Any Day Now

by Darrell Maloney

  He’d met Dr. Red Davis when the two worked on the same Air Force base in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

  Darrell worked in logistics planning. His job was to do all the planning and coordination needed to deploy the Air Force’s first stealth fighter plane, the F-117 Nighthawk, anywhere in the world on very little or no notice.

  It wasn’t as easy as putting pilots into cockpits and giving them clearance to taxi.

  To place a squadron of twelve aircraft at a forward operating base in… say, Germany, required an extensive amount of coordination.

  Permission had to be sought and obtained not only from the bundesregierung, or the federal government of Germany. It also had to be sought and obtained from NATO headquarters in Brussels.

  If the fighters were fitted with tactical nuclear armaments, permission would have to be sought and granted from any country they’d fly over on their way to the forward operating base, or FOB.

  And it wasn’t just a matter of sending the aircraft.

  Flight crews… additional pilots, would be sent as well. And ground crews. People who launched and recovered the aircraft. And maintainers. People who repaired the aircraft and its myriad of electronic, hydraulic and pneudraulic components.

  And parts. Lots and lots of parts.

  Billeting arrangements would have to be made, so all related personnel had a place to lay their heads at night to sleep.

  Transportation would have to be arranged so they could get to and from work every day they were at the FOB.

  They had to have food to eat, leisure activities to occupy their free time, medical facilities in case they got sick or injured…

  The list of things to do went on and on.

  That’s what Darrell did at the base in Alamogordo.

  Dr. Red Davis had a totally different job.

  He was a licensed animal behavioral specialist; he doctored animals, not humans.

  Specifically, he worked at a laboratory on an isolated back road of Holloman Air Force Base where he ran what most base residents called “the monkey farm.”

  His patients weren’t monkeys at all, though.

  They were actually chimpanzees.

  The laboratory worked closely with scientists at nearby White Sands Missile Range.

  Those who were alive in the 1960s and who kept up with the space race knew that the first “man” who went into space wasn’t a man at all.

  It was a chimp named Ham who made his historic journey in 1961 and returned safely home again.

  Until that time scientists couldn’t be sure it was possible for a man to go into space and come back unharmed.

  And now, to this day, chimpanzees are still used as test subjects for high-altitude rockets.

  Dr. Davis, like Darrell, was now retired and spent most of his days playing golf at one of Las Vegas’ world-class courses.

  Or at the blackjack tables.

  On this particular day he was sitting in a lounge right off the casino floor, sharing a Rob Roy with Darrell and Rocki and listening to a crooner singing old Frank Sinatra tunes.

  Darrell was picking his brain about the whole animal behavior thing, and the way Penny became nauseated by something neither of them could feel.

  After all, although he spent most of his career working with primates, Dr. Davis was still one of the most recognized and highly respected experts in animal behavior in the world.

  “You have to remember,” Dr. Davis said, “that animals have senses humans can only dream of having.

  That’s because humans never developed such senses. Never really needed them. We seem to get along fine without them.

  “Take their sense of smell, for example.

  “You know it’s highly evolved. That’s why they can smell things we can’t, like adrenaline from a man’s body they’re tracking.

  “But did you know it’s multi-layered as well?”

  “What do you mean, ‘multi-layered’?”

  “A dog can smell through something to something else beneath it.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “When I was in college I watched someone throw three rump roasts into a vat of gasoline.

  “Two of the pieces of meat were just what they appeared. Rump roasts.

  “The third had a cut sliced into it with a knife.

  “Our lecturer had taken a tiny amount… about half a gram… of marijuana. Not even enough to cover your thumbnail.

  “He rolled that marijuana into a piece of aluminum foil, then rolled it in peanut butter and wrapped it in a second piece of aluminum foil. Then he placed it inside a jalapeno pepper and wrapped the whole thing in a third piece of aluminum foil. Then it was inserted inside the rump roast.

  “The rump roasts were placed one foot apart in the vat of gasoline and a dog was brought into the room.

  “He was instructed to identify which roast contained the marijuana.

  “It took him only three seconds to lie in front of the vat and to point his nose at the correct piece of meat and bark.

  “His sense of smell smelled through the gasoline, through the meat, through the pepper, through the three layers of aluminum foil, through the peanut butter and to the marijuana, which he recognized immediately despite all the efforts to disguise it.

  “That’s quite a feat by anybody’s standards.”

  Chapter 34

  “Oh, come on, Red,” Darrell smugly said.

  “You’re just trying to set a world record for using the word through the most times in a single sentence,” he teased.

  “That’s just a trick dogs are able to be trained to do. Humans can do tricks too.

  “I can pick up a dime with my thumb and forefinger. I’ll bet your dog can’t do that.”

  “You’re not listening, my friend. Animals have senses humans never had, or lost because they weren’t needed and therefore never developed.

  “Dogs have a sense of empathy humans don’t have, for example.”

  “Oh, yeah? Prove it.”

  “I saw the same lecturer perform another experiment.

  “He took another piece of roast and used a knife to slice a hole completely through it, from one end to the other.

  “He shoved his thumbs into each end of the roast and held it out in front of him.

  “Then he instructed his assistant to open a door.

  “Another assistant brought in a very large pit bull on a leash.

  “The professor addressed the audience, saying, ‘I’ve never seen this dog before. He has not been trained in any manner. And he skipped his lunch, so he is very hungry. To the dog it will appear I am merely holding a piece of meat in my hand. He does not know my thumbs have been inserted inside the meat. Watch what he does.’

  “The dog handler took the pit bull over to the professor and offered him the meat.

  “Everyone in the lecture hall held their breath.

  “Many of them covered their eyes.

  “Most of us assumed the dog would tear hungrily into the meat and tear off the professor’s thumbs in his zest for a meal.

  “Instead the dog sensed there was something not quite right about his offering. He was puzzled, sniffing the meat and wondering why it had a beef smell on the outside and a human smell on the inside.

  “When he figured it out he gently bit into the meat and pulled at it, tearing away a bit at a time, until he tore the meat away from the professor’s thumbs.

  “Then he reached beneath the piece of meat, grabbed it from the underside, and pulled it away from the professor’s hands.

  “Once it was free of the professor he dropped it on the floor and sniffed it to make sure there was no more human flesh in it.

  “Once he was sure there wasn’t, he wolfed the meat down in two gulps.”

  “So what did the experiment prove, other than the fact he was a very smart dog?”

  “It proved three things, actually. It proved the dog could differentiate between the origins of two inter-connected smells. It also proved that
dogs possess empathy.

  “He could have just eaten the meat and hurt the human. But he didn’t want to do that because he had no ill will toward the human. He didn’t want to hurt him unnecessarily. So he figured out a way to avoid it.

  “He also proved that, despite its reputation, a pit bull is by nature a gentle and tender creature. He is not mean or aggressive unless he is specifically bred or trained to be that way.”

  “Okay, Red. You’ve convinced me. Dogs are very intelligent and very caring animals.”

  “Oh, it’s not just dogs. Can I bore you with one more experiment?”

  “Only if you buy me another Corona.”

  “Deal.

  “A different professor came in another day.

  “The topic was sense of direction that animals have and humans don’t.”

  “Now I object to that one. I know which way is north.”

  “You only know which way is north because you’ve learned to relate yourself at any given time to physical landmarks. For example, you’ll pause to think about where the sun came up this morning.

  “You remember it came up directly behind you.

  “You’ll reason that direction, directly behind you, is east. And you’ll use that reasoning to know that north is to your right.”

  “Okay. You got me.”

  “What if you were in a dark room with no windows. And you never saw the sun rise and couldn’t see any landmarks. Could you do the same thing?”

  “Um… no. I suppose not.”

  “This time it wasn’t a dog. It was a rat. A lab rat.

  “For months he was trained to find his food on the west side of his cage. Every time he was let out of his cage he scampered immediately to the west to find his food.

  “His cage was turned every day so he always exited from a different side. Yet every time he exited he went straight to the west side and made a bee-line to his food.

  “This went on for sixty seven days.

  “On the sixty eighth day he was placed in a shoe box and carried into an empty gymnasium.

  “Also in the shoe box was a cotton ball soaked in ammonia to temporarily deaden his sense of smell.

  “A tiny bit of food was placed on the west end of the gymnasium and the box was placed at center court.

  “The box was spun around in circles several times. Then the lid was taken off.

  “The rat scampered out and made a direct line to the food.”

  Darrell continued the story.

  “And then he went to all his little rat friends and told him humans were all nuts. What’s your point, Red?”

  “Humans don’t have a natural sense of navigation because they’ve never needed it.

  “Animals need it to find their way around the forest and other places because they don’t recognize landmarks the way humans do.

  “It’s just one of the senses they develop that we don’t.

  “You grew up in the south, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. In Texas.”

  “Did you ever notice in the fall that all the Canadian geese fly down and take up space on your lakes and ponds?”

  “Of course. They always cover my car in bird poop.”

  “Did you know it’s the same geese, year after year?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. The young ones follow their parents to the parents’ favorite winter resort. And then the young ones will return to that same spot, year after year, even after the old geese die.

  “Yet they find their way there, and they find their way back, without fancy GPS systems or road maps. They use their internal sense of navigation.

  “It’s no different than salmon that spend their whole life swimming in every stream and river they can find suddenly feeling the need to return to their very birthplace to spawn and die.”

  “Okay, Red. Maybe I’ve had too many Coronas. Or maybe you’re just making my brain hurt.

  “But I’ve forgotten the whole point of this conversation.”

  “The point is that one of the senses animals have that we don’t is the sense of disruption beneath the ground.

  “Many animals can tell when there’s an earthquake coming.

  “Horses and cattle get restless and stampede, sometimes several hours before an earthquake.

  “On Pacific islands monkeys and snakes go inland when they sense a tsunami is coming.

  “Your dog, and millions of other dogs and cats, can feel the earth rumbling beneath their feet.

  “You and I can’t feel it. But they’re so finely attuned to it it must feel like they’re on a train rumbling along at a hundred miles an hour.

  “Not all dogs are prone to motion sickness, but many are. Just like many humans are.

  “Your Penny, I’m afraid, is one of them. She’s used to traveling in your RV, sure. That doesn’t bother her. That’s because it’s a different feel entirely. Being in the area around Yellowstone made her motion sick.

  “The farther you got away from the park the less activity she felt.”

  “Interesting, Red. Very interesting, no, really.”

  He feigned a yawn and added, “How about buying me another beer?”

  Chapter 35

  Marilyn Petty sat all alone in a stark cell.

  She was deemed a suicide risk at incheck based on her general demeanor.

  She never actually said she wanted to die. But she didn’t really give any indication she was still a living, breathing human being, either.

  She didn’t cry, although it was noted in her records she’d wailed when she was arrested.

  Not at being arrested, but rather by being separated from her baby.

  She wasn’t angry, as many new inmates are, at the cops or circumstances that brought them there.

  She was merely going through the motions. Saying nothing to nobody while going through the process.

  Go here. Stand there. Have a seat. Stand up. Go stand in that line over there. Put this on. Take this off. Face this way. Now that way. Have a seat.

  Through it all she dutifully answered questions when asked. Dutifully did what she was told when she was told to do it.

  And she did it all without any emotion at all.

  Most new inmates are placed into cells which are already occupied, or get a cellmate soon after they arrive.

  Empty cells are typically filled with two inmates before the next empty cell is used.

  And there were plenty of female arrivals. The vice squad was sweeping through the red light district and gathering up prostitutes right and left.

  By all rights one of them should have been assigned the upper bunk in Marilyn’s cell.

  But Marilyn’s cell door was “red-carded.”

  Quite literally, a red card was taped to the outside.

  A red card with the letters “SR.”

  “Suicide Risk.”

  Most inmates wore navy blue jumpsuits.

  Marilyn’s was orange.

  Most inmates had a minimum amount of privacy while in their cells.

  Sure, they shared an open toilet with their cellie.

  But jailhouse etiquette called for that cellie to stand at the door, peering through the glass and into the day room, while one did their business.

  Not so for those in the suicide cells.

  Suicidal inmates got no privacy at all. They were watched closely at all times, twenty four seven.

  Even when using the restroom.

  Every cell in the county jail was equipped with surveillance cameras.

  But most of them were turned off.

  In fact, all of them were turned off.

  Except for those in the suicide cells.

  On one end of the day room, or the common area outside the cells, was an elevated platform the inmates called the “hack shack.”

  On the hack shack two guards managed the forty-six women currently housed in the unit.

  They did so mostly by watching the activity when the women were out of their cells.

  And by watch
ing their monitors and catching up on their paperwork during “lockdowns.”

  “Lockdowns,” as the name implies, are when all the women were in their cells and their cell doors were locked.

  They’re typically done at certain times.

  Like, for example, after chow three times a day.

  During those times the cellblock doors tend to be opened while kitchen staff are retrieving food carts. Library workers are replenishing and refreshing the small bookcases on each end of the day room, which contain almost exclusively religious books and books about kicking addictions.

  It’s also during this time that orderlies and trustees are mopping the day room floor and emptying the garbage cans, and maintenance people are changing light bulbs or painting or doing other routine maintenance.

  The logic is sound.

  For it’s during these periods the cell block doors are open and closing frequently.

  And they don’t want the inmates to take advantage of that by slipping away through the open door.

  The solution is to place them on “lockdown” for an hour or so after each meal.

  The guards, of course, have the discretion to declare a lockdown whenever they want.

  They typically use it when they’re short handed for any reason. Say, one guard has an errand to run in another part of the building, and only one guard is left behind.

  Inmates might be put on lockdown so the single guard doesn’t feel quite so vulnerable.

  Lockdowns are also used any time there’s tension in the unit.

  Say, for example, rival gangs start getting belligerent or two inmates get into a scuffle.

  A lockdown, under those circumstances, provides a cooling off period and generally helps diffuse such situations.

  During lockdowns most prisoners are left to their own devices.

  Not those with red cards on their doors.

  Jail policy is for guards to “put eyes” on red card inmates every fifteen minutes around the clock.

  A timer at the hack shack reminds the guards and makes sure none of the checks get ignored and nothing falls through the cracks.

  Every fifteen minutes the single “ding” of an electronic bell chimes from beneath the counter.

  Regulation requires for one of the hacks to physically move to the monitors and to check on each of their red-card inmates, one at a time, to make sure they’re alive and moving about.