Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

Back at my desk the screens are winking and the condensation drips down the sides of the can, pooling at its base. After the sugar, my hands have steadied themselves, but my heart is still pounding in my chest, like waking up from a bad dream you can only remember the outline of. Sometimes you need some fire and brimstone to wake you up. I guess that’s where I am now, awake in front of all these buttons telling me things, giving me the answers. All I have to do is record and repeat. But the fire and the brimstone aren’t here, far from it. And in a funny way I feel nothing. After all that, I am still sitting at my desk, tapping my fingers on the particleboard. That’s what the training is for. The shaking is a symptom of the adrenaline. Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo . I’ll get a phone call soon. I start to prepare the package. Everything that is recorded is kept, sealed, mailed, analyzed, investigated by the Transportation Safety Board. I pick up scraps of paper where I had scribbled details and set them aside to be included in the envelope. With the blinds pulled up the entire room looks different. John’s back at his desk rubbing his temples, making a real show of it. I take in the view from the windows: Cinnamon Ridge, the golden hoodoos under clear blue skies. No wind. Perfect visibility. A good day for flying. A host of sparrows lifts from the line of windbreak birches south of the tarmac, swooping in two giant arcs before settling back again among the branches.

The phone is ringing at my desk and I have a hand on it, but there’s that pause again — one second and a half. Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. On the tarmac a shimmer of heat blurs the ground and far in the distance — far as one can get it seems — off on the other side of those great blue mountains, smoke.

“LOOKS LIKE A HAWK,” Angie said, one slender hand shielding her eyes, the other resting on the baby nestled against her chest in the carrier. Sophie was four months old and it was late October, the air brisk and needles on the path, sticky with resin. The hike was a way to avoid the boxes stacked to the ceiling in our living room. NAV Canada had placed me in Kamloops and we’d just moved into a split-level rancher twice the size and half the price of what we would’ve found in Vancouver. We didn’t know anyone in the city. Everything was new and it was easy to be busy and happy.

“I’m going up,” I said, arms crossed over my heaving chest. I coughed and spit into the dirt.

“No,” Angie smirked, “you’re not.”

“I am.” My knee was throbbing and I stooped to rub it. I’d broken it several years ago when I fell out of a second-story window during a game of indoor paintball, and every so often after exercise or strange weather it would start to act up.

“Sore?” She smiled at me and bounced the baby from side to side. “Why don’t you catch your breath?”

“I’m fine.” I said, shrugging her off. We had reached our goal: the telecommunications tower up the mountain behind our house, the one whose red spire blinked above the tree line. The path snaked up the mountainside, keeping its grade gentle, but the distance was enough to get me huffing the cold air as I tried to keep up with Angie. Even with a baby strapped to her chest she was faster than me. I could tell she was staying ahead on purpose, trying to make it look easy, but there was a shimmer of sweat on her upper lip. On the way up, we’d talked about ways in which to build a new life. It was difficult to say who had asked more from the other coming here — Angie, giving up the possibility of returning to her counselling job, or me, venturing into a whole new career. On any given day it felt different.

I bent down and took a few deep breaths.

“You know, it isn’t a race,” Angie said, sitting on an old rotted-out log covered in moss.

“Sure it is.” I winked at her and climbed the first rung, feeling the joints of my bum knee grinding together. The hawk was perched about halfway up the tower.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Well, you married me,” I said, adjusting my hands to get a better grip, “so what does that make you?”

“A charitable soul.” She sounded tired even though I’d let her sleep through the night and well into the morning. “Please don’t kill yourself to impress me.”

“Oh, I know little I do will impress you .” I took another step up. The rungs were far apart and it took a bit of a push to get up to the next one.

“I can tell from here it’s a Harlan’s hawk.” She leaned back on the log and tilted her head to the sky.

“Well,” I said, looking down at her. “That, from a city girl, does impress me.”

“I know some things.” She got up from the log and brushed off her bum. “Okay, Wes. Let’s go. You’ve had your fun. I’m ready for some lunch.”

I ignored her and kept climbing.

“Wes! For real now. I’m not kidding around.”

I’m not sure what sent me up that tower. It was the hawk, at first, and curiosity, but once I started climbing there was an excitement and an anxiousness that kept me going. With each step my limbs felt more capable and my heart felt larger. I had an ear-to-ear grin that usually only struck me after beer number seven. I figured out a system to scale the tower using the diagonal red lattices to boost myself, and climbed to its mid-point quickly, waving down at Angie every few minutes. She didn’t wave back, but stood on the log, hands on hips, looking pissed. I knew what she was thinking: stupid little boy. And I grinned that ear-to-ear smile down at her exactly like a stupid little boy would.

As I got closer to the hawk I slowed down, remaining still for several moments before ascending the next section. The hawk didn’t move. Its brown feathers glinted with flecks of gold as it scanned the valley, head turning slowly from side to side. I’d taken one step closer to the bird, watching it from little more than a foot away, when it launched itself into the sky. I could hear the click of its talons and feel the wind from the beat of its wings as it set in motion. As the hawk glided down the mountain above the treetops, I took in the entire expanse of the valley — like a dark green bowl turning on a table top. Angie was pacing below the tower now, yelling obscenities and waving her arms, but I was conceivably high enough to be out of earshot. Tilting my head back, I hooted like a pimply-pocked teen out a car window, and even from that height I could tell Angie was rolling her eyes. I leaned out from the tower, brandishing one arm and one leg through the air, and called down to her, “I can see our house.”

The bird was almost out of sight when my knee gave out. All the words I was hurling were suddenly trapped in my throat and every cell in my body focused on the one hand that gripped the cold steel. It happened so quickly Angie didn’t even notice. I waited for a shriek or some kind of commotion from below, but all I could hear was my own panicked breathing. The contents of breakfast, scrambled eggs and buttered toast, sloshed around my stomach. I flailed until I found footing and my other hand found a grip. I closed my eyes against the valley and breathed deeply as I steadied myself, the hawk the only image gliding through my brain. My sweaty hand could have lost its grip and I could have ended up a crumpled mess of bloody bones at Angie’s feet, but what I saw was freedom, the hawk vanished into the vast envelope of trees.

I started down slowly. Every few minutes Angie would call up to me:

“It’s starting to rain.”

“Harder coming down than going up, eh, smart ass?”

“Sophie’s waking up.”

“It’s going to pour soon, I think.”