Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Charlie smells like musk perfume. He wears a green or maroon jacket with wide lapels, black pants with two-inch cuffs, black shoes with sponge soles, and an open-collar shirt that stands tall in back. The flat gold chain around his neck gets buried in gray hair that curls in the V of his collar. A college ring with a blue stone weights the third finger of his right hand. On the left hand is a band set with diamonds — not chips. He doesn’t need knucks. He doesn’t need a gun. Charlie is strong. “Just let some guy smart-mouth me,” he says. “Just let them!”

I’m a keeper at the zoo, Jack Leonard by name, Jack L. by nickname. Smart guys say it like “jackal.” I got a limp and I’m ugly. Now that Kally has left, I got Charlie for a friend. The lioness I’m in charge of don’t like me at all. Or if she does, she likes me the way she likes any cripple’ thing. She sees the hitch in my hip and says, Uh-huh! Just you wait, cripple man. Just you wait!

In Birmingham she clawed a keeper. They’d’ve put her down but she’s so pretty, we offered a trade. Got this fur on her neck like a lady’s cape. Got a walk about her, and a talk about her. When I throw her meat chunks she chuckle down deep. Thank you, cripple man, she say.

Some evenings after work when Charlie ain’t hurrying home to the good supper Kally cooked for him, or got a ball game to watch on his big TV, him and me sit outside the cat house and drink us some beer. “A twilight respite,” Charlie calls it.

Charlie explains things to me. His eyes hide deep in his face, like in caves, and sparkle out little and bright. Charlie’s maybe the smartest man I know, and the quickest. A man that crosses Charlie will have cause to wish he hadn’t.

Drinking on the grounds is against all rules, but we carry our beer in a paper sack to show the night guards some respect. They make a wide circle around Charlie. One that joked about seeing Charlie drink beer got fired for sleeping on duty and carelessness with a firearm. None of the rest of them want to see the grounds boss drink beer.

Charlie and me don’t call attention to ourselves. Just once we did. Charlie got the notion our oldest lion, Leo, needed some fresh meat. I took Leo on a chain to Monkey Island and let him look at them hanging in trees, screaming. I knew he wouldn’t cross the moat to get him one. He’s so old and spoiled he expects me to feed him.

When Leo came padding out of his cage, roaring loud enough to deafen a man, everything in the zoo screamed or barked or yowled or brayed. Leo showed his yellow snags and looked at Charlie. Charlie don’t like to be in the thin center of a lion’s eye. Leo made a little jump at him, but I got the chain and Leo ain’t gonna do nothing. He ain’t got it in him. But what does Charlie do? He runs.

I yell after Charlie, “Come back, Shane! Come back!”

Charlie comes back, draws himself up, and says, “Well, Jack L., I can retrieve my beer can, but I don’t think I can retrieve my dignity.”

I say, “How’d you move that fast, Charlie? I never saw a stout man run so fast.”

“Let it alone.”

I giggle.

“Okay, wise guy. What would you do if a lion came after you, and you didn’t have a weapon?”

“I’d order it to its cage.”

“Suppose that didn’t work.”

“I could run pretty fast if I had to.”

Charlie says patiently, “No you couldn’t. One of your legs is two inches shorter than the other.”

I showed Charlie and Leo my Reeboks. “These are magic shoes. I been practicing.”

“I can beat you in a fifty-meter dash, even with this.” Charlie pats the roll hanging over his belt.

“You named that thing?”

Charlie’s face gets hard like a rock. “Put that cat up. I’m going home and see what Kally fixed me for dinner.”

“Stay awhile, Charlie. I got another six-pack.”

“Get a life, why don’t you?”

That night I ate two peanut butter sandwiches with sour pickles while I watched a nature program about wolves. When there is not a nature program on TV, I watch my tapes. I’ve bought all the predator tapes. I got a life. There’s nothing better than living with predators, except maybe living with Kally.

“Jeez!” Charlie says the next time we meet for a drink. His lips tighten and he lifts his nose. “You smell like cat piss, man. You bathe in it?”

“No, I’m real careful, Charlie. I don’t want to get any on me. Cat piss must hop oh me from what cats have pissed on. It jumps like ticks do. That’s what I figure.”

“Where’d you acquire that idea?”

“I don’t know. I just thought it up.”

“Jeez! I don’t know why I put up with you. You’re nasty. You’re inhuman.”

“Kally didn’t think I was,” I say. My voice sounds whiny.

“Aw, kid, Kally felt sorry for you. You know how it is when you get some poor crippled dog out of the pound, and you want to feed it and make it normal?”

“Kally liked me. I know she did.”

“How could a woman stand a man that smells like cat piss?”