Best Friends

by Samantha Glen

  “Faith, there’s been an awful accident. I picked it up on the police band. They had to do the Jaws of Life on the car. They think it’s Dr. Christy. I thought you should know.”

  Faith was awake now. She knew it was common practice among the locals to monitor the emergency police band on the radio. She didn’t recognize the woman caller’s voice but her response was instinctive. “It couldn’t be Bill Christy,” she heard herself say. “We sent him home at lunchtime. He wasn’t feeling well. It couldn’t be him.”

  The bearer of bad news blabbered on. “He fell asleep at the wheel and wandered into the other lane. Did you know he was only thirty-nine? And everyone’s so fond of him around here.”

  The words sounded unnaturally shrill in Faith’s ear. “It wasn’t Dr. Christy,” she repeated and wondered whom she was trying to reassure. “We sent him home. He promised to go home.”

  “I hope you’re right. I thought you should know, seeing how close you all are.”

  Faith sat spine-straight in bed and wrapped her arms around herself. “He went home. He went home,” she repeated silently and wished for the dawn.

  The police came next morning, arriving a few minutes before Francis and Silva drove in from Los Angeles. John quickly took Francis aside. In a wooden voice he said, “Dr. Christy’s dead. He got broadsided by a van last night.”

  Shock, disbelief, denial—all had their turn on the face of the man who had been closer to the veterinarian than any of them. John didn’t know how to react to the tears that squeezed from Francis’s eyes. No matter how bad a situation, even with the animals he loved so dearly, no one had ever seen Francis cry. “I’m so sorry,” was all John could manage.

  “Do you remember how he used to fall asleep on the kitchen table—?” Francis couldn’t finish. Silva, nonplussed, came to his side. Francis shook his head and continued his way into the winter stillness of the mesa.

  “Leave him be right now, Silva. Leave him be,” John counseled and went to talk to the police.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  San Diego Angel

  For the community in the canyon, the death of their beloved Dr. Christy was an even heavier blow than their financial heart attack of the year before. Being broke meant that they existed hand to mouth. But they were no strangers to empty pockets. Money was not at all their driving force.

  But never again to hear the flap of galoshes preceded by the pungent fragrance of manure as the veterinarian clumped into the clinic. Never again to smile at the Charlie Chaplin charade of jack-in-the-box drawers. Never again to see that boyish, smiling face or hear that cheery “good morning.” This was a loss with which they found it hard to come to grips. In this atmosphere of mourning no news was good news.

  Best Friends appreciated Michael’s insistence that they couldn’t rely on tabling forever, and that they needed to do something more to keep in touch with the people who were responding to Best Friends.

  For responding they were. Every night the men and women on the front lines of tabling would fax in names and information for Estelle and Matthias to feed into the data base. Daybreak would find a dedicated crew at the sanctuary, scrambling to compose a letter of appreciation to each donor to get in the mail before Kanab’s 3:00 P.M. postal deadline. A personal call of thanks followed the next week. The resultant number of people asking to be put on Best Friends’ mailing list was growing rapidly.

  The response to the letters, the phone calls, and the Alpo appeal confirmed Michael’s belief that people wanted to feel a part of the community of Best Friends, to know that there were others who felt as they did about animals. Their own magazine would be a way to connect with everybody and spread the good news about animals and the environment.

  Right now his colleagues’ enthusiasm for the twenty-four pages of stories, Steven’s cartoons, and photos from their animal Camelot was muted by grief. Even John’s news that Zions First National Bank would extend their loan barely raised their spirits.

  And still there were the animals, the mortgage, electricity, gas, phone, food, and water—all the necessities of living that everyone faces when they get up in the morning. When you got right down to it, the Best Friends were no different from anybody else. Life went on; the months flew by, but Dr. Christy was always in their hearts.

  As promised, Homer Harris came to Angel Canyon in the summer of 1992. He was a big man. At six feet five, with iron gray hair cut close to the scalp military-style, and a face scored by many years in the world of business or riding the range—John suspected a bit of both—he was an imposing gentleman. “Norm Cram said I’d find somebody here,” he announced, striding into the treasurer’s cramped office with a chap John knew in town.

  “Hi, Jim,” John greeted.

  Jim Travers acknowledged the welcome with a quick bob of his head. “I was going to take Homer straight to Dogtown, but he wanted to see where the business was done.” The local man, slight and wiry, looked to be about half the height and width of his friend, but John knew that Jim Travers had been a distinguished race car driver, winning the Indy 500 twice in his career. Homer was an avid racing car enthusiast, and the two men had been good buddies for years.

  The man from California wasted no words. “My wife sends your Faith money now and then, and I’ve a mind to see where it goes.”

  John looked into the direct eyes of the man towering above him. Shall I tell the gentleman that if the bank hadn’t renegotiated our mortgage, there’d be nothing to see? Shall I ask him not to think too badly that there are fences demanding repair and everything needs a paint job, but we’re pretty strapped at the moment? No, I think the man wants to meet Faith so he can tell his wife he was here. “Why don’t I show you around myself. There’s quite a bit to see, and Faith’s expecting you,” John said, leading the way outside.

  Homer Harris took in everything. “I notice you got goats to keep the horses company.” He asked questions John didn’t expect. “Are those wolf-shepherd hybrids?” referring to the long-legged, massive-bodied animals in an enclosure chummed up to the wildcat compound. “Not right of someone to crossbreed like that,” Homer commented. Later, as the truck gratefully left the rutted tracks of the canyon and bumped onto the macadam road to Dogtown, he said, “Quite some space you’ve got here. Plenty of water I hope?”

  “We’ve put in eight thousand gallons altogether.”

  “Looks like you could do with more. Lots more.”

  “We’re working on it,” John assured.

  Homer frowned. “Hmmm.”

  Paul was kneeling on a two-by-four surrounded by a passel of curious mongrels when Jim Travers parked outside the clinic. John wasn’t surprised to see a rack of boards stacked neatly beside a pile of used nails, but Homer was obviously puzzled by Paul’s undertaking. He swung out of the truck and watched as the architect hooked the claw of a hammer under a bent nail, yanked it free, and tossed it on the heap.

  “Someone forget to make a run to the hardware?” Homer asked.

  Paul stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. He didn’t know this man, and Paul wasn’t about to tell a stranger they reused nails to save money. He smiled politely. “Something like that.”

  “Hmmm,” Homer said again.

  Faith came running out of Octagon Three when she heard the masculine voices. “Nice to see you, Jim,” she exclaimed before turning her full attention to his companion. “You must be Homer Harris.” Faith extended a wet hand and grinned up at the big man. “Sorry,” she apologized as Homer slid a meaty paw around hers. “I’m fixing the dogs’ dinners, but it can wait a bit.”

  Homer Harris said “hmmm” a lot as he toured Dogtown’s dusty lanes. “Hmm,” as he shook hands with Tyson and noted the pack of aggressive-looking mutts at his heels. “Hmm,” when the dogs waited patiently for the Alpha Man before passing by an ancient Australian shepherd half asleep in the middle of a lane.

  “He’s the Dogfather,” Faith said and told Victor’s story.

  “Hmm,” at the mound
of worn tennis balls jealously guarded by three feisty Chesapeakes under a juniper tree. Homer, however, said more than “hmm” when he bent to pet Ginger and found himself face-first in the dirt. “What the—?”

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Jim Travers, staring at the huge red malamute fanning his tail behind his buddy.

  “That’s our Sheriff,” Faith said. She bestowed a dazzling smile and a hand up to Homer Harris. “I should have warned you about Amra. Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. Didn’t expect it, that’s all.” To Faith’s relief the big man’s bemused grin matched her own. “Well, I’ll tell Dolores the pictures in your magazine are for real. You don’t keep the animals in a bunch of cages.”

  “Is that why she wouldn’t come?” Faith asked.

  Homer nodded. “She’s got a soft heart, my wife. Can’t bear to see the poor animals shut up like they are most places.”

  “She won’t find that here!”

  David Maloney’s pickup belched behind them and they stepped aside to let him pass. Faith’s son cruised down the lane, stopped his truck, left the engine running, grabbed a six-gallon plastic can from the bed, and staggered with it to the nearest enclosure. Ten excited dogs rushed the fence, a cloud of red dust billowing in their wake.

  Homer Harris again watched, fascinated, as a sunburned David balanced the heavy water can against a fence with one knee while his free hand slipped the latch on the gate. “That takes some doing,” he said in admiration as the young man pushed into a tumult of frantic caninity; managing somehow to keep all the escape artists where they belonged.

  The big man smiled at the dogs’ loud slurps of appreciation as David emptied the large buckets and refilled them with fresh water. He shook his head as a perspiring David repeated the operation in two more enclosures before moving the truck along. “That boy makes me exhausted watching. How often does he do that?”

  “Twice a day,” Faith said. “The water collects green algae in the summer if we don’t change it. In winter it freezes over, so we break it up with a screwdriver.”

  “This is your water system?” Homer demanded.

  “For the time being,” John said.

  Homer met Jim Travers’s studied glance. “Hmmm.”

  Faith wasn’t expecting to see Homer Harris again in the near future. He had made it quite clear that he had only stopped by in order to give a report to his wife, Dolores. And yet two weeks later, when Faith walked out of her trailer, there he was with Jim Travers, discussing their ancient trencher that hadn’t run in two years.

  “Do you think we can fix this darn thing?” Faith heard Homer ask as she walked up behind the two men.

  Jim Travers regarded the green wreck of a machine dubiously. “We might be able to do something with it.”

  “Good morning. What a nice surprise, Homer.”

  Homer Harris got right to the point. “There’s plastic pipe being delivered this afternoon, and we need a machine to dig the ditches.”

  Faith didn’t understand.

  “Dolores was upset when I told her how you watered your mutts.” The big man hefted a nonexistent belly. “You’ve got better things to do than haul water to six hundred dogs. Most inefficient. We’re putting you in a water system.” Homer turned to his smaller pal. “What do you think, Jim?”

  Jim Travers frowned, looking at the rusting trencher. “I think we need to rent a ditcher, Homer. Take a week to get parts for this thing.”

  “Let’s do it. Excuse us, young lady. We’ve got work to do.”

  Faith thought of all the years Best Friends had broken their backs worrying water to the dogs. Now this angel from San Diego was laying pipe, putting faucets at the enclosures. She gazed into the stern, no-nonsense face above her. A simple thank you wasn’t adequate, somehow. “We all get together for lunch around twelve,” she blurted out.

  Homer nodded. “Save us a plate. Tell John I need to speak with him, too.” He turned his attention back to the trencher.

  Faith regained her equilibrium. “Thank you. You don’t know how much.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Homer replied absently.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Illegal in July

  Late in the afternoon, as was his habit, Michael walked his dogs. The summer heat induced a pleasant perspiration as he chaperoned Sun and the latest addition to the family, That Naughty Girl, she of the Heinz 57 variety.

  He was thinking about how much he liked brainstorming with Tomato. Somehow the little cat enabled him to clear his head, to put things into perspective. Tomato was also taking on a most demanding personality, to the point of insisting that he have his own column. He had even chosen his title: investigative reporter. That way he could reveal to Best Friends members what truly went on at the sanctuary. Michael crossed the county road onto the sandy track to The Village. It was quite a trip having the saucy, cynical pussycat as his stand-in.

  His thought process was disturbed by the accelerating roar of a six-cylinder engine. He stepped aside quickly as a smart new Jeep flew past, trailing a cloud of red dust in its wake. Did they have to drive quite so furiously? Suddenly the off-roader reversed and jammed back to his side. Two young, anxious faces craned toward him from the driver’s window. “We were told there’s a place that takes care of cats around here?” The boy’s German accent rushed the question.

  “Anything wrong?” was Michael’s instinctive reaction.

  It was the girl—tanned, fair-haired, blue-eyed—who answered. “We find a mother and kittens near the Grand Canyon.”

  Michael didn’t let her finish. He knew it had to be bad. He scanned the vehicle’s interior. An unmoving calico mass huddled inside a man’s shirt laid on the backseat. “Excuse me,” he said and yanked open the rear door. Gently he slipped long fingers under the shirt and lifted the matted, furry bundle over the front seat. “Hold them. It’s not far. I’ll direct you,” he said, urging his dogs ahead of him into the backseat.

  The girl look startled for an instant, then muttered something to her companion. The German boy nodded and the car bucked forward toward Catland.

  Michael knew Diana was tabling in Arizona, but Judah should be on duty. Let Judah be at cats, Michael prayed. His glimpse of the feline family had confirmed his fears. Mother and babies were dreadfully dehydrated, and who knew what else. Please let Judah be at Catland. “Take the right fork,” he instructed urgently.

  Sure enough, Judah Nasr was at the TLC Club. Francis’s son didn’t say much as the trio trooped in. He had only to read Michael’s face to know he had an emergency on his hands. Wordlessly, he led the way to the back quarantine room. The girl followed, cradling the felines to her breast.

  Judah had been taught well by his father and Dr. Christy. With the efficiency of one for whom a veterinarian on call was no longer a privilege, Judah Nasr hooked up fluiding bags, filled a syringe, and eased the needles into the three inert bodies.

  “What about the other kitten?” the girl asked. “Why do you not help him?”

  “He’s dead,” Judah answered as gently as he could.

  The girl hid her head in her boyfriend’s shoulder.

  Michael saw that Judah could manage without them. “You’ve done a wonderful deed,” he said with feeling to the young couple. “We’ll take it from here. Is there anywhere we can reach you, to tell you how they’re doing?”

  The boy answered. “Eva and I, we’d like to stay around.”

  Michael looked at the two drawn faces. They were so young, couldn’t be more than twenty. If this was the future generation, there was hope after all. “Would you like to see our place? Perhaps a cup of tea at The Village?”

  The two tourists gazed in wonder at everything Michael showed them. “It is a paradise,” the girl Michael now knew as Eva said. She turned questioning eyes to him. “But what are you doing with all these cats and dogs?”

  “Most of them are ugly, rambunctious, three-legged, or special-needs in some way. Nobody wants them. They�
�d be put down, you know, killed in a shelter. So we take in as many as we can.”

  Michael wasn’t prepared for the immediate reaction. Two mouths dropped open as if he had told them the earth was flat. The couple conversed rapidly in German. “You don’t mean . . . ?” the girl seemed unsure of how to phrase her concern. “They kill homeless animals in America?”

  Michael nodded.

  The boy was most solemn. “In our country, it is illegal to kill animals that don’t have a home.”

  It was Michael’s turn to stare. “Illegal in Germany?”

  The boy seemed in shock. “Nobody would dream of doing anything like that in our country.”

  For Michael, it was a long walk back to his trailer that afternoon. Sun and That Naughty Girl, sensing their person’s mood, trotted, subdued, by his side. Michael kept asking himself the same questions. We are a civilized nation. The greatest peacekeeper the world has ever seen. And yet we treat our unwanted animals no better than disposable tissue. Why?

  Once again he pondered the apparent accidents in life after which nothing was ever the same. What were the chances of two German tourists hiking the wilderness of southwest Utah hearing the mew of a dying cat? What were the long odds that the car they stopped to ask directions to the nearest veterinarian would send them to Best Friends? And what even greater happenstance had brought them together with Michael?

  For as surely as the early evening light caught the canyon in magic time, Michael knew that these two people changed the way he saw the problem of homeless animals forever. The concept of simply housing and finding homes for the unwanted wasn’t enough. One day there must be no more homeless pets. For this, nothing less than a sea change in the way most people related to animals was needed. And that would require a radically different approach.

  As he wended his way home, Michael felt a growing excitement. He knew this was a new beginning. He had started on a journey that would take him through the rest of his life.