by Will Hobbs
Jackie touched me on the shoulder. “It wasn’t only to help out his sister, Shannon. He wanted the time with you and Cody.”
Time, I thought. Time was the key word, how much of it Uncle Neal might have. This summer, these nine weeks, could be the last time he’d ever see us. I swallowed hard and asked, “How bad is lymphoma?”
“It can be deadly, but it also can be survivable. If it’s gonna get you, it usually takes a few years and sometimes a lot more. It’s possible to beat it completely, walk away cancer-free.”
Fiercely, I said, “Then that’s the way it’s going to be.”
“I believe that too. He’ll find out shortly after you guys are back home if it’s still in his body. Then he’ll take it from there. Having you guys here…maybe he was anxious at first about how it would work out, but haven’t you noticed what it’s done for him? He’s crazy about you two. I’ve known Neal for years, and never seen him happier.”
I started sniffling. “You should have seen him in the van this morning, all hyper, before he got hurt. I just don’t know how I feel. I feel too many things at once. A few minutes ago I was so sure I was going to tell him I was mad at him for not telling us.”
“But now you’re looking at it from his point of view. If he had told you, what would the summer have been like for you and Cody, for all three of you?”
“So what do I do? Part of me really wants to tell my parents, but I’m already worrying what that will do to them. Will my mother think she has to come home?”
“Could happen,” Jackie said. “It’s not an easy decision. You have a lot to think about. It’s your call, Shannon.”
“If I tell Uncle Neal I know, everything will be so different. How will he be able to keep it fun with us, stay positive, concentrate on beating the cancer? What about Cody when he finds out? Cody’s going to take it real hard. Nothing will be the same.”
“You don’t have to decide right away, or even before you see him at the hospital. This is complicated. Life can be like that. Sometimes it’s hard to know the right thing to do, no matter how hard you try. You do your best. Just remember what it’s like for your uncle. He has his weaknesses, but he has amazing strengths.”
That’s all it took; I started sobbing again. When I got myself together, I said, “At least I understand a few things I didn’t before. I understand why you wanted Uncle Neal to move up here with you. It was so you could look after him.”
“The only reason it worked out was because he needed more space for you and Cody.”
“I understand more about him and Liberty, too. That’s about both of them getting well, isn’t it?”
“You’re a sharp one, Shannon.”
“I’m dense! I mean, there isn’t a hair on his head, and I’m like, ‘Duh!’”
I started laughing. Laughing-crying. “How is Liberty?”
“No better. Sooner or later we’re going to have to release her to the eagle spirit world.”
“You mean put her down.”
“Put her down. If she doesn’t want to live, well, Neal knows it’s a matter of weeks, not months. On a happier note, he’ll be pleased to hear that the red-tailed hawk you guys saved today is in perfect condition. She lost two flight feathers but that’s no big deal. Cody told me how you cut her loose, and how careful you were with her. We’re just about to release her. Come and see.”
Outside, everybody was assembling for the release. Rosie was there and so were a dozen or so volunteers, including Tyler in the bear suit. He was holding the head piece in his hand. I was kind of surprised that he let himself be rounded up for the event. Cody was there, peering into the carrier.
Jackie told everybody the short version of what had happened at the driving range. She said that the doctor who operated on Uncle Neal’s hand told her there was a good chance he’d get full use of it back. Then she said that Cody and I had showed “courage under fire.”
Cody opened the carrier door. The big hawk came out slowly, glared at everybody standing there, then took to the sky accompanied by cheers, lots and lots of cheers.
13
DOES IT HURT?
At least for this morning it’s all about his hand, just his hand. That’s what I told myself on our way up to Uncle Neal’s hospital room. No looking deep into his soul. If in doubt, keep it light.
Uncle Neal’s hand was in a soft cast that was wrapped in gauze from his knuckles to the middle of his forearm. “Does it hurt?” Cody asked.
“Only when I laugh at how dumb I was,” Neal said. “I took an IQ test and the results were negative.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “That sounds suspiciously like a bumper sticker.”
“It is,” he confessed. “Nothing is foolproof for a sufficiently talented fool.”
“Wait another second,” Cody said. “That sounds like a bumper sticker too.”
“How about this one?” Jackie chimed in. “The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.”
“This is sickening,” Cody said. “Everyone in this whole room likes bumper stickers.”
Everyone was laughing. That was when I made my decision. As much as I hated to, I was going to keep Uncle Neal’s secret. We had too much to lose, all the way around.
Neal came home later that day. He wasn’t going to be able to use his left hand for a couple of weeks. Using it fully, that was going to take months. Forget about rescuing animals, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
When Neal got back to the center he went straight to Liberty. He spent hour upon hour sitting with her. With his hurt hand on his lap he would stroke her chest feathers with his fingertips and talk, talk, talk with her.
For a while at least, no midnight rambles for him. I looked in on him three nights in a row. My uncle must have been exhausted; the first two nights I found him sound asleep. The third night he caught me. A light was on and he was reading. “Anything wrong, Shannon? Can’t sleep?”
I stepped inside and sat in his rocking chair. Sage got up from the throw rug alongside Neal’s bed, lay down next to me, and let me pet the crown of her head. “Cody would be so jealous,” I said. Then, after a pause, “How are you doing? Healing?”
“I sure think so.”
“Good. Are you bummed that you can’t be rescuing animals in the middle of the night?”
He looked surprised. “I thought I was being so careful not to wake you.”
My eyebrows went up disapprovingly.
“It wasn’t every night. I just don’t sleep much.”
“You slept the last couple of nights. It shows it can be done.”
“They put me so far under at the hospital, it took me a couple days to get my normal metabolism back.” With a grin, he added, “Hey, I’m a restless soul.”
“Too much coffee if you ask me.”
“I should have told you about my night runs, Shannon. Didn’t want you to worry. I have some peculiar ways.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“You might have noticed I don’t have a lot of close friends. I’m not so great on my people skills.”
“I wouldn’t say that, except with Tyler, I suppose.”
“To tell you the truth, I get along with animals better than I do with most people. They’re a lot more honest, a lot more straightforward, a lot more dignified. I’m a strange one—your mother should have told you.”
“It’s hard to figure out what to tell people and what not to,” I said.
“I actually envy the animals sometimes. Instinct is so strong with them. A deer knows how to be a deer, a raven knows how to be a raven. Every single one of us has to struggle to find out what it means to be human. We are so capable of messing up it’s not funny. Sometimes it’s hard to keep your sense of humor. You know what I mean?”
Around his eyes, he looked so sad. I said, “Can’t you just clap your hands together real loud and frighten Liberty into standing up?”
“Tried it,” he said with a strangled laugh. “Liberty’s on your
mind too?”
“A lot, especially because you care about her so much.”
“I’ve been trying to give her my life force. She hears me. Oh, she hears me. I haven’t given up on her by a long shot. That girl’s going to make it, I know she will.”
Time slowed down once we were no longer chasing around in the rescue van. I learned to milk the goats, helped out in Jackie’s garden some, and assisted at the clinic. I got to know lots of the volunteers by name, picked blackberries by the gallon, made some jams and pies in Jackie’s kitchen.
Sometimes I would accompany Cody to the creek that ran through the valley. It was about a ten-minute walk. At the creek it was shady and cool, a great place to hang out. I would read while he tried to catch frogs. They weren’t that easy to grab. The third time we went, Cody told me this was the same creek where Tyler killed the dog. I asked him how he knew that, and he said that it was somebody at Robbie’s school who saw it happen.
At Jackie’s these days, there was a deer hanging around the garden fence, browsing, twitching her tail and keeping her large ears attuned to the golden retrievers. Once in a while the dogs hassled her, but generally they were oblivious on the office porch. The deer was biding her time, Jackie said, waiting for us to leave the garden gate open.
The doe was bigger than our deer in the East. Jackie said it was a mule deer, named after the big ears. Jackie was pretty sure the doe was pregnant. Midsummer was late for dropping a fawn but sometimes the animals got off schedule. The year before, the center took care of a baby rock dove that hatched in November.
One day Cody and I followed the deer through the trees and around the edge of Jackie’s five acres. At the deer pen she visited the crippled doe whose job was to keep orphaned fawns company. The two touched noses through the chain-link fence.
One of those slow days, as I was heading with my novel for some shady quiet time in Jackie’s cedar grove, a voice from behind me called my name. It was Tyler, just getting off work.
I let him catch up. “What’s up?” I asked.
He shrugged, caught my eye, then looked away. “I don’t know, just wondered if you wanted to hang out. You know, just talk. You want to take a walk or something?”
I didn’t think so—I’d been staying away—but I didn’t say so. “I have to stay within shouting distance of Cody. He’s over there with Robbie. Over here in the trees there’s a nice cool spot.”
“Perfect.”
I climbed up onto my stump and Tyler followed. I sat down cross-legged and he did the same. “Sweet,” he said.
“It’s the perfect spot. I can see the door to Jackie’s house and the door to the clinic. I can hang in the shade but stay tuned to everybody’s comings and goings.”
“You like it here, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah, I like the people, I like the animals, I like everything about it.”
Tyler didn’t say anything, he just scraped a little swath clear of cedar needles. But then he said, “It’s kind of growing on me, too. I couldn’t stand it for a long time—I’ve been coming here since school got out. But now I kind of look forward to it.”
It can’t be because we’ve been seeing each other lately, I thought, because we haven’t. “What made the difference?” I asked him.
He closed his fist on a little pile of needles, lifted his hand, and started sifting them out the bottom, sprinkling a line across the patch he’d cleared. “To tell you the truth, I kind of expected everything to go south, but it never has.” He laughed. “People don’t get mad around here. I mean, even like Jackie. She’s pretty serious—everything has to be done just so—but she never gets angry, really. Your uncle—I can tell he doesn’t like me, but at least he doesn’t go out of his way to tell me about it. That’s kind of refreshing.”
Tyler needed to talk. Did I really want to go there, wherever this was headed? Yet if I didn’t, who would?
Why was it I had never believed he was a hopeless case? In a flash, I could picture him at the creek, what he’d done, and I pictured his father’s face in the driveway.
I took a leap of faith. “At home,” I began, “I guess it’s not so easy?”
“You got that right. It’s never been easy. My old man’s got a temper like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’m sorry. Cody and I are lucky in the parent department.”
“I heard about your parents going to Pakistan and all that. That whole part of the world is dangerous, isn’t it?”
“It’s definitely something to worry about.”
“Both doctors, that’s pretty impressive. I’m the son of a mechanic and a checker at Wal-Mart.”
“So, how come you’re putting that down? What’s wrong with either of those?”
He looked at me skeptically.
“My parents weren’t born doctors,” I said. “My dad’s parents were farmers. My mother was the daughter of a warehouse manager and a clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles. This is America, Tyler.”
He glanced at me like I’d made a speech, which I guess I had. “I know, I know. What I should have said was, sometimes I wish my father would go to Pakistan for a nice long vacation.”
“Really?”
He laughed and said, “Sure. It would be a break for me and my mom.”
To that, I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to run away from the topic but I got brave and said, “I guess you don’t mind getting out of the house to come to the center, even if it’s not by choice. It gets you away from your dad.”
“Right. This is all working out pretty good this summer. I can’t drive yet so I can’t get very far away, but this place kind of gives me a place to hide out. I just wish it made more sense.”
“How do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong, but what happened to ‘survival of the fittest’ and all that? I mean, rehabbing birds and squirrels that cats have dragged in, and raccoons that have been hit by cars. What happened to letting nature take its course?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. I’d been thinking about it since he started talking like this the last time. “Tyler, there isn’t any ‘nature’ anymore.”
“No nature?”
“I mean, we’ve interfered too much. We keep taking away land from them and using it for ourselves. Isn’t it true what Jackie says, how every year there’s more people, more cars and roads and buildings, and less room for wildlife? What’s natural about cars hitting the animals, people’s pets catching them, a hawk flying into the net at the driving range?”
“Heard about that. I’m sorry. It just seems so, well, extreme to try to save all these animals, like Jackie and your uncle and all these volunteers are doing. I mean, the whole earth is going to be a parking lot eventually, don’t you think?”
“Maybe not. What a nightmare, Tyler. We can’t give up that easy.”
“I’m just coming from such a different place. I started talking to my dad about the bear cub, me dressing up in the suit and all—it made him so crazy. I wanted to tell him that with certain animals at least, what the center does makes a lot of sense, actually. Like with the birds of prey, the bear cub, definitely the bear cub.”
“Well, tell me about that. I haven’t heard about the cub. Tell me what it’s like.”
“You really want to know?”
“Hey, I’m jealous. You’ve been getting closer to it than anybody.”
Tyler was suddenly all lit up. “It’s amazing to be wearing that bear suit, and to be that close. He only used to eat mush that was a mixture of fruit, fish, dog chow, and a bunch of other stuff. He still gets that, but I also bring him blackberry branches and logs that I fill with mealworms. He’s starting to find his own food, to work for it. It’s very cool, actually. And I get to play with him for like five minutes. He’s all over me. I keep hoping another cub comes to the center. That’s what he really needs. He has way too much energy to be alone.”
“Will they actually be able to release him? Can he go completely wild and not become on
e of those garbage bears that raid campgrounds and stuff?”
Tyler’s eyes got intense. “That’s the whole idea! In January, they’re going to take him up to the Cascades, to an old bear den in the snow country, and they’re going to put him in it. You know, when he’s tranquilized. When he wakes up and comes outside, it’ll be all cold and covered with snow. He’ll turn around, go back into the den, and go to sleep. In the spring, everything that happened here at Jackie’s is going to seem like a dream.”
“That’s fantastic to think about. It really works?”
“It really works. A vet who came and shot him with a tranquilizer gun told me all about it. I got to hold the bear while the vet gave him an injection, some kind of meds once a month for parasites. I asked how the bear will find a den or know how to dig a new one the next winter, and he said instinct will take care of that.”
“Amazing.”
“The vet said I could go along in January when they release him. I told him I’d be in school. He said no problem, we’ll figure it out. I doubt if my dad would let me, though. If it didn’t have anything to do with Jackie, maybe he would, but as it is—”
Suddenly Tyler looked at his watch. His face went pale. “Gotta jet. I was supposed to be home ten minutes ago.”
He started to climb down off the stump. “Tyler,” I said.
He looked back up. I said, “Well, just take it easy.”
“Sure,” he said. “You too, Shannon.”
14
TURTLES FOR PEACE
When Neal wasn’t with Liberty, he was more restless than the caged animals. He was used to roaming all of Pierce, King, and Snohomish counties. I understood. If he slowed down he’d start thinking about the cancer. He’d give anything to be on the road again and rescuing the animals.
And I had a solution. I’d been thinking it over and over. Our eighth day grounded at the center, I began by asking Neal about how he was doing. “It’s killing me that I can’t be out doing the hot rescues,” he admitted.
“I thought so,” I said. “I miss it too. And Jackie’s having to turn down a lot of calls. We don’t want the police departments and sheriffs’ departments and all the other people to quit calling.”
