After washing the cages, he’d push raw hamburger through the chain link, but he never opened the doors. He was careful to never look directly into the cats’ eyes. Once in a while, feeding the cats made him feel uncomfortably like the zookeeper, and he’d have to back off for a while and grab a beer. Unlike the zookeeper, though, the cats, after a few days, would lick his palms, their tongues feeling like soft, wet sandpaper. The books told him their tongues were covered in tiny rasps that helped the cats lick meat off bones. He always kept his hands flat; despite the seemingly affectionate licking, he knew they’d chew off his fingers in a heartbeat. He had to resist the urge to name them.
In the meantime, he nailed up chicken wire in the barn, building a large cage for the monkeys. Their constant screeching and howling were getting on his nerves at night. He thought about pouring tranquilizer over their food and let them sleep for a few days. In the textbooks, he discovered they were spider monkeys.
The clowns brought over the rhino. Frank walked it carefully down the chute; it moved slowly, mechanically. Frank filled the largest stall with straw and hoped the rhino would like it, or at least feel comfortable enough to lie down. But once inside, the great beast just stood there, immobile and emotionless, like a lobotomized bull. Frank dumped an entire bale of alfalfa into the stall and couldn’t have been more pleased when the rhino slowly lowered its head and started munching the green hay.
DAY THIRTEEN
As Frank lay on the narrow vinyl couch in the tiny office late at night, reading about the kidney functions of large cats, a severe, insistent buzzer vibrated throughout the hospital. He snapped the book shut and sat up. His first reaction was that the clowns were here, but they always just barged in through the back door. Curious, he made his way up to the front desk. There was a dark shadow behind the curtains in the front windows.
It was Annie. In the harsh orange glow of the bare bulb above the front door, she looked scared; her eyes were red and swollen. Behind her were two of her brothers, faces dark with fresh bruises and scrapes. Both grasped the handles of two wheelbarrows. The first wheelbarrow held Petunia. The dog lay on her side in a nest of old towels, breathing heavy, almost growling in and out; her front paws were held away from the body, stiff and covered with what looked like melted chocolate. The second wheelbarrow had been filled with knotted, twisted chunks of pine firewood. “I need your help,” Annie said.
Frank didn’t think twice. “Bring her in.”
They wheeled the dog right into the waiting room, and both brothers carried her suspended in one of the towels back into the operating room. Frank switched on the overhead light and got a closer look. Petunia’s front paws were charred black, seeping plasma. “What happened?”
Annie’s little hands curled into fists. “These two cunts trapped her under the porch, knocked her sideways, and then went after her with a lighter and a can of hairspray.”
“Fuckin’ thing shouldn’ta eaten my—” The brother didn’t get a chance to finish. Faster than Frank could follow, Annie’s arm shot out, whistling past her brother’s head. He flinched, too late. Something bloody hit the examining table with a faint slap. Frank realized it was the brother’s left earlobe as Annie neatly wiped the blade of her straight razor on the old towels.
The brother clapped his hand to the side of his head and looked like he wanted to say something as a thin trickle of blood meandered down his neck.
“Go ahead,” Annie taunted. “Spit it out. Swear at me. Please. Next time it’ll be your fucking nose.”
He kept quiet. The second brother hung back, looking the monkeys, at the door, the green tiles on the floor, anywhere but at his sister.
Annie turned back to Frank. “Please help her.”
Frank chewed on the inside of his cheek, wondering if any of the books in the back room talked about treating burns. He didn’t want to appear clueless to Annie, so he said, “She’s gonna need…rest, some antibiotics, and she’s gonna have to stay off these front paws, give ’em a chance to heal.” He met Annie’s eyes. “She’ll have to stay here. Maybe in a cage. She can’t walk on these. We’ll have to keep her quiet.”
Annie nodded. “You do whatever you have to.” Her bottom lip quivered and a fat tear squeezed itself out of her right eye and rolled down her cheek. “Please, just help her.”
Frank had the two brothers hold the dog down as he slipped a padded plastic cup over the dog’s muzzle. A circular rubber tube was attached to the cup; this was connected to a hose that ran to the wall. Frank had been reading about the halothane and isoflurane, anesthetic that was inhaled, instead of injected, since he hadn’t wanted to get close enough to the cats to slip a needle full of Acepromazine into their veins unless they were unconscious. He made a few quick calculations in his head, adjusted the vaporizer output on the wall, and fervently hoped the concentration wouldn’t kill Petunia.
When her breathing and heart rate had slowed, he smeared aloe salve over Petunia’s front paws. Towards the end, she fought through the haze of the anesthesia and snapped at Frank, but for the most part, the dog was remarkably calm, almost as if she understood deep down that he was trying to help. He injected her with antibiotics and encased the front paws in cotton and neon orange vet wrap. The brothers carried the now sleeping dog into the office where they placed her carefully on the vinyl couch.
“You two fuckheads wait outside,” Annie told her brothers. “We’re gonna have that little talk I promised. You run, and I swear to you one night, not too soon, just long enough for you to forget about it, but one night when you’re sleeping, I’ll creep in and cut your balls right the fuck off.” Everyone in the room knew she wasn’t kidding. “Get outside. Now.” When the front door closed, she closed her eyes and another tear slid down her round cheek. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said sadly. She blinked her tears away and tried to smile at Frank, but he felt like it was forced. “So how much is this gonna cost?”
“I.... I’m not sure, exactly. Let’s see how the treatment goes. Why don’t we settle up when Petunia is better?”
“I don’t like being in debt to anyone.” She cocked her head. “You’ve been hearing about me. I can see it in your face.”
“What? I haven’t heard anything about anyone. Nobody’s told me anything,” Frank said. “Let’s just see how Petunia heals.” He put his hands flat on the table. “Then we’ll talk payment.”
“We’ll talk payment then.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay then. We’ll be talking, you and I.” She gave a mischievous smile, but it looked to Frank like there was something else under the surface, still sadness maybe. Annie squatted in front of the couch, stroking her dog’s broad, flat skull. “You take good care of Petunia. I find out you don’t, I might have to go at your eyes with a screwdriver,” she said without looking at him.
Frank believed her. “Yeah.”
It was good enough for Annie. She stood, wiped her eyes.
“Come by anytime,” Frank said. “Day or night.” He wondered if that sounded too forward. Most of him was disgusted at the cruelty, but he had to admit that part of him was glad that Petunia had gotten hurt. It gave him an excuse to see Annie. “You know, see how she’s doing.”