American Hippo

by Sarah Gailey

  “Ask. I know you’re wondering. If we’re going to work together, you may as well ask.”

  Houndstooth swallowed. “I…” He paused, looking down at Hero’s mouth, then looked back at their eyes. “How did you drink the poison? Without it killing you.”

  Hero blinked. That wasn’t the question they had anticipated. “I’m immune. Small doses. Every day.”

  Houndstooth smiled. “Well. That’s the only question I need the answer to.” He sat back down and unfurled a map of the Harriet on the table between them. “Shall we plan a route? I think we should be able to get into the marshes by midmorning, and then we can collect Cal before meeting up with the rest of the crew.…”

  Hero let themself smile as they sat across from Houndstooth and began studying the map. This would be more fun than retirement.

  Chapter 4

  Houndstooth watched out of the corner of his eye as Hero stretched their arms high over their head. The popping of their spine as they twisted made Ruby startle; her tail flapped irritably in the water of the marsh.

  Hero and Houndstooth had been riding since dawn. The day’s ride had been filled with long, easy silences and the slow, steady rhythm of Ruby and Abigail’s treads through the water. The shadows were growing long as the sun began to dip, and Houndstooth had just started to doze off when Ruby’s flicking tail splashed water down the back of his shirt.

  “Ah! Damn.” He wiped his brow with his handkerchief. The day was hot; the air was thick enough that even the mosquitoes seemed to be flying a little slower. Houndstooth swatted at one that was trying to find its dinner on the back of his neck; then he reached back into his saddlebag, pulled out two pears, and tossed one to Hero, who caught it without looking.

  “Show-off,” he said with a small smile.

  “Sleepyhead,” Hero drawled back.

  Houndstooth was about to object, but interrupted himself with a huge yawn. He tried to cover it by biting into his pear, but Hero was already laughing at him.

  “Keep me awake, then,” he said through a mouthful of pear. Hero raised their eyebrows and Houndstooth felt himself blushing. Hero let it lie for a moment before answering.

  “Alright, if it’s my job to keep you stimulated. Let’s talk about your grand … caper.”

  “It’s not a caper, Hero. It’s an operation. All aboveboard. All very well-planned and prepared-for.”

  “And what’s the plan?” Hero asked.

  Houndstooth coughed. “I was hoping you’d help me come up with that.”

  Hero bit into their pear, spat a seed. “You’re funny.” They said it without smiling. They tossed the top third of their pear into the water in front of Abigail, who snapped it up without missing a beat. Abigail crunched and swallowed the pear, twitching her ears.

  “That I am,” Houndstooth said cheerfully. “Have you ever been to the Harriet before?”

  “No,” Hero said, “I’m not one for gambling.”

  Houndstooth looked at them sidelong. He dipped his hand into his saddlebag and scooped out a little pouch of the white saddle-resin all hoppers used to keep their kneeling saddles from sliding around on the slippery, hairless backs of their hippos. He dipped his finger into it and drew a long oval with open, fluting ends on Ruby’s inky shoulder, where Hero could see it. He drew a thick line across the top third of the oval, where the narrowed end flared open again—the dam that had turned the Mississippi into the Harriet. Not quite a lake and not quite a marsh, the Harriet was a triumph of engineering, but the ferals trapped within it rendered it a national embarrassment. The riverboat casinos that dominated its surface did little to alleviate the distaste with which most of the country considered the entire region.

  “So, if this is the Harriet, then this is the Gate.” Houndstooth drew another line across the bottom third of the oval. Hero snorted.

  “You’re not much of an artist, are you?”

  Houndstooth glowered at them. “This is the Gate,” he continued. “It keeps the ferals inside of the Harriet, so they can’t get out into the Gulf. The Gate at the bottom of the Harriet and the dam at the top keep the ferals penned.” He smudged white on each side of the circle. “Unbroken land to the east and west for a few miles in all directions keeps the ferals from traveling to other waters.”

  “So, it’s … what? Twenty miles overland in every direction?”

  “Give or take,” Houndstooth said with a shrug. “It’s enough land that the ferals can’t make it across. I’m sure a few try every year, and die in the process. Either way, the Gate extends far enough inland to discourage them from making a serious attempt at migration.”

  “Do they want to leave?”

  Houndstooth chewed on this. “I doubt it,” he said after a minute. “They’ve been there for a few breeding generations. It’s all they know. And other than the riverboats, it belongs to them.”

  Hero nodded. “Alright. So this plan that you’re expecting me to come up with is supposed to motivate these dangerous, well-entrenched animals to migrate south.”

  Houndstooth grinned at them. “That’s right. Per the federal agent who hired us, all we have to do is get them through the Gate,” he said, drawing a line from the middle of the oval out through the bottom line on the crude map. “And then they’re in the Gulf, and they’re not our problem anymore.” He drew the white line of resin all the way down Ruby’s flank and into the water, making Hero laugh. Their laugh was infectious, and Houndstooth found himself laughing too as he splashed marsh water onto Ruby’s back, rinsing the map away.

  “What does the Coast Guard think of this plan?”

  Houndstooth shrugged. “They’re not the ones paying me.”

  “And what do the riverboat casinos think of it?”

  “That’s a good question,” Houndstooth said. He settled his hat low over his eyes, and the two sank into the easy silence of the humid afternoon.

  There would be plenty of time for Hero to learn about the Harriett, Houndstooth thought. Plenty of time for them to learn about the man who had shaken enough hands and bought enough half-destroyed land to practically own the surface of that feral-ridden puddle.

  Travers.

  If he had a first name, nobody seemed to know it. If he had a soul, Houndstooth had certainly never glimpsed it. Travers had seen an opportunity when the Great Hippo Bust of ’59 rendered half the marshland in Louisiana worthless. He’d made his first fortune purchasing parcels of land for pennies apiece and reselling them to the Bureau of Land Management for use in developing the Harriet. The only caveat had been that he would have unfettered, exclusive business rights on the water, and the right to deny access to any nongovernmental person seeking entry via the Gate.

  It was a story that most hoppers didn’t know, but then most hoppers hadn’t done business with Travers. Unless they’d spent time on his riverboats, most hoppers didn’t know how much he relied on the vicious, hungry ferals that infested the Harriet. There had been a time when he would have paid handsomely to have even hungrier beasts in those waters.

  There had been a time.

  Hero interrupted Houndstooth’s blood-soaked memories of the most dangerous man in Louisiana. “So, we’re getting the ferals out of the Harriet because—why?”

  “Trade route,” Houndstooth murmured without looking up. “The dam is crumbling already—there’s a huge crack down the middle, and it’s less stable every year. The plan as I understand it is to tear it down and reopen the Harriet to trade boats that need to get down to the Gulf. But the boats won’t go through if there are ferals eating their deckhands. So, they’ve got to go.”

  “Ah, right. That’s not what I meant,” Hero said. “I meant why are we doing it? What’s in this for you?”

  Houndstooth missed the comfortable silence. He swayed back and forth on Ruby’s back, listened to the lapping of marsh water against her barrel chest. Abigail nudged Ruby with her shoulder. Ruby grumbled and ducked her nose under the water, and Houndstooth felt the pressure of Hero’s patience
settle over him.

  “Have you ever had anything that you feel like you’d die without?” Houndstooth said it so quietly that it sounded like a prayer. “Something that you’ve put everything into—your whole life, all your heart? Have you ever had anything like that?”

  There was another long minute of silence as Hero thought it over. Ruby blew bubbles in the water with her nose. On the shore of the marsh, a trio of fat frogs hopped into the water. Abigail glared at the shore primly, affronted by the commotion.

  “I don’t think I have,” Hero said. They sounded distant, but when Houndstooth looked over, they were patting Abigail’s flank with a small smile.

  “I had a ranch once.” Houndstooth watched Hero out of the corner of his eye, from under the shadow of his hat. He was ready for them to be skeptical, ready to have to prove his credentials. Hero didn’t look back at him; they simply braced their hands on the pommel of Abigail’s saddle and tilted their head back, their eyes half-closed. Houndstooth managed not to stare at the bead of sweat that ran down the side of Hero’s long throat. “A breeding ranch.”

  “Takes time, saving up for a ranch,” Hero drawled without opening their eyes.

  “Fifteen years,” Houndstooth replied. He found himself watching the water to keep from watching Hero. Ruby left barely a ripple in her wake; the mosquitoes that landed on the water didn’t move out of her path. “It took fifteen years of work to buy the land. I started when I was seven years old, bottle-feeding sick hops at my uncle’s ranch outside Atlanta every other summer. My father wouldn’t pay for my passage across the ocean, so I worked throughout the year to get the money—I did whatever I could, short of stealing.” He swallowed back memories of his father’s reaction the one time he’d attempted to pick a pocket. “One year, I just didn’t go back home. I stayed, so I could work the ranch year-round.”

  “That’s when you knew,” Hero said. It wasn’t a question.

  “That’s when I knew,” Houndstooth answered. He took his hat off and used it to scoop up a patch of mostly clean water, dumping it over Ruby’s back to keep her skin from drying out. “I was the best breeder in the country, you know. Back before my ranch burned. Could have been the best in the world.”

  Hero didn’t ask what had happened. They rode in silence for another thirty minutes or so as the sun dipped low, kissing the tree line. They set up camp a few miles outside the Harriet Gate. There would be no fire that night, but the air was warm enough that they didn’t need it. They laid out their bedrolls and sat, listening to the cacophony of nighttime insects and frogs singing. They passed a flask of whiskey back and forth while Ruby and Abigail splashed and grumbled in the water, looking for good patches of grass to dine on. The sky went grey; a few bright stars announced themselves. There was no moon, but the star-filled sky cast just enough light for Hero and Houndstooth to see each other’s outlines.

  After a few more minutes, Houndstooth grunted, leaning back on his bedroll and propping himself up on his saddlebag. “I’m going to kill the man who burned down my ranch, Hero. You should know that.”

  Hero stared hard at him. “If that’s what you have to do to make something right,” they said. “If you feel ready for it.”

  “I’ve been getting ready for years, Hero,” Houndstooth murmured. “He’s been hiding from me on the Harriet. And I’ve been waiting for the need to kill him—the hunger for it—to die down. But it hasn’t. And now?” He patted his saddlebag. “Now I have a warrant to get onto the Harriet, and not even Travers can turn me away at the Gate.”

  By way of an answer, Hero held out the flask. Houndstooth reached up for it. He misjudged the distance in the dark, and his fingers closed over Hero’s wrist. They both froze for a moment—then, Houndstooth slid his hand up over Hero’s. His fingers felt their way slowly past their hand, past their fingers, over their fingertips, finding the flask.

  Houndstooth unscrewed the top of the flask, taking a long drink. Then, finally: “I wish you could have seen it. The ranch.”

  Hero’s murmur only just carried over the hum of insects that rose around them. “Tell me.”

  It was the kind of story that couldn’t have been shared by daylight. Houndstooth told Hero about the ranch—about the hard year he spent preparing the land he’d bought near the Harriet, about the harder year he spent getting his hands on good breeding stock. As the darkness thickened and solidified, he told Hero about sleepless nights spent nursing newborn hops back from the brink of death. He told them about hiring his first ranch hand, Cal—the man they were on their way to collect. He tried to show them a scar he’d gotten from his very first breeding bull—a thick rope of shining skin that cut across the inside of his bicep and ran almost all the way to his collarbone. He unbuttoned his shirt to show Hero where it met his shoulder.

  “I can’t see it,” Hero laughed. “It’s darker than the inside of Ruby’s belly out here, Houndstooth.”

  Houndstooth set down the nearly empty flask and grabbed Hero’s hand. “Here,” he said, and before he could think he had pressed their fingertips to the scar. His breath caught.

  “Are my hands cold?” Hero whispered.

  “No,” Houndstooth murmured back, as Hero’s fingers traced the full length of the scar where it met his shoulder. He could smell the sweet whiskey on their breath.

  “What happened?” Hero asked, their fingertips still on Houndstooth’s collarbone.

  “Well, the bull was trying to kill a nine-month-old hop, and I—”

  “No,” Hero interrupted Houndstooth. “What happened to the ranch?”

  For the space of three of their shared breaths, the only sound was the buzz of night insects and the flap of Ruby’s ears in the water. Then, just as Hero was preparing to draw a breath to apologize for asking a question they knew they shouldn’t have, Houndstooth answered.

  “He burned it down.” His voice broke on the word “down,” as though he couldn’t quite hold the notion that the ranch was really gone. He lifted his hand and impulsively placed it over Hero’s.

  “I woke up one night, middle of the night. I’d been in … in the birthing barn.” He cleared his throat but didn’t stop telling the story. His fingers tightened briefly over Hero’s. “I’d been in there all night, working through a difficult labor. It hadn’t looked good—I almost lost the mother three or four times. My hands were white and wrinkled from being underwater so long, trying to shift the hop into the right position to come out. But then, like nothing had ever been wrong at all, that mother just up and pushed out her hop. It was small, but it swam right up and poked its head out of the water and took its first breath, no problem. It was a healthy, perfect little girl-hop. The cow was looking at me like she didn’t know why I thought I needed to interfere.” He let out a breath that was almost like a laugh. “I was so exhausted, I fell asleep right there on the marsh grass beside her.

  “When I woke up, the barn was filling with smoke. It smelled … wrong. I’ll never forget it, Hero.” He was nearly whispering, and Hero leaned a little closer to hear him. His voice was thick with the memory. “I stumbled outside and tripped over the hop, the one that had just been delivered. The mother was nowhere in sight—but then, I could hardly see anything, the smoke was so thick. There was sweat in my eyes, it was so hot, and the fire … the fire was everywhere.

  “I picked up the hop and ran. She was small, small enough for me to carry, and too new to wriggle like they do. I got to the edge of my marsh and set her down in the water—her skin was already getting dry—and then turned to run back and put the fire out, but—” He stopped midsentence, and Hero could hear him trying to find the words.

  “It was too late,” they murmured.

  Houndstooth sniffed hard. He squeezed Hero’s hand once, hard, and then let it go. He leaned back on his bedroll, resting his head against his saddlebag again. After a few minutes, he went on.

  “I couldn’t go back through the fire. The marsh grass was just dry enough, and there was a wall of flames betwee
n me and the paddocks. I couldn’t see through the fire and the smoke, but I could hear them,” he said. “The air smelled like … like meat, Hero. It was all wrong. I could hear them thrashing, bellowing. I could hear the hops. I could hear them burning. A hundred in all, hops and mothers and bulls, and I stood there and listened to them die.” His voice broke, and there were another few minutes in which they both pretended his tears were silent ones.

  “I stayed there, as close as I could be without choking on the smoke, and I watched it burn. All the hippos I’d spent my life breeding—gone. Dead.” He fell silent.

  “What about the hop?” Hero asked after a moment.

  “Ah, well, of course,” Houndstooth answered, his voice still thick. “She started nudging at my ankles around dawn, as the flames died down. She was hungry enough that she started trying to suckle on the toe of my boot. She raised up well enough, didn’t she?”

  “She sure did,” Hero answered. “Jesus, Winslow. A hundred hippos.” They whistled long and low. “That must’ve been a helluva ranch you built.”

  “It was,” he replied. “It really was.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But after it burned? I had nothing left but bad debt. I had to sell the parcel to Travers to get out from under it.” Houndstooth spat into the water. “And look at me now. What do I have to my name? A bedroll and a grey hat and Ruby. The last of her line. And her getting older every day.”

  Hero put their hand near the edge of their bedroll. Their pinky finger brushed against Houndstooth’s. He didn’t pull his hand away.

  “A few weeks from now, that won’t be all you’ll have,” Hero murmured.

  “No?” Houndstooth said, linking his pinky finger with Hero’s.

  “No,” they replied. “In a few weeks, you’ll also have revenge.”

  Chapter 5

  “They don’t have hoppers in California, asshole. They don’t have hippos in California.”