P. Parrish - Claw Back

Jeff left, heading out a back door.

Katy glanced over Louis, taking in his dress slacks and shirt for the first time. “Hot date?” she asked.

“No, job interview. I’m going back in uniform.”

Her smile widened. “That’s great. I know how much you wanted it.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “Want to go have a beer to help me celebrate?”

She shook her head. “I’d love to, Louis, but I can’t right now. Jeff and I have to — ”

Louis held up a hand. “Work. I get it. Some other time maybe.”

She cocked her head. “You want to come help us?”

“Help you do what?”

“We’re releasing Bruce today. Jeff has him crated and ready to go.”

“He’s okay?” Louis asked.

“Good to go.” Katy smiled. “He’ll do better out there than in here.” She pulled off her apron and looked at her watch. “We need to do it at dusk because they feel safer then. So, you want to come?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Louis said.

The setting sun was just starting to singe the tops of the cypress trees when Jeff slowed the swamp buggy. Riding in the passenger seat, Louis had a clear view of the landscape but still no idea where they were. He knew that unlike Katy, who seemed as at home in the Glades as the panthers, he would never feel like anything but an intruder in this primordial place.

He had come to appreciate its desolate beauty, come to understand its strange pull on the soul. But he still didn’t belong here.

Jeff stopped the swamp buggy. The quiet, after the roar of the engine, was almost deafening. Katy, who had been riding in the back with another ranger, jumped out and came up to Louis.

“You sure you want to mess up those nice shoes?” she asked, smiling.

“Screw the shoes. Let’s go.”

It took all four of them to lift the crate down from the buggy. It was solid wood except for the breathing holes so Louis couldn’t see Bruce. He could only hear him, hear his anxious panting.

Louis had sweated through his white dress shirt by the time they set the crate down on the marshy ground. He wiped his face, looking around.

They were somewhere deep in the preserve and Katy had chosen an isolated hammock for the release site, an island of brush and trees that sat a foot or so above the shallow water.

There was a low fringe of dark green on the far horizon and above that the sky was a huge blister of purple and orange. They had maybe ten minutes of daylight left.

“Let’s do it,” Katy said.

She went to the front of the crate and grasped the handle in the front. She gave it a hard tug upward.

“Go,” she said softly.

The panther was a brown blur and it took Louis’s eyes a second to catch up with Bruce. He was running across the open field at full speed. Then with a splash of his hind legs in the shallow water, he was gone.

Louis stared at the spot in the dark brush where the panther had disappeared.

“Where’s he going?” he said.

“North,” Katy said.

She stood staring into the darkness. “It’s still mating season,” she said. “He’ll travel hundreds of miles to find a mate if he has to.”

They stood silent for a moment then Katy let out a long breath, turned and walked back to the swamp buggy.

Louis didn’t move. He looked east, where the rising moon was a pale sliver and Venus burned bright. He looked west, where a flock of egrets seeking a roosting place slid silently across the purple sky. He looked north, where the panther had gone.

Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. He still wanted the badge but it would have to wait a little while longer. Mobley would rip him a new one and Louis knew he’d spend the next year clawing his way back to Mobley’s good side but he also knew that the sheriff understood that a good cop was first a good man.

Before he set foot in that academy Louis knew he had to go north, for just a while.

North, where Lily waited for a birthday party.

North, where maybe, just maybe, Joe waited for him.