Tucker’s Grove by Kevin J. Anderson Page A

sat on their haunches, keeping their slitted amber eyes on the crowd.
    Ramonza stepped forward and coiled th e whip in one hand. For the first time, she spoke to the audience, her voice thick and resonant inside the tent. “ For my final act, I require a volunteer from the audience.”
    The crowd fell silent, frozen in time. Nobody dared move, afraid that any action m ight be misinterpreted. Ramonza ran the braided leather of her whip through her fingers. Waiting.
    Grunting to himself, the fat man from Chicago lifted a chubby hand and stood, swinging his girth as he pushed past people to descend the rickety wooden benche s. “ All right, all right.” He chuckled in embarrassment and looked at the faces around him, as if expecting to hear cheers. He reached the circle and walked out to meet Ramonza like a man about to sell livestock.
    She regarded the man with her dark eyes, th en spread her lips in a smile. “ Yes, you ’ ll do fine.”
    “ What do I have to do?” He gave a gentlemanly bow to her, then to the audience. “ I was in a play once, back in Chicago.”
    “ Just stay where you are. The lions will do all the work.”
    She backed away to sta nd behind the neat row of lions. The cats tensed, gazing at the volunteer. Ramonza muttered som e thing that only he and the lions could hear.
    “ Kill.”
    Muscles rippling, the lions rushed forward. The smug grin on the fat man ’ s face dropped away, replaced with disbelief. He turned to run, but the lions were upon him in an instant.
    The crowd hesitated in an awed silence for a long moment, hearing nothing but the lions feeding. Then, slowly, they began to applaud.
     

HUNTER ’ S MOON
    Pinfeathers spurted into the air, and the sparrow ’ s song fell silent. The wings continued to twitch after the bird struck the ground.
    Clinton Tucker cracked open the shotgun and reloaded it with birdshot. He squinted in the afternoon sunlight but couldn ’ t see any more sparrows. Birds didn ’ t stay much by his farm anymore.
    Tucker stepped off the dusty porch — no one bothered to sweep up around the house now that Angela had left him. He carried the shotgun into the yard where a few ancient box elders stood around the white farmhouse. The leaves would turn color soon in the coming autumn, red and yellow and brown.
    As a boy, Tucker remembered jumping into mounds of co l ored leaves in the farmyard. Joyful times, foolish times. He frowned at himself, then locked away the boyhood memories where he wa s safe from them.
    He looked down the long hill, tracing the path of the dirt road to the buildings and whitewashed fences of Tucker ’ s Grove. Though Clinton Tucker ’ s great grandfather had founded the tiny town sixty years before, the townspeople scorned Clinton, and he scorned them right back. He didn ’ t have much good land and not much help to farm it, though harvest time was near. The big barn stood behind the house, snoring softly in the wind throu g h its cracked and peeling boards, empty except for some years-old straw in the loft.
    Tucker spent many nights outside by himself, walking under the stars like some nocturnal predator. He had been lonely once, then bitter, but now even those feelings were d ead. He could r e member a time when he might have asked for help from the neighbors and given it freely in return, but not anymore. He had no desire for false friendship, would never let himself be hurt again. Better to hold tight to his grim coldness after what Angela had done to him. It was safest that way.
    He had tried to love her, he had let down his wall for her — but she only used that to expose his vulnerable spots. And now she had deserted him. His face flushed, and his teeth ground together. Angela. B itch!
    He fired his shotgun into the air and listened to the echoes bounce around the hills, reaching all the way to the town.
    What had she been thinking of? How could she dare leave him?
     
    Night. Angela pounds on the door to the parsonage,