All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  That's where I learned to distrust monkeys. They may be cute, but they are dirty, noisy, and prone to bouts of viciousness against one another and any human being in the vicinity. We had to be extra careful not to let them bite the hand that fed them. I darned near got carpal tunnel syndrome the first week chopping fresh carrots and apples and cabbage for the little dears. They didn't appreciate my efforts and delighted in firing the remains of their meals back at my head with amazing accuracy.

  The best assignment was supposed to be with the mice. Mice were relatively clean, quiet, and they didn't throw things at you. Unfortunately, as a temporary employee, I got stuck with the monkeys.

  Then, the first of July the mouse person quit. She said flipping burgers was preferable to shooting syringes full of vitamins into the mouths of mice. I took over her job.

  I knew mice from all my lab work at school. When I opened the sound-proofed door to their holding area, I realized that a great many mice all squeaking at once reached a much higher decibel level than I had anticipated. They also smelled worse.

  Across from the door hung a large sign that read, "Please do not throw mice on floor."

  Why on earth would anybody throw a mouse on the floor?

  There were wire cages floor to ceiling on three walls and a desk and cabinets for supplies along the backwall. Soft artificial lighting left the comers of the room in shadows, but the room was air-conditioned. Blissful. Monkeys hate the cold, so their big room was hot and stuffy. After playing Jane to dozens of Cheetahs (okay, I know Cheetah was an ape and not a monkey), I really looked forward to my first day with the mice.

  I checked my list for my first subject and found the corresponding cage number. The sole inhabitant was a spectacular mouse twice as big as any mouse I had ever seen. I was supposed to shoot a syringe of vitamin mixture down his fat little throat. According to my predecessor, the stuff tasted like cherries. The mice loved it.

  I opened the cage, took out the mouse, held him in my left hand, and poked at his mouth with the syringe in my right.

  "Hey," came a baritone voice almost at my shoulder. "Know where I can find Royce Williams?"

  I jumped a foot and loosened my grip. The mouse snapped his teeth hard into the ball of my thumb.

  I yelped. Without a conscious thought I side-armed that mouse straight at the wall with the force of Arthur Ashe returning a serve.

  Now I understood the sign that said, "Do not Throw Mice on Floor."

  The mouse slid down the wall completely unhurt, tossed me a satisfied look and scurried under the supply cabinet at Mach 1.

  "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I hope it's not rabid or carrying tetanus," said my visitor.

  "Listen, you..." I said, and swung around ready to deck him.

  "It bit you," the man said, and came out of the shadows with a fresh white linen handkerchief in his hand. He took my thumb and wrapped it quickly and efficiently. Then he looked up at me.

  Up to that point I had considered Juliet was the sappiest of Shakespeare's heroines. Really stupid to fall in love at first sight with a thug from the wrong side of town. That day changed my mind. The French call it a coup de foudre-a blow of madness. It happened at a most inconvenient moment.

  The man holding my hand had the bluest eyes I'd ever seen. They were full of concern, but they crinkled at the comers with good humor. He looked as though he laughed a lot.

  "Do you need to sit down? Should I try to recapture the escapee?"

  I shook my head and probably said something like 'urk' Then I remembered I was annoyed at this jerk, snatched my hand back, and said, "The mouse is perfectly healthy. You can't possibly catch him."

  "If that sign by the door is any indication, I suspect he will join his compatriots who have successfully escaped to freedom."

  "At least I didn't actually throw him at the floor."

  He took back my hand and carefully unrolled his handkerchief from around my thumb. "Little bastard."

  "Huh?"

  "The mouse."

  "Oh. I might need to sit down after all." Not because I was faint at the sight of my own blood. After two years of vet school I had seen plenty of my own and everybody else's. I was weak at the knees. "Who are you and why did you scare the hell out of me that way? This area is off limits to visitors."

  "I'm Morgan McLain. I work in a bank and I'm looking for Royce Williams to get his signature on some papers. One of the secretaries told me he might be out here."

  "I have no idea where Mr. Williams is. I haven't seen him all morning."

  "Look, the least I can do is to walk you over to the main building so you can get that hand looked after, then buy you a cup of coffee, maybe lunch."

  I started to tell him not to be ridiculous, that I was perfectly capable of bandaging my own hand, but for some reason I didn't want him to walk out of my life. "Yes, all right. Damn, I'll have to type up an accident report. I'm going to have to account for the one I side-armed. It's my first day with the mice. Mr. Williams will scalp me."

  "No, he won't. It's my fault." He put his hand casually on the small of my back. "Shall we go?"

  I've never believed in jolts of sexual electricity either, but I swear I jumped a foot when he touched me. As we walked out the door into the heat, he said, "I wish I had you on my soft-ball team at the bank. We'd be leading the league with a pitching arm like yours."

  This guywasn't exactly handsome, although he had plenty of chin, unlike the Prince of Darkness. He did have a wonderful voice, deep and warm and friendly, but who falls in love with a voice? He was about six feet one, which meant I could wear heels when we went out, and had the kind of burly figure that would be called portly by the time he was forty. I guessed he was probably five or six years older than I was. Maybe over thirty.

  He wore an air of casual authority that said 'man, rather than 'boy.'

  But it was those bright blue eyes of his that got me and held me.

  I was not looking for a serious relationship, much less marriage. I had all I could handle with my last year of school, passing my board exams, and starting my internship with Dr. Parmenter. Unfortunately, no life-changing experience ever seems to come at a convenient time. Not in my life, at any rate.

  Chapter 4

  In which Maggie marries Morgan

  I gave Morgan my virginity on a rainy Saturday night in a Starkville, Mississippi, Holiday Inn.

  Sex with him was incredible. When he reminded me that I had no frame of reference, I assured him I wasn't about to acquire one. My entire last year of vet school I was torn between elation that I had him and terror that I'd lose him.

  Starkville isn't just over the hill from Memphis-it's a three-hour drive if you speed. I certainly didn't have time to come home to Memphis to see him, so he dutifully commuted to Oxford to see me.

  That's where our lives became permanently entwined with Eli's.

  It started as a way to save money-Holiday Inns in Starkville aren't cheap, particularly on weekends when the Mississippi State football team is playing at home.

  At Eli's little apartment we could be together. Thanks to Eli's kind heart we could often be alone as well. When she gets to heaven, her crown is going to glitter like a crystal chandelier from all the stars she accumulated during those months. She'd camp out at the library so we could snatch a couple of hours of passion. One day she remarked that my skin had never looked clearer. I seem to recall I smacked her. Not hard. Since she weighed under a hundred pounds, I might have broken her.

  No, that's wrong. She had already taken more hard hits than most women experience in a lifetime. She hadn't broken. We'd known one another for nearly four years. She knew just about everything about me, but I still knew only bare facts about her life. I didn't know what had forged her into the person she'd become. Her father ran a com mercial cattle farm outside of Pontotoc, Mississippi. Eli had four older brothers, and her mother died young. I knew Eli was a widow.

  One night over pizza and too much red wine she finally opened up.


  My youth had been relatively privileged. Hers should have been at least comfortable.

  "I guess the family genes for bulk petered out before they got down to me," she said. "Momma died of a heart attack two days after my twelfth birthday. Only way she could get any rest."

  Having met Eli's four enormous older brothers a time or two, I could see that death might be an appealing alternative for a wife, but hard on an only daughter. Her father, a fireplug of a man with the soul of an armadillo, believed that women were put on this earth to make the lives of men pleasant, to provide them clean houses, good food and plenty of it, and to stay the hell out of their way when they went drinking and whoring. "He believed Momma ought to be able to handle all his needs on butter and egg money," she said.

  As is so often the case, one magnificent teacher opened Eli's eyes to the possibilities of the world and discovered that this underfed waif with the circles under her eyes was not just bright, but brilliant.

  "Not that being smart would cut much ice with Daddy," Eli said. "He didn't believe in more than a high school education for females, and he only put up with that because the truant officer would have fined him if he hadn't. I'd have settled for marrying some good ole boy and having a passel of kids and dying young like Momma if josh Scheibler hadn't come along."

  She leaned back against the ratty old couch in her apartment, but I could tell from the dreamy look in her eyes that she was seeing josh Scheibler the day he walked into her life.

  "Here I am, four feet ten, and here comes this long, tall, drinkof-water veterinarian that must have been about six-six. Came into the kitchen to warm up before he went back to Tupelo where he was a partner with a small animal vet. He'd been treating one of daddy's bulls. I fixed him the damndest, richest cup of hot chocolate man ever had this side of Paradise."

  "He came back, I take it?" I asked.

  She smiled sheepishly. Eli was seldom sheepish about anything, but just thinking of josh Scheibler made her blush. "I already knew I wanted to be a veterinarian. I also knew there wasn't a chance in hell I could do it. Daddy would never pay for college, much less vet school. He planned to hold onto his housekeeper and cook as long as possible."

  "So how did you wind up Mrs. Josh Scheibler?" I asked.

  "One day josh came by and found me crying, because Daddy had just refused for the umpteenth time to consider even sending me to junior college. I sure didn't have the money to pay for myself, even with my part-time job at the Dairy-Queen. I had graduated from high school in June and turned eighteen in July. Here it was August and I was fit to be tied. Josh picked me up, slung me into his truck and drove off with me. When we were out on the highway, he told me that if we could make it to Tunica before the court house closed, we could get blood tests, a marriage license and be married before dark."

  "Wow! Romantic."

  "Terrifying. Took me nearly halfway to Highway 51 before I said yes. He bought me a ring and a dress at Shainberg's, and enough jeans and underwear to last until we could get home to tell Daddy what we'd done. We were married that night."

  At that point in my friendship with Eli, I was already talking about the wedding that Morgan and I would have-bridesmaids and flowers and a big reception and showers and all the hoopla that is usually associated with society weddings. When I looked at the light in Eli's eyes, I understood what weddings were all about for the first time. "What happened when you went home?"

  Eli laughed. "Daddy had a cat fit, said he'd disown me, and in the next breath said he supposed that meant he'd be getting free veterinary service from then on."

  "What about Josh's people?"

  "East Tennessee farmers from outside of Cookeville. He was an only child. Nice enough folks, kind of quiet. Very religious. I don't think they ever approved of josh's marrying me, certainly not without a preacher."

  Her tone told me that was another subject I shouldn't pursue.

  "We had four glorious years," she said. "Poor as church mice, but we managed to get me through college. He had some buddies on the faculty, and of course he was a Starkville alum, so he was pretty sure we could get me into Mississippi State. Being a woman and four-foot ten I needed all the pull I could get. Grades alone would never have been enough.

  "We'd been saving every penny so I could get through school, then we were going to go open a practice together back in Cookeville in East Tennessee where everybody knew him.

  "Josh joined the National Guard to make a little extra money. I mean one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. How bad could it be? Even when his unit was called up, we both thought he'd be sent to someplace like Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Who on earth would need a veterinarian overseas? I'd received my admission to vet school as soon as I finished my B.A. I planned to spend the summer with Josh wherever he went, then come back to school in the fall. When he came home, he'd rejoin his old practice and we'd have weekends until I qualified. It all seemed so simple."

  "What changed it?"

  "Believe it or not," Eli said, "Viet Nam was just hotting up, and that's where they sent him-lonely veterinarian and all." She tried a little laugh, but I saw her slide her finger under her eye to catch the tear.

  "What on earth would they do with a veterinarian in Viet Nam?"

  Eli shrugged. "He said it was boring, but beautiful. He sent me pictures of the big tent camp where he was assigned. It was right on this gorgeous beach. Mostly he inspected meat for the army to make sure it wasn't diseased. Then they started going out to some of the villages to try to help some of the native livestock. Completely safe, he said." She looked away, much farther than the walls of the little apartment.

  I didn't want to breathe. I didn't want to hear the rest of the story, either, but I kept my mouth shut.

  "I don't know how they do it now, but back then, they sent two soldiers in dress uniforms-white gloves and all. I was outside our apartment in Tupelo. It was Saturday morning. Funny the things you remember. I was changing the spark plugs on our old truck. Did you know I can change sparkplugs, Maggie? I can change oil, too, if I have to. josh taught me. At home my brothers did all the work on the tractors and stuff."

  Now I really couldn't breathe. She sounded so matter of fact, so casual.

  "I looked up when the car stopped. When the doors opened and they started to get out, you know what I did? I bolted right for the front door. When I got in I slammed it behind me and put the chain on. Isn't that crazy? As though if I didn't let them in it wouldn't be real." She shook her head. "One of them was a woman-a big woman, bigger than you are, Maggie. She kept talking to me nice and easy through the door. Not saying the words, just talking to me, trying to get me to let them in. Finally, I did."

  I could feel the tears sliding down my cheeks just listening to her, but Eli's eyes were dry. Her face looked like one of those death masks-caved in and lifeless.

  "You know, I don't remember a thing after that until they handed me that folded flag at his memorial service a month later at the old National Cemetery in Memphis. I must have gotten through it. I'm here, after all. But it's like I had a stroke or a heart attack that wiped out all those days." She shook her head at me. "Isn't that weird?"

  I wanted to go put my arms around her and rock her the way my mother used to rock me after I'd hurt my knee, but I was afraid to move. She was still speaking, but I knew she wasn't even aware that I was still in the room.

  "I got the usual letter from his C.O. about how he'd died a hero. When his sergeant got back to the States he called me. They'd been out on one of those perfectly safe trips to one of the villages, and on the way back, the jeep hit a land mine that somebody had just planted. He and his driver were both killed instantly. But they always say that, don't they? Instantly? At least he didn't suffer? For all I know he lived minutes, hours, all that pain and the blood..."

  That's when we both lost it. We clung together and just sobbed. When we had hiccoughed and gulped ourselves into silence, I said, "I can't believe you kept on."

  "
What else was I supposed to do? Go home to be a free maid and cook? Betray everything we'd hoped and dreamed for? Not on your life. His G.I. insurance pays for school and this apartment, and when I get out, it's going to help me set up in practice right back in Cookeville where he wanted to be." She looked me right in the eye with her head high. "Keeping on is what you do."

  That night over pizza in Starkville, I sympathized with her, but I didn't understand a thing about losing the other half of your soul.

  Eli and I graduated together, took our boards together, then Eli packed up the few things she'd accumulated in the back of her old pickup truck and drove off to Cookeville. She was planning to stay with josh's parents until she could find a job with one of the vets in the area.

  I didn't see her again until she drove down for my wedding to Morgan.

  The wedding itself was a far cry from what my mother wanted, but Morgan and Daddy and I had ganged up on her. We refused to have twelve bridesmaids. I told her I didn't actually know twelve girls I could force to buy a dress and shoes. Eli was my matron of honor, and I paid for her dress. I swore to her that was traditional. I doubt she believed me, but she let me do it anyway. I knew what a hard time she was having financially, and both Morgan and I wanted her to stand up with us.

  We had a morning service with champagne and wedding cake in the parish hall of St. Cecilia's Episcopal Church afterwards. A friend of Mother's did the flowers, which were lovely but simple. We hired a single harpist instead of the string quartet Mother wanted, and one of the vestry of the church took photos.

  On ourwayto The Peabody for honeymoon night, I asked Morgan why on earth he'd married me. He said, "Because, my dearest heart, you are an eagle among canaries. You were born to soar. I was born to hold the cage door open for you."