Pride of Eden

by Taylor Brown

  “See now, the farms collect pay-to-play money from the tourists while they’re cubs, then sell them to the hunting ranches.”

  Malaya held the cleaver high against the blade, driving it firmly, firmly through the shoulder joint. The foreleg broke free of the trunk. She bucketed the shorn limb and looked to Anse. He was staring far off, chewing his lip.

  “Now a real hunt, that could take two, three weeks of hiking through the bush, maybe a fifty-fifty chance of shooting a wild lion. These canned hunts, some son of a bitch just wants a head for his wall. The guides release a farm-raised lion into a fenced enclosure. Bait them, maybe, or hit them with a low-dose tranq. Ninety-nine percent chance of success.”

  Malaya had the other leg cut free from the trunk. The empty sockets dribbled blood, spattering the green rubber boots she wore. She looked at Anse.

  “’Least nobody shot this one. Sign says he was saved from a canned hunt.”

  Anse growled.

  “Which would you rather? Be shot once by a five-hundred-grain bullet, or a thousand fucking cameras and spitballs every day of your life?”

  “Still, isn’t it just one cage to another?”

  “Enclosure. What else can we do, turn him loose in the streets?”

  Malaya thought of the truck stop lion loosed from the interstate, disappearing along the nearby Savannah River and turning up in the streets of downtown, trotting heavy-pawed beneath the gothic oaks of the squares, rumbling past statues of dead men with their swords or hats or Bibles raised, as if to address him, or along the cobbled streets of the waterfront. People would flee screaming before him, leaving a trail of spilled beers and leather sandals and shopping bags in their wake, their ice-cream cones and cocktails bleeding between the cobblestones. Helicopters would swarm overhead, stabbing their spotlights through the trees, while the wails of cruisers converged. The lion would pass the barking dogs of front porches and apartment windows, unconcerned, and float among the ghostly statuary of Bonaventure Cemetery, a creature rarer there than any ghost. His paws would stamp a trail of crowns across the city, pugmarks that residents would cast in plaster for their mantels and curiosity shops. Perhaps he would come to stand finally at land’s edge and look east, dreaming of his home across the ocean, while a SWAT sniper loaded the round that would wreck his heart.

  Malaya thought of her grandfather, who died with a bullet in his chest. Sometimes she wondered if he’d wanted it that way—better than some hospital room or nursing home.

  “If we turn him loose,” she said, “’least he wouldn’t die behind a fence.”

  Anse shook his head, knocking his heels on the deep freezer.

  “He’ll have some measure of peace here. And room to roam. Some dignity.”

  Malaya nodded, sliding the severed foreleg into the bucket.

  “What about Lope? You thought about bringing him into this one?”

  Anse shook his head again.

  “We don’t need him,” he said.

  Malaya cocked her head, eyeing the cleaver held dripping from her hand.

  “It’s a high-profile heist, Anse.”

  Anse leaned and spat out the door, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Rescue,” he said.

  They practiced with a four-hundred-pound body bag full of Quikrete, sweating in the shadows of the old overgrown enclosure along the river, rolling the simulated lion into the bed of a custom-built lowboy litter outfitted with buggy tires. Malaya had gone with Anse to see the builder, an ancient biker named Spider with a shop off the highway. Out front, a row of raked-out choppers with chrome engines and leather tassels. The biker smiled at Anse when they walked in.

  “Old man, have you come to let me build you a bike?”

  “I’m not ready to die just yet,” said Anse. “When I put a motorcycle between my legs, you’ll know.” He handed the man a sheet of grid paper, a penciled design rife with arrows and notes and measurements. “I come because we’re needing something like this. Built low, so it’ll fit beneath the height of a truck bed.”

  The biker studied the sheet, scratching the spiderweb inked over one elbow.

  “You looking to transport bodies?”

  “Just one,” said Anse. “A lion.”

  Malaya jumped at the word. She cocked an eye at the old biker.

  “You ain’t a snitch, are you?”

  The man only smiled, lifting his chin. A dashed line tattooed across the front of his neck, along with the inscription: CUT HERE.

  * * *

  Malaya tried to slow her breath, worrying the trooper would notice the swell of her chest. While she fumbled for her wallet, the man leaned back on his heels, eyeing the bed cap. The windows were tinted to the legal maximum.

  “What y’all got in the bed?”

  Malaya’s heart bounced in her chest.

  “Tree-trimming equipment,” said Anse. This was not untrue—the litter lay hidden beneath the deck of a truck bed storage system, which was covered with chainsaws, climbing ropes, and gasoline cans. “Took down a couple widow-maker limbs up in Savannah this afternoon. Historical district. They call me in for the dicey stuff.”

  “No lions?”

  “Not that dicey.”

  Malaya handed over her license and registration.

  “I wish,” she said, surprising herself. “We’d be doing the poor thing a favor.”

  The trooper grunted, eyeing her license.

  “Buddy of mine from the DNR worked a tiger case not too long ago. Not the first big-cat theft of late.”

  He leaned back again, looking at the bed cap, thumping the license against his thumb. Deciding. He would ask to search the truck. Malaya knew he would. The trooper cleared his throat, about to speak, but Anse’s voice came first, barked like a gunnery sergeant.

  “You serve, son?”

  The trooper straightened at the question—reflex. Malaya turned to Anse, shocked to realize he wasn’t wearing his regular bush hat but a darker Stetson, perched high atop his head with a yellow braid around the base and a pair of crossed cavalry sabers on the crown. Beneath the brim, the old jockey’s eyes were steely and bright, as if newly polished.

  * * *

  Malaya had been sitting at the wheel of the truck, alone, when the bubble of light over the truck stop shivered and burst. Blackout. Anse had come climbing down the utility pole, leaning back on his flipline, kicking his tree spikes in and out of the creosoted pine. He waddled to the big truck and hauled himself into the cab.

  “Hit it.”

  Malaya nodded and pulled the truck into gear, driving down the service road without headlights, using a pair of night-vision goggles to see. Everything had been plotted, timed. The truck stop had no backup generators. Anse, still wearing his spurs and harness, pulled a balaclava over his head before replacing his eyeglasses. The truck rocked over the curb behind the enclosure and Malaya pulled in along the outer fence of razor wire, leaving the motor running. Anse unracked the tranquilizer gun from behind his head while she stepped down from the cab, leaving the goggles on the dashboard and reaching for a pair of heavy bolt-cutters stored behind the seat. She knelt before the outer gate, ready to cut the padlock. Anse crouched beside her, facing the opposite direction, scanning the truck lot.

  He tapped her shoulder and she cut the shackle and eased open the gate. Now Anse crept past her, the dart gun cradled against his chest. A Cap-Chur tranquilizer gun from the 1970s, built like a high-powered rifle, with a long black barrel and walnut stock. It fired 20-cc aero syringes, effective at ranges up to thirty yards. Anse knelt before the inner cage, threading the barrel through the heavy iron bars. The lion was sitting erect on a plywood platform in the very middle of the enclosure, watching the pumps. They could see the sharp ridge of his spine, the black shock of his mane. The tufted tail swishing along the platform. Surely his eyes were boring through the rare darkness of this twenty-four-hour oasis, watching the interstate travelers paw blindly about the aisles and gas pumps. He looked like a gian
t housecat, monitoring the world beyond his window.

  Anse’s chest rose, fell, his breath loud as a deer hunter’s. He was squinting through the starlight scope. Malaya watched the lion. His mane looked strangely human from the rear, like the wild locks of an eighties rock star. When she looked back at Anse, he was holding out the dart gun, long as a sword across his palms.

  “You do it,” he said.

  “Me?”

  His eyes looked slightly wet.

  “Please.”

  Malaya shrugged and took the rifle, spiraling the leather sling around one arm and sighting through the bars. The lion looked an eerie green through the starlight scope, as if seen through swampy water. The barrel hissed, a chuff of gas.

  Soon they were winching the King of Savannah into the bed of the truck. The sedated lion lay on his side. His paws, big as softballs, were curled against his chest, his eyes twitching beneath their lids. Malaya thought of Hemingway’s old Cuban fisherman, who dreamed always of lions come slinking from the dusk to stand on the beach. She looked at the beast in the bed of the truck, wondering if lions ever dreamed of men.

  * * *

  “Eighty-second Airborne, sir.”

  Anse’s eyes glittered beneath the wide brim of the cavalry hat.

  “I ain’t no sir,” he said. “I worked for my living. First Cavalry Division, Airmobile. Vietnam, seventy-one, seventy-two.” He growled. “Now there was a war run by a bunch of pasty-faced pencil-pushers out of Washington, D.C. Wonder Boys, they called them. The hell they were. Take a hill one day, give it up the next—”

  “Oh, let’s not start,” said Malaya.

  Anse squinted at her, his square jaws rumbling beneath the crossed sabers of the cavalry hat. “Listen, young lady, I spent all afternoon trimming that rich lady’s oaks while you sat on your got-damn cellular phone smacking chewing gum.”

  “Those trees weren’t all of hers you wanted to trim.”

  “The Christ,” said Anse.

  The trooper gestured toward Malaya with the license.

  “You his daughter?”

  “God, no,” she said. “He won’t touch Asians. So it’s all his wife will let him hire.”

  Anse growled in confirmation.

  The trooper shook his head, then handed Malaya her license back. Her body was trembling as she slid it back in her wallet.

  Anse leaned forward in his seat and thumbed up the brim of his Stetson.

  “Say, Trooper, you said this ain’t the first big-cat theft of late? Buddy of yours worked a tiger case?”

  The trooper hooked a thumb on his belt.

  “Just across the state line,” he said. “High school mascot. Could be related to tiger trafficking.”

  Anse leaned forward, cupping a hand over his ear.

  “Tiger what?”

  “Trafficking, sir. They busted a ring in the Midwest was rounding up old tigers and parting them out like stolen cars. Pelts, bones, paws for the black market. Like a chop shop. They say a hide can sell for twenty grand in Asia, case of tiger bone wine for twice that.”

  Anse growled—every inch the curmudgeon now, rarely loosed from the local VFW bar.

  “Ought to be a special rung of hell for sons-of-bitches would do that,” he said. “Same’s dogfighters. Line ’em up for me, I’ll send them down on a rail of fire, every one.”

  The trooper nodded, heavy and slow, as if to say Amen or Hooah or Get some.

  He tapped the door sill with one finger, lightly.

  “There’s a rest stop ’bout five miles up the road, clean restrooms. Sorry to keep you waiting, ma’am.”

  He touched his hat brim and turned for his cruiser. On the way he lifted a hand to rap the bed cap window—once, hard, to see what might wake—but didn’t. He kept walking, sliding the flashlight back into his belt.

  Malaya pulled back onto the highway. Her body was trembling, her blood fired with adrenaline. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, exhaling through the pinhole of her pursed lips. Counting her breaths. She imagined the heavy throb of the lion’s heart in the bed, steady as an engine. She imagined her own heart that steady, that sure.

  She looked at Anse. The cavalry Stetson had vanished into the backseat, quick as a magic trick, replaced with his battered bush hat. The old man was kicked back in his seat now, his hands laced across his chest, his eyes shut beneath his hat brim, as if he were asleep. A sly smile raked his face.

  Malaya shook her head.

  “You sneaky bastard.”

  CHAPTER 19

  WAR EAGLE

  Malaya stood cross-armed in front of the gift shop’s television set, head cocked. The owner of Lion Gas—a large man in a khaki safari shirt—was on the news, speaking teary-eyed before a bank of microphones. Winter Melton was offering a reward for the return of his beloved mascot. He said thousands of children would be disappointed not to see their favorite lion along the interstate. He said the thought broke his heart.

  “You seeing this?” asked Malaya.

  Anse huffed, not looking up from the bills and paperwork spread across the cashier’s counter. He was scribbling out checks, his handwriting tiny, jagged.

  “I seen it,” he said.

  They had placed the lion in the old enclosure along the river, a ten-acre tract. The fence was so overwhelmed with vines and kudzu no one could see him roam. On television, the truck stop magnate railed away at the act.

  A striking blow to conservation.

  A crime against wildlife.

  The work of evildoers.

  Meanwhile, newscasters speculated on the perpetrators’ motives, citing any number of theories: kidnap-and-ransom, wildlife trafficking, even environmental vigilantism.

  “What should we do?” asked Malaya.

  Anse didn’t look up.

  “Pick up Lope,” he said. “It’s feeding time.”

  * * *

  The golden eagle stood on Lope’s heavy gauntlet, her black talons hooked over his fist. She spread her wings, her flight feathers spanning nearly seven feet.

  His uncle Delk had been the one to name the bird.

  Aurora, pretty as the dawn.

  Uncle Delk had stepped in after the death of Lope’s father. The man was a giant. Six foot six, the same as Lope, but twice as wide, built like a brick shithouse. An ox-yoke of muscle crossed his shoulders, oak-hard, and he wore a black dart of beard that never grayed, even into his fifties.

  In the 1980s, Delk had played football alongside the great Herschel Walker, the patron saint of Georgia—a tailback who’d raced freight trains to build his speed and thumped out two thousand push-ups per day, transforming himself from a boy into a god. Oh you Herschel Walker. This human locomotive, built of an iron will, had roared through linebackers across the South until the radios crackled there was sugar falling out of the sky, sugar falling out of the sky—the Georgia Bulldogs were going to the Sugar Bowl. Delk had been there that championship season. The only man, said the papers, who could keep up with the rabid mania of Herschel’s training regimen.

  During an away game at Auburn University, Delk had toured the campus’s Raptor Center, which cared for injured birds of prey from around the country. There he met the opposing team’s mascot—War Eagle V, a golden eagle—and strode down the main aisle of the barn. There were eagles, owls, ospreys. Hawks and harriers, kestrels and kites. They stared one-eyed or wing-shot from their perches, stern as old gods. Here, he learned the golden eagle of Zeus had carried thunderbolts in his talons and fetched men to heaven before ascending among the stars—the constellation Aquila. He learned the Plains Indians had believed eagles carried their prayers to the heavens. They made whistles of their thigh bones and healed the sick with fans of their feathers. For the seal of their new nation, the forefathers of the republic had chosen a bald eagle with thirteen arrows in one talon, an olive branch in the other. War and peace, as if neatly twinned.

  In that raptor barn, Delk fell in love.

  Lope could still remember t
he first time his uncle took him to fly a bird. It was on the high school football field, a month after the stable fire. Uncle Delk, this childless giant who’d worn armor and wrecked other men for sport, emanated such calm on the field that day. He wore it like an aura. Valk, his peregrine falcon, stood hooded on his fist, still as a statue. Delk’s voice was baritone, risen from the deep bellows of his chest, but strangely sweet, rounded with a lisp.

  “A raptor is a live wire, baby. Electric. She can read your energy, she’s attuned. The peregrine most of all. She’s been clocked over two hundred miles per hour, diving. She’s life shot through the glass of God’s eye, magnified, beamed down on the earth. A laser, baby. A motherfucking thunderbolt. Her heart will beat nine hundred times a minute. She’s triply alive compared to us. She can see the twitch of a rabbit tail from three miles, the slither of a moccasin from one thousand feet. So you got to be cool, baby. Collected. You got to be scaled, smooth as glass. Sometimes you got to sing.”

  His great lungs expanded. The song rose like a sweet bird from his throat:

  “See that angel, in the middle of the field. That angel is working, on a chariot wheel.”

  The falcon stood listening. The words humming, perhaps, in the hollows of her bones.

  “Not too particular, ’bout workin’ on that wheel. I just want to know, how that chariot feel.”

  Valk shifted slightly on his fist. Her wings were slate, her nostrils baffled like jet intakes so she could breathe at high speed. Her wings swelled slightly, as if the song were a wind beneath them.

  “Now let me fly, O, now let me fly…”

  Delk slipped off the raptor’s hood, gently, and the bird rose from his fist. The raptor would orbit high against the sun, half a mile from the ground—watching, watching—then fold her wings and dive for the earth, striking shorebirds and songbirds and waterfowl in midflight, severing their spines with the clenched hammer of her foot, then wheeling back to catch their spinning, broken bodies from the sky.