Читать книгу Wild Spirits - Rosa Jordan - Страница 13

8

QUITTING TIME

Wendy did not leave home on Sunday. Instead she stayed indoors or messed around in the backyard with Danny, who had come over first thing in the morning. She had been living on her own for a year and liked being alone. Normally, having somebody else hanging around would have driven her crazy, but Danny was so quiet that she kept forgetting he was there. Then she’d look out the kitchen window see him sitting quietly, watching the antics of the raccoons. Again, she was reminded of how a rabbit will sometimes sit so still that it blends in with its surroundings.

At lunch she called him up on the porch to share a peanut butter sandwich with her. Again there was a third sandwich, cut in half.

“Is that for the raccoons?” Danny asked.

“Unless you want it,” Wendy smiled.

“I’d rather feed it to them.”

“Do you remember how I did it yesterday?” Wendy asked.

Danny hesitated, then said, “You didn’t let them take it from your hand. You dropped it in and closed the door, quick.”

“That’s right,” Wendy said. “We never hand-feed wild animals, not unless they’re babies and have to be bottle-fed. Because when they go back to the wild, we don’t want them running after people, begging for food. That could get them killed.”

“I know,” Danny said gravely. “You told me that already.”

• • •

When Wendy came home from work on Monday afternoon, she was not surprised to find Danny in the backyard. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass next to the cage, reading a library book called Raccoon.

“Glad to see you doing your homework,” she teased, and they both smiled, because it was summertime. No school, so naturally, no homework.

“It’s kind of short,” he said. “But it was the only book they had about raccoons.”

“You can probably find more information on the web,” Wendy said. “Do you know how to use the Internet?”

“Yes, but I don’t have a computer at home. Only at school.”

“You can use mine,” Wendy said. “Wait right there and I’ll bring out my laptop.”

Wendy logged on and waited until Danny Googled “raccoon.” Then she went back in the house and lay down.

She’d had a bad day at work. All day long, every time a strange man walked into the bank, a feeling of panic rose in her chest. When it was time to carry money across the parking lot to fill the ATM, she flatly refused. Ellen wouldn’t do it, either. Mr. Smart had sighed loudly, as if they were being totally unreasonable and he was the most patient person in the world. In the end, he filled the ATM himself, taking along his secretary who was scared stiff, but didn’t dare refuse.

Wendy wished Kyle could stop by later, but he was on night shift again. It was going to be like that all week, him going to work just as she was getting off. Usually she wasn’t bothered by him working the night shift. After being around people all day, she liked having evenings to herself. But not this week. Not since the holdup.

• • •

On Thursday, Mr. Smart called her into his office. “Wendy,” he said. “I am real sorry about what happened to you and Ellen. You know I am. But it’s part of your job to fill the ATM every afternoon. You’re going to have bite the bullet and do it, that’s all.”

Wendy didn’t much like his phrase “bite the bullet.” The way she saw it, she’d come all too close to biting a real bullet, and all because the bank wasn’t concerned enough about employee safety to put the ATM next to the building so it could be filled without the whole town watching. But she couldn’t argue with Mr. Smart’s main point. She had always known that the ATM was on the other side of the parking lot, and was told when she came to work here that filling it would be part of her job.

Too bad. Because no way was she going to walk across that parking lot carrying thousands of dollars in cash again. It was a well-known fact that robbers often held up the same bank twice, especially when they had found it easy the first time. Wendy stood in front of Mr. Smart’s desk, looked away, and said nothing.

“So can I count on you from now on?”

Wendy shook her had. “I would if I could, Mr. Smart. But I can’t.”

Mr. Smart steepled his fingers under his chin and looked at her for a long time. Then he said, “Well, think about it, Wendy. One way or another, you’re going to have to get past your fear of … the parking lot.”

Wendy almost laughed. It wasn’t the parking lot she was afraid of. It was guys with guns! Or any strange men, for that matter. It was almost a week now since the holdup, and she still felt panic when a man she didn’t know looked at her — or worse, two men together. She hadn’t told anybody, not even Kyle, because what could they do? They’d just tell her to stop worrying. She had already told herself that and it did not help one bit.

Wendy didn’t need to be told that if she did not go back to carrying that cash out to the ATM she was going to get fired. Ellen had already agreed to start carrying the money out on Monday. If Wendy kept refusing, then it was just a matter of time. She pulled into her driveway and sat there a minute, thinking things through.

“The bank is not where I want to spend my life, anyway,” she said aloud. “If I could have my druthers, I’d spend all my time in the backyard fooling with animals. Or better yet, out in the woods, where the real wild things are.”