by Alissa York
When it slipped away down the riverbank, she felt the tug just as surely as if she were holding its leash. Less than a minute of cooling muscles, and she decided it couldn’t hurt to get a better look.
The grass was dewy, wet against her calves, laced with some coarse, tangled weed that threatened to trip her up. As she neared the river, she caught sight of the creature again, motionless in the greenish flow. More bear than dog in that moment. She half expected it to draw back a paw and swipe a writhing salmon from the murk.
The girl stood unmoving as well, camouflaged among the scrappy saplings that fringed the bank. The dog heard Kate coming, or else caught a whiff of stranger on the wind. It lifted its head and only then, when the girl turned to follow her dog’s gaze, did Kate see her. The grey toque, the shapeless, dun-coloured vest, the skinny legs. She might have passed for an underfed boy if it hadn’t been for the delicate features, the fine white throat.
Something told Kate to advance slowly, being careful to make no false moves. That was no ordinary dog eyeing her from the shallows. And this was definitely no ordinary girl.
The grass is deep here. Lily lies with her head on Billy’s flank, enjoying the warmest morning in the valley so far. Cash from yesterday’s shift in her breast pocket, Watership Down in her hand. Life may not suck so hard after all.
It doesn’t take long before a passage stops her cold. She closes her eyes, breathing carefully, feeling for her dragon book and pen.
It’s important to get it down perfectly, remaining faithful to Fiver’s tale of life in the warren of snares—the fat, sleek rabbits with their redolent fur, the man and his shining wires.
They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away.
A flash of movement lifts her gaze—there, where the path comes winding out of the wood. The runner emerges at a good clip. Only her top half shows above the sea of grass, so that she seems to hover, propelled by her pumping arms alone. Lily could sit up and see more, but she’d rather not give herself away. Weird, given that the woman’s known to her. Even before the face comes clear, Lily recognizes the dark, swinging ponytail, the shapely arms.
Billy knows who it is too. “Hrrrr,” he says.
“Quiet.” She reaches back to clamp his mouth closed.
It’s fucked, she knows, lying low in the grass while her new friend passes her by.
The morning before last, she watched Kate’s entire body running off down the valley path—not just the top half, like today. And now even that partial view is gone. Billy knows she’s not far, though; Lily can feel him wriggling in his skin, a trembling so violent it moves through her body too. It’s only natural that he’d want to go after Kate, catch up and see her turn and smile. But natural isn’t always smart.
“Stay, Billy,” she tells him firmly. “You stay.”
Edal holds her eyes shut against the late morning light, listening for the mouse. Nothing. Three long, bewildering days without a single scritch.
She should get up. Just for an hour or two, then she can go back to bed.
Hauling herself up from the futon, she shuffles into the kitchen and turns the kettle on. Sits in her tank top and plain white panties to wait. Downstairs, a swell of music, the slow, throaty pump of a tango drifting up through the floor. Who the hell tangos at eleven in the morning? The mouse could be down there, swaying along to the accordion’s draw, overshadowed by James and Annie’s fused form. Or it could be lying broken-backed in one of the old-fashioned snap traps the bearded boy recommends.
Maybe she should get a pet. A python or a sleek black panther. A hawk. Crazy. Even a dog or cat would be unrealistic; she has time on her hands now, but she mustn’t forget what her real life—her working life—looks like.
A dog would be nice. Nothing too big, maybe a terrier of some kind. She could take it for walks in the park, stoop with her hand gloved in a bag when it did its business, stand with the other owners at the edge of the off-leash zone. The conversation would be dog-centred, easy. She could call out to the terrier when it got overly feisty—she can see him more clearly now, black-eyed and bouncing, with grizzled fur. She could name him after one of the neighbourhood streets, Chester or Logan or Wolfrey. Then some other human being standing there might smile at her and say, “That’s my street.” It’s the kind of thing people do—people who belong to the place they live in, and don’t just adhere to it like some tide-washed, clinging thing.
Why doesn’t she have a pet? Why has she never, in all her thirty years, had a pet?
It’s tempting to blame her mother. Letty said animals make a house stink; plus, dogs chew the place to pieces and cats shred anything they can get their claws on. It was the part about the smell that got to Edal the most. All those blocked-up windows, the trapped air heavy with smoke and mould.
Pets cost money, too. “There’s the food,” Letty told her, “and the vet bills. Do you have any idea how much a vet costs?”
No, Edal thought, and neither do you.
“Animals are always getting sick, Edal, or cutting themselves on old tin cans.”
“Maybe you should buy a book about it.” Edal’s not sure if she spoke the line clearly or mumbled it, or just thought it with force.
In the end, she contented herself with the animals she came to know in stories: the otters at Camusfeàrna; Black Beauty and White Fang; the ever-expanding collection of a boy named Gerald, whom she envied to the point of pain.
Still, she hasn’t lived under Letty’s roof for over a decade. Maybe a petless childhood has the power to shape a person for life. Except—oh God—she did have a pet. Not for long, but she did.
The memory stands her up like a leg cramp. She moves into the living room, passing the navy blue loveseat, the blind grey eye of the TV. Standing at the front window, she stares out into the whispering heights of the elm. The thinnest of breezes enters the room. It brushes against her and is gone.
Guy’s a rare breed. Most bosses would let the junior man strip and sort while they sat up high in the cab of the Link-Belt, but there he is, bent over the Lumina’s open hood, severing engine bolts with his blue-tongued torch so Stephen can reach in and pluck out the block.
Working the pedals to track into position, Stephen keeps the boom in tight, letting the grapple hang. Just like Guy said, it really does get so you can work the controls without a single conscious thought. It’s practically his own long arm now, his own massive, grasping hand. Imagine having a magnet for a palm; four steely, contracting claws. You could right a flipped vehicle and set it back on the road where it belongs—back before that road exploded in a geyser of shrapnel and dust. You could feel down over a courtyard wall and gather up rifles like a fistful of twigs. Turn sentries, even snipers, into ordinary men.
On the ground before him, Guy straightens and kills the torch. He stands back, giving the signal: thumbs-up-and-away.
Stephen brings the boom round with his left hand while extending the middle cylinder with his right. Opening the grapple wide, he rotates it a quarter turn, centres the magnet and floats it down onto the engine block. It rests there a moment until he wakes the charge with his trigger finger. The block gives a little jump, letting go of the mount with hardly a wiggle, a baby tooth loose at the root. He closes the grapple and raises the boom.
In the corner of his eye, Guy nods his approval. Stephen would love to flash him a grin but knows his attention should be cabled to the task at hand.
With a glance in the rear-view, he presses down with both heels, tilting the pedals to reverse. He tips the toes of his right boot forward to turn, then joins with the left to track straight for the engine pile. The block of the Lumina swings. It finds its own spot, like a fieldstone fitting into a wall. Stephen releases the magnet and opens the grapple in one. A place for everything and everything in its place.
Earlier this morning, they were faced with three unprocessed wrecks; now all three stand stripped to the axles and gutted, ready to be drained. He’ll lift the Lumina onto the crusher first, then check if Guy wants to drop into the pit and chisel holes in the tank and oil pan, or if Stephen should take care of it himself.
Tracking back to the wreck, he spots Guy signing the shut-’er-down. He brakes, tucks in the boom and cuts the engine. Plucks out his earplugs and lets them hang around his collar on their string.
“Man,” Guy calls, “you’re getting to be a demon on that thing.”
Stephen lets himself have that grin. Working the Link-Belt is a gas, the loader too—even the crusher, now that he knows what kind of racket to expect. His heart raced uncontrollably the first time the rusty-toothed track hauled in a wreck; he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep from hitting the dirt. Nowadays, though, the scream of the buckling steel delights him. He laughs out loud when the windows go—that sudden crystalline spray.
Only her second day on the job and already Lily has the dish pit well in hand. She never suffers a buildup, no matter how many grey bus pans the busboys bring. There’s a rhythm to it. Two trays on the slide at all times—a flat one for cups and cutlery, a pronged one for plates and bowls. Set the big items aside—pots and woks and stainless steel bowls—run them through whenever the pace drops off. When a tray’s fully loaded, reach up for the dangling shower hose and blast away the surface crud, then shoot the dishwasher door up on its runners and shunt the clean tray out with the next in line.
She’s been using the rubber spatula to scrape the plates since partway through yesterday’s shift, when Chin noticed her scooping scraps into the garbage with her hand.
“Tch, no-name-girl,” he said, grimacing, “you never hear of germ?”
He pulled the same disgusted face later on, when he caught her shovelling half a plate of black bean chicken into the to-go container by her feet.
“What this?”
She straightened. “It’s just going to waste.”
“You eat garbage again?”
Kenny, the youngest of the busboys, set a bus pan down and left grinning.
“No.” Lily drew down the hose and sprayed the standing ranks of side plates. “It’s for Billy, okay?”
“Billy? I told you, I give him lunch already.”
She let the hose spring from her grip. “For later. For tonight.”
“Tonight.” Chin shook his head. Then he turned and dragged the colander from beneath his chopping-block counter. Shouldering Lily away from the sink, he took up the scraps and dumped them into the colander. “Dog can’t eat black bean, barbecue. Too salty. Too much spice.”
She stood back, watching him spray the meat clean.
“Now he know what you give him. Chicken, pork, beef. See here, even crab.” His cheeks creased with a smile. “That one lucky dog.”
When he comes to stand beside her today, she carries on with her work, saying nothing.
“Your sleeve,” he says, pointing. “Why you no roll up your sleeve?”
She’s wearing the white kitchen jacket she changed into at the start of her shift. Both sleeves are wet past the elbow, the cuffs ringed with orange grease.
“No reason.”
She lifts the dishwasher door and slides in a tray of soup bowls, shoving a bleach-scented load of pans out the other end. Slamming the door back down, she hears the resulting rush.
“No reason, huh?”
She turns to find him regarding her steadily.
“You a junkie?”
“No.” She dumps the cutlery tub out over a tray, chopsticks skittering. “Why, are you?”
He plucks up a ladle from the pile, plays its cup against the cup of his palm. “Not for long time.” He sighs. “Not since Shanghai.”
For once, no one’s booked the after-lunch slot. Sandi’s gone for lattes; Kate sits with a stack of files in front of her on the desk. Days like today—when the dogs are all getting better, and the humans are getting along—she can’t believe how much she loves her job.
She wasn’t always so sure. The position at the clinic’s new rehabilitation centre came with a raise and regular hours, but it troubled her that the centre dealt solely with canine patients. Kate loved dogs, but no more than she loved cats and rabbits, parakeets and hedgehogs and snakes. There were days when the main clinic came close to a kind of paradise, so infinite was the variety of cries.
Still, it could be hard. The first time she wrapped a cat in black plastic and carried it back to join the other bodies in the deep-freeze, she faced the wall in that chilly corridor and wept. Shifts in Emerg left her footsore and dazed; there was rarely time to dwell on any one case—always the bleeding creature before you, the burned one waiting in the next room. Chemo duty was quiet by comparison, though the last shift she pulled in that cramped, brightly lit room was undoubtedly one of her worst.
The golden retriever had already lost one back leg; he lay down missing limb first, tucking the loss away. Tina was one of the best Animal Care Attendants on staff. She knelt down beside the dog, then sat with her legs folded to one side and gathered him into her lap. Like a woman in one of those painted scenes, Kate thought as she pulled on her paper gown—a woman in an elaborate hat cradling her lover on a grassy bank. Only the woman was a sturdy teenage girl in a mask and faded scrubs, and the golden-haired lover was a dying dog.
Tina knew the golden would require little more than a comforting embrace, just as she’d known to immobilize the miniature husky that had come before him with a nylon muzzle and full-body hold. It was the husky’s first treatment, and once Tina’d gotten the better of him, Kate had no trouble getting a good stick. Long needle, deep in the vein on the second try.
The golden, on the other hand, had already been in half a dozen times. Kate had been surprised to learn of the breed’s particular vulnerability; it seemed unlikely—almost cosmically wrong—that such sweet-tempered beauties should so often harbour tumours beneath their coats.
This one, Pickles by name, seemed fairly calm. A faster than normal pulse and the panting to match, but otherwise calm. Some patients got trickier with every treatment—became wrigglers or biters, backed into corners or broke for the door—but breeds that were docile to begin with generally chose to submit.
Kate knelt down beside Tina and the dog and pulled the cap off the needle with her teeth. Mask up, goggles down. She’d chosen a long needle to start, though she doubted whether she’d have any luck getting it to go in. The golden already had substantial scar tissue in both front legs. The left was played out, but she would try the right, lower down to begin with, though again, she knew her chances were slim.
The first attempt wasn’t promising; she had to jab harder than she liked to, and even then she only made it a few millimetres up the vein before she hit a valve. Tina looked up at her. Kate shook her head and felt a little farther up the shaved foreleg. The higher she went, the fewer viable vessels the golden would have left. On the other hand, if she kept on too long at the distal veins, she risked shutting down circulation in the entire limb. Which would mean the end for Pickles—if the owner could be made to see sense. More likely, given Eileen Brody’s teary track record, a second amputation. Dog in a basket. Dog pulled in a wagon around the park.
Discerning a potential vein with her forefinger, Kate took a breath and jabbed. A little deeper this time, but not much. Again, the valve closed against her. She withdrew, moved higher, tried another spot. Pickles lay unmoving, eyes at halfmast, resisting her on a vascular level alone. Over and over, that faint, collapsing no.
Tina smiled sadly down at the dog while Kate swallowed the thickness in her throat and made a fourth unsuccessful attempt. She was past the high crook of the ankle now, approaching the knee. She switched to a shorter needle, a final resort before giving up on this leg. The golden’s breath came fast, and Tina murmured, “Good boy, Pickles. Not long now.”
Kate steeled herself and
spiked the vein. No good. The valves could see her coming a mile off; they were flinching shut like so many minuscule eyes. She didn’t want to move on to the left hind leg—the only untouched limb Pickles had left—but she hadn’t any choice. Her jaw ached. The floor beneath her was cold.
“She should have to watch this,” she said.
Tina glanced up.
“Mrs. Brody. She should have to watch me stick him over and over. Maybe then she’d let him go.”
“Yeah.”
Kate hooked a finger over her mask and dragged it down, bit the cap off a fresh needle and spat it aside. The hind leg still had that lovely elastic angle. She stroked it once before stretching it out long. Tina had shaved a section of fur just in case—a small comfort to know she’d seen it coming. Feeling for the lowest possible entry point, Kate slid the needle in without a fight. The relief was overwhelming. She felt like howling, burying her face in Pickles’s silken fur.
Edal’s starting to feel like the local stray—feed her once and you’ll never get rid of her.
She glances at her watch. Just after two, not a bad time for a drop-in. It would be easier if she didn’t have to buzz for permission to enter. If, like a stray, she could insinuate herself under the fence’s springy hem.
She watches the office window for signs of life. Presses her palm to the sign for a long moment before her finger finds the buzzer. This time it takes him a minute or so to appear. His walk is already familiar—she would know him a long way off.
“Hey,” he says, letting her in.
“Hi.” She can’t help crossing her arms. “I was just passing.
“ He nods.
“Is this a bad time?”
“No, in fact, I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. There’s something I forgot to show you on yesterday’s tour.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” He smiles. “Come on.”
He leads her past the trucks, down to where a tall hedge runs at right angles to the bottom fence, connecting up to the office’s facade. Edal remembers the overgrown garden, sees now how it’s cut off from the yard. The hedge is healthy, thriving in a shapeless way. Guy approaches it without pause, as though he expects it to part and allow him passage. When he turns hard right and disappears, it takes her a moment to see the trick: not one hedge but two, staggered to form a narrow point of entry in what appears to be an impenetrable wall. She slips through the opening to find Guy on the other side, holding back a switch that would otherwise have caught her in the face.