The lion’s golden eyes were quiet and calm as night, considering Hanson as he walked through the door of the lion house and stopped at the brass railing, close enough to lean over, reach through the bars, and touch him if he felt like risking it.
The lion was looking beyond him now, into the distance, as if he might have imagined himself out of the lion house, back now in the heat and tall yellow grass of the savannah. Maybe he could come and go as he wished, Hanson thought. Even locked up, the lion owned everything.
This wasn’t the first time Hanson had come to watch the lion, who had no fear of death, certainly not his own. He hadn’t chosen to be born a lion and fearless, a killer with neither mercy nor regret, but that’s what he was.
Hanson had been born afraid, and it was only later—it had taken a war—that he became who he was. He was brave on his first combat operations, pretending to ignore the fear that followed him everywhere, stepping on his heels, complaining, second-guessing each decision he made. He knew that he couldn’t be brave for another year if he stayed in Vietnam. Two or three months, maybe, but not a year. He was running out of courage, not knowing how much longer it would last or what he’d do when it was gone. Then early one morning, after surviving another ambush, while calling in medivacs for the wounded and dead, it came to him like a miracle: he was dead too. His name was on the books, the to-die list, and nothing more was required of him, he would be served in his turn. He no longer had to be afraid and brave. Fear had left him to deal directly with Death.
The lion was back in his cage, waiting. All the big cats had come inside, restless, turning, showing their teeth. The clatter of locks and bars echoed through the lion house, the screech of steel hinges. An attendant came out through the wall, from a service door, brushing vitamin powder and horse blood off his hands and from the legs of his white uniform, looking at Hanson.
“I see it now,” Hanson said. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”
The attendant nodded, then Hanson had to go, all the cats were pacing their cages. Feeding time.
Hanson didn’t have a TV. He had to buy one at a shopping center to watch the nightly news about the shootings. Police officers standing behind yellow crime scene tape at the end of the block. Keeping reporters and cameras at a distance, they announced, in order to preserve the integrity of the crime scene. Three armed men, one with an assault rifle, all of them on parole, had been killed in a shoot-out with an undercover police officer. The officer was on an administrative leave with pay—standard procedure after an officer-involved shooting.
Hanson is sleeping.
It’s late. The lion purrs beside him. Hyenas whisper in the brush. In the distance, traffic rumbles and groans above the black water, over the Bay Bridge. East Oakland is deserted. The attendant glides past, ghostlike, in his white uniform.