Foodchain (24 page)

DAY TWENTY-TWO

The morning sun undulated into a white sky, sending temperatures into triple digits when Frank finally slipped away. He wheeled the long black car away from Sturm’s ranch, hunched over the wheel, joints in his neck and shoulders full of ground glass, everything coming through the tinted windows bleached and cracked, like bones picked clean and left to lie in the sun. When he realized he’d just blown straight through the highway intersection without stopping, without even slowing down, he decided he needed someplace to park.

He pulled off the road straight into an overgrown almond orchard, plowing silently through the three-foot grass into the center. Branches bursting with dry leaves and clusters of brittle almonds scraped the roof of the car. He killed the engine but left the keys in the ignition and slid down, relaxing into the corner of the seat and door, so that he could just see above the dashboard. He slipped into fitful sleep, too tired to even look for the bottle of rum under the seat. The shadows in the orchard were deep and dark and cool and Frank slept for six hours straight.

* * * * *

When he got back to the vet hospital, Sturm’s truck was parked out front. Frank swore, and fumbled under the seat for the bottle as he pulled around back to stash the car in its usual hiding spot in the barn.

He took a few strong gulps of rum, opened door to the aisle that ran through the center of the barn and found Sturm and Theo looking at the monkeys. Frank had gotten sick and tired of listening the monkey’s screeching and chattering all night every night, so he and Pine had lined the stall next to the rhino in yet more chicken wire. They sawed off a few thick limbs from the eucalyptus trees out back and nailed them crossways in the cage, giving the monkeys something to climb and hang off.

“Wasn’t sure if you were gonna make it today,” Sturm said. The blisters on his shoulders had deflated into slackened bubbles of dead skin.

Frank started to explain how he had nearly fallen asleep at the wheel, but Sturm cut him off. “Hope it doesn’t happen again. These animals need you to look after ’em. That’s what I’m paying you for, let’s not forget that. Understood?”

Frank nodded.

“Good. Okay then,” Sturm clapped his hands together and the monkeys jumped and scolded him in chittering screeches that echoed throughout the barn. Theo laughed and clapped his own hands. The monkeys flinched the first few times, but then got used to the sound. Theo took to kicking the wire to get a reaction from the monkeys. The rhino ignored them and calmly dragged more alfalfa through the bars of its feeder.

“Pick out a wild one,” Sturm told his son. “We want one that’ll give ’em a good run for their money.”

“That one. The big one, up on top,” Theo said, pointing and grinning, like he was choosing some exotic new toy.

Sturm turned to Frank. “Get it on out of there, then.”

Frank got a scoop of dry dog food, undid the cage latch, and cracked the door open just enough to fit his arm and the scoop inside. He dumped the dog food into the trough and waited until all the monkeys had swarmed over the trough. From the far cupboard, he grabbed an apple and sliced it into wedges with Sturm’s pocket knife. Sifting through the jumping mass of black fur, he found the big spider monkey Theo had pointed out, and carefully nudged it out of the rest of the pack with the toe of his boot. He kneeled quickly, bringing one of the apple wedges up the monkey’s face, instantly catching its attention. The furrowed brows popped open in excitement and the monkey snatched the wedge from Frank’s hand. It attacked the sweet white flesh like a wood chipper going after Styrofoam. Frank didn’t waste time; the other monkeys were clambering over him, reaching for the rest of the apple. He tossed most of the pieces into the corner to distract them, and grabbed the big monkey by the scruff of the neck.

He carried it outside, following Sturm and Theo. The monkey, fifteen pounds of sinuous, snake-like muscles, twisted and squirmed in Frank’s hands, rolling its head and reaching for his arm with all four limbs as well as its tail. He gave it another apple wedge to keep it quiet.

Sturm had a wooden kitchen chair waiting on the lawn in the sun. Theo carried his father’s heavy red toolbox from the back of the pickup over to the chair and thunked it down in the dry grass. He pulled a roll of twine from the toolbox and tied one end to the back of the chair. Looking up at Frank, he said, “Any day now.”

“What’s the plan here?” Frank asked.

“We’re gonna make this monkey famous,” Sturm said, fiddling with Theo’s digital camera.

“Let’s go,” Theo snapped. “Hold it on the chair.”

“You’re just taking a picture?” Frank asked.

“What the hell else are we gonna do with it? Play checkers?”

“Knock it off,” Sturm said. “Let’s get this done. We still have tents to set up and a thousand other goddamn little things.”

Frank could feel his insides clenching up as if he was afraid something might break loose and come washing down the insides of his thighs, blood pooling in his boots, but he knelt down and held the monkey on the chair. His scalp hurt, and he realized that the top of his shaved head was sunburnt. Theo looped the twine around the monkey’s right arm and cinched it down tight to a chair leg.

The monkey made a sound like a cat in a pneumatic press, sending ice picks marching up Frank’s spine.

Theo didn’t pay any attention; he yanked the twine tight across the monkey’s chest, tying it against the back of the chair. He repeated the process with the monkey’s left arm, then criss-crossed the twine back and forth, securing the screaming, wriggling animal to the chair.

Theo grabbed a pair of ring pliers from the toolbox and a length of copper wire. “Which ear, dad?”

“Both. Easier to spot.”

Theo threaded the wire into the pliers, positioned the pinchers over the monkey’s right earlobe, and squeezed. The monkey, now the owner of a bright copper earring, shrieked and bucked against the twine, but couldn’t move much; Theo had tied it down tight. After a moment, though, the monkey calmed down a little, just shaking its head violently back and forth, as if trying to dislodge a bug in its ear. Theo threaded another length of copper wire into the pliers and pierced the monkey’s other ear.

Frank went to untie the monkey, but Theo stopped him with, “Slow down—we’re not done yet.” He stepped back, eyeballing his work. “Dunno how we’re gonna get that vest on—we’d have to untie it,” he called to his father.

“Hell with it, then. Just get the hat and boots.”

Theo ran to the truck, came back with an old-fashioned bowler hat and a pair of children’s cowboy boots. The monkey hissed at him when he tried to slide the boots over the long, finger-like toes. Theo just got hold of one of the new earrings and yanked upwards, saying, “Sit still, you little fucker. Sit!” He eventually got the boots over the monkey’s feet, although one was on sideways. He jammed the bowler hat down over the monkey’s skull, down to its eyes.

It glared out from under the short brim, fingers waggling like a bug’s legs, tail whipping back and forth, and made worried chirps.

Sturm stepped closer, squinting into the viewfinder. He bent over, lowering the camera to get it level with the monkey’s head. He rocked back and forth like a cobra for a few moments, trying to get the best angle. Finally, he said, “Say cheese,” and took the picture. “You can put him back now,” he said to Frank.

Frank took off the hat, the boots, got a good hold of the scruff of the monkey’s neck like a wild cat, and broke the twine. After unwrapping the rest of the twine, Frank carried the monkey back to the cage. The monkey tried pulling on the copper rings, but quickly gave up when it discovered that they caused pain. After a few seconds, it seemed to have forgotten about them altogether and went scurrying up into the eucalyptus branches where it loudly warned Frank that he’d best not mess with it again.

* * * * *

When Frank got back out to the lawn, Sturm said, “Let’s go see my girls.” Frank followed him inside, leaving Theo to pack up the toolbox and chair.

Over fifty pounds of ground lamb had been thawing in the refrigerator. Each lioness required at least eleven pounds of fresh meat a day. Frank unwrapped each five-pound brick and dumped equal amounts of the pale meat into five gallon-buckets and carried them out to the lioness cages. Sturm knelt in front of his two lionesses, murmuring to them, curling his fingers through the diagonal openings in the wire.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Frank warned. “They’ll take your fingers off if they want.”

“Not my girls. Oh no. They’re good girls, aren’t you?” Sturm whispered to the lionesses. They regarded him with half-lidded eyes, tails sluggishly flopping about, slapping unenthusiastically at flies.

Frank worked his way down the corridor, dumping food into the cages, but when he reached Sturm’s lionesses, Sturm stopped him with one finger. “No. No food. They’re gonna go hungry. For tonight, at least. Tomorrow, it’s gonna be up to them.”

“I wouldn’t let them go too long. They—”

Sturm stood suddenly, like a deadly serious Jack-in-the-box, popping up and stepping in uncomfortably close; Frank could smell the man’s sweat. The frozen gray eyes drilled into Frank’s soul. “I’m paying you for one thing, and one thing only. Your job is very simple. That’s taking care of these animals until I deem it time for them to suit my needs. These animals are mine, not yours. They are mine to do with as I see fit. I’ve been sensing a little…hesitation in your work.” Sturm stepped in even closer, the toes of his boots touching Frank’s boots. “Suppose I wanted to shoot that monkey just now. Any problems with that, doc?”

Frank shook his head.

“Suppose I take a notion to cut off all them long fingers and toes with wire snips?”

Frank shrugged. “It’s your animal. My job is to keep ’em alive until you see fit.”

“Not just keep ’em alive, son. I want them taken care of. This is their last days. We have an obligation here. These animals deserve nothing but our respect. Thought I made that clear the other night.”

“You did.”

“So what’s our problem here?”

Frank shook his head, said, “There’s no problem here.”

“I hope not. Then the next time me or my son tells you do something, you damn well do it, you got that?”

DAY TWENTY-THREE

Sturm blew the ditch first thing in the morning. It was kind of anti-climactic, really. A whole hell of a lot of smoke spit out of each end of the drainage pipe, and some cracks appeared in the asphalt, but that was it.

“Goddamnit,” Sturm said.

Everyone else expected a much bigger explosion. Frank, Chuck, and Theo were hunkered down behind the pickups parked a hundred yards back up the highway. Jack and Pine were off somewhere for Sturm. Smoke unfolded in the still air. Nobody said anything else.

“Shit, shit. Shit,” Sturm said. “Chuck. Go park that sonofabitch in the middle of the goddamn highway. Park it right on top of the drainage ditch.”

“You got it,” Chuck said, and jogged down the highway, all that slack skin swaying and jumping. After a while, his figure got blurry in the heat rising from the asphalt that appeared a deep dark black under the morning sun, until it simply melted into the highway.

Sweat wormed its way down’s Frank’s temple, and he pulled his cap off and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He was pissed. Annie wandered through his mind, swinging those hips of hers, heavy breasts swaying, muscles gently contracting in her strong brown legs. As always, he didn’t know what the hell he was going to say. This was a waste of his time, being out here. A slow rage had been simmering in his veins all night, but he stood at the front of the vehicles with everyone else, facing the sun, and gave it his best practiced smile.

Sturm drank coffee, sitting on the front bumper of his truck. He tucked a pinch of Copenhagen snuff the size of a walnut into his lower lip. He grinned, black specks of tobacco seeping up into his teeth like tiny ants. He spit a gallon of black saliva at the dust as if it was a declaration of war.

Far down through the heat waves they heard a motor crank to life. It was the Caterpillar. And apparently, it was the signal Sturm had been waiting for. “Let’s go,” he said, and jumped into his pickup. Everyone followed.

They came upon the Caterpillar in the middle of the highway, tilted nearly sideways, caught in mid-lurch, haphazardly shoved at the sky as if it had twisted an ankle. The engine was silent. Apparently, Chuck had driven the backhoe onto the cracks in the asphalt, and the pipe underneath had collapsed, flinging him out of the tractor. He was off in the sand on the side of the highway; a thin line of blood trickled down his forehead into an eye socket full of blood. But it looked like he was too busy holding his left knee utterly still to worry about a bleeding scalp wound.

“Perfect,” Sturm shouted. “Don’t move anything. Leave it right in the middle of the road.” He turned back to his son and Frank. “Frank, you and Theo set up those sawhorses. Make sure them lights are blinking.”

“Which side?” Theo asked.

“Did your mother drop you when you were born? What side. Use your head.”

Frank had already carried two of the sawhorses to the other side of the backhoe, so anyone driving into Whitewood would see the blinking lights and the orange sawhorses. After a moment, Theo followed him, and they arranged a straight line of sawhorses, blocking all traffic.

“Mr. Sturm?” Chuck sounded like he might burst into tears any minute. “I…I don’t think I can walk. Can’t see real good, either.”

“Goddamnit.” Sturm stood motionless for a moment, hands on hips, staring at the horizon. “This is most inconvenient, Chuck. You do understand that we have hunters arriving today.” Sturm acted like an overworked parent scolding a toddler in the midst of throwing a fit. “Goddamnit.”

“I’m sorry. I really tried—”

Sturm snapped his fingers. “Frank! Take him on back to the vet hospital. Fix him up. If it’s real bad, then we’ll figure out how to get him over to the hospital in Alturas.”

Frank came around the backhoe and found a handkerchief in Sturm’s pickup. “Here. Hold this to your head there,” he held it out to Chuck. “Scalp wounds bleed like a bitch. You keep bleeding like that, you’re gonna pass out.” Frank thought all this was funny as hell, and he struggled to keep the laugh out of his voice.

As Frank pulled Chuck up and helped him limp across the highway to Chuck’s pickup, he realized that it probably would have been a lot less painful to simply bring the pickup over to Chuck, instead of making him lurch at his own pickup as if they were being chased by that tiger. But hell, watching Chuck try to move was more entertaining.

* * * * *

The steady chugging of a diesel engine reached them A square box grew out of the heat waves down the highway, coming into focus as a beige Winnebago.

The RV was so old they could hear the driver manually shifting down as it rolled up to the scene of the accident. It was towing an even older horse trailer, one that had been modified recently. Heavy bars had been haphazardly welded across any open space more than a foot wide.

Frank wondered what the hell kind of horse was inside.

The driver got out. He looked like a primitive voodoo doll made from horsehair; long and flowing in some places, short tufts of black bristles in others. Long, curly gray hair hung along the ears, brutally parted straight down the middle, as if it was a forest break, seared into the landscape by smoke jumpers. A black beard hung down past his ribcage. Apart from the sun blasted forehead and the wrinkles surrounding his eyes, the only other skin Frank could see was the palms of the man. And the soles of his feet.

The driver was barefoot. The pavement was hot enough to sear pork chops, yet he acted like he was walking on cool evening grass. He wore black leather pants. A safari shirt. A safari jacket the color of an egg gone bad in the sun. With fringes.

“Y’all have an accident?” He had an accent, maybe Texas or some other southern state, all of the words smeared together in an easy drawl.

“Nah. We were just tickling this Caterpillar to hear it laugh,” Sturm said. He faced the man from the other side of the highway crack, black boots wide, Carhart jeans tucked into the boots, held up by red suspenders, hands on his hips, shoulders square, black Cowboy hat secure.

“Looking fer a Mr. Horace Sturm,” the man said.

“You’re talking to him.”

The man smiled. “Name’s Girdler. Talked to you a while back. Believe you mentioned something about a hunt.”

“Believe I did, yessir.”

“Well then, I’m ready for some shooting.”

* * * * *

Sturm and Girdler drove the RV back up the highway to the locked gate, going the long way into town, while Frank drove Chuck back to the vet office. Chuck whimpered with every jolt and bump, barking out at one point, “Are you fucking trying to hit every goddamn hole?”

Frank hoped it wasn’t obvious. “Hell no. Sorry.”

Frank half-dragged Chuck into the hospital and left him on one of the waiting room chairs. He prepared a syringe of morphine and sunk it deep into the vein in the crook of Chuck’s elbow, just to shut him up for a while. Frank thought about breaking the needle off in Chuck’s arm, but figured that might be pushing things too far. Chuck gave a long, satisfied sigh, “Ah fuck yes…” and limply slid off the chair onto the floor.

Sturm and Girdler came in the back door, laughing and shouting as if they’d been pals for years. Sturm immediately grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge. Frank met them in the back examining room.

Sturm grabbed Frank by the shoulders, hugging him close, beaming, saying, “Like you to meet one of my most valuable employees. This is Frank, our vet. He’s taking care of all our animals; hell, he knows these cats inside and out.”

“Hi.” Frank stuck his hand out.

“Howdy,” Girdler extended his own paw; it felt like grabbing a leather glove wrapped in badger hair bristles. Up close, Frank could see that hair covered nearly every inch of Girdler’s skin. The man had hair down to his cracked, yellow toenails; actually the hair surrounded the toenail, growing right down to the callused bottoms of the toes. Girdler’s mother must have been raped by Bigfoot.

“Let’s go meet my girls,” Sturm said.

Frank held the door to the middle section open for Sturm and Girdler. Sturm strode briskly past the first four cats, simply saying, “These here will be available to hunt very soon. We’re getting ’em healthy. Later, if you wish, you can have your pick. But these two, back here, these are my girls—Princess and Lady.” Frank blinked, unaware that Sturm had already named his pets.

All of the lionesses lay in the far corners, but where the other lionesses seemed bored, if not downright sleepy, Princess and Lady were alert, anxious, as if a hot, vibrating wire had been laced through their spines. Sturm explained, “They haven’t eaten in two days. Saving ’em for something special tonight. The evening’s entertainment, you could say.”

Frank expected Sturm to launch into the usual bullshit about his magnificent predators and the pure essence of nature and all that, and was surprised when Sturm asked Girdler, “Will this facility adequately address your needs?”

Girdler shook the corner post of the cages, noting how it was set into the concrete. The cats recoiled, folded into themselves, flat against the concrete. They didn’t seem to like looking at the hairy man. Maybe it was his scent.

Girdler’s tongue came out and found an errant lock of beard at the corner of his mouth, pulled it back in and sucked on it for a while. “Don’t know rightly. Gonna be tight, that’s for sure.” He bit down on the lock of hair, chewed on it for a while, and spit out the pieces, like dark flecks of tobacco. “Maybe…if it was just a night. But hell. I may just be here a while. A week, maybe more. Providing you got plenty else to hunt.”

“Oh we got plenty to hunt, that’s for damn sure,” Sturm said. “Your barrel’ll melt ‘fore you run out of things to shoot. If this place won’t hold it, then hell, we’ll just have to find something that will. And if we can’t find something, then we’ll just have to build something. That simple.” He glanced at Frank. “Mr. Girdler’s got his own animal to hunt.” His voice got proud, awed. “Wait until you see it. Big as a goddamn mountain. A genuine grizzly bear. In my town.”

“Kodiak, technically. Same damn thing as a grizzly really, just a tad bigger, from an island off the coast of Alaska,” Girdler clarified.

Frank’s hoped the bear wasn’t a relative of Girdler’s. “Is it out in the trailer?”

“Yup. Got him doped up so he’ll be asleep for a day or two.”

“When he does wake up, we’re gonna need some more tranquilizers. No question. How big is this animal?”

“Around eleven hundred pounds,” Girdler said, pride coating his voice like warm syrup. “And over ten feet long.”

“Then yeah, we’ll have to figure some other place to keep it. No way it can stay here. It’ll go through this chain-link fence in a heartbeat,” Frank said. “We’re taking a hell of a chance with keeping the cats here as it is.”

“He’s not dangerous, not really,” Girdler said. “I’ve had him since a cub. I call him Bo-Bo,” he said sheepishly, then got defensive. “Well, he was just the cutest damn thing. Bought him off a zoo in Kansas. They couldn’t afford to feed him. Hell, I can barely afford to feed him. He eats 80 pounds a day in the summer, mostly blueberries and squash. He loves salmon. Thank the good Lord he sleeps most of the winter.”

Sturm looked at Frank. Frank knew what he was thinking. They had just about cleaned out the meat from the freezer behind the barn, and Frank wasn’t sure where or how Sturm was going to find more. He was wondering how in the hell they were going to scrape together 80 pounds of vegetables and berries. Forget salmon. The bear could eat lamb or hamburger just like the cats or it would go without meat. And that 80 pounds, that was just for one day. Sturm was wondering how they were going to feed this thing for a week or more.

“Bo-Bo’s just like a big ol’ puppy dog. Throw him in a corral. He’ll be just fine.”

“No disrespect intended here, but there’s no goddamn way I can just let an eleven hundred pound grizzly bear wander around my town,” Sturm said. “At least, not until you’re ready to hunt.”

Girdler pulled on his beard like he wanted to make sure it was still attached.

“You sure you want to shoot this bear of yours?” Frank asked.

Sturm shot him a warning look, but Girdler said, “Sure as I’m standing here, son. Shit, I would’ve shot him long time ago, but I wanted him to get as big as possible for the hide.”

“And the teeth,” Sturm added.

“Hell yes. The teeth too.” Girdler found some more hair to chew on. “Just couldn’t bring myself to shoot him in the pen. Didn’t seem right somehow. So when I heard about this particular hunt you folks got going here, I thought…well, this was just what I was waiting for.”

Sturm finished his beer. “Then we need to find a place to keep it. Let’s get my girls moved—I want them awake and hungry for tonight. Then we’ll go for a ride. See what we can find.”

* * * * *

By noon, Lady and Princess were sleeping safely inside their distorted, bulging cage that grew out of the back of Sturm’s barn like a cancerous spider web. One door opened into the barn; the other into a large corral. Before they had left, Jack and Pine had drilled iron poles into the posts and lined the whole corral with hog panels, creating a square cage, nearly a quarter acre total, with walls over eight feet tall.

But this corral, this new cage, this wasn’t for the grizzly. It had been built without Frank, so Frank could only guess that it was some kind of exercise yard for Sturm’s new pets. Frank wondered if he should mention that eight feet of fence wouldn’t hold the lionesses. Hell, if Lady and Princess had a mind to, they’d be over that fence in less time than it took for Sturm to spit.