Jackie's Wild Seattle (15 page)

Cody set the carrier down close to me. The coyote looked inside, then glanced at all the faces through the elevator door. Coyote still in my arms, I leaned toward the carrier. It sprang inside.

Cody closed the door. It was over.

My coyote adventure was over, but the day was far from over. Trailing blue smoke, we made about ten or twelve more stops. Late in the day, a policeman pulled us over and wrote Uncle Neal an air pollution ticket. “Seems ironic for an outfit like yours to be getting a citation like this,” he said as he gave Uncle Neal a copy.

“That
is
ironic,” Cody volunteered from the backseat. I had my doubts whether he knew what he was talking about.

“Wait a minute,” the policeman said. “You're the kid I saw on TV at the station during my lunch break. Your parents are with Doctors Without Borders, right?”

“That's right,” Cody said, “but pretty soon they're coming home.”

“And you're his sister?” the policeman said to me.

“That's my major distinction in life so far.”

“I tell you what,” the officer said. He took the ticket out of Uncle Neal's hand and tore it in two. “Since your parents
are helping out those refugees, I'm going to let your uncle off with a warning, just for being related to you.”

“Thanks, officer,” Neal said. “We'll park it tonight.”

“That's good. We don't want birds dropping dead out of the sky. Still got that coyote?”

Cody leaned forward from the backseat. “We dropped it off with one of the volunteers. She's going to release it down by the docks around midnight.”

The policeman gave us a thumbs-up as we drove away. “Cody,” I said, “I don't know what we'd do without you.”

We were anxious to get home. We started creeping north on I-5, in rush hour traffic. Jackie called to say supper was on the stove. North of the Everett exit, as we were finally making time, we got a call from a man who wouldn't tell me much—he said he'd been trapping, and “Would you take care of the orphans?”

It was from a Cedar Glen address, out past Jackie's on the same road. We were relieved it would hardly slow us down. I spotted the address on a big mailbox in front of an auto shop and a one-story house off to the side. I should have guessed what was going on, but the sign—
TUCKER'S AUTO AND TRUCK REPAIR
—took me by surprise.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “This is Tyler's place, Uncle Neal. That must have been his father on the phone. I think this is one call we should forget about.”

I was scared, but Neal didn't look scared. “I've never turned down a call yet,” he said calmly. “Let's go see what he's got.”

It was well after five and the shop was closed. We walked over to the house. My heart was beating like a sledgehammer. Cody rang the doorbell.

Nothing. Cody rang it again.

Still nothing, then a man's angry voice: “Answer the door, Tyler!”

The door opened, and it was Tyler. He had a fresh bruise, this one along his jaw. He was so embarrassed.

We could see his father on the couch across the room, laughing. “Give it to 'em, Tyler. Let 'em rehab the poor little wild creatures.”

Tyler reached for something that must have been placed by the door. He handed me a shoebox. Nested in a clump of dry grass was a litter of squirming baby mice. They were tiny and pink, barely beginning to grow fur. Their eyes were still closed. “I'm sorry,” Tyler said. “I'm really sorry.”

“They're orphans,” his father called. “Parents killed by a trapper!”

“He's been drinking,” Tyler said quietly. “This is so ridiculous. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” Neal told him. “No doubt Jackie will take care of them. Your dad's right about that.”

“Say good-bye, Tyler,” his father warned ominously.

Tyler was about to close the door. He looked desperate.

“What is it?” I said.

Tyler lowered his voice. “Can I come with you guys, right now? I—I think I better.”

I looked at Uncle Neal. He looked at Tyler, at his wild hair, the pleading look in his eye, the ugly bruise. “Sure thing,” Neal said.

Tyler opened the door wider and stepped out. For the first time I saw his mother. She was watching from the kitchen. She looked like a marble statue that was about to break into a thousand tiny pieces. Tyler turned around and said to her, “Mom, I'm going to spend the night at the center.”

“Oh no you're not,” his father said, rising from the couch.

“Let's go, Tyler,” Neal said softly. “Quick.”

“Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad, I just think it's best. Kind of a time-out, that's all. Don't worry, it's not a big deal.”

We were almost back to the van when we saw Tyler's father in the doorway. With a glance over my shoulder I saw him clenching and unclenching his fists. His face had turned very red.

“Take good care of those mice!” Tyler's dad called.

“We will!” Cody called back. Without a trace of sarcasm, he added, “Thanks for the mice, Mr. Tucker!”

Tyler got in the back with Cody and Sage. He said, “Do you think Jackie will let me stay over tonight? My dad's in real bad shape.”

“You know she will,” I said. “You can sleep on the couch in the living room. Actually, it pulls out into a bed.”

“If I just hadn't started talking to him about the center, about what I was doing there. When I first told him about the bear cub, I thought he'd like it. I thought he'd think it was cool. Big mistake. That's when everything started to get worse. He'd been a little better the last few months, since Social Services talked to him, a little easier on my mom and me. I should have left well enough alone. I wanted him to get excited about what I was doing, about the bear cub especially, about Liberty, too. I should have acted like I hated going to Jackie's, like it was a terrible punishment. That would have made him feel better. This is all my fault.”

“You gave your dad a big chance to make a fresh start with you,” Neal said. “He's the one who blew it.”

“Where will you go tomorrow?” I asked. “What will you do?”

“I sure don't want to go home for a while, not until something changes. Until he gets some help.”

Jackie got a few surprises when we drove in—Tyler and the baby mice. Fortunately there were two evening-shift volunteers in the clinic she could hand the mice off to. Yes indeed, she wanted them taken care of. She told the volunteers what kind of formula to mix, how much to feed the mice, to give them a heating pad and make sure it was warm but not too warm.

Jackie was awfully dismayed to see Tyler's face bruised again. It was swelling badly. She got him an ice pack while Neal and I were setting out the spaghetti, salad, and French bread. I heard them talking about Tyler's probation officer, about whether calling him might be a good idea. Jackie thought that the sheriff's department and Social Services could work together to find emergency foster placement for Tyler starting the next day. Tyler said he'd think it over during dinner.

If dinner started out quiet, it didn't stay that way for long. Jackie got up and turned the TV around where we could see it. She slipped a tape into the VCR and hit the remote. She had taped the local news from one of the Seattle stations.

A reporter was talking out in front of the Federal Building, and there we were driving up, with the camera zooming in on
JACKIE'S WILD SEATTLE
and our logos, the harbor seal and the bald eagle.

Not much spaghetti got eaten during the next few minutes. The tape showed us getting out of the van, Uncle Neal with his arm in the cast, his
Sage
tattoo, the Mariners cap. There was Cody taking in all the commotion, and there I was pulling on the coat and the gloves while the reporter talked about our unusual mission.

We watched with our mouths open, Tyler too. Next came the glamorous reporter interviewing Uncle Neal about
where the coyote came from. “Just a few blocks away, down at the docks,” he said. And there was Cody, big as life, suddenly entering the frame. “It eats rats. Big Norwegian suckers.”

Tyler laughed so hard he was seriously losing it, which was good to see.

“And what exactly are Norwegian suckers?” the reporter asked Cody, kind of afraid of what he might say.

It was all there. “Non-native species,” “a menace to public health,” and all the rest: how our parents were in Pakistan and Afghanistan, how Jackie needed a new ambulance, all of it.

Jackie hit the pause button. “Best publicity I ever had—even better than the newspaper story. The phone at the office has been ringing off the hook all day. I had to reload the paper in the fax machine. I'm just lucky the home phone is unlisted, or we'd never sleep tonight!”

“Show the rest,” I said.

“No, wait.” Jackie stepped over to the TV and pointed to a man in the background. “See this man?”

It was the Native American guy with the long black hair. “I remember him,” I said.

“Listen to this,” Jackie said. “That man left the Federal Building right after you guys did, went to his car, called me up on his cell, and drove straight over here. He ate lunch with the volunteers, ended up spending the entire afternoon here. He left about an hour before you got home. He left this.”

Dramatically, Jackie took a slip of paper off the top of the TV and brought it straight to Uncle Neal. She put it in his right hand. It was a check, I could see that. “How much?” I asked.

Neal was so choked up he couldn't even talk. Tyler, sitting next to him, said, “Thirty-five thousand dollars. It's from the Muckleshoots.”

“Muckleshoots?” I asked.

“The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe,” Jackie answered. “They're from south of Seattle, down near Auburn. It's for a new ambulance. The tribe has a special fund for giving away some of the money they make from their casino. They make gifts to charities and nonprofits. That man you saw at the Federal Building is the one in charge of giving away the money. I guess he liked you guys.”

“This is unbelievable,” Cody said. “My spaghetti's getting cold and I don't even care.”

“There's more on the tape,” Jackie said. “We can wait for the rest until after dinner.”

“Play the tape!” everybody yelled at once.

Pretty much all that was left was my fifteen seconds of fame, going into the elevator, then coming back out with the coyote in the carrier.

“You have the greatest smile in the world,” Tyler said.

I blushed red as the spaghetti sauce. “Yeah, I look great in Uncle Neal's old overcoat. It's a real fashion statement.”

Of course we had to watch the tape five or six more times. Cody couldn't wait to take a copy home to show to our parents and all his friends in Weehawken. The day he'd do that wasn't far off.

The kid wasn't hyper by nature, but that night it was like he'd knocked over a Starbucks. How he was going to flatten his brain waves and get to sleep, I had no idea. He had me checking the e-mail every time we turned around and kept dragging me into the clinic to look in on the mice. Jackie had said the next few hours were make or break for them. I slowed him down a little by having him feed one of them with the syringe.

Back at the house, Cody enlisted Neal to play soccer Legos on the kitchen table. Tyler and I sat up and watched
Friends
reruns, two in a row. There was so much on Tyler's mind, I figured that watching TV would be a lot easier than talking. At eleven, everything was breaking up. Jackie gave
Tyler a sleeping bag and went into her room, which was our signal to turn off the TV. Cody and Neal headed upstairs.

“Good luck tomorrow,” I said to Tyler. “Have you made up your mind what you should do?”

“Yeah, I really think I should call my probation officer, like Jackie was talking about. It's just too tense at home. I might have to stay somewhere for a while, but it should be better in the long run. It's worth a try. If I just go home, my dad might do something stupid. It's a no-win situation if ever there was one. I just wish I could figure a way to help my mom get out of there too.”

“Well, I'll see you for breakfast, anyway. Try to get some sleep, Tyler.”

“You too, Shannon. Hey, you really did look good on TV.”

“No kidding?”

“Seriously.”

I went upstairs having no idea I'd see Tyler sooner than breakfast.

 

I was dead asleep when somebody woke me calling my name. It was Cody, standing by my bed. “Listen,” he said.

I was bleary. “What time is it, Cody? Good grief, it's one in the morning.”

“I couldn't go to sleep. I'm still too excited. We're going home soon.”

“I know, I know. I'm excited too.”

“But listen. Tell me what you hear.”

Cr-r-ruck! Prruk! Kla-wock! Kla-wock!

“There, did you hear it?”

“A raven?”

“I know. It's Kickstand.”

“So? Cody, it's the middle of the night!”

“That's what I mean! Ravens don't talk at night.”

“How do you know that?”

“Jackie said so.”

I buried my head in my pillow. “Thanks for the information, Cody.”

He shook me. “Shannie, Shannie, he's trying to warn me.”

“Of what?” I mumbled.

“I don't know, but I have to find out.”

“No you don't.”

Prruk! Prruk! Tok! Kla-wock!

“There he goes again, and this time he's closer. Shan, he's talking his head off. I have to go see. I just want to go out and see if everything's okay. I'm wide awake anyway.”

“You aren't the only one,” I said. “And here you've been so good at not being annoying.”

“So let's go, Shannie.”

“I'm going to walk past Tyler in this nightshirt? I don't think so….”

“Then get dressed and I will too, but hurry. Be real quiet so you don't wake up Uncle Neal.”

“You're pushing it,” I said, but Cody had already tiptoed down the hall.

A few minutes later we met at the end of the hall. We tiptoed down the stairs. I grabbed the big flashlight in the pantry. Sage was at the front door, waiting.

“Whazzup?” whispered Tyler from the couch as we approached the door. He'd gone to sleep in his clothes. The sleeping bag he'd used for a blanket had fallen off.

“Kickstand is talking,” Cody whispered back. “Something's wrong.”

“Wait for me. Just gotta pull on my shoes.”

The door barely creaked as we let Sage and ourselves out.
It was real dark, with only the sliver of a crescent moon hanging above us. The raven had suddenly fallen silent.

“So, what do you want to do?” I asked Cody. “I just hope this doesn't turn out to be a skunk hunt.”

“Let's just see if Sage thinks everything's okay.”

Neal's partner was testing the air. Then her ears went forward. She started walking around the back of the office. We followed, quiet as could be.

Sage was waiting at the service gate to the rehab pens, very much on alert. Suddenly she started barking.

Tyler threw open the gate and we ran inside. We could hear someone running, not real close, over toward the deer and the coyote pens, it sounded like. We were stopped in our tracks wondering what it meant, what to do, when the side of the clinic closest to the bears' den lit up with reflected fire.

“Fire!” Tyler yelled at the top of his lungs. “Fire inside the bears' den!”

Without another word, all three of us ran to the back door of the clinic. Inside, I threw on the lights, took three steps, and pulled the fire alarm. Tyler and Cody went straight to the door that led into the bears' den and were back a second later. “Fire in the straw!” Cody yelled.

“I'll get the hose going,” Tyler shouted. “You guys get the fire extinguishers!”

We found two extinguishers and raced back to the bears' den. The fire alarm was still going off loud as can be. The noise was almost unbearable, but I was so glad to hear it.

The fire was racing through the straw. At the center of the blaze there was an intense white-hot light. Tyler was on the outside of the chain-link fence putting water on the fire as fast as he could, starting with the source and as far as he
could reach. The flames were about to reach the panicked bear cubs in the middle of the three sections. Quick as I could, I pulled on the cord that opened the trap door for the farthest section. The cubs ran through and climbed up the tree, away from the smoke and the heat.

Cody had thrown open the first door, the one from the service path to the inside of the den, and Tyler ran inside hosing down on the fire as fast as he could.

It wasn't going to be enough. Cody and I ran past him, each with a fire extinguisher. We sprayed ahead of us, back and forth, back and forth. And here was Uncle Neal with another fire extinguisher.

As the flames were starting on the wall of the clinic, the four of us mowed that fire down.

Suddenly it was dark. The fire was out. We stood there panting and coughing, the smell of burnt straw and bears strong all around us.

Floodlights came on, and there was Jackie at the clinic door. “Everybody okay?” she cried. “Is everybody okay?”

“Everybody's fine,” I said. “Fire's out, Jackie.”

“Thank goodness. What happened?”

“We heard somebody running,” Cody said.

Tyler was kneeling by the source of the fire. “It's a flare—an emergency flare.”

By now we could hear the fire department sirens on the road. “They're quick,” Jackie said. “Thank goodness we can send them home.”

Sage was sniffing the short red cylinder, partially burned. Cody was about to pick the flare up. “Don't,” Neal said. “It might have fingerprints.”

“Guess whose,” Tyler said bitterly.

“He wouldn't,” I said.

“We have flares just like that in our car, in the truck.”

“So do lots of other people,” Neal said. “Maybe it's not him, Tyler. Let's hope it's not your dad.”

The fire department arrived with the police. As it turned out, the sheriff was on his way minutes before Jackie reported the fire. Tyler's mother had called and said that his dad had left the house in a raging temper. She was worried that he was headed for Jackie's to drag Tyler home.

 

By morning Tyler's dad was in the news. An all-points bulletin had been issued for his arrest. The sheriff had found a piece of material snagged on the top of the chain-link fence in the deer pen. Tyler's mother said it was from his dad's jacket.

By noon Tyler's father walked into a police station in Everett. He turned himself in and admitted he'd done it.

Tyler was back at home with his mother when his dad called from jail. “My mom answered the phone,” Tyler said as we sat together later that day on the talking stump. “I was so afraid of how she would handle it. She didn't say much, she just listened. And when he was all done, she just said, ‘Tyler and I can't do this anymore. I can't go on being afraid all the time. I'm taking him back to North Carolina.' And that was it. She hung up the phone. So it's settled, we're going, and soon. I guess I won't get to see those two cubs hibernate this winter.”

“North Carolina?”

“That's right. Asheville. It's in the Blue Ridge Mountains. My grandparents live there, my mom's folks.”

“That's not too, too far from New Jersey,” I said. “At least it's on the same side of the country. We could stay in touch.”

“You want to?”

“Definitely. We've been through some interesting times together. Interesting times make for interesting people, my dad says. Do you think your mom and dad will ever work this out, ever get back together?”

“I seriously doubt it. She says she's felt so suffocated, she just wants a second chance in life. She said it was hard to stand her ground, though, during that call he made from jail. He begged for her forgiveness, mine too. I'm so proud of her—she stayed strong. Forgiveness, sure, but it'll take time before it means anything. He's always real sorry after he blows up. I only hope he gets it together. I mean, he could've burned down the whole clinic, Shannon.”

“And every animal in it.”

“I never would've thought he could do something like that. I keep wondering if it's partly my fault, like maybe I pushed him too far, made him flip out.”

“Don't even start thinking like that,” I told him. “I've watched you all summer. Trying not to be like him. Trying to come up for air. Your mother isn't the only one who was suffocating. You made it, Tyler. Like they say, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.'”