Frank didn’t bother to chase them. He kept going on to the irrigation ditch.
Petunia was down there.
She’d been shot three times. One bullet had passed through her chest, one through her fourth row of nipples, and one had shattered upon impact as it struck the outermost, center muscle in her thick jaw, sending shards of itself along her skull, into her eye, her throat.
Frank jumped into the ditch and said, “Easy girl. Easy.” Petunia whirled and snapped at the direction of his voice, shredding herself even further. “Easy. Oh please. Just …” Petunia dragged herself towards him in a barking frenzy, spraying blood with every horrible crunch from her ruined jaw. Frank finally made himself shut up by clasping a hand over his mouth. He crouched and watched until he couldn’t help but try and silently reach out to gently touch the uninjured side of her neck.
She ripped herself at him and chased him out of the ditch.
Frank stumbled back to the highway. He looked towards town, where the Mercedes had headed. Fighting the urge to follow, he grabbed a bottle from his car and went to watch Petunia either pass out or die.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, when Frank finally dared to get in closer, he wasn’t sure if she was unconscious or dead. She didn’t react when he gathered her in his arms and carried her to the long black car. He put her on the front seat, cradling her head in his lap as he steered with one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the dog, and talked to her the whole way, telling her about all the squirrels she would chase when she got better and how pretty she was and how he was going to take care of her and how Mr. Noe and Theo were going to be hurting worse than she was real soon. But when he finally got her back to the office and up on an examining table, Petunia was dead.
* * * * *
Frank sat on the floor for a long time. Then he carefully washed her and stitched up her wounds. He closed her eyes. He eased her tense muscles, moving the legs gently, letting her relax. He put her tongue back inside her teeth. He laid a white sheet on the floor and wrapped it around her more carefully than a new parent tending to an infant.
He put Petunia in the back seat of the long black car, but before he left, he unlocked all three outside doors to the vet hospital and let them stand open. He shut the freezer off and left the lid open. The ten thousand went in the trunk, under the spare tire. Then he went along the row of cages and unlocked all of them, letting the doors swing open by themselves. The cats watched him without moving.
“Go on. Get the hell out of here,” he told them.
* * * * *
He drove to the Glouck house. The girl that had been hanging in the dead tree his first day in town was out front, sitting on a wooden see-saw, as if waiting for someone to play. He’d overheard the mothers calling her Amber.
“Where’s your boots?” she asked.
Frank took Petunia out of the back seat and gently laid her in front of the satellite dish. He turned to Amber. “Your sister here?”
The front door slammed open and Annie came running out. She had seen the figure wrapped in the white sheet. Strong, tan legs faltered and slowed as she got closer until she finally simply stopped moving forward. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Tears filled her eyes, spilled out, and ran down her cheeks. “Why?” was the only thing she managed to get out before a sob choked her throat and stopped any more words.
Frank didn’t say anything. His vision grew blurry. It took him a moment to realize that his own tears were flooding his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually cried. He hadn’t even shed any tears when his mother was buried. Something tore, deep inside of him. It sounded awfully like the duct tape under the sink. It kept ripping, shredding some thin membrane down in the darkness. The voice hissed in approval and urged whatever had been sealed inside to squirm free. He shook, his knees buckled, and he collapsed onto his haunches, hands and face numb.
Annie stepped closer and knelt beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help her.”
Annie took his face and kissed his tears, her own hot tears spilling down her cheeks, mingling with his.
A great, agonizing wail grew in Frank’s chest and he felt that if he didn’t let it out and scream for every animal he ever hurt or killed, for all of the animals in his miserable life, his entire body would explode in pain. But he choked it back, rocking back and forth on the Glouck’s front lawn.
Annie held him close, sobbing into his ear.
Frank heard nothing but the anguished cry of the Kodiak, the horses, the big cats, all of them. And underneath it all, the voice. The voice, saying it’s about goddamn time. Enough is enough. You’ve been the goddamn grim reaper to the animal world for too long now, and it was time to end it. To end it all.
Annie grabbed the back of his skull and kissed him.
The pain floated up into the sky and dissipated among the stars.
He looked into Annie’s eyes and saw compassion. Kindness. Love. He took a deep breath. She wiped his tears away. He reached out, curled his hand around her ear, slipping her hair back. Her eyes never left his. He pulled her close and kissed her, hard. He tasted tears mixed with saliva.
He lowered his head and touched his forehead to hers. “The money? It’s all in a gunsafe, hidden in the barn. It’s in a stall in the back, inside a freezer. You got that?”
“I—”
“It’s heavy, but you’ll figure it out. I know you will.” He kissed her again. “Remember, it’s in the barn. In a freezer. In the back.” The edge in his voice was sharp enough to shave steel. “Tonight is gonna be your only chance.”
Annie ran her hand across his prickly scalp. “What are you going to do?”
Frank was dimly aware of one of the mothers, standing silhouetted in the doorway, Annie in front of him, staring into his eyes, and the body of Petunia in the sheet. He stood and walked away.
Instead of climbing in the car, he passed the front grille and kept going. The gas station had closed for the night. Frank didn’t care. He walked up to the front door and kicked in the glass. He ducked under the metal push bar and grabbed the entire case of rum. When he came out, Annie was still watching him.
Frank put the box in the passenger seat, and for a moment, he wanted to say how sorry he was for everything, but instead, he finally just started the car, slammed the door, and drove into the darkness.
* * * * *
He saw the lights of the town pool a mile off. After parking in the driveway of an abandoned farmhouse, he walked the rest of the way. If things went bad, he didn’t want to come running out of the pool and have to jump in his car. It was too slow. He wanted to slip away in the dark and get back to the office quietly.
Men stood in little knots on the front lawn, smoking, drinking. Rifles and shotguns lined the bike rack. No weapons were allowed in the pool. Chuck was charging ten bucks just to get inside. When he saw Frank, he visibly flinched. “Where you been, man? Sturm’s pissed as all hell. You better get inside and take care of it.” Chuck looked like the conflict might make him throw up. He changed tactics. “Say, what was that stuff you gave me? I was just wondering. The other day,” he added and said nothing else.
“Yeah.”
“I was just curious, you know, what it was called.”
“You need some more?”
“Well, yeah, now that you mention it…but I was…. you know, I was just wondering what you called it.” Chuck snapped his fingers and pointed at a big guy in a leather duster that had been trying to slip past him. “Ten bucks—you, Mr. Universe there—ten bucks, pal.” The big guy reluctantly gave up the cash, then hurried on inside. “So. What’s it called again? I wanted to look it up,” Chuck asked, taking a wad of cash the size of a softball out of his front pants pocket and tucking the money into a leather saddle bag under his stool.