Every Part of the Animal

by Duncan Ralston

  "Fuck." The girl bobbed her head forward and back like a chicken pecking in the dirt. "You."

  "All right, I don't got time for this," Bo said, pushing the girl aside with two fingers, which was a helluva lot less than what she'd wanted to do to her. The stunned girl staggered back a step as if she'd been slapped, nearly tripping over her ugly faux suede boots.

  "Oh no, bitch, you did not, oh no you—" Stumbling around in front of the truck as Bo headed for her door, the girl scowled off down the street, searching for something or someone. She barked a single laugh.

  Bo followed her gaze toward a heavyset black man in a dark suit, panting as he carried his large gut up the hill. A small animal—a rodent by the look—tiptoed along behind him on a leash.

  "Darius!" the girl called, slamming her palms down on the beaten hood of the truck. "Here she is! Citizen's arrest her, or something."

  Darius squinted as he approached them, the little dog—a longhaired Chihuahua or a Pomeranian, she could never tell the two apart—shivering at his feet. It wore what appeared to be a diamond or faux diamond stud collar, and Bo noted with mild disgust that its claws had been painted in rainbow colors. It looked up at Bo with beady black eyes.

  "What seems to be the problem, ma'am?" the man said in a slight East Texas drawl.

  "Are you talking to me?" Bo asked.

  "Do I look like a ma'am to you, bitch?"

  The little dog began to growl as Bo advanced menacingly toward her. "You call me that one more time—"

  Darius slipped a hand in between the girl and Bo, holding his acquaintance—No way he could be her friend—back from a fight. At their feet, the precious animal yapped sharply.

  "You don't wanna do that," Darius said. "I know she can be… hell, the girl's practically unstable, but she's also paid me good money to protect her, and if you raise your hand to her, well… "

  "Shit's about to get rull," the girl said, scooping up the growling dog into her arms.

  "I don’t want to strike a lady—"

  The girl snorted laughter, rolling her eyes as she mouthed the word "lady," and smoothed the fur on her dog's head.

  "—but I will subdue you if you leave me with no other choice," he finished.

  Bo backed off a step, sizing up the situation. No point getting into a tangle with an enormous big city black fella just to settle things with the snot-nosed tramp. "I just want to get this delivery finished," Bo said, letting out some of the air through her teeth that she'd inhaled to puff up her chest, "and your… whatever she is, is standing in my way."

  "Rainey, move for the nice lady," Darius said, his voice deep and authoritative. A cop's voice, Bo thought. The girl crossed her arms, pushing up her small breasts in the almost nonexistent crop top. "Rainey, will you please move and let the lady go," he said, defeat in his tone.

  "How you just gonna ignore the dead bodies in the back of her truck, Darius?" The girl, Rainey, raised the trembling dog to her face and planted a kiss on its nose.

  The bodyguard looked annoyed as he shuffled around back of the truck. He raised the plastic, nodded, then turned to Bo. "I'm sorry to waste your time, ma'am. Wolves, uh… well, she says they're her spirit animal." He spotted Caleb in the window then, and showed his teeth in a smile. "What's up, little man?"

  "You're my spirit animal, Darius," the girl said with a wink, stepping up onto the curb. "And you're my wittle piddle spiwit animaw," she said to her dog, which looked up at her bewilderedly.

  "Isn't that cute?" Bo remarked. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a living to make." She opened the driver door, adding, "Unlike some people…"

  "What the fuck's that mean, huh?" The girl handed her dog to Darius and stomped around to the front of the truck. "You don't know me, bitch. I made, like, a billion dollars yesterday, and I'll probably make another million while you're sittin at home watching reruns of fuckin Hee Haw."

  "Oh yeah, how's that?" Bo sat down in the driver's seat. "Selling your tight little butt on the street?"

  She slammed the door behind her as the girl threw herself on the hood of the car like a wild beast, slamming her fists on the battered metal. The dog started yapping again as Darius reached out to grab her mistress, but the tiny blonde monster tore away from him and scurried around to Bo's window.

  Bo wasn't frightened—well, maybe just for Caleb, who stared at the girl with wide brown eyes—but she locked the door anyhow.

  "And what?" the girl—Is it Lainey or Rainey? Not that it matters—shouted, thrusting out her chest toward the glass like some music video tramp. "And what?"

  Bo didn't know how you were meant to respond to a question like that, so she threw the truck into reverse and stepped on the gas hard enough to peel rubber and make the tramp jump back with her baby blues popped right out of her noggin.

  "We ain't done here!" Muffled by the windows, the girl sang tremolo, "We ain't even close to done, biiiiitch!"

  Caleb, the toy forgotten in his lap, watched the blonde girl step out into the middle of the macadam road and hoist up both middle fingers. "Momma, who was that lady?" he said, his voice soft.

  "That's not a lady, Cal," Bo said, driving forward into the lane alongside the general store. "That is what we politefully call a whore."

  DAN GOOSE PAID a pretty penny for the two dead wolves (with the cull still in effect for at least another month, the bounty was two hundred a head), and a smaller sum for the female coyote Caleb managed to kill this morning. He was getting better with the air rifle—had taken her lessons to heart, it seemed, trusting his instincts—and soon she hoped to graduate him to the .22 or even the shotgun. He still had to gain a little more muscle mass and bone density before she'd let him shoot anything that might injure him too badly.

  Bo loosely folded the plastic tarp and tossed it behind Caleb's seat. She paid for a weeks' worth of groceries with the money Dan gave her, and she and Caleb carried them out to the truck in paper sacks. The bed was dirty with bits of straw and flecks of blood. She strapped the bags in close to the tailgate with a bungie cord, and the two of them got back in the truck.

  Caleb plucked up the toy from the floor by his feet. "Look, Momma," he said, showing it off as if he'd solved a Rubic's cube. "The man turned into a gun." He pointed the small gray plastic Luger at her, making sound like a laser—pew! pew!

  Bo raised her eyebrows, faking interest. As she pulled out from the lane alongside Dan's General Store, Bo just about considered herself lucky for having taken care of business without further trouble from the protesters, when a sudden swarm overtook the truck. Her brakes squealed as she slammed both feet down on the pedal.

  "Christ on a bike!" Bo said, and looked to Caleb in time to see his eyes go wide from the swear.

  Fists hammered down on the hood and windows. Senior citizens in expensive rain gear and galoshes, college-age men and women wearing ponchos and their hair in dreadlocks thrust signs with scribbled credos like STOP THE CULL with a pound sign in front of it, BE THE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS, and GET OUR WOLVES OUT OF THE CROSSHAIRS! Some signs featured pictures of dead wolves caught in traps and furs drying on racks, images likely to bristle the hairs on a typical city dweller's neck, those types who refused to concern themselves about where their food came from, wanting everything in neat little Styrofoam packaging with a bar code and a price, and the animal activists, and the vegans…

  In the midst of all this, instigating, Rainey—That's her name, Bo thought; a shit storm if there ever was one—stood sticking out her tongue at Bo with the jittery little dog in her arms. One knee cocked inward with a heel raised from the macadam in a pose of schoolgirl innocence.

  Oh, I really stepped in it today. All because I had dollar signs in my eyes, and didn’t trust my own damn instincts.

  Caleb turned his fearful eyes toward her, and she snapped.

  She laid on the horn.

  Pounded on it. Snarling.

  The fists kept beating on the hood. Placards clattered on the windshield. Their chants rose in pi
tch.

  "Buckle your seatbelt, Caleb."

  He did as he was told, and Bo revved the engine, startling the crowd into motion. All the while, the little tramp stood between the headlights, loving it.

  Bo wanted so badly to wipe the smirk off her face.

  She floored the accelerator. The truck bounded off the curb and slammed down onto the road. Several placards clattered onto the sidewalk as the righteous anger fell from their faces, replaced by surprise and fear. Rainey stayed planted in the road up to the last possible second, playing chicken until it was clear the larger of the two forces was not going to back down. The flash of terror in her eyes as she bolted out of the way of the approaching grille was just about priceless enough to make the whole trip worthwhile.

  Little bitch had it coming, Bo thought, swinging the truck into the northbound lane, and accelerating up the hill out of town.

  As her heartbeat slowed, she came back to her senses and turned to Caleb. He was squinting at the door mirror. Bo patted his leg.

  "You good?"

  Caleb swung his head around. "How come those people hate us, Momma?"

  Bo gripped the wheel tightly, pondering the question. "Same reason people hate anybody, I guess. 'Cause they don't understand us."

  "They ain't American?"

  Bo looked at the boy and laughed, glad for the break in tension. Sometimes, when he was doing his lessons, he was so bright it hurt her heart to know he wouldn't amount to much more than she had, that she couldn't give him the same privileges of other kids his age. Other times, like now, she swore he was a dullard just like his father.

  "No, they're American." She shrugged. "Some of them might be Canadians, I guess. What I mean is, they don't know what it's like to live off the land like we do. They come from privilege. Do you know what that means? Two cars in the garage and big screen TVs. A computer in every room—heck, in every pocket. They got no concept of what it's like to live in the dirt. Do you understand?"

  She could see his mind working as he peered out the dirty windshield. Finally he nodded, seemingly pleased with himself. She tussled his hair, and like always, Caleb scowled and smoothed it back to its normal shag.

  Bo thought about how she'd do anything for the boy.

  Like a Momma moose, she thought, remembering that day out in the woods, hunting the porcupine that tore up the shed.

  Like always, she was reminded of the day he'd forced her to put her love to the test, and the memory of that day all those years ago came back in a haze as blood red as the tramp's crop top.

  She rolled down the window and spat a bitter taste into the wind.

  3 – Cub

  A single black wire connected Bo's cabin to the rest of the world. Their two-rut drive stretched half a mile from the nearest gravel road. Her late husband Delroy had spent a good portion of his drinking budget getting the telephone line put in when Caleb was born. The boy had been sickly, and Bo had pressured Roy into the expense, in case Doc Henson needed to be called during the long winter months. It was lucky they had anyway, considering what happened with their dog Daisy when Caleb was three.

  Bo and Caleb brought the groceries to the house. The spring on the screen door groaned, the door clattering against the jam behind them.

  Sunlight bled through dusty windows. The front door led straight into the kitchen. Beyond the tacky yellow vinyl wallpapering the counter stood an old dining table with a wonky leg Roy had picked up at the dump. Under the leg, Bo had duct taped a folded-up piece of cardboard, and the tape had worn down again, tacky on the hardwood floor.

  An old rattan sofa with floral cushions and a paint-flecked coffee table stood in front of the fireplace. Roy had done the masonry himself, which meant big chunks of it had broken off, leaving cold, dark spaces between stones where the hobo spiders spun webs around their brood. Bo had taken Roy's armchair, which had used up a good portion of the living space, to the dump a few months after he died. She figured it was probably gracing someone else's living room or rec room these days or maybe their covered porch, so long as they could get the smell of his beer farts out of the fabric.

  "Dang it," she said, peering out the window over the sink while Caleb sat on his haunches, unloading cold goods into the propane fridge. He peered up at her with a questioning look. "Something's got in the henhouse again."

  "Coyote?" the boy said, pronouncing it KY-oat, the way his mother did.

  "Could be anything. Could even be a skunk, or that dang possum again."

  She squinted her eyes at the feathers scattered around the coop. Judging by their color, and the other birds still left in the dirt, the predator had nabbed Polly Pickle, the pure black Buckeye Caleb had named despite Bo insisting against it. He'd be sore about that when he figured it out.

  "You all right to finish putting these away? I'm gonna see if I can't find that bird."

  Caleb nodded, and began placing things in the fridge double-time.

  Bo went to the tall broom closet beside the door. Turned the wooden latch. The .22 rimfire stood where she'd left it. She grabbed it, tucked the box of ammo in her vest pocket, and headed outside.

  The screen door clattered behind her as she strode across brown grass to the coop. Fence was still fine by the look, but what good was a fence if predators could climb over it?

  Gotta be a skunk or that damn possum. Wolves don't climb.

  Black feathers glistening with blood littered the dirt floor of the pen. The other fowl pecked around them, seemingly oblivious to the death of their own. A small heap of feathers and viscera indicated the point of attack. Bo bent to study the mess, looking for fur or tracks or anything that might pinpoint Polly Pickle's attacker.

  Small paw prints circled the area—five long toes ending in claws. Not a skunk, which have only the pads visible.

  Gotta be the possum. Raccoon woulda left the bird where he killed it. Probably took a couple more while it was here, just for the sake of it.

  The possum had lived in Roy's outhouse—what he'd called the "shitter" when he was still breathing air to speak such vulgarities. They had a sump pump toilet in the house, but Roy preferred to do his morning constitutionals in the privacy of the "great outdoors." Bo had often told him if he was so keen on doing his business outside, he should join the bear out in the woods.

  A five by five by eight structure made out of old lumber in various colors salvaged from the dump, with a toilet seat Roy had found in the woods—God only knew what it was doing out there—and the old screen door from the house facing the woods. It still stunk to high heaven despite Roy being dead three years this August, and the most recent bag of lye Bo had shook into the dark, sour-smelling pit.

  Scattered feathers bypassed the outhouse, trailing out into the woods along the two-rut road Roy had cut himself out to the maple forest, where he'd one day planned to harvest sap. He'd tapped one tree, boiled down the gallons of sap into one measly Mason jar full of syrup, and called it quits.

  "So much work for such a little bit of syrup," he'd said. It was the story of his life. Never wanted to put in the work, just wanted to skip straight to the reward. Bo had been the planner of the two.

  Following the feathers, and paw prints in soil still wet from last night's rain, she stepped cautiously to avoid snapping twigs and alerting the animal, loading a magazine while she walked.

  Probably brought it out there to eat, the crafty fella. Shoulda shot him while I had the chance.

  The trail ended cold at a solid outcrop of mossy bedrock. Circling, she picked it up again, finding drops of fresh blood on a hollow stump.

  Bald gray spruces swayed, creaking high up where their spindly tops seemed to touch the scudding clouds. A chill in the evergreen-scented breeze brushed her cheeks. Fall coming. You could almost taste the rot in the air.

  Bo looked back toward the house, but the trees had closed in around it. Only the secondhand shingle roof of Roy's outhouse visible now.

  Soon the two of them would be spending mornings chopping wood
to keep themselves warm. Soon the days would grow short, the nights long and bitter cold. For now, the wildfires still raged to the south. The rains were spare, and the well had nearly gone dry. The long, high drone of cicadas. Horseflies and mosquitos nipping at exposed flesh.

  "There he is," Bo muttered under her breath.

  Aside from the porcine snout, opossums could almost be considered cute. Bigger than the Rainey girl's dog, their coat was gray and black with a white face and ears, similar to a raccoon but without the black mask. The tubby critter tore a strip of flesh off Polly Pickle, and chewed it while gazing off into the woods.

  Bo opened the breech, checked for a round, then pushed the bolt forward as quietly as possible, wincing at the metallic click. The possum continued chewing mindlessly. Bones peeked through muscle and flesh, and the possum raised Polly's eviscerated corpse for another bite.

  She peered through the scope. Lined up the shot between his beady black eyes.

  Flicked off the safety.

  A deep breath in, and—mostly—out.

  Squeezed her trigger finger, as gentle as stroking a butterfly's wing.

  The possum let go of its prey and fell onto its back, hind legs pinwheeling, tail squirming like a drying leech. It was dead already, but Bo hated to watch them squirm. She squeezed off another shot and the legs stopped kicking.

  Polly Pickle had no salvageable meat left on her bones, but the carcass could be used to make broth. The possum would make a good, meaty stew. Bo was glad it had been the possum that killed the chicken instead of a raccoon, since possums weren't as likely to carry rabies, and she preferred the meat.

  She set the rifle against a tree stump. Wrapped the chicken in a strip of butcher paper, and tucked it into a vest pocket. On her haunches, she plunged her knife into the possum's sternum and drew it down, splitting her open to her pouch. Pulled out hot loops of intestine and spongy organs with her bare hands, and left them on the stump for the scavengers.

  Bo wiped some of the blood on the underbrush and stood holding the possum by its tail. Slung the rifle over her shoulder and let it hang by the strap as she headed back home.