"These hawks are not friendly. Sometimes you can feel it when they briefly hunt you. I remember the first time I felt them hunting me. It was like being in a crowd and turning and catching the eye of someone who for some reason is looking straight at you. You hold their eye for a moment and then look away, disturbed. You can feel the mind of the hawk as it puts its mind upon you. When my Anna was a child she used to complain about them. Not loudly, but softly. Bravely, though she was distressed. She was ten and already too big to be a target. She told me she didn’t like the hawks because they were creepy."

the blue stone of lady godiva         We were digging in the backyard. Big Ed was in his backhoe, sitting high behind the glass, pushing and pulling the levers. The metal bucket on the end of the monster backhoe arm was ripping up the earth. Big Ed’s dump truck was parked in my driveway. His flatbed trailer was hooked up to the dump truck. That’s how Ed had towed his backhoe onto my property. He’d backed in the trailer, then he’d loosened the metal chains and rolled the backhoe off the trailer. The backhoe had huge tires with deep treads. It was a little boy’s dream come true. My wife carried Little Pete out to where we were working behind the house. Ed and I had waved to him earlier when we saw him with his face pressed to the kitchen window. “Here, hand him up to me,” Big Ed said, and I passed Little Pete up to Ed in his cab and Ed sat Little Pete on his lap and he showed Pete how the monster’s levers worked. “Go ahead, you can make the bucket go down,” Ed told him, and Pete pushed the lever and sure enough the monster obeyed him. Little Pete was around four years old at the time. You never saw such a smile on a little boy’s face. Big Ed and I were fighting the water on my property. Well, you can’t say we were fighting it because you can’t fight water. The best you can do is reach some sort of agreement with it. Water doesn’t take orders from anybody. Today we were digging a big rectangular hole and filling it full of sand and then we were going to find out if the water from the washing machine would agree to stay in the sand pit and not overflow into the yard and make a mud pit. This was one of many waterworks projects which Big Ed and I worked on for maybe fifteen years. Little Pete wasn’t exactly new to the construction game, either. Even though he was only four years old, he was already a seasoned veteran. He’d learned his trade from Bob the Builder, who had a cartoon construction show on Saturday mornings. Bob the cartoon character also sold a full line of construction gear for little kids.

Pete had his own Bob the Builder hard hat and work belt complete with screwdrivers and hammers, and he had his own dump truck and backhoe and other vehicles as well. Pete was ready for just about any job you could throw at him. He wanted to know why we were digging in the yard. Ed had handed him back down to me and I’d given him to my wife for safe keeping while Ed went back to work. “We’re trying to find the blue stone of Lady Godiva,” I said to him. Little Pete said to me, “Blue stone? Where’s the blue stone?” “I don’t know,” I said, “But Big Ed has a map at home, and the map says it’s right around here somewhere.” “Is it big?,” Pete said, and he opened his arms wide. “It’s big,” I said, “But more importantly it shines real bright. There’s a fire inside it, and whichever way you turn it, you see the blue light shining out of it.” Little Pete looked at his mother. She was smiling. Then he looked at Big Ed. Big Ed shut off his machine. It was early on a sunny Summer day. I’d taken the day off from work to help Big Ed look for the blue stone. Big Ed came down out of his machine. “I know it’s around here somewhere,” he said, “because my map says so.” “Lady Godiva buried the blue stone in England where she lived a thousand years ago," I said to Pete, "And over the years the stone traveled underground, and then it went under the ocean, and now it’s coming up right here. We just have to find it.” “What do you do with it when you find it?,” Little Pete said, "Do you give it back to Lady Godiva? Is she still looking for her blue stone?" "No, she's not looking for it anymore," I said to him, "I think she wants us to have it." My wife said to Little Pete, “Come on inside. We’ll get the men some iced tea.” Big Ed and I were standing under the mild morning Sun. My dog Berry was hanging around not too far off, out of range of the backhoe. “I’ve heard of Lady Godiva,” Big Ed said to me, “But I never heard anything about a blue stone. Wasn’t she the lady with the long golden hair, who rode on her horse naked?”

“Actually her name was Lady Herefordshire. She was married with four young kids and her husband died. Then she remarried. She married the Earl of Clacker. Turned out he was a real jerk. Couldn’t even do what needed to be done in the marriage bed. Spent all his time having banquets with his buddies and bragging about how he was screwing all the peasant serving girls and giving them babies. Finally the Lady said to him, ‘I’ve had it with your bs.’ So she and all her maidens went for a ride through town. She was bare-assed on her favorite stallion. She’d put the word out earlier. Any virile man in town only had to paint a red cross on his door. On her ride through town, maybe she’d stop by for a visit.” Big Ed said to me, “I didn’t know people did things like that back in the day.” “When you’re rich you can do as you please,” I said, “But she already knew where she was going to stop. She had one of her maidens carry a brush and red paint just in case the lucky fellow forgot to paint the cross on his door. Nine months later she gave birth to a beautiful red haired boy. She called him Tom Godiva. Which means ‘twin gifts from God.’ She figured the first gift from God was the father, and the second was the son.” “But what was her blue stone?,” Ed said. “Well, not long after she gave birth to her boy, the North Men came across the channel from the lands in Gaul they’d conquered, and then they conquered all England. The Earl of Clacker was known as a shrewd businessman. He said to everybody, “I can do business with these guys.” They just hung him. But Lady Godiva strapped on some armor and rode out with her maidens and met the North Men at the gates. They were so impressed by her courage that they let her keep her lands, and they didn’t bother her maidens either. Years later, when she died of old age, the North Men rode back and gave her a big funeral. There’s nothing they loved more than someone who had courage in battle.”

Now my wife and Little Pete came out the back door. Little Pete was carrying plastic cups, and my wife had a pitcher of iced tea. I said to Little Pete, “I was telling Big Ed that when Lady Godiva finally died, when she was an old lady, how all the Viking warriors with horns on their helmets came to her funeral, and they piled up a huge mound of firewood and then dressed her up in her old armor and put her on top of the firewood and then lit it and it made a great blaze that burned all day. And as it got toward nighttime, and the Western sky was bright red at the bottom, one of her maidens said, 'Look! look! there she is!' And she was clear blue and she was rising up towards the Moon which had risen overhead, and somebody said they heard her say, ‘I’ll become a beautiful blue stone. And whenever you find me in the Earth, give me to the one you love, and they will always be safe from harm!’ And that happened over a thousand years ago.” Little Pete said to me, “What will you do with the blue stone when you find it, Dad?” I said to him, “Why, I guess I’ll give it to your Mom.” “Okay then,” said Big Ed, and he handed his empty plastic cup back to Little Pete, “I guess it’s time we got back to work so we can find that stone.” “But Dad,” Little Pete said, “What if we don’t find the stone?” “You got me there, Pete,” I said to him, “And maybe your Mom has been coaching you a bit. If we don’t find the stone, I can always drive down to Henry David’s jewelry store. I know for a fact he has some blue stones there.” This seemed to satisfy both Little Pete and his Mom. Big Ed and I didn't get the water to cooperate with us, at least not that time. But Henry David the jeweler had plenty of Lady Godiva's blue stones. I guess he had a better map than Big Ed. But he didn't have a backhoe.