Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,29

looking not at the security guards but at Ruth. “Are you insane?”

The woman shakes as she opens her purse, hands the security guard her driver’s license, photographs of her family, and two Social Security cards.

“Momma, don’t let them take me away,” the child says, clutching his mother’s knee more tightly.

The mother places her hand on her son’s head until the older security guard hands her back the cards and pictures.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says. “I apologize for this.”

“You should apologize, all of you,” the woman says, lifting the child into her arms.

“I’m so sorry,” Ruth says, but the woman has already turned and is walking toward the exit.

The older security guard speaks into a walkie-talkie.

“I was so sure,” she says to the younger man.

“Yes, ma’am,” the security guard replies, not meeting her eyes.

Ruth debates whether to meet her appointment or go home. She finally starts walking toward Dr. Timrod’s office, for no better reason than it is downhill, easier.

When she knocks on the door, the voice she heard on the phone tells her to come in. Dr. Timrod sits at a big wooden desk. Besides a computer and telephone, there’s nothing on the desk except some papers and a coffee cup filled with pens and pencils. A bookshelf is behind him, the volumes on it thick, some leather bound. The walls are bare except for a framed painting of long-tailed birds perched on a tree limb, their yellow heads and green bodies brightening the tree like Christmas ornaments, Carolina Paroquet emblazoned at the bottom.

Dr. Timrod’s youth surprises her. Ruth had expected gray hair, bifocals, and a rumpled suit, not jeans and a flannel shirt, a face unlined as a teenager’s. A styrofoam cup fills his right hand.

“Ms. Lealand, I presume.”

“Yes,” she says, surprised he remembers her name.

He motions for her to sit down.

“Our jaguar hunt cost me a good bit of sleep last night,” he says.

“I didn’t sleep much myself,” Ruth says. “I’m sorry you didn’t either.”

“Don’t be. Among other things I found out jaguars tend to be nocturnal. To study a creature it’s best to adapt to its habits.”

Dr. Timrod sips from the cup. Ruth smells the coffee and again feels the emptiness in her stomach.

“I talked to Leslie Winters yesterday before I left. She’d never heard of jaguars being in South Carolina, but she reminded me that her main focus is elephants, not cats. I called a friend who’s doing fieldwork on jaguars in Arizona. He told me there’s as much chance of a jaguar having been in South Carolina as a polar bear.”

“So they were never here,” Ruth says, and she wonders if there is anything left inside her mind she can believe.

“I’d say that’s still debatable. When I got home last night, I did some searching on the computer. A number of sources said their range once included the Southeast. Several mentioned Florida and Louisiana, a few Mississippi and Alabama.”

Dr. Timrod pauses and lifts a piece of paper off his desk.

“Then I found this.”

He stands up and hands the paper to Ruth. The words Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina are underlined.

“What’s strange is the source is a book published in the early sixties,” Dr. Timrod says. “Not a more contemporary source.”

“So people just forgot they were here,” Ruth says.

“Well, it’s not like I did an exhaustive search,” Dr. Timrod says. “And the book that page came from could be wrong. Like I said, it’s not an updated source.”

“I believe they were here,” Ruth says.

Dr. Timrod smiles and sips from the styrofoam cup.

“Now you have some support for your belief.”

Ruth folds the paper and places it in her purse.

“I wonder when they disappeared from South Carolina?”

“I have no idea,” Dr. Timrod says.

“What about them?” Ruth asks, pointing at the parakeets.

“Later than you’d think. There were still huge flocks in the mid-1800s. Audubon said that when they foraged the fields looked like brilliantly colored carpets.”

“What happened?”

“Farmers didn’t want to share the crops and fruit trees. A farmer with a gun could kill a whole flock in one afternoon.”

“How was that possible?” Ruth asks.

“That’s the amazing thing. They wouldn’t abandon one another.”

Dr. Timrod turns to his bookshelf, takes off a volume, and sits back down. He thumbs through the pages until he finds what he’s looking for.

“This was written in the 1800s by a man named Alexander Wilson,” Dr. Timrod says, and begins to read. “‘Having shot down a number, some of which were only wounded, the whole flock swept repeatedly around their prostrate companions, and again settled on