Wild Spirits

by Rosa Jordan

  6

  DANNY,S RACCOONS

  In a way, Wendy was glad to have Danny with her. Naturally, she would rather have had Kyle there — now that would have made her feel safe — but a boy was better than nobody. And fixing up a place for the animals was a welcome distraction.

  She peered in at the two young raccoons, wondering what to do with them. She had a small pen in the backyard, but it had some half-grown rabbits in it that were not quite old enough to set free. The only other place she could put them was in a pet carrier. It was too small for them to live in, but it would do for the night and be more secure than Danny’s cardboard box.

  Wendy had Danny carry the box into the bathroom where, if one of the raccoons got loose when she was trying to move them from box to carrier, it would be easier to catch them. Then she put on a pair of heavy leather gloves that she used for handling wild animals. “When I lift the first one out, you quickly close the lid so the other one doesn’t get out till I’m ready to take it.”

  In less than a minute, they had both raccoons secure in the pet carrier. “Good! Wendy said, pulling off her gloves. “I’ll go out to the kitchen and see what I can find for them to eat. Us, too,” she added, smiling at the boy, who did not smile back.

  Danny stayed in the bathroom a long time. Wendy guessed he was doing what she had done many times herself; just watching the animals. Raccoons were pretty common in the area, but he had probably never been able to observe them close up.

  “Danny!” she called. He came out at once. Wendy pointed to three tuna sandwiches lined up on the table. “That one’s yours, this one’s mine, and this one,” she picked up the two halves of the third sandwich, “is for our furry friends. After we eat, we’ll put their cage out on the back porch and feed them there.”

  Later, as he and Wendy sat on the back porch watching the young raccoons tear into the tuna sandwich, Danny said, “I’d like to keep them for pets, but I don’t think I’d be allowed. Maybe if they lived here …” He looked at her hopefully.

  Wendy shook her head. “Wild animals don’t make good pets. They belong in the wild.”

  “But if I tamed them —” Danny began.

  “The problem,” Wendy explained, “is that even if you tame one, it still thinks like a wild animal. I tried to make a pet of a raccoon once, when I was about your age. Bandit, I called him, because of the black mask markings. He would ride on my shoulder and everything. You can’t imagine how much trouble he caused.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Wendy laughed ruefully. “You see those little paws? Just like hands. Not only can they pull lids off garbage cans, they can also open cupboard doors. My raccoon used to get into all the cupboards. He would dump boxes of cereal on the floor and spill the flour and rip open loaves of bread. Also, raccoons like their food wet. Bandit always took his food to the sink and turned on the water to make it wet. Can you imagine the mess?”

  Danny laughed. “Really? They can turn on a water tap?”

  Wendy nodded. “Living with humans, I guess they learn how to turn on faucets. But here’s another thing: they never learn to turn them off. My mother was constantly yelling at me to turn off the faucet in the kitchen or bathroom. It got so bad that she threatened to shoot my raccoon. And my mother doesn’t even like guns!”

  “But why can’t they be trained?” Danny insisted stubbornly.

  “I told you. Because even if you tame one, it still thinks and acts like a wild animal. Besides, there’s another, worse problem.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t train people to leave wild animals alone. If a raccoon, even a tame one, comes around somebody’s chicken coop or raids the garbage, most people would do just what your stepdad did. Either they set the dogs on it, or shoot it. Or they call Animal Control, and they kill it.”

  Slowly Danny nodded, and Wendy thought he was beginning to understand the problem. Still, it seemed that he wasn’t quite ready to give up the fantasy of keeping the two raccoons as pets. “I could build them a pen,” he said. “I can take some of my money out of the bank and buy wire and build them a cage like this one. Only bigger.”

  “You could do that. But think about it, Danny. Would you like to spend your whole life in a cage? Or would you rather live in a place where you could run around and climb trees and maybe go fishing in the creek?”

  He looked up at her in surprise. “Raccoons fish?”

  “They do,” Wendy told him. “I’ve seen them.”

  Danny was silent for a long time after that, watching the young raccoons nosing the corners of the pet carrier, looking for an escape.

  “They want to get out,” he said at last.

  “Yes,” Wendy said. “And we should let them out. Not right away, because they’re too young to be on their own. But in a few weeks we can let them go.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a state park not far from here, where hunting’s not allowed,” Wendy told him. “That’s where I let my raccoon go.”

  “If we let them go, and I went back there sometime, do you think they’d remember me, and not be afraid?” Danny asked wistfully.

  “Maybe,” Wendy said. “But it’s better if they don’t. It’s better if they remember that people can be dangerous.”

  7

  THE WITNESS

  Wendy slept poorly that night, half dozing, every sound bringing her wide awake. Once it was noise made by the raccoons scrabbling in the pet carrier on the back porch. They were nocturnal animals, and nature was telling them that they should be out and about. They were probably missing their mother, too. Wendy went into the kitchen, cut up an apple, and took it to them. But when she heard a car out on the street slow down, and thought it stopped, she hurried back inside and locked the door.

  When morning came, after she had fed the animals and had her own breakfast, she drove to the hardware store to get a roll of wire and a few other things to build a pen for the raccoons. Just as she pulled into a space in the hardware parking lot, a car with two men pulled in beside her. She froze. Were those the same men who had held her up? Were they following her?

  But no. The men barely noticed her. They got out of their car, laughing and talking, and went into the store. Wendy waited until she stopped shaking, then she went in, too. But the same thing happened when she turned down an aisle and saw a man standing there, examining an electric drill. The way he held it, at the end of an arm stuck straight out, made Wendy think of the way the robber had held the gun. Again she felt her heart thudding. Then a woman walked up, probably the man’s wife, because she said, “If it’s what you want, honey, go ahead and buy it.”

  Wendy forced herself to continue shopping until she had all the items on her list. At the checkout, she got in line behind a man who turned and looked at her. It was just an ordinary look, the sort of mildly curious look you might give anybody in the checkout line. But when he waved to another man who had got into the line behind Wendy, once again she felt a sense of panic.

  Don’t be silly! She told herself. Nothing can to happen to you in the checkout line in a store full of people! At the same time, another part of her mind was saying, But they look just like.… Then she reminded herself that she didn’t know what the robbers looked like. That was what she had told the police, because it was true. Why was she imagining that every guy in sight looked like two men whom she hadn’t even got a good look at? What she going nuts, or what?

  Even though she knew she was being irrational, Wendy stayed inside the store until the two men left, and she could see out the front door that there were no other men between her and her car. Then she hurried out and drove home.

  When she got there, Danny was sitting on the steps, waiting for her.

  “Hi, Danny,” she called. “Want to carry this roll of wire around back?”

 
She opened the back of the Toyota RAV 4 and slid the roll of wire out. Danny tried to lift it, but it was too heavy for him to handle alone. Wendy took one end, and together they staggered around to the backyard.

  Danny was more helpful than she had expected. “You’re pretty good with tools,” she remarked, watching him double-measure a board before making a chalk mark and starting to saw. “And careful.”

  He finished the cut, then sat back on his heels. “I fix things around the house for my mom. Sometimes Butch lets me use his tools.”

  Raccoons can both climb and dig, so the pen had to have a top and a bottom. It took most of the day to build it. Danny drove a final nail and stood back to admire their handiwork. “Looks good,” he said.

  Wendy nodded. “As soon as I wire down this water dish to keep the little rascals from spilling it, we can put them in.”

  Danny filled the food and water dishes. Wendy set the pet carrier inside the pen. She opened the carrier door and quickly closed the gate to the pen. The raccoons instantly came out and began running around the pen, looking for a way out.

  “Keep your fingers away from the wire,” Wendy warned. “A raccoon bite is a terrible thing.”

  Danny looked at her in surprise. “Why? They’re not big enough to hurt me.”

  “Yes, but there’s a law. If a person gets bitten by a raccoon, it has to be reported. Then authorities cut off the raccoon’s head to test to see if it has rabies. If it does, the person who got bit has to get shots to keep them from getting rabies.”

  “Even if it’s a little bite?” Danny asked in dismay. “They kill the raccoon?”

  “They do,” Wendy confirmed. “That’s why we are very careful, and wear thick leather gloves if we have to handle them. Not just to protect ourselves, but to protect the raccoons.”

  Danny did not answer, and Wendy could not tell what he was thinking. She just hoped he would remember what she’d told him, and be careful.

  Wendy heard a car pull into the driveway, but didn’t tense up this time, because she recognized the sound of the engine. It was Kyle.

  “Around back!” she called.

  A minute later, Kyle came around the house. “Hi, Wendy. Hi, Danny.”

  Danny cast Kyle a sidelong look, then fastened his gaze on the animals, with barely a mumbled, “Hi.”

  “I see you two have met,” Wendy said, but she didn’t ask when or where. From Danny’s embarrassment and the meaningful look Kyle gave her, she guessed that it was one of the times when the police had been called to Danny’s house to break up a fight between his parents.

  “I was on that stakeout most of the night,” Kyle said. “And went home from there. I didn’t hear that the robbery was at your bank, and you were involved, until I got to work this afternoon. You okay?”

  Wendy gave a small shrug. “More or less.”

  “I talked to the officers who handled the case,” Kyle said. “I can’t believe you didn’t get the license number! What were you thinking?”

  Wendy put her hands on her hips and gave him a look. “I was thinking of getting out of there. What would you be thinking of if some guy stuck a gun in your face?”

  “You could’ve got the license number when they were driving away,” Kyle insisted.

  Wendy was on the verge of getting seriously annoyed with Kyle, who seemed to have forgotten he was her boyfriend. Instead, he was acting like a policeman, asking the same questions they had asked her half a dozen times at the cop shop. But just then Danny said something neither of them heard.

  Wendy glanced at him. “What did you say, Danny?”

  “I did.”

  “Did what?” Kyle asked.

  “Got the license,” said the boy.

  “Oh my gosh!” Wendy exclaimed. She turned to Kyle. “He was right there in the parking lot, not fifty feet away. I completely forgot!”

  “Did you tell the police?” Kyle asked in a skeptical voice.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Why not?” Kyle demanded.

  Danny kept his eyes fixed on the raccoons. “Nobody asked me,” he said in a timid voice, the voice of a kid who feels that no matter what he does, other people are going to decide it was the wrong thing.

  Wendy noticed that Danny was gripping the wire of the cage tightly with both hands. “Don’t put your fingers through the wire like that,” she reminded him. She caught hold of one hand to move it off the wire. It was trembling. It occurred to Wendy that even though Danny had seen the license plate, he probably couldn’t remember the number, and thought he’d get in trouble for forgetting it. But maybe he remembered something.

  “You didn’t happen to see what kind of car it was, did you?” she asked.

  “Pinto, like what my stepdad drives,” Danny said in voice so low they had to strain to hear him. “But not the same colour. His is green. Theirs was tan, with lots of beer cans up on that shelf by the back window.”

  “But you don’t remember the license number?” Kyle asked sharply.

  Danny didn’t answer, or even look up. Wendy thought, He’s so scared, he’s trying to make himself invisible, like a wild rabbit when it knows it’s been spotted and hasn’t got a chance of escape.

  Wendy knelt next to him. “You know, Danny, when robbers get away like these did, sometimes they come back and hit the same bank again. If you would tell Officer Kyle what you can remember, the police might be able to catch them.”

  “CR3 2FP,” the boy said quietly.

  Wendy shot a look at Kyle, and saw his jaw drop in astonishment. He quickly pulled a notepad from his pocket and jotted down the number. “Did you see what state the license was from?” he asked, this time in the respectful voice of an adult who is prepared to take something a child says seriously.

  “This one,” Danny told him.

  “That’s a big help,” Kyle said, giving Danny’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “I mean, a big help.” To Wendy he said, “My cellphone’s in the car. I’m going to call the station.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Wendy said. And to Danny, “Will you keep an eye on the raccoons, watch them and see if you think they’ll be okay in there?”

  “I like watching them,” Danny said, and sat down on the grass next to the cage, this time with his hands folded safely in his lap.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Wendy said to Kyle, “There’s no need for him to go down to the station, is there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask,” Kyle said.

  “No,” Wendy said. “You don’t ask. You tell them he’s not coming down. Or if you can’t do that, don’t tell them where you got the information.”

  “Look,” Kyle said impatiently. “Nobody’s going to hurt him. It would probably be good for him to see that cops can be nice guys.”

  “Kyle, I was at the station for two hours yesterday. I know cops can be nice guys. But maybe you don’t realize how they sound when they’re trying to get information. It’s like you’re being interrogated, like they’re suspicious of your answers. Of course they’re just trying to get the facts, but when they keep asking you the same thing over and over, it’s intimidating! You’ve already got the information, so why put Danny through that? If you think he knows anything else, you ask him. Nicely.”

  Kyle sighed. “Okay.” He speed-dialled the station and told them what he had learned. Then he said “yeah” a few times to what they were telling him. Finally, he hung up and turned to Wendy, who was leaning on the hood of the car. “Too late,” he told her. “A car matching the description was reported stolen yesterday afternoon, about the same time as the bank robbery. It was found this morning, abandoned. That means they stole a car for the heist, and once they got the money, they drove to where they’d left their car and dumped the stolen one. If the police had had the license number right after it hap
pened …” He gave her an accusing look.

  Wendy tilted her chin defiantly. “The police might have had that information, if they’d asked all the people in the area if they’d seen anything — including child people.”

  “Maybe. What was the kid doing there, anyway? And what’s he doing here?”

  “The raccoons. His old man set the dogs on the mother and they killed her.”

  Kyle grimaced. “I’d like to set the dogs on his old man. Maybe I will, if we get called out there to stop him from beating up his wife one more time.”

  “Why don’t you just arrest him?”

  “The wife won’t press charges. Scared of him, I guess. People in town have tried to help her leave him, but she won’t do that, either.”

  Wendy frowned. “You don’t suppose he abuses Danny, too?”

  “We sent a social worker out to talk to him about that, but Danny said they only get into it with each other.” Kyle sighed. “Apparently his mom used to be fairly well-respected, but after Danny’s dad was killed, she got into a bad depression and stopped taking care of herself or Danny. Then Butch came along and started cheering her up — with booze. Now that’s their life, and I guess Danny hasn’t got much of a life at all.”

  “Except what he makes for himself,” Wendy murmured, thinking of how hard Danny worked collecting aluminum cans and saving his money.

  “I guess.” Kyle put his arms around her. “Sorry I couldn’t take you out last night. I thought about you, though. And missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” Wendy said honestly. “Since the robbery I’ve been pretty jumpy.” She started to tell him about imagining that she saw the robbers everywhere she looked but decided not. Instead she said, “At least Danny has been around.”

  “I noticed,” Kyle said. “I thought you didn’t like kids. Didn’t you say you never wanted a houseful of rug rats?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like kids,” Wendy protested. “It’s just that I like wildlife more. I don’t think small children and wild animals mix, that’s all.”