A Wolf in Kid Gloves by Anne Eyries

‘You know anything about goats?’ It’s the first thing she’s said since he slid into the passenger seat at Walmart and pointed the gun. He cracks his knuckles and she flinches. She’s old enough to be his mother, with the same wispy hair the colour of grits. Once they’re out of Salt Lake City there’ll be plenty of wild landscape where he can get rid of her.

‘My grandmother kept goats in France,’ she tells him, turning south on I-15 though he hasn’t given her directions. ‘She made cheese and lived on a farm built before the French Revolution. They’re pretty smart, you know, in a determined sort of way.’

‘The French?’

‘Them too.’ She swallows like she’s got something lodged in her throat. ‘In the dry season they’ll break down a fence to get to food and water. Now take sheep, they’re so stupid all they do is get their damn heads caught in the wire and then stand around bleating.’

‘I saw a sheep once that was stuck. It had eaten all the ground cover within reach.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That figures.’ She picks up speed as though she knows where they’re going. He’s never car-jacked before so he’s been half expecting her to lean on the horn or try to jump out, but she’s behaving, which is just as well because his gun’s empty.

‘You got anything to eat?’ He’s starving and the back seat’s piled with old wicker baskets, the type would fetch upward of $25, more with the original gummed label. He used to be good at handling that kind of stuff.

‘In the cooler, turkey and avocado in multi-grain rolls,’ she says, as if they’re at the deli counter.

‘What’s in the baskets?’

‘Bottles.’

‘Of what?’

‘Nothing. Just bottles. I make them and sell them.’

He pulls one out, balancing it on his knees while he juggles with the sandwich and gun.

‘It’s a technique called terra sigillata on clay,’ she says, taking one hand off the wheel and pointing. ‘See there, I use woodcuts to make those patterns and, if you turn it carefully–.’ Her papery fingers ingrained with dust are picking up the bottle and he has no time to react before she’s whacking it against his head, again and again.

When he comes round, the car is nose deep in a bank of earth and she’s standing a way off, holding the gun and nodding into a cell phone. The air bags have deflated but he’s not sure he can move and doesn’t even try. As the ribbons of flashing lights approach he can’t help thinking that she looks just like a goat.

Anne Eyries left the UK last century to work in France and she’s still there. She’s completed several writing courses, had a few pieces published and firmly believes that, as Henry David Thoreau said: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Photo by Kian Zhang on Unsplash.