The Eyes and the Impossible, page 13
“Shoo!” roared one human.
And I laughed. I should not have laughed, because there was so much serious work to do, but I did laugh. The word shoo is such a funny one when applied to raccoons, because of all the animals under the Sun, the ones least likely to “shoo” are raccoons. They do not acknowledge the validity of the word.
Still, the humans said “Shoo, shoo,” and even the raccoons stopped their scratching and urinating to laugh a bit, too.
But only for a second, because more distracting needed to be done. As the people approached with their shoos and waving arms, Angus and his friends jumped from the hood and the roof and began a madcap circling of the vehicle, running under it, jumping back onto the hood—anything to keep the humans in their khakis occupied. The one human who was still in the office came out, too, now on her phone. She was no doubt calling the Control-the-Animals people. We had anticipated this. Now it was time to cut the lights.
This was the work of the rats. They wanted to be involved some way in the liberation plan, and kept volunteering for various tasks, but we thought it best to limit them to this one key—crucial—task: to chew through the electrical wires such that when the chaos began, there would be no way to shed any light on it. And bless those rats, just as the madness around the vehicle was at its peak, the lights in the office and around the enclosure all went black. It was still a bit before dawn, so having this period of deepest darkness was essential.
And dark it was!
So, so dark. Wonderfully dark. We could see everything, of course, being animals and superior in the ways of sight, but we knew the humans would be utterly lost.
“We have a power outage,” the office human said into her phone. “And the raccoons seem to be losing their minds.”
Now I saw the other Bison-minder, the one who had been in the hammock before. He was walking slowly toward the office woman, slashing the darkness with his flashlight.
“What’s happening?” he asked. Then his slashing light cut across me. “Ah! The coyote!” he yelled, and recoiled.
“Coyote?” the office human yelled, terror in her voice. “Where?”
Now that I was in the dark again, I have to admit that I was a bit scared, too—sure that the coyote must be near me, given the hammock-man had said the word immediately after slashing me with his light. I looked around, though, and saw nothing like a coyote. More importantly, I smelled no such creature. And I would have smelled anything new and unprecedented like a coyote a thousand miles away. It would have overwhelmed my nose.
And then I looked down and remembered.
“It’s gone now,” the man said. “But the raccoons are everywhere. They’ve gone nuts!”
As he explained the raccoon-madness, I waited for the humans to move closer to the vehicle. The humans were still too close to the Bison’s feeding station. We needed the humans out of eyeshot.
Angus must have known this, too. He’d likely counted the humans who were gathered near the vehicle, and knew that two were missing. The raccoons’ task was to distract all the humans, to draw them all away from the Bison enclosure.
But these two humans were hanging tight. He needed a more dramatic act.
“Ow! Oh god! One of ’em bit me!”
One of the khakied people had been bit, and I bet it was Angus who did it. He’d bitten for justice, and now this person was shrieking and jumping around, holding his ankle. And finally the two Bison-minders went out to the parking lot to help.
I am sorry that this biting happened.
It was not my idea.
There might have been other ways.
But in the moment, Angus acted, and the plan moved forward. With these final two gathered with the others around the still-alarming vehicle, and the one still inside it, trying to get the shrieking to end, the next stage of the plan could now begin.
With a triple-yip, I signaled Sonja to push the bolt of the enclosure door open. Though I could not see her from my vantage point, I could hear its distant tick as the metal moved left to right, and I knew that the door was ajar. I ran to the feeding station, and saw that Freya and Samuel and Meredith were slowly and silently making their way out of the gate and into the open park. Oh wow.
Oh wow oh wow.
My friends, I can’t tell you the vaulting joy I felt when I saw them pass through that gate! When I saw them drifting through—and then away from!—that metal grid of fencing, leaving that steel crosshatch behind! Oh wow it was something—far beyond what I imagined. My eyes watered, my throat dried, my heart darted everywhere in my body, from toe to toe and shoulder to shoulder, like a crazed dragonfly trying to escape.
But there was no time to dwell on this. It was Sonja’s next job to lead the Bison away from the enclosure and into the woods and onto the beach, and it was my job to make sure that all went as planned with the horses.
Yes, the horses. We needed the horses. As haughty as they are, they were indispensable to this endeavor. With the Bison safely away, I ran to the horse stables and told them it was time. And they did their part with gusto. We had carefully selected three horses that were closest in size to Freya and Meredith and Samuel, and the horses’ role now was to serve as stand-ins for the Bison. Moments after the Bison left, following Sonja into the woods, I led the horses into the enclosure, and to its farthest corner, away from the humans, so if they were to look across the field, they would see three large lumps, Bison-like silhouettes, in the distance, huddled together and seemingly asleep. The horses, of course, would not pass for Bison upon close inspection, but at a glance, and to buy precious time, they would do. I watched them lope off across the field and settle in the corner, and I thought:
Well, that is not bad. Not at all bad.
As they settled into the corner, a siren rose in the distance. Ambulance, I thought. An ambulance for the person Angus bit. Good, I thought. A good distraction. And the person would be fine, for Angus had no diseases or ailments, not even bad breath—which is such a problem with so many of his kind.
Now it was time to catch up with Sonja and take her place in leading the Bison to the beach. I followed our agreed-upon route and with my speed I was soon upon their lumbering parade.
“Psst,” I said to the rear of Samuel, who was in the rear.
“Psst yourself,” he said to me, and I jogged quickly around him and to the head of the pack, to Sonja.
“How are we doing?” I asked.
“So far so good,” she said. And she darted away, at a speed I found astonishing. I was always aware that she was quick—squirrels are quick, you know this, I trust—but I didn’t know just how fast she was. She ran off in a straight line, to our left, and in seconds was a tiny dot. Then gone entirely. Gone! Surely she was not as fast as I, but still.
Still!
Her work from here on out was to circle the park, to assess any new people-movements, to gauge how effective our horse-decoys were, to fix any problems that needed fixing, and alert anyone who needed alerting.
With Sonja gone, and the smell of the ocean wafting through the trees, I turned to Freya.
“Are you ready?” I asked. “Soon we’ll be at the windmill, and when we’re at the windmill, we’ll be among the goats, and when we’re among the goats, it will be time to go.”
“I know, my son. I know,” she said, and chuckled. “Do you really think we’ll make it? I’m far more nervous than I expected to be.”
In the dim light I could just barely make out her eyes, and they did seem disquieted. Behind her, Meredith’s breathing was quick, tense, on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Helene will take care of everything.”
And just as I said it, I wondered if this were true. Helene was capable and bold, but could she really hide three enormous Bison among a herd of goats? We did not even know Helene very well. We were basing all this—so much!—on a goat we’d just met. That I’d just met, and whom the Bison didn’t know at all! And hiding enormous Bison among relatively tiny goats? Oh, it was all such lunacy. We had not had time to test the theory. We had not had time to worry or calculate or run through problems and solutions. We had only had time to guess at this idea and now we had to see it through.
THIRTY-FOUR
We emerged from the densest part of the forest and now we could see the windmill’s silhouette, black against a sky of deepest blue.
“I smell the ocean,” Freya said.
“Wait till you see it!” I said.
“I’m here,” a breathless voice said.
“Helene?” I asked.
“Of course it’s Helene,” she said.
Now she emerged from the darkness and looked over my shoulder, up to the eyes of Freya.
“Ma’am,” she said.
“Hello Helene,” Freya said. “I am Freya, and this is Meredith, and this is Samuel.”
“Hello, hello,” Helene said, giving them each a quick bow.
And just then my chest ached, thinking in mere minutes I would have to say goodbye to Helene. She really was one of my favorite creatures—a thing of rare grace and radical kindness.
“Are you feeling ready?” she asked the Bison.
“I think so,” Freya said, but she did not sound ready, and Meredith and Samuel said nothing. I could not see them well, but there was something new coming from them, some shaky pheromone, that told me they were tense at best and at worst, terrified.
“Follow me,” Helene said, and we followed her down through the ice plants and toward what had been the field of tulips and then, from the tulips emerged a sea of goats. They had been sleeping, it seemed, and now they rose up, one by one, until we were surrounded by them, and they were already assessing whether or not they could do what they had been asked to do—to surround and hide these mighty Bison.
“Helene, this is crazy,” one said. “Look at me.”
This goat, whose name was Theo, stood next to Freya, showing just how tiny he was in her shadow.
“She’s huge!” he said, then looked up to Freya. “No offense.”
The sky was beginning to shed its night cloak.
“None taken,” Freya said, and I could see in her eyes an exhausted sadness. Meredith and Samuel were looking around them, at the goats converging from all sides, and though they smiled politely, they did not seem to be embracing the moment. Did not seem to believe the plan could work.
And for a moment, Helene faltered, too. I saw something in her eyes, something uncertain. Something like fear.
“Today…” I whispered to her.
She lifted her chin. “Today,” she said to the goats assembled.
“Today we do something important,” I whispered, and she glanced at me. Now her eyes were bright and sure.
“Today we do something new, something important, and something very risky,” she roared in a bell-clear voice.
Everyone around—the goats, the Bison, me—was instantly locked into attention.
“It will take total commitment, total belief,” she said, louder now. It was as if she had taken the wind from the ocean, had eaten the clouds from the sky. “It will take everything we have.”
I was so moved by her commanding tone, by her utter resolve, that I found myself wanting for it all to begin immediately.
“Now we act,” she said, and I tapped my paw on the ground, in a way I hoped she would read as gently impatient. What if the escape of the Bison was hampered by someone making endless speeches about the escape of the Bison? How long would we wait to begin?
Not long. Just then, far away, a whistle sounded. It was a human whistle, the kind made when they put their fingers in their mouths. It is an impressive trick—one very few humans can do on their own, with their own flesh, without their machines.
“That’s the goatherd,” Helene said.
Until that point, I hadn’t heard of any goatherd. But now, in the faraway distance, I could see a man in a wide-rimmed black hat. It was the human who had been with them the first day.
“That’s the goatherd,” I said.
“Indeed,” Helene said. “Now, the first group knows what to do. Go now.” And at her command, a group of twelve goats ran off toward the goatherd, and when they came upon him, they sprinted past him, and toward the jagged boulder that separated us from the port. The plan was these goats would rush toward the ship, forcing the goatherd to rush with them, chasing them, desperate to get ahead. He would not allow them to reach the ship before him, so this would keep him occupied and out of the way. Of this Helene was sure.
“He’ll be very surprised,” Helene noted. “Never before have any of us rushed to get back on that boat.”
And so we watched the goats run up the hill, and watched the goatherd—I love this word, goatherd—run after them. Which left a hundred or so goats still back near the windmill, ready and waiting to do the principal work of the escape, which was to cloak the Bison in goat-chaos.
This was everything, really. The heart of the plan. The part that had to work, lest all else be in vain.
“Ready?” Helene asked the Bison.
A long pause—a terribly long pause—ensued. None of the Bison said anything. But finally Freya nodded.
“Yes,” she said, and Meredith and Samuel nodded, too, though they seemed less certain than Freya.
“Go!” Helene roared, and the goats converged upon the Bison, forming a tight mass, jumping and swirling, baying and zigzagging. The hope was to create a mass of manic activity such that if the goatherd looked back at all, he would only see a thrashing forest of goats, moving steadily toward the ship. And in the dim light, we hoped, the goatherd would not see the three enormous Bison hidden in this moving goat-forest.
Besides, it was not so far. The mass of goat and Bison only had to get over the dunes, then onto the flat stretch of beach—a distance I could travel in seconds—and then up the promontory and finally down to the ship.
And now we were moving.
We were quickly in the dunes, and between the dark and the distraction of the goatherd, all was good. We were simply an inland wave of fur and hair and legs. No one could tell a Bison from a dog from a goat in that light, among those dunes.
We were moving steadily, the Bison trudging among the frantic goats, keeping their heads low, and I was circling, weaving in and out of the mass, assessing how it looked from outside—good, good, fine, better than expected!—while also periodically reassuring Bison and goats alike that all was working, that all we had to do was continue.
When we made it down the oceanward side of the dunes, and saw the long stretch of flat beach before us, I laughed a bit, knowing we were on our way, and there was not all that much left to do.
“It’s so far!” Meredith said.
“I was just thinking about the distance,” I told Meredith, “and I was thinking it’s not so far.”
Now Freya seemed unsure. “It really is a greater distance than I anticipated,” she said. “And that boulder! It’s high and so rocky.”
This trepidation in her voice! It was hard for me to hear.
“We need to go faster,” Helene said.
This was confirmed seconds later, when a heavy thump of wings filled the air. I knew it was Yolanda.
“Time’s short!” she yelled. “Time’s short!”
She explained that the raccoons had only been able to hold off the khakied humans for a short while after we had left. Apparently some new humans came with lights and nets and darts and the threat of guns—and the raccoons had understandably cleared out. The humans had then entered the Bison enclosure, suspicious about the Bison being Bison.
“In the light, the horses did not look so much like Bison,” Yolanda explained. “So as soon as the humans came near, the horses bolted. They bolted and jumped and went nuts.”
“As a means of distraction, I hope,” I said.
“Yes, yes! Of course!” Yolanda said.
The horses had run around the enclosure, kicking and rearing and scaring the humans, and finally they’d escaped entirely—jumping the fence that the Bison never could. The horses cleared it like it was nothing.
“You should have seen it!” Yolanda said. “Then they scattered all over the park.” She thought, and I agreed, that it was both advantage and problem: the horses would occupy the Parks People, who would have to track the horses down and bring them back to the stables. But at the same time, so much action in the park in general would likely bring more people, more Control-the-Animals people and maybe even Parks Police. This would not be good for our quiet pre-dawn escape.
“So you better get moving,” Yolanda said. “Oh, and Angus said you only have eighteen minutes. Whatever that means.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I looked to Helene and she confirmed that we needed to move. We had to get the Bison into the belly of the ship without anyone noticing. Only if no one suspected anything odd would the ship be allowed to leave on schedule. Even if everyone in the park knew the Bison were missing—and surely they knew by now—no one could know that they’d gone to the ship.
So we only had to get them aboard unseen.
“We’ll be a thousand miles across the sea before anyone would guess,” Helene said. “Far too late to turn back.”
THIRTY-FIVE
There was a short amount of time, and a short distance for the Bison to cover still, and I had a key task to perform to keep everything going—to signal the start of the final stage of the escape. So I ran to the top of the hill that separated all that the Bison would be leaving behind from the ship that would take them to their future, their liberation. It was my job to run to the top, and make sure all was ready for the last steps of the journey.
