Jackie's Wild Seattle by Will Hobbs Page A

Shannon. Didn’t want you to worry. I have some peculiar ways.”
    â€œI’ve noticed that.”
    â€œYou might have noticed I don’t have a lot of close friends. I’m not so great on my people skills.”
    â€œI wouldn’t say that, except with Tyler, I suppose.”
    â€œTo tell you the truth, I get along with animals better than I do with most people. They’re a lot more honest, a lot more straightforward, a lot more dignified. I’m a strange one—your mother should have told you.”
    â€œIt’s hard to figure out what to tell people and what not to,” I said.
    â€œI actually envy the animals sometimes. Instinct is so strong with them. A deer knows how to be a deer, a raven knows how to be a raven. Every single one of us has to struggle to find out what it means to be human. We are so capable of messing up it’s not funny. Sometimes it’s hard to keep your sense of humor. You know what I mean?”
    Around his eyes, he looked so sad. I said, “Can’t you just clap your hands together real loud and frighten Liberty into standing up?”
    â€œTried it,” he said with a strangled laugh. “Liberty’s on your mind too?”
    â€œA lot, especially because you care about her so much.”
    â€œI’ve been trying to give her my life force. She hears me. Oh, she hears me. I haven’t given up on her by a long shot. That girl’s going to make it, I know she will.”
    Â 
    Time slowed down once we were no longer chasing around in the rescue van. I learned to milk the goats, helped out in Jackie’s garden some, and assisted at the clinic. I got to know lots of the volunteers by name, picked blackberries by the gallon, made some jams and pies in Jackie’s kitchen.
    Sometimes I would accompany Cody to the creek that ran through the valley. It was about a ten-minute walk. At the creek it was shady and cool, a great place to hang out. I would read while he tried to catch frogs. They weren’t that easy to grab. The third time we went, Cody told me this was the same creek where Tyler killed the dog. I asked him how he knew that, and he said that it was somebody at Robbie’s school who saw it happen.
    At Jackie’s these days, there was a deer hanging around the garden fence, browsing, twitching her tail and keeping her large ears attuned to the golden retrievers. Once in a while the dogs hassled her, but generally they were oblivious on the office porch. The deer was biding her time, Jackie said, waiting for us to leave the garden gate open.
    The doe was bigger than our deer in the East. Jackie said it was a mule deer, named after the big ears. Jackie was pretty sure the doe was pregnant. Midsummer was late for dropping a fawn but sometimes the animals got off schedule. The year before, the center took care of a baby rock dove that hatched in November.
    One day Cody and I followed the deer through the trees and around the edge of Jackie’s five acres. At the deer pen she visited the crippled doe whose job was to keep orphaned fawns company. The two touched noses through the chain-link fence.
    One of those slow days, as I was heading with my novel for some shady quiet time in Jackie’s cedar grove, a voicefrom behind me called my name. It was Tyler, just getting off work.
    I let him catch up. “What’s up?” I asked.
    He shrugged, caught my eye, then looked away. “I don’t know, just wondered if you wanted to hang out. You know, just talk. You want to take a walk or something?”
    I didn’t think so—I’d been staying away—but I didn’t say so. “I have to stay within shouting distance of Cody. He’s over there with Robbie. Over here in the trees there’s a nice cool spot.”
    â€œPerfect.”
    I climbed up onto my stump and Tyler followed. I sat down cross-legged and he did the same. “Sweet,” he said.
    â€œIt’s the perfect