Page 7 of What Rough Beast

Ava

The bunny with the broken leg died overnight, probably of shock, something that particular species isn’t great at navigating, it seems.

“They just kind of give up sometimes,” Widow says as she pulls the bunny out of the cage.

“I know the feeling,” I say, opening the office door for Panda, who managed to traverse the driveway with only two naps on the way.

He flops down at my feet, exhausted by the effort.

“I’ll take the bunny out to the—”

“Nope,” Widow says, stripping the splint off the stiff little body and handing it over to me. “It was hurt, not sick. Feed it to Archimedes.”

Archimedes, a great horned owl, has a permanently disabled wing, which doesn’t make him any less terrifying. When I slide the bolt on his enclosure, he erupts into activity, neck twisting all the way around to look at me. I ease through the opening, flinching when his head starts to bob, up and down, left and right, eyes focused on the rabbit in my hand. I throw it and run back through the fence, slamming the cage shut.

But Archimedes ignores the offering, passing over it as he barrels toward me on foot, spreading his wings, head bobbing up and down. He’s at least three feet tall, and his wingspan is easily five, the injured one flaring a little less. His unblinking eyes lock on me as he approaches the fence, clicking his beak. I keep my shit together right up until he hisses at me. I stumble backward, falling on my ass and knocking into Widow’s legs.

“That’s called mantling,” she says, looking down at me. “Oh, look, you’re getting some toe-dusting, too.”

Arch is still hyper-focused on me, his head swinging from side to side, nearly touching the ground. It’s strangely intimidating, and I scootch back a little farther even though there’s a fence in between us.

“He really doesn’t like you,” Widow says. “Don’t worry, I’ve never found any hair ties in his pellets.”

“Ha,” I say, and take her hand when she offers it, pulling me to my feet and dusting off my butt like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“Why don’t you go bottle-feed the baby squirrels?” she says.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Everything I touch breaks or dies.”

“Probably should have put that on your application,” she says dryly, popping a shovel in my hand. “Compost pile is past the orchard to the east. Go give it a couple turns. Also, the skunks are out there. They’re all debagged, though, and they’re spots, not stripes.”

“Excuse me?” I say, wondering if this is some sort of racist joke among wildlife rehab people.

“Spotted skunks,” she clarifies. “We don’t have them here, but a place in Kentucky lost their funding, and I said I’d take their skunks. If something upsets them, they’ll do a handstand. They’re agile little shits.”

I pass Panda, still working on his return trip from Archimedes’s enclosure. He makes a sharp right and follows me.

“You make bad choices,” I tell him, but scratch him under the chin anyway.

The sun is almost down, and frogs are singing in the ditch that runs alongside the gravel road. I’ve been staying later and later at the refuge, sometimes well past dark. At home, Mom and Dad watch me, waiting for me to crack so that they can be there to hold the pieces together. Dad says everything will be okay; Mom says hope is what makes life livable. They both claim tomorrow is a new day. Widow doesn’t do that. She says that if something can go wrong it will, and that tomorrow is just another opportunity for something to die.

I find her pessimism oddly refreshing.

I grab a couple of drops in the orchard, the apples wet with evening dew. They’ve got worm holes and dark spots, a few nibbles from deer as well. But the skunks don’t care; they catch the scent of fruit as I approach their enclosure and attached shed. When I get close to the fence, they come to me.

“Hey, guys,” I say, squatting down and squishing bits of apple through the cage. The four of them grunt and chirp as I feed them, one of them reaching through the wire and sucking the juice off my thumb.

“Hey,” I say again, but this time it comes out heavy and choked, because I’m crying.

Animals might not be humans, but these skunks are showing me more compassion than any humans have lately, their light touches releasing something, removing the barrier that keeps my feelings at bay. I sink to my knees and press my face against the wire, feeling their wet noses and rough tongues as they lick away the salt.

There’s an unnatural glow lighting up the sky farther east; the lights from the football field. The air is chilly, and if I am very still, I can hear the cadence of the marching band, then a few notes of the national anthem floating across the miles between us. The press box commentator reads off the names of the seniors in the starting lineup, and I wonder how many of them saw my bare ass, and if there are pictures.

“Humans are animals,” I whisper to the skunks.

I wipe my face, give one of them a nose scratch, then grab the shovel and head for the compost pile. It’s as high as me, letting off heat against the cooler evening air. I can see a few spots where Widow turned it last week, digging the shovel in and aerating to speed up decomposition.

The compost is soft and black, the blade of the shovel biting deeply when I punch it in, the muscles in my upper back stretching, at first comfortably, then with a dull ache as I continue working. The natural light is almost entirely gone when Panda comes around the fencerow, tongue lolling.