Page 41 of Animal Tamer
Earl thanks me three times, pays at the desk, and carries Dixie out swaddled like royalty.
The clinic goes quiet.
Paige starts wiping down the table. “Small towns, man. One coat of spray paint and it's the Kennedy assassination.”
“Yeah,” I say.
But I'm standing at the sink with the water running over my hands long after the soap has rinsed away, and I'm doing math I don't want to do.
It could be nothing. It's probably nothing. A traveling show arrives, and a local man gets vandalized, and it’s a coincidence. Rowe holds injured things like they're made of glass. Rowe couldn't hurt?—
It's not you. I don't do well with being touched. By anyone.
Did it hurt?
That's why I did it.
I shut off the water.
Whoever painted those walls knew things. Wrote them on the house of a man who interviews boys, personally, one at a time.
And whatever happened to Rowe Holloway—whatever carved those lines into his arms and taught his skin to treat every human hand as a threat—somebody did that to him. Somebody specific. Somewhere specific.
I dry my hands slowly, one finger at a time.
I have a follow-up at the fairgrounds. Peanut's injection, day three of five. I'll drive out there. And I'll watch him.
Not the way I've been watching him—God knows I've been doing plenty of that. I'll watch the way I watched onday one, before this whole carnival got under my skin. I'll watch his face when the town comes up. I'll watch his hands.
Because either I'm inventing a story out of spray paint and scar tissue, and I owe him better than that. Or the gentlest man I've ever met came to Thistlewood for a reason.
“Hey.” Paige tosses the used drape in the bin and glances over. “You never finished telling me about last night.”
“Later,” I say, and reach for my field kit. “I've got a monkey to see.”
14
ROWE
I've walked past Cole's trailer four times.
The first time, I told myself I was checking on Cleopatra's hay net. The second time, I was looking for a lost lead rope. The third and fourth times, I didn't bother with excuses. I just walked past, turned around at the mess area, and walked back, my heart pounding like I was eleven and about to steal bread from the commune kitchen.
This is insane. I plan murders with these men. I cannot knock on my brother's door and say the wordsglory holeout loud.
I stop in the dirt in front of his steps. His trailer door is cracked open, and I can hear the rhythmicthunkof a blade hitting wood inside, which means he's throwing at the target board mounted on his closet door again, which means he's bored, which is the most dangerous state Cole exists in.
I think about Wren's mouth.
The way she said it, blushing so hard.I could kneel on the other side and you could just—and I'd never—my hands would never?—
I knock.
Thethunkstops. The door swings open, and Cole leans out, a throwing knife loose in one hand, floppy black hair falling over one eye.
“Well.” He looks me up and down. “You knocked.”
“That's what doors are for.”
