by Lou Anders
Kevin's own meals were either vegetarian or eaten at the restaurant.
He bought a used copy of Born Free at a yard sale. Jonesy wasn't any kind of modern cat, but it was a start. The librarian found him treatises on the Smilodons of North America, though he wasn't even sure that's what Jonesy was. He had to play it cool when the librarian got nosy about his interest in cloning.
Jonesy shredded any book he brought home. To her, books, like everything else, were toys. So his reading was restricted to the library and their Internet computers, and since he didn't like leaving the cat alone when she was awake, he kept all his research in his head.
He couldn't keep the saber-tooth penned up, any more than Sara could. So after a few weeks, he let her off the long line he'd tied to the trailer, and watched her lope the perimeter of the mowed area, where the demolished farmhouse had set. The line wouldn't hold her anyway, if she wanted to get away. She would chew through chain, though it might damage her beautiful teeth.
She stopped periodically to smell things, and her ears perked at the passage of a bird.
Then she saw the fox, and he thought he'd have to change her name to Turbo.
Did she eat the fox? No doubt she'd caught it. No bloody carcass in the trampled-down area where the chase had ended. But for two days, Jonesy looked quite pleased with herself.
The rest of that summer, the winter, and spring. The saber-tooth grew sleek and menacing, muscles moving smoothly under short tawny fur. One of her magnificent eyeteeth loosened. When it fell out, she let Kevin feel inside her mouth, underneath where the tooth had been, and another one was coming in. Which grew and grew and grew. The other side did the same, and one morning he awoke to her heavy paws on his chest and opened his eyes to see her monstrous white glistening sabers new and sharp and creamy white, each as long as the knife they used in the restaurant kitchen to hack apart beef joints.
Her inscrutable face and hot moist breath made his heart jump with terror. But she was his companion; he had held her under his shirt. He had fed her milk.
He reached up and stroked her ears, which alone of her fur retained kittenish silkiness. Then, with the greatest caution, he touched her saber fangs. Smooth, like ivory knives. This meant she was—Smilodon fatalis? Smilodon neogaeus? Or the other genus—Megantereon? He couldn't tell: he was no paleontologist.
He called Sara, to share this experience. She picked up after two rings, and hung up. But not even Sara's rejection could spoil that moment.
He was the first man ever to touch a living Smilodon's teeth, and survive.
Sara would call now and then to ask about Jonesy, or tell him about a job opening. He could leave the saber-tooth with her during the day, she said.
But when he called, employers always knew he was the kid who had gone to jail for drugs. Such is rural town gossip.
Jonesy and he walked the perimeter of the farm every night, out of sight of the road. He'd been four years out of high school. College seemed much further away now. He thought, Some would say I have no life. A dumbass job. Had good grades, could have gone to college, married a beautiful woman who owned land. Lost all that because I trusted the wrong person, didn't fight the system hard enough. Could have done better. But I've touched the saber teeth of a Smilodon, and if no other gift is given me in this life, that might be enough.
If Jonesy missed anything, she never said so.
Then Jonesy came into heat.
As she came insinuating up to him, dragging her butt against the floor, trying to hump the ragged sofa arm, beseeching him to do something, anything, he just said, “Kitten, I'd write you a personals ad, but your kind don't subscribe to the Country Crier.”
Spaying, but how the hell would he pass her off as anything but what she was? The vet would remember the incident at Frankenlab, and all would be up. Another jail sentence for Kevin. Worse for Jonesy: “sacrifice” at the hands of the scientists.
He tried penning her in the trailer while he slept in the Pinto, but she started chewing through the metal window frame. He let her out, and she howled to get inside with him.
Next night, his cell phone rang.
“Kevin, Keith, whatever your name is. People hear that howling, don't know what it is. But I do.”
Kevin's heart lurched. Caller ID said: B. Hartley. The scientist. “Doctor Hartley. You plan to ‘sacrifice’ her now?”
“No, you dolt. Do I have to spell it out for you? I incited your stupid Animals Our Brethren people to start that fire so she'd get away.”
He took it in. “She's in heat. What should—”
“She'll either go out of heat, or she'll attack somebody. She may even decide you're the lucky tom. Give her back to me.”
“Was there another saber-tooth? A male?”
“Of course not, you idiot.”
He snapped the cell phone shut and threw it against a wall.
Jonesy disappeared into the woods behind French Lick Creek.
A week later she slunk back. Kevin waited, but she was not knocked up. How could she be?
He was pretty sure Jonesy was keeping down the deer and raccoon population, but nobody mentioned missing any dogs. Cats, maybe.
When he needed to go to work, he had to lock her in the trailer, and she gnawed at the door and chewed the knob. Thank God she didn't have opposable thumbs; she was smarter than most dogs and cats. And some people.
But heaven, even Kevin and Jonesy's twisted heaven, can never last.
He had to run an errand. The feed store, which closed in the evening, was the cheapest place to get her dog food.
How she got out and trailed him wasn't that hard to reconstruct. He'd been careless. As he walked out of the store, he nearly tripped over her sunning herself on the front steps.
And across the square was Rosebud. Rosebud wasn't supposed to be out, either, but Mr. Trumbull was pretty lax too.
Rosebud hated cats. And Jonesy smelled like a big, unspayed cat. Rosebud killed cats. Smart cat owners in French Creek Township kept their pets indoors. As to farm cats, thank God Rosebud couldn't climb trees.
Rosebud was across the square, urinating on a post. He stopped abruptly and put his leg down, tiny ears perked, nose twitching. Then he charged.
Halfway across the square, he suddenly changed his mind. Uncertain, he froze, then turned tail.
Jonesy wasn't a long-distance runner, but she was fast on a sprint.
What Kevin saw next was that weird Smilodon leap. Jonesy charged and without stopping, rolled to her back, hugged Rosebud's neck, then sank her saber teeth into the dog's throat. The dog heaved into the air, Jonesy rolled over on top of him, and the two struggled. Rosebud had no offensive weapons but his jaws, and he'd never had to defend himself before, so his struggles turned to spasms and in seconds, he lay still.
Jonesy straddled the dog and raised her bloodied jaws in a terrifying roar. Everybody ran out of the feed store, the diner, and the gift shop.
Jonesy lowered her jaws and began to tear pieces out of the dog's belly.
Kevin fought vertigo and nausea. Somebody yelled, “Anybody catch that on video?”
He charged across the square, screaming at Jonesy. Three guys tried to stop him, yelling, “It'll kill you!” but he slid to a stop by the scene of carnage and yanked on Jonesy's collar.
“He's crazy!” somebody yelled.
Kevin realized he was crazy. Jonesy weighed maybe five hundred pounds by now. He'd read plenty of accounts of people mauled by previously docile big cats. Why did he assume Jonesy was different?
But he had to get the cat away, before somebody with a gun thought to use it.
A small, strong hand gripped his wrist.
Sara. Sara had the rifle her grandfather always carried in her truck. It had been a fixture in the truck for so long he'd forgotten about it. Nor did he wonder why she happened to be in town that day.
She gave him a serious look, then handed him the rifle. “It's under control,” she yelled at the gathering crowd. “Back off
before somebody gets hurt.”
The dog was mangled meat. Jonesy had ripped open its throat and its belly and was standing over it, sides heaving with desire, jaws quivering with hunger and triumph.
The crowd all took a step back.
“Get her in the truck,” Sara said. “You can still control her, can't you?”
Jonesy roared again, a softer roar.
Very deliberately—he believed that crap about animals being able to sense fear, but also knew he could fake courage pretty well—he took a handful of the loose flesh at the back of Jonesy's neck and said in a low growl, “Into the truck, bad girl.”
And it was over. Jonesy lowered her head and her stump of a tail and climbed into Sara's truck. Kevin slammed the door.
Which left Sara and Kevin standing outside.
Sara was shaking. She reached up and grabbed Kevin's ears and kissed him hard, tongue and all. Breaking loose, she said, “You're an idiot! But, God almighty, you've got guts!”
What now? Kevin couldn't leave Jonesy inside the truck; first, the saber-tooth would demolish the inside. Second, it was a nice spring day, sunny, and heat would eventually build up and kill her.
But he could no longer predict the cat's behavior. Jonesy's blood was up; she might boil over.
“We have to get her out of here before the cops come,” said Kevin. He shrugged, grabbed Sara's keys, and sprang into the truck.
Jonesy didn't kill him. The rest of his life, he would wonder why. Because he was dominant? Because she loved him? Do top predators know love?
He let Jonesy out of the truck outside his trailer. She lingered, licking his hand and making begging grunts, so he opened one of the dog food cans. She took it away from him and rasped the horse meat out, then lay down in the grass.
He went inside and wept.
Yes, somebody had videotaped it. Not the two animals running toward each other, not Jonesy's karate-like attack, but the dog underneath Jonesy, thrashing, then still, and Jonesy pulling out intestines. The video played several times, always zooming on the dead pit bull, then panning to Kevin pulling the cat away. He lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.
Thank God the cat looked like a female lion in the video. Some bystanders remarked on its teeth, but nobody connected it with the break-in and fire at the lab a couple years previous.
In the evening, Sara brought his car back. He didn't know how she had started it, but she came in uninvited and lay beside him on the bed.
They kissed. She said, “Lock the door.”
He did, obediently. “It won't stop Jonesy, if that's what you're thinking.”
Hours later, they dressed and talked about hunting for Jonesy. Did anybody recognize them from the video? It was really jerky. Nobody was knocking on the door. But Kevin's mind roiled with possibilities: if somebody recognized Sara's truck, they'd go to her house, then figure she was here. They'd come with guns for Jonesy. Jonesy was tame; she wouldn't know to run.
Hellfire. Maybe Jonesy should be put down.
He said, “I always thought you still loved me a little. Unless this is just a stress reaction.”
She leaned into him, then grabbed and shook him, hard enough that he thought, She's going to slug me next. She said, “I loved you, you jerk, but I couldn't keep on loving somebody who was stupid enough to go to jail for what he didn't do.”
“Ed is your cousin. I couldn't rat out your cousin. And I never was sure the pot was his, anyway.”
“Idiot!” And she did slap him, not enough to hurt, then turned away, hiding tears. “Ed is a goddamn jerk. He got you in trouble; you shielded him. He's my blood, but nobody I'd ever choose for family. Kevin, Kevin. I can't be with a man who spent time in jail and who—who lives with this monster.”
“You like animals.”
She sobered. “I do. I'm not sure what you should do with Jonesy. Maybe we could get rid of her somehow? Not kill her. Find somebody who would take her and keep her safe. Would you do that if I asked?”
“And we'd be like before?” He didn't say, And you'll marry me? but he hoped she'd know that's what he meant.
“We'd at least solve a problem. I have a friend who knows how to sell things on the Internet. Remember those people who tried to sell their kid on eBay?”
“They got caught.”
“They were stupid. EBay's not the option I had in mind. Listen, Ed isn't the only shady character we know. Maybe we can find a place for her.”
He was reluctant. “Sara, don't get her killed.”
He stayed up drinking cola after she left, but fell asleep in his lounge chair and awoke to early light and his cell phone ringtone.
“It's happened,” said Hartley.
“What?” He thought she was talking about the attack on Rosebud.
“Sara Jones, that's your girl, right? The cat's over at her farm.”
“Yeah, but Sara will be okay. Jonesy loves Sara.”
“Judas Priest, boy, that cat is a top predator. Her definition of love is different from yours and mine. Big cats seem okay for years, then go off like a bomb and eviscerate somebody for no reason. For hunger. For a mate. Because a fly bit them on the nose.”
“She loves Sara—”
“Yeah, she loves you, too. And maybe she thinks Sara is a rival in love.”
That sounded crazy. But Kevin pulled his clothes back on and ran to his car.
He beat the police cruisers to the farm.
Jonesy was bashing the front door, roaring her earsplitting roar, not the roar of triumph she'd roared over Rosebud, not the roar of desire she'd yowled in heat. This was rage. And she was destroying the door.
As the first cruiser threw open its door and a cop sprang out with weapon drawn, the door imploded and Jonesy bounded inside.
Why had he thought Sara was safe? For some reason—oh God maybe it was sexual rivalry—Jonesy was after her.
Kevin bolted out of his car and up the porch stairs.
Inside, he smelled the fury of big, enraged cat.
“I'm up here!” Sara screamed.
He pounded up the stairs three at a time.
Sara's voice came from the upstairs bedroom. Outside that closed door, Jonesy reared on her back feet, head scraping the ceiling. She clawed at the doorknob, chewed at the door panels.
One door panel split and fell inward. Jonesy threw herself with renewed rage, and the door splintered.
“Here girl! Bad girl!” Why hadn't he thought of bringing meat?
No. Meat wouldn't work.
Sara was screaming, punching at the jammed window.
He raced up and grabbed the cat's collar, but she turned and knocked him flat.
As he lay gasping from the blow, Jonesy lunged for Sara.
He crawled, dizzy, trying to rise despite the agony in his chest. He had just reached the door when Jonesy rolled across the floor, sprang up, and sank her teeth into Sara's throat.
Sara's eyes went wide, green as Jonesy's eyes. Her head snapped back. The cat ripped out her flesh together with a piece of her T-shirt, then howled, head thrown back, whiskered black nose grazing the ceiling light fixture.
Then the cat leapt through the window, splintering the frame.
Kevin crawled over to Sara. Her head was nearly separated from her body, blood gushing everywhere, in her beautiful golden hair, on her torn shirt, the cracked linoleum floor. More blood than he had ever seen.
He buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and sobbed.
Then he rose and looked out the window. Jonesy was loping into the barn.
He felt his way down the stairs, shattered. Sara was so beautiful. And Jonesy, his charge, his responsibility, his pet, had killed her. Pet? Oh, no. Not a pet. No more than an astronaut would call the moon a pet. No more than a composer would call his greatest symphony a pet. No more than a mountain climber would call Everest a pet.
He stumbled out into the light. Five police cruisers ringed the house now, and a paramedic van. One of the paramedics had the rifle f
rom Sara's truck.
“Cat still in there?” one cop yelled.
“Sara's upstairs. She's dead,” Kevin said. He sank to his knees and sobbed.
Hartley appeared. “The cat ran into the barn. I saw it.”
The paramedic raised the rifle, and another cop hauled open the barn door. He had a German shepherd with him on a short leash. Kevin pulled himself erect.
The dog strained forward, then turned to cower behind the cop. The cop broke into a run, at the same time trying to unholster his service revolver.
Jonesy exploded out of the barn. The cop with the dog fell down, and Jonesy vaulted over them.
Kevin heard the sound of the rifle being cocked.
Kevin screamed, “No!” He launched himself at the rifleman.
The rifleman stumbled and the shot went wild.
A tawny streak—Jonesy—broke into the woods behind the barn and coursed out of sight.
Hartley screamed, “Why did you do that?”
“Killing the cat won't make Sara be alive again.”
“You're in denial! The Smilodon will kill again.”
Kevin was silent. Hartley was right. He had no idea why he had pushed the rifleman. He felt his arms being jerked back; cuffs cut his wrists. But the saber-tooth, the miracle from another world, was free.
“You were involved with Sara Jones,” Hartley said. “I thought you loved her.”
“I did. Not what matters.”
“This monster kills the woman you love, and you protect it?”
How could he explain?
Jonesy was never found, though attacks on domestic animals and deer increased in the county for a few weeks. Maybe the saber-tooth died; maybe she went north, where the woods were thicker and the game larger.
Kevin went to jail. He got most of a college degree in there, gratis the state. He wasn't street smart, that was obvious, but he had a talent for book learning.
His life had changed forever. He got out of jail, went to university, studied paleontology, but studiously avoided Franklin U and Hartley, though she begged him for his photos of the Smilodon.
