Foodchain (33 page)

Frank shook his head. “Girdler is simply too fucking dumb to realize the bear is like that with everyone. He’s a big old puppy dog. The cats will kill that grizzly faster then the dogs tonight.”

“So we don’t feed it,” Sturm said.

“Girdler already did, when the old girl in there was killing seven dogs here tonight,” Frank said.

“That sonofabitch,” Sturm said. “We’re gonna have to watch him.” This was directed at Jack. “He’s liable to go apeshit he sees what’s gonna happen to his pet.”

“That’s the problem right there,” Jack said. “He still thinks its his.”

Sturm spit. “Fuck. Thought we had an understanding all worked out. Why didn’t you tell anybody that he was feeding it tonight?”

“I didn’t know the bear had been sold,” Frank said.

“Fuck. I guess, technically, we never got around to telling him.” His attention turned back to Frank. “No, that’s not why I’m telling you this. That bear is going to kill a bunch of them big cats over the next few nights. All I want you to do is make sure that damn bear wins until I say so. Hell son, all I’m asking you to do is make it look halfway fair, but hell, as long at that bear wins until the third, the fourth night if it’ll hold out, then we’re all gonna make some very serious money. As long as nobody finds out the damn thing’s name is Bo-Bo.”

“Look, it wouldn’t matter if that bear hadn’t eaten for a month. He simply isn’t going to last. You put that thing up against hell, one of them pound dogs, and it’ll shit itself. It’ll be dead tomorrow night.”

“Well then. That’s why you’re here. You’re the expert.”

“We’ll go in there, spend all night going to work on that bad boy if you want,” Pine said, always ready to hurt something. “Make sure it’ll fight good and hard.”

“No. Not this time. I got a feeling Doctor Doolittle here’s got a point.” Sturm gave a hint of a smile at Frank. “That’s why you’re gonna make that thing fight tomorrow. I got confidence in you, son,” Sturm said as he climbed into his truck. “See you gentlemen tomorrow.”

Nobody said anything to Frank. They looked at the horizon, mumbled excuses, and left. Frank drove back slowly, nursing his bottle. He didn’t see the point in hiding the long black car anymore, and left it outside in the parking lot at the vet hospital.

He stood for a long time in front of the sink. He got down on his knees and pulled the baggie free. It came loose with the sensation of pulling a long, fresh scab off your knee. The noise was very loud in the vet hospital, echoing inside the small space under the sink. He put the bag in the butter drawer in the refrigerator, finished the bottle, and went to bed.

DAY THIRTY-TWO

Sturm thought the bear had to weigh at least a thousand pounds. Frank’s guess was closer to nine hundred. The Kodiak was still massive, like a VW bug covered in rolling muscles and sparse fur, but it looked to Frank like he might be getting a little thin. Maybe the lack of hibernation had caught up to his metabolism.

Frank, Sturm, Chuck, and Jack looked down at the bag of pills on the examining table. “I think four of ’em will put that bear right where we need it,” Frank said slowly. “Any more…I’d hate to give it a heart attack. Be a hell of way to end the fight.”

Frank had called Sturm first thing in the morning. Early. Just to let Sturm know that he was working. “I got these pills. Got ’em offa trucker. I took one and it knocked me sideways for at least twenty, twenty-two hours.

Sturm was silent for a moment. “How many are left?”

“Six of the speeders, and five of the unknown ones.” Frank had put ten pills aside earlier, hiding them back up under the sink, just in case.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll see you later. In the meantime, you make sure the rest of them lions are ready to go tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and son, you did the right thing telling me this.” He hung up.

Sturm came alone to the vet hospital an hour later. Chuck and Jack were already there, getting the trailer ready to haul the remaining cats over to the auction yard.

Sturm picked the baggie off the table and shook it, peering at the pills. “You think four’ll do the job.”

Frank shrugged. “It’s a guess. That’s all.”

“What’ll they do to him?”

Frank shrugged again. “Can’t say. They’re definitely a stimulant. I’m hoping they’ll make him stronger. Meaner. For a while, anyway.”

“How are you gonna dose him?” Jack asked.

“Hide the pills in his food.”

“What’s Girdler feed that damn thing?” Sturm asked..

“Whatever sheep parts we got left over at the end of the day. Walnuts. Almonds. Peaches. Oranges. Whatever he can find in the orchards. Fish, too.”

“Fish?”

Frank nodded. “Three, four a day.”

“Oh yeah,” Chuck said, going through the fridge. “He goes up to the lake. He drinks all night, you know, with us. So he goes up there at dawn, goes fishing. Catfish mostly. Sometimes trout. Crappie. Whatever. He keeps the fish on ice while he sleeps.”

Sturm was pissed. “That freeloading sonofabitch. Taking fish outta’ my lake.” He spit. “You said, how many pills, four?”

Frank nodded.

“We’re gonna give him five pills,” he said.

“I’ll crush ’em up now.”

Sturm turned to Jack. “Go find this fuck. Find him and tell him I’d like a word. Sonofabitch thinks he’s going to take advantage of me, he’s got another thing coming.”

* * * * *

This time, the lot was full. The hunters must have called all of their friends; Frank counted over fifty pickups. Sturm opened the auction yard early, just to get the betting underway. Most everybody was inside when Girdler came walking down the highway in the twilight, face streaked with charcoal and holding a burning branch.

Sturm, Jack, and Frank were waiting outside the front doors. Sturm had instructed Frank to keep the back door locked. “Fuck the fire codes,” Sturm said. He wanted only one way in and out of the building.

Girdler got close. He waved the branch at the sky, sending a flock of sparks toward the first glimmers of stars, then tossed the branch onto the gravel. He strode up to front door and Sturm could see tracks of tears cutting through the smears of charcoal.

“It ends tonight,” Girdler said.

“Is that so? You haven’t been up in the hills chewing on peyote or some other hippy shit, have you?” Sturm asked.

“It ends tonight,” Girdler repeated.

“Heard you the first time,” Sturm said.

“So it’ll end. Tonight. Right here. Now.”

Sturm spit. He took his time, cleaning out the snuff. He pulled a new can from his jeans and thumped it with his thumb. “No. We got plans for that bear. He’s gonna fight for a few nights, at least. Gonna kill more than a few cats. Make us all some money.”

Girdler shook his head vigorously, long hair flying. “No. You can’t put him through that…that torture. He dies tonight.”

“I don’t know what kind of shit you got in your ears, but I’m gonna assume you didn’t hear me. That bear in there, that’s no longer your property. Your opinion don’t mean two shits around here.”

“Please, listen to me—”

“I ain’t listening to anything but the sound of the bell that starts the round. You want to, you come in and lay down that cash you just earned. You don’t, then you best hop in your goddamn RV and keep driving. Don’t you dare look in your rearview mirror ‘til you’re out of the state.”

Girdler blinked soot out of his eyes.

Sturm waited. “Your decision. I got business to tend to.” He marched into the auction yard. Jack gave Girdler a moment as well, then followed Sturm. Frank kept his eyes on the ground; he didn’t want to look at Girdler’s face.

Girdler fingered the two bricks of cash, one shoved his right pocket, the other in his left. He looked to the burning branch, but it had gone out, and nothing was left but a thin trickle of smoke. The roar of the crowd as Sturm came into view made the doors reverberate.

Girdler grabbed Frank’s wrist. “Will you help me? Please?”

Frank looked into Girdler’s eyes. “No,” he said, shrugging off the man’s hand and going inside.

* * * * *

The sound hit Frank first, like a physical blow. The arena was packed; everyone shouted and screamed and clapped. Men sprayed beer over themselves. They ate beef jerky. Popcorn. Smoked cigarettes. Cigars. Spit chewing tobacco on their boots. Almost to a man, they carried bottles of some kind of hard liquor, along with a bottle or can of beer. And everyone, everyone had their rifles.

Sturm got ’em quieted down enough to shout, “One thousand pounds of teeth and claws!” and the men roared again. They practically threw cash at Theo up in the office. Sturm shook his hat, “You men are privileged to see this, this offering to our God. The blood that spills is in his honor. He will drink the blood that soaks that earth.”

Nobody seemed to know exactly how to respond to that so a few bowed their head and a few clapped. Frank didn’t remember that particular passage from the bible from his father’s sermons, but his father would have liked it. Frank suspected the only place it existed was written across the tumor in Sturm’s head.

Sturm shouted, “Fifteen minutes ‘til the betting window closes!”

Frank stepped into the cage and watched as Girdler came in the front door and made his way up the steps to the office window.

Girdler slapped both bricks of cash on the ledge. Frank didn’t have to hear the conversation to know he was putting all of his money on the cats.

“Twelve minutes,” Sturm hollered. He went up to the office and stepped inside. Girdler followed him before Sturm could shut the door. Frank took a long look around, making sure none of the shit that the men had been throwing at the cage at slipped through the chicken wire, then walked up the chute.

He let himself out of the cage and into the back aisle and took a long look at the bear. Bo-Bo was fast asleep, flat on his back, legs splayed, leather footpads the color of milk chocolate in the light cast from a string of sparse bare bulbs. Frank gave Pine a hard look.

Pine shrugged. He was sitting on a rickety office chair with wheels that he’d carried down from the office earlier. “Watch,” he said, jabbing at the bear with one of the long cattle prods. Bo-Bo just lazily slapped it away. “I been shocking him for the past half hour, solid. Got it cranked up to the max. See? See? Shit. Too much fucking hard work.” Pine sank back into the chair and the bear’s breathing evened out and it wasn’t long before he started snoring. “Didn’t want to go any farther, you know? Didn’t want to get carried away, not before the fight.”

Frank said, “It’s time to get carried away.”

“Fuck yes!” Pine said, clapping his hands together like it was Christmas. He yanked a bowling ball from a storage locker across the aisle and lobbed it into the cage. The ball bounced, thunked into the side of the bear, and settled against the fence on the right. The bear jerked away from the blow and shook the sleep out of his head making a surprised, barking cough.

“Time to play, Mr. Bear,” Pine said.

Bo-Bo snorted and rocked back and forth, keeping a careful eye on the ball. Now that he had the bear’s attention, Pine reached into a small cooler next to his office chair and pulled out a ball of ground mutton the size of a softball. He held it up, making sure Bo-Bo was paying attention. Pine kicked the door open and tossed the ball into the cage. The meat had been laced with all five pills, ground down into a powder finer than talcum.

Bo-Bo ambled over and ate it without hesitation.

* * * * *

“Ten minutes!” Sturm’s voice echoed throughout the entire auction yard, amplified a thousand times over the loudspeakers. For a moment, everyone heard Girdler’s voice, high and thin, “This ain’t—” and there a brief, ear-splitting whine of feedback, then a solid click. The loudspeaker system went quiet.

The back door to the office upstairs banged open and Sturm stomped out. Girdler was right behind him. “You’ve got to listen to me,” Girdler begged. “Please. Please don’t do this.”

Halfway down the stairs, Sturm spun and grabbed Girdler’s beard and jerked the bigger man over the railing. Girdler went over sideways, legs kicking, arms flailing. He only managed to knock Sturm’s cowboy hat off before slipping over completely. A few feet down, he hit the storage locker, rolled off and landed heavily on his back in the aisle. Sensing a fight, the remaining dogs began barking.

Sturm followed his hat down the stairs. “Warned you once, hippy.” He dusted the hat off, put it back on. “You keep pushing, you’re just gonna get hurt worse.”

Girdler grabbed hold of one of the cages and pulled himself up. He laughed, but it sounded desperate. “I’ve been watching you, little man. Little bantam rooster, strutting around. You like to hit people when they ain’t ready. Then you step back and let your boys finish the job.”

“You saying I don’t fight my own battles?” Sturm asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, you little turd. Come on. You got the balls, come on then.” Girdler pointed at Pine. “Tell this asswipe to step back and let’s see just how tough you really are.”

Frank knew it wasn’t that Girdler had questioned Sturm’s ability to fight that made Sturm slowly take his hat back off and hang it on a nail. No, it was because Girdler had called him “little.” “Pine, you keep out of this. Frank, you too. Dumbshit here thinks he’s a big shot, won’t listen to sense when he was warned fair and square, well then, guess he needs a lesson.” And without any more words, Sturm launched himself at Girdler.

His abnormally large fists popped through the air like a pair of sledgehammers. Girdler had just enough time to get his forearms up and in the way; all he could really do was focus on blocking Sturm’s punches.

Sturm slipped one past and his left fist caught Girdler in the throat.

Girdler made an
urking
sound and fell back against the bear cage.

Sturm immediately slammed his left fist into Girdler’s solar plexus.

Vomit spewed out of Girdler like a water balloon full of green bile and meatloaf landing on a thorn bush. Several gobs spattered across Sturm’s skull. This just made him more pissed off and he hit Girdler hard enough in the chest that Frank heard something crack.

Girdler lurched off to Sturm’s right and stumbled over the office chair. Both of them went down. “Treehugger,” Sturm hissed and stomped on Girdler’s hand.

Girdler screamed, but Sturm kicked him in the face a couple of times, breaking the scream off like a violin string snapping in mid-note. Girdler tried to roll over, gagging blood. Several of his front teeth had broken off and were imbedded in his bottom lip.

Bo-Bo ignored all of this and settled back onto the pallet, yawning and pawing at himself, scratching at his belly.

Sweat and vomit glistened on Sturm’s skin under the naked bulbs. But he wasn’t even breathing hard. “Some folks, you tell ’em something, they listen. But other folks, you talk ‘til your blue in the face, telling ’em what’s what, and they still just don’t get it.”

Girdler crawled toward the bear cage.

Sturm pointed to the office chair and told Pine, “Set that up right here. I want this dumbshit to have a front row seat. Frank, there’s some duct tape in that locker over there.”

Pine and Sturm grabbed Girdler’s shoulders and threw him onto the chair. Sturm took the roll from Frank and slapped the end across Girdler’s chest and wrapped it around his back, again and again, taping him to the chair. Pine duct taped Girdler’s feet to the chair base, so they could roll him around easily.

The sound of the tape ripping away from itself reminded Frank of tearing the baggie out from under the sink. He checked the clock. The pills should be working by now. But Bo-Bo was still lolling on his back and looked like he might doze off any minute. Frank patted his chest, feeling for the sixth and final blue pill in his shirt pocket. If the bear didn’t start to show signs soon, Frank would have to somehow slip him the last pill, but he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that.