Before anyone knew what was happening, the church echoed with the high-pitched zip! of a retractable dog leash rapidly unspooling. Rocco Allen’s Doberman lunged past the three baby goats and the Italian hound and the startled children, pounced on top of the cardboard box, and set about shredding it with his nails and teeth.
The next few minutes were more or less a blur. Rocco dropped his end of Fang’s leash and jumped on top of a pew near the back of the church, and the plastic part skipped halfway down the slate aisle, clicking and clacking as it quickly respooled itself. The goats froze, startled by either the dog attacking the chickens or the surprisingly loud plastic-on-slate clacking noise, and then ran in different directions through the pews, tripping over the feet of the stunned parishioners. “Grab the leash!” someone yelled, but no one was brave enough to try. Sunny Bang darted over and scooped up Wyatt, and the Howard kids ran down the aisle, away from the dog and the box.
Kiev and Cacciatore were both Polish chickens, which meant they could, in a pinch, fly about twelve feet in the air, which was what Kiev immediately did. Fang got a mouthful of Cacciatore’s tail feathers and just enough flesh to draw blood before Cacciatore broke free and shot up into the air, flapping over the heads of the shrieking congregants. Fat Black, however, was an Australorp, a breed known for its large size and inability to fly. Fang sank his teeth into Fat Black’s neck and shook her back and forth for what felt like an eternity, blood and feathers flying. Louisa of the many white tights had let go of her cat—actually, pretty much all of the girls had let go of their cats—and a few of them started clawing their way up the church’s rustic burlap banners with the words Spirit and Hope and Community spelled out in green felt letters. Claire struggled to keep the llama under control, but it broke free and galloped up the center aisle, skirting the bloody chicken melee, then turned left at the altar, ran down the side aisle, raced past a stunned Claire, and shot out the main door.
Screams of kids and parents—it was hard to tell which—filled the church. Two husbands who were volunteer firefighters began evacuation procedures, leading the blood-spattered throng out through the wide doors.
Brannon Anderson had let go of his family’s sixteen-hundred-dollar purebred hound and was jumping up and down with excitement, soaking in everything and yelling at the top of his lungs, “This is fucked up! This is so fucked up!”
Susan Howard stalked past him and said, “Oh, shut up, you little shit.”
Lucy found Owen and Wyatt outside next to the car. Someone must have called 911 because a police car, sirens blaring, pulled into the parking lot. Meanwhile, Claire was frantically rushing up to each person, grabbing both arms, and yelling, “Have you seen the llama? Where is the fucking llama!” Apparently the police officers mistook Claire for an emotionally disturbed person—and the likely cause of the 911 call—because they were approaching her slowly from behind. Lucy noticed one of the officers had her hand on her Taser.
Just then the source of Claire’s hysteria appeared, trotting madly toward the church graveyard, clearly panicked and making a shrill and very loud sound, louder even than the earlier bag-of-turkeys sound.
“Don’t shoot it!” yelled Claire, having become aware of the police officers. “Don’t you fucking shoot! It’s borrowed!”
Claire charged into the graveyard, which caused the llama to bolt through a flower bed and run straight into the two-hundred-and-seventy-year-old headstone of the town’s founder, Nelson Orion Beekman, cracking it in two.
*
“Fat Black is extinct!”
Wyatt was in the kitchen, flapping his hands frantically and pacing from one of his plastic grass sensory mats to the other, wearing a bloody T-shirt that hung down past his knees. If anyone had caught a glimpse of him, he would have been carted off by child protective services immediately.
“I watched him get killed!”
“Let me take your shirt off, buddy,” said Owen.
“It’s got blood all over it!”
“Yes,” said Owen. “Yes, indeed, it does.”
“My shirt is covered in Fat Black’s blood!”
“Yes, let’s take it off and I’ll put it in the wash,” said Lucy. She wasn’t going to wash it, she was going to throw it in the trash immediately, but she didn’t need to tell Wyatt that. He might protest. Wyatt protested the oddest things. “I’m really, really sorry you had to see that, Wyatt.”
“I watched Fat Black get murdered! At church!”
“It was very sad. Are you feeling sad?”
“There was blood everywhere!”
“I’m gonna pull this shirt off over your head right now, buddy,” said Owen. “It might feel a little sticky.”
“It’s sticky with blood!”
“Are you feeling sad, sweet boy?” said Lucy. “It’s okay to feel sad, buddy. It’s okay to feel sad about Fat Black.”
“Fat Black is extinct!”
“Let’s get you into the bathtub,” said Lucy.
“No bath! No bath! I don’t want to take a bath!”
Owen and Lucy looked at each other. It was like a million moments they’d had together with Wyatt and yet completely, utterly unique.
“Wyatt, you’ve got blood all over you,” said Lucy. “You have to take a bath to wash it off. I’m going to take you upstairs.”
And with that, Wyatt was off. He bolted into the playroom, screaming and now crying too, “No bath! No bath! I don’t like baths! I don’t like baths!”
“You do like baths, Wyatt. You love baths,” said Lucy.
“I hate baths! I hate baths! I don’t want to take a bath!”
“You can play with your bath guys. We’ll just go play with your bath guys,” Lucy said. Then she turned to Owen and said, “I can’t handle this. He’s covered in blood. It’s going to get all over the house.”
Owen walked calmly into the living room. “You don’t have to take a bath, Wyatt. It’s your choice. But I was thinking something.”
“What?”
“What if I do something super-silly,” said Owen.
“Like what?”
“What if I get into the bathtub with you with all of my clothes still on!”
Wyatt stopped running around the couch and looked at his dad.
“All of your clothes on?” Wyatt asked, flapping his hands.
“Yes, all of them.”
“All of your clothes on?” He flapped harder, faster, higher.
“Yes,” said Owen. “But only if you go take a bath with me. I’ll only do it if you’re in the bath with me.”
Wyatt looked at his dad, seriously weighing this intriguing offer. “I’ll go start the water!” he finally said, and he darted up the stairs.
Owen took his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled off his suede belt. He took his phone and spare change and his watch and heaped everything on the kitchen counter and then followed Wyatt upstairs.
“Thank you,” Lucy said.