Potter went to his desk, picked up a pen, pulled a notepad in front of
him, and wrote the number down as Eduardo recited it. He tore off
another sheet of notepaper and gave it to Eduardo because it was
imprinted with his office address and his own phone numbers.
Eduardo folded the paper into his wallet. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” Potter said. “These weren’t your pet raccoons, so why
should you pay? Rabies is a community problem.”
Potter accompanied him out to the Cherokee.
The larches rustled in the warm breeze, crickets chirruped, and a frog
croaked like a dead man trying to talk.
As he opened the driver’s door, Eduardo turned to the vet and said,
“When you do that autopsy …”
“Yes?”
“Will you look just for signs of known diseases?”
“Disease pathologies, trauma.”
“That’s all?”
“What else would I look for?”
Eduardo hesitated, shrugged, and said, “Anything . . . strange.”
That stare again. “Well, sir,” Potter said, “I will now.”
All the way home through that dark and forlorn land, Eduardo wondered
if he had done the right thing. As far as he could see, there were
only two alternatives to the course of action he’d taken, and both were
problematic.
He could have disposed of the raccoons on the ranch and waited to see
what would happen next. But he might have been destroying important
evidence that something not of this earth was hiding in the Montana
woods.
Or he could have explained to Travis Potter about the luminous trees,
throbbing sounds, waves of pressure, and black doorway. He could have
told him about the raccoons keeping him under surveillance–and the
sense he’d had that they were serving as surrogate eyes for the unknown
watcher in the woods. If he was generally regarded as the old hermit
of Quartermass Ranch, however, he wouldn’t be taken seriously.
Worse, once the veterinarian had spread the story, some busybody public
official might get it in his head that poor old Ed Fernandez was senile
or even flat-out deranged, a danger to himself and others. With all
the compassion in the world, sorrowful-eyed and softvoiced, shaking
their heads sadly and telling themselves they were doing it for his own
good, they might commit him against his will for medical examinations
and a psychiatric review.
He was loath to be carted away to a hospital, poked and prodded and
spoken to as if he had reverted to infancy. He wouldn’t react well.
He knew himself. He would respond to them with stubbornness and
contempt, irritating the do-gooders to such an extent that they might
induce a court to take charge of his affairs and order him transferred
to a nursing home or some other facility for the rest of his days.
He had lived a long time and had seen how many lives were ntined by
people operating with the best intentions and a smug assurance of their
own superiority and wisdom. The destruction of one more old man
wouldn’t be noticed, and he had no wife or children, no friend or
relative, to stand with him against the killing kindness of the
state.
Giving the dead animals to Potter to be tested and autopsied was,
therefore, as far as Eduardo had dared to go. He only worried that,
considering the inhuman nature of the entity that controlled the coons,
he might have put Travis Potter at risk in some way he couldn’t
foresee.
Eduardo had hinted at a strangeness, however, and Potter had seemed to
have his share of common sense. The vet knew the risks associated with
disease. He would take every precaution against contamination, which
would probably also be effective against whatever unguessable and
unearthly peril the carcasses might pose in addition to microbiotic
infection.
Beyond the Cherokee, the home lights of unmet families shone far out on
the sea of night. For the first time in his life, Eduardo wished that
he knew them, their names and faces, their histories and hopes.
He wondered if some child might be sitting on a distant porch or at a
window, staring across the rising plains at the headlights of the
Cherokee progressing westward through the June darkness. A young boy