Paco wasn’t that bright.

But he didn’t know it, so it never held him back.

He was a kind soul, so his teachers helped him along when they could, and pushed him forward when circumstances required.

Paco loved animals, and they loved him.

When Paco was ten, he found a sack of abandoned kittens along the river road. Someone had thought to throw them in the river, but came up short. One of the kittens was dead, and the others severely dehydrated and starving when Paco found them.

He collected up the orphaned felines and took them to Gus at the corner gas station. Gus considered himself wise beyond his own years and was not afraid to counsel anyone who cared to listen.

In the course of a day, Gus spent more time talking than wrenching on cars, but he smelled of grease nonetheless, and his hands were never quite clean, even after he scrubbed them.

Gus was as close to a friend as anyone Paco had ever known.

“What the fuck are you going to do with them?” he asked Paco.

Paco shrugged. When Paco didn’t know the answer to an adult’s question, he shrugged. When he didn’t understand the question, he shrugged. When someone was talking to him and he wasn’t paying attention, he shrugged.

Paco shrugged a lot.

Gus looked in the bag again and shook his head.

“You best take them little fuckers right up to Dr. Tristan. He’ll know what to do with them.”

It took all the effort little Paco had to pedal his old one-speed Schwinn up the four miles of windy dirt road to Dr. Tristan’s place, toting three pounds of kittens in a sack.

About a mile in from the main road, a pickup truck coming in the opposite direction at full tilt ran Paco off the road into the ditch. The truck never so much as slowed down, and left Paco with two more dead kittens.

But Paco collected himself and forged forward.

When Paco finally made it to Dr. Tristan’s infirmary, the veterinarian was standing on the porch smoking a pipe, decompressing from his last customer, the uptight driver of the downbound pickup truck.

The animal hospital was in an old wagon barn not far from the main farm house where Dr. Tristan’s family had lived for five generations. Surrounding the building was a grove of old shade trees, planted by the vet’s great-grandfather.

In the last days of Indian Summer the smell of coming fall mixed with burning tobacco and the leaves, just starting to turn yellow, danced in the breeze.

“What do we have here, young man?”

Paco shrugged and handed the sack of kittens to the vet.

“Looks like five pretty sick kitties,” the vet said, discounting the three dead ones.

Paco looked at his feet.

“Let’s go inside and see what we can do,” the vet continued, “It is going to take some doing to get these critters in order.”

“Do you have any money?” the vet inquired, knowing the answer.

Paco shrugged.

“I’ll tell you what, if you’re willing to help out, I think we can save them.”

One by one they took the kittens out of the sack and Dr. Tristan showed Paco how to feed them the smallest amount of a warm brown liquid the vet called “kitty saver,” using a small syringe.

It was nearly dark when they finished, and all the kittens were curled up in a ball with a towel in a small cardboard box. “It looks like you’ve got three girls and two boys,” the vet said in summary. “I would guess they aren’t yet three days old, but I think they will be fine.”

Paco smiled, but it was barely discernible.

“Will you be back tomorrow?”

Paco nodded.

“What is your name, young man?”

Paco looked at his feet and fought the urge to shrug.

He looked up at the vet and said, “My name is John.”

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2015 Kirt Van Buren