“Suits me fine.”

“Good. We were just talking here about the qualities one would want in a dog. Jack here,” Sturm tried to sum up Jack’s description of his ideal dog. “Jack has just suggested…ah…aggressiveness,” “Which, I think, everyone here would agree that that would be a certain…useful attribute, could benefit the owner.” Everyone nodded. “So, Frank. What quality would you most prize in a dog?”

“Loyalty.”

Sturm nodded at his son and the clowns. “Exactly. Loyalty. There ya’ go. What’d I tell you? This man’s an expert.”

Jack shook his head. “Naw. But now, don’t get me wrong. No offense, Frank. Loyalty’s an admirable trait. Hell yes. But that ain’t what you need when some shit has got your dog by the throat. You need inner strength. You need…fire, you need a goddamn dog that wants to live.”

Sturm smiled. “And just what the hell is it supposed to want to live for?”

“Everything has a desire to live,” Jack said. “Call it whatever you want. Guts. Sand. Believe the niggers call it soul. Goddamn toughness.”

Sturm nodded patiently. “True, true. Hell, I ain’t arguing with that…however, I believe that when an animal has a purpose, a, a love, then that will take them farther than simple survival instincts. If an animal has something to live for, hell, if anyone has something to live for…then they’re gonna fight harder.”

Jack spit into the tortured, baked mud. “I think it’ll fight harder for itself than for any man.”

“Then we’re just gonna have to find out, won’t we?” Sturm clapped his hands. “None of them poor sonsabitches in there will fight for love. They been treated like shit.” He shook his head. “Don’t blame ’em one bit. If I was them, I’d say, fuck all you too.” He took Theo’s shoulder. “Forget that Shepard. It’s no good. Watch his posture. He’s too excited, too much. Next time you see him, you watch him close. He don’t know whether to shit or piss. No, he won’t work. You just like him because of his size. I’m telling you, you watch that little black and white mutt. That’s the one.”

DAY SIX

Frank’s mother was always spooning out a little wet cat food onto paper plates and leaving them in the alleys behind their apartments. Frank figured she was just fattening up the rats, but it seemed to make her happy to think that she was helping a few stray cats’ lives just a little easier. But rather than the alleys or the apartments themselves, Frank remembered the front doors the most. He’d be inside, listening to his mom argue with some asshole who had brought her home on the hope of getting something more than a goodnight peck on the check. The argument would escalate, and Frank would find himself huddling in an empty closet or under the sink, waiting until his mom would inevitably have to punch the sonofabitch. She’d slam the front door and lock it as best as she could. Then she’d find Frank and crawl into his hiding space—Frank would only hide in places where they both could fit—while they listened to the asshole kick and pound at the door, usually screaming vacant threats.

And when the other tenants complained, it was off to a new apartment.

So Frank wondered if his dreams were trying to tell him something when he woke up under his cot. Maybe it was just from sleeping this close to so many animals. He got dressed and checked on the animals. Most of them were now awake and hungry. They didn’t make a sound, just watched him warily.

Out back, behind the barn, was a freezer. Sturm had stocked it with fifty pounds of frozen lamb shanks, five-pound bricks wrapped in butcher paper and stamped with a red date. Most of the meat was over fourteen years old. Frank set out six packages, setting them on top of the freezer to thaw in the morning sun.

True enough, Frank found the fridge in the examining room stuffed full of beer, except for the bottom shelf. That was full of food. Bacon. Eggs. A roasted chicken, wrapped in aluminum foil. The freezer contained a selection of frozen food, mostly TV dinners. Frank cooked a couple of TV dinners and zapped up some coffee using an old microwave, and then took a long, ridiculously hot shower. He came out of it feeling better then he had in days.

Clothing had been left on a neat pile on the stacks of dog food. It fit fine, although Frank had to poke a new hole in the belt so he could cinch the jeans tight. He wore a long sleeve gray cowboy shirt, Wrangler jeans, and black White workboots. The clothes calmed him; he felt ready. Confident.

* * * * *

Sturm drove in around ten and waited for Frank to come out to the pickup. “Called an old friend last night,” he said through the window, bottom lip full of snuff. “How’re the girls?” He spit.

Frank shrugged. “Pissed.”

Sturm laughed, cowboy hat bobbing like a cork in boiling water. “Think they’ll be healthy enough for a hunt?”

“Depends on when you want to hunt ’em.”

“You tell me.”

Frank shrugged again. “Hard to say. They been starved for so long, don’t know if the muscles’ll come back. I mean, no point in hunting crippled animals. Maybe a couple of months, just to see.”

“Wish I had a couple of months, son. Tell you what. You got a week, maybe a week and a half at the most,” Sturm said, tipped his cowboy hat, and took off in a cloud of dust, orange in the morning sun.

* * * * *

Frank spent the first few days taking care of the animals and reading everything about them he could find at night in the tiny office just off the operating room that was chock full of veterinary textbooks. Mornings, he mixed antibiotics, vitamins, and deworming pills into the food. For the next few days, he found fist-sized clumps of what looked like sluggish spaghetti in the animals’ watery diarrhea. After the animals had eaten, he’d drag a long hose through the middle section, aim the nozzle through the chain link cages and wash their shit across the concrete into a waiting gutter. After three days, he was pleased to see that the stool was fairly solid. Most of the blood in the urine seemed to disappear as well.

After washing the cages, he’d push raw hamburger through the chain link, but he never opened the doors. He was careful to never look directly into the cats’ eyes. Once in a while, feeding the cats made him feel uncomfortably like the zookeeper, and he’d have to back off for a while and grab a beer. Unlike the zookeeper, though, the cats, after a few days, would lick his palms, their tongues feeling like soft, wet sandpaper. The books told him their tongues were covered in tiny rasps that helped the cats lick meat off bones. He always kept his hands flat; despite the seemingly affectionate licking, he knew they’d chew off his fingers in a heartbeat. He had to resist the urge to name them.

In the meantime, he nailed up chicken wire in the barn, building a large cage for the monkeys. Their constant screeching and howling were getting on his nerves at night. He thought about pouring tranquilizer over their food and let them sleep for a few days. In the textbooks, he discovered they were spider monkeys.

The clowns brought over the rhino. Frank walked it carefully down the chute; it moved slowly, mechanically. Frank filled the largest stall with straw and hoped the rhino would like it, or at least feel comfortable enough to lie down. But once inside, the great beast just stood there, immobile and emotionless, like a lobotomized bull. Frank dumped an entire bale of alfalfa into the stall and couldn’t have been more pleased when the rhino slowly lowered its head and started munching the green hay.

DAY THIRTEEN

As Frank lay on the narrow vinyl couch in the tiny office late at night, reading about the kidney functions of large cats, a severe, insistent buzzer vibrated throughout the hospital. He snapped the book shut and sat up. His first reaction was that the clowns were here, but they always just barged in through the back door. Curious, he made his way up to the front desk. There was a dark shadow behind the curtains in the front windows.