Fauna

by Alissa York

  “Edal. Hey, Edal, look at me. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Turn around for a second, would you?”

  She busies herself fastening her bra.

  “Why won’t you look at me?”

  Because now, when she does, it’s like being punctured. The air leaves her in a sound, the weirdest, weakest utterance she’s ever heard. He waits a moment before touching her.

  “I have to go home,” she wails.

  “Okay. That’s okay.”

  “My—my mother.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “No, she’s not all right. She’s dead.”

  “Oh, Edal.” He strokes her back. “It’s okay, I’ll come with you. I know all about funerals—”

  “No! There is no funeral. Was. She died a month ago.”

  “Oh.”

  “I haven’t been back.” She draws a deep breath. “I haven’t—Her ashes are waiting to be picked up.”

  “Baby.” His hand at the base of her spine. “I’ll come with you.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Sure I can. I want to.”

  “What about Stephen?”

  “Stephen will be fine. He knows what he has to do.”

  She takes a breath. “You don’t understand. The house—”

  “I can help with the house. Whatever needs doing.”

  Edal hugs herself. Now or never. “The house is crazy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “My mother—” She turns to face him. “The house is insane. It’s packed to the rafters with books.”

  “Okay, so she was a reader.”

  “No, I mean to the rafters. There’s nowhere to sit, no window she hasn’t blocked off.”

  “Oh.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Sounds like a big job.”

  Edal closes her eyes, sees the flat grey face of the family home. “Yes.”

  “So, you’ll need help.”

  Yes, she will. She does. She looks at him. “Guy, you have no idea.”

  “What are you talking about?” He smiles. “I grew up in a junkyard, remember?”

  Darius is immune to it all—the ticks making their way to his warmest parts, the undead numbness in his legs, even the punishing curl in his back. That’s what focus does for a man.

  He’s been running low on the stuff the last little while. At first he put it down to plain fatigue—the long vigils and shallow daylight sleeps, the bushwhacking and tree climbing and flat-out running through the dark—but he can see now there’s more to it than that. There’s a reason why generals keep enemy propaganda away from their troops; all that backchat on the blog has been sapping his purpose, clouding his resolve. He ought to have spotted the problem sooner, but there’s a lot to keep track of when you’re commander and foot soldier in one.

  It’s late—so late as to have become early. There’s no way he should have been wasting time watching over the girl; he put the whole operation in jeopardy, chanced getting his throat ripped out, and for what? She’s nothing to him. No one.

  Enough. He’s where he needs to be now, the blackened den mouth gaping not ten paces from where he sits. No camera flash to light it this time—only the thinnest hint of dawn. Darius’s pupils have long since opened wide to serve him. He can see just fine.

  The twelve-gauge lies quiet in the undergrowth beside him, each barrel holding its cartridge close. Not much in the way of a keepsake, but a man makes do.

  After Grandfather died, Darius couldn’t sell up fast enough. The land had to be worth something, and it pleased him to imagine the cabin dismantled, fed log by log to the sawmill the old man had haunted for most of his life. That was before the notary in town explained to him how property was never really free and clear—how the government kept on taking its cut, and if they didn’t get that cut, it became something called back taxes.

  Darius has survived for five months on the government’s leftovers. If he’s careful, he has enough to last out the year. More to the point, he made it all the way to Toronto. Not bad, considering Faye barely made it to Calgary, and Grandmother never even got that far.

  Stephen has only two points of reference from which to begin: the stretch of riverbank where Coyote Cop found the wheel he used to block the den; and, perhaps two kilometres north of there, the spot where Lily and Billy discovered the coyote with the missing paw. Hurrying down the footbridge stairs, he can’t help but imagine the pair of them lying in that same bank of brush—a sweet, maltreated girl and her loyal companion, together to the bitter end.

  Stephen’s in enemy territory now. Following the gloomy path, he walks carefully, quickly, upstream.

  Darius must have closed his eyes, maybe even nodded off. How else to explain the suddenness with which the coyote appears? She’s made of flesh, not smoke. She can’t have come winding out of thin air.

  The brush where he sits was meant to provide cover, but the animal gazes directly at him, as though he’s huddled in an open field. Those bright, inward-slanting eyes. Stepping softly, almost delicately, she positions herself between Darius and the den. He feels for the shotgun, wincing at the resulting crackle of twigs. The coyote startles him by staying put. She watches him bring the butt to his shoulder, watches him tuck his finger in against the forward trigger and sight along the barrels’ twinned extent. She doesn’t move a hair. Stands motionless as a tree, a naked outcropping of stone.

  And then she sits. Still eyeing him, the coyote sits down like a contented dog.

  It throws him. It’s hard to be sure, holding the creature in his sights the way he is, but he could swear her gaze has changed. Still unwavering, still unnervingly direct, it can no longer properly be called a stare. The coyote is regarding him. Mildly, terribly. For a full minute now. For what feels like his entire life.

  He could shoot, if he could control his trembling enough to be sure of his aim. Or he could surprise everyone, including himself, and abandon the gun—leave it to rust away into nothing, rise up and run for his life. The only problem is his legs. A new-born feebleness has come over his lower half, from his belt-scarred buttocks down through his clenching toes. There’s an odour to the feeling, a sudden putrid waft. No, nothing so mysterious. It’s coming from his own sweat-dampened chest. The paw, resting its black pads against his heart, is starting to stink.

  The coyote cocks her head. It’s quite a trick, making her meaning known like that without a single word. Darius hears a sound like a faucet coming on. Clouds of steam, the level rising inside his skull. He weighs the twelve-gauge in his hands a moment longer before turning it the right way round.

  Stephen spots the den first—a giant’s dark eye embedded in the scrubby slope. And now, in the path of the den’s black gaze, a sight that makes him catch his breath. A large coyote sits staring into a clump of brush, its coat glimmering in the breaking day. Stephen halts a stone’s throw from the scene. Tries in vain to see what it is that has the animal so entranced.

  Instead, he hears.

  A sliver-thin whimper from the coyote’s closed mouth. Then, from inside the leafy cover, the shotgun’s deafening blast. The blood, too, seems made of sound; it explodes from the bushes like a scream.

  Finally, it’s getting light. Not many people on the streets, but it won’t be long before the city shakes itself and begins to move.

  Lily could use a little more sleep. She tried to make camp again in the valley, but couldn’t seem to settle on a spot; nowhere felt hidden enough. She could go to the wrecking yard, lay the mummy bag out on the kitchen floor, or maybe in the office—there’s that squeaky old couch. She’d be safe there. Stephen would never try anything, and neither would Guy—she’s as sure of that as she ever will be. In some ways it’s a bigger risk to find herself standing here.

  The neat brick path with the little twist in it. The flowering bush. The paired wicker chairs down the end of the porch. Lily takes the front steps gingerly, Billy light-footed beside her, as though they’re pulling a B and E.
She swings the duffle bag from her shoulder and lays it down on the bristly brown mat.

  No doorbell. She has to close a hand around the heavy brass ring, lift it and knock. Nothing for as long as she can hold her breath. Then a light coming on in the hallway, glowing yellow through the pebbled glass. Footsteps. A pause while Kate looks through the peephole’s magnifying eye. Lily lays a hand to the door and feels the deadbolt turn in its works.

  Letting himself in the wrecking yard gate, Stephen flashes again on the body in the scrub. It had no face to speak of—scarcely any head—yet he could see there were characteristics they’d shared. They were both young men, both seemingly healthy and strong.

  He thought about heaving the remains up onto his shoulder, but there was nowhere to take them, no trained and capable comrade waiting to relieve him of what he’d found. The coyote had simply turned and trotted off. After standing over the body for a long moment, Stephen found himself following suit.

  He enters through the office door. On his way past the desk, he comes close to checking the blog. Actually goes so far as to reach for the mouse. Coyote Cop. It’s like something a kid would come up with—not that soldierboy’s much better, even if Stephen did mostly mean it as a sad and ugly joke. What if he’d signed himself Stephen instead? Maybe, over time, Coyote Cop would have offered his own name in exchange.

  Too late now. Too late to do anything—unless maybe he should still tell the police. It’s hard to think straight about it all, hard to be certain what’s right. He’ll see what Guy has to say when he gets up. Edal, too.

  The raccoons cry out to him as he passes through his room. “I know,” he says, “you’re hungry.” No more putting it off—he’ll blend some dog food into the morning feed, begin the process of getting them weaned.

  In the kitchen, he sees the note, anchored to the counter with the jar of powdered KMR.

  Hey buddy,

  Sorry I can’t go to the cop shop with you—gone with Edal to help her sort out some stuff back home. Not sure how long we’ll be. I’ll call when we get there and let you know. Can you take care of feeding and flying Red? And keep an eye on Lily will you? You know if she needs a place to crash it’s fine by me.

  Guy

  Stephen reads the note over again, and smiles. So it’s official. His friend is in love.

  They’ve been taking it easy, winding through suburbs and brick-and-board towns, bypassing the twelve-lane terror of the 401. They’re already through Shelburne, closing in on the Grey County line, when Guy leans across to open the glove compartment. The door drops down, revealing the familiar pinkish spine of a book.

  “What,” Edal says, reaching for it, “you’re going to read while you drive?”

  “Not me, you. Come on, there’s only one chapter left.”

  Edal smiles, opening to the spot he’s marked. “The Spring Running” takes place two years after the great fight with Red Dog—a tale Edal missed and will have to make up for. Mowgli has become a beautiful, formidable young man. The chapter opens with him lying on a hillside in the company of the aging panther, Bagheera. It’s the Time of New Talk—springtime in the jungle. Soon all his animal companions will desert him to run with their own kind.

  “‘There is one day,’” Edal reads, “‘when all things are tired, and the very smells as they drift on the heavy air are old and used. One cannot explain, but it feels so. Then there is another day—to the eye nothing whatever has changed—when all the smells are new and delightful and the whiskers of the Jungle People quiver to their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides in long draggled locks.’”

  She pauses, and Guy reaches over to lay his hand on her knee. She looks at him, and he turns to meet her look. Not for long. Just long enough.

  They feel the bump together—Guy wincing, Edal letting out a strangled cry.

  “Shit!” He brakes hard, the truck fishtailing sickeningly before it judders to a halt. “Shit, did I hit it?”

  But Edal’s already out of the cab, walking stiffly, miserably, back to what she knows she will find: the shell cracked along its latitudes, blood rising up through the faults. She knows the best she can hope for is that it’s already dead—that neither she nor Guy will be obliged to deliver the final, merciful blow.

  She can see now it’s larger than she thought. This is no pretty, painted thing. Mud-dark and twice the size of the one Letty killed, this can only be a snapping turtle—most likely a female loaded with eggs. She’ll have to be careful if it’s still alive.

  Glancing back, she sees Guy bent over into the back of the cab, doubtless digging beneath their hastily packed bags for his shovel and bin. Yes, she thinks, the least we can do is clean up the carnage, prevent the body from becoming an ugly, unrecognizable smear.

  She gets as close as she dares. She was right, it is a snapping turtle, an ancient, weighty mother in search of this year’s nest. And she was wrong—the shell isn’t cracked, it’s perfect. In fact, every part of it appears miraculously unharmed.

  Guy’s still a ways back, but not so far that he can’t read the look on her face. He lets out a whoop. Lets everything drop and comes running, his arms rising up at his sides.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to the following individuals for sharing their time and expertise: Sergeant Ben York, B.C. Conservation Officer Service; Gary W. Colgan, Director, Wildlife Enforcement, Enforcement Branch, Ontario Region, Environment Canada; John Almond, Area Supervisor, Halton-Peel-Toronto Area, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources; Ryan Gold of A. Gold & Sons Ltd. scrapyard in Chatham, Ontario; Mara Sternberg and the staff of the Veterinary Emergency Clinic; Tracy McKenzie and the staff of the Animal Rehabilitation Centre; Lieutenant Commander Albert Wong, Senior Public Affairs Officer, Department of National Defence; Linda Coleman, Communications Advisor, Department of National Defence; Michael Mesure, Executive Director, Fatal Light Awareness Program; Dr. Ronald Brooks, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph; Alan Macnaughton, Toronto Entomologists Association; Ian McConachie, Senior Communicator, Toronto Humane Society; Tara Harper, Bruce Peninsula National Park; Dr. Robin Love; John Routh.

  In addition to these walking, talking sources, several books and websites deserve special mention: Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell; Kipling: A Selection of His Stories and Poems, edited by John Beecroft; Watership Down by Richard Adams; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis; Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton; White Fang by Jack London; Toronto the Wild: Field Notes of an Urban Naturalist by Wayne Grady; A Little Wilderness: The Natural History of Toronto by Bill Ivy; The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature by David Baron; The Nature of Coyotes: Voice of the Wilderness by Wayne Grady; Raccoons: A Natural History by Samuel I. Zeveloff; Raccoons: In Folklore, History and Today’s Backyards by Virginia C. Holmgren; Just Bats by M. Brock Fenton; The World of the Fox by Rebecca L. Grambo; A Wing in the Door: Adventures with a Red-tailed Hawk by Peri Phillips McQuay; Ontario Birds by L.L. Snyder; Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of Its Participants, edited by Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren; Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army by Christie Blatchford; Fatal Light Awareness Program at www.flap.org; Don Watcher at www.donwatcher.blogspot.com; DND and the Canadian Forces at www.forces.gc.ca; the Cardiomyopathy Association at www.cardiomyopathy.org.

  My thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for their support during the writing of this book.

  Once again, I’m deeply grateful to the dream team at Random House Canada and Vintage Canada, especially my treasured editor, Anne Collins, who never misses a trick.

  Special thanks and welcome to my agent, Ellen Levine.

  As always, heartfelt thanks to my beloved family and friends. To my husband, Clive, as much love and gratitude as twenty-one years can hold.

  ALISSA YORK’s fiction has won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award, and has been published in Canada, the U.S
., France, Holland and Italy. Her most recent novel, Effigy, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her husband, the writer and filmmaker Clive Holden.

  www.alissayork.com

  Copyright © 2010 Alissa York

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2010 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to locate and acknowledge the owners of copyright material reproduced in this volume. The publishers would welcome any information regarding errors or omissions.

  Excerpts appear from

  Watership Down by Richard Adams © 1972, HarperCollins Publishers Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell © 1960, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis © 1950, The CS Lewis Company Ltd.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  York, Alissa

  Fauna / Alissa York.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37570-4

  I. Title.

  PS8597.O46F37 2010 C813′.54 C2010-901384-0

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