Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,27

tangled exchange of sorrow. Ruth knew now that it had been she, not Richard, who too easily had acquiesced to the idea that it always would be so, that solitude was better because it allowed no mirror for one’s grief. They could have had another child, could have tried to heal themselves. She’d been the unwilling one.

Ruth rubs her index finger over the encyclopedia spines, reading the time-darkened letters like braille. She pulls the J volume out, a cracking sound as she opens it. She finds the entry, a black-and-white photograph of a big cat resting in a tree: Range: South and Central America. Once found in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, but now only rare sightings near the U.S.-Mexico border.

There is no mention of South Carolina, not even Florida. Ruth wonders for the first time if perhaps she only imagined seeing the jaguar in the schoolbook. Perhaps it was a mountain lion or bobcat. She shelves the encyclopedia and turns on her computer, types jaguar South Carolina extinct into the search engine. After an hour, Ruth has found three references to Southeast United States and several more to Florida and Louisiana, but no reference to South Carolina. She walks into the kitchen and opens the phone book. She calls the state zoo’s main number and asks to speak to the director.

“He’s not here today,” the switchboard operator answers, “but I can connect you to his assistant, Dr. Timrod.”

The phone rings twice and a man’s voice answers.

Ruth is unsure how to say what she wants, unsure of what it is that she wants, other than some kind of confirmation. She tells her name and that she’s interested in jaguars.

“We have no jaguar,” Dr. Timrod says brusquely. “The closest would be in Atlanta.”

Ruth asks if they were ever in South Carolina.

“In a zoo?”

“No, in the wild.”

“I’ve never heard that,” Dr. Timrod says. “I associate jaguars with a more tropical environment, but I’m no expert on big cats.” His voice is reflective now, more curious than impatient. “My field is ornithology. Most people think parakeets are tropical too, but once they were in South Carolina.”

“So it’s possible,” Ruth says.

“Yes, I guess it’s possible. I do know buffalo were here. Elk, pumas, wolves. Why not a jaguar.”

“Could you help me find out?”

As Dr. Timrod pauses, she imagines his office—posters of animals on the walls, the floor concrete just like the big cats’ cages. Maybe a file cabinet and bookshelves but little else. She suspects the room reeks of pipe smoke.

“Maybe,” Dr. Timrod says. “I can ask Leslie Winters. She’s our large animal expert, though elephants are her main interest. If she doesn’t know, I’ll try to do a little research on it myself.”

“Can I come by the zoo tomorrow to see what you’ve found?”

Dr. Timrod laughs. “You’re rather persistent.”

“Not usually,” Ruth says.

“I’ll be in my office from ten to eleven. Come then.”

Ruth calls her office and tells the secretary she will be out one more day.

The needs of the dead have exhausted her. Too tired to cook or go out, Ruth instead finishes unpacking and takes a long bath. As she lies in the warm, neck-deep water, she closes her eyes and summons the drawing of the jaguar. She tries to remember more. Was the jaguar drawn as if moving or standing still? Were its eyes looking toward her or toward the end of the page? Were there parakeets perched in the palmetto trees above? She cannot recall.

Ruth does not rest well that night. She has trouble falling asleep and when she finally does she dreams of rows of bleached tombstones with no names, no dates etched upon them. In the dream one of these tombstones marks the grave of her son, but she does not know which one.

Driving through rush-hour traffic the next morning, Ruth remembers how she made the nurse bring her son to her when the drugs had worn off enough that she understood what lost really meant. She’d looked into her child’s face so she might never forget it, stroking the wisps of hair blond and fine as corn silk. Her son’s eyes were closed. After a few seconds the nurse had gently but firmly taken the child from her arms. The nurse had been kind, as had the doctor, but she knows they have forgotten her child by now, that his brief life has merged with hundreds of other children who lived and died under their watch. She knows that only two people remember that child and that now