“You’re talking to him.”
The man smiled. “Name’s Girdler. Talked to you a while back. Believe you mentioned something about a hunt.”
“Believe I did, yessir.”
“Well then, I’m ready for some shooting.”
* * * * *
Sturm and Girdler drove the RV back up the highway to the locked gate, going the long way into town, while Frank drove Chuck back to the vet office. Chuck whimpered with every jolt and bump, barking out at one point, “Are you fucking trying to hit every goddamn hole?”
Frank hoped it wasn’t obvious. “Hell no. Sorry.”
Frank half-dragged Chuck into the hospital and left him on one of the waiting room chairs. He prepared a syringe of morphine and sunk it deep into the vein in the crook of Chuck’s elbow, just to shut him up for a while. Frank thought about breaking the needle off in Chuck’s arm, but figured that might be pushing things too far. Chuck gave a long, satisfied sigh, “Ah fuck yes…” and limply slid off the chair onto the floor.
Sturm and Girdler came in the back door, laughing and shouting as if they’d been pals for years. Sturm immediately grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge. Frank met them in the back examining room.
Sturm grabbed Frank by the shoulders, hugging him close, beaming, saying, “Like you to meet one of my most valuable employees. This is Frank, our vet. He’s taking care of all our animals; hell, he knows these cats inside and out.”
“Hi.” Frank stuck his hand out.
“Howdy,” Girdler extended his own paw; it felt like grabbing a leather glove wrapped in badger hair bristles. Up close, Frank could see that hair covered nearly every inch of Girdler’s skin. The man had hair down to his cracked, yellow toenails; actually the hair surrounded the toenail, growing right down to the callused bottoms of the toes. Girdler’s mother must have been raped by Bigfoot.
“Let’s go meet my girls,” Sturm said.
Frank held the door to the middle section open for Sturm and Girdler. Sturm strode briskly past the first four cats, simply saying, “These here will be available to hunt very soon. We’re getting ’em healthy. Later, if you wish, you can have your pick. But these two, back here, these are my girls—Princess and Lady.” Frank blinked, unaware that Sturm had already named his pets.
All of the lionesses lay in the far corners, but where the other lionesses seemed bored, if not downright sleepy, Princess and Lady were alert, anxious, as if a hot, vibrating wire had been laced through their spines. Sturm explained, “They haven’t eaten in two days. Saving ’em for something special tonight. The evening’s entertainment, you could say.”
Frank expected Sturm to launch into the usual bullshit about his magnificent predators and the pure essence of nature and all that, and was surprised when Sturm asked Girdler, “Will this facility adequately address your needs?”
Girdler shook the corner post of the cages, noting how it was set into the concrete. The cats recoiled, folded into themselves, flat against the concrete. They didn’t seem to like looking at the hairy man. Maybe it was his scent.
Girdler’s tongue came out and found an errant lock of beard at the corner of his mouth, pulled it back in and sucked on it for a while. “Don’t know rightly. Gonna be tight, that’s for sure.” He bit down on the lock of hair, chewed on it for a while, and spit out the pieces, like dark flecks of tobacco. “Maybe…if it was just a night. But hell. I may just be here a while. A week, maybe more. Providing you got plenty else to hunt.”
“Oh we got plenty to hunt, that’s for damn sure,” Sturm said. “Your barrel’ll melt ‘fore you run out of things to shoot. If this place won’t hold it, then hell, we’ll just have to find something that will. And if we can’t find something, then we’ll just have to build something. That simple.” He glanced at Frank. “Mr. Girdler’s got his own animal to hunt.” His voice got proud, awed. “Wait until you see it. Big as a goddamn mountain. A genuine grizzly bear. In my town.”
“Kodiak, technically. Same damn thing as a grizzly really, just a tad bigger, from an island off the coast of Alaska,” Girdler clarified.
Frank’s hoped the bear wasn’t a relative of Girdler’s. “Is it out in the trailer?”
“Yup. Got him doped up so he’ll be asleep for a day or two.”
“When he does wake up, we’re gonna need some more tranquilizers. No question. How big is this animal?”
“Around eleven hundred pounds,” Girdler said, pride coating his voice like warm syrup. “And over ten feet long.”
“Then yeah, we’ll have to figure some other place to keep it. No way it can stay here. It’ll go through this chain-link fence in a heartbeat,” Frank said. “We’re taking a hell of a chance with keeping the cats here as it is.”
“He’s not dangerous, not really,” Girdler said. “I’ve had him since a cub. I call him Bo-Bo,” he said sheepishly, then got defensive. “Well, he was just the cutest damn thing. Bought him off a zoo in Kansas. They couldn’t afford to feed him. Hell, I can barely afford to feed him. He eats 80 pounds a day in the summer, mostly blueberries and squash. He loves salmon. Thank the good Lord he sleeps most of the winter.”
Sturm looked at Frank. Frank knew what he was thinking. They had just about cleaned out the meat from the freezer behind the barn, and Frank wasn’t sure where or how Sturm was going to find more. He was wondering how in the hell they were going to scrape together 80 pounds of vegetables and berries. Forget salmon. The bear could eat lamb or hamburger just like the cats or it would go without meat. And that 80 pounds, that was just for one day. Sturm was wondering how they were going to feed this thing for a week or more.
“Bo-Bo’s just like a big ol’ puppy dog. Throw him in a corral. He’ll be just fine.”
“No disrespect intended here, but there’s no goddamn way I can just let an eleven hundred pound grizzly bear wander around my town,” Sturm said. “At least, not until you’re ready to hunt.”
Girdler pulled on his beard like he wanted to make sure it was still attached.
“You sure you want to shoot this bear of yours?” Frank asked.
Sturm shot him a warning look, but Girdler said, “Sure as I’m standing here, son. Shit, I would’ve shot him long time ago, but I wanted him to get as big as possible for the hide.”
“And the teeth,” Sturm added.
“Hell yes. The teeth too.” Girdler found some more hair to chew on. “Just couldn’t bring myself to shoot him in the pen. Didn’t seem right somehow. So when I heard about this particular hunt you folks got going here, I thought…well, this was just what I was waiting for.”
Sturm finished his beer. “Then we need to find a place to keep it. Let’s get my girls moved—I want them awake and hungry for tonight. Then we’ll go for a ride. See what we can find.”
* * * * *
By noon, Lady and Princess were sleeping safely inside their distorted, bulging cage that grew out of the back of Sturm’s barn like a cancerous spider web. One door opened into the barn; the other into a large corral. Before they had left, Jack and Pine had drilled iron poles into the posts and lined the whole corral with hog panels, creating a square cage, nearly a quarter acre total, with walls over eight feet tall.
But this corral, this new cage, this wasn’t for the grizzly. It had been built without Frank, so Frank could only guess that it was some kind of exercise yard for Sturm’s new pets. Frank wondered if he should mention that eight feet of fence wouldn’t hold the lionesses. Hell, if Lady and Princess had a mind to, they’d be over that fence in less time than it took for Sturm to spit.
Frank kept his mouth shut. Sturm probably already knew this, and besides, Frank was still pissed. And more than a little scared. He couldn’t read Sturm, couldn’t see how the pressure built. Yesterday still made him feel like a loyal dog who’d been kicked for no apparent reason by a previously kind and considerate owner.