Jackie's Wild Seattle

by Will Hobbs

  “Was he doing his Midnight Rambler thing even before he was laid off by Boeing?”

  Jackie nodded, but she also flinched. There was some sort of conflict in her eyes, but it didn’t look like she was going to explain. I said, “You learn something every day around here.”

  “Never a dull moment. You’re really getting to like your uncle, aren’t you?”

  “I really am. You know, before we came, and early on, I was so anxious about this summer. Maybe I’m still a little nervous, but I’ll never be sorry we came.”

  “And you’re crazy about your little brother. He’s a real original.”

  I giggled. “Yeah, I love him to death, the little doof.”

  Jackie pulled the formula off the stove. “I’m glad I got the chance to know you, Shannon. You have the eyes of a hawk and the heart of a lion.”

  “Not even—”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I just wish I’d hear from my parents. It’s been three weeks, and I can’t stop thinking about all the terrible things that could have happened to them.”

  “Don’t let your imagination get away from you, Shannon. If they were missing, someone would have contacted us. Their e-mails just aren’t getting through, that’s all.”

  “Their palm gizmo mustn’t work, or there’s no phones. That’s the thing, I don’t even know where they are. Yesterday afternoon I tracked down a way to e-mail Doctors Without Borders. They told me they’d get a message through. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  We sat side by side on the living room couch and fed baby squirrels one at a time. It was as simple as cradling one in your left hand and very gently applying pressure to the syringe in your right. At the business end the syringe had a tiny nipple. Before I knew it, I had calmed down.

  My first squirrel was nursing contentedly. It looked so innocent, so adorable with its tiny hands and tiny face and big eyes. I thought of Tyler and how dumb he would think this was. “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Jackie?”

  “Not a bit. Let’s talk when we can. It’s always such a circus around the clinic, with the volunteers and all, and you’re gone so much of the time with Neal. Oh, half a cc if their eyes are closed, one cc if they’re open. Watch carefully. Overfeed ’em and they die on you.”

  “Got it…. The man who roared up the driveway, picked up Tyler, and roared off…that’s his father, right?”

  “Cor-rect,” Jackie said, after a slow intake of breath. “Most of the time, Tyler walks. He lives a couple miles up the road. His father picks him up when there’s something he wants Tyler to do.”

  “What does his father do for a living? Scare people?”

  “Did he scare you?”

  “Well, yeah. I can tell he scares Tyler, too. We were talking in the driveway today and Tyler yells, ‘Jump behind the bushes.’ That’s pretty extreme. Then I saw the guy. Scary is as good a word to describe him as any. He looked angry. He looked mean.”

  Each of us had an empty tub at our feet. We were both done with our first squirrel and set them down in their bedding.

  “Well, Shannon, it’s like this. Gary Tucker is not exactly the number one fan of Jackie’s Wild Seattle. Every time he comes here it makes his blood boil. The years come and go and he hates me as much as ever, hates this place, hates everything the center and I stand for.”

  “Alrighty, then. You don’t beat around the bush, Jackie.”

  “Life’s too short.”

  Here’s what I found out as we fed the squirrels:

  1) Tyler’s father had wanted the land Jackie’s center is on. He’s a mechanic, and he needed more land to expand his shop space and park more vehicles.

  2) Jackie first started the center in her garage and backyard in north Seattle. Before long she needed more space, lots of space.

  3) Jackie made a better offer on the land and Tyler’s dad lost out. He was fried because Jackie had money that was donated from a small family foundation, while he had to work for a living.

  4) Tyler’s dad tried to get the town of Cedar Glen and the county to stop the sale of the five acres to Jackie because the wildlife would cause a public health problem.

  5) The town and the county liked what Jackie wanted to do with the land. She could give wildlife programs to school groups and 4-H and so on.

  6) Tyler’s dad got even madder because he was from Cedar Glen, born and raised, and Jackie was an outsider.

  7) Years later, now that the probation department and the judge had arranged for his son to do his community service with Jackie, Gary Tucker was all riled up again.

  “I knew it would stir up all that bad history,” Jackie said. “That’s the last thing I wanted. Believe me, I can do with less stress in my life. I told the judge all about Tyler’s dad and me, but he still wanted to give it a try. Working here has done a lot of good for a lot of teenagers over the years.”

  “Had any of them been involved in cruelty to animals?”

  “A couple others. The judge, the probation department, his therapist—everyone agreed that working here was exactly the therapy Tyler needed. Theoretically, it should help a lot: taking care of injured animals, helping them, getting to know them, feeling compassion for them.”

  “I guess I finally have to know what it was Tyler did.”

  “He broke a dog’s back, then drowned the dog in the creek. Fortunately, somebody saw him.”

  I winced. I tried to think of something to say but came up empty. It was as bad as I was afraid it was going to be.

  Jackie waited me out. Finally I said, “You’re not sure that working here is helping, are you?”

  Jackie shook her head as she reached for another baby squirrel. “It’s just that Tyler’s been here long enough already. There should be some positive signs in the way he relates to the animals. He keeps himself so stiff, so detached, and not just when he’s cleaning cages. I mean, even when he’s bottle feeding Chuckie and the little porcupine. I thought for sure they would melt his heart.”

  “He was pretty pleased with himself, holding Liberty.”

  “That’s hopeful, but I think it doesn’t count.”

  “Why not?”

  “He knew you were watching, Shannon. After all, you’re a very attractive girl. The look you saw was probably more about him and you than him and the eagle.”

  “Now I’m embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be. Just keep that in mind. And you ought to be getting back to bed. It’s late, we’re almost done—I can finish up with these last few.”

  “I’m enjoying this so much, having the chance to visit with you. What will you do about Tyler?”

  “I just don’t know. He’s got me stumped. The magic isn’t working.”

  “Cody says Tyler watches the bear cub a lot, through the fence. Has he ever asked if he can wear the bear suit, feed the bear?”

  “No, but he would never come right out and ask. I could try that. Unless Tyler might hurt the cub, that is.”

  “He wouldn’t,” I said.

  “What makes you so sure? I’d like to give him a chance, but when he’s with the bear, we’d have to be able to trust him. We can’t be spying on him, or it’s pointless.”

  “When he was holding Liberty, the way he looked, I honestly don’t think that was about me watching him. I think that was the real Tyler, when he wasn’t on guard, trying to act how his father expects him to.”

  Jackie raised an eyebrow at me.

  “I really believe it, Jackie. You know what I think? Tyler regrets what he did. He’s just so locked inside himself, he can’t show what he feels. He thought Liberty was wonderful. If he could be the one to feed the bear cub, all by himself….”

  “You just sold me. It’s a huge risk, but I’ll try it.”

  “One more thing before I go back to bed, Jackie…. What are Liberty’s chances?”

  “Not good, Shannon. She’s still not standing up.”

  “Why do you think Neal got so attached to her? He never does that, right? W
ith the other animals, he doesn’t check back after he delivers them. He brings ’em, Jackie fixes ’em?”

  “Pretty much. Once in a while he’ll come into the clinic when we’re having trouble handling an animal, usually a raccoon. Otherwise he stays away. He never says much about why. Neal is not a big talker about his own feelings, about personal matters, as you may have noticed. What I do know is that your uncle has more feeling for the emotions and secret lives of animals than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “You know not all our animals make it. We can’t save them all. I’m just guessing, but I think he can’t bear to let himself care too much about them after he rescues them. He’d have his heart broken over and over. He tries to keep his mind on doing what he can. But like I said, he’s not much for talking about his feelings.”

  “My mother told me before we left: ‘Not a great communicator but as good a person as you’ll ever meet.’”

  “Well, here’s my theory about Neal and Liberty. Something about that magnificent bird, how vulnerable she is, just pushed him over the edge. He couldn’t help caring about her, and now he’s hooked. Up till now he’s always held something back, always tried to protect himself emotionally. With Liberty he just couldn’t, so he’s giving it his all.”

  “He’ll be crushed if she doesn’t pull herself together.”

  “I know,” Jackie said softly.

  I flashed on Tyler and the opposite point of view. “Jackie, what do you say to someone who says most of these animals aren’t worth saving? Like all these baby squirrels, the little skunks, the baby birds?”

  “A life is a life,” Jackie said without hesitation. “That’s what I say. A life is a life. It’s not ours to decide which are worth saving and which aren’t.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Thank you for that, Jackie, and thank you for everything. My parents would kiss your feet.”

  She waved me away. “They might have pigeon droppings on them or worse.”

  On my way back to bed I checked in on Cody. He wasn’t jabbering with dogs or with the wildlife this time, he was chewing on his blankie, and with a vengeance.

  No doubt he was having a nightmare. Only the day before he’d shown me a photograph in his Book of Disasters of a softball-sized meteorite that had crashed through the roof of a house and then through the floor at the foot of a kid’s bed. What disaster was he tilting with now?

  11

  THE DAY OF THE HAWK

  I finally got to sleep, only to end up fighting a nightmare myself, an old one that was back like a disease. I was in an airplane that had been hijacked by terrorists who were flying us right at a skyscraper. A moment before the impact I saw people jump up from their desks. They were looking at us and we were looking at them. Somehow Cody and I survived the collision and found ourselves inside the building. In the dark and the smoke and amid the screams, we started racing down the stairs. After what seemed like forever—everybody kept falling on one another—we had only reached the forty-sixth floor, and time was running out. The whole building was about to come down.

  Finally I got so scared, I blinked myself awake. And there was Cody, standing by my bed. “Something’s different,” he said. “It’s all cloudy. It’s starting to rain.”

  By now I was awake enough to see he was clutching his blankie. There was a hurt look on his face. “What is it?” I said.

  “Uncle Neal got hurt.”

  I sat up. “How, Cody? What happened? How bad is he hurt?”

  “It was in a dream, Shan.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Don’t scare me like that! Come, sit on the bed and tell me about it.”

  He sat on the bedside, sort of hiding his blankie with his leg. It used to picture Mickey Mouse from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with the wand and the wizard’s hat, but these days you had to fill in quite a bit with your imagination. Cody had been on the verge of retiring his blankie when September 11 happened. “Go ahead, Cody,” I told him. “It’s good to talk about your bad dreams.”

  Even though I haven’t been talking about my own, I thought.

  “Okay, Uncle Neal was on a steep roof trying to kill a cat with a hockey stick.”

  “Cody, Uncle Neal does not kill cats.”

  “I know, but he doesn’t like how they kill so many birds, and Tyler killed a dog with a stick. It all got mixed together.”

  “I can see that, but how did you know what Tyler did?”

  “Robbie told me. The bad part of my dream was, Uncle Neal slipped when he was trying to kill the cat and fell off the roof. He got hurt really bad. He had to go to the hospital.”

  I gave him a hug. “This is not a big deal, Cody. Strange things happen in dreams. I ought to know, I have my share of weird ones.”

  “Bad ones, scary ones?”

  “Last night I had one about the World Trade Center—the airplanes and the towers. I’ve had it before.”

  Cody crumpled. “Don’t talk about that, Shannie!”

  “Okay,” I said. “I just mentioned it to show you it’s still bothering me, too. As for your dream, it just shows how much you care about Uncle Neal. Of course you don’t want him to get hurt.”

  “Is it okay if I tell him not to go up on any roofs?”

  “Maybe sometimes he needs to.”

  “What if I ask him not to just for today?”

  “He’s not going to. It’s raining.”

  The rain kept up through the morning. It was still raining when we got on the road. “This is more like it!” Uncle Neal exclaimed as we took off. “I’ve got some genuine Seattle weather to show you. The beat of the wipers is music to my ears. We get nine months of this!”

  “I’m sure glad we came in the summer,” I said.

  “The dry season is for wimps!” the Midnight Rambler declared as he swerved off the road and into a drive-through espresso. Neal waited with the window open. His sleeve was getting wet but that didn’t seem to bother him.

  Neal took the hot paper cup and cradled it in his hands. “Before people ever drank these, they used them for hand warmers.”

  “He’s goofy today,” Cody said from the back.

  “No, I’m Pluto. I feel good, you guys.” Neal took a long sip from his coffee, then set it in the cup holder. “Ahhh…I’m on top of the world, I’m the king of the world! Liberty snatched a herring right out of my hand this morning. With vigor. Sun, sun, go away, there’s nothing like a rainy day.”

  “Does that mean she stood up?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, but…”

  I quickly changed the subject. “Uncle Neal, remember the first time you visited back East, before Cody was born?”

  “I remember it well. You were five.”

  “That’s right, and I remember sitting on the park bench at the end of the block with you. Dad was pointing out the famous skyscrapers: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the…”

  I hesitated, on account of Cody, then finished my sentence anyway: “…the World Trade Center towers.”

  From the backseat, a very loud silence.

  “It’s okay to talk about them,” I said over my shoulder. “It would be sad if we didn’t remember them. Cody, you’ll like this. Uncle Neal started telling us how the skyscrapers in Seattle are covered with moss, from all the rain. I remember that, trying to picture it.”

  “Ha! That’s a good one!”

  Neal found Cody in the rearview mirror. “Come back in October, Cody. That’s when the rains kick in and the moss starts to grow. Why do you think people here call it the Emerald City?”

  I said, “Mom told me the real reason. She said people from Seattle hype the bad weather so it won’t get too crowded.”

  Uncle Neal laughed. “So you’re on to us. Is that so bad?”

  “Bumper sticker!” the kid in the backseat yelled. “Uncle Neal, get closer.”

  “Cody, we’re going seventy,” I said. “You want to tailgate, in the rain?”

  Neal
did edge a little closer.

  “What does it say, Shannie, what does it say? Something about a toilet!”

  “Cody…”

  “I got it! POLICE STATION TOILET STOLEN—COPS HAVE NOTHING TO GO ON. That’s the best of all time!”

  “Write it down so you won’t forget it, Cody.”

  “I’m writing it down now!”

  Uncle Neal reached for his coffee. “The rest of the summer will be downhill from here.”

  “I’ve got one,” I nearly shouted. “It applies to you, Cody. ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU’RE UNIQUE—JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.”

  Neal drove us to a golf course overlooking Lake Washington. Our mission was to free a hawk that was tangled in a net on the driving range. It was drizzling when we got there, but people were out on the course playing golf. “A day without sunshine is like a day in Seattle,” Uncle Neal said as we parked at the pro shop.

  From the parking lot we could see the bird in the net. Fortunately it wasn’t very high off the ground. It had to be a large bird if we could make it out from so far away. We drove out to the hawk in style, a carrier and a folding chair fastened on the back of our golf cart with bungee cords. Sage had to stay in the ambulance.

  The hawk was hanging upside down. “Must’ve bounced when it hit the net,” Neal said. “Bounced and got its talons entangled. It doesn’t look hurt, really. What a beauty, a full-grown red-tailed hawk. We should have it on its way shortly.” Neal pulled the heavy welding gloves over his light buckskin gloves.

  The sun was coming out, and I was distracted by a glorious rainbow over Lake Washington. I didn’t really see what happened.

  Uncle Neal had climbed onto the chair and was starting to go to work. It was going to be a slow process with his clumsy gloves. I heard him say, “Oh,” just “Oh,” like he was mildly surprised about something. I looked up and saw spatters on his sunglasses. It took me a second to realize it was blood, fresh blood. I had no idea what was going on. I guess I thought it was from the hawk.

  Supporting his left hand with his right, Neal got down off the chair, staring at his left glove. The heel of the glove’s thumb had a clean slice through it, as if it was defective. Uncle Neal looked extremely confused, and then he said, “Must’ve got me.”