Our family, well, the common word you’d have for us is “hillbillies,” but I don’t mind. We’ve been living in our part of the Alleghenies for a long, long time, and my Pa’s family in particular holds to the old values. Of course, this was a while back, so we didn’t have the link, but I don’t think the old man would have approved if they’d been around. Anyway, he was determined that I would do things the right way, even though we both knew he was pretty sure I would be a disappointment to him. I didn’t like to fish or hunt (to his shame, I was gunshy); I hated camping, and I wasn’t good at swimming. Still, I was bound and determined to go for my eagle like our family had always done it.
He took me up into the Laurel Highlands, past where stupid old British General Braddock got himself shot in the back and where George Washington built and surrendered his first fort to the French and their Indian allies (though the enemy never got his cannon because George hid them). We got to the end of the track our family had always taken up into the mountains, and Pa gave me a panic button if I wanted to quit. He’d come and get me then, but he’d give up on me, too. That was another thing we knew without saying.
Long story short, I was coming down a hill my second day, worn out because I’d gotten little sleep in the cold, and upset because I hadn’t seen or heard any birds or animals let alone an eagle (I wasn’t what you would call an observant kid) when I tripped and fell. Down I went, and tumbled. I stopped on the bank of a stream,
I had my first aid badger from Girl Scouts, and supplies in my back pack, so I soaked my sprained ankle in the icy creek, then bound it up. By the time I found a branch long and strong enough to lean on, it was coming on sunset. I had two more days before Pa started to track me. I wanted at least to be partway back before he found me.
I had given up on that eagle. He’d have to wait for my sisters Kim and Dani to get big enough. They’d find theirs; they were better in the woods than me already. I was just a daydreamer, someone who never had any sense. Put me to shelling peas or doing dishes and I’d take twice as long as anyone else, because I’d be telling myself stories. That’s what I did that night, to keep my mind off my pain. I told myself stories of brave girls who found their eagles and went off to be soldiers (girls weren’t allowed to be in the Army then) or joined the FBI (we weren’t allowed to be agents, either). If the owls who hooted or the deer who drank at the stream liked the story, that was good, too.
I must have dozed off sometime before dawn. When I woke, a golden eagle stood by my hand. Not a bald eagle, like all those in my family, or like my friends’ parents had, or like people had on TV. A golden eagle, a big fellow with a trout in his beak. He dropped it on my knee.
At first I couldn’t breathe. When I could talk, I said, “Thanks, but I have jerky, and peanut butter, and celery, and … things. You eat it.” And he did.
When Pa saw me limping on the track three days from where he’d dropped me, dirty and crazy-looking with twigs in my hair and no eagle on my shoulder, he stopped and looked at me, his weathered face like stone. Then Anthony Wayne, his eagle, began to raise hell on his shoulder as Tecumseh glided down from his tree top. We’d found it was easier for him to fly ahead and wait for me than for him to ride on my shoulder, at least while I had one bum foot. This time, though, for the purposes of meeting family, he settled on my shoulder.
I describe things all the time, but I can never describe the look on my Pa’s face. I only know that he reached a hand out to Tecumseh, who stretched out and touched his fingers with his beak. Finally Pa said, “It’s been right in front of me all along. I’ve been trying to make you a strong member of the family, and you are strong, but you’re also a medicine woman. A dreamer. And this is a dreamer’s eagle.”
“His name’s Tecumseh,” I said.
Tecumseh fluffed himself up with pride.
Pa grinned. “Now let’s see if I can get you two home. Your mother is going to read me out for letting you into the woods alone.” He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled. One of my uncles and two of my aunts walked out of the woods, their own eagles on their shoulders. Tecumseh and I were going home like royalty.
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