Endangered Species

by Barr, Nevada

  Confusion swirled, turning Anna’s thoughts into a tornado that threatened to rip up what little equilibrium she’d regained. How long had she been down the rabbit hole? It was night. Which night? The ashes still gave off heat and she took comfort in that. She’d not lost a day. Screwing up her courage, she dug out her pocket watch and shined the flash on it: 2:42. Four or five hours had passed since she’d crawled into the hog pen. For at least three of that she’d been asleep. Lost time. It made her nervous. She put the watch and flashlight away and began to massage her legs.

  Twenty minutes later she had her body back, such as it was. It was not pleased with her, nor she with it. During her protracted sabbatical from reality, she’d become home to a thriving colony of chiggers. Several times she tried to count the bites but always lost her place. She’d find herself, numbers gone from her mind, head hanging, trouser legs rolled, wondering what she’d been trying to prove. Conceding victory to the chiggers, she turned her limited attention span on ticks.

  By the light of her flash she began detaching engorged insects from her person. One or ten or a hundred—she couldn’t tell. At first she crushed them between her nails. The death penalty: not revenge, just discouraging recidivism. It wasn’t long before the gore upset her stomach and she stopped, satisfying herself with flinging the bugs into the darkness and trusting she’d have moved before they had time to crawl back.

  Like a tape loop on video, she saw herself taking the same action over and over again. Having no idea whether or not she was making any progress, she finally stopped but she doubted she’d gotten them all.

  Minutes ticked by as she sat in the dark, trying to decide what to do next. Eyes and lungs burned, the pressure in her head had transmuted into a dull ache. There weren’t three square inches of skin anywhere on her body that did not itch with such viciousness it took all her self-control not to claw the flesh from bone. Anna hated the South and everyone and everything crawling around in it.

  A solution came to her: she had to get the hell out of there. When she tried to stand it came home to her how thoroughly ripped she was. Many sheets to the wind. Vertigo made the forest whirl. She fell to her knees and vomited up the water she’d consumed. Nausea: she didn’t remember that from the good old days. Her body had outgrown its tolerance for recreational poisons.

  Stomach empty, she felt marginally better and pushed herself to her feet, achieving the vertical on the second attempt. Around her, black trees were spinning, she could feel them, and dared not look. Eyes down, she fished out her compass and shined the flashlight on it. Looking only at the controlled world of the compass face, she began pushing determinedly east.

  Distance was as relative as time had become. Anna followed the needle in her palm as a true believer would follow the star. Navigation around obstacles was beyond her mutant mental powers. Gone was her fear of noise or thickets. What was one more bite? Merely an addition to her already splendid collection. She bulled her way through the brush, trusting the rattlers had retired for the night and calling down curses on the head of any spider who wouldn’t give her a fucking break.

  An eternity of scratches and bumps and confused dreams later, she staggered out onto the dunes. Silver light bathed her and she dropped to all fours. “Thankyoubabyjesus,” she whispered without thought of irreverence. Always before, away from the haunts of man she’d found solace. Fear of wild places had been alien to her. Control having been stripped away, the darkling woods took on a different face. Crumpled on the sand, the ocean at peace as far as she could see, she felt the soft light penetrate her soul, lift the darkness from within, and she understood at last why the ancients had condemned the wilderness as the walks of the devil.

  Beauty, true and lasting beauty, was personified by the squatting bulk of the pumper truck. She’d come out of the woods just three hundred yards south of where she’d parked. She ran to it as to a long-lost love.

  Before she left the denuded marijuana plantation, she’d finished the last of her water. It was with relief she downed half a liter from the canteen on the seat. Water cleared her head marginally. Motion had restored her muscles. She knew her lungs would hurt for a while. She’d consider herself lucky if she didn’t come down with bronchitis. Of her myriad ills all were somewhat alleviated but for the ticks and the chiggers.

  Having doffed only her boots and pocket watch, Anna waded fully clothed into the sea and let the ocean close over her head. Salt water purified, weightlessness calmed her spirit. Time warped again but this time she could live with it. She luxuriated in the warm surf. Bobbing like a bit of kelp on the tide, she lay at the surface, watching the panorama of beach.

  The nesting sites of the loggerheads were invisible in front of oat grass, thrust up black and spiky, the light of the moon behind the blades. A trail, something dragged, cut between two of the nests, breaking down a lip of sand carved by high tide. The Hansons, Anna thought, dragging their harvest. Wind and water would obliterate the track by noon. An ideal setup: a couple on a houseboat known to anchor in different places to savor island views. A few nights a year they anchor just off the beach, drag their goods in, stow them aboard, and motor sedately away.

  Dragging the booty over Marty Schlessinger’s prize cache of turtle eggs: Anna pressed the heels of her hands to her temples and squeezed as if she could wring the dope smoke from her system and glimpse what flash of thought that image had engendered. Had Marty known of the marijuana plot, found it perhaps in his wanderings? Would he kill to protect the eggs? Possibly. But killing Todd or Slattery—or both—wouldn’t stop the harvest, whereas one word in the right NPS ear would have shut the whole operation down. Besides, looked at realistically, assuming Schlessinger still retained that capacity, two people dragging a few bales of weed over the top of the nests would do them no harm.

  If it occurred on a night the little loggerheads were hatching, making that first perilous journey to the ocean, interference might do some damage. The turtles were slated to hatch within the next week. Had Marty tried a preemptive strike to keep the traffic off the beach? Had the Hansons guessed and harvested early?

  “Bullshit,” Anna said, and splashed salt water in her face. Taking a deep breath, she submerged until a fit of coughing forced her to the surface. “Work, damn you, work,” she said aloud, and smacked the side of her skull. The jolt seemed to do some good. The flaws in her line of thinking became apparent. The night the turtles came out was marked on calendars all over the island. The beach would be alive with rangers and volunteers come to assist and celebrate. That would be the last night the Hansons would choose for any illicit activity.

  Nothing made sense.

  Her ability to think was spent. Her brain unraveled and she floated, her clothing waving about her like Ophelia’s shroud.

  ANNA REACHED PLUM Orchard before sunrise and squished up the stairs. The door was unlocked as she had left it and no one stirred within. Another small blessing duly noted. What with one thing and another, she was out of patience. She doubted she could bear the whey-faced sorrow of Tabby Belfore with equanimity. And given the way she looked at the moment, Tabby’s laying eyes on her couldn’t be good for the baby.

  Standing at the sink, she downed another sixteen ounces of water, loaded the electric coffeemaker for eight cups, and clicked it on. Its little electronic eye was scarcely redder than her own. On the way to the bathroom, she left a trail of soggy clothing.

  Hot water, then cold; she switched back and forth, applying age-old remedies for sobering up. The passage of time was the only way to cleanse the body of drugs but the wives’ tales were rooted in a modicum of fact. Cold showers and hot coffee could transmute a dopey, knee-walking drunk into a wide-awake, alert, knee-walking drunk if assiduously applied. Anna would settle for that.

  Two more ticks were dislodged by repeated shampooing. Her legs from midthigh down were a mass of red bumps that itched like the devil. Chiggers. A little red bug that lived in the South and, not surprisingly, was a relative of the ti
ck. According to Dijon, an expert on all things repulsive, the little buggers burrowed in and lived there. The thought gave Anna the willies, so though she suspected it was true, she pretended it wasn’t.

  Five-fifteen found her dressed in clean clothes—two cups of coffee roiling in her stomach, wet hair hanging in witchy ropes—pacing around the tiny living room trying not to scratch. The black fog that clogged her brain had yet to dissipate. Anxiousness bordering on panic licked around the edges of her awareness and she was consumed by irritability. At 5:17 a.m. she banged open the door to Tabby’s bedroom.

  “Who on this island cuts hair?” she demanded when the sleepy young woman peered over the bedclothes.

  “Huh?” Tabby blinked, her eyes round and rabbity.

  Everything about the woman so aggravated Anna’s strained nerves that she had to fight down an urge to slap her.

  “Cuts hair. Snip, snip. Every park I’ve ever worked in has somebody who cuts hair.” Anna knew she was irrational. She knew she was growling. She didn’t care.

  “Cuts hair?” Tabby echoed stupidly.

  Anna began to count to ten, silently, in her head. At seven Tabby managed: “Lynette. Lynette’ll do it.”

  Anna closed the door with a bang and left.

  LYNETTE WAS UP. When Anna drove in she was out on her diminutive front porch in a gold and black kimono feeding the dog. If she was surprised to see Anna, red-eyed and chigger-gnawed, walking up her front steps before sunrise, she was too polite—or too wise—to say so.

  “Tea?” she offered.

  “Can you cut hair?” Anna asked without preamble.

  Ten minutes later she was seated on a stool on the porch, a towel draped around her shoulders and a cup of sugared tea steaming in her hand. A light bulb, decorated with a folding paper shade the size and shape of a beach ball, cast a warm glow over a jungle of potted plants and ceramic animals.

  Lynette’s calm acceptance soothed Anna more than she would have admitted.

  “Cut it off, all of it,” Anna said as Lynette emerged from the cabin with comb and scissors. Her voice sounded far away, as if she was listening to herself on the radio, and she stopped speaking. Being stoned was an art form and she had long ago lost the knack. Piled on top of the night’s adventures, the dissociation was disorienting, frightening, and she wanted little more than to be straight. Time, she promised herself. If memory served, by noon she should be completely down.

  Had Lynette questioned or argued or pried, Anna had no doubt that she would have run screaming into the woods. As it was, the woman began gently brushing the tangles from her hair, taking great care not to tug or pull. While she worked she talked, her voice low and sweet and monotonous, like rain on the roof. The words themselves were unimportant. Occasionally Anna tuned in: “We used to have a corgi . . . The dress my sister wore was this awful tangerine . . . Mom said the cats couldn’t sleep on the bed . . .” Pointless, wonderful stories without drama, violence, or passion.

  Knots inside Anna’s head began to loosen and, as the planks beneath her became covered in hanks of hair, she felt as if a vise were being unscrewed from her skull; blood flowed, thoughts moved. She started to cry.

  Lynette either didn’t notice or kindly forbore comment. The snipping went on a long while, or so it seemed to Anna—time continued to do its petty-pace thing, skewed by drugs and distraction. When she eventually came back from the nowhere she’d gone to, Lynette no longer chattered but hummed a melody: “Amazing Grace.” Religion, at least of the church-and-Sunday-school variety, had never made much sense to Anna but she’d always loved that hymn. This creaking morning it fell on her ears like the voice of fate itself. Once before, she’d reached religious epiphany through music. She was a sophomore at California Polytechnic State University. The song had been the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.” She’d been stoned then as well, but having a considerably better time.

  “Was blind but now I see.” Lynette put words to the tune. Her voice was cool and soft. Anna liked hearing her sing.

  Her sing.

  The two words reverberated.

  “Orinsing,” Mitch Hanson said that, or something that sounded like it. Anna drained the last of her tea and set the cup on the porch rail between a blue glazed rabbit and an African violet.

  Whispering on stockinged feet, Lynette picked up the mug and slipped through the screen door to make more tea. Anna scarcely noticed she’d gone. The old fat dog collapsed at her feet. She kicked off her moccasins and rubbed her toes along his back. He grunted, admitting to at least one porcine ancestor.

  There goes Ellen’s college tuition. Ellen Hull? Norman Hull’s daughter?

  A year with the Seven Sisters. Radcliffe? Barnard, et al? Orinsing—and an echo. Orinsing-sing. Or in Sing Sing. Ellen would end up in college or in prison.

  A bit of the letter Anna had found in the chief ranger’s desk from Ellen’s aunt in Pennsylvania made sense in this new light. “The change isn’t helping Ellen. Things aren’t working out.” And a bus ticket back to Georgia. Alice Utterback: Nice wife but that kid’s a piece of work. In Hull’s calendar beside his daughter’s name had been the initials “PO” on several of the dates. Parole officer.

  “Ellen’s selling dope,” Anna said to the dog. “Her dad must get it from the Hansons. Ellen peddles it in the school-yard.” What could be better? The girl had just turned thirteen, according to the letter. Most definitely a minor and, so, hard to prosecute.

  She saved her daddy’s life. What was that about? Had Ellen, via the Hansons, told her dad not to be on that plane? Or had she known Todd or Slattery was onto the marijuana plot, told her dad, and Dad saw to it they were disposed of? Had the Hansons intended to kill Hull and Ellen told him and so saved his life? That would mean not only the chief ranger but his daughter could be in danger. If at first you don’t succeed . . .

  “Shit! I cannot, cannot think,” Anna muttered, and found another cup of hot tea pressed into her hands. She sucked at it greedily. “God, but I’m thirsty,” she said by way of thanks.

  “Can you tell me what happened to you?” Lynette asked. She’d taken up the scissors again and was snipping near Anna’s right ear. Anna set down her tea, turned, and took hold of the other woman’s wrist, pointing the scissors away from her throat.

  “That depends on whether or not you killed Slattery Hammond and Todd Belfore,” she said bluntly.

  Lynette’s eyes widened and her breath was drawn in with a shush of sound. She looked shocked, not guilty, but over the past hours Anna had lost faith in the reliability of her perceptions.

  “Why would I do that?” Lynette said. That wasn’t an answer but it didn’t strike Anna’s ear as an evasion either. Lynette made no attempt to free her arm. It was beginning to shake.

  “Woman scorned and all that,” Anna hazarded. “You found out Slattery was married.”

  “I didn’t know he was. Not till you told me.”

  An idiotic rhyme racketed through Anna’s fogged brain and before she could stop herself she gave voice to it. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  Lynette looked startled, laughed; then her face blanked and she stared into the darkness. “I guess I knew,” she said.

  Anna waited. After a moment the woman began to tell her story.

  “The morning Slattery was killed I went by his house to pick up some things. There was a letter and I read it. She didn’t mention the little boy.”

  Anna’s grip tightened. “What time was it?”

  “When I read the letter?”

  “When you were at Hammond’s house.”

  “Early. Eight or a little before.”

  Anna’s attack had been later in the day. Lynette could have been lying about the time, but she didn’t think so.

  “I was there in the afternoon,” Anna said, loosing Lynette’s wrist and turning back on the stool. “There was no letter.” From the corner of her eye she could see Lynette’s hand come up, the sharp scissors pointing at a soft spot just below Anna’s ea
r. For too long, Lynette neither moved nor spoke, and Anna wondered if she’d misjudged her quarry. She tensed, ready to grab the scissors if she had to.

  A sigh so deep Anna felt the air puff in her hair gusted from Lynette’s lungs. Their little tableau came to life. Lynette combed, snipped; Anna picked up her mug of tea. “I took it,” Lynette admitted. “I was going to confront him with it the next time I saw him. First I wanted to pray about it.”

  “Any revelations?”

  “Somebody should punch the SOB’s fucking lights out.”

  Anna spewed a mouthful of Earl Grey into a Boston fern. “Don’t do that,” she spluttered. “You’ll choke me to death.”

  “Someone did put his lights out,” Lynette said soberly. “I’ve felt bad and not only for the deaths. I don’t know that I was in love with Slattery—he wasn’t the kind of man that is good for people—but I was very attracted to him. I thought maybe . . .”

  “All he needed was a good woman’s love?”

  “Pretty stupid?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I felt bad about him and Todd. Me praying and them dying. Not that I prayed for their death. I’d never do that. But God knows our hearts. There’s a dark spot in mine. There was that day.”

  If Lynette’s God couldn’t reassure her he didn’t down airplanes on a jilted girlfriend’s whim, Anna certainly wasn’t going to try. “What were you picking up at Hammond’s house?” she asked instead.

  “Some boxes Dot and Mona needed back for their updating project.”

  Because she needed to talk and Lynette was willing to listen, Anna told her about the night in the hog pen, the Hansons and their remark about Ellen’s college tuition. She finished her story at the same time Lynette finished cutting her hair. Drugs, murder, and conspiracy were temporarily shelved for the important things in life. The two of them went into Lynette’s crowded bathroom so Anna could see her new hairdo.

  In the old and spotted glass, her face looked unfamiliar. Hazel irises were rimmed with bloodshot whites. Time’s crows had left tracks around her eyes, and her forehead was creased with lines etched deep by the sun of the high deserts. She ran her fingers through the short hair, liking the feeling of lightness, cleanliness. “I look like a little boy,” she said in some wonder.