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  Or so I tell myself each day as I feel my nerve leak away.

  I hear Santa Head sing Ho Ho Ho, so I know Esther is making her slow, three-legged way home. I go back into the Landola and tell Mom it’s time for me to start my work day. She looks up from the laundry.

  Those no-good boys of Esther’s, she says. Seems like you can teach a child anything but how to love his mother.

  I’ve heard this before, Mom’s tirade against Esther’s good-for-nothing boys. Esther won’t be able to stay on her own much longer, and her boys, who live just over the border in Henderson, are no help to her. It’s known to happen that a child don’t love its mother, but it must be a deadly sin. That’s one thing I’ve learned well, and no one can fault me for not loving my own.

  Mom puts down her laundry and fixes me with a look so tender I know I could never leave her. At least I have a boy who loves me, she says. I must be the luckiest woman in all of Arizona for that. She reaches to squeeze my remaining arm, and I let her squeeze it. Squeezes so hard, she’s liable to squeeze it right off, and I think I would go along and let her do it.

  Time to go to work, Mom, I say. Proud. Not a statement I’ve had to make very often in my life. But along with all the love in Mom’s brown eyes, I see a copper speckle of doubt. I know she suspects that I no longer kill the cats. She said Anton finds out I’m soft he’s liable to revoke my age waiver, and then where would I go? I told her before that I didn’t think I could kill another one.

  You show mercy, it will be the end of Big Coyote, she says.

  By day Big Coyote can loaf in the shade unless there’s a major occasion or other such defugalty. I clean the pool and Jacuzzi when the water starts to scum up or someone complains of hives or a rash. It don’t pay to clean the pool too much, Anton says. These old-timers find new ways to dirty the water every day. You can’t convince an old-timer who used to cart buckets from the well that a Jacuzzi ain’t some giant bubble tub sent from heaven. Some mornings I’ll have to scoop out a turd or skim off a crud of razored whiskers. Always some surprise floating in the pool water, yes sir.

  Beyond the pool, I mind the horseshoe pits and I wax the shuffleboard. I shovel hot patch and replace a busted sprinkler head now and then. I seem to pick up odd chores along the way, just enough to give a day a nice shape to it. Besides those drug runs to Mexico, I’ve also been known to change an odd tire, limb a citrus, plumb a ruptured works, or string up Christmas lights, a fair range of one-handed labor. Come spring I might even help Anton keep a little book once the Cactus Leagues start. I always was tolerable with numbers. I see a future solvency that never before graced my horizon, a way to bankroll my eventual independence, and maybe even make me seem valuable to the fairer sex. Anton has a death grip on the manager’s suite, but I never was so ambitious, and second gun is high enough gun, if you ask me.

  It’s the night work I would like to hire out to some assistant to the assistant to the manager. I try to see the trapping as just part of my bigger job. Even a big-shot park manager has to get his hands dirty once in a while—my boss, Anton, notwithstanding, since he’s what you would call an absentee manager. It’s no trick to trap a cat. Trick is in the disposal, getting that solid body to disappear. Stray cat gets wise to the tuna bait, I switch to fresh carp I reel out of the irrigation canal. Isn’t a trailer-park tom alive would turn up his nose at fresh-caught carp. I have to admit to feeling some small thrill when I find a big kitty in one of my traps. You wouldn’t think there would be any thrill to it, but I would be lying to say there wasn’t. An empty trap has the opposite sort of hollow feeling. Walk out to the mailbox when you’re hoping for a special parcel and find the mailbox empty. Now think about all the long hours until tomorrow’s delivery, and I expect you’ll see what I mean.

  It was catching the carp that first gave me the idea of what to do with the cats. So, I started to take my catch out to the canal in the predawn to have a little drink. Something about that time of morning starts the coyotes to lamenting, and I performed my task to their serenade. I needed to finish my work by dawn because there is always an old pensioner who can’t sleep and spends his mornings meandering the carp-full canals. What would he say if he witnessed an overgrown hoodlum like me pitching the cage into the canal: the snarl and splash, then the minute of silence and the slow one-handed retrieve as I drew the heavy cage back in on its tether?

  Walking back to the Hacienda along the canal with my empty trap, I would often spot a lone coyote loping along hangdog after a long night’s industry. I reckon they come in from the desert for the cats themselves, so I felt a natural brotherliness. They hardly seemed afraid of me, just loped by and give me a look like I was a fellow creature. Once a coyote loped by so close I might have reached out and touched its feathered ear if that’s what I had a mind to do. I saw him pause and yawn and I heard the little ligaments in his jaw kittle and churr when he did so, I was that close to him.

  Communing with the wildlife aside, it was no more than a couple dozen strays and I could no longer stomach the canal work: the lifting of the dead cat by the tail and the swinging into the hydrangeas, the sad dull thud when the wet body hit hard dirt. I’m just not the man for it. You wouldn’t think a fellow would operate this way. A man gets callused the more hard work he does, that’s a known fact. But for me it seemed to work the opposite, and I would dread a canal visit more and more each time. I won’t even mention what I done with the kittens. There’s no explaining. I guess if I was like most men, I wouldn’t be swinging cats to begin with.

  I decided then to take the cats for a drive about town. Nights I would head to some other trailer park on some other side of town. I would stop at Dreamland Villas or Fairway Vista or Saguaro Heights and put the cage to the gate and open the latch. The cat would squirt through the bars and into some other old pensioner’s nightmares. I looked for parks that took kids, of course, because old pensioners have hearts of purest granite. But family-friendly trailer parks are a rare commodity here in Geritol Valley.

  During these night sojourns, I would see other cat killers, dirty workers, and petty hoodlums about. Sometimes a helicopter fluttered over, answering to another violent felony. The crime out here on the desert is rampant—there’s still an Old Westness about the place—but the swath of mobile homes and big box outfits is too vast for a lawman to traverse in a cruiser any longer. More and more the Arizona law flies in a chopper. Two weeks ago, I found myself in the spotlight of one of those police choppers, just as I was about to unload a prisoner onto the unsuspecting streets of Alta Mesa. It was one of my favorite drop-off spots, on account of what they did to my dad. I stood and put my hand up, but they weren’t looking for me, an overweight, one-armed hombre in a mechanic’s jumpsuit. I’m gray enough up top, maybe they thought I was just another oldster fell out of his rocker. The chopper headed out for some other territory and I finished my deed. But I knew then there must be another place to make my deliveries. So long, green card, if a midnight cat trader makes the news.

  Since my scrape with the law, I’ve been taking my quarry into the desert proper. It seems the most natural place. I have a special feeling for the Sonoran Desert, even the winding drive through Apache Junction with the Superstition Mountains looming over the twinkling metropolis. I like to think of an old lost Dutchman, still swinging his pickaxe for a vein of gold. Out there the air is clean, and you don’t taste the exhaust of all those thousands of rolling coffins. It feels as though I’m liberating the cats when I open the cage door and they scram into the clear, dry darkness. But the coyotes sing a different song, their voices echoing the rock walls, shaped like caved stomachs and clawing hands. I know I am just delivering a more brutal death. If I’m not dispatching the cats to the mouths of coyotes, certainly I am sentencing them to starve or die of thirst out here on the rock moonscape. An executioner with a soft touch is no good to anyone, least of all his victims.

  After I loose a cat I always linger a bit by the trailhead, waiting for some sign, some thank
ful meow sent by the cat to tell me he appreciates my kindness. No meow ever comes, just the hungry coyote cantos. I know the desert work is no good because I never feel good after it. But what alternative do I have? I make my decisions alone. There’s not exactly a union where stiffs like me can discuss a better business. Sure would be nice to round them up and fence them in like they do with the old folks. Ideas like that it’s no wonder I’m in this jam. I feel sick and empty driving back to the Hacienda with the empty traps, back to Mom, who always sleeps in the chair by the door until I return from my errand.

  Christmas Eve brings me home late like some shot Santa with an empty sack, all his presents delivered. A job done. Coming home again empty-handed, the empty traps in the trunk of my mother’s Buick, I acknowledge a truth that perhaps even Anton suspects. There is no end to the feral cats in Geritol Valley. The old folks’ trailer parks replicate themselves endlessly across the valley floor, and every few blocks you see the same pharmacy outlet, quick lube, and storage joint, on and on down the line. On the wide boulevards are others like me, foisting their nuisance off on the other parks at night. The big fences and the gates can’t keep the cats out, can’t protect the old from the feral young who just breed too damned fast.

  Before I pull into Mom’s carport at 89B I take a slow troll around Hacienda, observing the 10 mph speed limit. I roll up Calle Leon and across Calle de Oro and back down Calle Verde. It brings me a smile to think of the old-timers calling the streets Cally this and Cally the other. Almost every lot has some bit of decoration out for the season, and many of those colored lights I strung myself. No small sense of accomplishment now to find the streets quiet and cat-free. I hope Esther sleeps good tonight, deep and dreamless.

  Cat season is never a dry season, though, and they’ll be on the prowl sooner or later. Anton will be here tomorrow or the next day for holiday inspection, and he’ll either find Hacienda cat-free or cat-full. I will have met Anton’s objective or failed it. The age waiver will be mine for another year, or it will be lost. Either way, I know I have trapped my last cat, and I know life is hard and lonesome outside these gates.

  I take a slow spin past the clubhouse to see if anyone’s swimming naked in the pool, another little pipe dream I sometimes allow. But the Hacienda pool curfew is 9 p.m. and everyone obeys. This is a law-abiding community, after all.

  Rolling up to the wrought iron gate, I’m surprised to see a stooped oldster crabbing along sideways toward the pool. Must be an old lost one, gone astray after midnight bingo or out searching for a lost child. I shine the headlights on the old bird to see if I can ID her. Looks like a ghost, like some bathrobe left hung on a branch without a body inside at all. Ghost glances up toward the light and her walleye gives her away. It’s Esther. I should have recognized that bathrobe. What’s she doing out here?

  Esther, I say, opening the Buick door for her. It’s me, Big Coyote. Tootie’s boy. Get in, I’ll take you home. Are you lost, Esther?

  There’s a nuisance at the pool, she says. Kept me awake all night. Dear Esther, who must have the best ears for nuisance in all of Arizona.

  Leaving the car, I take Esther in my arm and lead her toward the pool to see what’s the nuisance. She’s not exactly a willing partner, and I wonder if some feline odor still clings to me. It’s OK, Esther, I say. I’ve got you.

  Sure enough, a splashing sound comes from the pool, and I hear a faint whimper. I think for a moment about my skinny-dipping fantasy. Perhaps I’m not the only age waiver at Hacienda. Perhaps some fiftiesh Madonna has come to sit with her mother, as I’ve come to sit with mine.

  The pool is dark, so I lead Esther into the even darker Jacuzzi room to find the light switch. In the damp warmth of the Jacuzzi room I feel her tremble, and a little tremor of shame runs along where my other arm used to hang. I have to let go of the old girl to grope for the lights, so I tell her to hold on tight. Esther and me are joined in our blindness, and I feel a chilling premonition.

  The splashing from the pool has abated. I realize with sudden sureness that a body has drowned out there. Graveyard shift at the canal renders me expert in this diagnosis. My hand shoots back to the light board and finds the switch that turns on the underwater pool lights. Looking to the pool, I see what Esther cannot, a dark shape afloat in the deep middle.

  Esther, stay here, I say. There’s been an accident. I lumber toward the water, picking up speed. I flounder into the shallow end and wallow toward the deep middle, my blue jumpsuit heavy with water, its empty sleeve unrolling. Looking out at the shape, even with all my splashing, I see that this is no human body. It is only a dog, some old fleabag escaped its master and tipped into the pool while getting himself a drink. Maybe even a suicide, a thing known to happen. Yes, I feel relief, but this water seems too familiar.

  I reach for the animal, grabbing its full tail, and make for the shallow end, kicking hard and flailing my stump. Finally I feel the smooth pool bottom rise to my feet, and I stop thrashing to catch my breath. It’s not dead, this dog. Life announces itself in the form of teeth clenched on my wrist. A weak bite, but startling. I let out a yowl. Goddamn animal bites you whether you mean to drown it or rescue it. No dog, I see now. This is a wild creature, a coyote.

  It lets go of my wrist, and its head lolls back in the water. Last bite. Surely it is about dead. How did this coyote get by the gate and into the pool? No wonder the cats are hiding tonight.

  I drag it toward the pool edge and heft its wet form in my arms, not even mindful of its jaws. Esther, I call. Here’s a coyote, Esther. It’s still alive.

  While I brood over the half-drowned animal, Esther arrives at my side. She offers her robe, which I use to towel the coyote’s head and back. It claws at me and tries to bite, but so weak now it seems almost playful. Esther makes a little chirrup sound with her mouth and even puts out a hand to pat its head and ruff it a bit. The coyote mouths her hand as a pet would. We take our time drying the animal, together with our hands rubbing some warmth into its bones. I get out of my jumpsuit, so I’m just in my drawers, but there’s no one to see. Our underclothes are soaked and the coyote coughs like an old man getting the phlegm up. In a moment I’ll load this animal in my trunk for a later delivery.

  All is quiet at the clubhouse, and the soft blue light comes from underwater. I hear a helicopter wing by and pause overhead, but its searchlight doesn’t find us. The picture we must make, these bodies so frail, and me with all this girth, enough to go around a couple of times. So this is what it’s like to be a lifeguard.

  You would figure a wild creature like that could save its own self, Esther says.

  I hear Santa Head sing a dismal Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho . . . announcing my own arrival with the dumps. I’ve still got Esther on my arm, and she’s snuggled into my bare chest to get warm. Batteries are running low on Santa Head, and he sounds like Santa with emphysema who must catch a breath between every dejected Ho. I guess he’s just survived the season.

  From the porch I see Mom’s ample belly filling the Landola window. She’s parked in her recliner with her feet up, lit by the Christmas lights, not stirring. Older you get, more fearful you are to see a body asleep. But I see a little pitch and fall in Mom’s housedress. Relieved, and sort of emptied out, I have the urge to sit with Esther on the porch a while. Esther’s mobile is just three lots down. We passed it on the way here. Hers is a Fleetwood, not quite as posh as our Landola, but the same vintage, and it sets on a prettier lot.

  We sit for a while, a safe distance from the door. I wrap Esther in a towel Mom had drying on the railing. Only racket is my big stomach, growling something fierce. I could use a nightcap maybe, or even a cigarette, old cravings I thought I quieted long ago.

  Esther’s feeling talky, and she doesn’t want to complain about cats, which is a relief. Her new story is an Ohio story. That’s more like it. In Arizona, all the best stories happen someplace else. Esther tells me that when she was a girl in Ashtabula, she was a regular eagle eye. She remembers seeing clea
n across Lake Erie to the wooded shores of Ontario, fifty miles away. Other people never believed her, but she saw the far shore a dozen times if she saw it once. When the weather and the wind were just right, she said, them big Canada firs stood up like they was planted just across the street. It felt like something, Esther says, to see clean across the water to a foreign land, like there was no distance at all.

  I don’t know what made me think of that now, Esther says.

  I don’t know either, but I know if you hear one person share a story about her little days, it makes you want to tell your own. Some reason I think about the fog, reaching its arms around that tilted little shack in the coulee and settling there like a quilt. I had forgotten about that. When I came back from the hospital after the accident, that’s how I saw it. I tell Esther how, for a while, Dad was determined to show me a one-armed boy was the most natural thing in Blue River. Dad had a milk route back then, and after work he would swing down from the milk truck with one arm slipped inside his shirt, as if it had been like that all day long. Then we would chore around the coulee one-handed, hoeing in the garden, mowing some grass, spraying out the bulk tank on Dad’s route truck. Dinner was a one-handed fork clattering, and even Mom played along, her arm stuffed inside her apron. Later on, Dad put me to bed one-handed, and in the morning when he woke me up, his arm was still tucked inside his shirt. It went on for quite a while like that. We were a happy one-armed family.

  Esther sighs when I finish my story. It’s been a long time since I heard a girl sigh like that.

  I don’t want Esther to catch a cold, so I usher her inside while Santa Head hangs there spent. I look at him crossly. Funny I never noticed it before, but Santa Head looks a little like Anton. I doubt I’ll be able to look at him the same after this.

  Mom startles, seeing me come home late with a girl on my arm.