Fauna (24 page)

“He’s a teenager,” Aunt Jan said, “like you.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “He the one you want?”

Guy nodded, and the tabby gave a low utterance, not unlike the cooing of a dove.

“Hear that?” the lady said. “We’ve been calling him Pigeon.”

“Pigeon.” Aunt Jan gave his shoulder a squeeze. “What do you think?”

Guy held out his arms, and the lady smiled and handed over the cat. “Support him under his backside. That’s right, don’t let him dangle.”

Guy didn’t need telling. He cradled the tabby’s length against his chest and, for a long, stupid moment, felt as though he might bawl. “It’s okay,” he said, when he was sure he could speak. “I already picked out a name.”

From the first, Brother knew to keep his claws in with Guy. There was only one time when he forgot, and even then it wasn’t really his fault.

It was the screaming that did it. Guy knew better than to get between a carnivore and its prey, but the pitch of pure distress made him lose his head. The squirrel was a big grey, not a hint of mange in its full, frantic tail. Brother was heavier by then—they’d had him a couple of years—but he was nonetheless testing his limits by taking the squirrel on.

By the time Guy threw open the door, broom in hand, Brother had abandoned cat tactics and was shaking his victim terrier-style. Guy brought the broom down edge-on, aiming for the seam between Brother’s bunched-up nose and the squirrel’s spasming back. It was a clumsy tool, but the right tool for the job: Brother sprang back hissing from the bristles; the squirrel lay stunned for a moment, then scrambled to its feet.

Working interference with the broom, Guy blocked Brother’s spitting lunges while the bloodied squirrel made tracks. When Brother let out a scream of his own, Guy threw a look over his shoulder and caught sight of the quarry clawing an erratic path up a poplar’s trunk. It would’ve been nothing for Brother to follow; Guy had watched him scale that tree and countless others with no greater incentive than the chance at a vertical run. What the squirrel needed was time. The thing to do was to get Brother inside.

It was there that he made his mistake. Still working the broom with his left hand, he stooped to grab Brother with his right. Brother wasn’t himself in that moment, at least not the self Guy had come to know. Even so, he managed to keep his front claws sheathed. It was the back feet, attempting to kick free, that did the damage. Thick and dull, the hind claws don’t often break skin. When they do, they leave a nasty mark.

Guy stumbled to the door, pressing the mad, thrashing body to his chest while he somehow managed the latch. The pair of them fell together across the threshold, the door springing shut in their wake.

Brother was never more fishlike than in that moment of release—all muscle and whipping spine. His nose was at the door crack in seconds. For a moment there was quiet, then came the howl, this time more plaintive than enraged.

“Sorry, buddy.”

Brother butted the door with his forehead, then stood up on his hind legs and began scratching the screen.

“No, Brother. Hey, quit it.” Guy reached again to interfere, and only then did he notice the blood.

It wasn’t so bad—the claw had found purchase in the meaty edge of the wrist, only grazing the vulnerable core. The idea was there, though, Brother’s blunt, curved nail plucking the tendons like guitar strings, twanging the fine blue veins.

Guy closed a hand over the bleeding and stood staring down at his cat. All four of Brother’s paws were white. Guy had often seen the front two pink with blood, Brother like a kid with a pair of strawberry cones, tonguing one then the other, as though they might melt and drip down his grey fur sleeves. Never a bloodied back foot, though. Not until now.

Aunt Jan was out for groceries, but Guy was no baby. He knew to wash the wound with as much soap as he could stand, knew where the Dettol and bandages were kept. It took five Band-Aids laid out side by side to cover the gash.

By the time he came back into the kitchen, still applying pressure to be safe, Brother had given up on the screen and was sniffing the weatherstripping along the door’s bottom edge. Guy hooked a chair out with his boot and sat, resting his pulsing forearm on the table. Aunt Jan would be pissed when he didn’t come out to help with carrying the bags, but she’d forgive him pretty quick. He closed his eyes and breathed quietly, listening for the sound of the truck.

Edal can’t think of a thing she’d like to eat. Two days of having dinner made for her and she’s forgotten how to feed herself. She walks from the kitchen into the living room, drops in a sprawl on the loveseat.

It’s a worry, that graveyard of his. She doubts whether he’s ever called in a find, and provincial regulations regarding roadkill are clear: acquisition of big game carcasses must be reported immediately, fur-bearing mammals within two days.

She could call the office. It’s not federal business, but there would be procedures in place. At the very least, Barrett would want to pass the information on to the Ministry of Natural Resources. She can see him sitting behind his desk, his broad, sun-browned face growing still the way it does. The last time she saw that face, she was in tears.
Take the time, Jones. Hell, take a holiday if you think it’ll help
.

It won’t
, she wanted to tell him.
Trust me
.

She’s only ever been on one true holiday; her vacation time always went to Letty, three days’ visit plus another week spent recovering in her own apartment. Then came the year when she couldn’t face it—last year, in point of fact. It’s amazing, the power of a blue and white poster when viewed in the right bleak light. After years of living just south of Greektown, she decided the real thing was a reasonable bet.

She went for ten days—Athens, Mykonos, Athens, home. Saw the Acropolis and its crumbling cousins, the markets of Monastiraki, the grass-topped windmills and flagstone streets—filling her camera’s memory card. She recalls other details with her body: drinking wine that tasted of Pine-Sol and stripped her tongue, and then drinking more; dancing in a dizzying circle with the other pale, clumsy souls at her hotel, the black-haired waiters corralling them, their muscular arms in the air.

There was a teetering moment when she leaned back into one of them—the youngest, or so he seemed—and the wine in her blood turned from uplift to down. She was sensible,
took up her purse and began a careful ascent to her room. He appeared alongside her on the stairs.
Miss Jones, I help you
. He didn’t actually press up against her—didn’t go that far—but she can remember his arm coming down like a toll bar at the landing’s turn. It was a fine arm, dark against its crisp white sleeve. She stared down at it for a stupefied moment. All she had to do was touch it, lay a single finger on the jutting wrist bone, or the elbow’s inner curve.

“I don’t need help,” she said in her work voice. It would’ve been easier to let his arm drop, but the waiter lifted it, a small show of defiance, the edge of a threat. He left her to manage the final flight on her own.

Edal stares at the shadowy ceiling. The house is quiet, no music moving in the apartment below. They’ve probably gone out to dinner, Annie reaching across to try James’s lamb, James refilling Annie’s wine. For once she wishes she could hear them—dancing, fighting, anything to let her know there was someone home.

The sound when it comes is subtler than any human might make. Inquisitive, interior. It’s back. Her mouse is back, charting a twitchy, hidden course behind her head. She closes her eyes. Softly, ever so softly, she lays her palm to the wall.

The maple tree provides good cover. Darius might more easily have hidden in a bush, but it makes sense to get up off the ground, where there’s no way one of the furry buggers can catch him unawares.

His position affords a decent view: clots of blackness that are clumps of trees, a gunmetal twist of river, the ashy expanse of the field. Unlike the shallow, snaking Don, the low-lit path runs straight between the viaduct’s massive feet. Darius stares south along its length, watching the girl and her dog pass through the great graffitied arch. It’s like something out of a movie, the lost daughter and her guardian leaving the ancient city’s gates.

It’s the first time he’s met them in the valley. Or not met, exactly. Not yet.

The girl is familiar to him, and not just from the lone aerial sighting. It’s in her walk—the swift, scissoring stride, arms held rigid, shoulders pinched up high. Faye walked like that. She was always forgetting his legs were shorter, forcing him to run and stumble or else chance being left behind.

Having cleared the viaduct’s gloom, the dog peels off into the adjoining field, its steps echoing those taken by the coyote months ago. Coincidence? Darius has come across no further sign hereabouts, but then his senses are only human. For all he knows, the dog could be following a freshly scented trail into the enemy’s midst.

He can picture it now, the pack filtering out of the trees, most of them falling on the dog, leaving the helpless, tender-skinned girl for the alpha pair. The male would be the first to bite, the female latching on seconds later to help drag the victim down.

Darius calls out to warn her in his mind but manages to keep his flesh-and-blood mouth shut. As though in answer, she raises a hand to her lips and whistles, turning the dog in its tracks, drawing it back to her side. Together they carry on
northward along the path, passing not far from the foot of Darius’s tree. Holding both moving shadows in his sights, he dangles, then drops. The stoop has taken hold during his vigil. He feels it shaping him as he lands.

No fighting a family defect: he’s not yet twenty and already he can feel the spine softening inside him. He straightens, forcing his shoulders back. One day he’ll have to do something drastic. For now, though, he can still get the better of it. When he hunches to follow the pink-haired girl, he does so entirely by choice.

Lily’s glad Shere Khan is dead, trampled to stripey shit by the
slaty-blue buffaloes
with Mowgli on the back of the biggest bull. It was fierce, the way the jungle boy managed the herd with the help of his wolf companions, the loyal Grey Brother and Akela the wise.

She throws an arm over Billy. “You’d make a kick-ass herd dog, wouldn’t you, boy?”

He sighs in his sleep against her, his breath spicy in the close quarters of the tent. Normally she wouldn’t sneak scraps from Guy’s table, but she knew Billy would love the meat loaf the second she tasted it. Besides, Guy had made a ton. Probably hoping Edal would show. Lily missed her too. It’s weird, how quickly things become routine at the yard.

It’s taking a chance, lighting the camp lantern again, but a person can only lie staring into blackness for so long. The book has been calling to her since before she marked the fifty-ninth day and wiped the butterfly knife clean, before she
made herself extinguish the light. Now, less than an hour later, the flame stands shivering again. Lily rises up on her elbows, opening to the bright yellow bookmark Guy let her keep. It’s low light for reading; she’s probably fucking her eyes up beyond repair.