The Pikesville Buffalo

The Angel of Mercy. The Worst Luck in the World.

Ethel rumbled back into the entryway, and Aunt Zippo clucked.

“What?” Ethel snapped. “Let’s go. Daniel, you’re driving.”

Ethel hadn’t changed her top or her shorts. But she’d somehow yanked on yellow winter tights and a long-sleeved thermal undershirt beneath them. Feeling a surprising grin creep onto his lips, Daniel followed his aunts out the front door into the icy morning.

He actually had to hurry to get to the car before them and flip the locks. Before he could do it for her, Ethel had somehow bent low enough on her creaking hips to pull the passenger seat-lever and climb into the back.

“Ethel, I’ll sit there,” Zippo said.

“Oh, be quiet, you’re too tall.” Ethel yanked the seat into position in front of her. “Come on, Daniel.”

“Ladies. Would either one of you like to tell me where we’re going?”

For an astonishing moment, even Zippo looked exasperated with him. “The farm, honey. Where do you think?”

“The farm. Right. Either of you want to tell me which…” But he realized that he knew. At the same moment, he also realized what had seemed so strange about the buffalo on their hill. Other than the fact that there were photographs of them on his aunt’s wall.

He’d seen those buffalo. Knew that hill.

“Buddy’s Farm,” he said.

“Of course, Buddy’s Farm,” Ethel snapped, “let’s—”

“Oh,” said Zippo, and moved off toward the white Le Sabre parked a good five yards behind Daniel’s car and another five from the curb.

“Zippo!” Ethel called.

Ignoring her sister, Zippo leaned into her front seat and returned with a white baker’s box wrapped in bowed white twine. She handed Daniel the box before circling the car and lowering herself into the passenger seat.

“That couldn’t have waited until we got back?” Ethel asked as Daniel keyed the ignition.

“Daniel’s here.” Zippo smiled that upside down, half-melted smile and patted his leg. “Daniel gets chocolate tops.”

The shudder that rippled across his shoulders startled him. At least it passed quickly. “Thank you, Aunt Zip,” he said. He started to wrestle with the twine, and Zippo clucked and took the box from him and neatly unpicked the knot.

“Let’s go,” Ethel barked.

Mostly, Daniel knew the way, though he couldn’t remember driving to Buddy’s Farm himself before. In fact, he didn’t even think he’d been there in at least ten years. The sun had slipped through the cloud cover, though its light served only to turn the dead grass and the bare trees whiter. He started to turn right, Ethel corrected him with a clipped, “No,” and Zippo began pushing random buttons trying to tune his radio.

“What do you want to hear?” Daniel asked through a mouthful of thick, fudgy frosting from the cookie Aunt Zip had practically stuffed between his lips. “Don’t know if I’ve got any big Xave, but—”

“The news, honey. The update. Hurry.”

The hurt in Zippo’s voice — and even more, that low trill of panic— alarmed Daniel all over again. He punched the Band button and got a talk station, expecting weather, traffic, the usual babble. Instead, there it was.

“The National Guard has been activated,” the reporter’s voice was panting. “Once again, residents of Pikesville, Sudbrook Park, and Woodholme are asked to stay indoors and off the roads. And if you’re driving on the beltway, until these animals are located and secured please use extreme caution, and be aware that there may be substantial delays.”

“Even more substantial than usual,” laughed the throaty, in-the-studio host, and Daniel stared at the dial.

“What the hell?” he said, and the first sirens screamed behind him.

He barely had time to pull to the gravel shoulder before a train of police cars rocketed past. In the window of the last, Daniel glimpsed a deputy loading a long, black rifle.

“Oh my God,” he murmured, turning toward his aunts. “Did you see…”

But they had seen. He could tell by the looks on their faces. Ethel’s eyes had gone steely, her mouth firm and flat. Even more disconcerting was the way Zippo dropped her head into the folds of her shawl and hugged her arms around herself.

“Maybe we should go home,” he said. Neither aunt answered.

Checking the rearview mirror multiple times, Daniel edged back onto the street. A helicopter whirred past overhead. Cautiously, Daniel turned the radio lower. When neither of the aunts objected, he turned it off. They drove in silence for a while.

“Hurry up,” Ethel murmured, though her tone lacked its usual barking cheerfulness.

On both sides of them, the houses vanished. The road cut through crop-less farm fields now, divided only by stands of oak and elm, a few half-hearted wooden fences.

“So,” Daniel finally said, if only to break the strangely pregnant silence. “I guess Buddy still lives there?”

“He still does,” Zippo said.

“And he still keeps random animals, just for fun? Buffalo? Cheetahs? Remember when he had that elephant? How is he even allowed to have animals like that? Ooh, remember those hairless alpaca or whatever they were, and—”

“They’reour animals,” Ethel said, and smacked the backseat. “Goddamn him.”

“Yours?”

“We’re sponsoring them,” Zippo said. “Ethel and I. Buddy’s their caretaker.”

“Some care,” Ethel snapped, and Zippo shushed her.

Then, abruptly, they’d arrived. Daniel recognized the hillside with its sagging cyclone fence, and the prickly ash tree with the forked trunk and the bare branches curling in on each other like clawed fingers on an arthritic hand. The parked police cruiser with its rooftop light-bars flashing was another clue. By the time he’d brought the car to a stop on the gravel, Aunt Zippo had her door open, and Ethel was practically pushing her from the car.

“Hold on,” Daniel said. “They’re not just going to let you…”

But both of them were out, now, and Aunt Ethel had already lumbered to the top of the long drive that dropped through the field of dead grass to the farmhouse. A burly police kid with shoulders roughly the width of the tire axle on his cruiser had stood to block her. He wasn’t really a kid, Daniel realized as he hurried forward. Just a whole lot younger than Ethel or Zippo. His black night stick and the holster of his gun bumped against his leg.

“You’re going to escort me?” Aunt Ethel was saying. “They really are teaching better ma

The cop — blond, probably not even thirty, cheeks flushed with the cold— just stared at the bobbing, flame-haired bird-woman in front of him. Ethel was several steps past before he recovered himself and stepped into her path again.

“Are you telling me you didn’t notice the police cars?” the cop said, folding his arms. “The helicopters everywhere? Lady, you really ought to turn on your radio.” He reached out, intending to steer her firmly back up the hill.

“What? Son, I don’t hear so well.”

Somehow, she’d got by him again. Beside Daniel, Zippo sighed and moved to follow her sister. A nervous tremor twitched in Daniel’s throat, and he hurried after them.

The cop had moved to grab Aunt Ethel’s arm again. Only when she glared at his hand did he think better of it. From across the fields, somewhere on the other side of the hickory forest that bordered Buddy’s farm, a siren wailed. Answering wails and their echoes flooded the air, as though a wolf pack had materialized in those trees.

Which, all things considered, didn’t seem so improbable.

“Look. Ma’am,” said the cop. “You can’t go down there.”

“Why, did Buddy warn you about us?”

The cop stared again. Ethel waddled off with Zippo right behind her. By the time Daniel reached the policeman, he was staring down at his own hands. There was a chocolate top cookie in them. The policemen looked up and Daniel shrugged, started to smile.