The Spectacular

On the first day of autumn, when clouds the color of timber wolves spilled over the Bighorn Mountains, Conrad O’Keefe knew that even as the hail beat down and bent the grass sideways, the squall would quickly pass. The unseasonable rain had become a pattern in northern Wyoming that September, and Con knew too that the sun would break through, the wind would settle, and he’d have a good two hours to fly his falcon before the afternoon bled into evening.

He had recently retired, building and selling his last saddle at the age of 64, and could come and go as he pleased now. He had earlier that morning stopped at Del’s for coffee and a sweet roll and was on his way home from Levon Ranch & Feed, having purchased three bags of sunflower seeds, two of nyjer, and one of peanuts, all for his backyard birds.

Pulling into the long gravel driveway that led to the Eyrie — the ten acres he called home — he cut the engine, got out of the pickup, and released the tailgate. As he reached into the bed to grab the first of the 40-pound bags, his back went out, sending a jolt of pain from his neck to his lower spine. Stars catapulted across his eyes. Resting his elbows on the tailgate, he waited for the spasm to pass. He knew the drill, understood that 3 minutes could well turn into 30, so he reached into the pocket of his jeans and took out his cellphone, one finger hovering over Bob Zelle’s number.

Bob managed Roan River, the outfit next door that ­catered to families wanting a dude-ranch experience — horseback riding, barbecue picnics, dirt bikes, and ATVs. Con had twice depended on Bob to help him when his back had gone out, and while he hated to ask again, he had no one else to turn to. He tapped the man’s mobile number.

Bob picked up on the second ring. “Con, my man! What can I do you for?”

“Can you come over, help me into the house? Back’s out again, and I can’t move — I’m draped over the back of my truck.”

“Well, hell, Conrad, I’m on my way to Billings. Let me phone Elise right quick.”

“No, don’t —”

“I don’t call her, she’ll skin me alive. You know that as well as I do.”

Elise Jackman owned Roan River. Her husband, Anse, had gone the way of Conrad’s ex-wife and then his father, all passing before their time.

He thanked Bob, hung up, and closed his eyes, concentrating on the scent of the shaving cream he had used that morning — its notes of eucalyptus and menthol — and the aroma of damp sage. It was apparent now that he wouldn’t fly Glacier this afternoon and might not fly her tomorrow. The realization pained him, since his falcon was his life, as all the falcons before her had been.

A northern flicker called from a cottonwood. Then, faintly, after about four minutes, came the thrum of a diesel engine. Elise turned into the driveway, pulled her Dodge pickup up to the house, and powered down the window. “Got yourself into a jam, I see.”

“Not for the first time, either.”

The woman slid from the truck and walked up to Conrad. “How you want to do this?”

“Just kick me up the stairs,” he said. “Whatever’s easiest.”

Elise gripped his waist with the fingers of a woman who had worked a ranch since girlhood. Conrad brought up one arm and draped it over her shoulders. “Lean on me,” she said, and although she wasn’t tall, she was sturdy, her boot-cut jeans tight on muscled thighs, everything about her compact. Conrad did as he was told, and together they inched toward the house, Con raising one foot at a time while Elise hoisted him up the steps. They stopped at the top of the stairs. “You all right?” she said, and when he nodded, she walked him through the door.

Conrad’s English setter hopped off the couch and followed them into the bedroom. Con sat on the edge of the bed, collapsing more or less sideways, while Elise grabbed his ankles and carefully pivoted the whole of him until he was fully reclined, feet splayed, one hand resting atop his belly.

“We made it,” said Elise.

“We did,” said Con. “And I thank you for it.”

Elise took in one hand the heel of Conrad’s boot and pulled it from his foot.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

She told him to hush. When she’d gotten the boot off his other foot, she assessed him with the eyes of a barn owl. “Where you keep your pain meds?”

“Bathroom medicine cabinet, bottom shelf.”

She walked around the corner, and a moment later he heard the pop of the cabinet door. “Ibuprofen?” she called.

“Two Flexerils, one Vicodin — please.”

Conrad glanced over at his dog and patted the empty side of the bed. Annie jumped up and lay down, rested her chin on Conrad’s thigh, and then looked at him, one eyebrow raised, brown eyes blinking. “I’m okay,” he said, cupping the aging dog’s muzzle and scratching her chin.

“There’s only one Flexeril left in the bottle,” Elise called. “You want me to order a refill?”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll call the pharmacy tomorrow.”

She walked from the bathroom to the kitchen, and when she returned she held a glass of water and a quilt she’d pulled from the back of the couch. While Conrad swallowed the medication, Elise covered him with the blanket, ensuring his dog was tucked in too. “What else you need?” she said.

“Put a little kibble in Annie’s bowl?”

“You got it,” she said. “What about your bird?” Conrad’s falcon, a peregrine, was housed in the mews — the small wooden structure 20 yards from the house, next to the weathering yard.

“She’s fine. She ate yesterday — snagged a teal this side of your pond.”

“All right, then,” Elise said, “get some sleep. I’ll bring a plate over later this evening.”

 

He slept the sleep of a dead man, through Elise’s evening visit and the drop-off of his supper. He woke a little after midnight. He got up, wrapping the quilt around his shoulders. He found a note in the kitchen saying Elise had put his meal in the fridge and let Annie out to pee. “Call if you need me,” she’d added as a postscript, and although he needed her, he would not ask again for her help. Nor would he ask Bob. They were busy people, what with the wrap-up the ranch required at the end of each summer: guests sent off with cheery farewells, equipment repaired, stables scoured and cottages cleaned, pipes wrapped for the upcoming winter.

It was distressing, depending on others for help. Before Con’s dad, Owen, died, the man had been Con’s helper, as Con had been his. His wife’d been there for him and his dad until the day she walked out, saying she was done dealing with two grown children and sick of competing with birds. “You’ve brought every falcon you’ve owned into this house, insisting it’s important to their socialization. But you don’t understand what it is to socialize with humans, Conrad. And by humans, I mean me.”

“You knew when you married me my life was falcons.”

He hadn’t said this to be cruel — he wasn’t a cruel man — but as a means of defending himself. As a boy he had read the Craigheads’ Hawks in the Hand and fallen in love with falconry, but in those days no one understood his fascination with falcons, including his father. When Con was 12, his dad dished out a nice slice of hell for the poor job he had done mucking the horses’ stalls. “Get back out there,” Owen had told him. “Do what you were supposed to do the first time I told you, or you won’t be flying your bird.”

“Jasper’s gotta eat, Dad. I can’t not fly him.”

“Then tend to your chores, young man.”

Con had set his mouth in a firm silent line and headed for his bedroom. He slammed the door, flung himself onto his bed, and buried his face in his arms. I hate you I hate you I hate you, he cried, hot tears sliding into his ears and wetting his pillowcase.

But his father was no more a cruel man than Con was, and one Saturday in early summer, Owen appeared at the barn door, a pair of spiked shoes in hand. “Thought I’d use these to shimmy the lodgepole down by the pond and check that red-tail nest. Want to come with me?” It was the beginning of his father’s turnaround, and Con had carried it for years.

Now he hitched the quilt higher onto his shoulders and opened the refrigerator door. Elise had left on the top shelf a lidded casserole and a slice of pie wrapped in aluminum foil. He dished a spoonful of the chicken-noodle mixture onto a paper plate, nuked the meal, and then carried it to the outdoor porch, where he slid with care into a wooden rocker.

He took a bite of casserole and slowly chewed as he rested his head against the back of the chair. He had always been fond of Elise — her candor, straightforwardness, and no-nonsense attitude — she had that in common with his Kira but lacked the woman’s resentment. He wanted in some way to thank Elise for helping him into the house but knew he couldn’t pay her — that would only insult her — or repair fences on the ranch, since she had Bob for that. But he thought she might enjoy an outing with Glacier, even as he recognized that tagging along while he flew his falcon might not be her thing. Still, he thought that two hours on the mesa might offer the woman a respite from the chores at the ranch. Too it might bring her closer to her dead husband, as walking the landscape brought him closer to his dad.

 

A little after 9 a.m., Con picked up his refill at the pharmacy, came home, and took his meds. He fed Glacier the two ounces of quail he’d pulled from the freezer that morning, and then set her in the weathering yard, where she could bathe and take in the afternoon sun. He spent the remainder of that day and all of the next alternating between stretching exercises and lying on the couch. By day three, he was himself again and so drove to Del’s just before lunch to pick up a box of cinnamon rolls for Elise.

When he arrived at Roan Ranch, the place was deserted, the parking lot empty of Teslas with out-of-state plates, kids playing cornhole, and horses toting tourists wearing Yellowstone ball caps. He parked, picked up the pink cardboard box, and carried it through a side door and into the lobby, a room paneled in Blue Mountain pine and divided in half by a reception desk, which held a metal dinger.

He waited, the scent of cinnamon pinging his salivary glands and roiling his empty stomach. When no one approached, he tapped the stem on the bell. “Hello?”

Elise walked around the corner. “Well, hello, neighbor,” she said, wiping her hands with a dish towel. “Glad to see you’ve rejoined the living.”

“As of this morning,” he said. He smiled and handed her the box. “Small thank you for helping me out.”

She threw the towel over one shoulder, cracked the lid of the box, and peered inside. “You know that’s two pounds on each hip, right?”

He shrugged. “Who’s counting?”

“Come in,” she said. “I’ll put a pot of coffee on, and we’ll dig into these rolls. They come from Del’s?”

“Best in town,” he said.

He walked around the edge of the desk and followed Elise into the kitchen. It hadn’t changed much. Same ­butcher-block table and metal farm sink. A few new paintings on the walls — pieces she’d done after Anse died, he guessed — scenes of the Bighorn Mountains. While she measured coffee grounds into a paper filter, Con walked over to a watercolor of a bull elk grazing beneath the pines. “This is nice,” he said. “Yours?”

“It is,” she said, looking up. “Cream?”

“Please,” he said. “A little sugar too.” He pulled out a chair and sat at the table while Elise set out forks, napkins, and plates at two places. When the coffee was ready, she poured them each a cup. Con used his fork to place a roll onto her plate and then one onto his own.

She sat in her chair and sighed heavily. “It’s been a day,” she said, shaking open her napkin and laying it across her lap. She cut into the roll, took a bite, and chewed. “You ­really swing by just to thank me for helping you into your house?” she said. “Because it was nothing — you know that, right?”

“It’s not nothing. This is the third time I’ve been stranded.”

“What’d you do the other two times?”

“Called Bob. Third time, Bob called you.”

Elise took another bite, gazing at him as she chewed.

“What?” he said.

“I suppose there’s not a good time to tell you, but I put Roan on the market three weeks ago. Looks like I’ve got a buyer.”

“Roan’s your life —”

“Anse’s life,” she corrected. “The ranch is what he wanted.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, a moment in which her comment struck Con as uncomfortably familiar. All this time, he’d thought she was happy, that she’d been living the life she wanted, first as a rancher’s kid and then as a rancher’s wife. “I don’t know what to say,” he said, and when she didn’t immediately respond, he found a handful of words, words that now seemed inadequate to the occasion. “I came here to ask if you’d like to go to the mesa with me while I fly Glacier — I thought it would bring you closer to Anse, that you could commune with him somehow. But it sounds like maybe that’s not where you’re coming from.”

“Not where I’m coming from,” she agreed. Then: “Before Anse died — we’re talking years now — I never wanted to look that hard at my life. Too risky, you know? If I saw something I didn’t like, I’d have to deal with it, and I didn’t have time to deal with anything, or so I told myself. Story of everyone’s life, I suppose.” She set her fork on her plate, then took a sip of coffee. “Now that Anse is gone and I’m selling the ranch, I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m 58, Conrad. For the first time in my life I can go where I want, do what I want. Carve out a life of my own.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’ve lined up a rental in Missoula with a nice little studio in back.”

“Montana’s good,” he said, striving for something supportive to say. “I’ve flown Glacier there many times. But what’ll you do in Missoula?”

“Paint. Read. Ride a bike. Learn to play the piano.” She placed the remainder of her roll in the box, got up, set her dish in the sink, and then ran a little water over the top. “There’s so much I want to do,” she said, turning to face him. She surprised him when she said, “You know, I haven’t been to the highlands in over a decade, nor have I ever seen Glacier fly. I’d like to correct both of those wrongs before I leave, so I accept your invitation. When’re we heading out?”

 

The day Kira left him, she had stood in the living room, hands on hips, prepared to let Con have it. “All these years, you’ve done exactly what you wanted to do — flown your birds, no matter the holiday, the friends coming over, the meals sitting cold on my table. My table, Conrad, because I live here too.” She turned to leave, got halfway through the door, and then turned again. “Nobody gets to do what they want in this life. That’s the whole damn point of adulthood.”

Owen had warned him that Kira would eventually leave if he didn’t put her first, and his father had been right about that. She slammed a drawerful of clothes into a duffel bag, threw herself into her car, and hit the gas, dust billowing in stagnant air. Four years later she passed out in the grocery store, apples dropping from the bag in her hand and spinning across the floor. He had gone to the hospital to say his goodbyes, as even after surgery she wouldn’t survive the cancerous tumor pressing against her brainstem.

 

Elise hopped out of the truck while Con raised the window on the pickup’s canopy, released the tailgate, and lifted Annie to the ground. The old dog shook, scattering fine white hair into the air, and then pushed upland, scouring the brush as she loped, sussing out the scents of ring-necked pheasants and sharp-tailed grouse. Con leaned into the truck, mindful of his back, fitted Glacier’s left tarsal with a radio transmitter, pulled on a hawking glove, and then urged the falcon onto his fist.

Elise stepped forward for a better view of Conrad and his bird. “When will you take her hood off?” she asked.

“Not till she’s ready to fly,” he said. “Hood keeps her calm, like a horse’s blinders. What she can’t see won’t upset her.”

As they started up the trail, Con scanned the horizon for predators — golden eagles and great horned owls, both of which killed falcons to steal their competitors’ prey. Today the sky was clear, absent of danger, and they took in as they hiked the fading willows against the now-blond grass. Aspens ignited the draws like so many gilded lanterns, and higher up, great swaths of Doug fir, lodgepole, and ponderosa pine frosted the mountain in midnight blue and black.

The path was still muddy in spots. Con told Elise to keep to the grass and low sage, as slick clay adhered to the soles of boots like pollen to the legs of bees. He held Glacier close to his chest and inhaled the scent of her feathers — a mix of mountain air and high-desert sage, of dust and bark and willow. Annie dashed between clumps of bitterbrush, quartering for scent, until all at once she slowed, circled back, and froze. On point, she fixed her gaze on a tangle of dry brush. With the dog in position, Con struck the braces of Glacier’s hood, removed it from her head, and released her tether. The falcon leaped from his fist, flew 50 yards, and climbed into the air. At a height of a thousand feet, her circle broadened, signaling she was waiting-on.

Con ran toward the setter, waving his cap. “Get ’em up, Annie,” he hollered. “Get ’em up, girl!” The dog leaped forward, flushing a sharp-tailed grouse from its hiding spot. The sharpie frantically headed for distant cover as Glacier dropped from the heavens like a silver-gray bullet and zeroed in on her quarry. Within seconds, Glacier was inches from the bird’s tail, until it seemed that falcon and sharpie were one now. All at once, the birds careened to the ground.

“Glacier’s got him!” Con called. He and Elise ran hard toward the peregrine, leaping over roots and stones and sagebrush. When they reached Glacier, she had already severed the sharpie’s head and begun to pluck its feathers. Con dropped to one knee and tethered Glacier to his hawking bag, allowing her to securely feed on the ground.

Breathing hard, bent at the waist, Elise looked up. “I don’t know what that was,” she said, “but it was spectacular.”

“Always is,” Con said, pleased that in this small way he had perhaps repaid his friend.

Annie came around and lay at his feet. While the old dog rested and his falcon ate, he stood without speaking. Elise did a 360, her arms outstretched. “Would you look at this,” she said as though she’d never seen Wyoming’s terrain before. “Not a cellphone tower or telephone pole in sight.” He smiled, and when she stepped back, slipping her hands into the pockets of her vest, he thought he saw admiration in her face.

“I had a really nice time,” she told him then. “Thank you, Conrad.”

“You’re the first person I’ve asked to join me since Dad died.”

“I’m honored. Your father was a good man.”

“Everything gets better with age,” he said, “wine, cheese, men.” She laughed, and as they headed back to the truck, Con told her that he and his dad had this thing they did at the end of each flight — something he’d like to do with her, if she had 20 minutes to spare.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

Con put Glacier on the perch in the truck, placed a folded blanket on the tailgate, and encouraged Elise to sit. He pulled a small white sack from a plastic bin in back, opened the bag, and showed her the two doughnuts parked side by side. “Chocolate or powdered sugar?” he asked.

“You do enjoy your sweets,” she said, choosing the chocolate. Con passed her a napkin, dug a metal Thermos out of the bin, sat on the tailgate, and set the container between them.

The western sky shone in the lingering twilight and gleamed with the night’s first star. The temperature had dropped 10 degrees in the last 30 minutes; soon it would be jacket weather. “How long before you leave for Missoula?” Con said.

“Six weeks — five if I push it. New owners are keeping Bob on — they want him to show them the ropes.”

“They’ve never owned a dude ranch before?”

“I don’t know that they’ve ever ridden horses.”

“Jesus. They’ll run Roan into the ground.”

“That’s what I told Bob.” She brushed crumbs from her lap. “I thought I knew him, but maybe I don’t. I mean, he’s lived on the same Levon ranch since he was two years old, so maybe he lacks the gumption to pick up and go, try something new. But there you have it.”

The remark took Con aback. He himself wasn’t so unlike Bob, born and raised in the house he lived in now, but he’d never thought of himself as lacking the resolve to move on. It was a choice, remaining where he was, loving where he was, walking the land and flying his falcon, tending to chores at the Eyrie. But if he was honest, he had to admit that what he now called choice was also refusal. Before his divorce, Kira had suggested more than once that they try something different, move to the coast — California, Maine, she didn’t care where — just for a change of scenery. Each time she asked, he said no, often as he was prepping his tercel for a flight on the mesa, one foot out the door.

“I appreciate Bob’s dilemma,” Con admitted. “I’d have a hard time leaving too.” Finishing his doughnut, he wiped his hands and reached for the stainless-steel Thermos between them. He unscrewed the cap, poured a cup, and handed it to Elise. “Coffee’s hot,” he said. “Watch your tongue.”

She sipped the liquid, tendrils of steam rising into her hair, and passed the cup to him. They sat quietly, enjoying the evening air, when all at once she said, “What’s going on with your back, Conrad? Vicodin’s no joke.”

He hesitated.

“It’s childish. A little stupid, even.” He set the cup down on the tailgate, placed his hands on his knees, and came out with it. “I haven’t had an emergency contact since Dad died — someone I can call on if I need help. I mean, what’s a man in his 60s supposed to do when his best friend is a falcon?” The admission ignited a rush of heat from his chest to the tops of his ears. “Kira warned me years ago I’d be in a world of hurt if she died before me — we even laughed about it. It never occurred to either of us that she’d die first. Ironic, considering she was the one with all the friends.”

“You can still call Bob. He’ll help you in a heartbeat.”

“I know he will. Except he’ll be twice as busy as he was before, what with newbies running your ranch.” He had more he wanted to say to this rancher woman and so spoke his genuine truth: “I can’t imagine Roan without you, Elise. I hate to see you go.”

She bumped her shoulder into his, the gesture playful and wholly unlike her. “Well, I’m going, so you better come with me, I guess.”

He chuffed a laugh. “Wait. What? Where did that come from?”

She turned serious now. “Some of us get two lives,” she said, “a do-over, if you will. Take a look around, Conrad — a real look around. Make a change, take a chance. Your back might thank you for it.”

 

He now spent very afternoon with his bird and dog and the falling leaves. November was coming on in earnest now, the clouds above the Bighorns a blend of white and gray and azure. There was snow on the mountaintops. Spectacular, Elise would have said, had she been there to see it. And then late one Sunday morning he was in the front yard, hanging feeders and suet blocks, when he heard the familiar hum of her truck. He looked up, raising one hand in greeting as she turned into the driveway, the truck idling as she parked. The driver’s-side window opened with a whoosh. “I thought you’d left already,” he said.

“Without saying goodbye? That isn’t my style, Conrad.” She turned in her seat and picked up a small sack sitting beside her. “I brought you a present,” she said, handing the bag to him. “A little something for your back.”

He took the bag, looked inside. “Green tea,” he said. “My favorite.”

“Liar,” she said, but she smiled. “It’s rich in polyphenols and reduces inflammation, but you’ve got to drink a couple of cups a day.”

They talked about the route she’d take, how the trip required seven hours of driving, a little more with stops and the U-Haul she was towing. She said she wanted to take her time and was thinking about spending a couple of nights in Bozeman.

“You might see a prairie falcon while you’re there,” he said. “You’ve got binoculars?”

“Con,” she said. “I ran a dude ranch for 25 years. I’ve got binoculars.”

He glanced at his feet and grinned. “I’ll want your address as soon as you’re settled.”

“Here, I’ll give it to you now.” She fished around in her handbag for a pen and an old ranch business card, wrote her new house number and street on the back, and handed it to him.

She smiled, and there was a moment when he thought she might get out of the truck and hug him. But she didn’t, and so he nodded and promised to keep in touch. He rapped the vehicle’s door with his knuckles, stepped back, and watched as she backed up and turned around, keeping his eyes on the big white diesel until it vanished over the top of the hill. His chest tightened seeing her go, and he wished he had thought to tell her he admired her for stepping into the New.

 

He again woke at midnight. It was becoming a habit, these nightly awakenings, and he got up and wrapped the quilt around his shoulders. He made a cup of the tea Elise had given him and took the mug out the back door, crossed the yard, and stopped at the fence line. The moon was full, bright enough to wash gray-blue light over the creek-side willows, their limbs an old man’s arms. It was not lost on him that his age had become a conspiracy, something that marched against him despite his desire to remain fit and healthy. As he stood, he recalled with astonishment the times he had leaned into the milestones the next year provided: a driver’s license at age 16, a beer at 21. He’d thought his 40s and 50s fabulous, realizing only after his divorce that he’d stumbled through those decades in the throes of self-righteousness. That lack of respect had cost him a wife and perhaps a child, as he was unwilling to put in the hours a family required.

He inhaled the night’s cool air, thought of the Montana mesas he had yet to walk, the things he should have said to Elise before she left. Some of us get two lives, she had said that day on the highlands, a do-over, if you will. Take a look around, Conrad — a real look around. Make a change, take a chance. Your back might thank you for it.

He had lived in Levon for 64 years and had never looked around. He’d seen the mesas, the Bighorns, the sagebrush flats, but had missed the bigger picture: the willing hand, the offering, the chance to alter the arc of his life and avoid the inevitable circle. And so he turned, shucked the quilt from his shoulders, and strode toward the house. He walked into the bedroom, grabbed his suitcase from the closet, and set it on the bed. Annie had been asleep, but now she lifted her head, her dark eyes patient as she awaited his explanation. “Road trip,” he said, reaching over and lightly tugging her ear. “What do you think? Just you and me and Glacier.”

The next morning they were gone, the sunrise at their backs. Con held in one hand the card Elise had given him. Every so often he glanced at it, and when he looked up, the Spectacular beckoned from just beyond, and the Bighorns shone sherbet and gold.

 

Renée Thompson writes about her love of birds, wildlife, and the people who inhabit the American West. She is the author of numerous short stories and two novels, The Bridge at Valentine and The Plume Hunter. For more, visit reneethompson.com

This article is featured in the March/April 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.