Fauna (43 page)

Darius has survived for five months on the government’s leftovers. If he’s careful, he has enough to last out the year. More to the point, he made it all the way to Toronto. Not bad, considering Faye barely made it to Calgary, and Grandmother never even got that far.

Stephen has only two points of reference from which to begin: the stretch of riverbank where Coyote Cop found the wheel he used to block the den; and, perhaps two kilometres north of there, the spot where Lily and Billy discovered the coyote with the missing paw. Hurrying down the footbridge stairs, he can’t help but imagine the pair of them lying in that same bank of brush—a sweet, maltreated girl and her loyal companion, together to the bitter end.

Stephen’s in enemy territory now. Following the gloomy path, he walks carefully, quickly, upstream.

Darius must have closed his eyes, maybe even nodded off. How else to explain the suddenness with which the coyote appears? She’s made of flesh, not smoke. She can’t have come winding out of thin air.

The brush where he sits was meant to provide cover, but the animal gazes directly at him, as though he’s huddled in an open field. Those bright, inward-slanting eyes. Stepping softly, almost delicately, she positions herself between Darius and the den. He feels for the shotgun, wincing at the resulting crackle of twigs. The coyote startles him by staying put. She watches him bring the butt to his shoulder, watches him tuck his finger in against the forward trigger and sight along the barrels’ twinned extent. She doesn’t move a hair. Stands motionless as a tree, a naked outcropping of stone.

And then she sits. Still eyeing him, the coyote sits down like a contented dog.

It throws him. It’s hard to be sure, holding the creature in his sights the way he is, but he could swear her gaze has changed. Still unwavering, still unnervingly direct, it can no longer properly be called a stare. The coyote is regarding him. Mildly, terribly. For a full minute now. For what feels like his entire life.

He could shoot, if he could control his trembling enough to be sure of his aim. Or he could surprise everyone, including himself, and abandon the gun—leave it to rust away into nothing, rise up and run for his life. The only problem is his legs. A new-born feebleness has come over his lower half, from his belt-scarred buttocks down through his clenching toes. There’s an odour to the feeling, a sudden putrid waft. No, nothing so mysterious. It’s coming from his own sweat-dampened chest. The paw, resting its black pads against his heart, is starting to stink.

The coyote cocks her head. It’s quite a trick, making her meaning known like that without a single word. Darius hears a sound like a faucet coming on. Clouds of steam, the level rising inside his skull. He weighs the twelve-gauge in his hands a moment longer before turning it the right way round.

Stephen spots the den first—a giant’s dark eye embedded in the scrubby slope. And now, in the path of the den’s black gaze, a sight that makes him catch his breath. A large coyote sits staring into a clump of brush, its coat glimmering in the
breaking day. Stephen halts a stone’s throw from the scene. Tries in vain to see what it is that has the animal so entranced.

Instead, he hears.

A sliver-thin whimper from the coyote’s closed mouth. Then, from inside the leafy cover, the shotgun’s deafening blast. The blood, too, seems made of sound; it explodes from the bushes like a scream.

Finally, it’s getting light. Not many people on the streets, but it won’t be long before the city shakes itself and begins to move.

Lily could use a little more sleep. She tried to make camp again in the valley, but couldn’t seem to settle on a spot; nowhere felt hidden enough. She could go to the wrecking yard, lay the mummy bag out on the kitchen floor, or maybe in the office—there’s that squeaky old couch. She’d be safe there. Stephen would never try anything, and neither would Guy—she’s as sure of that as she ever will be. In some ways it’s a bigger risk to find herself standing here.

The neat brick path with the little twist in it. The flowering bush. The paired wicker chairs down the end of the porch. Lily takes the front steps gingerly, Billy light-footed beside her, as though they’re pulling a B and E. She swings the duffle bag from her shoulder and lays it down on the bristly brown mat.

No doorbell. She has to close a hand around the heavy brass ring, lift it and knock. Nothing for as long as she can hold her breath. Then a light coming on in the hallway, glowing yellow through the pebbled glass. Footsteps. A pause
while Kate looks through the peephole’s magnifying eye. Lily lays a hand to the door and feels the deadbolt turn in its works.

Letting himself in the wrecking yard gate, Stephen flashes again on the body in the scrub. It had no face to speak of—scarcely any head—yet he could see there were characteristics they’d shared. They were both young men, both seemingly healthy and strong.

He thought about heaving the remains up onto his shoulder, but there was nowhere to take them, no trained and capable comrade waiting to relieve him of what he’d found. The coyote had simply turned and trotted off. After standing over the body for a long moment, Stephen found himself following suit.

He enters through the office door. On his way past the desk, he comes close to checking the blog. Actually goes so far as to reach for the mouse.
Coyote Cop
. It’s like something a kid would come up with—not that
soldierboy’s
much better, even if Stephen did mostly mean it as a sad and ugly joke. What if he’d signed himself
Stephen
instead? Maybe, over time, Coyote Cop would have offered his own name in exchange.

Too late now. Too late to do anything—unless maybe he should still tell the police. It’s hard to think straight about it all, hard to be certain what’s right. He’ll see what Guy has to say when he gets up. Edal, too.

The raccoons cry out to him as he passes through his room. “I know,” he says, “you’re hungry.” No more putting it off—he’ll blend some dog food into the morning feed, begin the process of getting them weaned.

In the kitchen, he sees the note, anchored to the counter with the jar of powdered KMR.

Stephen reads the note over again, and smiles. So it’s official. His friend is in love.

They’ve been taking it easy, winding through suburbs and brick-and-board towns, bypassing the twelve-lane terror of the 401. They’re already through Shelburne, closing in on the Grey County line, when Guy leans across to open the glove compartment. The door drops down, revealing the familiar pinkish spine of a book.

“What,” Edal says, reaching for it, “you’re going to read while you drive?”

“Not me, you. Come on, there’s only one chapter left.”

Edal smiles, opening to the spot he’s marked. “The Spring Running” takes place two years after
the great fight with Red Dog
—a tale Edal missed and will have to make up
for. Mowgli has become a beautiful, formidable young man. The chapter opens with him lying on a hillside in the company of the aging panther, Bagheera. It’s the
Time of New Talk
—springtime in the jungle. Soon all his animal companions will desert him to run with their own kind.

“‘There is one day,’” Edal reads, “‘when all things are tired, and the very smells as they drift on the heavy air are old and used. One cannot explain, but it feels so. Then there is another day—to the eye nothing whatever has changed—when all the smells are new and delightful and the whiskers of the Jungle People quiver to their roots, and the winter hair comes away from their sides in long draggled locks.’”

She pauses, and Guy reaches over to lay his hand on her knee. She looks at him, and he turns to meet her look. Not for long. Just long enough.

They feel the bump together—Guy wincing, Edal letting out a strangled cry.