by Dan Darling
Imagine you are an outcast. When you step out into the daylight, people stare. They are disgusted. They take sidelong glances at your face, but won’t meet your eyes. Children ask their mommies what is wrong with you. You develop deep-seated trauma about it. You structure your life around avoiding people―their stares and their gasps and their whispers―at any cost. This means that there’s no one you can rely on. Since you have few personal relationships―no lover, no children, one or two friends―you throw yourself into your work. It becomes your life. Then, one day you have a big opportunity that could make your career. It could catapult you into that next tier of achievement. The one thing standing in your way: it involves stepping out into that damned daylight.
I sighed. “I’ll be over in a couple hours.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I hung up. I took my canvas cricket bag down from its hook and filled it with crickets. I bred them by the thousands and kept them in a cooled terrarium so they’d be sluggish. That way, they were easy to scoop into my cricket bag, but would liven up by the time I dropped them into the terrarium of whatever lizard, serpent, amphibian, or larger arthropod was going to eat them. I dispersed my bag of crickets and distributed some marsh flies. I checked to make sure everyone was alive. I fished out a few socks of shed scales. Most of the larger reptiles only ate once a week or so. They’d be fine if I stepped out for the afternoon.
As I leaned through the panel into the caiman lagoon, Marchette cleared his throat behind me. I turned and looked down at him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Stick?”
“Just Stick.”
“Ah-hem. Stick.” He pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t help but notice that you brought in a specimen with you this morning.”
I closed the panel and faced him.
“Would you mind, you know, satisfying a fellow scientist’s curiosity?”
“I’m not a scientist,” I said.
He laughed. “Come, come. You know more about these creatures than anyone.”
“That bag I brought in this morning isn’t mine,” I said. “It belongs to a friend.”
“Ah-ha! Is Dr. Hernandez that friend?”
“I thought you were a bug guy? Since when do you care about frogs?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “My guess is that any scientist in the state would be interested in Dr. Hernandez’s work right now. She has a real mystery on her hands.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
His face split from ear to ear in a smile a clam would have respected. “I see. Well, no matter! Ta-ta!”
I walked away. I should’ve just shown Marchette my bloated dead bullfrog. He was a good man. He kept a close eye on my insects. I didn’t show it to him because it was a Friday. He wasn’t supposed to be there on Fridays.
Then again, neither was the frog, which I retrieved from the refrigerator. I put on my jacket and made my way through the alleys behind the walls and buildings of the zoo, which I shouldn’t have been doing either. These were normal zoo hours. In the parking lot, people were everywhere. It was as if a moose had gotten loose. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared. It took eternity to get to my truck. Someone snapped a picture. I fumbled my keys and forgot to engage the clutch when I tried to start it, grinding a gear and almost killing the engine.
By the time I escaped onto the main roads, my face was hot. People always stared at me in the parking lot. Normally when I came and went, it was nearly empty. I could usually blow off the few who were present, but not this time. I shouldn’t have been out there. It was not my routine. I wanted a drink, or better yet, a bar fight―I’d once ground out my anger in the dive bars of Albuquerque. I’d found my Zen place since then, or at least I thought I had.
I didn’t drive to the university. It was one o’clock on a weekday and the place would be obscene with humans. Instead, I drove home. I entered my cool, dark space, closing and locking the door behind me. Ralph sat motionless in his terrarium. His calm bled into me. When I felt a little better, I picked up the phone and dialed Melodía’s number.
“Dr. Hernandez,” she answered.
“Your frog is in my refrigerator.”
“My frog?”
“The result of my trip to the Bosque Del Apache,” I said. “You may pick it up at your convenience.”
“At the zoo?”
“At my home,” I said. “I’ve gone home for the day.”
She exhaled into the receiver. “Okay. I’ll bring the egg―”
“Keep your egg,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
“But you have to incubate it.”
“Incubate it yourself,” I said. “I’ve got my own eggs to look after.”
The line went quiet. Across the room, Ralph tiptoed around in his terrarium. I’d woken him from his daylong slumber. Another link in the routine broken.
“Okay, I’ll come by after work,” Melodía said. “And Stick?”
I waited.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
I stayed in my apartment the rest of the day, slow-cooking some beans for me and releasing a couple of small beetles into the living room for Ralph to hunt. I settled down in front of a documentary on Australian monitor lizards that I’d seen a half-dozen times.
A dead frog cooled its heels in my fridge. It was sealed up in several plastic bags, but the gasses released by the body during decomposition would swell those bags and potentially burst them. Then I’d have a fridge full of rotten frog. Still, I wasn’t in a rush to see Melodía―or anybody. I’d had enough interruptions in my life.
The frog wasn’t even a lead. I should have thrown it out. It was just a dead frog. It had probably died of disease or been bitten on the inside of the mouth by a spider. The bites on the whooping crane weren’t a lead. The mysterious egg inside the whooping crane wasn’t a lead. To be at all causally related to the death of thousands of birds, the bites and the egg would have to be common to all the birds. They weren’t. Simple science. Case closed.
I tried to stop thinking about the dead birds.
Instead, I thought about Australian monitor lizards. They ate mammals, birds, eggs, other lizards, and insects. They loved carrion―my dead frog would entice one from a mile away. They climbed trees. They were good swimmers. I had a spiny-tailed monitor at the zoo. However, I’d always coveted the lace monitor, a dark-scaled creature which could exceed two yards in length. The lace monitor had been known to take down young kangaroos. It was a glorious desert monster. I wondered if Australia looked like New Mexico. I’d never get there to find out.
A car door slammed up at ground level where the normals lived. Melodía descended the steps outside and knocked.
“Enter,” I yelled.
Her burgundy top hung loose at the neck and wrists, and her black slacks were wrinkled. Her curly hair was frizzy at the ends and flattened in the back. A bag hung under her darkened right eye and the small veins and arteries laced through the tumors stood taut below her skin. Her brown complexion had gone gray.
“You need rest.” I didn’t get up from my couch.
She sat on my love seat. “No time. Too many tests to run.”
“Found anything?” I asked.
She shook her head, put her elbows on her knees, and dropped her brow into her palms. “What did you find at the Bosque?”
I shrugged. “I found a dead bullfrog. It’s probably nothing, but I couldn’t find any outward causes of death. Thought it might be related to the bird incident. If whatever killed your birds also killed an amphibian, it might narrow things down.”
“Or broaden them.” She groaned. “Where is it?”
I jerked my thumb at the refrigerator. I thought about telling her I’d been followed, but figured she had enough on her mind.
Melodía didn’t get up. “What are you watching?”
“Documentary on goannas.”
“What are those?” she ask
ed.
“Australian monitor lizards.”
She opened her mouth at the same instant the phone rang. The image of a toothy gray dragon clinging to a tree remained frozen on my TV screen. The phone rang again.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Melodía asked.
“Absolutely not. I’m not even convinced the sound of the phone is real. You’re here. You’re the only one who calls me. Therefore, the phone is not ringing.”
“You forgot to account for entropy,” Melodía said. “The second law of thermodynamics. Nothing is static.”
The machine picked up. It took me a minute to recognize the voice speaking uninvited into my apartment.
“I presume this is the residence of Mr. John Stick, employee of the Rio Grande Zoo,” said Tanis Rivera. “I realize that I’m crossing a boundary of decorum by calling you at home after you refused to give me your telephone number. However, I feel a great urge to speak with you.”
Melodía lifted her head from her hands and looked at me. Her pupils became hard and small. The arteries in her left eye burned red.
“I would like to share information with you,” Tanis said. “I’ll give you my insights, you’ll give me yours. We’re investigating the same mystery, though we approach it from different angles. I feel that we would benefit from working as a team.” Her voice paused. “Please contact me. You have my card.” She left her phone number for good measure and hung up.
The apartment fell silent.
“You met a woman,” Melodía said, her voice flat.
“She’s not a woman,” I said. “She’s a crazy person who accosted me at the Bosque. She thinks I’m a metaphysical detective.”
Melodía snorted. “You’re ridiculous. If you have a date, you can just tell me.”
“This woman thinks I can help her unlock the secret of the universe.”
“So, you admit she’s a woman?”
“She’s a fanatic. She believes animals conform to human codes of morality. Tree frogs are good. Tiger sharks are evil.”
“I’d be happy for you,” Melodía said, “if you had a date.”
“Animal theologian. That’s what her business card read.”
“I’d cheer you on, is all I’m saying.” Melodía held an imaginary glass in the air. “I’d buy you a drink and propose a toast.”
“Is that your way of hinting that you want a beer?” I asked.
“God yes.”
I retrieved two bottles from the fridge. They sweat into my palms. Melodía took a third of hers down before I could even sit. She heaved a deep sigh. Her eyelids fell like heavy curtains, and lifting them again looked like a Herculean labor. She smiled one of those gentle, genuine smiles that occupy people’s faces when their guard is down, like a squatter taking over a vulnerable house. “You could have answered the phone.”
“I couldn’t have.”
“I wouldn’t have minded. I don’t want you to miss out on a date just because I’m here.”
“I don’t have a date,” I said. “That Tanis Rivera―I’m telling you―she’s just a lunatic who only wants to talk to me because I’m a giant.”
Melodía woke up. Her eyes got fierce and her mouth tightened. A hint of tooth gleamed at the stiff part of her mouth. “You shouldn’t talk to people who are only interested in you because of that.”
“I know.”
“You’re a great person, Stick. You don’t need anybody thinking of you that way.”
“Why do think I didn’t answer the phone?” I said.
“Do you want me to call her and tell her to leave you alone?”
I held up a hand. I didn’t have the heart to remind Melodía that Tanis had only run across me because I’d gone to the Bosque on her orders. I wasn’t used to disclosing every little detail of my life to other people, so it was easy for me to hide things. When you say little, nobody notices when you’re clamming up on purpose.
Once Melodía’s work ethic had flushed her, along with one dead bullfrog, from my place, and I’d enjoyed a night of sleep on a clear conscience, I settled back into my routine. I’d rid myself of the frog. I’d fended off the responsibility of incubating a mysterious insect egg. I’d ignored the phone call from Tanis. The world had tried to get a bite out of me, but it had failed.
Four days went by. No one followed me, at least as far as I noticed. No one called. I consorted solely with animals that didn’t have the complex brain functions to coax, ogle, or philosophize.
Tuesday came around again and found me reading a book about ants. Ants adhered to hierarchies. Some went to work. Others went to war. A select few queens lorded over the rest. Americans were supposed to be the opposite of ants: every individual took care only of itself, society be damned. Our system worked like gangbusters―the talking heads told us so every day.
I was deep into drone culture when Rex’s truck roared up. The clock read shy of six in the evening. Two doors opened and slammed. A flap-footed tread accompanied the clomp of Rex’s jackboots. That tread belonged to Flowers the Clown. Rex and I had known Leon Flowers since elementary school. Back then, he’d been a chubby, apple-cheeked kid. He’d been sweet and quiet. He’d been picked on mercilessly. As a fellow outcast, Flowers had become the third wheel of our friendship, always on the outside. I felt the kind of pity for him that only lasts until you see the object of your pity face-to-face―then they remind you how irritating they are.
Another car purred up. It sounded like it parked right behind Rex’s truck. A car door opened and shut. Feet shuffled around and voices murmured. I couldn’t quite catch what they were saying. Three pairs of footsteps marched down my stairs and crossed my patio, and Rex’s fist hammered on my door.
I considered pretending not to be home. Strangers never visited me. My door was very difficult to find. It was not visible from street level. You had to venture into my vestibule of creepies, crawlies, and buzzies to get to it, by design. I did not want to meet this mysterious third person.
“Stick!” It was not in Rex’s nature to be ignored.
I placed a section of snakeskin on the page I was reading and closed the book. Snakeskin made a beautiful bookmark. Every time a snake at my zoo molted, the snake got a fresh, sleek look, and I got a new bookmark. It was what you might call a win-win.
I opened the door. Rex was dressed as usual: jackboots, camo pants, heavy metal band t-shirt, leather jacket. That night he wore a baseball cap that cast a shadow over his deep-set eyes all the way down to his mustache. Flowers stood behind him in street clothes―dungarees, canvas jacket, and a button-up shirt with one button missing over his protruding belly―except for the orange clown shoes on his feet. He was pale-skinned, red-cheeked, with small eyes and a childish smile. He had a way about him that made me want to wrap my fingers through his hair and lift him up on his toes.
A white, middle-aged, short, bulky man with beefy forearms and very little hair accompanied them. He wore khaki on his legs and crow’s feet around his eyes.
“Stick,” Rex said, “meet the Captain. Captain, meet Stick.”
The Captain’s gray eyes bulged slightly out of their sockets. “Holy Toledo.” He put the back of his hand against his forehead, as if checking himself for a fever. “You boys weren’t kidding.”
I gave the Captain one of my unfriendly giant glares.
The Captain stuck out his hand. “Mr. Stick. Pleasure’s mine.”
I looked at Rex. “I’m not calling him Captain.”
The Captain laughed one of those good-old-boy laughs. “That’s just a little nickname the men use. Call me Bruce.” He stuck out his hand a little farther.
I ignored it. I wondered if I could have picked him up, carried him out my front door, and pitched him all the way to the bed of Rex’s truck. He looked heavy, but my ire was riding pretty high.
Rex grinned at me. “Can we come in?”
Flowers hoisted a 30-pack of Budweiser cans above his head like an Olympic champion hefting a barbell. “We brought bevera
ges!”
I groaned and stood aside.
It was like a parade. One body after another. By the time all three men had marched past, I felt like it would take a miracle to ever get my peace and quiet back. Rex leapt atop a bar stool and put his elbows on the wood. The Captain climbed onto the one beside him, one haunch at a time. Flowers threw open the refrigerator door and tried to jam the huge case of beer inside.
I didn’t grab Flowers by the hair. I brushed him aside as gently as my temper would let me and took control of the beer. He hovered at my elbow, grinning like the Cheshire cat until I gave him three cans and explicit instructions to distribute them. I removed the case from the cavity it had violated in my orderly refrigerator and put the cans in a cooler covered in ice. After refilling the ice trays, I took out a beer.
The pinching sound that cut through my apartment as I popped the tab relaxed me a little. The icy first splash on my tongue helped a little more.
The three men chatted at my bar. They looked up when I turned to them.
“So, why do they call you Captain?” I tried not to growl out the words.
The Captain chuckled.
“It’s not ’cause he owns a boat!” Flowers cackled and punched the older man’s shoulder, not even moving him. The Captain may have been portly, but he was solid.
“He’s with the Minutemen,” Rex said. “He’s hiring us.”
The Captain held up his hands. “I recommended you. The Minutemen are volunteers. We don’t hire anybody. Typhon Industries is hiring you.”
“C’mon!” Flowers said. “That’s the same thing in my book.”
“Don’t be modest,” Rex said.
The Captain had his face turned down toward his beer. On his left, Flowers fawned over him; on his right, Rex beamed fiercely from beneath the bill of his cap. I felt sorry for the poor guy, even though he seemed like he was having a decent time.
“The Minutemen are volunteers,” The Captain said to me. “These boys were hired by a private company that subcontracts with the government to patrol the border.”
“Secret experimental surveillance technology and what-not,” Rex said.
“We’re riding shotgun,” Flowers said. “For deployment. We’re the hired military experts.”