Day 3

He finished his beer, putting the empty behind the seat. He thought that he heard a yell from the house, though an open window, but he couldn’t be sure. Just then, Dr. Bonanza came out the back door. He hoped down the steps, took a couple of steps at a quick jog, before falling into his limp. In his hand he held a rifle, and over his shoulder a leather satchel hung. He put the rifle on the rack in the back window, dropped the satchel on the seat between them, and slid into the seat and started up the car. Hugo saw the curtains part and then close quickly as they pulled around the side of the house, passing upslope and to the east of the cherry orchard. The passed by the big barn on a dirt track that looked well used but seldom taken care of. The barn itself, still showing red with white trim, need to be painted. It stood two stories, but ceiling on the lower floor where the sheep gathered, was only six and a half feet high, and the upper ceiling was only seven feet above that. Hugo wondered why anyone would make a barn aerodynamic. The other barns in the area looked like normal barns. Hugo figured that Dr. Bonanza had knowledge that others didn’t. Or maybe he didn’t.
“What’s in the bag,” Hugo asked, glancing at he gun. He never had like guns, or loud noises of any kind, for that matter, since that firecracker had gone off in his hand. His hand ached with the memory. He and a friend and his friend’s parents went to Southern California one summer for vacation. Their trip coincided with Independence Day. His friends relatives, with whom they were staying, had many, many fireworks. They thought that it would be fun to throw lady fingers out into the street. Hugo had gotten the idea that having one explode in the air would be much more interesting. It might have, Hugo never found out for the next one that he lit blew up in his hand with a loud and rather painful crack.
“There’s the shells in there for the rifle,” said Dr. Bonanza, “and also a camera. We’re heading down to where that sheep got killed. I want you to take a look.”
Hugo nodded. He searched the cooler for another beer.
They bumped along the dirt track for about half a mile when they came to another gate. Dr. Bonanza jumped out of the pick-up and remembered to limp all the way to the gate and all the way back. He drove the pick-up through and went to get out. It occurred to Hugo, as he sipped his beer that he could get the gate just as well. “I’ll get it,” he said, raising a hand to keep Dr. Bonanza in his seat.
Hugo hopped out of the truck and went to the gate. It consisted of four lengths of barbed wire held in line on three posts. Currently the gate lay in a crumpled heap on the ground beside the road. Hugo looked at it, only slightly perplexed. After some searching, he found the end post. He carefully picked it up, hoping not to catch a finger on the barbs and pulled it closed behind the pick-up. Blue exhaust clouded the ground around Hugo’s feet. He put the free post up against the stationary post and looped the stick-held-on-to-a-chain-by-baling-twine and experimentally tried to fasten it. Not having much luck he looked down the road: the sheep were watching him. As he tried to force it, the stick snapped back and he cut the heel of his right hand on the wire. It tore a not so neat gash about half an inch long in the soft skin. Hugo winced, but apparently that was all that the gate gods had wanted because the stick held and the gate stood upright.
Hugo shook his hand as he walked back to the open passenger door. Droplets of blood spattered against the fender, and a few splashed onto his boot. He put his hand in his mouth and sucked at the wound, hoping to stop the bleeding, I guess.
“Cut myself on the fence,” he said as he sat back down beside Dr. Bonanza.
“Well, it took you long enough,” said Dr. Bonanza. He pulled a red bandana from under the seat and threw it into Hugo’s lap.
“Thanks,” Hugo mumbled. He picked it up and regretted giving thanks for a handkerchief that had obviously resided in Dr. Bonanza’s pick-up for many years. He shook it out the open window and then regretfully pressed against the wound. He wondered how long it had been since his last tetanus shot.
Any confusion that Hugo had earlier felt, had been replaced with sullen resignation. He squelched his wet socks in his wet boots; he checked his wound, still dripping.
Dr. Bonanza turned the pick-up around a slight bend, then angled it up the shoulder of a larger road. It also was made of dirt, but had been graded recently and so made for much faster travel.
“That sheep got killed out down in the south end of my property,” said Dr. Bonanza. “Where it butts up against the refuge. Out on those rocks.”
“When was it killed?” asked Hugo.
“I found it yesterday morning, but it had been dead for a couple of days before that. Mrs. Bonanza called in the sheep and gave them their grain two nights ago. I didn’t see that one was missing until last night. She refuses to take good care of anything around here,” Dr. Bonanza scowled. Hugo thought of how nice the house looked and wondered if Dr. Bonanza wanted him to think that that was all his doing.
“What do you think killed it?” asked Hugo.
“I don’t know.” Dr. Bonanza finished off his beer and put the empty behind the seat. “That’s why I’m taking you out to have a look.”
Hugo groaned inwardly. He had known, but not admitted to himself that it had not been a coincidence that Bonanza had talked to him last night about the dead animals. Hugo had let it slip that he had worked for the forensics branch of the Oregon Department of Fish and Game (ODFG). He had been hired because he had a “knowledge veterinary medicine”. What that consisted of was three terms in the veterinary program at Hedlund College before he had moved on to his present career, if it could be called that.
“I don’t know that much about this kind of thing,” Hugo began.
“Nonsense,” Dr. Bonanza replied.
“I’m not really qualified…”
Dr. Bonanza waved his hand in dismissal. He put on the turn signal for the first time that Hugo had ever seen, and they stopped in front of another gate. Dr. Bonanza waved Hugo to sit down, as he jumped out and strode to the gate. His limp returned for the trip back to the pick-up.
“It’s not far now. Just over that little rise, out on the rocks.”
Hugo cringed at the thought of poking around a dead sheep. They are bad enough when they are alive, he thought. Why does Bonanza think that I want to see his damn dead sheep? He had seen some bad trauma on the animals that had been brought into the ODFG, mostly mammal vs. vehicle. Parts missing or unrecognizable. He cringed again at the memory of one unfortunate deer that had been hit by, he assumed, a pick-up not unlike this one. It had just drove off, of course, leaving the deer to limp to the side of the road, and slowly expire as the other cars raced past. Ye gods, he thought: left hind leg broken in three places and the hoof torn clean off.
A bang on the undercarriage brought Hugo back to the present. They had entered the rocks. Hugo could see the dead sheep laying on its side just ahead. Hugo checked his hand. The bleeding had stopped so he stuffed the bandana under the seat, fully expecting to have it flung at him the next time he cut himself.
The pick-up rolled to a stop and then rolled back a bit as Dr. Bonanza set it in park and let the brake off. He got out, as did Hugo, taking the gun and the satchel with him. Dr Bonanza looked around with beady eyes trying to locate the perpetrator with no luck.
Hugo couldn’t tear his gaze from the dead sheep. The turkey vultures had been at it, he could tell: they’d torn open the belly. He had to assume that the coyotes had not found it yet, because only one hind leg had gone missing. As they neared the carcass, Hugo could smell the rotting flesh. Flies buzzed around the open wounds, the haunch and the belly. They approached it from the belly side. The front let stood up at about a thirty degree angle. Hugo had the urge to sight up the leg and see what it pointed to. He resisted, however and continued slowly closer.
Dr. Bonanza had given up searching for whoever had killed his sheep. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and took out the camera. Hugo glanced at it. It looked like it must have been about a hundred years old. Hugo wondered what kind of film it took. He looked back at the sheep, intestines spilled out, black blood caked on the rocks. A wave of nausea swept over him. He resisted the urge to vomit. A little voice inside his head said that he should look for footprints, or something, but then he realized that even if there had been any, they would have been washed away by the previous night’s rain. He looked into the leg hole, noticing the socket for the femur and moved around to the back side, hoping to obscure the rotting belly. He glanced at the head and felt the vomit come. He couldn’t stop it and felt saddened losing those three beers that he had already enjoyed.
This is why I got out! He thought. Damnit. Damnit, Damnit.
He spit out the last of the sick and looked at Dr. Bonanza. “That’s alright,” Dr. Bonanza said. “I almost lost it when I noticed the brain missing too. It’s almost surgical,” he continued. “If you look real close, and you don’t have to if you don’t want, you can see that every bit of brain matter had been picked out. I’m not sure, But I think that even the (insert lower brain part here) has been removed, but I can’t tell for sure.”
Hugo moved closer to the sheep’s head. Now that he had thrown up, he felt fine. His hand shook a bit, but he didn’t plan on using it on the sheep anyway. He tilted his head to get a better look and had to agree that the (insert lower brain part here) had been removed. He easily could make out the top of the spinal cord.
Well, Hugo thought, it probably didn’t feel a thing when its leg was ripped off. “It was like this when you found it?” he asked.
“Exactly like this.”
“Then the vultures didn’t pull out the intestines and scatter them around like…that?” Hugo stopped himself. Why had he assumed that the vultures would scatter intestines? They would have carefully picked up every bit, not flung them around. The beer and the shock of the dead animal had confused his brain. Jesus, he thought. What animal would scatter intestines, on purpose like that?