It all happened when I was walking back from the hen house. The hen house is set back from the main farm complex; see, our hens squawk like you wouldn’t believe when it’s a full moon, and one night a couple years ago my dad stormed out of bed in the middle of the night and screamed to the whole house, “That’s it! I won’t have any more!” and he just walked outside and started putting up a new hen house at the top of a hill a couple minutes’ walk from our house. So anyway, I was walking back from the hen house one evening, and the sun had just set, and the wide western horizon was glowing orange, while the dark green hills, pickets, and sagebrush melded together into night.
All of a sudden I hear this voice, right behind me, it says “Hey there! Hey, you!”
I whipped around about as quick as a pistol and yelled, “What? Who are you? Where are you?”
It took me a minute to make out the face over by a thick oak, and once I did I stepped back a couple of paces. She was just a kid like me.
“Wait, just a second,” the girl said hurriedly. “You’re Carol.”
“Who are—?”
“My name’s Annie. I know who you are,” she said plainly, then, looking worried, added, “because I’ve been following you.”
I backed up some more.
She looked more worried still. “No, I know you want to have a different life, where you’re not working on a farm. I know you hate stripmalls and new housing developments and gravel mines.”
“I’m sorry, who are you? What’s going on?”
“Look, Carol, there’s something you can do. That’s what I’m here for. Please just let me talk to you.”
I said nothing, just stared. This girl had already lost me.
“Come on, let’s sit down on that rock over there.”
Well, I did it, I followed her and sat right down beside her and decided I would talk to her, on account of I was a little tired and I wasn’t looking forward to going and being lectured by my parents about why I hadn’t checked the hens for eggs earlier.
“Carol, I’m really happy to be finally talking to you.”
“Okay, first of all, what did you mean you’ve been following me? Do you even go to my school?”
“My family works the farm a couple turns down. We’re the Weylons.”
“Oh, as in Weylon Dairy?”
“Yeah, that’s ours,” she sighed. She looked down, maybe the red ants were crawling up her toes. “Carol,” she continued, and I liked the way she said my name all careful and slow, “Have you ever heard of an ocelot?” Seeing my blank expression, she went on, “Of course not, you’ve never heard of one or seen one. Well, if we were here, on this here rock, roundabout two hundred years ago, you wouldn’t even hesitate a-tall when I said ‘ocelot.’ We’d have ocelots crawling through the woods and over the prairies and coming out of our ears. We’d have so many ocelots you wouldn’t a known what to do with all them. Ocelots are these little creatures that are kind-a like wildcats, you know, but they’re the most beautiful little cats you ever saw. They’re just about this big (she held her arms a couple feet apart) and orange and striped, but the part about them that you really notice is that their eyes are just so fierce. I swear, Carol, you have to see one.”
“Okay, um, well, what are you getting at?”
“There are hardly any ocelots any more.” Her face closed and she looked to her side, towards the fading orange horizon. “They’re almost gone, Carol. Almost gone.”
