Wild Card

creature.

He moved toward her, threading a silent path through the eight-foot-tall reed stalks. Jarvis was a Spiritual Baptist by upbringing who, while not a churchgoer, considered himself a man of deep Christian faith. He had, though, sometimes joined friends and relatives at nyabinghis, ceremonies of music, religious philosophy, and politics organized by the mainland’s Rastafarian community — drawn to these at first by the reggae, the lovely girls with whom he would laugh and dance, and, in his younger years, the free and easy abundance of ganja. At these gatherings the Rastas had introduced him to their ideas about livity, a natural way that forbade the eating of flesh, eggs, or dairy in favor of a vegetarian diet, and it had taken hold in his mind and soul. He had come to believe that it was against God’s will, even parasitic, to sustain his own body with the meat of animals the Almighty had brought onto the earth, or with anything that carried their lifeblood inside it.

But Jarvis Lenard was a practical, reasoning man as well as a spiritual one. Already today the helicopters had made three passes of the wetlands and bordering jungle — just an hour ago one of them had flown above the wall of trees outside his shelter, blowing a tempest of foliage through its entrance — and their attempts to close in on him would not end when a heavy curtain of darkness fell over the island and they could put their nightseeker equipment into play. The sky would be patrolled day and night, as would the ground. And the village would be watched, and searched, and watched some more, and searched again with sinister, devious eyes.

Jarvis was unsure how long it would be before he might get to a safe place, or even where such a place might be. In the meantime he would need to hide for what could be days, perhaps weeks, and could not be falling short of food. It would hardly be enough for him to scrounge lichen and berries and the pulp of cattails. However much it troubled him, he would have to resign himself to killing if he meant to keep his strength.

He moved on the fowl with two hurried strides and, as he raised his stick with both hands, saw it snap its head up from the water to look around at him. Its display of aggressive defiance was instantaneous — a shrill cry, a puffing out of feathers, a spreading and flapping of wings. Jarvis took another step forward and brought the stick down on it with a hard swing, trying for the long neck or head. But the whistler partially eluded him with a shrieking, fluttering hop and was instead struck on its right flank at the base of the wing. It fell onto its opposite side and slushed about in the marsh, the one broken wing dangling with shoots of bone sticking up through the skin at its base, the other thrashing like a paddle in the water, flinging up clumps of mud.

Jarvis Lenard clubbed the body again, felt the crack of ribs transmitted to his fingers through his stick, saw bright blood splash from underneath its plumage. The crippled bird dragged on its side with its good wing still paddling and scooping mud, and Jarvis stood over it with his stick up over his head for the deathblow. But then his teeth clenched at its dying cries and he knew he could not take a chance that it would not finish the job. The creature had suffered enough.

He lowered the stick across his chest and, gripping it at either end, bent to press it down against the base if the whistler’s skull. Then he put one knee heavily on the stick to hold it firm, snatched the bird’s legs into his fists, and pulled back with a hard jerk to break the neck apart from the spine as he had seen Grandma Tressie do to the live chickens she would occasionally bring home from market.

The bird quivered as if with a surge of voltage and kept beating its one unbroken wing into the muck for almost a full thirty seconds before its nervous system shut down and the twitches stopped.

Jarvis took his knee off the stick and rose, lifting the warm carcass, standing there a little while as some of the blood and water dripped off. He felt tired, desperate, and sorrowful.

“I beg your forgiveness, little mother, and am deeply obliged for yer sacrifice,” he said. His arm and voice shook. “Doan’t know if yah would care why I done as I ’ave — an’ need yet do — but there are those who must be held accountable fer what’s goin’ on t’ruout this island, and my intention’s ta stick around and see justice done fer a fact.”

Jarvis waited another moment, silent and thoughtful, drops of blood and water spilling from the limp bird in his hand. Then he put it in his makeshift sack and turned toward the mangrove thicket where he had spotted its nest.

Without their mother to feed and protect them, the hatchlings would face either starvation or eventual discovery by predators.

He could do no less in his guilt and gratitude than give them the mercy of a faster end.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA

It was half past noon when they met as planned at the Valley Fair Mall on the border of San Jose and Santa Clara.

Megan Breen had exchanged a Louis Vuitton Suhali handbag that she’d purchased the week before, her eye having discriminated a flaw in the stitching of an inner zipper compartment once she got it home. At the price she paid for the bag, this seemed a shameless crime.

Julia Gordian had come for an advertised sale at the aromatherapy and herbal cosmetics boutique. She liked using the tea tree antioxidant facial scrub, lavender and ylang oil body lotion, and rosewater skin restoration gel with “bio-intrinsic essences,” whatever that meant. All she really knew was that the products made her feel fresh and clean out of the shower and didn’t contain too many artificial ingredients, or so their labels said.

Now Megan sat keeping an eye on their shopping bags and other personal articles at the table they had pulled up to in the mall’s big, sunshiny food court after doing their errands. In front of her were two cranberry scones, a paper cup of dark Italian roast coffee, and a stack of napkins. The coffee was piping hot and tasted good and had been served with one of those cardboard sleeves that slid around the cup so you didn’t have to double it.

She sipped and looked around for Julia, whom she’d last seen getting in line behind her for a garden salad. Then she located her in the crowd of shoppers, leading with a plastic tray as she pushed toward the table. On it was a flat mini-pizza box and some paper plates.

“Sorry it took me a while.” Julia said, putting down the tray. “Hot stuff.”

She sat opposite Megan. Her black hair cut short and deliberately mussed, she wore avocado-and-cream striped lowrise bellbottoms, a black midriff blouse, and white lace-up Keds sneakers. The blouse was loose and sleeveless with a flared lapel and some kind of complicated sash tied above her exposed navel. On the right lapel was a silver marcasite brooch shaped like a gecko. On her left shoulder was a small dark blue tattoo composed of a pair of stylized kanji ideographs: Ji, which means “oneself,” and Yuu, which roughly translates into the word “reason” or “meaning.”

Together they form the traditional Japanese symbol for liberty and freedom.

“Changed your mind about that salad, I see,” Megan said.

Julia got comfortable at the table, flapped open her pizza box, and pointed inside. The pie was cut into four slices and topped with a huge pile of onions, peppers, mushrooms, and sausages.

“Wrong,” she said. “I just decided it would look better on runny mozzarella, hot tomato sauce, and crust. A nice, thick carbohydrate-ridden crust.”

Megan looked into the box.

“No arugula?” she said, straight-faced.

“Or sprouts.” Julia smiled. “Those little pieces of spiced ground pork stuffed into intestinal lining do more to zest it up.”

Megan cocked an eyebrow with amusement. She had come from the office in a charcoal gray blazer with the Chanel logo on its penny-colored buttons, a matching skirt, an ice blue blouse, and gray mid-heel dress shoes.

“I can’t believe you intend to consume that whole pie,” she said.

Julia shrugged. She reached for a napkin, put it in her palm, took a wedge of pizza out of the box, put it on the napkin, and bent it slightly along the middle to form a sort of runoff channel for the excess grease. Careful not to lose any of the topping, she tipped the slice down to let the grease drip onto the foiled cardboard liner that had been underneath it. Then she pushed the pizza box toward Megan.

“Mangiare bene,” she said. “Take one.”

Megan shook her head.

“I already bought these scones.”

“Eat ’em afterward.” Julia pushed the box closer to her. “Go on, be a lioness.”

Megan smiled.