brought the quail’s limp skinned body to a dark corner. There, He had gathered hay and bones for a plate. Out it came then, once the carcass was stripped: a fierce, defiant, second caw.

“So yeah, one week, and we’ll pay you. Just drive down, refill waters, feed the birds, feed the Falcon, of course, and it should be easy. I’ll give you the number of a buddy to call in case anything goes wrong, but it’s pretty straightforward. You take Venmo, right?” The Falconer shook my hand again, firm and tough. I nodded.

The next day, I came alone. Driving out into the rural pocket, I was reminded of how empty the area was. Just me and the trees would know what I had to do. Well, the trees, the cat, the fish, the quail, and the Falcon.

On the first day, I realized the extent of the cat’s shyness. She slipped her fat, furry body away as I entered the home and only snuck out from shadows to peek at my behind. I fed the fish, cleaned the water bowl, and refilled the kibble (though the cat ate little of it). The feline’s green eyes tracked my steps as I went downstairs again. They held judgment.

Next came the baby quail. The first time I spilled the food over the heads of the small chicks in the basement, I couldn’t watch. When I cleaned the quail’s water, it was easiest to ignore the filth by blasting my music. Sometimes turning away helped. When I had to feed the Falcon, I couldn’t bear to lock eyes with Him. I held the skinned quail from a rough leather glove and felt it leave my fingers. I winced. As my eyes opened, a screech escaped from the Falcon’s mouth, and I tripped over myself.

On the second day, I noticed a frail chick’s injury. The chicks were the hardest to deal with, to look at, to consider; they were a flagrant interruption to any sense of obligation I felt to perform the work. I moved the injured chick out of the way and poured extra food for it, in a small corner. Within seconds, other chicks trampled over the poor young quail, stepping its head into the stained floor.

After seeing the injured chick floundering, I felt a sudden urge to clean the water, food, and enclosure of every quail, across the complex—three enclosures, upwards of twelve water bowls, and several feeding tubs. Guilt pressed into my stomach like a hardened boot, and I cleaned it all. While scraping feces from the water bowls of the first enclosure, I turned to see the cat watching me from the bottom steps of the twisting staircase. Her gaze was hot and heavy, but, once our eyes locked, she ran from me.

After my third day of the job, I told my family the abridged details over dinner.

“You should just quit,” my mother told me, scooping the last of the chicken toward her mouth.

“I agreed to do it, and he’s out of town now. I can’t just up and leave.”

“Yeah, well, it’s ridiculous. This was supposed to be just watching the Falcon. He’s asking you to do way more than you signed up for,” she said.

Suddenly, I was on the defensive. “I signed up for the job, I’m going to do it. He’s paying me, I can do it. Sebas did much more when he was, like, twelve.”

Sebastian, my adopted brother, was responsible for preparing the chickens at the orphanage growing up. Over meat dinners with guests, he would drop how chickens would run and twitch after they were beheaded with an air of nonchalance. This would draw glares from our parents, but he would continue eating as if it were just a fact of life. It was just that: a fact. There was no dodging it or fleeing from it for him. He was assigned a necessary job, and he performed it for years. The things he did were the just things he was told to do until, suddenly, he wasn’t ordered anymore. When one has the distance to look back on their past, memories often become regrets or nostalgia. In Sebastian’s case, they just became the unjudged past.

That always seemed the manliest way out of a solemn memory.

On the fourth day, I found the injured chick in worsening health. The only movement he expressed was the blinking of his tiny eyes. Pale eyelids raised and fell in a slow trance, as if the chick was willing himself to live just a bit longer. I got a small bowl from the kitchen and filled it with water and nudged the bowl against his head. I hoped something could drive him to move again, despite his crooked left leg and discolored body.

I went upstairs to feed the cat after tending to the quail, changing my typical routine of tending to the cat, then fish, then quail (in ascending age), then the Falcon. As I mounted the steps, the cat saw me.

This time, she froze.

“It’s okay, it’s just me. I’m here to feed you,” I said to the cat, to the empty hall. The walls didn’t respond, and neither did the cat. She stared at me for another moment, before darting behind a door. Guilt rose inside of my chest.

“It’s just me, I’m just here to feed you.”

She didn’t respond.

“I’m going to drop the water off for you, so you can—”

The cat darted away again. This time, she disappeared into thin air: all I heard were the footsteps away from me, the scratch of tiny paws on the wood floor.

On the fifth day, the injured chick died. I texted the Falconer. He responded, “Just toss it in the woods or something.”

I brought the chick out in a paper towel. He was smothered in the waste of his siblings and friends. While his body lay between my shaking fingers, I searched online for how to check the pulse of a bird. I held my ear to the quail’s keel bone and listened to silence.

I pressed the dead bird to my chest and trudged deep into the woods. Fallen leaves met loose soil in a spot where I could barely see the house. This would be the grave. My eyes leapt around, cautious that someone could see me. Was the cat watching me from the window? Was that why she ran? Did she hate me for playing a part in this sin?

The air was cooler in the forest’s dense shade. Water swept my eyes while I cradled the chick toward cold, dead leaves. The brown of the leaves blended into the body of the quail, until its corpse was out of view. Not even the mountains were visible as the quail rested; it was a private burial. I, the Falconer, wiped my eyes and marched back toward the complex to finish the fifth day’s work. The Falcon was especially hungry that day.

“I don’t know why you keep going back there,” my mother told me before I left on the sixth day.

“There’s only two days left,” I responded and grabbed the keys to my Corolla.

I, the Falconer, listened to pop music on the way to the complex. I, the Falconer, now performed the job itself without music nor distraction. I, the Falconer, washed only what needed to be washed on the sixth day. I, the Falconer, rationed the food and quickly shut every door, lest a single organism escape. I, the Falconer, reported everything to the Falconer who gave me the job. I, the Falconer, didn’t talk to the cat on the sixth day. I, the Falconer, finished the job in record time. I, the Falconer, recorded myself feeding the Falcon with ease. I, the Falconer, drove home in my Corolla, yawning, listening to more pop music.

The Falconer is just the man who performs his duties.

On the seventh day I looked out into the long field, where evergreens stood tall at the border. I wasn’t tense when I approached the barn: exhaustion numbed my senses. When I opened the wooden enclosure to feed the barn quail, one snuck out past my right forearm and darted into a corner. We looked at each other. Her small, glassy eyes were startled. Rather than chase her, I paused, sighed, and opened the barn door wide. Time stopped. She wouldn’t run out. My stomach rumbled and a force within me fired off.

“Go!”

The quail never left, so the feeling stayed buried in me, and I found myself walking back to the residence. Now it’s not a memory but a regret: I should’ve chased the quail out. The cat eyed me when I came in, but she didn’t dash when I trudged up the staircase’s curve. I passed the cat and said goodbye to the fish. When I backtracked, the cat’s eyes locked on me. I wanted to pet her, just once. Then I could go on my way.

I approached the cat with my hands stinking of quail feces. On the seventh day, the cat rested; she fell against me. Outside the window, I could see the forest, the barn, the adult quail enclosure, and the tip of the Falcon’s den. Running my fingers over the cat’s soft fur, I looked out and wondered what would have become of it all if I had emptied every cage and left forever on the first day.

On the drive home, I didn’t listen to any music—I wept.

Just over a week after I finished the job, the Falconer’s wife sent me 140 dollars (the sum of 20 dollars a day) on Venmo, along with a short thank you message and a bird emoji.

About the author:

Gavin Miller is a writer currently residing in Boston, Massachusetts. His work most recently appeared in JAKE and is forthcoming in Sand Hills Literary Magazine and Rathalla Review. Currently, he is the Co-Editor in Chief of the Boston-based music publication 5 Cent Sound. When he’s not reading or writing, Gavin can be found on a long walk.