The Vegan and the Wolf by Julie Steimle (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📕

Silvia smirked on the sidelines, leaning back. Brooke and Paula stared in surprise at him. Jeremy looked confused.

Audry laughed mockingly. “You? The confirmed ‘never could be vegan’ man?”

He grinned, obviously glad she remembered. The fact that he remembered her was astonishing. He had forgotten her twice before. Perhaps that last time finally stuck.

“You’re on,” she said. “And you’ll lose.”

Raising his eyebrows, Rick’s smug grin argued to the contrary, his gray eyes shining.

“It is fairly simple,” Audry said, deciding to go for the jugular of all debates, “Animals have the right to live too. Meat is murder.”

“And that is your starting point?” Rick asked, chuckling.

She lifted her chin. “It is a good one.”

“So, according to your theory, all carnivores are murderers?” he asked.

Audry stiffened, realizing where he was leading. She colored a little. “Ok, so I need to clarify. Human beings have more choice in their food than, say, a wolf,” choosing an animal he was familiar with and fond of and was most undoubtedly referencing to when he talked about carnivores. “Our teeth specialize in the consumption of seeds, nuts, fruits, and vegetables—”

“With a pair of canines to boot,” Rick cut in.

Some of the people in the crowd chuckled, the bacon guy the loudest.

Audry flushed.

“We are omnivores,” Rick said, gazing at her with those gray eyes almost as if he were sorry to break the news to her. “Our canines are proof.”

“Our canines are stunted. Smaller than those of carnivores,” she said.

“I didn’t say we were carnivores. I said we were omnivores,” he retorted. “And my canines are pretty long.” He smiled to prove it. Sure enough, his canines were sharp, though still not knife-long as a wolf’s.

Silvia snickered nearby. His eyes flickered to her. He stiffened just a smidgeon, but then his eyes came back to Audry again.

“Meat eating is savage and brutal,” Audry said, stepping it up. “If human society has advanced to the point that dares call itself civilized, then all savagery should be abolished.”

He nodded slowly. “Good argument. Sound. Only…” he eyed her carefully. “Let’s define why it is savage, shall we? Let’s just not slap a name on it. Why is it savage?”

“So you accept that it is savage?” Audry asked triumphantly.

Rick shook his head. “I am accepting that you believe it is savage. But you haven’t put any parameters on what savage means.”

“Fine.” Audry glanced to her friends in the booth who were enjoying the debate, especially whom she was debating and how familiar Audry and Rick were with each other. “Savage is being violent. Savage is causing the death of another living being.”

Rick nodded. “So you would be anti-war.”

Audry nodded.

“And I know you are anti-abortion,” he said.

Those around her flustered. They appeared shocked.

“At least in practice for yourself,” he added for her sake.

But Audry had not reacted or bristled. Her friends who were vegan knew she was anti-abortion. She was a purist when it came to veganism. A life was a life in her eyes.

“So…” He got this crooked smile on his face, which reminded Audry briefly of his mischievous friend Tom Brown whom she met momentarily but whose image was indelibly etched into her brain for all time. “You strictly define the killing of another living being, no matter what the circumstances, as savage.”

“Yes,” she said.

Rick nodded. “Are you sure?”

Audry paused, wondering what he was getting at.

“So, you’ve never killed a fly or a mosquito—ever?” he asked.

Audry flustered. “Not if I can help it.”

“And if an animal went at you to eat you, you would not kill it, ever?” he asked. “Not even in self-defense?”

She could see where he was leading with this. Audry replied, “I have tranquilizer guns, which I use.”

Rick nodded, almost in admiration. “True. You do. But how about if a rapist comes after you? Do you tranquilize him also?”

Smirking at him, Audry lifted her chin. “I have pepper spray for that. But if I needed to, yeah. It is better to bring him to justice than to take his life.”

Nodding to himself, Rick thought things over. Then he said, “Ok. So, what about plants? What about their lives?”

 Audry stared. “What do you mean? As in would I wantonly—”

“I mean,” he said with a sharp, mocking look in his eyes, “On behalf of all those who must eat meat—us carnivores and omnivores—that I think vegans are too presumptuous in assuming virtue over others simply because the food they eat cannot protest with big eyes and cute furry faces.”

People in the crowd laughed. But a number of those listening looked confused.

“Excuse me?” Audry narrowed her eyes at him.

Rick smirked more. “More plainly, a vegan is a person refusing to eat something with eyes and shows obvious movement, while assuming they are more virtuous compared to people who know their food was once alive.”

She huffed. “No. That is not it.”

“So you think a carrot is not alive?” Rick asked, gazing innocently at her. “That a carrot does not grow and wish to keep growing?”

“A carrot does not have a brain,” Audry retorted. “They don’t have a nervous system. They don’t feel pain.”

“So we can eat someone with congenital analgesia?” Rick asked continuing to blink innocently at her. “They don’t feel pain.”

Audry flustered. “That’s cannibalism!”

Rick snickered. “Ok. I see. You only eat things so dissimilar from you that you cannot possibly relate to them and therefore they are fair game to eat. Never mind that they do have lives. And they do react to their environment.”

Audry huffed. “You’re being stupid.”

“I’m being stupid?” Rick chuckled, clearly teasing. “You are living under the delusion that just because something does not have a voice, supposedly does not feel pain, and cannot cry ‘don’t eat me’ with begging eyes, that it does not live or have value. I mean, a carrot or a bunch of broccoli cannot protest, even though they are being systematically ripped out of their homes and brutally chopped into bits for a salad.”

Several people in the crowd jeered at her, laughing.

“Burn!” the bacon guy shouted out.

But Rick lifted a hand, shushing them. “Don’t be rude. This is a debate. Not a mob.” He then turned to face her. “I know a guy who believes in Hari Krishna—and he believes it is unlawful to use knives on the vegetables he eats because in a past life they were a human being. He insists a person has to tear vegetables apart with his hands, because using knives is too brutal.”

Audry stared.

“And in old Native American cultures they believe that all life, including the plants and trees and rocks, have spirits. And when their hunters take a life, they thank that life for giving them life,” he said. “Are you going to ignore that?”

“Oh, please…”Audry moaned. “You are hairsplitting.”

“And you are making light other people’s beliefs,” Rick said. “Just because vegetables cannot cry out in pain in ways that we comprehend does not mean they don’t suffer or have feelings.”

She realized then that he was just being facetious. He didn’t really care about the lives of vegetables any more than the lives of a chicken—his professed favorite food. She said, “You’re full of it.”

“And so are you,” he said. “Food is food. The only kind of murder I see is when things are killed outside self-defense and eating. And since eating one’s own kind is a foul practice, and I have no illusions about what I eat once being alive, my feelings remain the same on this subject.”

Those anti-vegans in the crowd cheered. The nutritionist smirked but did not seem moved by his argument either. But then he wasn’t arguing health. He was using unusual religious beliefs as examples. There wasn’t a drip of science involved. 

Audry glowered at him.

“I told you I could never be vegan,” he said and turned to go back to his personal assistant. His assistant was a different man than at the last conference, but then it had been two years since that time. This one looked like a college intern rather than a full time employee. The previous assistant had a great deal more command and had been steering Rick around. This one was following Rick’s lead. The dynamic was interesting, as Rick also seemed a lot more balanced and in control of his life.

“You can’t prove plants have sentience,” Brooke shot out as he was going.

Rick turned back, his eye fixing a little more sharply her. “And you can’t prove they don’t. A plant’s reaction time is slower than that of an animal, so it is not obvious. I know a botanist who has been studying plants and their reactions to other plants in their environment, and his findings are rather fascinating.”

Audry groaned. If that argument kept up, they would end up talking about sentience of fetuses and of coma patients next. She hated getting stuck in those kinds of ethical debates, because euthanasia would then come up—which she despised. Her friends would then accuse her of only being progressive about animals but not about women’s issues and health issues—never mind that a life was a life. As for Rick, she knew he was not there for a serious debate. He had merely come over to banter with her. He knew he could not convince her to eat meat any more than she could convince him to become a vegan.

“Nice seeing you again,” Rick said with a nod to Audry. His eyes raked past Silvia with familiarity. But with a hop in his step, he turned to go, like he was merely happy to be alive. Yet he paused and said with another look back to Audry, “Nice necklace, by the way.” And he walked off.

Audry automatically touched the silver bullet which she wore on a chain around her neck. Others looked at it.

“Why are you wearing a bullet on a necklace?” Paula snapped at her, offended by its existence.

Turning with a sharp look, Audry said, “Didn’t I tell you at the Green Club meeting? I dug this bullet out of the leg of a wolf I rescued. I wear it to remind me about animal cruelty.”

Someone from the other side, the one with the nut allergy she had been arguing with, reached in to see. “Really?”

Silvia smirked, heading off in the same direction Rick had gone, weaving through the crowd with her oils.

Audry nodded, letting the girl touch it. “Yeah.”

She and a few others examined the bullet, clearly impressed. But Audry watched to where Silvia had gone, as she was most likely following Rick. And to be frank, that was creepy.  

Rick, however, was so irritating. He had finally revealed his true colors as a bloody carnivore with an attitude. Audry was only glad he hadn’t thrown that stupid ‘bacon’ argument at her. Apparently he knew it wasn’t an argument at all.

“You know what? I need the restroom,” Audry whispered to Brooke. “Cover for me.”

Brooke nodded.

Audry headed toward the nearest building. As she stepped in, she saw Rick standing to the side of another booth talking to Silvia. And though Audry could not hear what she was saying, Rick didn’t look too happy in the conversation. He was standing beyond the reach of Silva’s long arms and fingers, his personal assistant almost between them. Rick didn’t notice Audry at all as his focus was entirely on Silvia—which, to be honest, was where it should be whenever Silvia came around. Silvia exuded powerful confidence. But as an almost gothic level worshipper of Celtic mythic deities, she also made Audry honestly imagine her as a mythic witch—which Audry mentally checked herself about, as that was prejudiced.

As she went into the building, Audry thought about Silvia more. As long as she had known Silvia, the girl had given off a creepy vibe. Silvia was beautiful. But like a girl who stared without blinking enough, Audry always felt like she was standing on the border of a slasher movie whenever Silvia was around. And Silvia was ambitious.

Audry wondered what ambition she was trying to fulfill by talking to Rick Deacon—who