Last night, within the shoddy brick rowhome the sound of helicopter banking for a quarter-mile, swooping for a half-mile and banking again, causes the house to rattle and shake.
I had heard the approach before the Land Lady at the dinner table.
She only heard the furious yawn of the rotors as the large mechanical dragonfly tilted sideways. She asked, “What is it doing?”
“It’s nightfall, it came in for a call from the east and is now searching for someone. If the ellipse its flying tightens that means the chopper is spotting its quarry for ground units. If the circle widens, he is still looking.”
I hear the circle widen and say, “He’s expanded the search radius.”
“How can you tell?”
“Loud is close. Fading is making distance. It’s fading.”
The character of the rotor noise changes in two ways.
“It’s gained altitude and is on station, just staying in one spot just north of here in overwatch. The hunted must have been flushed out and he’s just standing off above like a news helicopter probably using radio to communicate with the ground units as they converge on the target.”
“Wow,” she says, “how can you know such things?”
“Any hoodrat knows the beating of the ghetto hawk wings. It’s a survival skill.”
I spotted the chopper from the day shift earlier and tried and snap a picture and don’t know if I succeeded.
After 9, as I slept on the coach and she was upstairs breathing through her C-pap machine, I heard another search pattern, another quarry, another hunted target trying to escape across the exterior nightscape.
