Winter Moon

swelling. Extreme."
        "Maybe the state lab ought to test that brain tissue."
        "Brain tissue was part of what I sent them in the first place."
        "I see."
        "I've never encountered anything like it," Potter told him.
        Eduardo said nothing.
        "Very odd," Potter said. "Have there been more of them?"
        "More dead raccoons? No. Just the three."
        "I'm going to run some toxicological studies, see if maybe we're dealing with a poison here."
        "I haven't put out any poisons."
        "Could be an industrial toxin."
        "It could? There's no damned industry around here."
        "Well… a natural toxin, then."
        Eduardo said, "When you dissected them…"
        "Yes?"
        "… opened the skull, saw the brain inflamed and swollen…"
        "So much pressure, even after death, blood and spinal fluid squirted out the instant the bone saw cut through the cranium."
        "Vivid image."
        "Sorry. But that's why their eyes were bulging."
        "Did you just take samples of the brain tissue or…"
        "Yes?"
        "… did you actually dissect the brain?"
        "I performed complete cerebrotomies on two of them."
        "Opened their brains all the way up?"
        "Yes."
        "And you didn't find anything?"."Just what I told you."
        "Nothing… unusual?"
        The puzzlement in Potter's silence was almost audible. Then: "What would you have expected me to find, Mr. Fernandez?"
        Eduardo did not respond.
        "Mr. Fernandez?"
        "What about their spines?" Eduardo asked. "Did you examine their spines, the whole length of their spines?"
        "Yes, I did."
        "You find anything… attached?"
        "Attached?" Potter said.
        "Yes."
        "What do you mean, attached'?"
        "Might have… might have looked like a tumor."
        "Looked like a tumor?"
        "Say a tumor… something like that?"
        "No. Nothing like that. Nothing at all."
        Eduardo took the telephone handset away from his head long enough to swallow some beer.
        When he put the phone to his ear again, he heard Travis Potter saying,
        "-know something you haven't told me?"
        "Not that I'm aware of," Eduardo lied.
        The veterinarian was silent this time. Maybe he was sucking on a beer of his own. Then: "If you come across any more animals like this, will you call me?"
        "Yes."
        "Not just raccoons."
        "All right."
        "Any animals at all."
        "Sure."
        "Don't move them," Potter said.
        "I won't."."I want to see them in situ, just where they fell."
        "Whatever you say."
        "Well…"
        "Goodbye, Doctor."
        Eduardo hung up and went to the sink. He stared out the window at the forest at the top of the sloped backyard, west of the house.
        He wondered how long he would have to wait. He was sick to death of waiting.
        "Come on," he said softly to the hidden watcher in the woods.
        He was ready. Ready for hell or heaven or eternal nothingness, whatever came.
        He wasn't afraid of dying.
        What frightened him was the how of dying. What he might have to endure. What might be done to him in the final minutes or hours of his life. What he might see.
        On the morning of June twenty-first, as he was eating breakfast and listening to the world news on the radio, he looked up and saw a squirrel at the window in the north wall of the kitchen. It was perched on the window stool, gazing through the glass at him. Very still. Intense. As the raccoons had been.
        He watched it for a while, then concentrated on his breakfast again.
        Each time he looked up, it was on duty.
        After he washed the dishes, he went to the window, crouched, and came face-to-face with the squirrel. Only the pane of glass was between them. The animal seemed unfazed by this close inspection.
        He snapped one fingernail against the glass directly in front of its face.
        The squirrel didn't flinch.
        He rose, twisted the thumb-turn latch, and started to lift the lower half of the double-hung window.
        The squirrel leaped down from the stool and fled to the side yard, where it turned and regarded him intently once more.
        He closed and locked the window and went out to sit on the front porch.
        Two squirrels were already out there on the grass,