I Heard Animals' Voices novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ticket Said Eight Dollars
A keeper orders a lovesick tiger put down, Tierney hears him beg, and when Dr. Bramhall raises the dart gun she steps in front of it; a quiet voice tells the keeper to lower it.
The keeper said they would put the tiger down by five o'clock, and the tiger said that was bullshit.
Only I heard the second part.
I had been hearing animals since I was seven.
The swallow over my front door cursed the neighbors' power saws every morning, and the stray cat on my street spent all week complaining about sausages laced with rat poison.
I came to Metro City Zoo hoping a tiger would be quieter.
I was standing in the big cat house with a crumpled ticket in my fist when the keeper started talking.
She was tall, in pressed khakis, with a tablet on her arm and a name badge that said Dr. Lorna Bramhall.
"Please stay behind the rope, and thank you for being so patient with us today," she told the small crowd by the cage.
"Duke has hurt three handlers. If this continues, euthanasia may be our only option, and I hate saying it."
The visitors nodded sadly, and a little boy whispered, "Poor tiger."
The poor tiger put both paws on the bars and roared so loud the glass hummed.
"Euthanize me?" Duke yelled, in my ears only. "For what? I did nothing!"
"Okay, I did one thing. I like the girl in the next cage!"
"We are supposed to share an outdoor run, and every single day we miss each other!"
"By ten minutes! I'm not angry at people. I'm angry at the clock!"
From the next cage, a smaller tigress lifted her head off her paws.
"Duke," she said flatly. "Stop. Everyone can hear you."
Nobody could hear her either, which was the only mercy of the afternoon.
Duke slammed his shoulder into the door, and the whole cage rang.
The crowd backed away together, the way crowds do.
I did not back away.
I had spent eleven years keeping my mouth shut about this, and I was very good at it.
But a man in a suit was walking down the corridor toward us, and he was about to sign something.
"Excuse me," I said. "Why don't you put them together?"
Duke went quiet for the first time.
Then he said, "YES. Exactly. Thank you. Finally."
Dr. Bramhall turned around slowly.
Her eyes went down my jacket, past my sneakers, and stopped on the ticket in my hand.
"A recent graduate discount," she read. "Eight dollars. Did you just finish your exams?"
"Yesterday," I said.
"Congratulations." She smiled and held out a green marker for my map. "Then enjoy the sightseeing, and stay behind the rope."
"I have a doctorate in feline behaviorism from abroad, and you are telling me how to house my tigers?"
"Duke and Poppy are hostile to each other. He roars every time he sees her."
"Put them together and one of them leaves in a body bag."
"He roars because he likes her," I said.
Dr. Bramhall laughed, a short one, over my head, at the crowd.
"Of course he does. Go home, honey. Open a book."
"With that attitude you will need the discount for college too."
My face went hot.
Duke hit the bars again. "She is wrong! I only get loud because I like her!"
"I'm very sure he likes her," I said. "He's trying to court her."
"Courting." Dr. Bramhall rolled her eyes. "He bit another female last month. Is that courting?"
Duke's voice cracked with offense. "She climbed on me! I told her I was taken! I said it three times!"
"He says she climbed on him first," I said. "He says he told her he was taken."
A few visitors giggled, and Dr. Bramhall's mouth went flat.
"Finish your little tour," she said, "and get out of my cat house."
The man in the suit reached us, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.
A young man in gray vet coveralls walked half a step behind him, carrying a bag.
"Lorna," the man in the suit said. "Is there really no saving Duke?"
Dr. Bramhall dropped her voice into something mournful and practiced.
"I'm afraid not, Director. He lunges at anyone who comes near. Behaviorally, he is a liability."
"For everyone's safety, I recommend we do it today."
At the word today, Duke lost his mind.
"Don't you dare!" he roared. "Kill me and take me from her, and I will tear your throat out!"
He threw his whole five hundred pounds at the door, and a hot breath blew past the back of Dr. Bramhall's neck.
Every person in that corridor flinched.
Every person except the young vet, who looked at the tigress's cage instead of the tiger.
I noticed it and did not think about it, because Dr. Bramhall had already stepped back, pale, and was pointing at the cage.
"Director, look at that. He's completely out of control."
The director nodded to a keeper, who ran off and came back with a long gray dart gun.
Dr. Bramhall took it, raised the barrel, and aimed it at Duke's shoulder.
I thought about the eleven years.
I thought about the ticket in my fist, which had cost eight dollars and was apparently going to cost a tiger his life.
So I walked in front of the gun.
It took me three steps, and I said, "Stop."
Dr. Bramhall did not lower it.
"Move, kid," she said, with her finger on the trigger.
"Or you can have the dart instead."
"Lower it, Lorna," said a quiet voice behind her.
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