CLAWS

by Stacey Cochran

  The mountain lion leapt silently to its feet and watched her from the darkness.

  Maggie crossed the wooden bridge, lingered for a moment, and saw the moonlight reflecting off of the creek. She took another sip of wine and started up the hill toward the bathhouse.

  She saw the yellow light bulb to the left of the door. She saw the payphone. She saw the sign hanging crookedly from the door. And then she heard something back behind her. Maggie turned and looked down toward the creek.

  She saw their campfire and camper up on the little hill across the creek.

  She started to say “hello?” but then thought that whatever she’d heard was just her imagination. She turned and walked up to the bathhouse door. At the doorway, she saw that the screen door was open about four inches wide. The lights were off inside the bathroom. Standing outside, she reached her hand inside and felt for a light switch on the wall. The wall inside consisted of cold, square bathroom tiles.

  Again, she thought she heard something, and she peered over her left shoulder down at the creek. And again, she saw nothing. She saw the glow of the campfire up at their site, the rushing water in the creek, the rustle of leaves in the treetops, but that was it.

  Her hand hit the light switch inside. She flipped it up, and fluorescent lights came on.

  She turned once more, and this time, spoke in the direction of the creek, “Is anybody there?”

  As if in reply, the wind in the branches died down, and everything in the forest became still. There was only the sound of rushing water in the creek. She shrugged her shoulders and stepped inside the bathhouse.

  She was pleasantly surprised to see that the bathhouse was clean. There were two toilets over to the right, and she stepped up to the double sink in the center. The mirror was spotless and shiny clean, and the sink looked as though someone had given it a good scrub with Comet in the not-too-distant past.

  Maggie looked at herself in the mirror.

  She had blue eyes and was beautiful in that curious way that only occurs when a young woman does not know that she is beautiful. She had the beauty of a young woman who had been through some crazy shit in her lifetime and was working to keep her failed family together. There was something deeply piteous about her, but of course Maggie didn’t see this at all when she looked at herself in the mirror.She saw a woman who was cracking up, tired, goofy looking, unkempt, slightly drunk. She had a smudge of black soot on her cheek. She opened her bathrobe, and she gazed at herself calmly.

  Maggie Eiser was proud of her breasts and slightly ashamed of her little paunch. She sipped the wine and then tried to smile at herself, but it felt awkward and she sort of smirked at her own inability to look genuinely happy.

  She turned and saw that the screen door into the bathhouse was open a few inches, and she wanted it closed. Mosquitoes were not a problem in Arizona, but she was sure there were other bugs, and they’d be attracted to the fluorescent lights. She put her towel and shower kit in one of the two shower stalls over to the left and then tried to pull the bathhouse screen door closed.

  She pulled it shut and let go of the handle, and the door creaked slowly open about four inches. It was built on a tilt, she realized, and the door was going to stay open just a few inches. Maggie sighed.

  She crossed to the shower stall, pulled back the clean plastic shower curtain, and turned on the hot water.

  She removed her bathrobe and hung it on a shower hook. She placed her soap, shampoo, and white washcloth inside the shower. A few seconds later, the water turned hot, and she adjusted it to just the right temperature. She stepped inside the shower and pulled the clear plastic shower curtain closed behind her.

  The mountain lion came up from the creek, and it walked up the dirt path toward the bathhouse.

  The light inside shined through the screen door. The mountain lion took three cautious steps, then froze and listened to the sounds coming from inside the bathhouse. It heard the hiss of the showerhead and the water pattering off of the woman. The young female hadn’t made a kill in ten days, and she was tense with hunger.

  Maggie rinsed the shampoo from her hair, leaning backward toward the showerhead. The water was warm and clean, and it felt good on her skin on her back. She took the bar of Ivory and lathered up her shoulders. She turned and faced the shower and let the hot water spray down over her forehead and face. She leaned back and let the hot water shower her chest, and she lathered the bar of soap up underneath and around her breasts and let the water rinse her off.

  The mountain lion stepped up to the screen door. It sensed that the woman was completely unaware, but the young cat was still very cautious. It nosed its head toward the opening in the screen door, and it realized that the door would part for its head and body. It eased its head inside the door and peered from right to left.

  Maggie dropped the bar of soap and squatted down inside the square shower stall to pick it up.

  The mountain lion lowered its head and looked underneath the wooden stall outside of the shower. It saw the woman’s legs, and its head rose up, poised, realizing that the woman was utterly unaware of its presence. It took three silent, cautious steps into the bathhouse. The floor was cold and slippery, and the cat’s claws emerged from its paws and felt the hard surface of the tiled floor.

  Maggie glanced over the top of the shower curtain and saw the screen door swaying.

  “Honey?” she called.

  There was no response. Maggie stood still, and her brow furrowed over with worried curiosity, her lips dropped open ever so slightly, and she wiped the water back from her eyes.

  The screen door’s swaying settled, and Maggie moved her head to see better, realizing that the door would not have moved like that unless someone had opened it.

  “Baby, is that you?”

  Maggie stood there in the shower, waiting for a response.

  Then, through the somewhat clear shower curtain, she saw the mountain lion step around the corner of the wooden locker right in front of the stall. Its head peered up at her. Maggie’s chest felt like it was injected with a massive needle of icy helium, and her lips tingled.

  All the blood rushed out of her face, and she felt raw panic like nothing she’d ever experienced in her life.

  Something primal clicked inside her, and she realized that she was cornered, pinned in a little ceramic-tile cell, and that a large predator stood there three feet away. She realized that the next ten seconds would determine whether she lived or died.

  The cat took two steps forward into the wooden locker area and then lunged at the clear plastic shower curtain. Its claws did not grab well on the tiled floor, so the lunge was partly a slip. It hit the shower curtain, and Maggie fell backward in the square shower.

  She screamed, and she beat at the plastic curtain.

  The cat fell to the floor inside the wooden locker area but outside of the actual shower. There was a bench on either side of the locker area, and Maggie’s towel hung on a hook on the right side, and her bathrobe hung on a hook on the left side.

  The cat tried to spring to its feet, but the floor just outside of the shower was wet, and the cat had difficulty standing balanced. It slashed at the shower curtain with its right front paw, and the claws tore through the plastic.

  Maggie screamed and batted dumbly at the plastic curtain and at the cat’s clawing paw.

  “Get out!” she screamed. “Goddamn it, get out!!”

  Her voice was an animalistic shriek.

  The cat crouched down and leapt into the shower curtain again. This time its claws caught the plastic, and its weight tore out four of the eight shower curtain rings. The cat’s two front paws came down inside the shower.

  Water sprayed all over the place, and the cat was somewhat tangled up in the half-fallen shower curtain, and its right forelimb came up and slashed through the air inside the shower.

  Its claws swept powerfully across Maggie’s front left thigh. She was backed up as far inside the stall as she could stand, and she scre
amed and batted at the mountain lion’s head.

  The cat bared its teeth and tried to take a bite at her hand. Maggie screamed at it, and the cat lost its balance and fell on its side. It immediately tried to leap up onto its feet, but it slipped and fell down again. Its left front paw clawed around wildly, and it tore down the rest of the shower curtain.

  Suddenly, the cat was blanketed by the curtain, and it just went crazy, screaming a wildcat scream like nothing else Maggie had ever heard. It thrashed wildly and powerfully to get free of the curtain, and in this action, it swept Maggie’s legs out from under her.

  She fell hard inside the shower, her head struck the wall, and everything faded into white dizziness for a moment.

  The cat retreated into the locker area, thrashing around wildly. It tore through the wooden locker wall on the right side, and it tried to swing completely around, which it could not do, and so it swung back the other way.

  Finally, the shower curtain fell away from the cat’s head. The mountain lion stood there, staring at Maggie Eiser who was now seated inside the shower. Blood flowed from her left thigh.

  Maggie sat there, staring at the lion.

  “Come on!” she screamed. “Finish it off!”

  But the cat stepped back away from the stall. And as swiftly as it had entered, it turned and exited through the screen door, vanishing into the night.

  Seven

  “You want to do it again?” Jenny asked.

  She lay cradled beside Nick, her head and her right arm up over his chest. Nick lay on his back staring up at the millions and millions of stars in the night sky. She took his silence to mean “no,” though he hadn’t really heard her. Nick was imagining them making love on the moon where they’d both weigh like twenty-five pounds and could float around.

  He started to laugh.

  “Oh, you think that was funny?” Jenny said.

  She grabbed hold of his penis and flipped it around.

  “Now, that is something to laugh about,” she said.

  Nick rolled over to reach for one of the last two beers, and it kind of pushed Jenny backwards.

  “Well, aren’t you Mister Sensitive,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and he cracked open the beer.

  “Let me have a sip,” she said, and he handed her the beer.

  She sat cross-legged on the edge of the blanket, sipped the beer, and gazed down the fairway and across the glimmering city lights of Tucson.

  “Do you want to live a long time, Nick?” she asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “It’s just we don’t get many years, you know?”

  “That’s life.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I’ll get to thinking about what happens when I die, and it’s like a black grip of fear comes over my mind. I’ll start twitching and shit, and my heart will feel like it’s about to explode, and I think ‘What if this is it, man, you know?’ What if this is all there is? The thought is so frightening and lonely, it scares the hell out of me.”

  “Damn,” Nick said.

  “I’ll be alright. I’m just telling you that it happens sometimes. You ever feel like that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. What do you do?”

  “When I get scared like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re gonna laugh,” she said.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “I swear I won’t,” he said. “What do you do?”

  “I pray,” she said. “I get down on my knees, and I pray.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Sometimes,” she said.

  They were silent a moment.

  “What do you do if it doesn’t work?” Nick said.

  Jenny thought about it. She said, “I go hang out at Wal-Mart.”

  Nick laughed.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I’ll go walk around Wal-Mart, talk to employees, ask them questions about toothpaste and shit. Make some good eye contact and just talk to other people, or just be around other people. I don’t think about dying when I’m around other people.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  She looked at him. And then she noticed that he was getting aroused again.

  She said, “Well, look who decided to stand at attention.”

  “Come here, baby,” he said.

  She put the beer down and got on top of him. She wasn’t quite ready yet, but she rubbed up and down on him until she was. She eased her way down and felt him filling her up inside. The sensation was raw pleasure, and she felt comfortable enough to want more, faster.

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  They held one another’s arms while she rode up and down on top of him.

  “Oh, my God!”

  Eight

  Maggie Eiser lay on the cold tile floor inside the bathhouse. She glanced at the front door and saw that it was still open four inches. She expected the mountain lion to nose its head inside that door at any moment, to look at her bleeding on the floor, and to realize that it had almost passed up an easy kill.

  She reached across the demolished wooden locker and grabbed the white towel. The towel was now damp with water that continued to spray out of the shower. Her leg was bleeding badly, and she had zero movement south of her left kneecap. The wound was so messy that it was difficult to tell just how deep the gash went, but she knew that if she’d lost musculature movement below her knee that it was pretty deep.

  She grabbed the towel, and with both hands positioned her legs out in front of her. The general plan was to wrap up the leg in order to stop the bleeding. Her face and hands felt pale and cold, and her whole body felt weak. Again, she glanced at the screen door into the bathhouse. It swayed just a little in a breeze that stirred up from outside. She could see nothing outside the bathhouse, in part because it was dark and in part because of her angle on the bathroom floor.

  She padded the wound area lightly with the towel. The towel soaked up the blood, and Maggie grimaced seeing just how deeply the mountain lion’s claws had torn through her thigh. The muscles were cut in two like a rubber band that had been snapped.

  She groaned, “Son of a bitch.”

  And she held the towel firmly on her thigh, applying pressure to the wound.

  • •

  Chip Eiser awoke inside the camper. He lay in his sleeping bag, but his eyes opened and looked across the camper.

  “Momma?” he said.

  Through the dim light, he could see that there was no one on the far side of the camper. He rolled over and looked out the mosquito-netting window down past the creek and on up to the bathhouse. He saw the light on inside the bathhouse through the bathhouse’s screen door. He saw the single bug-repellant yellow light bulb hanging just left of the screen door.

  He quieted himself and listened for any sound.

  He heard the steady rushing water of the creek, and faintly (maybe just his imagination) he thought he heard the sound of a shower. Again, he glanced at the far end of the camper toward his mother’s bed, but he could see in the dim light that there was no lump where her body should be.

  He said a little more urgently, “Momma?”

  And again there was no answer.

  Chip sat up in bed and shivered. He unzipped his sleeping bag and stepped down onto the floor of the camper. He was wearing a white pair of underpants and white socks with little blue stripes. The camper smelled of wine and the lingering odor of campfire smoke. And it was cold.

  Chip could see his breath in the air, and he turned and pulled his sleeping bag over him like a blanket. He opened the door to the camper and looked around outside at the dying embers of the campfire. He saw the picnic table with a two-liter bottle of soda on it, a roll of paper towels, the red forty-gallon Igloo cooler, and an empty bottle of wine.

  He called out into the darkness, “Momma?”

  He thought he saw something moving down by the creek, and h
e suddenly remembered the big cat he’d seen earlier when his mom took the stinger out of his arm. His mom hadn’t seen the cat, but he had.

  Or had he dreamed it?

  Chip rubbed sleep from his eyes, pulled the sleeping bag a little more snugly around his shoulders, and stepped down out of the camper. He closed the door behind him. The sleeping bag dragged behind him like a lumpy cape, but it kept his shoulders warm. He stepped out into the middle of the campsite and looked around him in the darkness.