Sleeping Beauty
By Susan Graham
He wasn’t particularly cold. If anything, he was uncomfortable in his layers, but his hand shook, like the breeze was a gale and his hands were leaves about to be torn from their branches. He’d awoken before dawn, trembling between the blankets. Garry fumbled for the bottle he’d tried hard to ignore for the past 24 hours.
“Min-minute,” was all he could manage for the cats purring and winding round where he lay. Their affectionate yellow eyes glowed against a backdrop of murky forest. Even his tongue was pulsing in his dry mouth. He’d been drinking for so long that any attempt to stop always brought on the symptoms. He knew better than to be without his liquor.
“Hair of the dog,” he thought, even though he knew that wasn’t quite right.
He tilted the bottle and took a few burning gulps. He climbed out of his sleeping bag and leaned against the wall of the lean-to. He closed his eyes and waited for the alcohol to calm his tremors. When his nervous system gained enough equilibrium to let him grasp the pull tabs on the cans of cat food, the sucking sound they made as he opened them caused the cats to spin tighter round his ankles in silky circles and nudge his wrists with their whiskers.
He squinted in search of his favorite. He located her sitting regally erect and staring at him intently, as always. The fur on her nose and around her eyes was dusted white. Her tortoiseshell coat was short and bristly. She hung back from the fray, ignoring the frenzied gorging of the other cats, knowing he’d be saving the best for last, for her. When most of the cats had had their fill, they slunk off into the woods. A few more familiar with the routine spread out on the ground to warm themselves in patches of rising sun.
“Lizzie,” he crooned. The name was short for Elizabeth, royal as her demeanor. He called to her again, drawing her name out.
“Lizzieeeee, look what I have.”
The other cats still lingering nearby watched sullenly as Lizzie padded closer, tail high. He opened a takeout carton of chicken wings Ian had given him the day before. Ian had held them out insistently, saying Garry needed to eat more. Garry sniffed the carton’s contents; he didn’t want to offer Lizzie spoiled food. Finding it acceptable, he tore tiny bits of chicken from the bones and held them out to the cat.
She ate delicately from his fingers. Even though she was essentially wild, if he left his spot next to the petrol station, to go to the bottle shop, the market, or to sit on one of the benches in the town park, she trotted along behind him, keeping him within sight. Even when he walked all the way to the library on hot days, to sit in its serene, air-conditioned rooms, she followed along and waited near the step for him to re-emerge. The locals knew her name, knew she belonged to him, and greeted her with a quick pet when they saw her sitting sentinel.
When Lizzie had swallowed the last of the chicken he had to offer, she moved with exaggerated slowness back to her original post a few yards away. She seemed to be mocking the other cats, showing off her privilege, and they glared at her resentfully in return.
That was when he first saw it. Lizzie had lowered herself onto the pavement next to a creature that, in his bleariness, he’d mistaken for one of the cats. The tilt of its darkly liquid, almond shaped eyes conveyed something slightly feline. But its long muzzle definitely said dog. It cowered shyly next to the cat. When he started toward it—Someone’s lost their puppy, he thought—it scrambled backward in fright.
“You’re not used to people, huh?” he murmured. The puppy hissed with its jaws spread wide. It turned again, showing him the stripes along its hindquarters. Garry shut his eyes.
I’m still too drunk. I’m not fully awake. I thought I was, but now I’m going to lay down and count to ten, and then I’ll wake up properly.
He’d used this method many times to extricate himself from dreams he wasn’t enjoying. It never failed to work. He laid down on the gravel-strewn ground and closed his eyes. He slowed his count as he neared the final number. When he opened his eyes, Lizzie blinked at him sleepily. The puppy cavorted round her, snapping at the air.
_____________
Garry slumped at the lone picnic table that stood next to the back door. It had appeared when Ian first started serving food in the convenience store attached to the petrol station, but Garry was the only one who ever sat there anymore. He was turning a bottle round in his hands while he pondered its contents. He needed to make it last, but it beckoned through the glass. A sandwich, still wrapped, sat next to his elbow. Ian had laid it there earlier: one of the customers had specifically requested no mayo and Ian had slathered the bread without thinking.
“Here—you won’t be afraid of a little mayo, will you? You need to line your stomach anyway,” Ian had said, eyeing the large brown bottle Garry guarded. “A bit less drink and a bit more food will do you good.”
Ian squinted at Garry’s crown, at the frizzled gray hair not filthy but not particularly clean. He envied Garry nothing except for that head of thick hair. His own hair had vacated the top of his head years ago, leaving him with a monk’s tonsure that he let grow rebelliously long and wore gathered into a braid at the nape of his neck. He waited until Garry had rolled his eyes up to meet his gaze and had given him an ironic smile.
“You know I know you’re right about that. Thanks.”
Ian let Garry stay in the lean-to out back of his petrol station, had set him up with a makeshift bed, encouraged him to come into the general store for coffee and to wash up. He even allowed the feeding of the cats: Garry accumulated them until the locals from the village started calling Ian’s store “the cattery.”
The cats came and went as they liked, always returning because Garry was their constant, a reliable source of sustenance. It wasn’t lost on him that he was similarly situated to Ian, whose kindness kept him alive.
Garry had started out all right when he first returned from overseas. He’d been relieved, if not entirely happy, to settle into the familiar surroundings of the town where he’d grown up, back with the people who’d known him as a child and then as a mediocre student and much better athlete in high school. Within his first year back home, though, he knew something inside him had come loose. He’d willed himself through the years, through jobs, a failed marriage, and the flatness of his days with the comforting knowledge he’d be numb every night with the help of drinking.
Eventually, his balance tipped, and he was drunk more than he was sober. He decided a change of scene might be best, and he’d drifted around the countryside, until he passed the village on the mountain. He’d continued higher up the winding road, and stopped at Ian’s station to ask for something to eat. Ian immediately recognized Garry as a fellow veteran.
Ian asked few questions—just enough to show that he knew the things Garry saw when he closed his eyes and that he understood Garry couldn’t compartmentalize like he could. He’d gently coerced Garry into staying, offering him a place to sleep. Ian was matter-of-fact about it, though, and made clear that his assistance had boundaries they both understood, so Garry felt no shame for his reliance.
The church reverend from the village tried every so often to lure Garry into his white stucco church with its stained-glass portrayals of pain and redemption, to get him to pray, repent his way of living, and agree to enter the church-sponsored men’s shelter. But Garry didn’t want to live in the village. He was too set in his ways become domesticated. He preferred his refuge behind the station, along the isolated mountain road.
Garry opened the sandwich and took a bite of the ham, pickle, and lettuce layered between slices of soggy toast. He pulled the sandwich apart and laid all but one piece of ham to the side. He reassembled the sandwich with the single slice of ham and managed to get about half of it down between alternating sips from the bottle of vodka and a can of lukewarm cola. Then he stashed the bottle with his belongings, folded the ham in the wrapper, and discarded the rest. He walked to the back of the lot and into the woods.
Lizzie had been sleeping at his feet next to the picnic table, and now she trotted along behind him. He stopped at a small clearing about twenty yards in, where he’d put together a makeshift shelter using a wood pallet and plastic bags laid over top.
“Hey there, puppy,” he said, even though he knew this was no puppy. Before Ian came to open his store, Garry had coaxed the animal away from the station and into the trees. He’d used a length of thin rope to fashion a collar for the animal, and wrapped the end round the base of a sapling to keep it from running away. This was only temporary. He needed to return it to its kin. Not that he knew how to find them. Not that he was even sure they existed. But this one was so young. There were definitely more of its kind, somewhere.
He knelt down and offered the ham. After only a day, the puppy seemed to trust him, its hunger quickly overriding caution. After devouring the ham with a snap of its long jaw, the puppy laid on the ground and went still. It watched Garry with its forepaws stretched straight, and its head held erect, sphinxlike. Garry wanted to keep the animal away from prying eyes, but he was uneasy about leaving it alone in the woods, tied to the tree.
“Ok, you’re coming with me, puppy.” It perched placidly in his arms as he carried it back to the petrol station, which was closed for the evening. Ian always said he preferred the small-town way of doing business, where he could set his own hours. Ian’s place was mostly frequented by the locals, with periodic stops by tourists headed to the campsite further up the mountain. Everyone knew the store closed early so that Ian could have dinner at home with his wife. If you wanted 24-hour service, there was another station a few miles away, along the main highway.
When Garry set the animal down, it sidled up to Lizzie and lay at her feet. The sun was already low in the sky, and Garry settled onto his sleeping bag, bottle at his side. He relaxed into the dusk sounds: leaves rustling overhead, an owl hooting, the sporadic chirping of crickets that would soon crescendo. The sky was clear. It was a night to look at the stars and appreciate the fact that he wasn’t relegated to living under a roof that obscured his view. He reached out to touch the bottle, found its presence reassuring, but he didn’t drink.
The animal started nosing around the site. Its gait was oddly stiff, and gave the impression it wasn’t built for running. Drawn by the aroma of spoilage, it loped toward the dumpster. Garry considered tying it up again, but wanted to give it a few more minutes of freedom.
He listened for the rumble of vehicles. Someone driving by would likely mistake the animal for one of the cats, if they noticed it at all. Drivers slowed as they rounded the curve in the road but they’d step on the gas immediately on either side of the bend. If there was any sign of more than the briefest pause in acceleration, he was prepared to move the animal out of sight before anyone could pull in to the station.
What he didn’t consider was the possibility of approaching bicyclists. He didn’t pick up the grinding of their tires on the asphalt until it was too late. Two boys, coming from the direction of the campgrounds, rolled up and went straight for the air pump. One of them was riding with a tire that had gone nearly flat. Garry estimated they were around 10 years old, young enough that they were unlikely to cause any trouble. They examined the air hose, trying to figure out how it worked. One of the boys looked around for help.
“Do you work here?” A shock of dark hair fell forward over one eye as the boy addressed Garry. The eye Garry could see was pale blue and set deep in its socket. The setting sun glinted off his braces as he spoke.
“No, the station is closed. But you can use the pump. Just go slow, don’t overfill it.” He hoped they’d be on their way soon. The puppy was still laying quietly next to Lizzie, and would remain unnoticed as long as it didn’t make any sudden moves to draw the boys’ attention.
While the boy with the floppy bangs got to work inflating his tire, the other stared toward the cats that, true to their crepuscular nature, were done sleeping the afternoon away, and were stretching, arching their backs, preparing for their night prowling.
“Why are there so many of them?” This boy was stocky and lacked the easy youthful grace of his friend. He approached one of the cats and reached out to pet it. It raised its head to bump against his palm. When he moved to stroke its back, it cringed and leapt away.
“They get fed here, so they stick around the station. They’ll be off hunting soon.” Garry moved in front of the puppy, noticing how the boy’s roving gaze snagged on its difference.
“What is that?” The boy had already pulled out his phone and was holding it up to take a photo. Before Garry could think of a way to intercede, there was a flash and a click and the boy was squinting at his screen.
“It’s a puppy,” Garry said.
The boy looked at Garry and then back at his phone. “No, I don’t think so. It looks-” His voice trailed off. He turned and walked back to his friend who had filled his tire and was replacing the hose on the pump. The light had almost disappeared and the boys were shadows now.
“Are you ready?” said the stocky boy to his friend. They both turned to look at Garry. The taller one thanked him, and then they rode off. Garry looked down at the animal, where it dozed with its head on its paws, and then at Lizzie, who apparently felt she needed to remain by the puppy’s side rather than dissolve into the dark as she usually would.
_____________
A bad couple of days followed. Garry had lapsed into taking long pulls from the bottle after they boys left, until he passed out. He revived, found a way to acquire more drink, and then spent nearly a day and a half mostly drowsing in the shade of the lean-to. He still managed to take care of the puppy, and kept it hidden behind the shed, where it stayed silent. Such a quiet creature, but it seemed content. That the boys had seen it wasn’t good, but perhaps they’d forget about it soon enough. At least Ian hadn’t noticed that an animal everyone believed had gone extinct was living on his property.
Garry woke again in darkness. The station was empty, the sign turned off and the lights inside extinguished. A paper bag with its top neatly folded over had been placed atop the picnic table. Next to the food he hoped Garry would consume when he awoke, Ian had pointedly left a large bottle of water.
Garry dragged himself to sitting. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he knew he must still be drunk, though his head felt surprisingly clear. He opened the bag, found a cold egg sandwich, some stale chips, and Ian’s idea of a vegetable: a single large dill pickle, floridly green and wrapped in plastic.
Thinking the egg might be good for the puppy, he carried the bag to where it was curled on a makeshift bed of a few of Garry’s crumpled shirts. He undid the rope and lured it out into the open with the sandwich. Lizzie emerged from the side of the building and watched intently as the puppy sniffed and then wolfed down the egg.
Counting on a quiet night, Garry amused himself by trying to teach the puppy to pick up twigs he tossed across the parking lot and bring them back to him. It demonstrated no aptitude for fetching, though.
“No, puppy. You’re certainly not a dog, and won’t be learning dog tricks.” The puppy’s ears pricked and swiveled west, toward the road. The growl of an engine echoed up the mountainside.
“C’mon, come here!” Garry called to the puppy. It stared at him curiously as he went to pick it up and then skittered just out of reach as soon as he got near. It stopped and waited for him to approach again, before playfully galloping away before he could catch it. A black SUV pulled into the station. Too well-shined to have spent much time traveling the dusty rural roads, its headlights swung round until they landed on Garry gracelessly jogging in pursuit of the animal.
“Look! There it is!” A girl had opened the passenger door, stepping out before the vehicle had time to stop. Her legs went out from under her, and to Garry’s horror, she was dragged with the toes of her platform sandals dragging on the gravel while she clung to the open window. He was relieved to see she just managed to keep from falling under the wheels of the vehicle. The last thing he needed was for the police to show up because the girl managed to get herself run over right in front of the station. As soon as the SUV came to a full stop, the girl righted herself.
“Oh god-look how sweet he is!” She let go of the truck and came straight for Garry, or so he thought. She held her arms akimbo, as if coming in for a hug. Garry stood in place, stunned. The girl walked right past him, approaching the puppy with her hands outstretched. It stared at her uneasily before rollicking away, continuing the game of avoidance it had been playing with Garry.
“Felicia, calm down. You’re scaring him,” the driver of the car called after the girl. Then he turned to Garry, who was suffused with irritation because he was sure the puppy was female, “Your pet’s gone viral, man. Fee saw the photo and freaked out. She demanded we drive up here to see it. I didn’t think it was real, but there he is!”
These people weren’t from the village and they hadn’t come from the campground. They looked like they’d come from the city. The girl was still chasing the animal, hindered by her ridiculously high heels. She snapped her fingers and cooed as she stumbled after it.
The driver had taken out his phone and was taking pictures. Garry stood mute, unsure how to stop what was happening. The car was still running, doors open, and the puppy scampered into the beam of the headlights, its striped haunches flashing. Suddenly the girl caught up to it. She clasped it round its plump middle and lifted it into the air.
“Here, get one of me holding him!”
The puppy, bewildered by the girl’s boisterous affection, terrified at being hoisted off the ground so rapidly and against its will, twisted frantically. Spurred on by the puppy’s distress, Lizzie made a beeline for the girl’s bare legs and swiped with her paw, claws extended. With a deliberate turn of its head, the puppy clamped its long jaws around the girl’s hand.
Shrieking, she yanked her hand away from the puppy’s mouth and kicked at Lizzie. Lizzie danced gracefully out of reach. With a plaintive yip, puppy dropped and landed hard on its side. It scrambled to its feet and tore off into the woods. Garry headed after it, avoiding the girl’s eyes as he passed her.
“I’m sorry, I know he didn’t mean it. It’s my fault--I just scared him,” the girl called after him. Garry suppressed an impulse to knock her over, right off her towering shoes.
“You know you can’t keep him, right?” The driver’s voice was already faint, as Garry crashed further into the trees, Lizzie at his heels.
Away from the car’s blinding headlights, Garry’s eyes adjusted to the night forest. He continued walking, searching for any sign of the puppy. Lizzie darted ahead. She would be his guide in the search. The pale spots on her mottled fur flashed among the ferns, leading him onward.
Sure enough, he soon discerned the barest hint of the puppy’s pale striped coat in the underbrush. It emerged cautiously when he knelt and held out his hand. Lizzie gave the puppy a proprietary rub of her cheek. Gently gathering the puppy into his arms, Garry continued walking into the woods.
He needed to put as much distance as possible between the puppy and the girl who’d traveled from the city, prompted by whatever social media photo the young boy on the bicycle must have posted. More gawkers would be arriving behind her. There might be news vans staking claim to Ian’s parking lot, carrying journalists with their invasive cameras and aggressive questions. Animal control, experts from the zoo, researchers from the university—they were all going to show up. But the first to make the trip would most likely be the dreamers, the crazies, and the normal people who simply wanted to believe in the existence of magical creatures.
Garry’s foot hit a stone at an angle that twisted his ankle and he almost fell. He cursed his inadequacy. An old alcoholic was not the ideal hero for spiriting the puppy to safety. And the haste of their escape meant he’d left his bottles behind. He’d awoken needing a drink. Now the thirst was growing. Leaning against a tree to catch his breath, he felt the puppy’s tongue lick the underside of his chin. He looked down into the wide black eyes.
“That’s right, I’m the mad idiot who thinks he can save you.”
After he’d walked as far as he could, Garry stopped and sank to the ground. The thick forest had turned misty gray with the coming day. Need for drink fogged his mind and made him nauseous. He’d experienced withdrawal before; each time was worse than the last. He had no choice but to let it happen. He knew he needed to drink some water while he still had his wits about him. He brought all the plants he could reach to his mouth and drank the dew that still coated the leaves. It wasn’t much, but would have to do. He had nothing to feed Lizzie or the puppy. Perhaps the cat would teach the puppy to hunt. He laid back then, and waited. He’d done his work. The puppy wouldn’t be found.
____________
Ian spent weeks fending off the reporters. The local media showed up, and then the international correspondents came from afar with their translators, all in search of the thylacine seen in the photos that had infused social media feeds across the globe. Researchers were declaring this the most credible documentation of a thylacine sighting since the last one known to exist had died in captivity.
When Garry had first disappeared, Ian hadn’t been concerned. Garry was fighting his demons, and perhaps he wanted to do so on his own. Ian had noticed his recent attempts to stop drinking, though Garry’s every cell had become so accustomed to the alcohol, Ian wasn’t sure he could succeed without entering some sort of program.
Within days, though, people started showing up. They’d present Ian with photos of the mythical creature, a young specimen, sitting in anachronistic proximity to the dumpster outside his store. Even more jarring were the images in which Garry appeared with the animal, staring slack-jawed into the camera, hands held out in a futile attempt to hide it. In one, he was caught mid-step by a spotlight that outlined his form sharply against the trees, as he appeared to be chasing it across the parking lot. In the photos, Garry was bedraggled, and much more frail-looking than he’d seemed when Ian saw him day-to-day. His pants sagged despite the belt Ian had given him, and his plaid shirt hung off his skinny frame. Ian shook his head and looked away.
As the days turned to weeks, Ian started to worry that Garry had met with foul play, perhaps a result of the craze surrounding the animal, or else his alcoholism had caught up with him. The continuing presence of the undisturbed liquor bottles alarmed Ian the most. Garry was either deliriously wandering the mountain or he was dead.
Each morning as Ian arrived to open the store, he first walked round to the back. He nudged the sleeping bag, still crumpled in the lean-to, with the toe of his boot. He rifled through Garry’s pile of dog-eared paperbacks, searching for a diary, a note, any evidence that Garry had intended to stay away, but he found nothing. When he took the sleeping bag home to wash it and put it into storage with the rest of Garry’s belongings, just in case he returned, he left his own note in the lean-to pinned to the wall: Welcome back. You’ve been missed. I’ve got coffee inside.
Ian needed the onslaught of visitors to stop. At first, he told all of them he had never seen the animal in the photos, knew nothing about any of it. Eventually he started saying that he was sure his old friend had faked the whole thing, painting stripes on a dog, the genetic mishmash of its ancestry making it unusual-looking enough to warrant comparison with an animal last seen alive over a hundred years ago.
After the scientific community and the journalists moved on, the seekers and the true-believers kept coming. Ian gave up trying to dissuade them, and instead he re-fashioned his business as part gas station, part tourist attraction. The station now had a gift shop full of trinkets for sale and postcards he’d had made. There was a sitting area with a screen on which a black-and-white film of the last known thylacine in captivity paced nervously around its cage in a continuous loop. Despite all of the extra business, he still closed the store early every evening so that he could go home to have dinner with his wife.
During moments where the store was empty, Ian spent time viewing the overnight footage from the motion-sensor activated camera he’d set up behind the store. The camera’s fish-eye view stretched from the strip of asphalt where the dumpster sat at the edge of the parking lot to where the picnic table stood outside the back door. In between, Garry’s empty lean-to was still there. The forest lurked in the background, a featureless dark silhouette.
Ian hadn’t told anyone about the camera, though once in a while some tourists on the way to the campgrounds noticed it and asked if there was crime in the area warranting security cameras. Ian assured them this wasn’t the case. He’d never had any trouble. He was just extra cautions. He never said aloud what the camera was really for.
Since he’d seen the photos of Garry with the thylacine next to the store, Ian had been plagued with an intense yearning for a sighting of his own. Most of the time, the grainy footage revealed only the cats that remained since Ian had taken over their feeding after Garry left, or wild animals that emerged from the woods to scavenge the garbage when the dumpster needed emptying. Ian found himself examining the edge of the forest with the most interest. That was where he’d seen mysterious forms subtly materialize from the solid mass of trees. Sometimes he could almost perceive a flash of pale stripes, but when he rewound and looked again, he thought it must be the stems of grass growing there, disturbed by a sudden breeze. He’d watch it again, again, again, stripes, stems, stripes, stems, finding no certainty in his vision.
The bit of footage that haunted him and that he couldn’t get out of his head showed a larger, more defined shape among the trees. Ian had almost missed its subtle presence, and he let it pass, perceiving it as a trick of light, clouds passing over the moon. But a tug of recognition made him start. He was sure he’d seen Garry standing at the edge of the forest, just inside the tree line. His heart thumped, and he’d rewound the tape and played it again, but he couldn’t locate the disturbance that had caught his eye. He toggled the film back and forth, over and over, searching futilely for the place where he was sure he’d seen his friend.
