Panic

Panic Page 9

They entered the prettiest kitchen Heather had ever seen. Even Nat’s kitchen didn’t compare. The walls were cream and yellow; the cupboards tawny wood, bleached nearly white from the sun, which poured through two large windows. The counters were spotless. No ants here. Against one wall were shelves arranged with blue-and-white pottery and small porcelain figurines: miniature horses, cats, donkeys, and pigs. Heather was almost afraid to move, like one step in the wrong direction might cause everything to shatter.

“Tea?” Anne asked. Heather shook her head. She didn’t know anyone who drank tea in real life—only British people in TV miniseries.

Anne filled a kettle and plunked it on the stove. “We moved here from Chicago.”

“Really?” Heather burst out. The farthest she had ever been from Carp was Albany. Once on a school trip, and once when her mom had a court date because she’d been driving with a suspended license. “What’s Chicago like?”

“Cold,” Anne said. “Freeze your balls off ten months out of the year. But the other two are pure joy.”

Heather didn’t respond. Anne didn’t seem like the type who would say balls, and Heather liked her a little better for it.

“Larry and I worked in ad sales. We swore we’d make a change someday.” Anne shrugged. “Then he died, and I did.”

Once again, Heather didn’t say anything. She wanted to ask how Larry had died, and when, but didn’t know if it was appropriate. She didn’t want Anne to think she was obsessed with death or something.

When the water had boiled, Anne filled her mug and then directed Heather back through the door they had come. It was funny, walking across the yard with Anne, while the steam rose from her tea and mingled with the soft mist of morning. Heather felt like she was in a movie about a farm somewhere far away.

They rounded the corner of the house, and the dogs began to bark again.

“Shut it!” Anne said, but good-naturedly. They didn’t listen. She kept up a nonstop stream of conversation as they walked. “This one’s the feed shed”—this, as she unlocked one of the small, whitewashed sheds, pushing it open with one hand—“I try to keep everything organized so I don’t end up throwing grain to the dogs and trying to force kibble on a chick. Remember to turn off the lights before you lock up. I don’t even want to tell you what my electricity bills are like.”

“This is where the shovels and rakes go”—they were at another shed—“buckets, horseshoes, any kind of crap you find lying around that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else. Got it? Am I going too fast?”

Heather shook her head, and then, realizing Anne wasn’t looking at her, said, “No.”

She realized she wasn’t nervous anymore. She liked the feel of the sun on her shoulders and the smell of dark, wet ground everywhere. Probably some of what she was smelling was animal shit, but it actually didn’t smell that bad—just like growth and newness.

Anne showed her the stables, where two horses stood quietly in the half dark, like sentinels guarding something precious. Heather had never been so close to a horse before, and she laughed out loud when Anne gave her a carrot and instructed her to feed it to the black one, Lady Belle, and Heather felt its soft, leathery muzzle and the gentle pressure of its teeth.

“They were race horses. Both injured. Saved ’em from being shot,” Anne said as they left the stables.

“Shot?” Heather repeated.

Anne nodded. For the first time, she looked angry. “That’s what happens when they’re no good for running anymore. Owner takes a shotgun to their head.”

Anne had saved all the animals from one gruesome fate or another: the dogs and horses from death, the chickens and roosters from various diseases, when no one else had cared enough to spend the money to nurse them. There were turkeys she had saved from slaughter, cats she had rescued from the street in Hudson, and even an enormous potbellied pig named Tinkerbell, which had once been an unwanted runt. Heather couldn’t imagine that it had ever been the runt of anything.

“All she wanted was a little love,” Anne said, as they passed the pen where Tinkerbell was lolling in the mud. “That, and about a pound of feed a day.” She laughed.

Finally they came to a tall, fenced-in enclosure. The sun had finally broken free of the trees, and refracted through the rising mist, it was practically blinding. The fence encircled an area of at least a few acres—mostly open land, patches of dirt, and high grass, but some trees, too. Heather couldn’t see any animals.

For the first time all morning, Anne grew quiet. She sipped her tea, squinting in the sun, staring off through the chain-link fence. After a few minutes, Heather couldn’t stand it anymore.

“What are we waiting for?” she asked.

“Shhh,” Anne said. “Look. They’ll come.”

Heather crossed her arms, biting back a sigh. The dew had soaked through her sneakers. Her feet were too cold, and her neck was too hot.

There. There was movement by a small cluster of trees. She squinted. A large, dark mass, which she had taken for a rock, shook itself. Then it stood. And as it stood, another form emerged from the shadow of the trees, and the two animals circled each other briefly, and then loped gracefully into the sun.

Heather’s mouth went dry.

Tigers.

She blinked. Impossible. But they were still there, and coming closer: two tigers, tigers, like you would find at a circus. Massive square heads and huge jaws, bodies muscled and rippling, coats glossy in the sun.

Anne whistled sharply. Heather jumped. Both tigers swung their heads toward the sound, and Heather lost her breath. Their eyes were flat, incurious, and old—impossibly old, as though instead of looking forward, their eyes saw back to a distant past.

They ambled up to the fence, so close that Heather stepped backward, quickly, terrified. So close she could smell them, feel the heat of their bodies.

“How?” she finally managed to ask, which was not quite what she meant, but good enough. A thousand thoughts were colliding in her head.

“More rescues,” Anne said calmly. “They get sold on the black market. Sold, then abandoned when they’re too big, or put down when there’s no one to care for them.” As she spoke, she reached her hand through a gap in the fence and actually petted one of the tigers—like it was an overgrown house cat. When she saw Heather gaping, she laughed. “They’re all right once they’ve been fed,” she said. “Just don’t try and cuddle up when they’re hungry.”

“I don’t—I won’t have to go in there, will I?” Heather was rooted to the ground, paralyzed with fear and wonder. They were so big, so close. One of the tigers yawned, and she could make out the sharp curve of its teeth, white as bone.

“No, no,” Anne said. “Most of the time, I just chuck the food in through the gate. Here, I’ll show you.”

Anne walked her to the padlocked gate, which to Heather looked alarmingly flimsy. On the other side of the fence, the tigers followed—languidly, as though by coincidence. Heather wasn’t fooled, though. That’s how predators were. They sat back and waited, lured you into feeling safe, and then they pounced.

She wished Bishop were here. She did not wish Nat were here. Nat would flip. She hated big animals of any kind. Even poodles made her jumpy.

When they turned their backs on the tigers’ pen and returned to the house, Heather’s stomach started to unknot, although she still had the impression the tigers were watching her, and kept picturing their sharp claws slotting into her back.

Anne showed her where she kept all the keys to the sheds, hanging from neatly labeled hooks in the “mudroom,” as she called it, where Heather could also find spare rubber boots like the kind Anne wore, mosquito repellent, gardening shears, and suntan and calamine lotions.

After that, Heather went to work. She fed the chickens while Anne instructed her how to scatter the feed, and laughed out loud when the birds piled together, pecking frantically, like one enormous, feathered, many-headed creature.

Anne showed her how to chase the roosters back in the pen before letting out the dogs to run around, and Heather was surprised that Muppet seemed to remember her, and immediately ran several times around her ankles, as though in greeting.

Then there was mucking the stables (as Heather had suspected, this involved horse poop, but it actually wasn’t as bad as she’d thought), and brushing the horses’ coats with special, stiff-bristled brushes. Then helping Anne prune the wisteria, which had begun to colonize the north side of the house. By this time, Heather was sweating freely, even with her sleeves rolled up. The sun was high and hot, and her back ached from bending over and straightening up again.

But she was happy, too—happier than she’d been in forever. She could almost forget that the rest of the world existed, that she’d ever been dumped by Matt Hepley or made the Jump in the first place. Panic. She could forget Panic.

She was surprised when Anne called an end to the day, saying it was almost one o’clock. While Heather waited for Bishop to return for her, Anne made her a tuna sandwich with mayonnaise she’d made herself and tomatoes she’d grown in her garden. Heather was afraid to sit down at the table, since she was so dirty, but Anne set a place for her, so she did. She thought it was the best thing she’d ever eaten.

“Hey there, cowgirl,” Bishop said when Heather slid into the car. He still hadn’t changed out of his pajama pants. He made a big show of sniffing. “What’s that smell?”

“Shut up,” she said, and punched him in the arm. He pretended to wince. As Heather rolled down her window, she caught a glimpse of herself in the side mirror. Her face was red and her hair was a mess and her chest was still wet with sweat, but she was surprised to find that she looked kind of . . . pretty.

“How was it?” Bishop asked as they began thumping down the drive again. He’d gotten her an iced coffee from 7-Eleven: lots of sugar, lots of cream, just how she liked it.

She told him—about the runt pig that had ballooned to a huge size, the horses, the chickens and roosters. She saved the tigers for last. Bishop was taking a sip of her coffee and nearly choked.

“You know that’s totally illegal, right?” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “So are the pants you’re wearing. If you don’t tell, I won’t.”

“These pants?” Bishop pretended to be offended. “I wore these just for you.”

“You can take them off just for me,” Heather said, and then blushed, realizing how it sounded.

“Anytime,” Bishop said, and grinned at her. She punched him again. She was still fizzy with happiness.

It was a twenty-minute ride back to downtown Carp, if the Motel 6, the post office, and the short string of greasy shops and bars could be counted as a downtown, but Bishop claimed to have figured out a shortcut. Heather went quiet when they turned onto Coral Lake, which couldn’t have been more inaccurately named: there was no water in sight, nothing but fallen logs and patchy, burnt-bare stubs of trees, because of a fire that had raged there several years ago. The road ran parallel to Jack Donahue’s property, and it was bad luck.