That night, alone in the motel room, Kit lay awake with thoughts of the other coyotes in the ditch. They must be starving by now, she figured, imagining them climbing out of their den, stumbling up the bank to the road, following the scent of their mother. The pup had been whining intermittently all night, hungry, thirsty, lonesome; she wanted to hold him and feed him something warm and sweet, would tap her vein to nourish him if she thought that would help. But she knew she wasn’t enough, and every sound he uttered ratcheted up her guilt, made her feel selfish for trying to keep something she couldn’t care for. All she had ever known were people who’d taken her in and realized she was too much. But then, how could she expect complete strangers to take care of her when her own mother hadn’t wanted her? She remembered hearing about how some animal mothers, when they would smell something wrong with one of their young, maybe weakness, or poor constitution, would eat the weaklings; others would simply leave them to predators and the elements. When she heard this, she couldn’t help but think that her mother must have sensed something with Kit, a congenital wrong that no amount of love could right.
She thought she had been loved once. There had been a family, the Foyts, she lived with when she was seven. They seemed perfect. Little house with a yard, a ten-year-old boy named Teddy and three-year-old girl they called Shel. Miss Rhonda, the mother, worked during the day, but at night, after bathtime, she would scruffle Kit’s hair with a towel, comb the “rats” out, and braid it tightly. She’d read stories to her, as many as Kit wanted, and perform a different voice for each character. Kit had loved those nights, when Miss Rhonda would tell her about her days growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, how her parents were “Bible Thumpers” and how she’d run away as soon as she was old enough to work on her own. Kit just listened, mute, because she was afraid if she opened her mouth she would tell Miss Rhonda how stupid she had been for leaving a perfectly good family. Kit would never say anything to make her cross. Miss Rhonda hugged her, good, long, tight hugs that felt like sugar to Kit. None of the other parents had hugged her, hardly anyone at all, and Kit got to where she needed a hug as soon as she got home.
A few months into her stay, Mr. Foyt left with all his clothes and never came back. To keep the family afloat, Miss Rhonda took an extra job. When she came home, she would kick open the door, drop the keys and her purse on the floor, and disappear into her room to sleep until her next shift. Kit never saw Miss Rhonda cry about her husband, but after he left, she lost her sweetness and stopped spending time with Kit. The loss of Miss Rhonda’s affection was devastating.
Kit missed Miss Rhonda so much she stopped sleeping at night and could scarcely keep herself awake during the day. The school nurse diagnosed Kit with mono and ordered her home from school. She lay on her mattress for a week, too tired and too sad to move. It was as if a horse had rolled onto her and died. She would have rather been a wild child, eating garbage and hunting ugly animals no one would miss. Even if it meant she’d die young, of hunger or violently by the tooth of some near-city predator, she’d take that any day over the feeling of being ignored.
One day, while Kit was still in bed, a social worker came and explained that Mrs. Foyt was no longer able to take care of her. Her hurt bloomed anew at the thought of leaving. She wrapped her arms around her shins and pressed her eyes to her knees until she saw bright white and yellow splashes and the heaviness and the heartache dimmed to a bearable numbness, and for the first time, Kit discovered how to kill her feelings. How sweet it was to master this one, small slice of her life. How powerful she felt.
The social worker waited in the car while Miss Rhonda helped Kit pack up her things, which were few, and saw her out. She hugged Kit goodbye, but by this point Kit had detached. She couldn’t want Miss Rhonda anymore. As they drove away, she watched the house shrink in the distance, swallowed up by the pretty trees lining the streets.
It hurt to think of Miss Rhonda and the little taste of loving that was given and taken so abruptly. As she lay there in the motel, the pup whining and clicking at the tub, Kit pushed at her eyes and swallowed the ice cube sadness in her throat. She was embarrassed to think how much she had relied on Miss Rhonda, hadn’t even seen the end coming. Maybe that was when she’d learned that being loved was a fairy tale, and the best she could hope for was making it on her own.
Kit left the bed, slipped on her jeans, and cracked the bathroom door. The coyote pup had finally passed out, kicked a limp hind leg in his sleep. She lifted him by the loose sleeve of skin at the back of his neck, held him at her belly with one hand, and tucked her shirt into her pants with the other, making a little pouch. As quietly as she could, she carried the chair to the closet, pulled the shotgun from the shelf, and stuffed four shells in her pockets. She knew how to kill a thing, how to follow the creature as it moved with the barrel of her gun, take aim, and pull for a clean, quick death. A shotgun like this had more recoil, so she’d have to hold it tight against her shoulder, and even then, she knew it would knock her back a step or two.
She walked the quarter mile up the road and took a grim survey of the surroundings. The mother’s carcass lay where it had landed, no doubt riddled with nascent maggots and rot, but there were only two pups left and no sign of the third. Most likely he had become a meal for some passing hawk. My babies, she thought, and again she wanted to scoop them up and lay them on soft bedding and give them everything they needed. She choked on her tears and lay the pup she’d been holding with the others. The numbing washed over her, a tingle at her cheeks that sank and spread outward, fanning across her body and through her organs until the suffocating sadness seemed locked behind some door, the chinks stuffed tight.
She stood up, gun raised, and aimed at the silver mass nestled among the weeds. She realized she must look deranged out here on the highway, holding a loaded weapon at a litter of pups.
She heard someone walk up behind her.
She whipped around and saw Manny, just a few feet away, aiming a revolver at her. She froze. She could try to get a shot off, but the gun was so heavy. She’d be dead before she could even take aim. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Use that and you’ll blast them to tatters,” he said.