Last Resort Read Free Page A

blood in his stool, Wilkie hadn’t volunteered the information. He knew the odds; he had looked them up. He was determined never to be the weak, exhausted victim of a colostomy, weakened further by chemotherapy and radiation, dragging through what was left of his life with a plastic bag of his own shit strapped to his body. No. He would say nothing until treatment became impossible.
    The trouble was, he couldn’t put the fear and the pain and the fear of coming greater pain out of his mind. And this failure of courage and detachment pained and terrified him further. He was sick with self-disgust to think that when this planet and the animals that lived on it were in such desperate straits, he should be obsessed with his own declining health—and, worse and more shameful, his declining reputation. He was an animal too, and animals suffered and died, he told himself; that was what had always happened and always would happen.
    His hip ached, ached. But he was not going to admit this to anyone, not even Jenny, not yet. For many years articles and books had portrayed Wilkie Walker as stoic, heroic, fit, and invincible; stories had been told of how in search of rare creatures he had survived Alaskan blizzards, tropical heat and storms, treks through remote jungles, frostbite, days without food, a dislocated shoulder, a broken wrist. Largely, these stories were true.
    But Wilkie was no longer regarded as heroic by everyone. Many animal-rights activists now considered him weak and gullible, and his writings outdated and irrelevant. Ecological vandals who had tried unsuccessfully to enlist him in their cause now despised and bad-mouthed him because he wouldn’t support or participate in the driving of murderous spikes into redwood trees or the bombing of animal research laboratories. As several of them had troubled to inform him, in print or in person, in their opinion he was not only a cowardly, cranky has-been, but a traitor to the environment.
    All this was in Wilkie’s mind, always. But he was resolved not to complain, especially not to Jenny. For as long as he could, he must be strong for her, because she was weak.
    A troubled, complex expression appeared on Wilkie’s face. For a quarter of a century he had loved Jenny more surely, more steadily than any other human being. But now he also resented her, because if she did not exist he would be free to leave the world by the nearest exit—in his current fantasy, the exhaust system of their Volvo station wagon. Because of Jenny all such exits were barred; he knew that psychologically she would not survive his self-inflicted death.
    For Jenny he must live as long as he could and die as peacefully. He must save and shelter her now, as he had saved and sheltered her ever since, over a quarter century ago, they had met at UCLA. His first reaction, even stronger than his awe at her delicate pale beauty, was astonishment that such a creature—a creature of the woodlands and wild places, surely—should be living in Los Angeles. When he heard that Jenny had been born and raised in New England, he understood better. Later, when he learned that she had been unwillingly transported to Southern California by self-centered and ambitious parents, and then abandoned there, a spirit of ecological knight-errantry had suffused his romantic admiration. He swore to himself that, whatever it cost, he would rescue this beautiful, unique primate and restore her to her natural environment.
    And in the end he had done so. Choosing among three possible endowed professorships, he had returned Jenny to an unspoiled New England town, bought her an unspoiled colonial house, and surrounded her with woods and fields and flowers. There was nothing he would not do for Jenny, Wilkie thought. She asked so little, was so content only to be with him. For twenty-five years she had made him almost wholly happy. Moreover, she had presented him with what most people would consider the three greatest gifts of his