Mrs. Paard picked the lonely flyer from her mailbox on her front porch and let the lid close with a satisfying clunk. She leaned on her cane and scanned the Senior Center Environmental Caucus mailer with its photo of a majestic wolf. “COME SAVE US”, the caption read.
Maybe this is it! she thought. Something noble about the animal made her feel that she could save an endangered species. Her spirits lifted like an alligator rising from the depths of blackwater toward the sun-dappled dangle of a child’s foot. No, she chided herself, time for a “new me.” No more rooting for the alligator.
Back inside, Mrs. Paard shook the dust and dead flies from the vase of artificial sunflowers in her window. She tweezered three flies into the spikes of her Venus flytrap, turning the bugs this way and that, then wavered in her resolve to save the world.
Wouldn’t such heroism require getting out of the house? She was not homebound, exactly. She ventured reliably to her oft-empty mailbox, tapping her cane alongside. But she regarded the long curve of moss-covered steps with a dour, face-lengthening regard. Efforts to venture down them rarely bore rewards. Just last week, for example, she had the impulse to impart some European culture to a young neighbor girl and explained that her name, which the girl found odd, meant ‘horse’ in Dutch.
“Mrs. Horseface” the little girl had yelled back and skipped off. It was this child whose toes she now imagined tempting gators.
But at her appointment last week, the physician who had arranged her compassionate release from prison said her liver wasn’t going to last forever. “You’ve surprised us all surviving two years on the outside,” he drawled. “But this might be the hour to wake your better angels.”
“Oh, they sleep late,” Mrs. Paard had retorted. But she understood what he meant: it was nearing time for her last hurrah.
I am no creature of virtue, she thought now. She could think of no great deed nor words to carve on her tombstone. She was better behaved while in prison than out on her own: she had enjoyed cooking chili in the penitentiary kitchen. But now, she only popped popcorn or mashed gnats for her plant. She fanned herself with the flyer and then looked again at the photos of the wolf.
During an incarceration for mail theft, she had trained a wolf-like Tamaskan service dog. But her dog never graduated, and when Mrs. Paard got released, she took the dog back to the pound. She remembered now the feel of her hands in his fluffy black and grey fur. The dog had licked her hand, then turned to snarl at the frizzy-haired animal control officer.
“You can apply to rescue him again next time you go to prison,” the officer said as she attached the control pole used for dangerous dogs. “Unless either of you gets the death penalty in the meantime.”
Mrs. Paard still thought that was a mean thing to say. Remembering it fired her up: she would go help save the endangered species!
The next morning, Mrs. Paard stepped onto her porch, stuck her cane down the back of her turtleneck sweater, which left the handle sticking out above her head. She descended the stairs, gripping the railing with two hands. At the bottom, she retrieved her cane and flicked aside some leaves at the pavement’s edge. To her surprise, she uncovered a small patch of tightly curled fiddleheads, some still white, others in shades of green, unfurling. They looked like violins of a fairy orchestra. She recalled the four-inch rafts of weeds in the prison exercise yards that had kept her spirits afloat midst the ocean of pavement. This patch even was more exuberant. I must show this to the Horseface Kid, she thought.
She walked the two blocks to the Senior Center, occasionally whacking a lilac bush with her cane to scent the April air. On arrival she sat heavily onto a plastic chair by the water dispenser, tired from the exertion. She blamed the flowers.
After scooting her chair underneath the bulletin board “Caucus for Saving Endangered Species,” she took down the poster on saving wolves and waved it at the volunteer staffing the front desk. The woman picked up a black and white cat with a turquoise collar and came over.
Too late she realized it was Rizzo, whom she had known since elementary school.
“Mrs. Paard, how can I be of service?” The senior cradled the cat in one arm.
Rizzo had stopped calling her by her first name after she had gone to prison. Rizzo knew Paard was an alias; she was aware Mrs. Paard had never married. Rizzo had married but kept her own name. Mrs. Paard suspected that Rizzo, a churchie, do-gooder type, liked knowing a real criminal. But Mrs. Paard didn’t trust her.
“It is I who wants to be of service. I’m thinking of joining this team to save the wolves.”
“How wonderful,” said Mrs. Rizzo. Her eyes glinted. She set down her cat.
Mrs. Paard watched as her nemesis easily lifted a five-gallon water bottle into the dispenser, then sat next to her. Rizzo tapped the wolf on the flyer with a red nail.
“The Wolf Pack is looking for persons with cross country ski and snowshoe experience. The volunteers go in pairs and visit the trails weekly. The Conservancy has old trail cameras and has to swap out the memory cards in person.” She smiled sweetly, “Can you remind me of your relevant experience?”
“I, well, er, once–”
Mrs. Rizzo interrupted. “We also need money to buy new cameras. You could help by contributing towards the $25,000 goal.” She leaned forward, “But I’m not suggesting you rob a bank.” She hooted and slapped Mrs. Paard on the knee. “If you know what I mean.”
” I am not a bank robber,” Mrs. Paard said, and thought these days. She leaned back to escape Rizzo’s perfume, then leaned in to read the small print. The lovely wolf photo looked so like her Tamaskan. But it did mention mountaineering. She could literally hear the hiss of her cheer deflating, as if Rizzo had punctured her with a needle. She tried to rally. “Maybe there’s something else?” she asked.
Mrs. Rizzo held up a just-a-moment finger and stood to turn off the electric tea kettle which, to Mrs. Paard’s relief, was the source of the hiss. Then Rizzo left to help a boisterous group entering the center carrying canvases and easels.
Mrs. Paard turned back to the bulletin board. A poster of mug shots of four different prairie dogs caught her eye. “Volunteers to Observe Threatened Prairie Dog Colony in the Uteo Desert.” She read on. ‘Persons wanted for a two-week period to—
Rizzo was back.
“I want to sign up for the prairie dogs,” Mrs. Paard said.
Rizzo laughed. “Those prairie dogs are endangered.” Rizzo glanced at the group setting up their easels and lowered her voice. “But honey, you are too. Did you know observers are up in a tree blind for two weeks on twelve-hour shifts? Volunteers have to squat over a bucket to pee.”
Mrs. Paard ignored this and looked her same-age associate dead in the eyes. “Mrs. Rizzo, are you discriminating because I’m 75?”
“Mrs. Paard, I’m, er, it’s because you can’t climb ladders while carrying supplies.”
“As if you’d know the difference between a Utahn, black-tailed, and Gunnison prairie dog.” Mrs. Paard had just glimpsed this requirement on the flyer. She peered closely at the photos of each rodent’s furry face. The varmints looked alike to her.
“No need to squint,” Rizzo said. “Gunnisons hibernate so you won’t see them. And the black-tails have, well, a black tail.”
Mrs. Paard restrained herself from ripping up the flyer. She stood up, humiliated. Her eyes teared as she read other notices. She tilted her head back to read through the lowest part of her progressives. But the letters were too small.
I’m not dead yet, she thought to herself. Somebody, somewhere needs me.
***
Back home, she put on a Metallica tape to get her Venus fly trap in the mood for lunch. Saving prairie dogs was already a step down from saving wolves. And it annoyed her that she couldn’t watch Utah prairie dogs either. Feeling defiant, she took laborious steps up to her attic bedroom. Then she lay on her bed, belly down, and looked through the tiny window overlooking the street. She imagined herself in a tree blind looking down on an urban colony of prairie dogs and settled in to observe.
A red curtain fluttered from an open window across the street. An Amazon delivery panel van drove by, did a three-point turn and reversed course. The few lawns on the street were quiet green rectangles each the size of a parking space. Sometimes these were bordered by thin rows of hyacinths and tulips. A few had untended blackberries. No prairie dogs. She saw a quick flickering of dark birds, but they were too fast and too small for her to identify.
Too late, she thought after ten minutes. The prairie dogs of Belmont Street must be extinct. Her annoyance at being rejected still simmered. Then she had an idea. Instead of watching the prairie dogs from above, she would take on the perspective of a prairie dog and watch from their level. Real comrade-in-arms crap. She put a pillow on the stairs, sat down with her bad knees stretched in front, and thumped gently down the stairs to the first floor.
Her front windows offered a panoramic view of the neighborhood’s World War II-era houses. She pulled back the curtains and scanned the homes, sidewalks, and cherry trees. She opened a window and popped her head out. Two squirrels scampered up an oak into a twigged nest, fighting over something. Others were running under the cars, crossing the street, racing like show-offs across the top of fences. One was digging up bulbs, sitting upright, and rolling them between its paws.
But there are so many squirrels, they can’t possibly be going extinct. Mrs. Paard thought. I can’t keep track of them. But she didn’t give up, entirely. She darted into her house when she saw the mail carrier up the street. She watched from a distance and waited until she heard the lid of her mailbox clink. A finger separated the slats in the Venetian blinds across the street and Mrs. Paard glimpsed a face with white hair and upswept blue glasses. She pulled back in surprise.
After waiting a few moments, she opened the door to get her mail, her favorite moment of the day. Her parole officer occasionally sent greeting cards with nice stamps. She sorted through the Safeway coupons then looked up to keep an eye on the street. For the first time she realized doors were opening up and down the street after the mailman’s visit. Gray, silver, and henna-maroon heads, appeared, scanned the surroundings, then bent over mail.
It’s not just me who likes the mail, Mrs. Paard thought.
During the next hour, she stood her vigil. A hand pulled back the red curtain in the second story window of the house across the street. A crow scolded other birds from a tree perch. A black and white cat sauntered down the sidewalk, stopped in the sun, then investigated, perhaps a butterfly, with a lifted paw. The cat circled the base of a maple then looked up at some mystery in the branches before resuming its nonchalant promenade down the block. As it passed by her house, Mrs. Paard glimpsed a turquoise collar. Was it Rizzo’s cat? Her mind split between taking the cat back to Rizzo on a velvet cushion or sending a ransom note and–
Mrs. Paard gasped. Almost a block away, a coyote trotted down the middle of the street, its radar zeroed onto the cat. It was gaining. But a coyote in the middle of the city? It couldn’t be. But as it got closer, she saw the golden eyes, the long legs above a scrawny, hungry body, and felt, as if kindred souls, it’s predatory drive.
She turned Metallica up full volume, grabbed the steel bowl of leftover popcorn and a spoon, and accompanied by the crescendo of music, stepped outside. The coyote was now halfway down the block, three houses up. She thumped the bowl with the spoon and yelled, “Go away! Leave that cat alone!” Popcorn cascaded like falling snow.
The coyote stopped in its tracks and stared. Then it resumed its pursuit.
A window of the house across the street opened and arms poked out. Hands clanked a saucepan and lid together. Up the block, a door opened and the lady with maroon hair hobbled out with her walker, blowing a shrill whistle held between her teeth. From the rambler next to her, a wicker-thin lady in a wheelchair, kicked her door and shot a water pistol in the coyote’s direction.
The coyote was surrounded by a cacophony of gongs, plinks, bongs, and plunks. It moved to the far side of the street, turned back, resumed pacing up the street, then reversed direction after another intense saucepan drum solo from the neighbor dragging an oxygen tank.
Meanwhile, the cat had disappeared. Mrs. Paard continued yelling and smashing kitchenware until the coyote ran off away from the cat.
“We did it,” Mrs. Paard yelled. “We saved the cat!
The ladies on their front porches waved. Mrs. Paard thought they might be kindred spirits: they too were looking for excitement beyond the mailbox; they too wanted meaning, were seeking community. And she recognized the toil of living. The lopsided gaits, the inability of the person from the white house to push her wheelchair past the threshold, the neighbor dragging the green oxygen cannister behind her like a reluctant pet, the housedresses unevenly buttoned, the parkas thrown over nightgowns but worn with pants. Yet all had responded, rallied, and helped out. She saw their shy smiles, heard the ringing of porch wind chimes. She flashed back to a day in the pen when she and other women were mopping the communal shower after a prisoner had vomited everywhere. Mrs. Paard had complained to the corrections officer that she was meant for greater things.
“Don’t you believe it,” the officer had snapped back, “the purpose of living is to do one’s part.” Mrs. Paard turned, open mouthed. The officer pointed her back to another apple-sauce colored splotch.
Today Mrs. Paard felt that she and her neighbors had done their part. True, they were nearly as extinct a prairie dog colony. They were as flawed and decrepit as she was. But she looked forward to gloating, well, informing Mrs. Rizzo that she and the neighbors had saved her cat—at least she would say it was her cat—and she looked forward to the idea that there would be other opportunities for glory on the bulletin boards of the great beyond.
After a raucous career in public health (Eastern DR Congo, Gaza, Sudan, etc.), Mary Catlin is now writing fiction in Seattle.