Читать книгу Wild Spirits - Rosa Jordan - Страница 6

1

THE BANK

It was an old bank, the kind where the teller windows had bars so deposits and withdrawals had to be passed back and forth through a space below the bars. Maybe, Wendy thought, the bars were there so, if a Jesse James–type bank robber stuck a gun in your face, you could duck behind the counter and the robber couldn’t lean over to shoot at you. Not that banks were robbed in the Jesse James style anymore, with a bandana over the nose and a horse waiting at the hitching post outside.

Wendy felt lucky to be working at the bank. There were few jobs in the small town for girls with only a high school diploma. She had already tried working as a sales clerk and a doctor’s receptionist, but found the bank job more interesting. Some people said that with her honey-blonde hair, clear skin, and eyes so blue they were almost turquoise, she could be a model or in the movies. But you don’t find those jobs in small towns, either. Besides, she did not like being stared at. She had read that models and actresses spend 90 percent of their time standing around waiting for somebody to tell them what to do the rest of the time. That was not how she wanted to spend her life.

She did not want to spend her life as a bank teller either, but for now — she was only nineteen — it was okay. She found math easy, and had never made a mistake counting money. The only thing she did that sometimes got her reprimanded was what she was doing right now: staring out through the bars, her thoughts far away.

Her boss called it daydreaming. Ellen, the teller at the next window, jokingly called it “going into a trance.” But Wendy was not daydreaming or in a trance. She was just remembering. Like most people, she remembered a lot of things. But when she stared into space as she was doing now, she was remembering the wild things.

• • •

Wendy’s parents said she couldn’t possibly remember something that happened when she was so little, but she did. She remembered her dad spreading a blanket in the middle of the forest and she, a toddler, being placed on the blanket and told, as if she were a puppy in training, “Stay right here, Wendy. Take your nap. If you wake up, don’t go off this blanket. You understand?”

What Wendy understood was that if she left the blanket she would be spanked. She would lie down with her thumb in her mouth, and listen as her father clumped off through the woods.

Wendy’s mother, who worked during the day, believed she was being babysat by her father. Her mother knew, when she came home, that they had been in the woods, and knew Wendy’s father had gone there to hunt, because often he brought back fresh game for supper.

“How can you hunt and look after the baby at the same time?” her mother asked.

Her father shrugged. “No problem. I just put her down for a nap on her blanket. I stick close enough to hear her if she cries.”

That was not true. Wendy could tell, just by listening, exactly when he had gone so far away that if she called out, he would not hear her. So, after a few experimental calls, she didn’t call out, or cry. She took her nap, as her dad had told her to do.

She was alone when she fell asleep, but when she awoke there might be a bushy-tailed squirrel sitting on the corner of her blanket. It would stare at her with its bright black eyes — as hard as she stared back at it with her bright blue eyes. One day it was a smell that awakened her, and she saw, just a few feet away, a mother skunk parading across the clearing, trailed by four little ones. Wendy kept completely still. Luckily, the skunk family kept going. She often saw rabbits, and learned that they came in all sizes, from ones almost as small as a mouse to ones as large as her family’s big tomcat. As long as she remained still and did not make any noise, they would play around her in the grass, and even hop close to her on the blanket.

Perhaps when she was very small she had tried to touch the animals, but she did not remember that. What she knew, and it seemed she had always known, was that if you tried to touch a wild animal, it ran away. If she wanted the wild things to stay nearby, to keep her company until her father returned, she had to be quiet. She didn’t have to stay completely still, or completely quiet, for that matter. The animals made small noises themselves, and didn’t seem to mind if she did. Small movements, like brushing away an ant, were okay, too. Wild creatures just didn’t like loud noises and sudden movements. But then, neither did Wendy.

The only loud noise she liked to hear was her father who, two or three hours after he had left, would come clumping back along the trail. The wild things scattered when they heard him coming, so by the time he reached the clearing where he had left Wendy, she would be alone again.

Her father, carrying his gun in one hand and a sack in the other, would be in either a good mood or grumpy, depending on how the hunting had gone. He would shake Wendy’s blanket, roll it up so she could carry it, and they’d set off for home. Sometimes, if he was in a hurry and she wasn’t keeping up, he would yell at her. Other times he would pick her up and carry her.

When they got home he would open his sack and take out the furry things he had shot. They looked like the animals that had kept her company, but not as real. Her father would quickly remove their skins and cut them into pieces. Then they didn’t look like animals at all. They looked like pieces of meat, which her mother, when she got home from work, would cook for supper.

Deer often wandered into the clearing when her father was not around, when she was there alone and quiet on her blanket. Once she opened her eyes from a nap to see a big deer stepping right over her. Behind the big deer came a very small one, probably a brand new fawn. It did not step over her, but stumbled, and stepped on her. Its hooves were so tiny that getting stepped on didn’t hurt, but it did surprise her. Neither the fawn nor its mother paid Wendy any mind. The doe stopped close by to browse on some bushes. The fawn stuck its nose under her belly to suck milk. Wendy, lying on her blanket, remembered clearly how she looked up at underside of the mother deer’s belly and saw the small teats where the fawn was getting its milk.

That was the only time a deer ever came so close as to actually touch her, but many times deer crossed the clearing where Wendy waited, or stopped to nibble on nearby bushes. That was why, when her father took his gun and went on weekend hunts with his friends, and came home with a dead deer, Wendy eventually realized what “hunting” meant.

She was five years old when, walking into the woods one day with her father, they startled a deer. The big antlered buck threw up his head and stared at them. Her father quickly raised his rifle. Wendy dashed forward, screaming at the deer, “Run! Run for your life!”

That was the last time her father ever took her with him when he went hunting.

• • •

“Hey, Wendy, wake up!” Ellen hissed. “If Mr. Smart catches you off in a trance again, he’s going to hit you upside the head with a computer print-out.”

Wendy grinned sheepishly and turned her attention to the computer screen, to input data as she was supposed to when there were no customers. But just then a customer came in. The moment Wendy saw Danny Ryan, she knew he would come to her window. He always did.

Danny was a serious eleven-year-old with shaggy brown hair. His dark eyes were bright and watchful. They reminded her of the eyes of a wild animal, not sure whether to stay put or run, because it doesn’t know whether to expect kindness or cruelty.

Danny’s dad, a soldier, had been killed about five years earlier, and his mother had remarried. Wendy had never met Danny’s mother or his stepfather, but she knew that they had been in trouble a few times for drunk driving and fighting. Maybe because of how things were at home, Danny spent a lot of time wandering around downtown. If he saw other kids coming along the sidewalk, he’d cross to the other side of the street. If he didn’t — and this Wendy knew because she had seen it happen — they’d taunt him. Instead of trying to defend himself, Danny would hunch his shoulders and hurry away, as if he had important business elsewhere.

In fact, he did have a kind of business. He collected aluminum cans that he sold to the recycling centre. When not in school, he worked at this project almost continuously, and earned a surprising amount of money for a kid his age. Once, after his stepfather broke into his piggy bank and took all the money, Danny’s grandmother, who lived far away and was just there for a visit, brought the boy to the bank and helped him open an account. After that Danny came to the bank at least once a week, marched straight to Wendy’s window, and made a deposit.

“Hi, Danny,” Wendy greeted him. “How much are you depositing today?”

“Nineteen dollars,” he said, shoving the money through the barred window.

“You’ve got over three hundred dollars in your account now,” she said encouragingly. “What are you saving it for? A bicycle?”

Danny narrowed his eyes at Wendy in a way that made her think that he was making up his mind whether or not she could be trusted. Apparently deciding that he could count on her not to laugh, he said in a low voice, “Not a bicycle. A llama.”

“A llama?”

Wendy did not laugh. When she was Danny’s age, she had often visited farms near where she lived. The cows and horses grew used to her, and allowed her to pet their calves and foals. But her favourite farm animal was an exotic one, a llama. When the mother llama had a baby, Wendy thought it was the cutest thing she had ever seen. She thought, Someday I’ll live on a farm. Instead of cows and horses, I’ll have llamas.

Wendy looked through the bars of the teller window at the boy. She did not find his desire to own a llama funny at all. He was just different, the same way she as a little girl had been different, caring about things that sometimes caused other kids to tease her.

“Why a llama, Danny?”

The boy looked in both directions, as if to make sure no one was near enough to hear what he said. Then, standing on tiptoe and leaning close to bars that separated them, he told her, “Llamas spit.”

“You want a llama because they spit?”

Danny smiled the way you do when you’ve just shared your biggest secret with somebody, and whispered, “I’ll train it to spit on people who pick on me.”