Gordon Kent - The Falconer’s Tale

“What does he want?” Piat said to his new friend, the owner of the tackle-and-book shop. He’d made the shop part of his off-duty routine, cruising the books every few days and usually buying something. “The dog comes back and sits and looks at me and I don’t know what to do.”

“It sounds like quite a good dog. Probably a herder: you get a lot of those here. They’ll herd anything—sheep, children, ducks. Quite smart, is he?”

“Well, he sure seems to know things I don’t.”

“Ye-e-e-s.” The man stroked his long, unshaven chin. “Sounds as if he’s been trained and expects you to know the signs. Or partly trained, perhaps—young dog, is he? Tell you what, carry a few treats in your pocket; try one on him when he sits down like that. He may be used to the odd reward for coming back. Not every time, mind—if you do it every time, he’ll use it as a dodge to gorge—but often enough.” He talked about hand signals that the dog might know. “Friend’s dog, is he?”

“They neglect him.”

The shop owner laughed. “Mind he doesn’t become your dog, then.” He grinned. “You know what Kipling said.” He waited. Then: “‘Don’t give your heart to a dog.’”

“Kipling also said, ‘He travels the fastest who travels alone.’ I travel fast.”

But he bought a packet of something called Bow Wowzers, and when he gave the sitting dog one, a new relationship was forged. He became the replacement for some earlier man, the trainer, the giver of treats, the divinity. The dog ran for him, returned for him, herded for him, waited for him. Every day.

It was Annie who gave him a name. “I call him Ralph,” she said, “because it’s what his bark sounds like—Ralf! Ralf!” Annie was perhaps sixteen, not pretty, but, despite her big shoulders and heavy hips, she had the kind of complexion that was imitated in decorating china figurines and postcards. She also appeared to be as strong as an ox, and her handshake was firm. She was more or less Hackbutt’s apprentice, apparently as daft about falcons as he was. If she felt any jealousy of Piat over the dog, she certainly didn’t show it. She was basically a good kid who liked animals.

“Ralph,” Piat said. The dog wagged his tail. What the hell, he’d be Ralph or Emily or Algernon if this man would just be his human being.

Piat bought Ralph a green tennis ball. And then a chewing toy.

Irene was sardonic about Piat and the dog. Amused, but sardonic. In fact, he didn’t see her as much as he’d expected to, as much as in fact he’d hoped. He found himself responding to that tall body, the more so as she toned down her sexual advertising—the shock words, the wet kisses with Hackbutt—as Piat became part of her landscape. Whatever her fears of her “art” were, she’d grasped the nettle. Every day he came to the farm now, she was “working.” Mostly, she was shut away in her “studio” and he didn’t see her, and he increasingly found he wanted to. He sensed that increasingly she didn’t want to see him.

In his hindbrain, he wanted to see more of her. In his professional brain, he was satisfied that she kept her distance. When he was bringing Hackbutt in to Partlow as a one shot, the thought of fucking her had been exciting, but Piat had rules, and one of them was that sex and operations didn’t mix. This was his operation now.

The rules didn’t always penetrate his hindbrain.

When she came out of her isolation, it was to cook and take part in the training sessions, which started by not going very well and then got worse.

“I don’t know how !” Hackbutt’s voice would quaver like the whine of a housefly. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

Piat, Irene, and Hackbutt were silently eating their way through a curry with some shreds of lamb, Irene’s first attempt to add meat to their diet. The food was simple but good. The conversation was nonexistent. So far, Piat had managed only three kinds of interaction: silence, a harangue from Hackbutt about falconry, and a harangue from Irene about overwork.

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