Fauna

by Alissa York

  “You want the tour?” he says finally.

  “Sure.” Too quick—she should at least pretend to think about it.

  “Okay.” He sweeps an arm grandly across the scene. “Loader. Link-Belt. Big old dirty oil drums, big old dirty pile of tires.” He grins. “Over here, these are my trucks. The funny-looking one’s a tow truck and the other one’s just regular.”

  “Okay, okay.” She points to where a mangled white sedan sits mounted on the boxy machine. “What about that?”

  “That’s an Acura.”

  She gives him a look.

  “Oh, you mean the thing it’s sitting on. That’s the crusher.”

  “That’s what you call it?”

  “What else? Hey, you want to see something worth seeing?”

  “Sure.” Again, the unhesitating assent. She’ll have to work on that.

  The hawk is hiding. Guy presses up against the cage door, fingers hooked in the chain-link on either side of his head. Standing behind him, Edal can’t help but remember the last time she patted a suspect down.

  Customs was on the lookout for a different breed of smuggler coming off the Bogotá flight, but that didn’t stop one of them noticing the crusts of white crap on the suspect’s shoes. He was pacing the holding room when Edal arrived—nineteen years old, a skinny, unthinking kid. She frisked him gently, halting when she discerned the first lump on his thigh. He did as he was told, standing up on the chair and stepping carefully out of his wide-legged jeans. The pant legs had been rigged up with a series of hammock-style slings; each one held a red siskin—pretty little finches prized for their crimson plumage and trilling song. There were males and females, living and dead. Their keeper stood on the chair in his grubby briefs, eyes fastened on the floor.

  “Ah.” The sound Guy makes is soft, little more than a sigh. He glances back at her over his shoulder. “Look who’s decided to show himself.”

  The red-tail peers round the trunk of the dead oak. After a moment, it stretches out one foot, then the other, grasping hold of the broken side branch. It looks steadily at Guy, then cuts its eyes away. Guy motions for Edal to step forward, the hawk watching her now, gauging her intent. Guy gives a low whistle. Again the bird looks away, turning its head sharply aside this time, as though piqued.

  “You’re no fool, are you, Red?” Guy says. “He knows I haven’t got anything for him.”

  “He?”

  “Well, he hasn’t laid any eggs, anyway. At least not yet.”

  The hawk’s head is in motion now, as though buffeted by hairline variations in the breeze. Countless trajectories extend from the curved midline of its bill, pointing up the minutest of movements and sounds.

  “I could swear his colour’s getting better,” Guy says. “Especially his head.”

  “It probably is. Their hood feathers brighten up in spring.” She’s spoken without thinking. When he turns to look at her, she keeps her eyes forward, pinned on the hawk. “I’ve got a couple of bird books.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Red, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s not a name, really. More of a nickname. Makes it harder if you name them, you know, when it comes time to let them go.”

  “You won’t keep him?” She hears herself trying to sound merely curious.

  “Only till he’s strong enough to make it on his own.”

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “Farther up the parkway. He was hopping around like crazy in the grass, looked like he was trying to hunt. I let him wear himself out before I got close.”

  “How’d you catch him?”

  “Threw my coat over him.” He shakes his head. “You could feel how skinny he was.”

  “When was this?”

  “Must be a month ago now.”

  The red-tail makes a sound of its own then—Awk, or, with a slight stretch of the imagination, Hawk.

  “Aawk,” Guy says back to it, and it shifts from foot to foot on its branch, seemingly pleased.

  “So,” Edal says after a moment, “why’d you keep him? I mean, aren’t there places?” She’s actually lying now. She knows there are places. She has their numbers in her cell, knows the names of the people who would pick up if she called.

  “I take good care of him.” Something’s shifted in his tone. A hint of distance, possibly even hurt.

  “Oh, sure,” she says quickly, “I can see that. It’s just, I mean, how’d you know he didn’t have a broken wing or something?”

  “I told you, you could tell what the trouble was. He was starving. Anyway, I felt his bones to be sure. His breastbone was like a butter knife, all the muscle shrunk away. I figure somebody tried to make a pet of him, maybe in one of those condo towers along the valley. Maybe they weren’t feeding him right, or else he just wouldn’t eat. I have this picture of him making a break for it from a balcony, you know, leaping off and finding out he was too weak to really fly.”

  “Could be.” She leaves another small pause. “What do you feed him?”

  “Mice. I started with dead ones, but just lately I’ve switched to live. You know, get him hunting again.”

  She nods. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “Speaking of food, you can stay for supper if you like.”

  “Oh.” She feels herself flush. “I don’t know. I don’t want to eat you out of house and home.”

  He laughs. “I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s Stephen’s turn to cook, so it’ll be something with lentils—about seventeen cents a plate.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lily usually shows up to eat. You don’t want to go home without your bike again, do you?”

  “No. Well, if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  It turns out to be beans rather than lentils—a fragrant stew served over fluffy brown rice. Lily shows up when the three of them are already seated.

  “Hey, Lily,” Guy says.

  “Hey.” She dumps a helping of kibble in the bowl by the door. Billy buries his snout and starts crunching.

  “There’s plenty in the pot,” Stephen tells her. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” She heads for the stove.

  Edal’s playing over the ways in which she might broach the subject of the bike when Guy says simply, “You bring Edal’s bike back?”

  Lily takes her seat. “Do I look like a thief?”

  “Okay.” Guy takes a swallow of beer. “Maybe next time you could ask.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “Who’s making a big deal?”

  “Whatever.”

  It’s Edal’s turn to say something—the right thing, if she can figure out what that might be. “What did you think?” She meets Lily’s gaze across the table.

  “About what?”

  “The bike.”

  Lily shows the briefest of smiles. “It’s pretty sweet.” She bends over her plate, eating quickly, catching up. When she stands and begins clearing the table, Edal rises to help. “It’s okay, I’ve got it.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “No, really, it’s okay.”

  Last night it would’ve been a rebuke, but tonight Edal’s fairly sure it’s a kindness. She resumes her seat, watching Stephen fold Billy’s black ear in his palm, causing the dog’s dark eyes to close with pleasure. Guy leans back and fishes out the knife. The toothpick slips out easily, and he goes to work behind the curtain of his hand.

  “You mind?” Edal asks, reaching for the knife.

  “Be my guest.”

  She’s always loved them—the smooth casing, bright and candy-hard, the neat white cross. She fits her thumbnail to the first dark groove and folds out the larger of the two knives. He keeps it sharp, she’s strangely pleased to see, and clean. She digs out the scissors next, the combination screwdriver—can opener, the awl. File, small knife and corkscrew. It’s silly, but she has to get the tweezers out too. Lay them down alongside the bristling whole.

  She glances up to fi
nd both men watching her. How long has she been playing with the knife, marvelling open-mouthed like a child or a chimpanzee? She snaps its appendages back in place quickly, feeling the nip of the little blade’s point in the pad of her thumb. Guy takes it up a moment after she sets it down. He slides the toothpick into place. Cups the knife as though weighing it before shoving it away.

  Guy’s body is tired—deep in his bones, but also the fragile, creeping fatigue that lives in the skin. His brain, on the other hand, is wide awake.

  Is it his imagination, or was Edal in a rush to get away? Maybe she hadn’t liked tonight’s reading. “How Fear Came” is a little slow compared to the other chapters. Or maybe it wasn’t the story at all, but the fact that he was reading it aloud.

  He feels for the bedside lamp, the push-through toggle of the switch. It’s the gentlest light he knows. Aunt Jan often complained it wasn’t strong enough, swore she was ruining her eyes.

  She always sat in the same spot, crossways at the foot of the bed, walking her buttocks back until her shoulder blades met the wall. Once she was settled, Guy liked to work his feet out from beneath the covers and rest them against her thigh. The older he got, the more he had to tuck his legs up to give her room. When Uncle Ernie wasn’t out on a call, he’d light a smoke and draw a chair up to the bedroom doorway, balancing the ashtray on his lap. Sometimes, when his bad disc was bothering him, he’d lie on his back on the floor.

  Everybody comfortable? Aunt Jan would say. Now, where were we?

  When Brother the cat came to live with them, it was Guy’s turn to read aloud—not the whole chapter, as Aunt Jan had done, but bits and pieces, the passages too good to keep to himself. Listen to this—White Fang’s getting picked on by the dogs. “To keep one’s feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he learned well. He became catlike in his ability to stay on his feet. “ Sometimes Brother curled up in Aunt Jan’s old spot and listened. Other times, when the kitten part of his brain took over, he batted the book’s cover, or wormed his way in between Guy and the page.

  Now there’s nobody to keep Guy from reading. Also, no question which book he will read. It’s been on the nightstand since he took it down last night. He sits up against his pillow and reaches for it, opening to where the story begins.

  I sit in a pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living room, with an otter asleep upon its back among the cushions on the sofa, forepaws in the air, and with the expression of tightly shut concentration that very small babies wear in sleep …

  Edal lies on her back, the futon hard beneath her. Why, despite all her years of gainful employment, has she never invested in a proper bed?

  No sign of the mouse, the lone turd by the kitchen faucet its only message. It’s deserted her. Left by a rodent. Ridiculous but true.

  Doubtless it’s made its way down through the walls to James and Annie’s place, where it can nose out two people’s crumbs. They probably let their dirty dishes lie—at least on those nights when they turn their music up loud. French dance hall tunes, or rhythmic gypsy guitar. Sometimes, in the quiet between songs, Edal catches a scrap of laughter, or worse.

  They’ve laid down traps—Annie told her last week when they met up in the front hall. Edal said yes, she’d noticed them too. She made sure to say “them,” not “it.” Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a single mouse.

  Annie said they were using the regular wooden snap traps with cheese, only they hadn’t caught anything yet, and the guy at the Home Hardware—you know, the cute one with the beard—said to try peanut butter, so they might do that. The cute one? Edal flinched inwardly. Annie had James, and yet she still kept an eye out for bearded boys. Maybe they weren’t so happy after all. Edal had heard them fight, not often, but they both raised their voices, and sometimes Annie cried, really howling, like a child. But that was normal, wasn’t it? Was it? Edal could scarcely imagine. Yelling at someone—really yelling—and standing your ground, or collapsing, or both when he yelled back. Then, the next morning, kissing that same someone deep and long. Standing on the front walk and kissing so you don’t hear your neighbour on the porch behind you, forcing her to call out Morning! in a strained and cheerful voice, and scuttle past you with her bike.

  Not glue traps, though, Annie said, they could never do that. What are you supposed to do when one of them is stuck there, squeaking its little head off—squash it with a frying pan? She pulled a sick, fearful face, and for a moment she was no longer a beauty. Snow White, Edal thought the first time they met, and she can’t help but believe Annie’s apple-blossom skin and thick black curls have something to do with the abandoned sounds—happy and unhappy—she plugs her ears not to hear.

  She can see them now, falling together into bed. Maybe Annie pushes James down onto the duvet, or maybe they don’t even make it that far, but stay where the music plays in their little living room, him easing her down on the sofa, or lower, the blood-red rug Edal’s glimpsed through their open door.

  Turning on her side, Edal draws her knees up and hugs them. It’s pathetic. She’s crying now, wetting her pillow with tears and even a thin stream of snot, because a common house mouse has forsaken her home for another.

  In the beginning, she told herself she watched it with the eye of a naturalist. She’d known it was there for some time, but had never actually spotted it until her first day home on leave. It left the shadow beneath the refrigerator boldly, sniffing the air only briefly before darting across the kitchen floor. It expected her to be at work, not lying useless in the adjacent room. She’d been awake for an hour, trying to think of something—anything—she wanted to do.

  Warmth was what she felt. She could call it delight, but gratitude would be closer to the truth. She lay dead still for what remained of the morning, watching the little creature whisker its way over her kitchen floor.

  Here among the trees, the leaf litter lies thick and driven through with shoots. Fallen branches hide grubs. There are mice, and there are ground nests brimming with eggs. On lucky nights, the odd nestling, bird or squirrel, drops from the thin cover above.

  The skunk snuffles. Scenting a cache of grubs, he halts, listening hard for their soft-bodied sound. In the distance, a human yelp, followed by the bark of a dog. The ground slopes down from here to the field where they gather—the dogs gambolling like puppies, returning time and again to feed from their masters’ hands.

  The skunk has no master. He relies on his own curved claws.

  Turning an ear to the ground, he discerns the subtle music and digs. The night is generous—not only grubs writhing in the sudden air, but there, slipping out from beneath a rotten limb, a snake. As a rule, the skunk doesn’t hurry. He must act quickly now, though, before the bright-sided slither plays tricks with his eyes. A lunge, a single bite to the head, and the snake lies still. So smooth to the nose’s touch, the scent still delicate, no time to panic and release its stink. It’s a good length—his own measure and more. The chewing will take some time.

  He’s a fine hunter, young but able, no trace of the blind kitten he once was. The memory lives in his senses: the massed, many-hearted comfort of the den; the return of the mother’s pungent coat and sweet-smelling teats. Soon she brought them more than milk—the first leggy mouthful of spider, the first pretty pink worm. Eventually she led them to the source of all things good and wriggling, the wide-open night of the world. The skunk remembers in the red hollow behind his eyes the striped, winding column he and his siblings made as they followed the lovely brush of her tail. They were adept at raising their own tails by then, though the glands that would afford them special standing had yet to swell with their precious yellow oil.

  It’s the best kind of weapon to have—the kind that rarely comes into play. Here where the humans live packed so close, the only cats to be found are skunk-sized and smart enough to give him a wide berth. On occasion the call of an owl lifts his hackles, but it’s rare to feel the silent-feathered wind of a swoop. Foxes are only a problem when fami
ne gets the better of their good sense. There was one, not long after the skunk left the living column to hunt alone. All bone and mange, it stalked him with a dull-eyed desperation he’d never encountered before. It ignored all warnings. Taking the initial blast head-on, it recoiled but held its ground. The skunk fired again into its blinded face, again and again, and still the snapping jaws came on. Only when he loosed the last doubled jet he could muster did it finally turn tail and run.

  Hunger comes to them all. The skunk has known frozen nights devoid of a single scrap, stark contrast to this scene of bounty, this scaled and tender feast. The snake is half gone. The skunk works the next fine-boned section back between his teeth, chews and swallows, then stills his noisy jaws.

  Panting. Rustle in the undergrowth, the thud of heavy paws.

  The skunk wheels, letting the raw remnant of his quarry drop. The dog is tall, long-nosed and dark, its coat no thicker than a newborn’s but slick with an unnatural sheen. It lets out a whine—a submissive signal belied by the pointed intent of its ears. Looking to its tail for clarification, the skunk finds only a mute black stump. Best to be on the safe side. He sends a gentle message to begin with, standing terribly still.

  Beyond, in the meadowy open, a human calls. The dog pays no heed. Steps forward when any sensible creature would step back.

  The skunk stamps his feet. The dog whimpers and crouches low. The skunk arches his back and chatters, the dog inching, beetling close. The skunk growls, an utterance the dog doubles and returns. The human bellows again, and still the dog remains deaf to all but its own dim purpose. Up comes the black and white signal of the skunk’s tail, the tip still limp, a slim and final chance.

  The dog reads it wrong. As it lunges, the skunk twists his hindquarters round, his tail stiff to the limit now, pointing up through the darkened canopy to the sky. The dog leaps back when the spray hits, a single round more than enough. It wants its human now. Blind and howling, it crashes away.