Fauna

by Alissa York

  Now look at the photograph again.

  POSTED AT 8:19 AM, June 1, 2008

  Chin is a demon with a cleaver. At the moment he’s dismantling chickens, reducing featherless bodies to their elements—bone-white, breast-pink, blood-red. In the lull between bus pans, Lily comes to stand beside him, watching his old hands fly.

  “What you doing, no-name-girl?”

  “What’s it look like? I’m watching you chop.”

  “Huh.” He brings the cleaver down, splitting a thin bird in two.

  “Looks easy when you do it.”

  “Easy. You think easy?”

  “No, I think it’s hard.”

  “Huh.” He angles the blade, dividing a breast from its fan of bones. “Maybe I teach you sometime.”

  “Teach me?” The possibility never occurred to her. She’s never even touched one of his cleavers. He cleans and sharpens them himself.

  “If you sticking round.” He glances at her. “You sticking round?”

  The rinse cycle clunks to a halt. Ping, the teenage prep cook, is out back smoking, mumbling to Billy in Cantonese. Lily can almost hear the cups inside the dishwasher giving off steam. Her marked-up arms, normally so heavy, feel strangely light, almost papery, inside her sleeves. The butterfly knife, on the other hand, remains leaden. She can feel it in her jeans pocket, dragging that side of her down.

  Slipping a hand up under her apron, she digs it out and sets it on the counter. Chin lays the cleaver aside and wipes his chickeny hands on a rag. He takes up the knife, opens it. Tests the blade against his thumb. “Tch.”

  “Would you—” She pauses to steady her voice. “Could you sharpen it for me?”

  “That depend.” He looks up. “What it for?”

  She meets his gaze. “Protection.”

  “Protection.” He nods. “Okay, sure.”

  Stephen’s made another of his standbys—red lentil soup with chunks of potato, the onions sautéed with cumin and added last thing. Armpit stew, Lily called it when he cooked up a pot a couple of weeks ago, but he noticed she went back for a second bowl.

  She makes no comment tonight, setting the table in silence before walking around back with Billy to smoke.

  Kate shows up as he’s tossing the salad. He looks round to see her standing awkwardly, just inside the door. “Guy said I could stay for supper.” Something forced in her tone. “Anything I can do?”

  “You could put out the butter, and some of those rolls.”

  “Okay.” She heads for the bathroom. “I’ll just wash my hands.”

  Guy comes in next, engine grease to his elbows. He crosses to the sink and squirts dish soap into his palm.

  “You get that pump out all right?” Stephen asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Any sign of Edal?”

  He lathers up carefully. “Nope.”

  Stephen’s deciding whether he should say more when Lily steps back inside. A moment later Kate appears, towel in hand. “Hi, Lily.”

  “Oh. Hi.”

  Kate pats her thigh, but Billy needs no encouragement. “Hi, Billy.”

  “Don’t be a suck, Billy,” Lily says sharply. “Come here. Come.”

  At the table, Guy stares down at his helping. Kate watches Lily; Lily keeps her eyes on her dog.

  “So,” Stephen hears himself say brightly, “how was everybody’s day?”

  “Good,” says Guy.

  Kate echoes him. “Good.”

  Lily says nothing, spooning up a mouthful of soup. Stephen hasn’t seen her this prickly in weeks—not since she first started showing up at the yard.

  “How was work, Lily?” he says.

  She shoots him an unpleasant look.

  “You have a job?” says Kate.

  “Yes, I have a job. Why is that so fucking hard for anybody to believe?”

  “Sorry, I just—sorry.” Kate lays down her spoon. “Where do you work?”

  “Coal mine,” Lily mumbles, her mouth full.

  Kate blinks. “Pardon?”

  “Oil rig.”

  “Lily, if you don’t want to tell me—”

  “Slaughterhouse.” Lily reaches for a roll and tears it in two.

  Not much point trying to make conversation after that. Stephen focuses on his food—yellow soup, green salad, brown roll. Nobody takes him up on an offer of seconds. Lily clears, Kate washes, Guy dries. They could be hooded brothers at a monastery, not a word shared between them as they work.

  Stephen lingers at the table, nursing a second glass of milk. No one seems much in the mood for a story, so he’s surprised when Guy fetches the book from his bedroom and the other two resume their seats.

  For the first page or so, Guy’s delivery is uncharacteristically dull. Only when a cry sounds throughout the jungle—the terrible Pheeal that tells of some big killing afoot—does he begin to do justice to the words. Stephen feels his head grow heavy with dread. The Red Dogs are coming, the monstrous, one-minded pack known as the dhole.

  To defeat them, Mowgli will require an intelligence older and more supple than his own. He will require the python, Kaa.

  The snake is a tactical thinker with years of experience in the field. The mission he comes up with is risky; as Mowgli puts it, “It is to pull the very whiskers of Death.” While Kaa waits in the river below, Mowgli will lead the dhole over the high marble cliffs. Caves are dangerous places, and the cliffs are laced with them. Dripping with dark honey, they’re home to the killer hives.

  The table is hard, unyielding against Stephen’s brow. He knows the man-cub will land unscathed in the water below, just as he knows the dhole will drop through the wakening swarm to the death of a thousand stings. Worst of all, he knows the long fall to the river will be only the beginning. Bees may be smarter than any bullet, but there’s no way they’ll neutralize every insurgent. There are always those who make it through.

  Downriver, Mowgli and the wolves take on what’s left of the ravening horde. Guy reads the pages-long battle like a pro, calling up all the dumb lust and horror, the sorrow and the sickening glee.

  It’s a happy ending of sorts: the dhole are vanquished, victory to the man-cub and his wounded pack. As with every chapter, though, the true conclusion comes in the shape of a song. This one belongs to Chil the Kite, winged scavenger that waits for them all. Guy reads it plainly—no lilting tone, no relentless, thudding hand. “‘Tattered flank and sunken eye, open mouth and red, / Locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their dead.’”

  When it’s over, Stephen lifts his head—lighter now, almost weightless. Lily rises before Guy can even close the book. She slips outside without a word, Billy sticking close, as though she’s sewn him to the flesh of her thigh. Kate looks up sharply at the muted clang of the gate. Her expression is painful to behold, so Stephen turns to Guy—only to find he too looks as though someone has died.

  Stephen needs to lie down. “Well,” he says, standing, “good night.”

  They answer him with one voice: “Good night, Stephen.” Then Guy on his own: “Want another beer?” And Kate: “What the hell.”

  The apple green door seems to shimmer. He lets his floating head lead him through it to his room. The bed isn’t his, not really—it belongs to the old lovers, Ernie and Jan. Lowering himself down beside it, he stretches out long on the floor. The cries start up as soon as he’s on their level. He rolls onto his side and drags the carrier out into the gloom.

  The kits come tumbling the moment he swings open their door. Three make for the far reaches—one of the greys already fingering the curtain’s hem—but the brown runt decides to stick close. Stephen lies back, allowing her to clamber up on his thighs. She waddles away down the length of his legs, pausing to sniff his boots thoroughly before turning and scampering back. Little fingers at his kneecap, his hip bone, his ribs. Her eyes are shining. She comes face to face with him, practically nose to nose.

  Guy rarely has trouble getting to sleep; as a rule he’s out like a light after a c
hapter or two. Tonight he reads until the words swim, and still he can’t seem to drift off. Not Ring of Bright Water—he’ll have to leave that one for a time. Maybe even for good.

  Aunt Jan used to do the bookwork when she couldn’t sleep. In the weeks following Ernie’s death, she laid her hands on every invoice and order sheet in the place. Guy could walk round to the office and give it a try—only Stephen handles that end of things now, and ever since Guy followed his advice and bought the computer, the bookwork involves few if any actual books.

  He ought to get a lesson on the new system. This is your place, Guy. Uncle Ernie with the blowtorch, or the caulking gun, or the plunger in hand. There shouldn’t be a job on the property you don’t know how to do. Besides, Stephen might decide to move on. Which would leave Guy on his ownsome again.

  No sense kidding himself. Two evenings in a row now she’s stayed away. He should never have loaned her his key, let alone mentioned having one cut; it’s enough getting used to the place without thinking he’s planning on her moving in. No sense dwelling on it, either, something else Ernie taught him. The more you feel sorry for yourself, the sorrier you feel.

  Guy sits up. Swings his legs out from under the covers and pulls on the day’s dirty clothes. Cocoa. That’s what his uncle used to do on the rare night when he couldn’t settle. Cocoa and smokes at the kitchen table—Guy always knew by the saucepan left to soak until morning, the ashtray loaded with butts. He’ll have to make do with cocoa on its own; it’s nearly four years since he lit up.

  The air in the kitchen is relatively fresh, a sweet cross-breeze sweeping in through the locked screen door. Maybe he’ll step outside and take a few deep breaths. Remind himself of the wider world.

  His hand is on the latch before he sees her. She stands still as a doe, looking out over the shadowy sprawl of his yard. He’s gentle with the lock, but she hears him and turns sharply. He snaps on the light.

  “Oh, God.” Her face is pale. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He steps out onto the stoop.

  “I should give you your key back.”

  “Keep it.”

  “Oh, no, I—”

  “Go on, it might come in handy.”

  She touches a hand to her chest. “What about the chain?”

  “Keep that too.” He comes to stand beside her. For a time neither one of them speaks.

  “I was wondering,” she says finally.

  “Yeah?”

  She points into the darkness. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That thing over by the loader. It looks like—I don’t know, like a mouth.”

  She’s right, it does look like a massive, parted mouth from this angle. He can remember the afternoon he helped Ernie make it, marking out the first cut around the belly of the oversized drum while his uncle flipped down his mask and fired up the torch. The following cuts were subtler, made on the oblique down the drum’s curved flank. The shape they cut free was lovely. They might well have called it the mouth, but Ernie had another name in mind.

  “That,” Guy says, “is a half-moon.”

  “A half-moon.” She smiles. “What’s it for?”

  “Turns the fork into a bucket.”

  “What?”

  “The loader. It turns the forklift into—” He halts, gripped by an idea. “Wait here.”

  The coveralls hang where he left them, just inside the door. After a quick sniff to make sure they’re not too ripe, he grabs them and ducks back outside.

  “Put these on.”

  “What? Why?” But she’s already drawing them on, leading with her left foot in its slim canvas shoe, her bare left leg. Soon she’s all zipped in. The colour suits her; she actually looks good in grease-stained elephant grey.

  He reaches for her hand. “Come on,” he says, pulling her after him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just come on.” He drops her hand when they get there. “In you get.”

  He expects her to question him, but she only smiles, stepping blithely into the crescent cup of the half-moon.

  “That’s it,” he says. “Now sit down. Make sure you tuck in your feet.”

  She arranges herself tidily and looks up at him.

  “There’s a fresh pack of earplugs in the breast pocket. You better put those in.”

  Again, she does what he says. He vaults up into the loader and slips on the earmuffs. Two tries before it starts with a hacking roar.

  Turning to track in close, he drops the forks so they skim along the ground. He takes it easy slipping them under the half-moon’s rusty base, lifts smoothly, only a metre or so to begin. She seems calm enough, but it’s difficult to judge from the top of her head.

  He tracks upland first, keeping to even ground. At the top of the yard he lifts Edal so she’s level with the uppermost layer of wrecks. He trundles past several stacks, giving her a good long look, before lowering the forks again. Shunting round, he tracks over to the tire pile and shows her the highest tire. After that, he heads for the old willow that overhangs the southern fence. He holds her up there a little longer, watching her hands fan through the shadowy curtain of leaves.

  The tree’s a hard act to follow. Buying time, he eases her down to half height, executes a restrained one-eighty and tracks back to the centre of the yard. He comes close to overlooking the next attraction, just catching it in the top corner of his eye. The true moon is nowhere near half, little more than a sliver left. He raises Edal up to make sure she sees it too.

  The key to a great show is knowing when it’s over. He lowers her to the ground with care, kills the engine and springs down from the cab. She’s already standing by the time he reaches her. Having taken her up in the loader’s arms, it’s only natural to close her in his own.

  Lying two abreast in Guy’s skinny bed ought to be a squeeze, but there’s no such thing as crowded when a body truly lets go. For the first time ever, Edal understands the mammalian habit of sleeping in clumps—the dug-out dens and warrens, the tree holes packed with tangled limbs and ticking hearts. Her shoulder fits precisely into the red-haired hollow beneath his arm. Her cheek, pressed to his breastbone, receives the beating message therein. Yes, she thinks, she would like nothing better than to live in a cave with this man. The tighter the fit, the better.

  It happened fast, the initial kiss like the click of a stopwatch. Edal was first through the bedroom door, catching her finger in the long zipper of the coveralls and crying out. It took her a second to realize the muffled sensation in her head was down to the earplugs, a second more to pluck them out. Guy was awkward too—slamming the bedroom door, wrestling his T-shirt up over his head. It didn’t matter, they were graceful enough in the end.

  He stirs. She lifts her face to watch him, feels something tear loose inside her when he opens his eyes. This time she’s the one reaching for the nightstand. She rips the little packet with her teeth, rolls the condom on with as much care as her trembling allows. He keeps his eyes open as she climbs across him. At no point—not even when the helpless sound escapes her lips—does he look away. He comes staring up at her. “Edal,” he says, rocking, “God, I love that fucking name.” She folds down to kiss him, long and deep.

  The laughter comes when she sits back. It starts innocently enough, but soon she’s making ape sounds, hiccuping hysterically, covering her mouth. Guy beams back at her but doesn’t crack. He works a hand gently beneath her butt to hold on the condom, the nudge of his knuckles making her shriek. She’s laughing so hard now she could pull a muscle, maybe even give herself a hernia. Then suddenly she’s crying—an unkind observer might even say bawling—and still, she can’t help but register through the gaps between her fingers, he hasn’t so much as blinked.

  “Hey,” he says gently, “hey.”

  “Sorry.” She wipes at her eyes. Watery snot threatens to escape her left nostril, decorate his chest like the path of a snail. There are no tissues, at least none she can see, so she sucks it back up
noisily. “Sorry. Jesus.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She takes a shuddery breath. “Christ.” She drags the back of her hand under her nose. “Is there any tissue?”

  He feels among the sheets and hands her his T-shirt.

  “Really?”

  “It’ll wash.”

  She holds the sleeve to her nose and blows.

  “Better?”

  She nods, balling up the shirt.

  No avoiding it—she has to climb off him now. She does so slowly, careful not to catch him in the balls with her heel.

  “Come here.” He pulls her close.

  “Sorry.” She says it in his ear this time.

  “What the hell for?” He draws back to look at her. “I’ve never felt this good in my entire life.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He smells of beeswax—if there existed a subspecies of bee with a rippling coat and dark, magnificently feathered wings. She breathes deeply, drifting to the brink of sleep.

  “There is one small problem, though.”

  She opens her eyes. “What?”

  “Condom. It’s got to go.”

  “Oh.” Edal hears herself giggle like a fourteen-year-old—like she never did when she was actually fourteen. She rolls back to free him, her bare ass meeting the wall.

  He sits up. “You want something to drink?”

  “Water, please.”

  He scoops up his boxers and pulls them on. Twists at the waist to kiss her. “Won’t be long.”

  Edal lies for perhaps a minute in the negligible light before turning on the bedside lamp. Its yellow glow pleases her; she wants to see him properly when he comes back. Arranging the pillow lengthwise against the headboard, she sits up a little, tucking the sheet in under her arms.

  On the nightstand, the Kipling lies stacked atop a handful of other books. She reaches for it, intending to browse the chapters she missed, but sets it aside upon spotting the title beneath. She studies the cover closely. It’s the edition she knows, boy and otter walking together along the shore. When she looks up again, Guy’s standing in the doorway. He’s brought a single tumbler for them to share, the way lovers do.