Silent, face averted, Lisa bent over Ralph as Maggie gently put pressure on the plunger of the syringe. Maggie found her glance sliding from the pale parting of hair at the crown of Lisa's head to the tender, blue-veined skin behind the girl’s ear.
Ralph went to dead weight in her hands.
***
Ralph's amber eyes glowed in the darkened kennel room as Maggie approached his cage. He lay with front paws tucked under his chest; his tail wrapped neatly around. “Hmm. You really aren't so bad, are you,” Maggie murmured. The big cat began to purr—an almost hypnotic rhythm. His eyes blinked complacently and Maggie smiled back. He exuded Zen-like serenity.
“Dr. Allen?” Ernie stood at the kennel room door.
Maggie roused herself. “Hi, Ernie. All done?” Ernie shuffled nervously, his earnest gaze fixed on her face.
Wiping his big hands down his jeans, he swallowed. “I'm all done the barn, um...” Ernie flashed his prominent teeth in a smile, quickly shuttered. Maggie guessed that he'd been teased many times about the size of his mouth and teeth. Personally she found his appearance conveyed a strength and vitality she found appealing.
“That's great, Ernie. Why don't you head on home now, it’s getting late.”
“I wondered if there was anything else you'd like me to do—I don't mind staying.”
Maggie, alerted by Ernie's expression, suddenly realized she was the object of a nineteen year-old's infatuation. She felt both touched and appalled.
Maggie smiled warmly, “no, I...”
“Wow! What a neat cat!” Ernie interjected, walking toward Ralph's kennel. “I really like animals, Dr. Allen.”
To Maggie's surprise Ralph lowered his head and butted gently at the large-knuckled fingers waggling through the bars of his kennel.
“Well, Ernie, Ralph seems to like you, too.”
“Yeah. Man, is he big! Can I help you with him? Dr. Kline's been letting me help him with the cats.”
“So I understand. Ernie, I'm sure Dr. Kline appreciates your willingness to help...”
“I like it! I want to learn more of that kind of stuff.” Ernie's eyes blazed. “I'll stay longer and everything will still get done.” His hands lifted and fell, as if he were unsure of how to emphasize the importance of this to him. “I’ve always liked animals better’n people... most people, anyways. I like you, Dr. Allen. Liked you right off.”
Maggie was touched. “Well... I like you too, Ernie.” She studied him, considering the novel thought of replacing Lisa with Ernie. Mac had told her that Ernie definitely ‘played in a different ballpark’, but the boy had adopted the clinic as his second home. “Hell,” Mac had said, “I think this is his home, he sleeps in the barn more often than not.”
“I'll tell you what, Ernie,” she said seriously, “I promise I'll discuss the possibility of training you in assisting with Dr. Kline.”
“Thanks, Dr. Allen. Thanks.” Ernie nodded and awkwardly flailed his hands again. He turned at the door and flashed a quick, shy grin; a dazzling flash of white in the darkened room. “See you Monday. Thanks a lot.”
“See you then, Ernie. Goodnight.”
She was still scratching thoughtfully at Ralph's broad skull when a sudden dervish of cold air chilled her feet and tumbled some cat-food kibbles across the floor. Maggie sniffed the air. Fresh night-scents, earth, and damp leaves. Curious, she walked from the kennel room down the dark hallway toward the reception desk. The furious gusts of the October storm were strong enough to push open the heavy glass and aluminium door of the clinic entrance.
Maggie watched as dry leaves scrabbled crab-like across the cedar deck. At the far end of the flood-lit drive, poplar trees were bending like stalks of grass. At least it wasn't raining. Yet.
Maggie shivered. At midnight she would turn thirty. Thirty.
Her mother, a beautiful and vital woman, had disappeared just after her thirtieth birthday. Maggie had never got over the aching loneliness of missing her.
On the evening Maggie's mother had celebrated her thirtieth birthday, ten year old Maggie crept down the stairs in her nightgown and ran, sobbing, toward her mother. Some of her mother's regular guests at the cocktail party had exchanged droll looks. Maggie saw them, but she didn't care. She felt something was going to happen to take her mother away from her.
Louise Allen's hazel eyes had widened in surprise as Maggie flung herself toward her and pressed a tear-blotched face into the delicate fabric of her evening dress. She put her arm around Maggie and walked toward her small office off the living room.
A male voice called after, “oh, for heaven's sake, Louise. Send the child back to bed.”
Maggie knew by the quick rustle of silk and sudden tension of her mother's hand on her shoulder, that Louise had flashed the speaker an angry glance. Maggie sneaked a look at the man from under her mother’s arm. Louise Allen’s friends seemed always to defer to her, Maggie saw how the others already drifted away from the man who had offended her mother. He tossed his drink down quickly. Though he hunched one shoulder in a careless way, the gesture was lame rather than defiant. A woman laughed and drawled, “nothing comes between Louise and her cub, Raymond. You know that.”
Louise closed the office door behind them, turned on the table lamp and sat Maggie down on the small leather sofa.
“Here, Magpie. Lay your head on my lap. We'll tuck this snugly throw around you. So. Now tell me.” Her mother's fingers stroked damp hair back from Maggie’s face.
Hiccupping sobs, Maggie looked into her mother's face. “Mummy, I really feel something's going to happen.”
“Do you?” Louise Allen said seriously. “Well. You are a sensitive and knowing child.” She tweaked Maggie's chin, “Oh my dear, I will tell you a thing you must remember. There is something very, very special happens when the Allen women turn thirty.”
Mother’s smooth fingers felt like a soft tongue lapping at her forehead. Maggie’s eyes drooped.
“There now. I will tell you a secret... would you like that...?”
Just as sleep overcame her, Maggie reflexively grasped at the throw rug as it slipped away. How strange that its soft wool now felt like the rough pelt of a large beast.
***
Maggie shook off the memory.
She pushed through the clinic door and stood outside, rubbing the chill from her forearms. The stars flared, as if fanned by the wind. The train whistle blew at Vedder crossing; coyote howls singing counterpoint.
Maggie knew that train and coyotes had a symbiotic relationship. The CN freight travelled a deep, five-kilometre gully between Hemlock Ridge and Vedder before it swung south again toward the Fraser River; the coyote pack would run in the train's wake, frequently finding small animals, injured or dead. Maggie had walked the tracks, and seen the small, scattered bones. She shrugged. Well. The tracks are cleared of carrion and the coyotes well fed.
Sighing, she went back inside. She glanced at her watch. Nine. Two more hours and she would be free to go home to a hot bath and a good book.
She looked for Ralph's file; somewhere amidst the upheaval on the desk, presumably.
“Lisa. Where's Ralph's file?” Maggie patted over the various folders stacked to either side of the monitor.
“On the desk.”
Maggie swivelled, a frown creasing her brow. Lisa was seated at the dispensary counter; the Hemlock Ridge Times spread before her.
Before Maggie could speak, a gust of wind blasted open the door. Her hands slapped after the various papers in flight around the computer. Lights flickered. The computer, which Maggie thought of as a sentient, if perverse, entity, scrolled silent, hieroglyphic curses.
The appointment book pages snapped backward.
“Oh sure,” Maggie muttered. “Enter the ghost...”
“What?” Lisa looked up from her paper.
Maggie glared at the front door. “Isn't it unusual for the wind to blow from the north like this?”
“Dunno.” Lisa, uninterested, went back to he
r paper. “Guess so.” Her voice brightened. “Listen to this—they found that old coot who used to look after the canoe rental place at Crater Lake—dead. Man, I remember him from when I was a kid an' we used to go up there. He'd come out of his little shack an' tell us to get off the dock. Crazy old geek. The guys 'd tell him where to go, an' he'd jump up and down. He'd get so pissed at us. It was so fun.” Lisa shook her head.
Maggie remembered him!
Only two days ago she'd driven up to see the lake. He had been a strange little man in a Siwash-knit toque with an eagle feather stuck in it.
“Two more days and we'd be closed up for the winter, lady.” He had peered at her. “It's a big lake; the wind can come up fast and catch you unawares.” His grey-stubble chin with its tobacco stain had jawed away with the fascinating flexibility of the toothless. “I don't rent out to no ladies alone.” He spat. Disgusting. An awful little man... so disrespectful...
Maggie blinked and pushed at her glasses. “What happened to him?”
Lisa's finger found the text. “The body of Mr. Samuel Gibbins, better known to residents of Hemlock Ridge as Crater Lake Sam, was found by canoeists at the shore of Crater Lake.”
“Crater Lake Sam! Ha! That isn't what we called 'im!” Lisa continued reading. “The owner of the canoe rental business where Mr. Gibbins worked as watchman for ten years, says he knows of no relatives or next of kin. Police continue to investigate. Exact cause of death is not known at this time, as the body appears to have been mauled by scavengers.”
Maggie winced as Lisa popped her gum and the phone suddenly warbled. Maggie Allen heard Lisa speaking, but she remained staring out the dark glass of the front door. All she saw was a dark reflection of the veterinary clinic reception area, with herself, a pale spectre staring back.
“Dr. Allen!” Lisa's voice was peeved.
“Mmm?” Maggie struggled back to reality.
Lisa was poised, hand over receiver, even though the phone was on hold. “It's Mrs. Prewett-Jones...” Lisa hissed, “she wants to talk to you... now.”
Oh no. She'd told Mrs. Prewett-Jones to call her when Madame Butterfly, her English Bull-Dog went into labour. Maggie reached for the receiver. “Lisa, could you prep the surgery for a Caesarean Section. I'll need you to stay overtime. She'll be a tough anaesthesia, all bull-dogs are—I can close her up myself, just stay 'til I can get her delivered.”
With dismay, Maggie watched a crimson hue steal up Lisa's neck. “There's four hours overtime pay in it for you,” she hastened to add, “and I'll get Mrs. Prewett-Jones to bring Butterfly right down. You should be done in a couple of hours.”
***
It was a bitch of a surgery. Butterfly's trachea collapsed while Maggie was trying to intubate her.
Lisa whined over her head, “what's the good of these stupid dogs anyways!? They can't even have puppies without surgery, and besides, they're ugly looking—an' now I'm gonna be late meeting the guys tonight.” Lisa slammed the retractors Maggie gave her into the pan. “We were all gonna play billiards at Mocha Man's...”
Maggie's ears were burning. Her eyes flinched from tiredness as she finally exposed the uterine horns and three viable puppies in their birth sacs.
“Can’t I get Ernie to help you finish? He's sleeping in the barn again, I could get him in two minutes. Then I could still meet the guys...”
Sweat seeped into Maggie's eyes. She glanced at the surgery clock. Damn. Almost midnight.
“Just a little while more, Lisa. Check her gums, will you? How are they?”
“Pink.”
“Good.” Maggie breathed. She opened the first sack and removed the pup. Small, warm and wet. Tenderly, briskly, she rubbed it, then handed it to Lisa. “Incubator. Butterfly, you make beautiful babies.”
Lisa snorted—a small puff of her surgical mask.
“Just two more and...”
Suddenly rigid, Maggie felt a tremendous pain/vibration charging through her body. She bent over the operating room table, breathing in short, shallow gasps, helpless against the onslaught. The pain surged, from feet to head, boiling just under her skull. Ears buzzing, she felt pressure against her eardrums, as if she'd dived too deep. Brilliant colours flared around her peripheral sight; everything in the white, sterile surgery, suddenly had its own vivid corona.
As quickly as it had come, the pain left, and she hung, panting, in its wake. Slowly she swayed upright, pushing her glasses back up her nose. To her surprise, her vision was all distorted. She removed the glasses, and for the first time in many years, saw with unaided clarity.
“What on earth...?”
Oh no. What now? Maggie quivered as static-like tingles crawled, almost caressingly, over her body. Again panting, she felt increasingly intense sexual arousal; her nipples hardening, an engorged clitoral throbbing. Never before had Maggie felt such a fervid heat.
Her nostrils dilated to the scent of blood below her.
She tipped her head down; watched, fascinated, as the crimson-threaded, opalescent sacs pulsed in the mother's body. New life. Their small energies visible to her.
Slowly, Maggie drew down her surgical mask. Bending low over the huge incision, she closed her eyes, and licked, ever so delicately, at a throbbing natal sac. Again, tingles of energy, tiny and pleasurable, zapped through her.
A cartilaginous crackling followed the path her tongue traced, and horrified, Maggie saw the torn natal sac spill its bloodied contents; tiny abraded bones projected from their membrane covering.
Noise. Shrill, unpleasant noise.
Maggie looked up, her tongue still seeking, tasting the blood on her lips and chin.
Lisa. Sprawled against the far wall. The instrument tray was spilled at her feet. It was she, screaming.
Maggie's dislike of the girl curdled in her stomach like clotted blood and a hotter, darker rage filled her. I am the Alpha; more sensual, more beautiful, more fierce than she. She, I will kill. I will urinate on her ugly remains.
Lisa’s fear inflamed her; Maggie panted with the emotions the fear smell stirred in her. One dominant female in any pack. Stupid, useless, girl.
Her lip curled, and her hands tightened on the edge of the operating table. The hair on her scalp lifted with the tension in her muscles.
“Stop moving. Stay very still,” Maggie commanded; her voice, rough, guttural and strange to her own ears. Increasing waves of energy thrust through her body. Her forearms thickening, her hands ...her hands ...
Maggie dropped to all fours, stretching into a flaunting display of youthful musculature and svelte flank. Her human self was there, she realized, in the energy aura that surrounded her. She retained the ability to tap that, if she wanted. She saw herself reflected in the polished steel of the operating room door and preened, her tongue lolling moistly red over fine white teeth. I am strong and very beautiful.
Lisa screamed shrilly over and over. Her arms fluttered against the white wall as she edged away. Maggie twitched an ear at the scratching of Lisa’s nails against the wall.
Slowly Maggie turned, lowering her head, walking stiff-legged, she stalked her prey.
***
Maggie was splashing water on her face when she heard Ernie's voice.
“Dr. Allen?”
She looked up, water dripping from her fingers. Echoes of her animal arousal still reverberated through her body. Fine young male, came unbidden.
Ernie's glance swung around the surgery: Butterfly, warmly wrapped in a blanket as she snored and snuffled her way up from anaesthesia sleep; two pups heaped in the incubator, tiny limbs moving as they blindly nosed each other; and the bloody rags of flesh that had been Lisa.
His face lit as his gaze returned to Maggie. “Dr. Allen, you're so...so beautiful!”
Maggie had seen her reflection in the small mirror over the surgery scrub sink. She was a vivid, glowing version of her former self. Energy vibrated all over her skin like warm sunshine.
She shook the water from her hands and smiled back at
Ernie. She sensed she need explain nothing.
“Thank you, Ernie.”
Ernie gazed at her. His shoulders shifted as if shrugging off an ill-fitting coat. Awkwardness dropped away as he stepped protectively toward her. His hand reached to touch her face, and Maggie leaned into the caress. Her tongue flicked his hand, tracing the curve of the thenar eminence.
Thumb. Dewclaw—fine big paws, murmured some part of her consciousness. Baring her blunt human teeth, Maggie gently but firmly bit down.
With a shuddering gasp Ernie clasped her to him. His body heat burned down the length of her. No question of the intensity of his arousal.
Fine, big...
Enough! Chided Maggie.
Ernie’s voice rumbled in his chest. “I knew this would happen, Maggie. There was a night a long time ago, when I was only nine, I was up out of my bed ‘cause I heard my Dad yelling; yelling like he did when he was afraid for you and the only thing he knew how to do was act mad ... Mama told me that about him, one time when he yelled and hit me for fallin’ out of the old alder tree by the river. Anyway, I was standin’ at my window, my face pressed to the glass, and I was listen’ to my old man yelling and I saw my Mama leave the house and just walk into the mist by the river. My Dad hung in the doorway, instead of goin’ after her, and he called like his voice would break, yelling for her to stay—but she never.
One day, five years later, I saw my old man on the dyke. Not walkin’ like he was beat, but steppin’ out like he was young again. I could just make out this big dog kinda loping along at his side. And he bent down to it and touch it, real gentle, and I heard him laugh.” Ernie tilted his head down, his expression gentle, knowing. “Then I heard the big dog howl, like to raise the hairs of my head. And I knew. It was a huge coyote, Maggie. Then it was gone, back into the river mist, and my old man standin’ there looking after it for the longest time. Damnedest thing I ever saw. But, you know, we never lost a chicken or a lamb to coyotes. Neighbours used to marvel some at that,” he laughed.
The Spinetinglers Anthology 2011 Page 19
