T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

What he sees is blood: the gray-gloved claws of both animals’ forefeet are stippled with it, bright flecks where the flesh has been abraded, and there are worn red gashes at the corners of the larger one’s mouth. The enormity of it hits him with the force of a blow: they’ve been clawing at the steel mesh since the door dropped down behind them, all night and into the break of day, tearing their own substance, in pain, bleeding.

He’s on his feet suddenly, pounding with urgency. All he wants now is to set them free, but where? He looks again to the mountains rising out of the fog. He sees himself lifting the cage by the handle on top — or dragging it; it’ll be heavy — setting it in the back of the SUV while the animals scramble and hiss in terror, then driving all the way up to the road that cuts into the hillside, as high as he can go, to release them at one of the trailheads. They’ll be tentative at first, like in the nature films, but eventually they’ll emerge, unable in those first few seconds to grasp the radical change in their fortunes, and then, heads down, almost comical, they’ll barrel off into the bushes. Yes. Only to starve or fight their battles with the established population, with the coyotes, pumas and whatever else is out there, mountain bikers, pyromaniacs, hunters — or come right back and dig up his lawn all over again.

It’s a conundrum. He feels as if he’s still asleep, still dreaming, the animals slipping in and out of the cage as they please, their snouts glistening with the oil of the sardines, the lawn restored and the earthworms burrowed deep. How long he stands there, he can’t say. But the phone has been vibrating in his pocket for some time now, off and on, and he needs to snap out of it if he’s going to get down to Ventura to do any good on the picket line, especially after blowing them off yesterday to go wine-tasting, and how frivolous that seems to him now. How idiotic. Irresponsible. And then he feels the sun breaking through to chase the fog, the warmth of it on his shoulders and the back of his neck, and something makes him lift his eyes from the cage and gaze out over the wall and the gate and the red-tiled roof of the neighboring house to where the long crenellated run of Santa Cruz Island suddenly fills the horizon, all its chiseled facets aflame in a solid sheen of early morning light.

He knows then that he’s going to be late, very late, and that he’ll have to call Anise and Wilson to let them know, a dozen things running through his head at once. He can foresee draping a blanket or maybe a painter’s tarp over the cage to spare the animals, maybe stopping for a bagel and a cup of coffee, just to have something on his stomach. But no, no time now, no time for anything. If he calls at all — and he has to, he promises himself — it’ll have to be from the boat.

T hat night, she stays late at the office, propped up behind her desk long after the others have gone home. It’s not that anyone would ever question her over her hours or that she feels any compulsion to clock in like a factory worker because she’s her own boss and her schedule is flexible — but she’s conscientious, that’s all, and when four-thirty rolls around she never even glances up. The breakfast meeting was work, certainly, but it took a chunk out of her day and there are things she wants to catch up on. Vital things. Purchase orders. E-mail. The latest figures from Island Healers, who need to be paid in monthly installments. And, not least, Alicia’s computer.

She didn’t say a word when Alicia did finally come in, fifteen minutes after she herself arrived, and Alicia, tentative, red-faced, her eyes dodging away from the issue — apostasy, and nothing less — murmured only that she was sorry she’d decided to take an early coffee break but that she was starving because she’d overslept and left home without breakfast and since nothing was happening in the office anyway, she thought no one would mind. Alma, mortified herself, had only stared at her as coldly as she could manage. Then it was lunch hour and Alicia stayed anchored to her desk. Conspicuously. Rising only to go to the machine for a Diet Pepsi and then, half an hour later, to the ladies’, answering the phone in her breathy nuanced voice, entering data, typing, her fingers in swift softly clicking motion as people came and went, telephones rang and the fluorescent lights hissed overhead.

Shadows lengthened, the afternoon fell back and finally dropped into the ocean. At five-thirty, quitting time, Alicia stood, fluttering briefly round her purse and backpack before murmuring, “See you in the morning,” and pulling the door shut behind her as she left. A full hour drifted by, Alma absorbed in her own work, before she went to Alicia’s computer, and it was another half hour before she shut it down. She was looking for irregularities, outside contacts, e-mails that might have tipped her secretary’s hand, but there was nothing whatever beyond the usual business correspondence. And yet Alicia had been with Wilson Gutierrez — had been intimately engaged with him, his arm around her, his tray of coffee and cakes set down before her as if he were used to courting her, serving her — and that was beyond the bounds on every level she could think of. But was it a firing offense? Was there anything in the Park Service’s contractual agreement with its employees that proscribed consorting with the enemy? On company time, no less? Or was that considered free speech or free association or whatever?

At any rate, when finally she does leave the office, it’s past six and all traces of light have faded from the sky. The yachts sit patiently at their berths, muted amber lights showing in one cabin or another, the water as still as the boardwalk that parallels it. There’s a faint echoing thump, a noise so soft it’s been sealed and wrapped twice over by the time it reaches her, and she looks up to see a working boat— uni divers — gliding past the ranks of ghostly masts, lights slowly pulsing, in search of its berth. It’s a moment stolen out of the day, a moment of tranquillity and surcease, but she doesn’t linger. She’s always been a brisk walker, always in a hurry, and she’s moving quickly, ducking around children, exiled smokers, strolling couples. Just as she’s passing the Docksider, she becomes aware of the music drifting down from upstairs, a cover band sloppily working its way through one of the tunes from her mother’s day — and that’s when she pulls up so suddenly the jogger coming up behind her has to swerve wide right to avoid her, very nearly colliding with a pair of oncoming women in the process. She sees the women’s faces flood with alarm and annoyance beneath their flap-brimmed whale-watchers’ hats, there’s a murmured apology, a scramble of limbs — the jogger’s legs glowing as if they were fluorescent — and then he’s gone and one of the women calls out something, but she’s not listening. She’s rooted to the spot.

Her mother . In the confusion of the day she’s forgotten all about her. Her mother’s baking a birthday cake. She expects to be taken out to dinner, as promised. At this very moment she’s no doubt sitting in the easy chair in the living room, with Ed, abusing vodka, the images of chaos on CNN drifting past like clouds in a flattened sky. Guiltily, Alma digs out her cell phone and dials her home number.

Her mother answers on the first ring.

“It’s me, Mom. I just wanted to say I had to work late and—”

“On your birth day?”

“Well, yeah. Some things came up.” She can hear the falseness in her voice, the amateur theatricality — and why does it always seem as if she’s hiding something when she’s speaking with her own mother? When, in fact, she’s not? Because many things have come up, one of them — Alicia’s duplicity — as disorienting and disturbing as anything she’s been through in a long while. Aside from the protestors, that is. And they tend to give it up when the sun sets. “But I’m leaving now — I’ll be home in half an hour, half an hour tops.”