trailed from it. His teeth closed on empty air, and in frustration he leaped higher the next time, higher still.
Just as he chastised himself for succumbing too completely to his inner puppy, the balloon proved to have meaning, after all.
He came upon a fluttering bird lying on bare ground. One wing was broken.
In fright, the creature rolled its eyes and worked its beak without making a sound. Terror and pain robbed it of song.
Nothing could be done for the bird. Its fate was to be taken by a hawk or a fox or something else, and eaten alive.
Kipp considered it for a minute.
He thought, I’m sorry, little one.
With one forepaw, he stepped on it, bore down with all his weight, and broke its neck.
When humans went to a theater to see a tragedy, it was a play in which some great person fell from a height, destroyed by fate or a character flaw.
Kipp had watched comedies and tragedies on TV with Dorothy.
A bird could have no character flaw. And yet birds, like all the little animals, had their roles in tragedies every day.
In this beautiful but hard world, fate spared no species.
This bird was plump. There was a satisfaction of flesh under the feathers.
Kipp turned away, leaving the bird untouched. He had no taste for tragedy.
Less than a mile later, an aroma came to him that was familiar and delicious. Hamburgers on a grill.
And not just hamburgers. Also frankfurters.
Drawn by the smells, he raced toward a wall of trees, through an evergreen woods, and out into a campground with a mix of tents and small motor homes.
People. Adults and children.
He had a thousand wiles and stratagems by which to charm them. He would be fed.
In his hunger, he forgot for the moment that not all people were good. If even a hundred of them were kind, there would be one whose every intention was wicked.
14
Shacket calls her from a motel parking lot on the outskirts of Truckee, California, north of Lake Tahoe, and he pours his heart out to her, confesses having made a mistake by not romancing her better back in the day, offers her the world, the world in Costa Rica, and at first she seems pleased that he’s called. Judging by her tone, he thinks she regrets not letting him bang her, because if he, instead of backstabbing Jason, had knocked her up, there would be no Woody, no mentally disabled mute dragging her down day in and day out. He and Megan would have had a beautiful son, a good-looking and smart-as-hell kid they would have been proud of. So, yes, at first he thinks she wants him, she needs him, he’s got her.
But then a superior tone comes into her voice, a snottiness he doesn’t like, doesn’t deserve, just can’t tolerate. I’m afraid you underestimate how a special-needs child changes your life. Does she think he’s stupid? How can he not know how some idiot mute would screw up her life? I’m afraid our time has passed, Lee. As if she has twenty guys worth a hundred million bucks beating on her door. As if she ever gave him the time, which she never did; their time never passed, because she never gave him the time, never gave him the chance to pin her down and show her what she was missing. What’s best for me is what’s best for Woody, and that’s not Costa Rica. Can she really think he doesn’t realize that she’s shoveling shit at him? Hell, he can smell it over the phone. What she’s really saying is that some pinhead kid who can’t even talk is more interesting than Lee Shacket, that a dead-end life in a backwater like Pinehaven is preferable to white beaches and the blue Caribbean and the good life if all of that comes with Lee Shacket.
The angrier he gets with Megan, the hungrier he becomes. He’s hungrier than he’s ever been, inhumanly hungry. Five hours earlier, he stopped to eat in Bishop at this dump that some shit-for-brains critic rated three stars, and they couldn’t even make a hamburger the way he wanted. He sends it back twice, trying to make them understand what rare means. The third time, it’s still wrong, and the manager comes to the table, says, Sir, what you seem to be asking for is steak tartar as a burger, but I’m sorry to say we aren’t a restaurant that’s prepared to pull that off. There are health considerations