Unbearable

Unbearable


"Did you smell that?" Sara wrinkled her nose.

"So what's new." Caleb's tone was placid. He reminded Sara of the bears that they worked with. Large, furry, and quick to move from stillness to anger. Not nearly as cuddly as outsiders seemed to think.

"It's worse when Bob is off," Sara said, nodding her head at the closed door of the assistant curator's office.

Caleb shrugged. "He needs a drink just to be normal, at this point. Anyway, I'm not his boss. As long as he's not endangering anyone else, I'm not getting involved."

The conversation stopped abruptly as Nick shuffled back into the food prep area, the miasma of alcohol almost visible around him.

"Hot wire's off," he said. "Sloth bears."

The three exchanged looks. Sloth bears were Bob's exhibit. They should have decided first thing this morning who was working them today, but they'd procrastinated. On his return, Bob would always find some detail that had been neglected and nag about it. No one was enthusiastic about being his next victim.

It's probably my turn, Sara thought, resigned. She picked up another handful of mealworms.

"I can do it. No problem," Nick said, waving a hand, before she could speak up.

Sara put down the log she was stuffing with mealworms for the cusimanses. She walked over to the display that indicated the state of the various exhibit hot wires. The system was intended to give the animals a shock if they tried to climb out over an exhibit wall. Designed to react when something touched it, it was finicky about any kind of intrusion. Sara saw that one of the wires wasn't off, exactly, but clicking on and off excitedly.

"It's the one up top," she said. "Probably there's a branch or something in stuck it again. You'll have to climb up that rock wall."

"No problem," Nick repeated. "I can do it. No problem."

Nick wandered toward the exit of the keeper kitchen. Sara and Caleb exchanged glances. Was he going to make it out the door?

Nick stopped. He stuck his hand out, and it made contact with the doorknob.

"No problem," he said, pulling the door open. "Back in a jiff."

"Better him than me," Caleb grunted as the door closed behind Nick.

"Do you think he can really climb the wall in that condition?" Sara wrinkled her brow. She felt a bit guilty, but not quite enough to run after him.

Caleb shrugged. "I don't think he can climb it sober. He'll stand there all morning throwing rocks at the branch hoping to knock it free. Beats working, right?"

Sara thought about picking up the phone. Was it worth calling their senior curator about Nick's drunken state? But they'd complained before. No one seemed to care that they had to follow closely behind Nick all day, making sure he'd closed shift doors and locked gates. The problem was, they did such a good job of it that no one realized there was anything wrong. But what choice did they have? These were dangerous animals. They couldn't risk letting one of them get out just so Nick would get fired for it.

"Yeah. You're probably right," she said. She loaded the mealworm-stuffed pieces of log into a bucket. "See you later."


Sara glanced over at the sloth bear exhibit as she walked past. She didn't see Nick, either up on the wall or throwing rocks from the ground. He'd better not be up on the wall, she realized – the bear was out. It wandered into view from behind a pile of logs, shaking its head back and forth. Foolish animal, she thought. Not one of her favorites.

She peered toward the back of the exhibit. Something didn't look right. She sighed. She'd just spent a long morning scrubbing the forest carnivore section, and was looking forward to lunch. She was in no mood to cover Nick's ass again.

She trudged over to the exhibit without enthusiasm. As she'd suspected, the shift door to the back holding area was ajar. Not just ajar, but half open. The bear was supposed to be closed out during the day. If he had access to his holding area all day, they had trouble getting him to come in for the night. If the bear decided to mess with the door, it would be easy for him to push it the rest of the way open. In fact, he probably wouldn't have to bother. He could squeeze through that opening if -

Suddenly she had a worse thought. Was Nick drunk enough to leave the door that way while he was working back there?

Sara started to run. She pulled her keys out of her pocket as she approached the door to the service area. Her hand trembled as she tried to fit the key in the lock. It seemed like forever before the door opened and she pushed it open, so hard that she almost fell through the entrance.

"Nick?" she called out as she rushed toward the holding cage.

The light was dim. That ought to mean he wasn't back here working. But this was no time to waste time thinking. She pushed the shift door shut, hard.

Now she could relax. Her heart started to slow.

"Nick," she called again.

She turned on the light. There was no one in the service area. And no one lying there, mauled, in the shift cage.

It smelled like no one had cleaned yet, in fact. Obviously all Nick had done was pop in and let the bear out. And then not even closed the door properly behind him. She looked around. Her eyes lit on the panel of switches on the far wall. Nick hadn't turned the hot wire back on either, she saw. She walked across the room and flipped it back on.

Her concern had turned to annoyance now. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind, she thought. Giving me a scare like that. And what had he been doing all morning that he hadn't gotten around to cleaning here? If she or Caleb ended up having to do it, she was going to be furious.

Not that anyone would care, she thought, scowling. She turned out the light and slammed the door behind her.


It was nearly the end of the day. Caleb, carrying a clipboard, opened the animal fridge. He stuck his head inside and started making marks on the order form.

Sara was cleaning the kitchen. She'd rather clean than do the inventory and ordering any day. She hadn't become an animal keeper to spend her time doing paperwork.

An incomprehensible sound came from the depths of the fridge.

"I'm sorry?" Sara called.

"Eeniglaidly?" With Caleb's voice still muffled by the refrigerator, Sara couldn't make out any more than that. She put down her sponge and walked over to him.

"Sorry, what?"

Caleb's shaggy, bearded head emerged from the chilly depths. "Sorry. I said, have you seen Nick lately? Isn't this the sloth bear pan?" he pointed.

"Yeah. No. I haven't seen him since this morning actually. Not that I've looked for him, I was so angry after that thing with the sloth bear shift door."

Caleb nodded. Nick hadn't been around for lunch, either, or they wouldn't have been able to spend the whole break complaining about him. Caleb pulled out his radio.

"Caleb to Nick, lower bears."

They waited. There was no reply. He repeated the call, with the same result.

"He didn't – oh, he couldn't have gone home early, could he?" Sara said.

Caleb's face grew dark. Sara was reminded of how she'd often thought she wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of a shift door with Caleb if he got really angry. She watched as he stomped across the keeper area to the small office and vanished inside.

He reappeared after a moment. "No, his radio hasn't been put away. He must still be here."

"And ignoring his radio," Sara whined. It was such a good excuse, pretending you'd bumped up against something, accidentally turned your radio down. It happened for real often enough to be plausible. And such a perfect way to avoid someone who was trying to give you work to do.

Caleb shook his head. "I've had just about enough of this."

Sara nodded. "Between ignoring the radio, and giving me that scare at the sloth bear this morning, and not feeding – "

She stopped. "I didn't go into the holding cage," she said.

They looked at each other, both thinking of the covered den area in the bear's holding cage. Thinking, that was where he liked to drag his last bits of food, to eat in private.

"You don't think...." Sara began.

"He's probably just passed out in one of his other exhibits." Caleb sighed heavily. "Let's go look. Not that I care if he sleeps it off behind the grizzlies overnight, but who knows what else he hasn't gotten done today?"

"I guess. You take the grizzlies, I'll do the rest?" The grizzlies were the farthest walk away, so that was a fair division.

Caleb nodded. He took the sloth bear pan out of the fridge. "I'll feed this guy afterwards. Someone has to do it."

Sara nodded, her lips pursed, as they headed out the door.


Nick wasn't behind the beaver exhibit. Sara had run out of places to look. She unclipped her radio from her belt.

"Sara to Caleb."

"Go ahead."

"Any luck?" She didn't really think so, or he'd have called, but you never know. Maybe she'd missed it. Like Nick was always claiming.

"No. You?"

"No."

She hesitated. Nick couldn't really be dead or dying in the sloth bear holding cave, could he? That was crazy. Caleb would have had them go there first, if he'd thought that was really a possibility.

"Did you feed the sloth bear yet?" she continued.

"I'm just headed there now."

"I'll meet you."

"Ten-four."

Sara trotted toward the sloth bears. She couldn't decide whether to be concerned or angry. If Nick was fine, just slacking off somewhere, and they'd wasted all this time looking for him...

Caleb was just walking up to the exhibit as she arrived. Sara found herself scanning the enclosure. She told herself it was stupid, there's certainly no way he's been lying in there all day without anyone noticing. There've been hundreds of people walking by, she thought, as she was jostled by a woman pushing a huge stroller full of babies and cupholders.

But in back was different. She felt nervous as Caleb unlocked the door and she followed him in.

Caleb checked the shift door to make sure it was safe for him to go into the holding cage. It was solidly closed, as Sara had left it. He unlocked the cage door and picked up the pan of food he'd left on the floor behind him. The food was supposed to be spread around the exhibit for enrichment. Nick should have done it, of course. But now that it was so late, they didn't have time.

On the bright side, Sara thought, it would make it easy to bring the bear in for the night. She tried to convince herself that that was all there was to worry about as Caleb, inside the cage, bent over and looked into the den.

She felt all the tension go out of her body as Caleb just set down the pan and turned away. No reaction, like everything in there was normal. The urge to get mad at Nick resurfaced. It's not like I even like him, she thought, or the bear, that much. But the idea of one of the animals hurting or killing a keeper – it was everyone's worst nightmare. Even if it was the keeper's own drunken fault.

Caleb left the cage, closed and locked it behind him. He opened the shift door and rattled it, as they did to tell the bear it was time to come in. It didn't always work so well for the other keepers as it did for Bob. But the bear was hungry, and after only a moment he stuck his head through the door, lifting his snout, smelling. Catching a whiff of something edible, he hurried into his den, and Caleb closed the shift door behind him.

Sara's worry had turned fully to anger now. "So, no Nick," she said, as the two keepers watched the bear vacuum the pan clean. Worth waiting for, he seemed to think. Food delivered on a silver platter, instead of having to hunt for it through the exhibit. He looked over at them as if to indicate his approval. Why didn't they do more of this sort of thing?

"I say the heck with him," Caleb said.

She shook her head, disgusted. "The shift door was half open. The hot wire – he hadn't even turned that back on, and that's what he'd come out here to deal with. He's done nothing, and where's he disappeared to?"

"The hot wire?" Caleb said. He seemed suddenly interested.

"Yes. He'd switched it off to work on getting the obstruction off it, obviously. But he never turned it back on."

Caleb got a funny look on his face. Suddenly, without a word, he turned and walked quickly out the service area door.

"Caleb?" Sara called, trotting after him, surprised.

Outside, he was already in the exhibit, the heavy metal door left unlocked and wide open behind him, and was climbing up the wall to the top hotwire. Sara hurried in and closed the door behind her. She stood at the bottom of the wall where Caleb was now looking over the far side, his face oddly pale.

"Caleb? What's wrong?"

He didn't reply. She called again, and again, strangely, he didn't respond.

There was nothing else to do. She climbed up the wall after him, quicker than she'd ever climbed it before. She wasn't sure she wanted to see what he was looking at.

She reached the top and looked over, as Caleb was. Nick was lying on the ground at the bottom of the outside of the wall. Even at this distance, Sara and Caleb could recognize death. It was part of their job. They had no doubt.

Sara felt a moment of guilt. If she'd hunted for Nick earlier, before lunch, would it have made a difference? She considered the angle of his neck. No, she thought. It wouldn't have mattered.

Caleb took out his radio and called the zoo police. She looked over at him. His face had regained its color and his voice had sounded perfectly controlled.

The police responded. Caleb gave them the location, not revealing over the radio exactly what the problem was. There was no point in causing a ruckus.

He clipped the radio back on his belt. Now he looked directly at Sara for the first time.

He shrugged. "Well, that problem's solved." Then he began to climb down the wall without waiting for a reply.