"Just when things were going so well."
PART FOUR
E) (1) ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMITTEE
There is established a committee to be known as the Endangered Species Committee (hereinafter in this section referred to as the "Committee").
(2) The Committee shall review any application submitted to it pursuant to this section and determine in accordance with subsection (h) or this section whether or not to grant an exemption from the requirements of subsection (a) (2) of this action for the action set forth in such
application.
(3) The Committee shall be composed of seven members as follows:
(A) The Secretary of Agriculture.
(B) The Secretary of the Army.
(C) The Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.
(D) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
(E) The Secretary of the Interior.
(F) The Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
(G) The Governor of each affected State.
--The Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982
Sheridan went outside to tell her animals that she'd be away for a little while, but they were nowhere to be found. Not only that, but she felt as though someone were watching her.
Sheridan's pockets were bulging with as much food as she could cram into them and still get out the door without her mom noticing. She had sunflower seeds, croutons, dry dog food, and cereal in the pockets of her skirt. It was more food than she had ever taken out to the animals, but she didn't know when she would be back to feed them again. She was very upset about having to leave the house again, this time to go and stay in the home of people she had never even met before: a stranger's home at Eagle Mountain. Mom couldn't even tell her when they would be back. Sheridan didn't care to see what Eagle Mountain was ("wealthy people share their homes all of the time!" her Grandmother Missy kept telling her. "And they have a pool!"), because she already hated it. Grandmother Missy had said that the girls at school would be envious of her, but Sheridan didn't really care about that. Grandmother Missy liked it when other people were envious, but Sheridan wasn't sure it was all that great. Sheridan thought that taking the entire family to Eagle Mountain would be a big mistake, just as she had when she, Mom, and Lucy had stayed at the motel in town. So many things her parents did for her benefit didn't seem to help her at all. She told her mom and Grandmother Missy that. She didn't want to leave her home again, and she especially didn't want to leave Lucky, Hippity Hop, and Elway.
But the animals didn't seem to be there.
It wasn't as if the creatures always came bounding out of the woodpile at the sight of her. Sometimes it took a while before one of them would realize she was out there. But as Sheridan walked across the yard, there was something about the woodpile that seemed vacant. The secret life was gone from it. It was just a woodpile.
She rained some seeds on the top of it and waited, looking closely for any movement. She sighed and sat under the cottonwood, her chin in her hands. Hot tears welled in her eyes. Where could the animals have gone? Could they be hurt, or worse? Did she feed them something that made them sick? Did they leave during the night and go back into the mountains? Could it be that they just didn't like her anymore? Or that they knew she was leaving and were so sad or angry that they
didn't even want to see her?
"This," she said out loud to herself, "is a really bad day."
And she could not get over the feeling that she was being watched. She shinnied around the trunk of the tree and looked at the house, fully expecting to see her mom or grandmother at the window. Or at least Lucy. But no one was there. Maybe that was it, she thought. Maybe her secret pets sensed someone's eyes on them as well. Squinting, she looked all around her. She took in the rest of the yard, the Sandrock draw pulsing red in the evening sun, and even the roof of the house.
She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. But she could see no one. It was giving her the creeps, and her imagination started to wander. For the first time in weeks, she thought of the monster again. It came from somewhere deep in her mind, as if it had been there waiting for the right moment all along. Maybe, she speculated, the monster, or the monster's friend, had come back for Lucky, Hippity-Hop, and Elway.
When she stood her stomach ached. The feelings welling up inside of her were overwhelming: anger, fear, and guilt. Maybe she should have told her mom and dad about the creatures. If she had told them, possibly they would somehow still be around. Her dad could have caught them and built nice houses for them, like he did when he built the rabbit hutch. Maybe by not saying anything, she had caused the creatures to die.
She decided she would give the creatures a little more time. If they didn't come out, she would rush in the house and find her mom. She would tell her everything. When Dad came home they could take the woodpile apart, stick by stick, until they found the poor little animals. Eagle Mountain could wait.
She threw more food on the woodpile, this time harder. There was no way the animals, if they were okay, would not know she was out there. Then she heard the familiar trill. She was suddenly joyous. But the sound did not come from the woodpile. She stood as silently as possible, listening and smiling. When she heard the sound again, her head swiveled toward it. Past the woodpile, past the fence, past the bushes. She found herself staring through bushy leaves at the peeling paint on the back of the garage.
She found them. They had moved, for whatever reason. The sound came from the other side of thick lilac bushes, and she crawled toward it on her hands and knees. She knew the area around their house so well that she was certain where she would find her pets: under the foundation of the garage. There were some large cracks in the concrete where the structure met the ground, and the cracks led to a large dark space under the floor of the garage. She had once probed the space with a long stick and had not been able to find the sides. That, she was sure, was where she would find them.
When she emerged from the bushes, the first thing she saw was Lucky sticking his head out of the crack and then vanishing under the garage.
"Boy, am I glad to see you," she said, emptying her pockets into the hole. "That ought to keep you guys full for a while." The relief she felt made her giddy.
"I'll be back as soon as I can be, you can count on that." She felt as wildly good as she had horribly bad a moment before. "You guys are pretty smart." She smiled, pulling her pockets inside out to get every last sunflower seed. "This is a much safer place for you."
Rather than crawl through the bushes again back into the yard, Sheridan skipped down the length of the lilacs toward the end of the fence and the corner of corral. She planned to turn and enter the yard through the same gate the monster had used. As she turned toward the corral, she saw the face of a man in the window of the pole barn, and it stopped her cold.
The man's face withdrew from the window into the shadows of the barn and then reemerged in the doorway, so that she could now see all of him. He stood in the light but didn't step outside into the corral. He was motioning to her to come to him. He was smiling. She had been right about being watched.
Sheridan couldn't move. She was terrified. She didn't know whether to scream for her mom, run for the gate, or run back toward the garage. If she ran back to the garage, the man might follow her and maybe see the animals.