Foodchain

It was A

Frank didn’t think twice. “Bring her in.”

They wheeled the dog right into the waiting room, and both brothers carried her suspended in one of the towels back into the operating room. Frank switched on the overhead light and got a closer look. Petunia’s front paws were charred black, seeping plasma. “What happened?”

A

“Fuckin’ thing shouldn’ta eaten my—” The brother didn’t get a chance to finish. Faster than Frank could follow, A

The brother clapped his hand to the side of his head and looked like he wanted to say something as a thin trickle of blood meandered down his neck.

“Go ahead,” A

He kept quiet. The second brother hung back, looking the monkeys, at the door, the green tiles on the floor, anywhere but at his sister.

A

Frank chewed on the inside of his cheek, wondering if any of the books in the back room talked about treating burns. He didn’t want to appear clueless to A

A

Frank had the two brothers hold the dog down as he slipped a padded plastic cup over the dog’s muzzle. A circular rubber tube was attached to the cup; this was co

When her breathing and heart rate had slowed, he smeared aloe salve over Petunia’s front paws. Towards the end, she fought through the haze of the anesthesia and snapped at Frank, but for the most part, the dog was remarkably calm, almost as if she understood deep down that he was trying to help. He injected her with antibiotics and encased the front paws in cotton and neon orange vet wrap. The brothers carried the now sleeping dog into the office where they placed her carefully on the vinyl couch.

“You two fuckheads wait outside,” A

“I.... I’m not sure, exactly. Let’s see how the treatment goes. Why don’t we settle up when Petunia is better?”

“I don’t like being in debt to anyone.” She cocked her head. “You’ve been hearing about me. I can see it in your face.”

“What? I haven’t heard anything about anyone. Nobody’s told me anything,” Frank said. “Let’s just see how Petunia heals.” He put his hands flat on the table. “Then we’ll talk payment.”

“We’ll talk payment then.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then. We’ll be talking, you and I.” She gave a mischievous smile, but it looked to Frank like there was something else under the surface, still sadness maybe. A

Frank believed her. “Yeah.”

It was good enough for A

“Come by anytime,” Frank said. “Day or night.” He wondered if that sounded too forward. Most of him was disgusted at the cruelty, but he had to admit that part of him was glad that Petunia had gotten hurt. It gave him an excuse to see A

“I will. First thing tomorrow.”

Frank smiled. “We’ll be here.”

Quickly, almost without thinking, A

They left the lights of the parking lot and disappeared into the darkness of the field. Before long, though, Frank could see the first tentative flickers of a fire out in the star thistles. Frank got a beer and made himself comfortable, sitting sideways on the windowsill, watching the figures, letting his eyes adjust. When the fire had been burning for a good long while, A

The smell of burning skin mingled with the smell of rhino shit.

Frank turned away from the windows, feeling good, feeling fucking great. He grabbed another beer and headed back to his cot and .12 gauge. Outside, A

DAY FIFTEEN

A

“Help him. Oh please help him,” she said.

But the cat wanted to die. It was ready. It needed to die. It shivered, breathing about seven hundred miles an hour for a while, followed by that long, low hissing leak that caught the attention of the lionesses out back when Frank took him out of the carrier.