All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  The clients in the waiting room screamed. So did Tonesha.

  For a moment my mind went blank, then I grabbed the empty metal garbage can from the comer of the examining room and raced after him.

  Clients stood on the chairs and sofas. Tonesha climbed onto her desk. Dogs and cats and rabbit tried frantically to escape the clutches of their masters and mistresses.

  "Where is he?" I asked.

  "Under that chair in the comer," Mayrene said.

  "Gone to ground. Good. Stay where you are, people. Duane, get me a carrying cage. Wanda Jean, stay out of the way."

  "Maggie, he'll tear you up," Eli whispered.

  "No, he won't. He's still muzzled, and I can avoid those claws. He's just scared." Suddenly, the exhaustion was gone, replaced by a surge of adrenaline.

  "I'm scared too," Eli said.

  "Hold a cushion against the side of the chair so he can't get out that way. He won't be able to go anywhere but into the garbage can." I slid the garbage can along the floor in front of the chair with its open end toward the cowering fox. "Come on, sweetheart, come to Maggie."

  "I got your cage, doc," Duane said from behind me.

  "Good. Put it down and when I tell you, bang on the seat of that chair."

  "Yes'm."

  "Now."

  Duane banged and Eli pushed my cushion. The fox bolted straight into the safe darkness of the garbage can. The instant I heard him inside, I tipped the can on its nose and sat on it. The fox scrabbled frantically against the metal. "Now, all we have to do is transfer him to the cage, sedate him, treat him, give him his shot, drive him back to where he came from and let him loose."

  "He was running on all four legs," Eli said. "He must have popped his shoulder back in when he jumped off the examining table. We can give him enough tranquilizer in a bit of dog food to get the muzzle off. As for the concussion-ifyou think I'm going to shove an aspirin down this thing's throat, you have another think coming."

  "Is it safe to come down?" Mayrene asked. Snooper the Fourth was still in attack mode. His ruff stood straight up while he barked non-stop.

  "Go back into the examining rooms and shut the doors. B'rer Fox is not going to get loose again, but just in case..." Decanting the terrified fox into the cage wasn't as easy as I had made it seem, but he gobbled up the dog food with his muzzle still on and settled right down five minutes later. I clipped the muzzle carefully, then Duane carried the cage back to the kennel area at arm's length.

  "Tonesha," I said and tossed Tonesha the card the Good Samaritan had given me. "Call that man and ask him where on the road he hit the fox. And tell him everything's fine. I'll drop him about where he got hit. Old Foxkin can run on home to his wife and family, assuming he has one."

  "And call the wildlife people," Eli said to Tonesha. "Tell them what happened and what we plan to do. Should be all right, but better be certain."

  "Okay," Tonesha said. "I swear, this place is a zoo!"

  An hour later Duane carried the groggy fox out to my truck and slid the carrier into the back seat. The good Samaritan had hit him less than five miles from the clinic. I knew we had foxes and coyote around, but I'd never been lucky enough to see one on our property.

  I pulled my truck onto the shoulder approximately where the fox had been hit. I carried the cage across the shallow ditch beside the road to the edge of a cotton field. I stood well back when I opened the cage door. For a moment nothing happened.

  Then B'rer Fox bolted out as though he'd been scalded and took off running across the field, his bright red brush like a knight's banner behind him.

  I watched him until he gained the shadows of the trees in the first hedge row. The moment he disappeared, the old, cold emptiness struck me again. And the exhaustion. I had to force myself to load the cage back into my truck and drive back to the clinic.

  Was his vixen pacing back and forth in front of her den worrying about him? Was she afraid he'd gone forever? If he had died there beside the road, would she have grieved? Animals did grieve.

  But they also seemed to accept death. Why couldn't I?

  As I walked in the back door of the clinic, Eli stuck her head out of her office.

  "Maggie, Nathan's on the phone for you."

  I froze. Nathan never called me during the day. He wouldn't call me simply to chat, would he? I didn't think I could bear any more bad news.

  Chapter 28

  In which Nathan's birth certificate starts a chain of events

  "Hey, Nathan, how are y'all?" I fought to keep my voice normal, but no doubt I sounded shrill. My hand on the telephone shook.

  "We're fine, Momma," he said.

  "Lisa?"

  "Fine. How are you? That's what's important."

  "Fine. I'm doing fine." God, we sounded like a pair of strangers. But what good would it do to blubber and scream and tell him that I wasn't fine, that I'd never be fine again, that I was empty and frightened and wanted to go curl up in a comer and die? The least I could do was to protect him from my grief. He had his own to deal with. We continued the banalities until he got around to telling me why he was calling.

  Eli listened to my end of the telephone conversation, which consisted mostly of "uh-huh." When I hung up, she asked, "So? Lisa's pregnant? He's been busted for insider trading? Disaster or good news? What?"

  I shrugged and tried to act nonchalant. Eli had seen my panic, however.

  "No, Lisa is not pregnant and Nathan is not under indictment-or if he is, he didn't mention it. Lisa is going to put off having children until her eggs are too old to recognize a sperm, much less blend with it. They may never get around to grandchildren."

  "If we're not talking disaster, what did Nathan want?"

  "He needs the original copy of his birth certificate."

  "Whatever for?"

  "He and Lisa are bringing their wills up to date."

  Eli nodded. "Since Morgan died he's feeling his mortality."

  "I'm sure that's it exactly. He's setting up some kind of trust for Lisa. Apparently the good old bureaucracy in Nashville has not ambled from the nineteenth into the twenty-first century and will take ten days to get it to him. He wants me to FedEx it."

  "Oh. Why are you looking like that?"

  "He told me exactly where it is. Good thing, since I haven't a clue. He says it's in Morgan's file cabinet in his office over at the house."

  "So?" Eli narrowed her eyes. "Do not tell me you haven't been in Morgan's office since he died."

  "I never went in there when he was alive. That was his sanctuary. He kept up with all the paperwork." I looked away and refused to meet Eli's eyes. "And I let him."

  "I'll bet you haven't opened his closet either, have you?"

  "I've been busy. Besides, I don't need any more closet space. Morgan's stuff can stay where it is."

  "Get up. It's lunchtime. You can fix us a sandwich, then I'll go up to the office with you and get that birth certificate."

  "That will not be necessary."

  "Bull hockey. Come on, tough guy, the least you can do is fix me a chicken salad sandwich."

  I opened the door to Morgan's office, took two steps and stopped so quickly that Eli bumped into me. A moment later, I said, "The cleaning crew dusts and vacuums in here every week. I don't know why I had visions of cobwebs hanging everywhere like Miss Haversham's wedding reception in Great Expectations."

  "So find the birth certificate and let's get back to the clinic." Eli pointed to the three-drawer walnut file cabinet in the comer of the room. Morgan didn't stint on his comfort either at home or at his office in the bank. The walls were paneled, the dark wood floor was covered with an antique Heriz that Morgan had inherited from his parents. He'd inherited the mahogany partner's desk from his father.

  The big computer with its twenty-one inch monitor seemed at first glance to be the only modem piece in the room. I sucked in a deep breath. "I was hoping that I could still smell him, but all I smell is Murphy s oil soap." I strode purposefully to the fi
le cabinet and yanked open the top drawer as though I actually wanted to.

  Eli curled up in the big blue leather wing chair in front of Morgan's desk.

  "Go on back to the clinic," I said. "I won't slash my wrists."

  "Fine," she said and started to pull herself out of the big chair.

  "No, wait. Please. Tonesha will call if there's an emergency."

  "So you want me to stay?"

  "Dammit, all right, yes, I want you to stay."

  She nodded. "Okay, butyou need to do the actual work." I'm sure she heard my cavernous sigh because she said, "Maggie, trust me on this. I've been through it. Starting is horrible, but it gets easier."

  I did not believe her for an instant, but I began to thumb through the folders. "Nathan said the personal family papers were in the first or second drawer," I said. "This seems to be stuff on private clients and general correspondence." I checked to the end of the drawer. "No birth certificates."

  "Try the second drawer."

  There they were. Thick hanging files for each member of the family. Next all the official papers from mortgages to tax forms for what looked like the last twenty years. I pulled out a copy of my marriage license to Morgan.

  "Morgan always said he felt as though we'd been married forever, and at the same time, just married yesterday." I pulled out Nathan's folder, opened it, and said, "Here's Nathan's birth certificate. Just where he said it would be." I put it on the comer of the desk, replaced the folder and slammed the drawer. "Okay, time for work."

  Eli didn't move. "What's in the bottom drawer?"

  "No idea."

  "No curiosity either? Come on, now that you've started, keep going at least a few minutes more. I promise I'll come over Sunday afternoon. We'll get a real start on cleaning out the debris-file cabinets and desk drawers."

  "Oh, hell, all right." I did not want to go on a moment longer. I wanted to go back to work where I could safely hide from this room, so full of Morgan and yet so completely empty. I bent down and pulled open the bottom drawer. A moment later I sat down on the floor in front of the cabinet. "It looks like a scrapbook." I said over my shoulder, "Weighs a ton." I held it on my lap and heard my heart thud in my throat. Like many busy families, we rarely took photographs. The ones we did take were shoved away in boxes waiting to be mounted. Or at least I had supposed they were. "If Morgan put all our pictures in here, Eli, I'm not sure I can bear to look at them."

  Eli was beside me in a flash. "Of course you can. Here, let me."

  Wordlessly, I handed her book

  Eli opened it across her knees. "I always told Morgan he was too anal-retentive for his own good." She opened the book and caught her breath. "It's your wedding pictures and your honeymoon. Lordy, were we thin!"

  "Put it away." Eli turned a page. "Eli, put that thing away right this minute!"

  "Morgan looks so cute in his striped pants and cutaway. And the way he's staring at you..."

  "Damnation, Eli!"

  She glanced up then and saw my face. "Sure, Maggie. It's okay, honey." As she began to close the book, a shower of brightly colored brochures spilled out onto the floor.

  Next came old airplane tickets, stubs, receipts, notes in Morgan's handwriting. I grabbed at a cascade of still more loose brochures. "Help!" I set the book down and began to scrabble at the brochures and pieces of paper on my knees. I was suddenly frantic to get those bits of paper safely shut away into that scrapbook again.

  Almost against mywill, I stared down at the brochure in my hand. Across the front Morgan had written: "Booked Alaska Cruise, June 84. Underneath was another note: "Cancelled, August 84."

  Still stacking loose notes and brochures, Eli slid the book across the floor. "Don't drop anything else."

  I began to leaf through the pages. After the pictures of our honeymoon I found neat, orderly pages on which Morgan had mounted photos, old airline tickets, brochures for side trips to Gatlinburg.

  I could trace every moment of the week we spent together in New York when Sarah was a year old. Eli had looked after her because Morgan said I needed a break. Everything-theater stubs, old theatre programs, brochures from the Frick and the Museum of Modem Art, even hotel receipts and restaurant menus. Morgan had not only kept every scrap of paper, he'd lovingly built this scrapbook. Why had he hid it from me?

  The leaves at the front of the book were thick with keepsakes, but I found more and more blank pages, some with brochures still stuck loosely between them. I'd cancelled our trip to Tuscany to go to the International Veterinary Congress in St. Paul.

  The following year Morgan had tried to take me on a cruise down the Seine on a barge, but I'd gone to a course at Colorado State to learn about embryo transplants in horses instead. The opening at State had come so late, I'd had to cancel France at the last minute.

  I told Morgan to go without me.

  He told her there was always next year. Or the next. After the children left. After they went to college. After they graduated and moved away from home for good. Or after he retired.

  He planned to retire in August of this year.

  "Maggie, here's your passport," Eli said. "Yours and Morgan's. I wonder why he kept them here." Eli flipped open the pages. "It's out of date."

  "After ...I forgot." I bristled. Morgan would have reminded me. Except that he no longer could.

  "I guess he planned to do them both at the same time. You wouldn't be able to leave the country even if Morgan could finally have persuaded you to actually go someplace instead of just promising and reneging."

  "I didn't always renege, dammit!"

  "Sure you did. I don't think you've taken a real vacation with Morgan since we built the clinic. The Militia and I ran an annual pool on the day you'd cancel."

  'Was I that bad?"

  "You know you were."

  'Why didn't he let me know how important it was to him?" I swept a hand at the papers on the floor around them. "Look at all these things. It's like I told him year after year he'd get a pony for Christmas and year after year I didn't deliver. What kind of a monster am I?"

  "You're not a monster. You're simply afflicted with tunnel vision where your work is concerned. Morgan understood that. He was perfectly willing to wait..."

  "Until he keeled over dead eight months before he was due to retire." I surged to my feet and began to pace. "He never saw the pyramids or the Mona Lisa or the Great Wall of China. Hell, he never even saw the Grand Canyon."

  "He wanted to see them with you. You haven't seen any of those things either."

  "Not yet I haven't."

  Eli scrambled to her feet. "Calm down. Morgan wouldn't want you to..."

  "He's not here to express his current needs. All I can see are the ones I failed to meet in twenty-seven frigging years of married life. He was always there for me. I was supposed to be there for him too. Half and half. Only my half was a damned sight bigger."

  "You're shaking. It's all right."

  "It is not."

  Eli's pager beeped. "Lord." She picked the phone off Morgan's desk and clicked into the office. "Yes, Tonesha? Yes, all right. I'm coming." She hung up the phone. "Dog hit by a car. I have to go."

  "I'm coming with you."

  "No, you're not. You stay here." She touched my shoulder. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Morgan loved you."

  I heard Eli footsteps recede down the hall. "And I loved him. Maybe not enough."

  I slid out of the chair onto the floor and crawled over to the file cabinet. I went through the scrapbook page by page, carefully fitting the brochures into the blank pages in the order the trips would have taken. Every note of a cruise or a trip booked and then cancelled tore into me. He gave me so much-his financial support in the early days, his child-rearing skills when mine proved to be minimal, his sense of humor, his kindness, his patience...

  He'd made my dream for the clinic our dream. Without him to push me I'd never have had the nerve to try it.

  I hadn't been able to cry since he died. Sudde
nly I leaned against the file cabinet and howled like a banshee. "Damn you! Damn you, Morgan! Damn you for dying on me and leaving me the whole rest of my stupid life to live without you! "

  I don't know how long I wailed. Eventually I hicchoughed into silence. I lay down on the floor the midst of all those brochures. I was so tired, and my life without him had just begun.

  Was the old dream, the one we had shared, empty now without him? Was it enough to get me through my leftover life? If Morgan had given up so much for me, then somehow I had to make the rest of my life without him count.

  Chapter 29

  In which Maggie and Eli perform an unusual surgical procedure

  In the past when faced with a career choice, I had consulted Dr. Parmenter, but he was dead too. So I did what I usually do when faced with a life-changing decision. I mulled, I puzzled, I ruminated.

  And I worked even harder.

  One morning in early March, Eli and I had just finished pinning a cat's broken leg when Tonesha walked into our exam room and said, "Y'all, the weirdest thing just happened. This guy drove a fancy horse trailer into the paddock, unhooked his truck, drove around front, ran in, threw some papers on my desk and tore out like a bat out'a hell. Whatever 's in that trailer is doing some heavy duty kickin"'

  "Duane! " I called. "Come take this cat to recovery. " Then I started toward the back door with Eli on my heels.

  "Maggie?" Tonesha called. "These papers-they're releases for surgery. The guy says he needs a orchidectomy. I know what that is. It's gelding a stallion. But what on earth is a saddle-ectomy?"

  My eyebrows climbed. "What now?"

  "Rodney Armbruster called meat breakfast," Eli said as I followed her through the clinic. "Said he'd be here before noon."

  Rodney was one of our colleagues. He owned the clinic where the young vet who had effectively killed Patsy's Pride had been working when my Sarah was eighteen and still riding. We stayed on good terms, but like most of the vets in the area, we snickered at Rodney's pretensions.

  "He sure didn't mention a saddle-ectomy, whatever that is," Eli said. She opened the back door to the clinic and started across the parking lot to the paddock. "You know how he thinks he can ride the hair off of anything with four legs."