Part 2
“He’s not getting her like this,” Frank said, and handed Tessa the cutters.
Deputy Bennett moved uphill to speak to dispatch. When she returned, she told them Henson had been instructed to remain at his property. The animal would receive treatment and be transferred under a plan coordinated by the county and the sanctuary. Nobody at the culvert was going to negotiate that with him.
Tessa eased the cable clear after it was cut. She set it on the snow beside the deputy’s evidence bag, then bent over the leg again. Frank looked away before he could see more than he wanted to see.
“Can you fix it?” he asked.
“I can make her more comfortable and get her through the next few hours. She needs a hospital.”
“Truck can’t get up here.”
“They’re clearing the access road. The transfer team will meet us at the gate with a proper crate.”
Earl was already on his radio, discussing the trail groomer stored at the junction. It could pull the crate in on a freight sled once the fallen timber had been cleared from the approach. His volunteer crew used it all winter. Today it would need room for two handlers and their equipment instead of trail markers and a sack of lunches.
“Meanwhile?” Frank asked.
Tessa glanced toward the house. “Somewhere sheltered. Somewhere we can secure when she wakes up. I can’t keep her asleep indefinitely just because it’s convenient.”
He rubbed his sore knee through his overalls. The house was small, with two bedrooms and an enclosed porch. Every interior door had been hung by Frank, and he knew precisely how little would separate an awake tiger from a person standing in his kitchen.
“My shop,” he said. “Steel freight container. I put it up there when the mill sold off equipment. Doors lock outside.”
“Any openings?”
“Inspection window. Barred. Air vents. Nothing big.”
“Show me.”
The deputy stayed with Juniper while Frank led Tessa uphill. His old work radio remained with them, turned up so Bennett could reach him. Earl brought the empty utility sled after unloading the medical cases.
The container stood beside the house under a narrow covered walkway. Frank had insulated it, added a small industrial heater, and spent eighteen winters repairing whatever people left at his gate. The generator that powered it sat beyond the porch, under its own little shelter. A window cut into the side of the container had heavy welded bars; through it, he could watch tools drying without opening the shop in bad weather.
Tessa inspected the door fastenings and the interior. Frank showed her the sliding covers on the air vents, which stayed open whenever he occupied the shop. His workbench could fold against the wall to make room for large repairs, but he left it down so she could lay out her equipment. She called the sanctuary again, describing what she saw, while Frank began moving toolboxes.
For years, he had worked around a narrow trunk that stood against the rear wall. It held Ruth’s coats, a stack of photographs, and envelopes he had moved out of the house during a roof leak. Above it hung a small framed picture of her at the county fair, holding a paper tray of onions she was pretending not to eat.
Tessa pointed to the trunk.
“That needs to come out too. Nothing loose where she can reach it.”
Frank caught himself gripping the workbench.
The vet noticed. “You can tell me if there isn’t another place for it.”
“There’s a place.”
He took the picture from the wall and put it facedown on top of the trunk. Earl came in to help him carry it through the walkway and into the spare bedroom. Neither man spoke while they lifted. The lid rattled, and Frank wished he’d checked the latch before moving it.
When they returned to the bank, Tessa arranged the move. Frank followed her directions instead of deciding for himself where to put his hands. With the tiger sedated and the deputy watching the surroundings, all four of them worked her onto the padded sled. Earl took the snowmobile uphill at a crawl. Tessa stayed beside the animal, checking her through the short journey.
At the house, they eased the loaded sled up Frank’s low shop ramp. Juniper remained on it, cushioned with blankets, while Tessa finished what could be done in the makeshift shelter. Once the vet stepped out, Frank secured the steel doors. They could observe the animal through the barred window and leave her undisturbed.
“Everybody keeps clear of the window,” Tessa said. “Even if she looks sleepy.”
Frank had no intention of forgetting.
Earl went with the deputy to the gate. They needed to meet the transfer team, help the road crew, and bring in the groomer. Bennett checked radio contact before leaving and told Frank and Tessa to report any approach by Henson immediately.
“You’ll answer this thing now?” Earl asked Frank, tapping the radio.
“Yes.”
“First try?”
Frank gave him a look. Earl seemed encouraged by it.
After they left, Tessa stood outside the shop window for several minutes. Frank watched from the walkway. Juniper lay with her head on the quilt Earl had brought. One corner of it was tucked beneath her chest. Ruth had sewn it from scraps too small for anything else, working through a whole November because she disliked wasting good fabric.
“She’ll tear that up if she gets hold of it,” Tessa said.
“It’s been torn before.”
The vet turned toward him. Snow had melted into dark patches along the shoulders of her coat.
“Do you have coffee?”
“It’s old.”
“So is mine, usually.”
In the kitchen, he poured it into the mug he used and the one Earl used when he managed to get invited inside. Tessa took Earl’s without comment. She warmed her fingers around it, keeping the radio between them on the table.
Frank sat at an angle that let him see the shop window. The generator’s low vibration came through the porch boards. He was accustomed to hearing it while he worked, but he had never listened for a pause in it before.
“You knew about Henson’s cats?” Tessa asked.
“Everybody knew he had them.”
“He’s been trying to place them for months. He closed to visitors a while ago. That hasn’t made it easier to move the animals.”
“Why not?”
“Space. Money. Safe transport. And sometimes he agrees to something, then changes his mind.”
Frank looked at her taped boot. He had been about to ask why she hadn’t brought better ones, but the question seemed less useful than it had a minute earlier.
“You’re not from around here.”
“No. I’ve been here two years. Before that, a zoo hospital, then a mixed practice farther south.”
“And now this.”
“Today, this.”
She drank some coffee, made a small effort to conceal her reaction, and set the mug down. Frank almost smiled.
Tessa got up to check Juniper again. When she returned, she stood in the doorway instead of sitting.
“Earl told me about your wife,” she said.
Frank moved his cup away from a worn patch in the table. Ruth used to set hers there, always without a coaster.
“He tell you everything?”
“He said she was killed at the old animal park. That was all.”
“She worked there three mornings a week. Cleaning, feeding. Filling in when somebody quit.”
Tessa waited. Frank found he could speak more easily when she wasn’t trying to help him do it.
“They were moving one of the cats between pens. There was a gate that hadn’t caught. She went where she thought it was safe.”
He stopped. The papers afterward had described her decision in three tidy sentences. They hadn’t mentioned that she had told Frank to bring home milk, or that there was flour on her coat from the biscuits she’d made before leaving.
“I thought about shooting this one,” he said.
Tessa sat down.
“Before you called?”
“After, too.”
“Was that because of Ruth, or because you thought she was suffering?”
He looked at the shop through the kitchen window. He could see an orange flank against the dull steel wall.
“I can’t separate it that neat.”
Tessa rested both hands around her mug. She didn’t tell him he had made the right choice, and he was grateful enough for that to be suspicious of her.
Outside, Juniper moved her head. Both of them rose, Tessa first. They watched from the walkway as the tiger stirred, then settled again, her injured leg held stiffly away from her body.
“Hospital vet says there may be too much damage to save the foot,” Tessa said. “We’ll know more when they get proper images.” Frank stared through the bars. “She could get through all this and still lose it?” “Yes.” He had been waiting for the vet to guarantee something. Now she had given him an answer he couldn’t improve by asking again…
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