Christian Kiefer - The Animals

As if in response, the animal started its terrible bleating honk again, mouth open, body once again lurching forward, slowly, as if possessed of some awful errand, down the street and toward the town. Bill moved as close to it as he could, squatting before it on the asphalt, voice calm even as his heart beat wild in his chest, his own blood pulling toward the animal all at once as if magnetized by the agony. Shhh, he said. It’s gonna be all right. We’re here to help. It’s gonna be all right.

The moose quieted again and he stood slowly and stepped backward to the sheriff. Who ran into him?

Some mechanic from Sandpoint, the sheriff said.

He OK?

In the hospital. Broke his ribs up and slammed his face into the wheel. There anything you can do here? I’m supposed to call the new Fish and Game guy.

You haven’t called them yet?

Not yet. You want me to?

Not very much.

Then it’s slipped my mind.

Bill glanced back at the smashed truck and then to the moose again. A half hour ago it had come down from the mountains, perhaps following a line of fragrant moss in the trunks of trees that lined a muddy creek bottom, and now it stumbled along that scant black road among men and women and children gathered for no reason other than to watch it go to ground.

He breathed out, slowly. There was a tightness in his chest and a feeling that he was caught up in something of which he could not let go.

When he looked to the street beyond, he caught sight of her pickup as it trundled between the buildings and then came to a stop. She leaped down from the cab in her purple coat and came to the moose, kneeling directly before the animal much as he had a few moments before, her voice the same quiet hush as his own, the moose’s head moving, the breath coming in bursts of hot steam.

He turned away now, returning to his pickup, opening the door to pull the canvas gun case toward him and unzipping its front pocket. Two or three loose shells spilled out onto the seat and he scooped them into his hand and then, from the pocket, extracted a small black box, inside of which rested a hypodermic needle and two vials of clear fluid, and a plastic tube containing a thin dart with a brilliant red tail. The shells he returned to the pocket, zipping it closed. Then he set to filling the dart, first sucking the fluid from one of the vials and then holding the syringe up to the light and squeezing a small quantity into the air before slipping the needle into the larger bore of the dart and pressing home the plunger.

When he looked up from his work, Grace was there, her eyes wide.

I was loading point eight carfentanil, he said. Is that what you want?

She sighed, her breath outspiraling into steam. He’s got a broken hip.

You sure?

Well, yeah. Aren’t you? When he did not respond, she put her hand on his shoulder. It would be better to just do it, she said. Get it over with.

Can we just check him first? Just to make sure there’s nothing we can do?

Baby, he’s not going to make it. He’s in pain.

I know that, he said.

It’s not humane.

I just need you to tell me that there’s nothing we can do for him. I mean one hundred percent sure. Can you do that?

She stared at him. Shit. You really know how to put me over a barrel, you know that?

He said nothing, his hands hovering over the tranquilizer gun, hovering in the grim cold air.

Well, she said at last, you got anything else besides the carfentanil?

Ketamine, he said, but I don’t think I have enough to put down a moose.

She exhaled. All right, so let’s go a full milligram of the carfentanil and hope that knocks him out the first time.

He nodded and returned to the vial and then to the dart, the small bottle from which he had extracted the medication nearly empty now, and then unzipped the larger compartment on the case. He knew that she saw the rifle there but she did not comment and he shifted the firearm to the side and pulled the tranquilizer gun from the case, opened the bolt, and slid the dart into the breech.

The moose had started up its sound again, its sharp terrible bleating. Grace’s forehead wrinkled as she glanced behind her and then returned to Bill. You want me to do it? she said.

No, I’ll do it. He lifted the gun to his chest and pumped it, three times, four, five, and then wrapped the strap once around his forearm and stood by the door of the truck. You should ask Earl if he can get someone to bring a flatbed tow truck out here.

She nodded and left his side, moving in the direction of the sheriff as Bill walked to the moose, raised the gun, and in one quick, sure movement, fired the dart into the animal’s shoulder.

He had used the dart gun many times. On a wolf and a coyote and an elk. In each instance the animal had hardly even registered the shot. The sound like a puff of air and the animal’s response maybe only a brief twitch of furred hide. But this time the moose released a long bray of surprise and anger and anguish and staggered forward on its spindly legs, its massive head rocking from side to side, the broken leg cycling in a weird sickening orbit around the break, the hoof backward, ungulate points ticking against the asphalt as its front legs scraped forward a few more yards, the human bystanders jerking out of its path. Then it went down, the whole of the thing collapsing, hind end first, not from the medication but from its own broken body and from gravity itself, its pelvis hitting the asphalt, and then its chest, the front legs splayed out for a terrible moment and then the head rising again, the animal clattering up on its front hooves, legs stilted out, everything about it agony and the will to live, to survive.

Christ, Bill said. Go down. Please go down.

He did not look up at Grace but he heard her voice now. He will, she said. He will, honey. She put her hand on his own and he realized then that his hand was trembling where it gripped the dart gun.

How long’s this gonna take to work?

The voice had come from the sheriff, and then Grace’s voice in answer: Twenty minutes, she said. We might have to dart him again, though.

All right, the sheriff said. I called for a tow truck. Probably’ll be here around the same time.

At these words, the moose let out another series of honking cries. Bill stood watching for a few moments and then stepped back to the car with the gun and opened the breech and returned it to the black zippered case. When he turned, he could see the sheriff moving toward the bystanders again.

And now we wait, Grace said.

He nodded. They stood side by side, watching the animal as it stumbled forward on its spindly front legs, panting in short, heavy breaths, the rear of its body sloped down toward the street and the dart’s bright red tuft waving from its furred shoulder like an ornament.

Bill leaned against the truck.

I was just gonna call you, Grace said after a time.

Now you don’t have to.

No, I do not, she said. She smiled at him briefly and he tried to smile in return. I was thinking I might come over for a visit.

You got a sitter?

Maybe. Why? You busy?

Well, I wasn’t before.

Yeah, she said. Neither was I.

They fell silent then, the two of them in the cool dusk with their bodies just touching, hip and shoulder and ankle. Her hand came into his own and squeezed and then held there, her fingers interlacing with his. He looked out at the moose standing spraddle-legged in the road. Once upon a time, you told yourself that you would be no killer, that this was how you would live your life. And yet you learn and relearn that everything is the same. The animals will call you. And sometimes you will answer them with gunfire. Majer’s voice again, or maybe it was only and always himself and himself alone.