The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [206]
that was not for her and felt the same from her. We stayed a length of time as we were, easing and slowly lying apart on each other's arms, then once more nearer, kissing neck and breastbone and on the edge of the face and on the hair. Meanwhile the clouds, birds, cattle in the water, things, stayed at their distance, and there was no need to herd, account for, hold them in the head, but it was enough to be among them, released on the ground as they were in their brook or in their air. I meant something like this when I said occasionally I could look out like a creature. If I mentioned a Chicago junkyard as well as Charlemagne's estate, I had my reasons. For should I look into any air, I could recall the bees and gnats of dust in the heavily divided heat of a street of El pillars--such as Lake Street, where the junk and old bottleyards are--like a terribly conceived church of madmen, and its stations, endless, where worshipers crawl their carts of rags and bones. And sometimes misery came over me to feel that I myself was the creation of such places. How is it that human beings will submit to the gyps of previous history while mere creatures look with their original eyes? We had few such afternoons when we started to train the eagle. After all, love can be the calling of mythological characters around Mount Olympus or Troy, like Paris, Helen, or Palamons and Emilies, but we had to start to earn our own bread. And it couldn't be in any way other than this one that Thea had chosen, to send out a bird after another animal. And so the gilded and dallying part of the excursion ended in Texarkana. Seeing that fierce animal in his cage, I felt darkness, and then a streaming on my legs as if I had wet myself: it wasn't so, it was only something to do with my veins. But I really felt dazed in all my nerves when I saw with what we would have to deal, and dark before the eyes. The bird looked to be close kin to the one that lit on Prometheus once a day. I had hoped this would be a smaller bird, and, brought up by us from a baby, he'd learn something about affection. But no--to my despair--here he was as big as the one in Chicago, with the same Turkish or paratroop knickers down to his merciless feet. Thea was terribly excited and keen. "Oh, he's so beautiful! But how old is he? He's not an eaglet; he looks full grown and must weigh twelve pounds." "Thirty," I said. "Oh, honey, no." Of course she knew more about it than I did. "But you didn't get him from the nest, did you?" she asked the owner. This old guy, who kept a roadside zoo of mountain lions and armadillos, a few rattlers, was an ancient-prospector or desert-rat-looking joker, with the sort of eyes that request you to believe their crookedness is only the freak of nature or effect of unfavorable light. But I hadn't served around Einhorn's poolroom or had Grandma Lausch's upbringing for nothing, and I recognized him for a crooked old bastard and prick in his heart. "No, I didn't climb for him. Fellow brought him in when he was real tiny. They grow so dum fast." "He looks older to me. My guess is he's in the prime of life." Thea said, "I have to know if he was ever a haggard--ever hunted wild." "He's never been outside that cage since practically from hatching. You know, miss, I've been shipping animals to your uncle for close on twenty years." He thought George H. Something-or-other was her uncle. "Oh, of course we're going to take him," said Thea. "He's so magnificent. You can open the cage." I rushed forward because I feared for her eyes. Falconry with those little peregrine hawks was all right in the tame meadows out East in the company of ladies and sporting gentlemen; but we were on the edge of Texas, within smell of deserts and mountains, and she had never touched an eagle before even if she was experienced with smaller birds and capable of the capture of poisonous snakes. However, she was very steady when it came to dealing with animals; she had no fear of them at all. With the gauntlet pulled on, she held a piece of meat inside the cage. The eagle struck it out of her