Jackie's Wild Seattle

by Will Hobbs

  The raccoon kept trying to get off the street into the doorways and shadows. Every time, Sage leaped in front and turned it back. Now it was caught between Sage and Neal. Uncle Neal made his move. Quick as could be, he had the raccoon trapped under his net.

  Now came the trick: how to get this snarling, hissing, spitting beastie into the carrier.

  The raccoon delivered a number of vicious bites on Neal’s welding gloves and the sleeves of his heavy coat. At last, when Neal let go, the raccoon practically leaped the rest of the way into the carrier. We were out of there.

  Fifteen minutes later, Uncle Neal released the raccoon where the Duwamish River meets Elliott Bay. “Stay out of downtown, you hear?”

  As we headed home, Cody started fretting about the salmon Jackie had picked up for dinner. “Is she going to cook it like fish and chips?” he asked hopefully.

  Neal winced. “Fresh salmon, deep fried in batter?”

  Just then Neal’s cell phone rang. It was Jackie with a proposition for Cody. If he didn’t mind the quick turnaround when we got home, Rosie’s husband was going to come by to take him and Robbie to a baseball game. The Mariners were playing the New York Yankees, and Robbie was planning on hot dogs at the ballpark.

  The kid must have been born under a lucky star.

  9

  FLYING GRAVEL

  The first day of July, Neal’s bald eagle was moved outdoors to a private pen, one of the large flying enclosures. Inside of all that space she was going to live in a wire cage lined with shredded newspaper. At least she’d be in the open air and could see the sky. Neal thought it might help. The eagle still hadn’t stood up.

  Every chance Neal got he was there with her. He’d talk softly to her, tell her to hold on, tell her to fight, to live. The big fledgling just lay in a heap on the floor of her cage. On his last visit of the day he would throw a blanket over her cage so she wouldn’t get chilled. I couldn’t help wondering why he’d gotten so attached to this bird, especially after Jackie’s remark about him not liking to get involved with the rehab part of the operation.

  The van was back from the shop. Making the rounds was easier after a week crowded into Neal’s Toyota. The rescues were usually of small birds and mammals injured by cats, dogs, and cars. My job was to keep up with the pager, return calls on the cell phone, and take directions. We collected dozens of baby squirrels that had fallen out of their nests, a juvenile possum that might have fallen off its mother’s back, a fuzzy duckling whose tiny leg had been accidentally broken by an eight-year-old boy. People would notice the lettering across the side of the ambulance and the seal-and-eagle logo. Lots would smile, give us a thumbs-up. But a few would frown—go figure—or actually give us a thumbs-down.

  We and Neal’s eagle had been at the center two weeks when the vet came back to look at a new set of X rays. Cody and I were there when Uncle Neal got the news. Dr. Minorca was my mother’s age and reminded me of her on the job, professional yet still a regular person.

  “I wish I could tell you she might fly one day,” Dr. Minorca told him. She looked at Jackie, then back to Neal. “Unfortunately, it’s not to be. The right wing is healing fine, but the left one never will. It was just too bad a break. I’m sorry.”

  “Such a shame,” Jackie said.

  Uncle Neal grimly said, “I just hope she’s going to live.”

  The vet replied with a shrug, then added, “I sure don’t like it that she’s not feeding on her own. That she’s not even standing up worries me especially. She might just throw in the towel. Time will tell.”

  “Liberty’s going to make it,” my uncle said with conviction. “I know she will.”

  “So you’ve given her a name?” The vet sounded like maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

  “After Liberty Place, the street Shannon and Cody live on, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Not to mention she’s the symbol of our country.”

  After the bad news, Uncle Neal’s devotion to the bird only grew. He would talk-talk-talk to Liberty, and try to feed her small fish or bits of beef heart. “It’s okay, Liberty,” I heard him say. “It’s okay if you never fly. It’s okay, it’s okay.” The big fledgling would look at him, and she’d take food sometimes, but she wouldn’t stand up.

  Another week went by, and Liberty was still a sack of potatoes. One day in the clinic I asked Jackie what her chances were. “Neal picked a tough case,” she answered. “That bird’s eyes are dull, and that’s never a good sign. She’s got to have something to live for. She might have a chance if she bonds with Neal. Thing is, bald eagles normally want nothing to do with humans. They go to great lengths to get away from them.”

  I went to Liberty’s pen in search of Uncle Neal but found Tyler there instead. He was inside the pen holding Liberty while Rosie slid the feeding tube through her mouth and down her esophagus. Tyler looked up at me when I came in, kind of like an old friend. He was proud to be holding the eagle.

  I couldn’t help feeling warm and fuzzy about Tyler. I mean, he looked so happy holding that magnificent bird. Actually, the feeling had been growing slowly since the first day. We would bump into each other, talk a little, not about anything in particular, just kind of Hi, how are you—keeping it light but basically trying out being friends. He’d smile when he’d see me, and a smile looked good on him. He had a beautiful smile, in fact. I seemed to be the only one around the place he could talk to.

  Just then Uncle Neal showed up. He looked anything but happy about Tyler holding Liberty. Neal didn’t say anything, just looked very stressed out until Rosie and Tyler left the area.

  “So what’s the deal with Tyler?” I asked. Tyler was a topic nobody seemed to bring up, including me, but now I wanted to know more.

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “I mean, what’s he doing here?”

  “Nobody’s told you? Jackie? Rosie?”

  “They could tell I didn’t want to know. I guess I’m ready to hear it.”

  Neal breathed out, breathed in. “Okay, sure. Tyler’s on probation. From juvenile court. One of the things Jackie does here, besides working with the animals, is help kids who’ve gotten into trouble. Sometimes the court will let them do community service, like working at the center, instead of time in a detention center. Tyler’s judge assigned him to work here four hours a day.”

  “So that’s why he told me wasn’t exactly a volunteer.”

  “I’d like to know what he is, ‘exactly.’ Jackie’s had a lot of success with some of these kids, really turned their lives around, but this time…Well, I think she’s over her head. I just don’t think she should risk it. If he’s going to be around the animals at all, then he should stay in the clinic cleaning cages. Where people can keep an eye on him.”

  “What in the world did he do that makes you so worried?”

  Uncle Neal swallowed hard. “Cruelty to animals. And I don’t mean he forgot to feed a pet.”

  Just that quick, I held up my hand, as if to ward off a blow. “Stop,” I said. “Don’t tell me any more than that.”

  I took off for a walk into the heart of Jackie’s tall cedars, a good place to air out my head. All the same I couldn’t quit thinking about Tyler. Maybe I should’ve asked for the details, but I truly didn’t want to know, didn’t want to have those kinds of pictures inside my head.

  I needed to be alone. I climbed up and onto an old stump about six feet above the ground. The day was hot, but inside the trees it was nice and cool. The stump was so far across that I was able to lie on my back, stretch my arms and legs wide, and still be contained within its circle. I looked up through the branches at a tiny patch of blue high above and got real sad about all the cruelty in the world, all the wounded people. My mind jumped to the refugee camp in Pakistan. I hadn’t heard from my parents since they got there, and that was scary.

  Don’t go there, I thought, don’t brood on all the bad things that could happen. You promised you wouldn’t. I concentrated on relaxing, on how nice the breeze w
as, how beautiful the light filtering through the trees, and I nodded off.

  I woke to kid voices filtering through the cedar boughs. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could tell it was Cody and his friend Robbie. I climbed down off the stump and edged out of the cedar grove toward their voices.

  They were playing with the garden hose outside Jackie’s garden, which was fenced against the wild deer and her own goats. The nannies were grazing close by but not near enough that Cody could spray them with the hose. The goats were not interested in playing, and they hated getting wet. The golden retrievers watched from the shade of a big maple.

  Cody and Robbie were packing dirt. It was fun peeking into their world. They were making a dam. It was pond construction, your standard little boy water engineering project.

  I left the trees and crossed to the garden gate, then crept closer down the garden’s center path. The pole beans and the dill made excellent cover. When I reached the raspberry patch I could hear every word. The topic was Chuckie.

  It wasn’t until I sat, pulled my knees up to my chest, and peeked through the vines that I figured out that the baby beaver was actually there. They were making a pond for him. Chuckie was swimming back and forth in the rising water like a motorized toy, only he was alive.

  “Wait a minute,” Cody was saying, “Chuckie should be making his own dam.”

  “Let’s tear out this dirt dam and start making a new one out of sticks and mud,” Robbie said. “Then he’ll get the idea.”

  With the pond emptying fast, Chuckie quit swimming and looked around quizzically. “It’s just for a few minutes,” Robbie explained.

  The waters were soon rising again, but so far Chuckie hadn’t pitched in to help with the construction. The retrievers saw the little beaver swimming around, came over, and sniffed at it. Cody ordered them off. “Don’t even think about it!”

  The goldens went back to the shade and lay down.

  Robbie said, “How come you like Sage better than them? They play stick with you and she won’t.”

  “They’re too easy. Sage is smart and knows how to rescue animals. I wish she’d get to like me.”

  “Don’t you wish we could play with the bear cub, Cody?”

  “That would be major, but he’d bite us. He’s too wild. I like to peek through the hole in the fence, but usually Tyler’s there watching him.”

  Tyler’s name hit me like a bucket of cold water. They went back to their dam project, and I slipped out the other gate and into the parking lot. And there he was, the very person I would have gone out of my way to avoid right then.

  “Waiting for someone?” I asked Tyler, my heart thumping a little faster than usual.

  “My dad. He’s picking me up.”

  I started to walk away.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Tyler called. “What’s the deal? Did you hear something bad about me from your uncle?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, fine, I understand not talking about stuff. But what’s the deal with Cody?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, he kind of steers a wide path around me. Is it something I said?”

  I had half a second to think if I was going to disguise my feelings, but I hated that sort of thing. “Well, yeah,” I said. “It was something you said, right after we got here.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I guess if you really want to know, it was that stuff you told him about half of the animals dying, getting euthanized and cremated and all. It hurt his feelings. Was that really necessary?”

  Tyler flushed. “So you are upset with me. Well, he was asking. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  “You didn’t have to be so negative, Tyler. He’s just a little kid. Neal says you were exaggerating, but even if it’s true, you could have talked about the ones that make it.”

  “He’s a great kid, Shannon. I’m sorry.” Tyler ran his hand through his unruly hair, hung his head. “I’m real sorry.” His hands went into the bottom of his pockets. He looked down the driveway.

  I was surprised to hear him sounding so sincere, surprised he had it in him to say he was sorry.

  Now I was confused. This was the Tyler I’d seen with Liberty. But what about the Tyler Neal described, the one so vicious a judge was making him pay for what he’d done?

  Tyler was reaching out to me, asking me to believe in him, trust him. I couldn’t walk away. I had felt it from the first, his need to be understood. Not by everybody, by me. Wasn’t it true what my parents believed, that it’s up to everybody to help in the healing of the world?

  If I was going to even try, I had to try to get past not wanting to know the bad stuff. “Tyler, is it true what they say, about you hurting animals?”

  He didn’t say anything, just nodded grimly.

  Part of me wanted to get away from him, part of me wanted to stay.

  “One animal,” he added. “I don’t suppose that helps any.”

  Cautiously, I said, “Maybe it’s none of my business, but is anyone helping you? I mean, like are you getting counseling or anything?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I am. Lots of talking, a couple times a week. Hey, can we just drop it, okay? All I want is to finish up here and not blow it. The way people look at me, like your uncle, it gives me the creeps.”

  “What about Jackie?” I asked. “She’s trying to help, isn’t she?”

  He laughed. “She’s wacky, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “What do you mean? Why would you say that?”

  “I mean, I like her and all, but don’t you think she’s mental? A lot of these animals, maybe most of them—squirrels, possums, pigeons, crows, skunks—I mean, give me a break. They’re mostly pests. Why all this effort? It’s crazy.”

  A car turned off the pavement and was rumbling up the gravel driveway. With all the trees, it wasn’t in sight yet. “Quick,” Tyler said, “duck behind those bushes.”

  Tyler was pointing at Jackie’s thick hedge of rhododendrons along the drive. I looked at him like he was crazy. “Just do it!” he yelled.

  I don’t know why, but I did what I was told. I ran behind the hedge and sat there motionless, peering through the dense foliage.

  I didn’t see much, just a glimpse of a dark-haired, red-faced man as he jerked his boat of a sedan around in the narrow driveway. It took three tries. He was driving angry, lurching the car forward and then back as if he couldn’t get out of Jackie’s fast enough. Finally he had the car pointed back down the driveway. Tyler jumped in and his father hit the accelerator hard, spraying gravel all around.

  I understood a lot more than I had a minute before.

  10

  BABY SQUIRRELS AND BAD HISTORY

  I woke up scared that night. Not hearing from my parents was more worrisome than I’d been admitting. We hadn’t heard anything since they left Islamabad, bound for the refugee camp in Peshawar. I’d kept up a stream of e-mails but nothing was coming back. Had Pakistan just swallowed them up? Right after Tyler left down the driveway with his father I’d done some e-mailing back and forth with Doctors Without Borders. They were working on getting me in touch, but what if something awful had happened?

  The big red numbers on the nightstand clock said 1:14. In the next room, Cody was talking in his sleep. The kid needed a dump truck to unload his head. I threw my robe on over my nightshirt and tiptoed to his open door.

  Cody’s head was at the foot of his bed, while his feet had a firm grasp on his pillow. His blankie was wrapped around his face, maybe to break the glare from the nightlight in the hall. He was mumbling away, but now and again I could catch what he was saying, including “Got it!” “Hang on!” “Major!” and “Good, Sage.”

  Cody’s hand reached out, flicked the blankie from his face. He pushed something away, said “Back off!” Obviously he wasn’t talking to the border collie anymore. Maybe the retrievers were all over him with their sticky tennis ba
ll.

  More mumbling, then a minute later, “Let go of those skunks!”

  I could go back to sleep now, at least try.

  As I was turning the corner into my room, the light downstairs went on. No doubt Jackie had gotten up to do a feeding. She’d been bringing the baby squirrels over for the night. They had to be fed every three hours.

  At the foot of the stairs I could hear faint mewing from two plastic laundry tubs on the coffee table. I peeked inside. The squirrels were sorted by age: the tiny ones with eyes still shut in one tub, the ones that were a little larger, with more fur and eyes opened, in the other. Almost all were squirming in their rumpled towel bedding.

  Jackie spotted me from the stove, where she was heating formula. “Hi there. Can’t sleep?”

  “Not really. Could you use some help?”

  “Sure could, but don’t make a habit of it, Shannon. Being able to sleep is a godsend. I wish your uncle could.”

  “You mean he doesn’t?”

  “Snatches a little now and then.”

  “I never hear anything from his room.”

  “Sometimes it’s because he isn’t there. He and his partner glide out of here like a pair of wolves.”

  “To do what?”

  “Prowl the greater Seattle area. Neal parks the van downhill so he can coast down the driveway before he starts the motor. Rosie calls him the Midnight Rambler.”

  “What a sneak. What’s he doing?”

  “Rescuing animals, of course.”

  “But it’s dark.”

  “He’s got Sage. At night it’s mostly raccoons that get injured on the road, that sort of thing. In the winter, they do it in the dark and the rain. He’s a nut. He’s devoted.”

  “Maybe a tad bit crazy?”

  “Neal can’t stand the idea of an animal suffering with a people-related injury and people not trying to help. Believe me, I’ve tried to talk him out of 24/7. Neal says he can’t sleep anyway, might as well be doing what he loves to do. I can’t fire him. He’s not exactly working for me. We’re more like dance partners.”