BLOOD ON THE ASPHALT
Chapter Seven
by Galen Hardesty
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With a visible effort, Helen recovered herself. "Daria, how long have you been standing out there?" she asked.
Daria shrugged. "I don't have a watch."
Damn literal-minded kid, Helen thought. "What did you hear?"
"Plenty. You want to kill Opie." Daria paused for a second, then, "Humans are naturally vicious. Humans carry diseases. Are you gonna take me out in the country and set me free too?"
Helen swayed under the impact of her daughter's accusing stare. "Honey, we don't want to kill him, we just want to put him back in the wild where he belongs."
"That would kill him. He belongs with his mother, but his mother is dead. So I have to take care of him," Daria stated.
"Sweetie, just because you found him doesn't mean you're responsible for him," Helen pointed out reasonably.
"Yes it does."
Helen was confounded. All her education, all her training in argumentation, logic, and dialectics availed naught against the massive moral certainty of Daria's simple statement. She tried another tack.
"Daria, I know he's cute. Most baby animals are cute. But that doesn't mean he'd make a good pet. He's a wild thing. Don't you see, there must be a reason almost nobody has a pet possum, even if we don't know what it is. You just don't know enough to..."
"You guys." Daria shook her head, a sort of sadness in her gaze now. "You're always talking about what a smart girl I am, but you don't really believe it."
Helen saw an opening. "Honey, being smart isn't the same as knowing..."
Daria held up a little hand that stopped Helen in mid-sentence. "I know more about possums than you think I do. I know how to take care of orphaned baby possums. I know they're not vicious. They actually make pretty good pets."
"Daria, there's just no way I'm going to..."
Daria held up her hand again. "Mom. I don't want to keep Opie as a pet. I never did, even before I found out why other people don't."
This left Helen totally off-balance, as if a heavy door she'd been pushing hard against had suddenly vanished. "You... uh, well... why?"
"Wait right here." Daria disappeared down the dark hallway and came back with several sheets of paper. Finding what she wanted, she handed one sheet to Helen and indicaed a couple of paragraphs. "Read that."
Helen held the sheet up to best catch the light and scanned the indicated paragraphs. "Oh, that's just gross."
"Tell me about it."
Helen looked at Daria, her surprised expression blended with equal parts horror and respect. "You mean you've been..."
Daria nodded. "About every four hours."
Helen stared again at the sheet of paper she was holding, then at the others in Daria's hand. "Where did you get this?"
Jake tugged tentatively at the paper in Helen's hand, and she relinquished it gladly.
Daria replied, "The library. I downloaded it off the internet, just after I found him, before I brought him home. That's why I was late for lunch yesterday."
"You mean you knew you'd have to... do that... and you knew you didn't want to keep him, and you brought him home anyway?" Helen looked mystified.
Daria, although surprised Helen still didn't seem to get it, nevertheless knew exactly what it was Helen didn't get. With childlike simplicity, she went straight to the point. "He would have died if I hadn't. I have to do the best I can for him."
Helen perceived a possible argument to be made. It was hypocritical, she knew, given what she'd been planning to do with Opie, but... "Sweetie, the best thing you can do for Opie is to turn him over to someone who's qualified to care for him properly."
Helen could feel Daria's green eyes looking right through her. Daria said, "Right. That's what I decided."
Helen almost physically staggered this time. Daria had done it again. She'd feinted and ducked, and Helen had gone right where Daria wanted her.
"What you decided? Uh... what did you decide?"
"There are people who do this, who take care of hurt and orphaned wild animals until they can set them free. They have licenses. They're called..." Daria looked through her printouts and put a little finger under a big word. "Re-ha-bil-i-tators."
Helen was amazed that her daughter could read a word like that in third grade, but she pushed that aside for the moment. "And is there one of these rehabilitators here in Gaithersburg?"
"The librarian thinks there's one somewhere close, but not in town," Daria replied. "But I haven't found his name and phone number yet. When I do, we can take Opie to him. I'm just trying to keep him alive till then. Now, can I count on you guys to leave him alone till tomorrow morning?"
Helen looked down at her daughter, standing out in the darkened hallway in her little jammies, computer printouts hanging at her side, looking back up at her with that searching gaze, and experienced the genuinely strange feeling that she wasn't the adult in this conversation.
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