ground against a rear tire. “Figured you wouldn’t have dog chow on
hand just in case someone happened by with a golden retriever.” He
explained what and how much to feed a dog Falstaff’s size.
“What do we owe you?” Jack asked. “Zip. He didn’t cost me. Just
doing a favor for poor Harry.”
“That’s nice of you. Thanks. But for the dog food?”
“Don’t worry about it. In years to come, Falstaff’s going to need his
regular shots, general looking after. When you bring him to me, I’ll
soak you plenty.”
Grinning, he slammed the tailgate. They went around to the side of the
Rover farthest from the house, using it as shelter from the worst of
the biting wind.
Travis said, “Understand Paul told you in private bout Eduardo and his
raccoons. Didn’t want to alarm your wife.”
“She doesn’t alarm easy.”
“You tell her then?”
“No. Not sure why, either. Except … we’ve all got a lot on our
minds already, a year of trouble, a lot of change. Anyway, wasn’t much
Paul told me. Just that the coons were behaving oddly, out in broad
daylight, running in circles, and then they just dropped dead.”
“I don’t think that was all of it.”
Travis hesitated. He leaned back at an angle against the side of the
Rover bent his knees, slouching a little to get his head down out of
the keening wind. “I think Eduardo was holding out on me. Those coons
were doing something stranger than what he said.”
“Why would he hold out on you?” – “Hard to say. He was a sort of
quirky old guy. Maybe … I don’t know, maybe he saw something he felt
funny talking about, something he figured I wouldn’t believe. Had a
lot of pride, that man. He wouldn’t want to talk about anything that
might get him laughed at.”
“Any guesses what that could be?” “Nope.”
Jack’s head was above the roof of the Rover, and the wind not only
numbed his face but seemed to be scouring off his skin layer by
layer.
He leaned back against the vehicle, bent his knees, and slouched,
mimicking the vet. Rather than look at each other, they stared out
across the descending land to the south as they talked.
Jack said, “You think, like Paul does, it was something Eduardo saw
that caused his heart attack, related to the raccoons?”
“And made him load a shotgun, you mean. I don’t know. Maybe.
Wouldn’t rule it out. More’n two weeks before he died, I talked to him
on the phone. Interesting conversation. Called him to give him the
test results on the coons. Wasn’t any known disease involved–”
“The
brain swelling.”
“Right. But no apparent cause. He wanted to know did I just take
samples of brain tissue for the tests or do a full dissection.”
“Dissection of the brain?”
“Yeah. He asked did I open their brains all the way up. He seemed to
expect, if I did that, I’d find something besides swelling. But I
didn’t find anything. So then he asks me about their spines, if there
was something attached to their spines.”
“Attached?”
“Odder still, huh? He asks if I examined the entire length of their
spines to see if anything was attached. When I ask him what he means,
he says it might’ve looked like a tumor.”
“Looked like.” The vet turned his head to the right, to look directly
at Jack, but Jack stared ahead at the Montana panorama. “You heard it
the same way I did. Funny way to word it, huh? Not a tumor. Might’ve
looked like one but not a real tumor.” Travis gazed out at the fields
again.
“I asked him if he was holding out on me, but he swore he wasn’t. I
told him to call me right away if he saw any animals behaving like
those coons–squirrels, rabbits, whatever–but he never did. Less than
three weeks later, he was dead.”
“You found him.”
“Couldn’t get him to answer his phone. Came out here to check on
him.
There he was, lying in the open doorway, holding on to that shotgun for
dear life.”
“He hadn’t fired it.”