He didn’t speak to his mother as he stormed into the house and he felt bad because he could tell he was frightening his younger sister, sitting there at the bottom of the stairs, stroking the border collie. He marched up to his room and slammed the door. He paced from the window to the door, his hands closing and opening, closing and opening, and all he could see was the face of the wolf, indifferent and unsuspecting, the amber eyes boring into him. He wanted to scream. He heard his father’s horse outside and he looked through the window to see him tying up at the post.
“I hate you!” Hiram shouted, but his father didn’t look up. “I told you it was dogs! I told you!” Still his father did not raise his eyes to the second floor, but walked onto the porch and into the house.
Hiram could hear his mother asking what had happened as he threw open his bedroom door and stepped to the top of the stairs. “He’s what happened!” Hiram said. “He made me shoot that wolf.”
“That’s enough, Hiram,” his father said.
“No, it’s not enough. You made me kill that beautiful animal because you’re too stupid to listen to anybody.”
Hiram’s father started toward him, up the stairs. It might have been the perspective, but Hiram realized that he was larger than his father. He looked down at the man and moved to meet him on the stairs.
“Hiram,” his mother complained.
His sister was crying and that was the only sound which seemed to filter through his rage.
“I said ‘enough,’” his father said.
“Bastard.”
Hiram saw the rage in his father’s eyes and ducked his swinging fist, heard his mother’s scream. Hiram grabbed the man and felt how weak he was. He now understood that his father had been profoundly affected by the death of the animal, and felt his father’s chest heaving with sobs. Hiram fell to the floor holding his father, both crying, neither letting go.
• • •
It was true that Lewis Fife didn’t look comfortable seated in the driver’s seat of an automobile. His stomach pressed against the steering wheel, which he held with both of his fat paws, the seat belt idle beside him since it would not accommodate his girth. “Been driving for thirty-five years and not one accident,” Lewis Fife would say, taking a steep curve on two wheels. Hiram sat beside him in the monstrous mid-seventies Lincoln Town Car, squeezing his nails into the armrest, believing, as did everyone else, that Lewis Fife was long overdue for a vehicular mishap. But that night the fat man didn’t take any curves on two wheels, didn’t drive well above the limit, didn’t crowd the center line, didn’t fumble with a bag of chips set on his shelf of a stomach. Lewis drove steady and slow from Hiram’s house all the way to the village with his eyes stapled to the highway; the silence about him suggested reverence. Hiram was taken over by a similar quiet mood. All he could imagine was the large, majestic, dead face of the lion.
Lewis Fife pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store and parked in a space well away from a large huddle of people. They were standing around the bed of a black dually pickup with yellow running lights.
Lewis Fife pointed but didn’t say anything.
Hiram grabbed the handle, opened the door, and got out. He walked toward the truck, feeling the muscles in his stomach shaking as if he were freezing cold. Beyond the crowd and the truck was the market, all lit up; people inside were pushing carts and standing in the checkout lines. He looked at the people inside, trying to distract himself, trying to tell himself that there was other business in the world. He recalled the look on Carolyn’s face as he left the house and repeated to himself that he wouldn’t cause a scene.
Hiram heard someone say, “Hey, it’s Doc Finch.” And the crowd of men peeled away from the truck and watched him. He got to the bed of the big pickup and there it was. Nothing could have prepared him for the face of the animal. He was large, his head about the size of a big boxer dog’s, and the front legs were crossed in a comfortable-looking position as he lay on his side. But the face. The mouth was open, showing pink against white teeth, and the tongue hung crazily out along the metal of the truck. The ochre eyes were open and hollow and cold and held a startled expression. Hiram looked up at the faces of the surrounding men, one at a time until he saw Wilcox and his son. The two were not quite smiling.
“We got him, Doc,” Wilcox said.
Hiram swallowed. “Yep, I guess you did.” Hiram touched the fur of the lion’s neck and stroked it.
“Big one, ain’t he, Doc?” someone said.
Hiram felt Lewis Fife standing beside him. He walked away from him, circled around the open tailgate of the truck, and studied the cat. “He’s a big one, all right. I hope he’s the right one.”
“He’s the right one,” Wilcox said.
“Got him in Moss Canyon,” the Wilcox son said. “I shot him,” proudly, a little too loudly.
Hiram looked up, caught the boy’s eyes, and saw the fear in them.
The silence was then broken by a scream and the breaking of glass. Hiram turned with the others to see Marjorie Stoval a few yards away, with dropped sacks and broken bottles at her feet, looking at the lion. She screamed again and then sank to her knees, crying. Hiram went to her, as did the Wilcox boy. Hiram supported her while the boy gathered her groceries. They helped her away from the pickup and to the line of stacked wire carts in front of the store.
Hiram talked to her. “Mrs. Stoval, are you all right? Mrs. Stoval?”
The Wilcox kid backed away and rejoined his father. Hiram stood with the woman and watched the crowd disperse, watched the black dually pickup drive off down the street.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Hiram said.
Lewis Fife came over. “Is she okay?” he asked Hiram.
Hiram shrugged.
“I’m sorry,” Marjorie said, trying to stand up straight, but keeping a hand on the cart. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“I know. Where’s your car?” Hiram asked. Marjorie pointed across the lot toward a small station wagon. “Listen, I’m going to drive you home.”
“I’ll follow you,” Lewis Fife said.
The headlights of the Lincoln faded and grew large, but stayed in sight the whole way. Hiram had failed to adjust the driver’s seat of Marjorie Stoval’s wagon and so he was crammed in behind the wheel; his knee raked his elbow every time he shifted. Marjorie was no longer crying, but sat stone-faced, staring ahead through the windshield.
“Are you okay?” Hiram asked.
“I’m so embarrassed,” the woman said.
“Why should you be embarrassed? I think your reaction was the only appropriate one out there. I told them not to, but they did it. They say they did it to protect their stock. They say they did it to protect their families. But none of that is true. They did it because they’re small men.” Hiram felt how tightly he was holding the steering wheel in his hands, and when he glanced into the mirror, he noticed that Lewis Fife’s headlights were white dots well off in the distance. He eased his foot off the accelerator and tried to relax.
“You’re really upset, aren’t you?” Marjorie said.
Hiram didn’t answer, but did look at her.
“That was a beautiful animal,” she said.
“Yes, it was.”
“I saw a lion near my place once.” Marjorie rolled her window part way down. “He was on the ridge about three hundred yards from my house. I couldn’t believe it. It was about nine in the morning and I had just finished my tea and there he was. Or she. I don’t know. I got my boots on as fast as I could and went hiking up there, but it was gone. I can still see the white tip of its tail.” She closed her eyes.