Case of the Glacier Park Swallow (4 page)

T
om returned the next morning. He seemed happy that she was there, and genuinely interested in everything that she had learned. Then he took her to her jeep and she drove it back to his cabin.

She stayed another night, sleeping beside Max on Tom's couch under a quilt that his grandmother had made for him, as the storm blew up outside the cabin. Tom had sat up with them until it was very late, poking the fire and listening to the wind, and asking questions that Juliet was sometimes hesitant to answer.

He wanted to know everything about her. First he asked about her family, and then he asked where she went to school and what she liked to eat and what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

“I have a little sister,” she said. “Her name's Katie and she's eleven. I go to a big high school in Montana. After I graduate in June I'll go to college in Montana. I love Montana.

“I like puffed rice,” she continued, and peanut butter cookies, and animals of course. I love animals. I think I even like them better than people. My mother says that's because they can't talk or tell me what to do. She says I should have been born a wild animal so that I could scurry away whenever I wanted to. My mother understands me, even though I make her nervous.

“I'm going to be a veterinarian,” she said, when he encouraged her to continue. “I work with a vet named Cam now, and....”

She stopped, because she didn't like to talk about people behind their backs. Her face must have given her away, because Tom said, “You don't like him?”

Juliet avoided the question. She ran her fingers through Max's soft fur and when he snuggled closer to her, she pulled the quilt tighter around them.

The wind was dying down outside and the snow was stopping. Suddenly Juliet found herself thinking about the drive home, and decorating the Christmas tree with her mother and father and Katie. She wondered if they still had the angel that she and Katie had made the year before.

She didn't want to talk any more. She just wanted to go to sleep and wake up and begin the long drive home.

Tom wouldn't let her. “Do you?” he asked.

Juliet glanced over at him. “What?” she asked.

“Do you like him?”

“He's all right. But he brings out the worst in me. He makes me competitive, or maybe I
am
competitive, and he makes it worse. I don't know, but all I really want to do is take care of the animals. He's a vet and I'm not ... yet.”

Juliet looked at Tom then, and saw that he was really interested in her, and it made her nervous. He noticed that, and glanced down at the fire, then got up from his chair and picked up a log and tossed it onto the fire, mumbling something.

“I couldn't hear you,” Juliet said.

“I said, can't you just take care of the animals? Can't you just let him be the best, let him be the veternarian, and you help him?”

“I could try,” Juliet said, and then she felt guilty because they had talked only about her. “I'm sorry,” she added. “I haven't asked about you.”

“There's not much to say,” he replied. “I'm here. I'm doing what I've always wanted to do, and I'm happy most of the time.”

He glanced out the window. “The storm's letting up,” he said. “You should get some sleep if you're going to drive home tomorrow.”

He brought her an extra pillow and said goodnight, and then he went away and came back with a blanket, and said good night again. And he didn't come back until morning.

She dreamed of swallows that night. She dreamed of swallows and small men in caps, and a fire that glowed way, way, back behind a far-away shadow somewhere far away.

Tom woke her at eight with a bowl of puffed rice, and she wondered if he already had it or if he had gone out to the store to buy it.

“You're welcome to stay longer if you'd like,” he said as she ate.

Juliet looked up at him and smiled. “I'd better go home,” she said. “I want to see if my angel is still in the box.”

Tom looked puzzled, but he didn't ask any more questions, and she was glad. She climbed out from under the quilt and opened the door for Max.

Outside, the snow was deep, but the sky was clear. The main roads had probably been plowed by now. She could leave.

She felt sad again as she called Max to her. All this leaving. All this sadness. She would have to find a better way to leave. She would have to study it, as if she was studying a new skill, like sewing up a calf or diagnosing a sick horse. Advanced leaving, she thought. Maybe they have a course like that in college.

When it was time to leave, she said goodbye quickly, and turned away so that Tom wouldn't see her face. Then, when she was settled in her jeep and settled within herself, she looked out the window and smiled, and said, “Thank you. I guess I needed a friend to talk to.”

“Remember,” he said, “just take care of the animals.”

“I'll remember. And I'll see you in the spring.”

“You will?”

Juliet turned the key and started the jeep. “I want to come back and see the swallow and the swan return together,” she said.

“And me?”

“And you,” Juliet said.

She waved then and drove away.

I
t was a strange, unsettling Christmas. Her parents were carrying in the Christmas tree as she drove up the small dirt road that led to the old house, and when they saw the jeep they dropped it in the snow and ran to greet her.

She could tell that they were relieved to see her, and it made her feel uneasy. She wished that they trusted her completely, but at the same time she realized that perhaps she couldn't expect that, yet.

But at the same time she was happy to see them and glad to be home.

She felt a bit like one of those little balls attached to a paddle with a piece of elastic. She kept bouncing farther and farther away, but she always came back, and every time she returned safely her parents felt secure enough to send her out a bit further.

Was that what love meant?

She helped them carry the tree inside, and then she went to the attic and found the box of Christmas ornaments. The angel was there, at the very, very bottom.

Katie came up to the attic while she was trying to straighten it out, and when she saw the angel she took it and twirled it around in the air so that it looked like it was dancing.

Juliet and Katie carried the box of ornaments downstairs together and Juliet climbed up on the stepladder and carefully placed the angel on the top of the tree.

It was a silly angel really. The body was made of cardboard, and the skirt was cut out of red foil. It had glitter glued all over it, but the strangest thing about it was the eyes.

One of the eyes was a blue star, and the other was a red one.

“Remember the day we made her?” Juliet said as she climbed back down.

“Sure I do,” Katie said. “It was three years ago, and you wanted a blue eye and I wanted a red one.”

Juliet laughed. “I told you that no one in the world had a red eye, and you said it didn't matter. You said it was our angel and we could do what we wanted. I thought you were silly then, but I was wrong.”

“I know,” Katie said.

Katie seemed to have grown, even though she was still much shorter than Juliet. For a moment, when Juliet looked at her, she felt envious, and then she felt sorry that she saw her sister that way. Why couldn't she just think, well, this is Katie and this is me and we're different and that's fine? Why did she always have to compare herself to someone. First it was Cam, and now Katie.

Katie was cute. She was little, and funny, and cute, and Juliet had never been little or cute in her whole life. Katie had short, dark curly hair, and she had long straight blond hair, and why couldn't that just be the way it was.

Juliet felt nicer the next day, after she had had a good night's sleep. The whole family finished decorating the tree together, and then they went into the kitchen and made Christmas cookies.

Juliet was putting the last batch into the oven, when Katie started to cry. It came as a surprise to them all, since everything had been fine until then.

Juliet closed the oven door and went to her. She could tell that her sister wanted to run, and so she sat close to her and put her hand on her arm to stop her.

“What's wrong?” Juliet said.

Katie wouldn't speak for a long time, but finally she said something that Juliet couldn't quite understand.

“Tell me again,” Juliet whispered.

“It's the cookies,” Katie sobbed.

“What about them?”

“I don't know how to do it.”

Juliet sat back and looked up at her parents. They seemed puzzled, but they seemed to understand that this was between Katie and Juliet and it was best if they stayed out of it. They left the kitchen then, and Juliet and Katie were alone.

“What? Make cookies? Of course you do,” Juliet said. Katie's cookies had been perfect, so what was this about?

“You do it better.” Katie was angry now. “You do everything better!” she cried. “You do everything perfectly. Like the eyes. You always have the right color. Your eyes are always the right color.”

Juliet couldn't believe it. She hated that she had chosen a blue eye. She thought that Katie had been creative, and she had been right, and dull, and boring.

“You're beautiful,” Katie whispered.

How strange, Juliet thought. How very, very strange.

She touched her sister's arm, gently this time, and said, “It's funny, but I've been thinking that you were the beautiful one. You're so pretty and cute, and I'm so big and, well, unsure about everything.”

Katie started to laugh then, because she was unsure about everything too, and now they could be unsure together. After a moment Juliet laughed too, and everything was all right.

The next day was Christmas and it was fine and warm and they were friends again.

Her parents gave her money for Christmas so that she could go to Canada, and she felt lucky to have parents who supported her comings and goings.

T
he next day she went back to work.

Cam wasn't there when she came in, and she was glad. She picked up the phone and called the lab and gave them the reference number for the blood sample.

“The bird was injected with a very strong tranquilizer called chlorpromazine,” the technician said.

Juliet corrected her. “It was an implant,” she said. “Does Cam know?”

“He knows,” the technician said. “He called last week.”

Juliet thanked the woman and hung up the phone. Two minutes later it rang. It was Cam. He was calling from the phone in his van.

“Could you come?” he asked. “I need your help.”

“Where are you?”

“I'm in the park, by Medicine Lake, and I've got a very sick mountain goat here. The van broke down and I need you to come and get us.”

Juliet wrote down the exact location and drove toward the park.

She found him easily. He was kneeling on the ground just where he had said he would be. The goat was lying beside him. He was very still, but when Juliet touched him gently, he stirred and tried to look up at her. He was very heavy, probably 250 pounds, and it was not easy to carry him to the jeep, but together she and Cam managed it.

Juliet drove back to the office slowly. They carried the goat inside and placed him gently on the table. He was almost frozen, and so they covered him with blankets and warmed him until he was fully awake. When he opened his eyes they could see that he was in pain.

“Something's probably broken,” Juliet said. “I wonder what happened to him.”

“A fall, probably,” Cam said. “A bad fall from the looks of it, but not bad enough to make him immobile. Somehow he made it to the road before he dropped.”

They took turns running their hands through his shaggy, yellowish-white coat, searching for a break. When Juliet examined his right rear leg he jerked in pain and they knew they had found it.

They anesthetized the goat, set the bone without speaking, and moved the goat into a confined recovery area. Then they went into the other room and sat in chairs on opposite sides of the room.

“I called your home first. Your father said you were back. How was the trip?”

“It was all right, I guess. I learned a few things.”

“Like what?”

“I learned.....” She hesitated. She didn't want to tell him, but then she did tell him, slowly, and when she was finished she knew that she had done the right thing.

“Someone's putting implants in those birds,” she said. “Some of them are being tranquilized, and some are filled with amphetamines. The question is why.”

Cam stayed up with the goat that night, and when Juliet returned the next morning the goat was awake and annoyed that he couldn't walk. Once when Juliet turned her back for a moment, the goat pulled himself up and seemed quite surprised that one of his back legs didn't work. He teetered for a moment before he tried to move, and then, when he did, he crumpled and settled back into a corner with eyes filled with terror.

But he was a determined creature, and so he tried again and again until his confusion and terror changed to impatience.

“Give it time,” Juliet told him softly. He hobbled wildly until Cam sedated him.

“I'd like to go to Alberta tomorrow,” Juliet said.

“All right.”

“Don't you care?”

Cam shrugged and smiled an understanding smile. “Of course I care,” he said. “But you need to go, and I can't stop you. I'll tell you when I can't handle the animals without you, and when that happens you'll probably still want to go, and then you'll stay and hate me, but until then it's all right.”

He's changed, Juliet thought. He's become nice, and for the first time she realized that she was coming to like him. But all she could think to say was, “Oh.”