One afternoon when Sarita brings in the mail, there is a letter from Amy. Charley takes it and thinks for a moment how impressed Amy would be at the changes in Coyote, before she remembers that Amy doesn’t even know about him. Incredible, she thinks, and drops the letter in the trash. She has better things to do with her time than read about how Amy is doing with her tennis.
At least she has better things to do until Sadie and Coyote swim back across the lake. After that the days have been stretching out blankly, hour after hour. She usually spends a while on the computer, answering instant messages from kids who check in to see how she’s doing. Sometimes one of them asks if she wants to go to the mall or the movies, and Sarita has said she’ll take her, but Charley doesn’t feel like being in a car if she doesn’t have to. Besides, she has discovered that she doesn’t really want to leave Eagle Lake and the dogs, no matter where they are.
This time when she sits down to her laptop, Charley is thinking about the difference between working with an animal you can touch or leash or cage somehow, and a wild thing you can’t control. Somebody must know how to do it. Jane Goodall. She remembers the movie they saw in science class last year about Goodall and her chimpanzees. Charley Googles Jane Goodall. An hour later she has come up with a plan. What she needs to do is spend some time in Coyote’s territory.
She enlists Sarita’s help, then calls Mrs. Davis to explain. Her father is working late that night, so after dinner Sarita drives Charley around the lake and drops her off in front of Crazy Sherman’s.
“You can come get me when it starts to get dark.”
“I’ll be back before then,” Sarita says.
There is a plastic bag full of freshly cooked liver chunks in Charley’s waist pack. Mrs. Davis has agreed to keep Sadie inside the house every evening until dark. There’s no way for this plan to work with Sadie around.
Charley whistles a couple of times to let Coyote know she’s there, and walks back toward the Davises’ house. Coyote is in his usual place, lying on the smooth-packed dirt by the tree across the road. “Liver!” Charley calls to him. He sits up, poised to bolt into the woods, so she stops. She takes a piece of liver out and holds it up, hoping he can smell it. “You’re gonna love this.”
She sets it down on the side of the road and walks away from it, back toward Sherman’s. A few feet farther she puts down another piece. She keeps this up, putting a piece of liver every three feet or so, until she reaches the boulder at the end of the Heywards’ driveway, one house down from the Davises’. Then she sits on the boulder, facing away from Coyote, and gets out the mirror to watch what he does. She can’t see his patch of bare ground from where she is, but she can see if he comes out to get the liver.
For a long time nothing happens. She is just wondering whether she has to go even farther away when Coyote creeps out of the woods and across the road to the first piece of liver. He sniffs at it, then snatches it and gulps it down. He stands looking at the next piece, his nose quivering, and then goes just far enough to get it, walking the way he used to walk, all hunched and careful. After another moment he moves forward again and takes the next piece. And the next. Then he stops.
He knows the others are there. He can see them and smell them, and he wants them. But he won’t come close enough to her to get them. Not even with her back turned. Finally he heads back across the road. He doesn’t go all the way to his tree, though. He flops down under a bush, puts his nose on his paws, and watches her.
Mr. Heyward comes out to fill his bird feeder. The minute he opens the screen door, Coyote is gone into the woods. Charley explains to the man what she is doing, why she is sitting on his boulder.
“That dog’s wild,” he says. “If Animal Control can’t catch him, nobody can.”
“I don’t want to catch him,” Charley says. “I want to tame him.”
“I don’t know what your father’s thinking of, letting you mess with that dog. That isn’t some pet that got abandoned, you know. I know dogs. The way it’s acting, it’s never been anything but wild. You don’t get a dog used to humans by the time it’s three months old, it’ll be wild forever. Wild and dangerous. That’s a known fact! Can’t any more tame a full-grown feral dog than you can tame a five-point buck. If it was up to me, I’d get my gun and put him down.”
“You wouldn’t!”
Mr. Heyward shrugs. “Come winter, it’ll be the only sensible thing.”
Winter’s a long way away, Charley thinks. But her stomach is in a knot. Mr. Heyward goes back into his house. “Known fact,” his words echo in her mind. Well, I don’t know it. The books don’t say anything about it. “Wild forever.” No!
There were people in Coyote’s life. What about whoever trapped him with food? Charley swats a mosquito and closes her eyes, remembering the scene she saw before, the men catching Coyote and locking him in a shed. Her breath begins to come hard and fast, the way Coyote’s did, trapped in a dark shed. She sees him, feels him pacing back and forth, around and around, looking for a way out. He scratches at the door, at the walls, till his paws bleed. Then there is a sound by the door. Coyote smells a person coming closer and cowers back into a corner. The door opens a crack, and a child’s face peers in. Coyote throws himself against the door, knocks the child down, and runs. He goes on running, into the woods.
Is this what happened? Was Coyote born in the woods? The people who owned his mother could have found him there, too late to tame him. Maybe that’s who the men were who used food to catch him. And then he escaped. It could be true. Just like before, it feels true. She swats another mosquito and checks her mirror. Coyote has not come back.
Charley hopes he knows to stay far away from Mr. Heyward. She is just about to put the mirror back in her waist pack when he is suddenly there again, at the edge of the road. He lies down, relaxed but watchful.
Wild forever. She refuses to believe it. You might as well get used to me, she thinks at Coyote. I’m not going to give up. Come winter, she imagines a clean, brushed, golden dog curled up on the rug by the fireplace as snow falls past the bare trees outside the lake room windows. Can that happen? Of course it can. Of course.
By the time Sarita comes to get her, Charley is bored out of her mind. How did Jane Goodall keep from going nuts all those days in the jungle? She has eight new mosquito bites to add to the last of the poison ivy. She wonders if Sarita’s hot water trick will work on mosquito bites. Good thing she isn’t in Africa. Jane Goodall got malaria trying to get the chimpanzees used to her!
10
Rain
Coyote runs ahead of her, his blond plume of a tail waving. She follows, climbing the trail between the trees easily, both legs moving smoothly, fast. She is not carrying a spider stick because there are no spiders. Just the clean, clear, bright air. Not like summer. Like the perfect days of spring. Or fall, maybe. Except that the leaves haven’t turned color. When she reaches the top of the hill, she breaks into a run, amazed at the freedom of it, dodging low-hanging branches and weaving in and out between trees and stands of Russian olive, until she and Coyote are side by side, emerging together into the sunlight. They are on a huge granite boulder overlooking the lake, the glitter of the water, the sweep of sky stretching before them. Charley sits on the edge, her legs dangling over toward the water below, and Coyote sits a little way away, too far to touch, but closer than he’s ever been. He turns to look at her, his eyes intent on her face, his ears pointed sharply forward. The sun makes diamonds on the lake as a breeze ruffles the water. Listen. Her heart leaps. It is her mother’s voice, coming from directly behind her. Listen! Charley turns to see her mother. There is nothing there but the rough granite of the boulder, the pale green circles of lichen.
Charley opens her eyes to dull gray light. Rain pounds steadily on the roof. She holds the sheet tight against her chin, wishing she could go back to the dream, back to the moment she heard her mother’s voice, clear and real and not a memory, the moment she believed her mother had come back, was rea
lly there. No good. Even if she could get that moment back, there would, inevitably, be the next, when she turned and saw the empty stretch of granite. Stupid to have been tricked into believing, even in a dream. There is no clearing in the woods above the lake, no boulder like the one she and Coyote were sitting on. And no way for her mother to come back.
The clock says 8:32. She has slept later than she has in weeks. There is no sun to filter through the blinds and wake her. Coyote will be wondering where she is.
Charley has never thought about having to walk the trail in the rain. The drought has gone on so long, she’s almost forgotten the possibility of rain. Already she’s late. She should be at the Davises’ by now, starting back. She gets out of bed, goes to the window, looks out between the slats of the blind. It is like peering into a deep green jungle through a curtain of silvery beads. What she can see of the sky is leaden, no cloud forms moving, no scraps of blue giving hope for clearing.
It is Day Nineteen of The Taming—Saturday, Sarita’s day off. She can hear her father in the kitchen, banging things. It’s the way he always is in the kitchen, slamming cupboard doors, clanging silverware, smacking bowls or plates on the counter, as if he’s mad at them. He can make the opening of a box of cereal sound like small arms fire.
This isn’t what he used to be like, when he and her mother sometimes worked together to make wonderful, special dinners. He always did the meat dish, her mother the vegetables and salad. What he wants now, Charley thinks, is for someone else to be doing all of it, whatever has to be done. He hates cooking now, hates having to think about food except to eat it. Hates having to clean up afterward.
If he could have hired Sarita twenty-four/seven, he would have, so that he would never, ever have to set foot in the kitchen. Before the accident Charley used to shoo him out on Sarita’s day off sometimes and do it herself, even the cleanup. Breakfast and lunch were easy—cereal, sandwiches, whatever. And there was enough stuff she’d learned to make—tuna casserole, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs and beans—to get them through dinner once or even twice a week.
Since March he’s had to do Saturdays himself. Charley could take over in the kitchen again now, and she knows it. He knows it, too, and the banging is getting louder. But he hasn’t ordered Charley to do it, or even asked her. Until he does, she isn’t going to volunteer.
She writes the number 19 on the calendar and dresses for the walk. She can’t expect Coyote not to eat just because it’s raining. As she laces her hiking boots, she wonders what the dog is doing in the rain, where he has gone for shelter. His place under the sweet gum isn’t really a den. The leaves overhead are the only protection. From the sound of the rain on the roof, that won’t be worth much today. The image of him huddled, nose to tail, rises in her mind. His ears are tipped sideways, and he’s lying beneath something that doesn’t provide the cover he needs. She watches a thin stream of water fall onto his forehead, run down his nose.
“You going out?” Dad asks when she gets to the kitchen. He is leaning against the counter, eating a piece of toast.
Charley nods and gets out a bowl for cereal. “Coyote needs to eat.”
“Seems to me if he’s all that hungry, he should be coming around to get his food on his own by now. It’s been—what?—three weeks?”
“Nineteen days.”
Her father pours himself a second cup of coffee and bangs the empty pot back into the coffeemaker. “You sure this is going to work?”
“I’m sure.” She isn’t, not really.
“You shouldn’t walk that trail when the weather’s like this.”
“It’s only rain,” Charley says. As she says the words, they become a kind of echo. It’s only rain. Her mother used to say that whenever she set off for the woods with her cameras under her yellow slicker. Her mother loved the way the world looked on a day like this. Eventually there was a whole series of photos—soft colors, misty air, silvery drops on the tips of leaves. Rainy Day Carolina. The series won an award somewhere.
Charley concentrates on pouring cereal into her bowl, getting out the milk, pouring it, putting it back into the refrigerator. Cereal. Milk. Eating. Breathing in and out, chewing, swallowing. Stay focused, she reminds herself firmly. No remembering.
“How long will you be?” Paul Morgan asks, his voice carefully light, as if he has no particular interest in the answer.
“About an hour. Why?”
“Mrs. Jensen’s gone to the mountains. She can’t come stay with you, and I need to go to the office.”
Of course he does. “You can go.”
“Not while you’re out there in the woods by yourself. You could slip and fall. You could—”
“Hurt myself?” she finishes for him. “I hurt all the time.” Even without looking, she can feel him wince. She probably ought to be sorry, but she isn’t. Why shouldn’t he feel bad about running away to his office on Saturday, for never, never being there? “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
Her father looks out the window and sips his coffee. “I’ll stay here till you get back. I just need to go in for a few hours. I’ll stop on the way home and get takeout for dinner.”
Charley grins into her cereal bowl. These days her father even manages to bang Styrofoam boxes.
She considers, briefly, taking an umbrella. But if Coyote doesn’t like walking sticks, she’s pretty sure an umbrella would freak him out. She wears her slicker instead. Before she gets as far as Mr. Garrison’s, where Jasmine and Bernie are holed up in their twin doghouses, not even barking as she passes, she is sweating under the slicker. She takes down the hood and lets the cool rain fall on her hair and face.
The world really is different on a day like this, she thinks. There is a new smell, almost a taste to the air. The colors are softened, the edges of things blurred. Only sound is sharper—the family of five geese honking from the water could be right there on the trail with her. Mrs. Jensen says the geese are the pair that raised three goslings on the lake last year, back again with their whole family. No one can know this for sure, Charley thinks. How could it be that wild things born here can fly away to another part of the world and come back again, not having been shot by hunters, caught by foxes, hit by lightning?
When Charley gets to the road and whistles, Sadie doesn’t come running. Coyote isn’t under his tree. She sees that neither of the Davises’ cars is in the driveway and Sadie is chained on the side deck. She is lying up under the eaves, out of the wet.
“Where’s Coyote?” Charley calls. Sadie comes to the end of the chain and barks, her tail wagging eagerly. She seems to have no problem with the prospect of a walk in the rain.
As Charley starts down the driveway, Coyote crawls out from beneath the picnic table in the side yard. He is drenched, his fur darkened and muddy. The picnic table, its boards spaced half an inch apart, has offered little shelter from the rain overhead and none at all from the water running down the yard toward the lake. He shakes himself, spraying mud and water, and then waits at the edge of the woods for Sadie to be released.
It’s only rain, Charley tells herself. But Coyote looks awful. Miserable.
“Shelter,” she calls to him. “I’m offering you food and shelter. Remember that!”
He wants both, she thinks. From the tilt of his ears, it is clear that he doesn’t like rain any more than he likes swimming.
Once they start the walk, though, Coyote and Sadie pay no attention to the rain. They bound off on one side of the trail, then the other, doubling back and charging ahead, bumping into each other from time to time the way they do when they’re playing. After a while Coyote disappears on some journey of his own. Charley listens, hoping to be able to hear where he has gone. There is something about this day that makes her want him with her. Close. Safe. But there is no holding him.
She has passed the worst of the steep, slippery part of the trail, moving from handhold to handhold, has ducked under the Limbo Tree, and is heading across the ridge of the hill w
hen she catches her foot in a vine and falls, landing full length in a thick patch of poison ivy with such force that the breath is knocked out of her. For a moment everything seems to stop except the pain in her leg and the steady fall of the rain. It’s only rain.
When she is able to breathe again, Charley discovers, with a jolt of surprise, that she is crying. Tears are sliding down her cheeks, the only difference between rain and tears the warmth of the tears. Sadie comes back along the trail and nudges her with her nose.
“Leave me alone,” Charley says. She tries to blink back the tears, but they are flowing faster now. She doesn’t know why she is crying, but she needs to make it stop. She folds her arms beneath her head and puts her forehead on the wetness of her slicker, its yellow bright against the deep green of the ivy leaves. She squeezes her eyes as tightly shut as she can, willing the tears away. Stop it. Now. She swallows hard, and little by little the tears begin to slow. When at last the wetness on her face is just the rain, she lies very still, breathing and counting, breathing and counting. She feels Sadie’s nose against her neck and turns her head to tell her to go away.
It isn’t Sadie. For the space of a single breath, Coyote’s nose is an inch from hers. His dark eyes meet hers.
Listen. Listen.
Charley reaches a hand toward Coyote, and he backs hurriedly away. Still there is no taking back what has just happened. He has touched her. Dog to human. Spirit to spirit. She can still feel his nose on her neck. She pushes her hair out of her eyes with a muddy hand. Listen! It is what her mother used to say when she sat, camera in her hands, Charley on the ground nearby, waiting for the right light, the perfect puff of wind, a bird or squirrel or lizard to venture into view.
Charley listens now, the way she used to when her mother told her to. She can hear the rain on the leaves over her head, on the ground around her. She hears a stir of wind, a bird calling across the lake, Sadie moving in the soggy leaf litter down the hill. She doesn’t know now any more than she knew then what it is she is listening for, what her mother wanted her to hear.
Listen! (9780062213358) Page 5