home,” I called to Helen. She went to the porch and knocked, sending the skinny, wormy cats scattering. Nothing.
Just then a buzzing came from the woods behind the house, growing louder and louder, sounding like power tools. The donkey made one single bray, clearly of disgust, and laid her ears flat on her fuzzy neck. Three men on four-wheelers came into view. They drove into the yard, right up to me, showering me and the donkey with mud. All three men laughed as they cut their engines.
I wiped mud from my face. “Are you Mr. Pete Early?” I asked the skinny one, not giving them the satisfaction of getting a rise out of me with the mud.
“What’s it to you?”
“We’re here from the Humane Society, investigating a report of abuse.”
“What the hell?” another man—heavily tattooed—asked.
Pete Early’s grin vanished. “What I do with my animals is nobody’s damn business.”
“Oh, so you have more animals than this donkey, sir?”
I saw him notice Helen in the driveway. He began to dig at the skin of his neck.
“So what if I did?” Pete Early said.
“We’d like to see those animals, too, sir.”
“What if I don’t want to show you? You can’t come on my property without permission.”
“You’re absolutely right, sir,” Helen said, both of us so utterly polite it cracked me up. “We could get a warrant, though, and return with the police.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” he muttered.
The tattooed man whispered something to him.
I interrupted them. “Can you please show me where this donkey eats and drinks?” I asked. “There appears to be no water within reach of her . . . restraints here. And there’s no shelter.”
Speaking of no shelter, the rain, of course, had moved from droplets to a trickle.
“It’s a donkey,” he said, the way one might say, “It’s a rock.” “I don’t even want it. I took it as a favor to a friend, and now it’s coming back on me. I never hurt this damn donkey.”
“Did someone suggest you had?”
He looked confused, then angry. “You know what? You care about this donkey so much, she’s yours, okay? Take her. She’s a pain in my ass anyway.”
I smiled sweetly. “Thank you, sir. We’d be happy to take her off your hands.”
“We just need you to sign here,” Helen said, “and one of your friends, too, so it’s officially witnessed that we took the animal with your permission.”
“Jesus Christ on a crutch!” Pete Early slogged over to Helen, as I reached through the mud to unlatch the band tying the donkey to the concrete block.
The third man laughed, a hyena-like sound. “Good luck getting her on that trailer.”
I ignored him. In my peripheral vision, I saw Pete Early sign Helen’s form. He turned to his friends, “One of you fucknuts get over here and sign this.”
“I ain’t putting my name on nothing,” Hyena Man said.
They began to argue. I worked on the choke chain—a dog’s choke chain!—and managed to get it over her ears and down her nose. I let it drop in the mud, where it disappeared.
“You wanna leave this place, old girl?” I whispered. I gave her another apple slice and tugged on her halter. Those ears flipped up, something Muppet-like that made me smile, even in these circumstances. I stepped away and held out another piece of apple.
“What did I tell you?” Hyena Man said.
“The only way to get her to do anything is to smack her,” Tattoo said. He got off his four-wheeler and walked to the fencerow, presumably to get a stick from a fallen tree.
The donkey watched him, saw his intent, and began trudging through the mire. I never had to touch her halter again, so willing was she to follow me.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Tattoo said. He held a wicked-looking stick as wide as my forearm.
The donkey walked right into the trailer. I’d forgotten to put in fresh hay, but she couldn’t care less. She knew an exit when she saw one.
As I put up the trailer door, the sheriff’s car pulled in, followed by another cruiser.
Sheriff Stan Metz got out and called, “Everything all right, ladies?”
“Oh, yes,” Helen said, so sugary it was hard to keep a straight face. “Mr. Early has signed over possession of the donkey quite willingly.”
I wiped my hands on my mud-spattered jeans and said, “We just need a sweep of the property to see the conditions of the other animals.”
“Whoa. Hey,” Mr. Early said, going pale. “I told you, I don’t have any other animals.”
“Actually, sir, that’s not what