Sheddio Sessions - Redtail Hawks [Video]
The story of two teenagers whiling away one lazy afternoon and the unknown futures that stood in front of them.
One day in the summer of 1989, I was asked by my mother to go out and “check on things at the farm”. My grandparents were away and there were a few chores that needed to be done daily, and on that particular Friday, it was my turn. Being a self-obsessed teen, I reluctantly agreed that I would get it done, but I planned to take a friend along to keep it fun.
My friend Eric was a year older than me, and about to head to his first year at Penn State University. We had met as members of competing teams in our regional Quiz Bowl league. Eric was funny, smart, liked good music, and seemed to enjoy me as well. We’d only known each other a few months, but by that summer, we saw each other almost daily.
The morning that I was supposed to head to the farm, I drove out to Eric’s to spend some time hanging out. We listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland, a huge record for both of us that summer. As we listened to CDs and lounged in Eric’s room, morning turned to early afternoon. Begrudgingly, we packed up a few tapes for the car and headed out to my grandparents’ farm just west of Lansing.
It took less than an hour for Eric and I to complete the minor chores to which we had been charged. As we finished up feeding the cows, I noticed that a flock of birds had begun to form over the field. Watching more intently, I could see that hawks were forming in groups and descending one by one to pluck mice from the field beyond my grandparents house.
The scene was something out of a low-rent nature film. It reminded me of the old television program Wild Kingdom with Marlon Perkins, or those David Attenborough docs that displayed the battle between the hunter and the hunted. At seventeen, I just thought it was wicked cool. Eric and I grabbed a pair of lawn chairs from the garage and set up shop to take in the show.
WATCH THE SHEDDIO SESSION OF ‘REDTAIL HAWKS’ BELOW
As we rummaged around for something to drink and snack on, we found a jar of homemade wine. It was sweet, pungent and almost viscous. We each took a sip, making faces as we forced the sweet wine down. Neither of us thought it was good, but we each took a second hit just to be sure. We resealed the jar and set it neatly back in its place.
Back outside, the show blazed on as the late afternoon sun set an orange hue to the affair. Eric had found a small boom box in the house and we brought it outside to listen to a mix tape that I’d made for Eric as we were getting to become friends. Four hours, we sat and listened to the music, watched the hawks, and enjoyed the emptiness of the farm.
At the end of the summer, Eric went off to Penn State and for several months, we kept in regular contact. We mailed letters back and forth and we saw each other at Thanksgiving and Christmas. As Eric became more entrenched in his first year away, and as I focused only last year of high school and my friends at home, we slowly drifted apart.
Just before coming back for the summer, Eric sent me a long and intense letter about his struggle with his sexuality, and he confessed that he might have feelings for me. I was stunned and unsure how to respond. Eric being gay was no issue at all. I had two close friends who had already come out of the closet, and I was very comfortable with Eric’s homosexuality. I was not as prepared to deal with Eric’s possible affections.
I sent him a terribly awkward letter in return in which I tried to tell him that I supported him but I did not share his feelings. In retrospect, I am certain that my response was tone deaf and awkward. There were a few more letters and I did see Eric once or twice after that, but things were never the same. Eventually, we fell out of each other’s lives.
Eric had been one of my mother’s students and once in a great while, I would receive an update about how he was doing or where he was living. Over the course of several years, I learned that Eric had met a woman, gotten married and moved to Brazil. He’d even begun working in his wife’s family’s company. It sounded like things were going well.
WATCH THE STICK AROUNDS FULL BAND VERSION OF ‘REDTAIL HAWKS’ BELOW
Then one day, my mother called me to tell me that Eric had died. He had hanged himself, and his wife found him in the basement. Hearing her words on the phone, I felt as though I might lose my balance. This was a person I had not seen in more than twenty years, and yet this news felt like a punch to the stomach.
Of course, I thought of our falling out and Eric’s feelings for me at the time. I wondered if his attraction to me had simply been a phase of experimentation for Eric, or if he had been trying to live a life that those around him expected for him. Inevitably, I wondered how much of Eric’s pain and hurt had been caused by the way I had handled our situation.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see the hallmarks of mental illness that lay within Eric when I knew him. Looking back, it’s easy to see that our shared mental illness was probably a connecting force between the two of us as much as music, Quiz Bowl, or movies. At seventeen, and in the late 1980s, I was incapable of telling Eric that I loved him in a platonic way. Now that I possess the wisdom and the language to tell him, he is gone.
In a way, this song is an ode to the person that Eric was when I knew him best. He was wry, mischievous, hilarious, whip smart, and shrewd. That afternoon was one of pure and simple joy. That is not a place I get to very often these days without some extra help. ‘Redtail Hawks’ is call for us to return to those days of simple pleasures and lazy afternoons.
Cheers,
Matty C