by Will Hobbs
“Give ’em room!” a burly policeman shouted. The crowd fell back and made a corridor for us. The TV cameras were rolling, reporters talking into their microphones, saying stuff about a man and a girl and a boy and a fishing net and Jackie’s Wild Seattle. I heard one of them mention our bumper sticker, Turtles for Peace. They were saying lots about the girl because Neal still had the cast on his arm and I was the one with the gloves and the net. The only face in the crowd I really focused on was that of a Native American guy with a dark face and long black hair. He wasn’t talking to anybody, just watching very keenly.
The lobby was crowded with people who worked in the Federal Building, policemen and security cops, and the radio and TV reporters. Neal waved for people’s attention. Everybody fell silent.
“We’d appreciate your cooperation,” Neal said. “TV cameras fine, still cameras bad, unless they’re digital, on account of the sound of the shutters. We’ll set up a rope line—please stand behind it. When the elevator door is open, please be as quiet as you possibly can. We don’t want to startle the animal. My able niece, Shannon Young, is going to attempt to help this coyote out of its pickle. Handling the carrier, that’s her brother Cody.”
“Where’d the coyote come from?” asked a reporter, holding her microphone toward Neal. The reporter was the supermodel type.
“Just a few blocks away, down at the docks.”
“It eats rats,” Cody added. “Big Norwegian suckers.”
“And what exactly are Norwegian suckers?” the glamorous reporter asked him.
“Norway rats,” Cody spoke up. “Non-native species. They’re filthy and they’re a menace to public health, and that’s why the coyotes are good citizens.”
The reporters who didn’t have recorders or TV cameras were writing all this down. The Indian man was enjoying this.
“Where do you go to school, Cody?” another reporter asked.
“New Jersey. I saw the towers crash down, the World Trade Center towers. My best friend’s dad got killed. He was my soccer coach.”
“Cody,” I whispered, “this might be more than they wanted to know.”
“By no means,” the reporter said, and another one said, “Are you kidding, this is great.” Yet another reporter called, “What else, Cody?”
“Well,” my brother said. “Our mother is in Pakistan and our father is in Afghanistan. They help people at the refugee camps. They’re with Doctors Without Borders.”
“Keep going,” the supermodel encouraged him. “The coyote can wait a little longer.”
Cody looked at Uncle Neal, who gave him a thumbs-up. “Whatever you feel like saying, Cody. It appears that you’re all theirs, and vice versa.”
My brother’s face lit up. “I know what. My uncle Neal—that’s him—he donated the wildlife ambulance that’s parked outside to Jackie’s Wild Seattle, but it’s all broken down. We might not even make it home. Jackie needs a miracle. My uncle can’t donate another one to take its place because he’s running out of money. He used to work for Boeing. He’s an engineer. Maybe somebody else could donate a new ambulance to Jackie.”
Everybody in the lobby started clapping.
Suddenly all my tension was gone. The kid had drained it right out of me. Knock me over with a feather, I felt that calm. “Uncle Neal,” I said, “I’m ready.”
“Let’s go to work,” Neal said.
Everyone fell silent. The rope line was set up, and the crowd stood behind it. When the time came, the elevator door opened and there was the coyote curled up in the back left corner. It lifted its head and its ears stood straight up. It was looking at me and Cody and Uncle Neal, and past us to a hundred or more very quiet people.
The coyote didn’t stand up, just lay there very alertly.
“Looks healthy,” Uncle Neal said. “A young one, maybe just a year old. It’s a go, Shannon, whenever you’re ready.”
I hesitated. I pictured the coyote lunging at me like the bear cub and the bobcat. Don’t go there, I thought. Don’t even think about it.
I took a deep breath. As calmly as possible, I stepped into the elevator.
The coyote stood up. Its ears pointed straight toward me, its tail went straight down.
Behind me, the door closed noisily.
Right away I started talking. I told the coyote how beautiful it was, what beautiful colors it had in its coat, what beautiful eyes, how sorry I was to hear that it was lost.
So far, so good. I decided to sit down. I might look less threatening that way. The coyote locked its eyes on mine as I sat cross-legged across from it. I kept talking. I explained who I was and where I was from, described our house on Liberty Street, described my room, my bedspread and everything on my dresser, then started talking about what a great city Seattle was. “Have you ever been to Fremont and seen the troll?” I asked. The coyote had beautiful amber eyes. They were always right on mine.
By this time I wasn’t afraid anymore. I felt calm, even, and I thought how fun this was, what a rush. I thought about Neal. I thought about how much my uncle and I were alike. The coyote truly was a beautiful animal. “Beautiful Amber Eyes,” I began to call the coyote, and I meant it. “Beautiful eyelashes, beautiful coat, beautiful wild thing.”
The coyote lay back down. There was only about four feet between us.
I had practically hypnotized myself. How long I’d been in there, I had no idea. The coyote’s head had been down on its paws for some time now. Its ears were relaxed. I had a feeling it trusted me. It knew I’d come to help it, not hurt it. Animal intelligence.
The time was now. Still talking, I got up on my knees. Still talking, I eased over and sat right next to it, like I might with Sage or Jackie’s retrievers. I reached out my hand and touched it on its back. The coyote followed my hand closely with its mouth, but it didn’t open its jaws, didn’t nip at me. Amazing.
“Beautiful,” I said.
I told the coyote how I was going to pick it up, pull it into my body so I could take care of it.
“Let’s get you out of your pickle,” I said, and then I made my move. I eased my right hand under its chest, slipped under its backside with my left, then pulled the animal into my body. “Cody,” I said, not much louder than I’d been talking to the coyote, but loud enough my brother might hear me.
The elevator opened. The coyote’s ears went straight up and I felt its body go rigid. In glided Cody with the carrier, the door already open. “He’s a friend, he’s a friend,” I whispered. “He’s bringing you a little den to crawl into.”
Cody set the carrier down close to me. The coyote looked inside, then glanced at all the faces through the elevator door. Coyote still in my arms, I leaned toward the carrier. It sprang inside.
Cody closed the door. It was over.
24
THANKS FOR THE MICE
My coyote adventure was over, but the day was far from over. Trailing blue smoke, we made about ten or twelve more stops. Late in the day, a policeman pulled us over and wrote Uncle Neal an air pollution ticket. “Seems ironic for an outfit like yours to be getting a citation like this,” he said as he gave Uncle Neal a copy.
“That is ironic,” Cody volunteered from the backseat. I had my doubts whether he knew what he was talking about.
“Wait a minute,” the policeman said. “You’re the kid I saw on TV at the station during my lunch break. Your parents are with Doctors Without Borders, right?”
“That’s right,” Cody said, “but pretty soon they’re coming home.”
“And you’re his sister?” the policeman said to me.
“That’s my major distinction in life so far.”
“I tell you what,” the officer said. He took the ticket out of Uncle Neal’s hand and tore it in two. “Since your parents are helping out those refugees, I’m going to let your uncle off with a warning, just for being related to you.”
“Thanks, officer,” Neal said. “We’ll park it tonight.”
“That’s good. We don’
t want birds dropping dead out of the sky. Still got that coyote?”
Cody leaned forward from the backseat. “We dropped it off with one of the volunteers. She’s going to release it down by the docks around midnight.”
The policeman gave us a thumbs-up as we drove away. “Cody,” I said, “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
We were anxious to get home. We started creeping north on I-5, in rush hour traffic. Jackie called to say supper was on the stove. North of the Everett exit, as we were finally making time, we got a call from a man who wouldn’t tell me much—he said he’d been trapping, and “Would you take care of the orphans?”
It was from a Cedar Glen address, out past Jackie’s on the same road. We were relieved it would hardly slow us down. I spotted the address on a big mailbox in front of an auto shop and a one-story house off to the side. I should have guessed what was going on, but the sign—TUCKER’S AUTO AND TRUCK REPAIR—took me by surprise.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “This is Tyler’s place, Uncle Neal. That must have been his father on the phone. I think this is one call we should forget about.”
I was scared, but Neal didn’t look scared. “I’ve never turned down a call yet,” he said calmly. “Let’s go see what he’s got.”
It was well after five and the shop was closed. We walked over to the house. My heart was beating like a sledgehammer. Cody rang the doorbell.
Nothing. Cody rang it again.
Still nothing, then a man’s angry voice: “Answer the door, Tyler!”
The door opened, and it was Tyler. He had a fresh bruise, this one along his jaw. He was so embarrassed.
We could see his father on the couch across the room, laughing. “Give it to ’em, Tyler. Let ’em rehab the poor little wild creatures.”
Tyler reached for something that must have been placed by the door. He handed me a shoebox. Nested in a clump of dry grass was a litter of squirming baby mice. They were tiny and pink, barely beginning to grow fur. Their eyes were still closed. “I’m sorry,” Tyler said. “I’m really sorry.”
“They’re orphans,” his father called. “Parents killed by a trapper!”
“He’s been drinking,” Tyler said quietly. “This is so ridiculous. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Neal told him. “No doubt Jackie will take care of them. Your dad’s right about that.”
“Say good-bye, Tyler,” his father warned ominously.
Tyler was about to close the door. He looked desperate.
“What is it?” I said.
Tyler lowered his voice. “Can I come with you guys, right now? I—I think I better.”
I looked at Uncle Neal. He looked at Tyler, at his wild hair, the pleading look in his eye, the ugly bruise. “Sure thing,” Neal said.
Tyler opened the door wider and stepped out. For the first time I saw his mother. She was watching from the kitchen. She looked like a marble statue that was about to break into a thousand tiny pieces. Tyler turned around and said to her, “Mom, I’m going to spend the night at the center.”
“Oh no you’re not,” his father said, rising from the couch.
“Let’s go, Tyler,” Neal said softly. “Quick.”
“Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad, I just think it’s best. Kind of a time-out, that’s all. Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal.”
We were almost back to the van when we saw Tyler’s father in the doorway. With a glance over my shoulder I saw him clenching and unclenching his fists. His face had turned very red.
“Take good care of those mice!” Tyler’s dad called.
“We will!” Cody called back. Without a trace of sarcasm, he added, “Thanks for the mice, Mr. Tucker!”
Tyler got in the back with Cody and Sage. He said, “Do you think Jackie will let me stay over tonight? My dad’s in real bad shape.”
“You know she will,” I said. “You can sleep on the couch in the living room. Actually, it pulls out into a bed.”
“If I just hadn’t started talking to him about the center, about what I was doing there. When I first told him about the bear cub, I thought he’d like it. I thought he’d think it was cool. Big mistake. That’s when everything started to get worse. He’d been a little better the last few months, since Social Services talked to him, a little easier on my mom and me. I should have left well enough alone. I wanted him to get excited about what I was doing, about the bear cub especially, about Liberty, too. I should have acted like I hated going to Jackie’s, like it was a terrible punishment. That would have made him feel better. This is all my fault.”
“You gave your dad a big chance to make a fresh start with you,” Neal said. “He’s the one who blew it.”
“Where will you go tomorrow?” I asked. “What will you do?”
“I sure don’t want to go home for a while, not until something changes. Until he gets some help.”
Jackie got a few surprises when we drove in—Tyler and the baby mice. Fortunately there were two evening-shift volunteers in the clinic she could hand the mice off to. Yes indeed, she wanted them taken care of. She told the volunteers what kind of formula to mix, how much to feed the mice, to give them a heating pad and make sure it was warm but not too warm.
Jackie was awfully dismayed to see Tyler’s face bruised again. It was swelling badly. She got him an ice pack while Neal and I were setting out the spaghetti, salad, and French bread. I heard them talking about Tyler’s probation officer, about whether calling him might be a good idea. Jackie thought that the sheriff’s department and Social Services could work together to find emergency foster placement for Tyler starting the next day. Tyler said he’d think it over during dinner.
If dinner started out quiet, it didn’t stay that way for long. Jackie got up and turned the TV around where we could see it. She slipped a tape into the VCR and hit the remote. She had taped the local news from one of the Seattle stations.
A reporter was talking out in front of the Federal Building, and there we were driving up, with the camera zooming in on JACKIE’S WILD SEATTLE and our logos, the harbor seal and the bald eagle.
Not much spaghetti got eaten during the next few minutes. The tape showed us getting out of the van, Uncle Neal with his arm in the cast, his Sage tattoo, the Mariners cap. There was Cody taking in all the commotion, and there I was pulling on the coat and the gloves while the reporter talked about our unusual mission.
We watched with our mouths open, Tyler too. Next came the glamorous reporter interviewing Uncle Neal about where the coyote came from. “Just a few blocks away, down at the docks,” he said. And there was Cody, big as life, suddenly entering the frame. “It eats rats. Big Norwegian suckers.”
Tyler laughed so hard he was seriously losing it, which was good to see.
“And what exactly are Norwegian suckers?” the reporter asked Cody, kind of afraid of what he might say.
It was all there. “Non-native species,” “a menace to public health,” and all the rest: how our parents were in Pakistan and Afghanistan, how Jackie needed a new ambulance, all of it.
Jackie hit the pause button. “Best publicity I ever had—even better than the newspaper story. The phone at the office has been ringing off the hook all day. I had to reload the paper in the fax machine. I’m just lucky the home phone is unlisted, or we’d never sleep tonight!”
“Show the rest,” I said.
“No, wait.” Jackie stepped over to the TV and pointed to a man in the background. “See this man?”
It was the Native American guy with the long black hair. “I remember him,” I said.
“Listen to this,” Jackie said. “That man left the Federal Building right after you guys did, went to his car, called me up on his cell, and drove straight over here. He ate lunch with the volunteers, ended up spending the entire afternoon here. He left about an hour before you got home. He left this.”
Dramatically, Jackie took a slip of paper off the top of the TV and brought it straight to Uncle Neal. She put it in his right hand. I
t was a check, I could see that. “How much?” I asked.
Neal was so choked up he couldn’t even talk. Tyler, sitting next to him, said, “Thirty-five thousand dollars. It’s from the Muckleshoots.”
“Muckleshoots?” I asked.
“The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe,” Jackie answered. “They’re from south of Seattle, down near Auburn. It’s for a new ambulance. The tribe has a special fund for giving away some of the money they make from their casino. They make gifts to charities and nonprofits. That man you saw at the Federal Building is the one in charge of giving away the money. I guess he liked you guys.”
“This is unbelievable,” Cody said. “My spaghetti’s getting cold and I don’t even care.”
“There’s more on the tape,” Jackie said. “We can wait for the rest until after dinner.”
“Play the tape!” everybody yelled at once.
Pretty much all that was left was my fifteen seconds of fame, going into the elevator, then coming back out with the coyote in the carrier.
“You have the greatest smile in the world,” Tyler said.
I blushed red as the spaghetti sauce. “Yeah, I look great in Uncle Neal’s old overcoat. It’s a real fashion statement.”
25
COMING UP FOR AIR
Of course we had to watch the tape five or six more times. Cody couldn’t wait to take a copy home to show to our parents and all his friends in Weehawken. The day he’d do that wasn’t far off.
The kid wasn’t hyper by nature, but that night it was like he’d knocked over a Starbucks. How he was going to flatten his brain waves and get to sleep, I had no idea. He had me checking the e-mail every time we turned around and kept dragging me into the clinic to look in on the mice. Jackie had said the next few hours were make or break for them. I slowed him down a little by having him feed one of them with the syringe.
Back at the house, Cody enlisted Neal to play soccer Legos on the kitchen table. Tyler and I sat up and watched Friends reruns, two in a row. There was so much on Tyler’s mind, I figured that watching TV would be a lot easier than talking. At eleven, everything was breaking up. Jackie gave Tyler a sleeping bag and went into her room, which was our signal to turn off the TV. Cody and Neal headed upstairs.
