The Animals: A Novel (5 page)

Don’t get too excited, Bill said, smiling. He patted the bear twice on the head and pulled his hand from the opening, stepping back from the door. You ready for breakfast?

Majer looked up at him, still panting, his lips curled in a wide grin.

Dang, you’re a cheap date, Bill said. I’ll go get it. We got salmon from BTC.

He walked to the barn and opened the big sliding door. Straw dust circling in beams of light. He went to the bank of refrigerators and freezers and opened one and extracted a whole salmon and two heads of lettuce and dropped them both into a bucket and then returned to Majer’s enclosure and slid all of it into his metal feed box. Majer stood and watched him all the while, or seemed to, his blind eyes following as he moved, standing in his great silver-tipped bulk beyond the fence until Bill pulled the heavy counterweight so that the second gate slid up along its track. Breakfast time, Bill said, and the bear stepped through to eat, his bulk rocking slowly from side to side with the motion of his body.

The air’s chill was deep and sharp. Winter was coming. In the mornings along the birch path: bubbles flowing under shells of November ice. They would need to pull the water into the heated sections of the enclosures soon, for already the first task of the morning was breaking loose the bright clear windows that encased each animal’s drinking trough. How those sharp-edged shields glowed in the morning sunlight. Rime ice curling the office windows. Hoarfrost boxing the fence wires. By late morning the bunched needles would drip sunlight onto dark soggy earth, but there would be fewer such days now. He knew it. The animals knew it. All of them, in their ways, preparing for the snow. Bedding for the martens and for Zeke. The raptors scratching about in their nests, lining them with rags and tufts of cotton and dry leaves. Even Majer, despite his age, swelling in size, putting on the fat-weight that would get him through the four or five months of his hibernation. Soon he would disappear into the cave at the back of his enclosure. Months in the snowdark, not moving, his heartbeat and body temperature slipping down and down until it was nearly indistinguishable from death, silent in that darkness of hibernation for the months of the heaviest snows.

The lesson is that we all go to ground. Some by slowing. Some by quickening. Some by consuming more and doing less. Some by curling into their own dark interior places. Dying into the winter’s cold and clambering out of our dens when the snowstorms break and spring begins. Thin green seed leaves from black earth. Dwarf shoots. Spiral scales. The fascicles curl from the bud, and we clamber out of our dens sniffing the air for the scent of a meal.

Next month, he would close to the public for the winter and send the volunteers home, opening up again once the roads were clear enough for day-to-day movement from town. Grace would come up when the weather allowed it, sometimes in her truck, occasionally via snowmobile, but for long stretches he would be alone with the animals and the snow and no sound but that which they made, sometimes for many days. The martens streaking across white hills. The owl peering out at him from her perch. The mountain lion’s silent flowing motion. The wolf’s yellow eyes watching him through the black trunks of the big pines. A geography of snowed-over silence. Elk would come down through the trees on their way to the meadows in the south, their calls echoing up from those blank white plains. And moose on the river road.

For the first four years he had anticipated those months of isolation with a mixture of relief and dread. Now was the time he looked forward to most: the silence of it, the rhythm of those short days, waking at dawn and coming down the birch path, the big trees frosted over and so very quiet, his snowshoes crunching against the ice. Of the path itself, he had once told Grace that it was like something out of a fairy tale. He had thought of it that way when he was a child and had first visited his uncle David and when he returned so many years later the path from the trailer to the animals seemed even more so. My god that you could walk through such a landscape. My god that such a landscape existed anywhere but in your dreams. And yet here it was. Were a fox to step out from behind the trees and speak in human words, or a raven to descend wearing a suit coat and a top hat, you would not have been surprised. Worlds overlapping.

He unlocked the office and started the coffeepot and then unlocked the tiny gift shop down by the parking lot and then the medical room and finally stood in front of the wolf enclosure once more. He thought he had seen Zeke when he had turned up the path from the gift shop, the wolf’s body a quick blur against the fence line, but there was no sign of him at all now. Though he waited there for the animal’s appearance, the wolf did not come. Bill resigned himself to that fact and returned to the bare, boxlike construction trailer that he used as an office, pouring himself a mug of coffee and then sitting for a time looking at invoices he knew he could not currently pay, a process he had hardly started before Bess arrived, knocking twice on the office door and then opening it. Morning, she said.

Morning.

She stood in the doorway, a woman perhaps ten years older than he was and whom he had hired soon after his uncle had died because he
knew he would be unable to run the rescue on his own and because he had begun talking to the animals in earnest, talking and listening, a habit that sometimes made him doubt his sanity.

There’s coffee, he said.

Sounds good.

His words were her cue to enter the office trailer and pour herself a cup and begin going over the day’s schedule with him: the feedings, the turkey vulture’s antibiotics, some planned maintenance on the lower fence, the building of a new raptor enclosure, which volunteers they would have that day and which they would not. But instead she stood there unmoving near the closed door. So … uh … what happened? she said.

With what?

Last night. You left in a hurry.

Moose, he said.

In town?

Down near Ponderay. Hit by a pickup.

He did not want to talk about it but there it was. He told her what had happened and when he was done she said nothing for a long time, standing there in the doorway in silence. He did not look at her, kept his eyes focused on the paperwork on the metal surface of the desk. At last she said, simply, Awful.

He nodded. Well, he said, let’s do the schedule.

She moved forward into the trailer and they went over the day’s routine just as they might have without the moose. She reminded him she was taking two of the eagles out to an elementary school in Sandpoint later that morning and he told her he would help her load the bird. Then she nodded and stepped out the door, the coffee cup steaming into the chill air.

He returned to the trailer in the late morning. The plastic thermometer that hung by its door read just under thirty degrees, but the sky was bright and clear and so there had been a few visitors when they opened the gate at ten: a family of three on vacation from somewhere farther west, and two women, perhaps mother and daughter, neither younger than sixty. What do you think, old man? he said to the bear when the women started up the path.

The bear looked at him, swinging its nose up the fence.

That’s gonna be us one day. Old men stumbling around. You want a grape?

The bear’s lips curled in a smile again. Bill removed a ziplock from his jacket pocket. Don’t tell anyone I’m giving you treats for no good reason, he said. He slipped a grape through the fence. Majer took it carefully in his distended lips, one after another until the bag was empty. I’m serious about keeping this secret, Bill said. You know the rule: Don’t feed the bears.

Majer sat looking at him, or at least looking in his direction, the bear’s eyes filmed in milk and Bill returning that vacant stare. A blind bear in a cage. You can feel the tug of the heart in those gray pools. It is the pull of other worlds within this one, where time and memory and vision have meanings you cannot begin to understand.

All right, now, Bill said. Grace’s coming this week to look at you, so you’d better not be cranky with her.

The bear’s head rocked slowly from side to side, a thin stream of drool suspended in a silver strand from his lip.

I’m off to pay more bills. If you all would just stop eating, this whole thing would get a lot cheaper.

He slid off the stump. Below him, an olive-green SUV had appeared in the parking lot and a man in a similarly colored uniform had just stepped out onto the gravel. Shit, Bill said. He looked around quickly and when he saw Chuck coming down the path he said, Hey, go find Bess. The new Fish and Game guy’s here.

Gotcha, Chuck said, turning on his heel and heading back in the direction from which he had come.

The officer had passed through the public gate below and Bill walked down to meet him, his jaws clenched. Morning, he said.

Morning. He was older than Bill, perhaps fifty, thin and fit with salt-and-pepper hair and a dark mustache. His official title, the title on the business card Bill had been handed a month earlier when the man first walked up the path, was District Conservation Officer, but Bill thought of him as a game warden. Around his torso was zipped a down vest that matched the rest of his uniform.

It’s Steve, right?

Steve Colman, the warden said. He reached his hand out, and Bill took it gravely.

Right, Bill said. What can I do for you?

Just came by to talk about a couple things.

What things?

Well, that moose hit down by Ponderay for one. Sheriff says you dispatched it.

Bill looked at him. Their breathing was visible as white smoke upon the air. Yeah, he said.

Well, it creates a mess of paperwork when a citizen does it on their own. Better if you could just call me next time. I told the sheriff the same thing.

Bill stood staring at him, saying nothing. Having the warden there at all sent a thin shiver of nervousness through him. The badge. The sidearm. The authority he seemed to assume.

Anyway, let’s say we just look the other way on that, this one time. This is assuming next time you’ll call me if something like this comes up again.

It’s not like I did it for fun, Bill said.

Why did you do it at all?

Someone had to.

I get that but why you?

He shrugged now, and when the warden spoke again it was into the long drift of silence that had risen between them.

All right, all right, he said, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender. Behind him, Cinder, the rescue’s resident mountain lion, watched them both, her one undamaged eye expressionless, outsize paws resting on the stone beneath her head. Look, that’s not even the real reason I came out here, the warden said. I need to talk to you more about all that permitting stuff.

I was afraid you were gonna say that.

Like I told you before, that’s the job. Part of it anyway.

Bill thought the warden might say something more but there was nothing and so Bill said, I guess we’d better head up to the office. He turned and walked back up the hill then, the warden behind him, Bess appearing at a distance, a look of concern upon her face. The animals were all at their fences now, pacing, watching them as they came up the trail between the enclosures: the mountain lion first and then the badgers and raccoons, the raptors hopping about on their perches. It’s all right, Bill said to them. He expected the warden to comment but again there was nothing. Farther up the trail, Bill could see Majer’s back as the bear moved toward the rear of the enclosure, a vast mountain sinking slowly from view.

You want a coffee or something? Bill said as they entered the office.

No coffee for me, thanks. The warden sat down immediately and Bill refilled his cup and then sat at the desk, the coffee curling steam.

Well, the warden said, let me just get to it then. We’ve got some real immediate concerns out here.

What kind?

I don’t even know where to start. You’re operating what’s essentially an illegal facility.

How’s that?

You’ve got to be licensed to run a zoo.

It’s not a zoo. It’s a wildlife rescue.

I think you might be missing my point, the warden said. His face looked pained and he did not seem willing to meet Bill’s eyes.

No, I get it. You’re talking about some kind of paperwork thing? Like a permit?

It’s a bit more involved than that.

That’s fine, Bill said. Let us know what you need us to fill out and we’ll start working on it.

It’s not really that simple, the warden said. I mean, look, you’ve got two federally protected species here. Grizzlies and wolves fall under US Fish and Wildlife.

So what does that mean?

Means Department of Interior.

So we’re talking about more paperwork?

No, the warden said. And then, I don’t know. The thing is, you can’t— He took a breath. Look, it’s my understanding that the grizzly wasn’t born in captivity. Do I have that right?

My uncle bought him from a gas station.

Where?

Bill almost said, Montana, but caught himself. Just a few miles north of here. Orphaned, I think.

See, that’s the problem. If that bear wasn’t born in captivity what you have is a big game animal. And a wild one at that. That’s going to be an issue at the federal level.

Bill smiled as if the warden was making a joke of some kind. Majer’s about as wild as a poodle.

That may be, but the law’s pretty clear on what can and can’t be put in a cage in the state of Idaho. And that’s even clearer if we’re talking about a federally protected species like wolves and grizzlies.

Majer’s lived in captivity all his life.

But he wasn’t born in captivity. See? That’s the distinction.

Bill sat looking at him, not speaking for a long time. Sure he was, he said at last. Yeah, I just forgot. That’s what my uncle said. The gas station guys bred him or something.

We’d need some kind of proof of that but there are lots of other issues here.

Like?

Like I know the wolf just came in a couple of years ago. Same problem, really. Federally protected species.

Yeah, you keep saying that, Bill said. But what am I supposed to do with him?