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.