Jeff Jacobson - Foodchain

Hunger.

Frank sensed, rather than heard, the roar behind him, felt the impact of the lion hit the catwalk like a five hundred pound wrecking ball. The lion came down hard on Sergio, claws slicing through the tasteful suit like a plow breaking through the last frost of winter.

Frank grabbed Giulio’s left wrist with both hands as he fell forward and pulled the heavy, quiet gentleman down. They toppled into the tank together, Frank fumbling for the car keys in Giulio’s suit pocket. Frank’s bare feet hit the slimy bottom and he instantly kicked out, driving his heels into Giulio’s chest, pushing himself back towards the catwalk. He heard nothing but a rush of bubbles and the thin, staccato beat of his own heart.

The lion’s back feet, claws outstretched like lethal grappling hooks, caught the bottom rung of the railing. As the front legs bounced off the catwalk, the ungodly massive shoulders rolled with the impact. The back legs tensed, pulling the giant cat backwards. Sergio dropped to his knees, his eyes popping open as shock ratcheted into his soul.

The zookeeper stumbled away, fumbling with the cattle prod, and fell backwards down the stairs.

Sergio managed to get his .38 clear of the holster just as the lion’s front left paw swung through the air like a scythe and sent the quiet gentleman’s arm, fingers still clenched around the taped gun handle, sailing out over Frank and the alligator tank. The arm spun, spitting a fine mist of blood into a rainbow above the black water and yellow light. The hand muscles twitched and the gun flinched, firing a round into the night sky.

The lion rolled his back hips over the railing with a fluidity that matched the surface of the water and stalked forward, inch-long splintered claws slipping into the gaps in the steel mesh.

Sergio took one solid, confident step forward. In his mind, he raised the .38 and squeezed off three quick shots.

The lion struck faster than a rattlesnake, clapping his great stretched paws on Sergio’s shoulders and crunching his skull between his jaws like a hammer under a walnut. The cat shook his head once, twice, and raggedly ripped Sergio’s head off.

Down in the tank, Frank gathered his legs under his chest and shoved down as hard as he could manage, throwing himself onto the catwalk, just under the flicking tail. The steel mesh chewed into his chest like a cheese grater, but he thrust his elbows down, pulling himself out of the water.

Sergio’s headless, one-armed body sank to its knees, as if he had finally given up completely, and toppled backwards, bounced down the stairs and landed heavily on top of the zookeeper, who was scrabbling away when the limp sack of bones and flesh slammed him into the dirt.

Frank rolled under the bottom rung of the railing as two quick explosions shattered the water’s surface. Frank didn’t know if Giulio was shooting at him, the lion, or the alligators; he didn’t care. His bare feet hit the dust and he broke out into a flat-out run, ignoring the sharp edges of gravel, cuffed hands swinging, elbows flailing in the cool night air.

The lion shivered, shaking his head, crunching those giant teeth together. The pieces of skull cracked into splintered fragments, dribbling blood over the black lips and tawny fur of his bottom jaw. Elegant drops clung to the long, thick whiskers like heavy dew on a spiderweb. The tufted tail flicked happily back and forth. The taste of blood had jump-started his other senses; smells suddenly gained new dimensions of texture. Every sound became crisp, clear. Even the quick snick-snick of the .38 being cocked.

Frank ran. Behind him, gunfire popped. The lion roared.

The shooting lasted for a long time and as the thunderous, almost numbing sound of gunfire continued to ring in Giulio and the zookeeper’s ears, neither heard the engine of the long black car start as Frank stomped on the gas, plowed through the front gate, and shot into the night.

DAY TWO

He hadn’t meant to kill the horse.

No, that wasn’t right, Frank corrected himself as he steered the long, black car along the high desert highway. That’s not exactly being honest. He’d meant to kill the horse, all right, just not then, not that way. He braced his naked knees against the steering wheel and reached over with his cuffed hands to turn on the heat. Soothing, warm air exhaled softly over his white skin.

The grooms called him, “ El Caballo Susurrero .” The Horse Whisperer.

After Frank and his mom moved away from East Texas, away from the ghost of his father, they settled in the industrial wasteland of suburban southwest Chicago. Mom told Frank that she was a waitress, but he found out later she was a stripper.

Frank found work at Hawthorne, a nearby horse racetrack. For a long time, Frank worked alongside the little Mexican guys who found their way north riding in the backs of trucks. He cleaned stalls, shaking and sifting the shavings until nothing remained, not horseshit, no soiled hay, nothing except wood shavings. He tacked up the thoroughbreds, preparing the snorting, dancing racehorses for their morning run, and washed them after their workouts.

He may have made a good jockey, but genetics betrayed him. Mom was damn near six feet and his father was at least 6’ 5”. But his father’s height was never impressive; he looked like a scarecrow that had seen too many hard winters.

In the barns, Frank hung back, always helping, always watching. When he spoke, it was quiet, but people started to listen. And listen hard. By the end of that first season, he’d been driven up to Arlington to watch the horses there. His observations about the horses and his race predictions were eerily correct. The big money boys, the guys that watched the races from behind great walls of air-conditioned glass, took notice. It wasn’t hard to pull an eighteen-year old into the fold.

They paid for college. Frank went to school at nights while working at the track during the day. Two years away from a veterinary degree he saw his Mom cough blood. She was washing dishes. He’d come down from his bedroom and saw her back hitch a little as she gripped the side of the sink. Little flecks of crimson suddenly appeared within the bubbles. She whipped at the water in the sink with a wooden spoon, as if stirring in some exotic herb into a frothy soup. Frank put a frozen burrito in the microwave and his mom asked him if he was going out that night and neither one of them mentioned it again.

The next day Frank was bent over, wrapping the front left leg of a five-year old filly nearing the end of her career, trying to focus on the job but thinking of all those flecks of blood in the soap bubbles, when a groom tried to bring a notoriously twitchy colt under the lead line connected to the filly’s halter. Any other day, it probably would have worked, but the colt was spooked by the sound of a pitchfork being tossed into an empty wheelbarrow. It reared and kicked, and the next thing Frank knew, he was vomiting uncontrollably in a hospital bed. The doctors spoke in clipped, officious tones, throwing out terms like “brain damage” and “limited recovery” as if they were simple math equations.

Once the pain went away and the vomiting stopped, Frank didn’t feel much different. Except for two things. He’d been kicked in the left side of the head, and the muscles on that side of his face didn’t work very well. They’d respond halfheartedly, like a tired, petulant ten year old being ordered to wash the dog. Other times, they’d constrict, as if they were trying to climb right off his face. Most of the time, though, they just hung there like heavy, wet curtains. The right side worked just fine.

The second thing was, for some reason he never did understand, he couldn’t get his brain to decipher numeric representations. He could read a traditional watch with an hour and second hand, understood it on a core level, but a digital readout looked like a series of random LED slashes.