After the procedure I rode home, too distracted by fear to drive, a bottle of tranquilizers rattling in my pocket. I waited for the results. I waited. I spread cracked corn beneath junipers for pheasants and quail and watched them through my window as they flocked and moved like a shadow on the snow. But a beautiful peregrine falcon was canny to this, and he turned my yard into a killing field. Through binoculars I counted the chevrons on his wings as he tore with one foot at his meals. Feathers and splashes of blood speckled the snow.
I waited days. And then came a call on December 23rd. A nurse at the university said she didn’t want me going into Christmas not knowing the results. The results were negative.
“Negative? What do you mean, negative?”
“The biopsy came out negative,” she sa
