Fauna (17 page)

This time it’s Guy who lets Edal in. She doesn’t even have to buzz—he appears in the office doorway seconds after she shows herself at the gate.

His jeans are faded, worn to strings at the left knee. A green checked shirt sets his hair blazing. He walks like no one she’s ever known, hands in pockets, a kind of springing stroll.

“Hey,” he says, drawing near, “you came.”

She nods. “My bike back?”

“Not yet.” He reaches down the front of his shirt and draws out his key on its silver chain.

She looks away, peering up the street as though she hopes to find her bicycle there.

“She’ll show up soon.” Guy draws back the gate.

“Yeah?” She steps inside.

“Yeah.”

If this was the old country—any old country—they’d know what to do next. Clasp hands or kiss each other on the cheek—once, twice, even three times, bobbing together like
a pair of preening birds. As it is, she stands side-on to him in silence, both of them surveying the yard.

“You want the tour?” he says finally.

“Sure.” Too quick—she should at least pretend to think about it.

“Okay.” He sweeps an arm grandly across the scene. “Loader. Link-Belt. Big old dirty oil drums, big old dirty pile of tires.” He grins. “Over here, these are my trucks. The funny-looking one’s a tow truck and the other one’s just regular.”

“Okay, okay.” She points to where a mangled white sedan sits mounted on the boxy machine. “What about that?”

“That’s an Acura.”

She gives him a look.

“Oh, you mean the thing it’s sitting on. That’s the crusher.”

“That’s what you call it?”

“What else? Hey, you want to see something worth seeing?”

“Sure.” Again, the unhesitating assent. She’ll have to work on that.

The hawk is hiding. Guy presses up against the cage door, fingers hooked in the chain-link on either side of his head. Standing behind him, Edal can’t help but remember the last time she patted a suspect down.

Customs was on the lookout for a different breed of smuggler coming off the Bogotá flight, but that didn’t stop one of them noticing the crusts of white crap on the suspect’s shoes. He was pacing the holding room when Edal arrived—nineteen years old, a skinny, unthinking kid. She frisked him
gently, halting when she discerned the first lump on his thigh. He did as he was told, standing up on the chair and stepping carefully out of his wide-legged jeans. The pant legs had been rigged up with a series of hammock-style slings; each one held a red siskin—pretty little finches prized for their crimson plumage and trilling song. There were males and females, living and dead. Their keeper stood on the chair in his grubby briefs, eyes fastened on the floor.

“Ah.” The sound Guy makes is soft, little more than a sigh. He glances back at her over his shoulder. “Look who’s decided to show himself.”

The red-tail peers round the trunk of the dead oak. After a moment, it stretches out one foot, then the other, grasping hold of the broken side branch. It looks steadily at Guy, then cuts its eyes away. Guy motions for Edal to step forward, the hawk watching her now, gauging her intent. Guy gives a low whistle. Again the bird looks away, turning its head sharply aside this time, as though piqued.

“You’re no fool, are you, Red?” Guy says. “He knows I haven’t got anything for him.”

“He?”

“Well, he hasn’t laid any eggs, anyway. At least not yet.”

The hawk’s head is in motion now, as though buffeted by hairline variations in the breeze. Countless trajectories extend from the curved midline of its bill, pointing up the minutest of movements and sounds.

“I could swear his colour’s getting better,” Guy says. “Especially his head.”

“It probably is. Their hood feathers brighten up in spring.”
She’s spoken without thinking. When he turns to look at her, she keeps her eyes forward, pinned on the hawk. “I’ve got a couple of bird books.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Red, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s not a name, really. More of a nickname. Makes it harder if you name them, you know, when it comes time to let them go.”

“You won’t keep him?” She hears herself trying to sound merely curious.

“Only till he’s strong enough to make it on his own.”

“Where’d he come from?”

“Farther up the parkway. He was hopping around like crazy in the grass, looked like he was trying to hunt. I let him wear himself out before I got close.”

“How’d you catch him?”

“Threw my coat over him.” He shakes his head. “You could feel how skinny he was.”

“When was this?”

“Must be a month ago now.”

The red-tail makes a sound of its own then—Awk, or, with a slight stretch of the imagination,
Hawk
.

“Aawk,” Guy says back to it, and it shifts from foot to foot on its branch, seemingly pleased.

“So,” Edal says after a moment, “why’d you keep him? I mean, aren’t there places?” She’s actually lying now. She knows there are places. She has their numbers in her cell, knows the names of the people who would pick up if she called.

“I take good care of him.” Something’s shifted in his tone. A hint of distance, possibly even hurt.

“Oh, sure,” she says quickly, “I can see that. It’s just, I mean, how’d you know he didn’t have a broken wing or something?”

“I told you, you could tell what the trouble was. He was starving. Anyway, I felt his bones to be sure. His breastbone was like a butter knife, all the muscle shrunk away. I figure somebody tried to make a pet of him, maybe in one of those condo towers along the valley. Maybe they weren’t feeding him right, or else he just wouldn’t eat. I have this picture of him making a break for it from a balcony, you know, leaping off and finding out he was too weak to really fly.”

“Could be.” She leaves another small pause. “What do you feed him?”

“Mice. I started with dead ones, but just lately I’ve switched to live. You know, get him hunting again.”

She nods. “Sounds like a good idea.”

“Speaking of food, you can stay for supper if you like.”

“Oh.” She feels herself flush. “I don’t know. I don’t want to eat you out of house and home.”

He laughs. “I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s Stephen’s turn to cook, so it’ll be something with lentils—about seventeen cents a plate.”

“I don’t know.”

“Lily usually shows up to eat. You don’t want to go home without your bike again, do you?”

“No. Well, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

It turns out to be beans rather than lentils—a fragrant stew served over fluffy brown rice. Lily shows up when the three of them are already seated.

“Hey, Lily,” Guy says.

“Hey.” She dumps a helping of kibble in the bowl by the door. Billy buries his snout and starts crunching.

“There’s plenty in the pot,” Stephen tells her. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks.” She heads for the stove.

Edal’s playing over the ways in which she might broach the subject of the bike when Guy says simply, “You bring Edal’s bike back?”

Lily takes her seat. “Do I look like a thief?”

“Okay.” Guy takes a swallow of beer. “Maybe next time you could ask.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Who’s making a big deal?”

“Whatever.”

It’s Edal’s turn to say something—the right thing, if she can figure out what that might be. “What did you think?” She meets Lily’s gaze across the table.

“About what?”

“The bike.”

Lily shows the briefest of smiles. “It’s pretty sweet.” She bends over her plate, eating quickly, catching up. When she stands and begins clearing the table, Edal rises to help. “It’s okay, I’ve got it.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No, really, it’s okay.”

Last night it would’ve been a rebuke, but tonight Edal’s fairly sure it’s a kindness. She resumes her seat, watching Stephen fold Billy’s black ear in his palm, causing the dog’s dark eyes to close with pleasure. Guy leans back and fishes out the
knife. The toothpick slips out easily, and he goes to work behind the curtain of his hand.

“You mind?” Edal asks, reaching for the knife.

“Be my guest.”

She’s always loved them—the smooth casing, bright and candy-hard, the neat white cross. She fits her thumbnail to the first dark groove and folds out the larger of the two knives. He keeps it sharp, she’s strangely pleased to see, and clean. She digs out the scissors next, the combination screwdriver—can opener, the awl. File, small knife and corkscrew. It’s silly, but she has to get the tweezers out too. Lay them down alongside the bristling whole.

She glances up to find both men watching her. How long has she been playing with the knife, marvelling open-mouthed like a child or a chimpanzee? She snaps its appendages back in place quickly, feeling the nip of the little blade’s point in the pad of her thumb. Guy takes it up a moment after she sets it down. He slides the toothpick into place. Cups the knife as though weighing it before shoving it away.

Guy’s body is tired—deep in his bones, but also the fragile, creeping fatigue that lives in the skin. His brain, on the other hand, is wide awake.

Is it his imagination, or was Edal in a rush to get away? Maybe she hadn’t liked tonight’s reading. “How Fear Came” is a little slow compared to the other chapters. Or maybe it wasn’t the story at all, but the fact that he was reading it aloud.

He feels for the bedside lamp, the push-through toggle of the switch. It’s the gentlest light he knows. Aunt Jan often complained it wasn’t strong enough, swore she was ruining her eyes.

She always sat in the same spot, crossways at the foot of the bed, walking her buttocks back until her shoulder blades met the wall. Once she was settled, Guy liked to work his feet out from beneath the covers and rest them against her thigh. The older he got, the more he had to tuck his legs up to give her room. When Uncle Ernie wasn’t out on a call, he’d light a smoke and draw a chair up to the bedroom doorway, balancing the ashtray on his lap. Sometimes, when his bad disc was bothering him, he’d lie on his back on the floor.

Everybody comfortable?
Aunt Jan would say.
Now, where were we?

When Brother the cat came to live with them, it was Guy’s turn to read aloud—not the whole chapter, as Aunt Jan had done, but bits and pieces, the passages too good to keep to himself.
Listen to this—White Fang’s getting picked on by the dogs. “To keep one’s feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he learned well. He became catlike in his ability to stay on his feet. “
Sometimes Brother curled up in Aunt Jan’s old spot and listened. Other times, when the kitten part of his brain took over, he batted the book’s cover, or wormed his way in between Guy and the page.

Now there’s nobody to keep Guy from reading. Also, no question which book he will read. It’s been on the nightstand since he took it down last night. He sits up against his pillow and reaches for it, opening to where the story begins.

Edal lies on her back, the futon hard beneath her. Why, despite all her years of gainful employment, has she never invested in a proper bed?

No sign of the mouse, the lone turd by the kitchen faucet its only message. It’s deserted her. Left by a rodent. Ridiculous but true.

Doubtless it’s made its way down through the walls to James and Annie’s place, where it can nose out two people’s crumbs. They probably let their dirty dishes lie—at least on those nights when they turn their music up loud. French dance hall tunes, or rhythmic gypsy guitar. Sometimes, in the quiet between songs, Edal catches a scrap of laughter, or worse.

They’ve laid down traps—Annie told her last week when they met up in the front hall. Edal said yes, she’d noticed them too. She made sure to say “them,” not “it.” Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a single mouse.

Annie said they were using the regular wooden snap traps with cheese, only they hadn’t caught anything yet, and the guy at the Home Hardware—you know, the cute one with the beard—said to try peanut butter, so they might do that. The cute one? Edal flinched inwardly. Annie had James, and yet she still kept an eye out for bearded boys. Maybe they
weren’t so happy after all. Edal had heard them fight, not often, but they both raised their voices, and sometimes Annie cried, really howling, like a child. But that was normal, wasn’t it? Was it? Edal could scarcely imagine. Yelling at someone—really yelling—and standing your ground, or collapsing, or both when he yelled back. Then, the next morning, kissing that same someone deep and long. Standing on the front walk and kissing so you don’t hear your neighbour on the porch behind you, forcing her to call out
Morning!
in a strained and cheerful voice, and scuttle past you with her bike.