Dannie saw the billboard for the Owl Café and then she saw the exit and blew past it. She wanted to be in her car. There was something way out ahead of her on the horizon, either low clouds or lofty mountain peaks. They were as far off as her eyes could see, in another state or another country.
MAYOR CABRERA
He walked his sister-in-law out to his car and she lowered herself down into the passenger seat without any help. Mayor Cabrera got them going north on the old Turquoise Trail. His sister-in-law was wearing an actual outfit, a blouse and pants that matched and a coat and shoes that went together. She’d made some effort with her hair. Mayor Cabrera could tell by the way his sister-in-law looked around at the scenery that she hadn’t been up this way in a long time. She placed her hand on the dashboard, bracing herself, and Mayor Cabrera slowed down. When they were young, she’d have been egging him to go faster. She and Tam and Mayor Cabrera had spent so many hours in a car, in his old El Camino. They’d burned a whole summer chasing around the state to sites where aliens had been spotted.
At the cemetery they walked at a measured pace, browsing the tombstones. Some of these people had lived in the Old West, Mayor Cabrera thought. The Old West had not been so long ago. Mayor Cabrera asked how his sister-in-law’s chickens were doing, which was a way of asking if she was worried about the wolf. She said she couldn’t bring the chickens in at night because of the mess they’d make. She hoped there were enough of them to look out for one another, or at least raise enough racket to wake her. She seemed resigned to leave her chickens to fate, which Mayor Cabrera decided to take as a sign of sanity. She seemed a little embarrassed about the chickens, in general. If she could be embarrassed, she was rejoining the human race.
They came to the tombstone they were looking for. Mayor Cabrera had decided not to put dates on his wife’s stone. He didn’t want her hemmed in that way. There was an engraving on the stone of verbena, her favorite flower. There was a weed the landscaping crew had missed, leaning against the stone like a drunk against an alley wall. Mayor Cabrera reached down and plucked it.
His sister-in-law’s cheeks looked blanched, out in the chilly breeze. “Things have never felt real,” she said, “without her here to see them.”
Mayor Cabrera knew what she meant. The moment he was in now didn’t seem all that real. “We used to be the best people we knew,” he said. “We walked around with that. The knowledge that we were fun and tough.”
His sister-in-law’s lips became a hard line and then she said, “I remember. I remember how I was.”
The sun found its way out of the clouds and Mayor Cabrera saw that they were standing in the shade. He hadn’t visited his wife’s grave in forever but the feeling was nonetheless familiar, the uncertainty about what to feel, about whether he was there for himself or Tam, whether that mattered. Maybe it was good to feel confused. Maybe some people didn’t feel anything at the cemetery, and that had to be worse.
“I remember,” his sister-in-law repeated. “But it was easy back then.”
A small noise issued from behind them, a throat-clearing, and they turned to see an old man approach a nearby grave. He pulled a newspaper out from under his arm and rested it in front of the stone. It wasn’t yellowed or stiff, the paper. It looked like today’s paper. The old man removed his hat with a shaky hand. He didn’t seem to notice anyone else was around, and Mayor Cabrera and his sister-in-law, in order not to disturb him, grew still and quiet.
THE FRESHMAN
He was in ninth grade but was almost six feet tall and had strapping forearms. Each morning he came out before he left for school and fed his rabbit and stroked its ears back. It wasn’t a normal rabbit, nor even a jackrabbit. It was some European breed with long hair and a permanent frown that the boy’s mother had rescued from a defunct circus. The rabbit looked like a wizard. It had taken the boy’s mother one day to realize she didn’t want the rabbit inside the house and two days to realize it would make a poor pet. By then, the boy was attached.
When the boy came out, still chewing his last bite of cereal, he saw the buzzards all around and knew what had happened. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew the rabbit was dead. He couldn’t see the cage from where he stood because it was tucked against the side of the house in a utility shed that was really only some sheets of plywood. The buzzards had not dared inside. They were building courage. The wolf now knew everything about the boy. The wolf, by this time of morning, was hiding somewhere on the edge of the wilderness. He was hiding but he wasn’t worried about getting shot or captured. He was worried because the songs were coming less often and he needed them more and more. The girl in the house with the chickens was failing him. The wolf would have been relieved, somewhere inside him, to have the humans corner him, the same as the pets were relieved in their souls when they saw the wolf’s eyes before them.
The boy, the rabbit’s owner, was always alone at the house in the mornings because his mother worked early, and for once the boy was grateful for this. He went in and got the shotgun and the paper bag of shells. The paper of the bag was stiff and rough, like it had been rained on and then dried out. He sat himself on a stack of vinyl siding and aimed the shotgun and put even pressure on the trigger. Then he quickly fired the other shell. Then he reloaded. He was so close to his targets, he didn’t have to use the bead at the end of the barrel. Each time he shot a pair of buzzards he had to wait for the rest of them to resettle. They would scurry a short ways, flapping and stumbling, wanting to get to safety but not wanting to forfeit their spot in the chow line. The boy didn’t want to see the rabbit yet. He wasn’t going to school. He was excusing himself. He shot twice and waited, shot twice and waited. The sun ascended shapeless and white. After a half-hour, there were more buzzards, not fewer. Some of them had lost interest in the hidden rabbit and were poking at their dead brethren. The man who lived on the next property came over to see what was happening. When he realized the boy’s pet was dead and the boy was almost out of ammo, he allowed the shooting to continue. It was a sight. The yard looked war-torn. The shot buzzards were fifty low, tattered flags from fifty defeated little forces.
In time, the boy had to go look. He saw. The rabbit had beaten its head against the bars. The boy had been right that the cage was sturdy enough to keep out any predator, but he had not counted on an animal that would scare the rabbit to death just to do it. The wolf hadn’t wanted to eat the rabbit, only to torture it. It was a lot for the boy to take in.