Dream Baby. Ann Evans

the sunlight sifting through them was strong enough for Nora to see that each of the animals was faring well. Within the next two weeks, they would all be able to be returned to the nearby national forest. Even Marjorie.

      It was with some reluctance that Nora moved closer to the pen where the deer was penned. She knew she’d made a mistake with the fawn, an unforgivable error for a rehabber to make.

      Marjorie’s mother had been killed on the road, and the animal had been brought to her when she’d been hardly old enough to stand, malnourished and soaking wet. Nora had bottle-fed her, had wrapped her in blankets and stroked her for hours until the poor thing had stopped shivering. The fawn’s sweet brown eyes had looked up at her defenselessly, trustingly, as though she knew Nora was trying to save her life but didn’t know what to do to help.

      And in that moment, Nora had done something every rehabber was supposed to avoid at all costs—she had fallen in love with one of her charges.

      The fawn needed her as no other animal had. Nora brought the creature back from the brink of death at least half a dozen times during those first few days. In the first critical week, she had spent more time out here on a cot in the shed than in her own bed. But gradually the fawn had begun to rally and thrive.

      Now, after six months, she was ready to be reintroduced to the wild. Nora knew in her heart it was past time, really. If she kept Marjorie much longer, the deer would lose all her instincts for survival.

      Nora moved to the pen’s entrance, but went no farther. Too often the deer had lifted her head over the edge of the door for a scratch, or had taken food from Nora’s hand. Exhibiting such tame and. trusting behavior was sweet and desirable in a deer park, but unacceptable for a wild animal. Knowing she was responsible for this kind of human imprinting, Nora was doing her best to reestablish some boundaries between the two of them.

      The deer ran her body against the wire pen, obviously hoping for a friendly rub. Nora backed away. “I’m sorry, little girl,” she said. “No more human contact. You’ve got to stay wild.”

      As though disappointed, the fawn snorted noisily, then wandered to the back of the pen to paw through the hay. She looked so healthy now, muscled, sleek, with none of the nicks and scars so many deer in the woods suffered. Nora watched the animal for a long time, wondering where she’d find the strength to send her off to join others of his kind.

      While Nora stood there silently asking how she could have allowed herself to make such a mistake with Marjorie, she became aware of another presence. Actually, she heard the boy long before he appeared in the open doorway of the shed. He walked like a city kid—noisily, with total disregard for the beauty of the silence and his surroundings. From the corner of her eye she saw him move tentatively forward, inspecting the place.

      Without glancing his way, Nora pulled a bale of hay off the small stack the feed store had delivered last week.

      The boy moved into her line of vision, observing her silently for a long time. Then he asked, “Are you...like...one of those weird old ladies that keep eighty-two cats in their house?”

      Nora straightened. “Gosh, I hope not. Come back in fifty years, and we’ll see.” She motioned behind him where a rusty box of tools sat on a wooden feed bin. “Hand me those wire cutters, will you?”

      It took him longer than it should have to figure out which tool she meant. Finally, he lifted the wire cutters cautiously and held them out to her with a questioning look.

      “Those are the ones,” she told him. She slid the cutters under the wire binding the hay together. One snip, and the bale began to fall apart into flakes. “Feel like helping out?”

      “I don’t want to get dirty.”

      “I can see why,” Nora replied, eyeing the expensive cut of his slacks and shirt. Who dressed a kid—especially a boy—like that? “Maybe you’d better not. I need someone who can really dig in and help me out.”

      The boy seemed to consider this statement for a moment or two, then he shrugged. “I’ll be careful, and I guess there’s nothing better to do.”

      “Can you tear this hay into pieces?” With one hand she indicated a second small pen she’d recently finished constructing. “Then spread it around the floor there?”

      He nodded and began pulling apart the hay, methodically placing it in layers across the dirt floor of the pen while she retrieved medicines from the small refrigerator under one of the counters. She noticed that he was very careful not to allow the straw to touch his clothes.

      “Don’t you have anyone to do this for you?” he asked.

      “I do now. What’s your name?”

      “Charles.”

      He said his name precisely, as though he thought it held special meaning. She inclined her head toward him. “Welcome to the rehab shed, Charles. Don’t talk too loud and don’t move too suddenly. It frightens the animals. And if you want to hang on to all your fingers, don’t put them in the cages. All right?”

      He nodded again. “So what’s a rehab shed?” he asked when he was about halfway through the chore.

      “A place where sick wild animals get better. Every year a few run into trouble—cars, hunters with no sense, predators that beat them up pretty badly. If the problem is fixable, they’re brought here so I can nurse them back to health.”

      “So they’re your pets.”

      She thought of Marjorie and shook her head firmly. “No. A rehabber isn’t allowed to turn them into pets. They have to remain wild. Otherwise they won’t know how to survive once you’ve released them.” From the sink in one corner, she added a few drops of water to the medicinal base she planned to use on Bandit’s cuts. “Want to meet them?”

      He nodded, and she led him to the cages while she gently stirred the yellow concoction into a paste. “This is Jeckle,” she said, inclining her head toward the crow, then the mockingbird. “And that’s Begger. They were both brought to me as orphans.”

      Charles wrinkled his nose as he peered into Jeckle’s cage. “Why are you bothering to save him? He’s just a crow. They’re everywhere.”

      “You see little boys everywhere, but wouldn’t you want someone to save you if you were in trouble?”

      “I’m not a little boy,” Charles said in an aggrieved tone. “I’m nearly a teenager.”

      “Well, Jeckle is important to me. All creatures ate.”

      The kid looked up at her with sudden speculation. “Do they pay you lots of money to do this?”

      “They don’t pay me at all. I do it because I want to.” She moved on to the raccoon’s cage. The animal looked at them with sharp, beady eyes. “This is Bandit.”

      “Are you gonna cut his head off!”

      “Good grief, no!” Nora stared at the boy, wondering what kind of horrid imagination this kid liked to indulge. “Why would you ask that?”

      “You know,” Charles said in a seemingly earnest tone. “Rabies. Isn’t that how they find out if they have them?”

      Nora frowned. “Bandit doesn’t have rabies. He had a run-in with a dog. I’m mixing up this paste right now so that I can put it on those cuts you see.”

      “Oh. What if he bites you? Is there a chance you’ll get rabies?”

      “Are all kids your age so gruesome?”

      The boy opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to change his mind. After a few seconds he spoke. “I’ve just never seen many wild animals up close before. I live in the city. At least, I used to.”

      “That explains a few things,” Nora muttered.

      Charles asked a few more questions about the raccoon and its chances for survival. Unexpectedly, they were thoughtful, intelligent