The O'Connor children prepared for competition. As much as they had moved as one to trap Leroy into the pigeon hunt, now they were each alone, considering how they could capture the most pigeons and hold the glory over each other in the days and weeks to come, how they could report to their parents who was the new expert.
The pigeons kept pressing down until they brushed against the faces of the children. The noise began to die down as the birds settled in for the night. Leroy tapped Peter and Peter tapped Jake and they passed the signal down to get ready.

 

What happened next happened very suddenly, but slow in the minds of the children. Jake had decided that the best way to catch the pigeons was to stand up on the plank and reach as high as he could with the net. Peter had not thought of this. Chris, after playing with his bag and thinking very hard about what a proper pigeon catcher would do in his situation, could not figure out how to keep his bag open and he began to despair. When Leroy flicked the broad beam of the light on, Jake stood up quick as a cat. The pigeons exploded in a cloud of feathers. Peter felt Jake move and realized his brother would catch more pigeons than he would. Instinctively, like he was fighting for position in the crease of a lacrosse game, he elbowed Jake and tried to stand up himself. In the low light, Leroy's eyes flashed as he saw Jake lose his balance on the plank. Jake shouted. Leroy reached across Peter for him but he was too late and his fingers only ripped the boy's t-shirt. There was an audible crunching sound as Jake's head hit the side of the silo and then the thump of his body falling to the earth. Ellie screamed, the pigeons fled out of the hole in the silo with a whoosh, and then there was a terrible silence.

The Ambassador sat beside Jake's hospital bed with his big hand wrapped around his grandson's little one. Ellie was asleep on his lap, her arms hanging around his neck like she was a stuffed animal monkey. Jake's eyes were closed and his chest moved up and down steadily, punctuated by the beeps of the heart monitor and the sucking sound of the breathing machine. His face was full of tubes. The ambassador looked like a man very used to staying up all night in crisis. The swollen bags under his eyes seemed full of a liquid capacity for suffering. On the other side of the room in three green-backed chairs sat Leroy, Peter, and Chris. Leroy looked grim, like a sailor resigned to a cursed fortune. Peter's face was drained of blood and he chewed on his lip. He was not sure if this was all his fault, but he thought it was and this cut him in two ways. First and foremost he had failed as a big brother. Second, he had hurt Jake out of jealousy. Chris's white eyelashes were moist with tears and he had begun to fidget. He rarely felt comfortable in rooms full of people and now he was nervous. He did not know what he was supposed to do for Jake, but he did not want to sit in the hospital anymore. He wanted to catch a hawk. He had, at the time of Jake's fall, reached up with his burlap sack as high as he could, and when he felt the weight of the bird in it, he'd brought it down. The bird had folded up in the bag and rested in his lap. Chris recognized that something miraculous had happened and now it seemed, like so many times before, he was going to be deprived of his earned prize. The realization was too much for him, and for a moment he looked at Jake, with his dark skin and his mysterious talent for everything, even as he was chained to tubes, with anger and envy. At that moment, as if he'd read his grandson's mind, the Ambassador spoke in a low gentle Southern-tinged rumble.

 

"Leroy. You'd better take those boys out of here. This place doesn't do them any good."
Chris's chest tightened.
"I want to stay with Jake," Peter said.
"Jake would want you to go catch a hawk," the Ambassador said. "He wouldn't want you moping around his bed."
Leroy rose without comment.
"Come on boys," he said. "Let's get out of their hair."
Chris could not contain his excitement and he hopped out of the chair and sped to the door. Peter was slow to get up.
"Will Jake be okay?" he asked.
"Yes," the Ambassador said.

 

He said it like he'd said a country at war would be okay, knowing it wouldn't be but knowing that things would be worse if he didn't say it. Peter bit his lip. He thought of confessing that he'd knocked Jake over. Leroy had told the Ambassador that Jake slipped and fell, but Peter knew he'd seen what happened. He could still feel Jake's weight move as he pushed him with his elbow. An instant later the weight was gone into thin air and the two sounds followed, the crunch and the thump. Peter's throat swelled and he turned out the door. Leroy put his old hand on the back of Peter's head as they walked out of the room. He turned to the Ambassador.

 

"Ed," he said. "I'll bring some food by tonight. You alright with Ellie?"
"She won't leave him," he said. "I asked her already."
Leroy nodded, turned and herded the boys down the hospital corridor to the elevator bank.

It was not a long ride from the farm to the county airport. The boys rode in the back of the old blue Chevy truck, holding onto the wooden pigeon crates.