Fauna Read online

  Finally, he lowers his hands. She watches as he wipes the toothpick against his sleeve, like a tiny blade on a whetstone, then threads it back into its slot. He glances up, catching the tail end of her expression before she can wipe it away. It’s in her mouth mostly—at least, that’s where she feels it. A little pinch of judgment. She smiles to cover it, but the smile, too, is pinched.

  He pushes back to clear the plates. When she rises to help, he says firmly, “Sit, finish your beer.”

  Across the table, Stephen is intent on his milk glass, filling it again to the rim. Lily stands and drains her beer, then heads for the door. It slaps shut hard behind her.

  “Is she going?” Edal asks Stephen.

  “Just getting her dog.”

  Guy piles the plates in the sink and leaves them. Without a word, he crosses to the small bedroom and disappears behind its door.

  Stephen drinks his milk in one long, lazy go, watching her over the glass. He wipes his mouth. “You live around here?”

  “Not far.” It feels a little mean, holding back when she’s the stranger among them, but Stephen seems satisfied with her reply. Edal inspects her hands. She feels the dog’s arrival in the floorboards, looks up to see two bright eyes in a wall of black, advancing fur.

  “Hello, boy.” She holds out the back of her hand. “That’s me.”

  “It’s okay, Billy,” Lily says, though he’s showing no aggression—quite the opposite in fact. He’s nuzzling Edal’s fingers as though she’s been handling raw steak.

  “Hey, Billy,” Stephen says quietly, and the dog shoves past Edal’s thigh, jostling the table as he tunnels beneath it to lay his chin in Stephen’s lap.

  Lily gives them all a wide berth on her way to the fridge. She gets another beer and resumes her seat. It’s clear both she and Stephen are waiting; they sit unnaturally still, like children who’ve been promised ice cream if they’re good.

  Guy’s hiding something when he reappears, one hand tucked behind his back. “Everybody ready?” he says.

  Lily and Stephen nod. Ready for what? Edal wants to ask. Guy flashes her a smile and shows the tattered hardcover in his hand. She looks for a title but finds only the author’s name.

  “We started last night,” he says, “but the chapters stand up pretty well on their own.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  He’s a better reader than Letty ever was; he even does the voices, shifting subtly from bear to boy, with not a hint of Disney in Bagheera’s liquid panther drawl. Edal closes her eyes and sinks into the story, a willing captive—at least until Mowgli falls into the hands of the Bandar-log.

  Kipling didn’t specify species—in fact he confused the matter by referring to them as both the Monkey-People and the grey apes—but it’s an Indian jungle, so the Bandar-log are probably langurs. All the same, Edal envisions a different primate, one she’s come to know through her work. Mounted with its long fangs bared, the baboon hangs just inside the evidence room doors, strategically located to give newcomers a scare.

  Having entered that room full of oddities, her thoughts are inclined to remain there. As Baloo and Bagheera chase through the jungle after their beloved man-cub, her mind’s eye moves over confiscated grizzly rugs and black bear galls, a dried tiger penis, a leopard-skin coat. When they make an ally of Kaa, the massive rock python, she can see only wallets and handbags, hideous pointy-toed boots. She manages to focus again during the great battle at the ruined city known as the Cold Lairs, but only until Mowgli tumbles down into the abandoned summer house and lands among the hissing hoods of the Poison-People. Why would anyone shove a cobra down inside a bottle and pickle it? More to the point, why would anyone spot such a monstrosity in a marketplace and long to possess it, let alone attempt to smuggle it home?

  Edal forces herself to concentrate, if not on the story then at least on the sound of Guy’s voice. By the time the battle comes to a close, she finds she no longer has to try. The Dance of the Hunger of Kaa is what does it, something inside her swaying forward helplessly alongside the hypnotized Bandarlog. She escapes in the company of Mowgli and his creatures, returning to the vivid, living jungle, leaving the evidence room and its dust-covered dead behind.

  Guy switches deftly from prose to verse, finishing with the “Road-Song of the Bandar-log.” It’s startling, the quiet confidence with which he sing-songs his way through the lines. By the end of the first stanza, he’s keeping time with the heel of his hand. Soon they’re all beating out the meter—Edal with the tips of her fingers, Stephen open-handed, Lily with a white-knuckled fist.

  The fox is light on his feet—soft toes, softer fur between. The roadside gravel bears little mark of his passage, save for the sweet scent of his prints.

  Cars come thundering. No longer the downpour roar of early evening, now each rolls out a singular din of its own. He feels their wind in his flank fur, keeps his tail to their stupefying light.

  Trot while they deafen you, pause to listen during the lulls. The grass along this particular stretch is worth it, tall and weedy, teeming with food.

  There. The leeward ear finds it first, its partner swivelling a hair’s breadth behind. Incremental adjustments now, flicking, flickering. Another car brings several seconds devoid of sense. Then a clearing, a locking-in.

  No mistaking the fat-bodied scuffle of a vole. It’s not far, no more than a tail’s length from the border where the grass begins. The fox tenses, a trembling in his long hind legs. Until now, he’s been a mere facet of the rustling, hundred-scented night. Springing, he becomes a thing entire.

  The angle is all: too wide and he’ll land beyond his quarry, too narrow and he’ll fall short of the mark. He registers a shiver in the grass from on high, contracts a fraction tighter at the crest of his pounce. Forepaws and nose lead the jabbing descent. He pins the wriggling, pissing vole, snaps it up in his jaws and tosses it high in the air. Catching it, he tastes the night’s first blood.

  It’s a start. The fox’s stomach is small, but a vole is smaller—and when the stomach stretches to its limit, there remains the planned promise of the cache. His territory is dotted with bodies, each deposited in a tidily excavated hole. Covering the dead is a careful business. Push the loose earth in, pausing to pack each layer flat with the nose. A sweep of the whiskers to clear away any sign.

  Some caches he will find again by landmarks, others by smell. Of these last, a certain number will lie empty, raided by creatures as bold as or bolder than he. Which is why there must always be more than enough. Why, full or empty, a fox must hunt.

  He lifts his nose to find the breeze has turned back on itself, delivering unwelcome news. Coyote. A dog-plain whiff of its urine, and now, not so distant, a waft of its recent scat. How do they abide such a stink? His own slim form creates only pleasing smells—from the vivid scat-spray, to the subtle chin gland, to the flower-scented patch on his tail.

  No sense chancing another shift in the wind. When coyotes kill his kind, they kill as humans do, with little or no thought for food. The fox turns neatly in his tracks. His pupils shrink in the sudden glare.

  Edal should be on her way, but she’s loath to be the first to speak.

  Lily beats her to it. “Come on, Billy.” She rises, her dog at her side.

  Guy looks up. “You coming by tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  “It was nice to meet—” Edal begins, but they’re already gone, the screen door slapping Billy’s rump.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Guy says. “She takes a while to warm up.”

  Edal’s saved from responding by the muffled ring of a phone—a nostalgic brrrring reminiscent of the mechanical age. Stephen pushes back from the table. “I’ll get it.” He turns and opens the green door, revealing a partial view of what looks to be another bedroom. Edal hears a second door open, after which the phone falls quiet, replaced by the murmur of a brief exchange. Glancing up, she finds Guy watching her. She searches for something to say
. How about that python. Wish I was brought up by wolves.

  “Roy Tanner,” Stephen says, returning. “Says you’re supposed to be picking up his LeBaron.”

  “Right.” Guy stretches, his T-shirt rising to show a strip of belly, hair a shade lighter, redder than Edal expects. “Duty calls.”

  “Oh, right, okay.” She stands quickly, almost knocking over her chair.

  “I’m going online,” Stephen says. He pauses in the doorway. “Bye, Edal.”

  “Bye-bye.” Something about his expression makes her say it gently. Nighty-night. “Online?” she adds once he’s gone. “Doesn’t really go with that ring tone.”

  “Yeah, he set all that up.” Guy grabs his Mack from a hook by the door and shrugs it on. The back’s torn where Edal could swear it wasn’t yesterday.

  “You don’t have a cell?” she asks, following him out.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Just for—Not really. I used to.”

  “I’ll grab your bike,” he says over his shoulder, heading for the corner of the house. He’s back before she can decide whether to follow. “It’s gone.”

  She stares at him. “What do you mean, gone?”

  He stoops to pluck up a stray spark plug. “I guess Lily took it.”

  Edal fights a sliding sensation of fault. She’s done nothing wrong—nothing except let her guard down among people she knows nothing about. It’s not that far to walk home, maybe half an hour, but she’s suddenly very tired. She’ll have to take the streetcar—only she has no tokens. No cab fare either. “Great.”

  “She’ll bring it back.” He smiles.

  She’s beginning to think he does that a little too often. She crosses her arms. “How do you know?”

  “Trust me, she will.”

  He pivots on his heel, draws his arm back and lets the spark plug fly. It cuts a high, tumbling arc, lands with a ping on a shadowy heap of scrap.

  “Where do you live?” he asks.

  “Me?” Edal says, still watching the spot where it hit. “Pape and Danforth.”

  “Come on. I’ll drop you on my way.”

  She’s never ridden in a tow truck before. The cab is cleaner than she would’ve imagined—no coffee cups or balled-up burger wrappers, only a few duct-taped tears in the pearl grey seats. Roomier, too. There’s space enough behind them for two large Rubbermaid bins and a clutter of tools, including a pair of bolt cutters, a shovel and an industrial jack. She watches in the passenger-side mirror as Guy hops down to close the gate behind them. Like Stephen, he wears his padlock key around his neck.

  She expects him to take Mt. Stephen Street to Broadview and head north from there, or else follow Gerrard to Carlaw. Instead, he turns right, making his way via back streets to the on-ramp for the northbound parkway. It’s an odd route—he’ll have to double back and cross the viaduct to take her home.

  He speeds up to merge then keeps to the slow lane, taking his time. He’s watching her again. At first she thinks it’s her imagination—but no, she can feel his eyes repeatedly sliding her way. They pass beneath the footbridge. Moments later he flicks on his signal and begins to slow, already drifting right.

  “What are you doing?” There’s hardly any shoulder, but he glides in snug against the guardrail. “Why are we stopping here?”

  He jams the truck into park and frees his belt. “This won’t take long.”

  With a quick glance in his mirror, he throws open his door and drops to the ground. Edal twists to watch him rummage behind his seat. He grabs the shovel by its blade and drags it toward him.

  “Come on,” he says. “I could use a hand.”

  “With what?”

  “Grab the bin behind you.” He backs out and swings shut his door. Shovel in hand, he walks along the shoulder, heading back the way they came. Edal stares straight ahead for several seconds. Then reaches down to unbuckle her seat belt.

  The bin is light. She doesn’t lift the lid to check what’s inside, just holds it close to her belly so she can walk without it bouncing against her knees. Oncoming headlights blind her for seconds at a time, Guy’s figure taking shape in the gaps between cars.

  Midway between two towering lights, he halts and drops into a crouch.

  The grass around him is coated in dust; it shows pale with every wave of glare. As Edal draws near, the lights of a lumbering cement truck pick out another colour—the shade Guy must’ve spotted from the driver’s seat. Because he was looking for it, she realizes. Not looking at her after all.

  As she hunkers down beside him, he draws a thin flashlight from his breast pocket and switches it on. The fox’s coat is the colour of new bricks. Its tail is substantial, a slim second body, the tip lily-white. White throat, too—spotless. Four sooty, sparrow-boned legs. It could almost be sleeping, if it wasn’t for the fact that no fox would bed down so close to passing traffic.

  “Broke his back,” Guy says.

  Edal nods.

  “Sometimes they’re still alive. There’s the odd one you can save, but most of them are too far gone. The shovel comes in handy then too.” He stands, his flashlight spilling its narrow beam. “Can you take the lid off?”

  She looks up at him, his face in shadow, hands at his sides. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take him with me.”

  She straightens to stand beside him. “Why?”

  He stoops for the shovel. “Anything that comes to feed on the carcass stands a fair chance of getting hit too.” He directs his beam along the small, bright body, letting it rest on the pointed face. “Besides, look at him. I can’t just leave him here.”

  She watches as he nudges the shovel’s blade beneath the animal’s ruined back. He’s careful—bizarrely so, given that the fox is dead.

  “Christ,” he says, “he barely weighs a thing.”

  The truck is crowded now, full to bursting with a musky presence, as though the fox’s spirit has turned to pure scent. They pass beneath the viaduct’s barred shadow, cliffs of concrete rising on either side. Guy keeps his eyes on the road now, and Edal does her best to follow suit. When he enters the loop that will lead them up out of the valley, her mind takes a turn of its own.

  A grey, daytime road overlays the lanes before her. Her mother is a bad driver. She tends to drift, the road a river, the Chevy a makeshift raft; no wonder the undercarriage is practically rusted through. She’s doing it now, sober as a judge but weaving, groping in her handbag for a cigarette.

  “I’ll get you one, Mom.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, still fishing, “I’ve got it.”

  Edal hates the handbag. Squeezed between the two front seats, it’s crammed with crap, like everything Letty owns. The back seat of the snub-nosed car they ride in is crowded with boxes and plastic bags, plus the scaly old Hoover and matching grey pails that are the organs of her mother’s work. Down on her knees in the homes of half a dozen nearby towns.

  It’s a lovely stretch they’re on, hay bales and horses, the Chevy the only blight on the landscape for miles. The centre stripe dips and rises, endless. Save there, where the bright line breaks.

  “Hey,” Edal says, pointing, “what’s that?”

  “Hm?” Letty’s got the du Maurier in her mouth now.

  “What’s that on the road?”

  Her mother squints. “I don’t know.” She has to talk around the filter, gripping it between her lips. “A rock.”

  Maybe, only they’re closer now, and Edal could swear the rock just moved. The head is what gives it away. Edal cries out, but her mother’s busy digging for the lighter. The bump is minor, as though they’ve driven over a book, or a girl’s first jewellery box.

  “What? What?” Letty says, her unlit cigarette bobbing.

  Edal wrenches round in her seat. The turtle lies broken on the road behind them. Its colours will haunt her. Green—dark green, like the pond where Edal knows to look for them, lined up basking on a log. Also, smeared by the Chevy’s wheel, the loveliest, ugliest red.
<
br />   ——

  “You said Pape and Danforth, right?”

  Edal blinks. They’re already at Carlaw, idling three cars back at a red light. She’s missed the rattle and rush of the viaduct, plus a good portion of the Greektown strip. “This is fine,” she blurts. “I’ll get out here.”

  He looks at her, surprised. “I can take you.”

  “I’d better go.” She cracks her door. “The light’s going to turn.”

  “Okay. Come by for your bike tomorrow if you like.”

  “What bike?”

  He laughs. “She’ll bring it back, you’ll see.”

  Edal checks for cyclists and slides down off her seat.

  “Besides,” he says, “you want to hear the next chapter, don’t you?”

  She turns and closes the door gently. “It’s green,” she mouths through the glass, pointing to the light, the traffic already leaving him behind.

  Edal’s bike is a treat to ride after Guy’s junkyard clunker. Lily burns along the darkened valley trail, Billy working for once to keep up. She barely slows for the tight spots, the blind turn before the culvert that runs beneath the tracks. Corrugated pipe closes in, too dark to see the scribbled tags that mark its metal ribs. She could cream somebody coming the other way, wipe out and trash the bike—maybe even trash herself. She passes the marsh, the stands of lion-tailed rushes where blackbirds like to flash their red shoulders and cry. Pumps harder. By the time she shoots under the viaduct, her thighs are burning. Glancing back over her shoulder, she sees Billy lagging, a good way back. She slows, glides a wide loop through glowing, knee-high blooms—stalky white flowers that scent the night. Back on the path, she brakes and stands astride the bike, bringing a thumb and forefinger to her lips. Billy pours it on when she whistles, galloping with everything he’s got left. She knows a corresponding jolt of joy. Nothing sweeter than the sight of that black bulk coming on like a train.

  He’s with her in seconds, crashing through the weeds, using the drag of them to slow himself down.