We met in the batting cages of the dilapidated roadside amusement park off Blackthorn Highway.
A foggy afternoon I’ll never forget.
The place empty, just the way I like.
I had an increasing problem being out in public.
Easy swings I took, drove line drives where I wanted, felt all right on two anxiety meds. Muttering my mantra. Wraparound sunglasses. Pink noise in my headphones.
Then came the pale flash of unending home runs popping off in my periphery, would-be out-of-parkers, caught and cradled in distant green nets.
I finished my sequence of pitches and glanced over expecting to see some jacked dude who’d want to fight but no it was an attractive woman stepping out with a Louisville Slugger, waving to me.
She walked up the dirt trail into the trees.
The next time I went she showed up again. Took the cage next to mine. Through the chain-link she faced me southpaw. My heart began to race. Her lips were moving. I took out my headphones, “Sorry.”
She said, “I said I’m rusty.”
Once I heard her sweet voice my dread eased. I put my headphones in my pocket, left them there.
“You’re good, man,” she said. “You on a team?”
I shook my head and didn’t mention I blew about fifty dollars a week at the cages because my therapist said to, and how I only hit for release, some shot at inner peace, no other metric.
The predictability of the cages soothed me. Pitches always the same. My hands didn’t tremble when gripping the bat. Something pleasant about the sting when I made contact.
She put coins in and bashed some more way out.
I’d never seen anybody hit like that or look like that. And she was against the pro pitch machine, I’m talking hundred mile per hour fast balls.
In my own weed-strewn cage I whiffed again and again on medium but it was partly because she’d begun playfully heckling me. Got to be I couldn’t even swing at my last two. Just laughed embarrassed and leaned against the fence and in a moment of confidence alien to my life, took off my sunglasses and ogled her the way she’d ogled me.
That last one she sent to the moon.
“Damn girl, that one is gooooooonnnnne.”
She looked disappointed when her machine shut off.
I fished the last of my quarters out of my jeans and offered them through the chain-link.
“You’re really something.”
I said she was too.
By dim glow of seashell nightlight, as my roommate’s toddler slept in his crib four feet away, I was once again having a session with Ravi, who specialized in agoraphobia.
Whispering in the little cave of my room.
“I met somebody. Jane.”
“What’s she like?”
Jane and I had gone on two dates so far. Both at the amusement park she lived behind. She had a sexy little gap between her front teeth. Had never lost at chess, she claimed, but we’d yet to play, so we’d see about that. We’d sat for hours, talking without a break on the aluminum bleachers, or the last time, in the shade of the elm trees west of the driving range, a joint passed back and forth. We had everything in common except she was a Marine, currently in reserves, and I was a nervous cook in a restaurant whose menu kept changing.
“She sounds perfect for you,” Ravi whispered.
“She is. I’m the problem. I got weird when she asked me to just come over to her place next time.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Chickenshit.”
Baby Leopold shifted in his crib. I sucked in my breath. The room had been my safest haven, was still my safest haven, but now it was also Baby Leopold’s nursery.
No space for other furniture, Ravi and I sat on the edge of my bed. He’d been trying to get me to move out of the nursery for some time. Ravi who’d emigrated to my country to save my life and possibly my soul. I’d found his ad in the back of Autotrader magazine.
Ravi whispered again, “So the first couple dates went well. What’s your plan for going over to her place.”
“Hmm.” I had to have a plan for everything. “I’ll remember Jane makes me feel comfortable, so I should feel relaxed in her domain. Safe there.”
“What else?”
“When I’m around her I feel strong. I’m going to trust good things are coming for us both.”
“Wow, it’s like I’m hearing a totally different person talking. The progress you’ve made is insane.”
He motioned toward the crib.
“Obviously she can’t come here.”
Ravi was my therapist long before Baby Leopold’s birth complicated my living situation. My roommates, the owners of the resaurant where I cooked, had agreed to let me keep renting the room even though I would have to cohabitate with their then-newborn. I think they thought I was going to jump off a bridge if I had to move, which was both ludicrous, and also, maybe I would have.
They wouldn’t suffer an infant in their bedroom.
In the night when he woke up screaming I rocked him back to sleep, changed his diapers, sang him lullabies, and prayed the rent didn’t go up.
For two years Ravi had said the situation was unfair to me and I should consider moving. But fear of the unknown was my biggest weakness.
Not to mention denial.
I’d keep looking past problems until the baby was a full-grown man. I didn’t mind spending my free time playing with Baby Leopold, teaching him words, animals, colors, numbers, all in the comfort of our tiny room. But recently his parents had become resentful of my uptick in socializing. The father called me selfish. Who’s gonna entertain Baby Leopold if you go out?
Before Jane I hadn’t had a proper date in years.
“She’s got her own problems,” I said to Ravi. I don’t feel like a freak. She doesn’t drive anymore because she almost died. Over there.” I pointed at the wall but meant Afghanistan. There’d been a roadside bomb or a missile.
Ravi and I were quiet for a minute. Out the door I heard Baby Leopold ’s mother walk by singing.
“The other day Jane and me had our first kiss, I don’t know, man, it felt right.”
Ravi gave the gentlest low five.
Baby Leopold stood up in the crib, “What was that?”
“Nothing, is sleepy time over? Time to play?”
Baby Leopold, in candy-striped onesie, climbed out and sat on the bed between Ravi and me.
Ravi said I was doing good, “Let’s switch therapy sessions to every two weeks.” He gave me a hug and said he was proud of me. Baby Leopold leaned over and gave me a hug from the other side, “I proud too, Kyle.”
I was thankful for Ravi. I didn’t know how long I could count on the room, my most important coping mechanism. Major hints had been dropped it was almost time to transition Baby Leopold into a bed. When that happened the room would be too cramped for the both of us. I’d suggested we try bunk beds. His parents replied with stony silence. Change had been coming for the last year. On Christmas morning both his grandmothers said I was doing a terrible job raising Baby Leopold.
Jane lived in the secluded condos they’d made out of the old galvo dip factory. Three sprawling units down a hidden ill-paved road. The developer couldn’t find buyers for the other two units. Her place was a single vast floor with exposed steel beams, concrete floors, thirty-foot-high ceiling. Her living room had a clear view through beech trees down to the batting cages. Jane admitted she’d come down whenever she saw me at bat. “Boy was I crushing.”
We made out on the couch. When I lifted her shirt I saw the bumps I’d felt under the fabric were scars, the heaviest of them covered over by a tattoo of a black angel.
We got intimate. I got overwhelmed. I slipped out of the room panting. “I’ll be right back.”
I hid in the bathroom. Sat on the toilet. Guts twisted. Couldn’t get it together. Wanted to run back to the safety of the nursery.
At my weakest and most vulnerable her psycho of a cat leapt out of the laundry basket and opened an onslaught on my legs. Dashing forward and slashing. Retreating. Slashing again. Higher and higher up my shin. Jane heard me yelling and came to the end of the hall.
I opened the door, the tile slick with blood.
The pale ninja hidden.
“I see you’ve met Odin.”
We laughed about it back in bed. She kissed me, ready for round two in the blue moonlight. Midthrust I discovered how serious the problems of the universe. Odin launched into the room, also ready for round two. Ran up my back. Dug his claws into my spine. Bit the nape of my neck.
I tumbled out of the bed and gave a bit of pathetic chase. My whole childhood, bullies messed with me. Now pushing thirty I’d picked a ten-pound house cat to finally stand up to. A feline lightning bolt long gone.
I limped back into Jane’s room.
She said, “All right. You can fucking leave now.”
I tried to crawl back to Jane but she pushed me off the mattress with her foot. I crashed down bare-assed onto raw concrete.
“What would you have done if you caught him?”
“Given him a big kiss.”
Jane said something about Odin being able to sense evil. I said I was a nice guy. She said, “I thought you were.”
I gathered my things and went out in the rain half-dressed. She locked the front door. Her last boyfriend had punched holes in her wall. Smashed the kitchen window. I’d gone to culinary school. I had the smallest wrists in town. My minuscule Isuzu had a bumper sticker that read: “All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chance.”
Two days later we made up, parked in her condo’s lot. “I overreacted.” She gave kisses to the slash marks and puncture wounds.
“Your cat is an asshole, I’m not gonna be.”
She said she wasn’t worried about it. She always got revenge. If I tried some silly shit she’d find out.
Jane was different than any other woman I’d dated. She’d been in the service since she was eighteen. Mountain patrols. Guarding bases. Medical leave after an IED. Despite two tours she was still a corporal and felt the rank an insult to her ambition. Shaken by combat, unable to face another tour, she was stuck like me. And I told her I could relate to that. Respect that. She wanted to make higher rank, stay stateside, teach new recruits discipline. Become a drill sergeant.
“That’s admirable. I’d like a new job too.”
She said if I ever wanted to work at the zoo, she knew somebody there who could get me started.
Silence fell over us. I reached out and took her hand.
“Who took your cat while you were deployed?”
“He came with me.”
“To war?”
She leaned back and said I had a lot to learn about the real cost of freedom but she said it in the goofy voice we’d begun to use together.
“I was sure I’d be going back overseas until I met you.”
“Stick around,” I said.
Soon we were steaming up the windows. The Angel of Death tat leered at me.
“Okay, okay. We should stop.”
I kept rubbing. “Oh you don’t want to?”
“I’m not banging in your pint-sized truck.”
I nodded up to her condo. “Let’s go in.”
“No way.”
I pulled my hand back. A boyfriend I thought. Of course. Or worse, a husband.
“Odin,” she said, touching my face. “Odin is home. I’m not upsetting him again.”
I drove into the failing amusement park, past the bent carousel and burned-down archery hooch. Went behind the batting cages. Parked out of view from anything except a turkey buzzard fanning in the white sky. The distant buzz of the two-stroke go-kart engines ripping round the potholed track. We climbed into the bed of my truck and screwed harder than I’d imagined we could. Our feet hung over the tailgate. It was exciting. I see why people cheat. Elevated bombast. Secret passion. Sneaking around so her tomcat didn’t find out.
Baby Leopold was having a temper tantrum because I’d been forced to withhold dessert. Meanwhile I was trying to have a session with Ravi. Trying to explain how the insult to my truck kept echoing in my mind.
How she’d called my Isuzu pint-sized.
Ravi shouted, “I don’t think she meant dee-eye-see-kay size.”
Now Baby Leopold was trying to yank apart the bars of his crib, red-faced, teeth bared.
I shouted over the child’s fury. “I think she did.”
“So? What are you going to do about it, Kyle?”
After therapy I picked Jane up on a surprise date. We went to the Ford dealership and romantically strolled the rows, each truck lifted higher than the one before. Soon we stood at the king daddy of them all. I’d almost need a ladder to get inside. “Sick. I need it.”
“Get it,” she said, hopping in place. “Get it. Get it.”
When the salesman bumbled up Jane made fun of his pinstripe suit until he backpedaled, hands up in surrender, “I’ll wait in the showroom. Take your time.”
“Keep walking,” I said.
In negotiation she haggled him down three thousand. Terse. Unbending. Beads of sweat on his brow as he dared suggest the extended warranty, never mind the undercoat.
The truck gave me a new confidence. I loomed over the road and all the lower vehicles, fully erect.
After a few more times knocking boots in the cab of our mammoth machine, Jane suggested I come inside and have a talk with the cat, man to man.
I found Odin sitting, eyes in a tight slit, staring hatefully at the dining room rug, paws tucked under, as if incubating a miserable egg. He wouldn’t look up. He was white-furred with crimson eyes.
“Odin, listen. We can either be best friends or worst enemies. I vote best friends. I can get you shrimps, pollock, cod, Chilean sea bass. I have connections. Oysters. Clams. Cockles. You don’t need to be so pissed. You got a loving home and a caring mom. My life has been so much better since I met her. Maybe you can relate? This may be hard but I just had a talk with your mom. I’m moving in. I’ve had tough roommates before, so I’m ready to endure whatever you got. And I won’t be a tough guy to you. Really. I’d rather we be pals. I’m no threat. How do I explain this to a cat. Have you ever heard of pacifists?”
After a similarly dramatic farewell speech to poor Baby Leopold, I shook his tiny hand.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to. Don’t worry. You’ll be old enough for the batting cages soon. They’re down the dirt trail by my condo. I’ll teach you home runs.”
I packed my things as he hung on my leg begging, “You can’t leave me with these people.”
The first week I lived with Jane, Odin hid. Then he got brave and started stealing my seat at the table. I’d come back with seconds and he’d hiss and could not be moved. “Was this always his chair?”
“Only since you got here.”
I’d take another chair at the table, feeling both of their mocking eyes.
“Odin, I’m not your bitch.”
Jane almost fell over. “You totally are.”
Jane built a rock-climbing gym in her living room. Colorful epoxy handholds and footholds attached to brick face. Some holds high overhead, mounted into a tough old beam. I tried to climb like she did but couldn’t get more than a few holds before my grip failed. Jane said I should keep trying. It was sexy seeing me try.
We were perfectly happy homebodies despite Odin’s hatred. I showed Jane garbanzo beans, tarot, and when the nights got warm we took the truck out on Island Beach, my other safe spot.
One night out there we lit a discrete bonfire in a place the police never patrolled. We spent hours in each other’s arms, telling stories and talking about moving somewhere more isolated. We had no family here, no ties. It’d be nice to have a bunch of animals she said and by the way she said it I thought she meant kids. I held her tighter.
The wind whipped the fire into wild sparks.
To my surprise she opened up about the source of her night terrors while I held her and she clutched back.
The fear in her voice was new. When I was scared of something, Ravi pushed me to face the fear in a smaller version. Jane had almost died driving in a sandy war zone—well we didn’t have a war here but at least we had some sand. I took the truck keys out of my pocket, jingle-jangled them, suggested she drive the truck on the beach.
“I could never.”
“You can. I used to be petrified of everything. I haven’t been through what you have but you helped me.”
She stared into the fire. Lips drawn taut. “I should’ve never shown weakness. Now you’ll leave me.”
“Never. You’re my home. I love you.”
“Let me help.” I tossed her the keys to the F-450.
We climbed inside and she sat at the wheel for a while and I told her she didn’t have to drive if she didn’t want to. It was enough to just sit at the wheel and make engine sounds. I revved with my lips, vroom vroom, like Baby Leopold and I did playing with toy trucks. And she started laughing. “Stop that, I’m gonna piss my pants.” Vroom vroom. Jane turned the key. At first she looked shook by the sound of the engine and her being in charge of it, but then ten minutes later we were doing donuts so close to the dunes I thought we’d tip. Us howling somewhere in the sweet spot between terror and joy.
“You should feed Odin a mouse. Woo him. Make him adore you.” This very tactic had worked on Jane. Though I’d fed her elaborate vegetarian and meat-alternative meals she’d gone nuts for. She said she’d never had a man cook her anything but a hamburger, a couple sad eggs, a limp pancake. I’d shown her something different was possible in life.
“No, I’m serious, give him a couple hamsters.”
I compromised and tried to give Odin his wet cat food. But I gagged midserving, leaned over, mouth sweating, got sick in the trash. I felt fully emasculated.
I hit up the grocery store for organic cat food. Even though it was three times the cost, the reek of it still made me puke.
Jane saw how sick the smell of the wet cat food made me and she guessed what was next. “I love you but you can’t feed him hummus.”
It meant a lot to hear that word spoken. The first time she’d said she loved anybody, I suspected. But I didn’t make a big deal. I just said, “He wouldn’t catch this sludge in nature.”
I tried. I really did. But my disdain for Odin was so clear and his disdain for me so potent.
Jane and I had gotten even closer. Close enough to bicker, argue, sometimes shout. The icier it got between us, Odin became emboldened. Attacks to my feet. I had to start wearing my shoes inside. Seeing no retaliation, he got more aggressive, leapt on my head as I was bent over getting linens in the hall. He ran up the wall and into the living room, somersaulted under the couch. The next time Odin attacked I was cutting lilies at the kitchen table and Jane saw the whole thing and I had trembling hands again and had to set the scissors down before I did something foolish.
I was embarrassed to admit to Jane I had a therapist. She’d vehemently opposed counseling despite her PTSD. Thought a person should figure their own shit out. Or if it was too big to handle alone that’s what a boyfriend was for. Two of her buddies in the service, Jamal and Erika, had shot themselves after talking to shrinks.
Ravi came over pretending to be my drinking buddy. We put on the football game and Jane took the truck over to see her zookeeper pal.
“Brother, I been meaning to ask. How’s our wonderful little Baby Leopold doing?”
“I’m not sure. I wanted him to come over and play but this cat is so vicious.”
As if summoned, Odin charged out of the kitchen and made threatening maneuvers. Back arched, fangs bared. We had to retreat into the bedroom and close the door. Sitting on the bed whispering like the old days, only now no sleeping baby, just a pale demon slashing at the door. I was paranoid Jane would come home before the therapy session was over and catch me and Ravi on the bed and think we were lovers, which would be less damning in her eyes than me talking to a mental health professional.
Jane and I had our secrets, our own lives, and a good thing going together while Odin slept, which was most of the time. As long as Odin didn’t begin attacking while I slept, I could hang on. I thought anyway.
I got in the shower and there was no hot water. I shivered against the tile wall, testing the temp with my fingertips. The shower curtain wavered like someone had just walked in.
“Jane? That you? Get in here, warm me up.”
Odin leapt through the shower curtain in berserker mode ripping and tearing tender parts I will not mention.
Bouncing off the walls, yowling and corkscrewing through the freeze. Trying to get away, I bashed my face on the faucet and slipped down semiconscious in the tub.
Jane found me half an hour later, and pulled me out, wrapped me in a towel, inspected the gash on my head while I babbled.
She thought I’d had a stroke.
“No, he somehow got the bathroom door open.”
“Cats hate water.”
“We’ll find him and you’ll see.” She was looking at me like I needed to be driven to the psych ward. “You’ll see.”
Later that night she found Odin hiding under the couch. He was slightly damp. Wouldn’t stop panting and moaning. Paws tucked under, tongue hanging out.
He died as the sun came up.
Jane cried. I’d never seen her cry. Sometimes I thought it might have helped, to vent out the hurt accumulated before I’d met her. Now that I saw how angry crying made her, I wished I could take the tears back.
She said there was no way he had leapt into the shower and attacked me. There was something I wasn’t telling her. She accused me of murdering Odin.
“You’re joking I hope.”
She showed me text messages from her zoologist friend who believed Odin was poisoned. The zoologist’s chief evidence seemed to be that Odin had also drunk all the water in his bowl, despite me never once seeing him take even a single sip in all those months. Pets usually became dehydrated and drank mightily on death’s door.
“Maybe that’s why he leapt into the shower.”
“Shut up!” She showed me the text where her friend also said if Odin was poisoned, most likely he knew his killer. Statistics said so. I was the only other person Odin knew in America.
“I didn’t do anything, he attacked me.”
“Why though? Why did he attack you?”
“If we are to believe the zoologist’s hypothesis it’s because Odin was thirsty.”
We didn’t have a yard of our own, so we buried Odin in the woods he’d constantly stared at from the window.
I patted the dirt with the shovel.
Jane said she’d re-upped her service contract after all. She’d put in the time and make sergeant. In two weeks she was going back to the base and then she was being sent to Poland. For at least two years.
I thought we were about to break up but then after a long silence I said, “Please don’t kick me out of your place.” To my relief she asked me to please stay living there while she was gone, be its caretaker.
“I don’t want to just be your caretaker.”
“I’m not done with you yet.”
“But you’re mad at me.”
We walked back up the path. She said she wanted to get another cat before she left.
“Please, no cat, I’m a dog person.”
The next day Jane came home with a little thing rolled up in a blanket. “I got you a puppy.”
I peeked inside.
“What kind of dog is this?”
“I’m not sure. Some weird mutt.”
A sandy-colored fella, with sharp teeth and green eyes.
She said someone was giving them away. The home they’d had was exploitive.
Jane would barely acknowledge me. In bed at night she stayed far away and the night terrors returned. The pup was my pup alone. Back to how it’d felt raising Baby Leopold. A dependent creature, in a sequestered space where I had to do my best to be good enough for him, or I could lose my home. Jane was leaving and the condo with the dog was a consolation prize.
For the first few weeks the puppy had various names that didn’t stick. Finally I settled on naming him Leopold in tribute to the friend I missed so much.
During the gray days that followed she began selling things out of the condo. Most of her clothes, books, even her chessboard. “He’ll just eat this stuff anyway.” People would come to pick up art and pieces of furniture and say, “Wow what is that?”
“Shiba inu mix, most likely.”
“A dog? Are you sure?”
Another tense week with Jane and then we said our tearful goodbye. Hugged and kissed like it was the beginning rather than the end. I could see it in her eyes, she still cared for me. She grabbed my shoulders, “I’ll ask you one last time. Did you kill my fucking cat?”
“Absolutely not.”
She shook her head. “I want to believe you.”
“Are you ever coming back?”
She said that was up to me.
I motioned to the puppy standing between us.
“Is this a test?”
“I’m rooting for you.”
The first lonely afternoon in the condo I noticed the blanket had a tag from the zoo.
I threw the blanket out and walked down the path with tiny Leopold bounding and squealing.
The amusement park was going out of business. A long decline. Finally reached bottom.
Two tall men were loading the go-karts into a tow behind a trailer. I hadn’t had to listen to pink noise or don sunglasses out in public going on three months. Now I felt the call again.
The owner of the amusement park had obviously been weeping in the snack stand. He opened the window and said if only he had had ten more people with my enthusiasm for the batting cages things would have been different. He tried to sell me each and every piece of remaining equipment. Powerless against a salesman, I settled for what I actually wanted. A pitch machine I could set up inside the condo. Now that all her things were gone, there was nothing to break if I kept the doors closed.
Leopold, to my joy, refused to eat the wet dog food, which smelled even worse than wet cat food. He seemed perfectly happy eating what was left of Odin’s dry mix—so much so, I kept him on that into the spring.
The menu changed again. We were Lebanese now instead of French-Korean. I had no idea what I was doing. We only had a handful of customers anyway, none of them seemed to care what they were served, how accurate my cooking, at least. I’d long assumed we were a drug front. I set up the vertical rotisserie and called livestock suppliers endlessly asking about mutton. It was out of the question to even mention bringing my new puppy to work, keeping him crated in the office while I prepped, chopped, made whatever current culture’s stew. If this didn’t work they wanted to become West African.
And every day my bosses increasingly on edge. On the verge of fleeing their grave mistakes. They’d wanted a restaurant so bad and that hadn’t made them happy, so they had a kid but that hadn’t worked either.
His mother with big sad cocaine eyes.
“Kyle, don’t you miss him?”
The hulking father cracked his knuckles, “You must miss him.”
“He can bathe himself now.”
“Potty time, the whole deal.”
“Let’s set up some sleepovers.”
I’d backed away until I was cornered in the walk-in freezer. “It’d only be right if you took the boy on your days off, Mondays and Tuesdays.”
“He’s too much for the elderly grandmothers.”
I was unemployed for two months and then got a work-from-home, doubly lucrative gig coordinating international distribution for organic dairy, vegetable, and livestock farms.
Mostly it was an email job. Endless emails.
No downsides for me except the occasional anxiety-inducing phone call to a poultry farmer who didn’t know what a computer was.
My hours went up slightly but now I was home full-time with the pup, pecking away at a laptop while he ambled, paced, twitched in dreamland.
For the first few months Leopold slept in a crate at night and life was easy. He quickly outgrew the crate. I got a bigger crate. Already the days were predictable and I realized how lucky I was to have him in my life. He wanted to play and I wanted to play with him. He kept growing and chowing through an obscene amount of kibble. He soon was bigger than the second crate. I gave up. It was winter and the condo was cold. When he crawled up into bed with me I appreciated his warmth.
Every day he seemed wilder and more unruly.
He’d filled out with muscle.
I was never scared of him. Not once.
We were so close. If I got up and walked anywhere in the condo he shadowed each step.
One morning I looked at him lying in the sunshine and noticed his paws were getting huge and his tail thick. This would not be a medium dog. Leopold was going to grow up to be a monster.
I texted Jane and brought up my worry.
She wrote back a few days later and said things were bad where she was and they were probably bad where I was but we should both remember to ‘soldier up’ and we’d survive.
Two weeks later I picked up the phone and called Jane though we’d agreed on no phone calls except in absolute emergencies.
“Leopold is sprouting a mane.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Are you hurt?”
“You brought home a lion? That’s what you meant by testing me.”
“I apologize. It was wrong of me.”
“A lion.”
She said she was sorry again and her voice cracked and in the silence that followed I felt my dread wash off. My spine snapped into place. I stood an inch then two inches taller.
“I’m not even mad. Leopold is glorious. He’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
“Really?”
“One of the best. Really. I don’t even care if he’s payback.”
“There, you admit it, you did something to Odin.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She was screaming and I was screaming.
Leopold looked up from the floor and seemed to understand the source of our argument. He let out a roar.
Then she was laughing and I was laughing.
I want to stop right here and mention something. I was never in danger. I was not a magician and he was not a security system. We were equals.
I can understand how others would be afraid. But they had never had something this pure happen to them.
There are certain ways life could go, experiences could go. You think you’d react one way but when you are in that position your true self arrives. That’s what happened once I’d decided there was no way I would ever part with my Leopold. He never tried to take my seat, never tried to push me out. He respected my bubble. He wanted to be part of it, not overtake, burst it. The bubble expanded to include him.
Without him I could see how I would be lonely, how it might have dawned on me that I really was a loser. With him I was in God’s mafia.
The constant of my days. The sound of his breath.
The glance of his eye. The nudges to be pet. To be played with. Other people had their hobbies. I had this relationship that took my everything. All we had was each other and the rest of the world faded away. I thought about Jane all the time. She wrote me letters and I sent letters back. Full-time I was his. Full-time he was mine. Dawn and twilight blended into one. Even in those early days I was sick at the thought I could lose him. I’d do whatever was necessary to keep him. I understood now what the devout felt. Every morning when I woke up still alive it felt like a gift and I don’t just mean because he didn’t murder me in my sleep but yes that too. I prayed he’d also grow to love my girlfriend if she ever made it home.
Glorious as he was—it wasn’t right to keep a lion in the condo. I cleaned up the shit and piss and I wanted to take Leopold outside but I worried I’d get arrested, or they’d take my Leopold away, or worse, shoot him on sight. At his most base, Leopold was an indoor cat. If somehow I shipped him back to the Sahara he would be killed by other outside cats. If I took him back to the zoo it would be like taking him to jail.
I called Ravi. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in contact.”
“Is it about your lion?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
He was quiet.
I said, “It was obvious to everyone but me.”
“Your superpower is denial.”
“What should I do?”
“Well, lots of people have lions and tigers or cheetahs for pets. Alligators. It’s no big deal. I knew a girl in Red Bank, she lives on Cedar Street by the cultural center. She had a silverback gorilla. Brother, it’s something. Shared a bi-level with the beast. It’s not as uncommon as you’d think. The trick is keeping them happy.”
“This is a client of yours?”
“Was a client.”
“Ah well. Leopold is getting sick here. He doesn’t look healthy. I need to take him to the vet but I can’t.”
“Talk to that zookeeper.”
I did a little digging and found out her zookeeper friend, Daniel David, was already six months into a prison sentence for selling endangered animals. He’d been picked up in the days immediately after gifting this lion cub to Jane. Even if I wasn’t a shut-in, there was no way I would drive to Rahway prison to ask his advice.
But it wasn’t hard to raise a lion after all. Just like learning anything else, the ingredients of an unknown dish, or how to give yourself stitches, I watched a few YouTube videos and got the gist. Switched Leopold from processed dry food to whole slabs of beef, bulk packs of chicken breast, all on steep discount because of my new job. A few weeks of that and he looked healthier, happier, eyes and coat shining. I’d almost murdered him on kibble.
Taking care of Leopold changed as he changed. So did the amount of poultry. A pound of chicken breast in the beginning. Full grown, he’d need twenty pounds a day, bones and all, and I’d need a second job.
No problem, chickens were easy to acquire.
When I thought he was a dog I took him for leisurely strolls down the path through the woods. I drove around town with him in the cab of the truck and if it weren’t for the rest of society I would have kept up the cruising with him eventually standing in the truck bed like a farmer’s impossible hound dog. As my error became apparent walks and drives were out of the question. He was locked inside with me and I got him a litter box he never used. The stench of lion shit and ammonia filled the condo. I mopped constantly. Shoveled his dung into the toilet and flushed. He was increasingly trying to get outside but freedom was impossible anymore for either one of us.
You can get anything on the internet. I bought a hundred-foot spool of steel cable, five eighths of an inch thick. The kind used to hoist elevators. Clamps and a heavy plate to bolt to the floor. Ravi helped me run the steel cable out the back door. Wrapped it around a thick oak tree across the narrow strip of sod. While I worked the hammer drill Leopold tried to play with Ravi and by that I mean he kept knocking Ravi over and I could see how scared Ravi was getting. “It’s fine, he likes you.”
“Likes me for lunch.”
“He’s harmless,” I said but I couldn’t stop smiling.
I Shop-Vac’d the cement dust out of the holes in the concrete. Leopold rolled around and playfully attacked the canister and hose. Ravi carefully poured foul-smelling, two-part epoxy into the holes and sank 3/4″ studs in. Some of the epoxy bubbled out and made a pink ring around the studs. “Whatever you do, don’t let him lick this stuff.”
When the epoxy dried a steel plate with a welded lug was bolted to the floor. Ravi was dubious the little metal thing could support the weight of my Leopold.
I said, “It’s good for twenty thousand pounds of force.”
It didn’t matter how big Leopold got, no lion was breaking this contraption.
Ravi clasped my shoulder, “As long as you’re confident.”
Now Leopold was free to be outside in the fresh air. A heavy steel grommet free to travel down the length of the cable with Leopold’s chain shackled to the grommet.
I stood with my friend, Ravi, drinking peppermint tea in the doorway, watching the lion gnawing at his ridiculous chain. Biting and tearing. And then, as we all do, he accepted the chain, made the best of limitations, gave up, stood up, got on with things.
Leopold hid in the tall weeds growing along the beech wood’s edge. Sniffed the bluebells. Rolled through splatters of golden sun speckle, licked the dew off stems and stalks, drank from puddles dually to wash the sugar sand from his mouth and to kiss his own reflection.
Sometimes he’d catch me a birdy.
Geese were no challenge. He’d come inside to my amazement with a robin or wren crushed and suffocated in his mouth, set it at my feet as a present. Once he even brought in a pair of cardinals together. Damp with slobber but otherwise un-mangled. These small birds would have been a snack for him. He had gone out of his way to show me his love by not swallowing those tiny chirping pills.
Leopold always wanted out but when to let Leopold out was the precarious question. Yes we were usually alone up here on our hill but there was still the mailman to consider, the occasional real estate agent who’d show up for one of the other units.
That fall the maintenance crew appeared, blowing and raking leaves, stepping in substantial deposits of lion dung.
The winter was tranquil and my biggest job was covering over Leopold’s tracks in the snow while he watched, paws on the windowsill.
The real problem showed itself during the first mow.
The landscapers returned with an industrial lawnmower of such power and torque its whirring blades shook my bathroom mirror. Leopold would have crashed through the living room window and eaten them all had I not dove across the room and hooked the chain to his collar right as he leapt.
My wrist was shattered.
A man on a machine passed by the window and briefly locked eyes with me but couldn’t see the predator also inside the room because I’d positioned the bamboo shoji screen to hide my dear Leopold.
I was praying the mowing didn’t take much longer but also hoping the engine didn’t suddenly go silent because he was roaring and moaning and pulling hard on his chain. Staring at my wound, I was doing a bit of moaning and roaring myself.
The mower suffered a sudden catastrophe of its own.
The blade struck the loose end of the steel cable I’d run across the narrow sod and pulled the line up, so it wrapped around the shaft, yanking the lawnmower and its rider toward the oak tree.
The engine cut when the shaft snapped.
I heard the landscaper yelling in anger, luckily not pain.
I looked out the window and saw he was walking toward my door but before he could get there I stepped outside and led him away, clutching my wrist, seeing stars, all while he screamed, “Why would you have this in your yard?”
He demanded I pay for the broken mower. The way he was talking down to me, pointing his finger at my chest, I almost wanted to sic Leopold on him. He was a small man, I realized then, not just in height or weight compared to me, but in thinking, in heart, in intelligence. You could hear it in his voice. I didn’t have to listen. “Your one job is to cut the lawn. You can’t even do that.” He tried to say something else but I shut him down. “I don’t want to hear another word. Get off our property and don’t come back here. Ever. I’ll take care of it all myself.”
I fed tennis balls into the pitch machine and launched them across the condo. Leopold bounded as they ricocheted off brick and concrete. Endless energy burned off. Concrete trimming down his claws to something sane. I kept my damaged paw as far away from his nose bumps as possible. Still he’d get me. Howl I would.
At night he still slept with me and I was cured of anxiety as I spooned him. I knew better than to let him spoon me.
Halloween came around again. Ravi texted me a picture of us with Baby Leopold dressed as a green crayon.
We all looked so young.
Now my Leopold slept diagonally in the bed, inadvertently into my territory. He refused to move when I gave a well-meaning nudge. A deep growl as I laid hands on his back.
I would have slept on the couch but he’d eaten it.
All afternoon I debated the boundaries I was about to establish. I could not fit another king size, or even queen size bed in the room. I spread a blanket on the living room floor and pointed at it. “You can have the whole place during the day. At night the bedroom is mine. Alone.”
He showed me his canine teeth, each over an inch.
I led him into the living room, turned back immediately, tricked him, shut my bedroom door.
Through the door I said, “This is how it is, pal. Get used to it.”
I lay down and turned on the TV. Clicking around thinking, pondering how dire everything had become. I settled on American football. Green Bay vs. Detroit.
Half watching the game, half doing the physical therapy stretches and mobility work on my wrist, I heard Leopold sniffing at the door. It shuddered as he pawed.
“Go away. You can’t have the whole bed.”
The pawing stopped for a moment.
Then I heard him roaring full throated.
“Go lie down.”
He leapt and the wood began to splinter and I screamed like a little bitch and to this day I still think he was just playing around unsure of his own strength but the screws in the hinges ripped out of the frame and the door crashed into the bedroom. I backed against the wall with the blankets gathered close as a shield and saw Leopold looming in the semidark. The TV reflecting in his eyes.
He licked his chops and roared.
“No,” I said. “Bad. No.”
He wasn’t eyeing me, he was looking at the players on the screen sprinting after each other.
Leopold leapt through the air and pulled the television off the wall. Crunched down. Orange and white sparks danced down the cord.
And then darkness.
I’d let it get too far. I screwed sheet metal over the windows. Double over the one that used to look down to the batting cages. Leopold was more fixated on getting outside than ever. I had constant nightmares of him escaping and me helpless to stop him. Now the condo was always ill lit, spooky. I was just a mortal man on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and a triumphant dose of benzodiazepines.
A knock on the door. I looked through the peephole but couldn’t see anything. A wee little voice. “Kyle? It’s me! Open up.”
Baby Leopold was outside on the doorstep.
Leopold the lion was crouched down behind me ready to leap. The doorknob shook.
“Kyle. Open up.”
“What are you doing here? We can’t play.”
“It’s Leopold.”
The lion tilted his head at the mention of his name.
“Where are your parents?”
It was quiet out there.
“It’s dangerous for you to be here. Do you know what dangerous means?”
“Open the door, let’s play.”
“I got a new friend. I’m sorry.”
With trembling hands I called his mother and begged her to come pick her son up. She tried to pass it off like we’d set up some definite reason for her child to be here but of course we hadn’t. I argued and she said both grandmothers were in the ICU, what was she supposed to do on date night?
“I’m sad,” Baby Leopold said through the door.
My Leopold was leaning against the thin sheet metal covering the nearby window. Sniffing furiously.
“Get away from the window!”
“Don’t raise your voice to my son,” his mother said. The father was yelling in the background too, same as ever.
I asked them please to take him back before something bad happens. They said they had plans they couldn’t break and knew I was home, I was always home. I said, “Unmake them or I’m calling DYFS.”
I hung up and turned to my apex predator and pointed to his bed. “Please lay down. Right now. Pretty please with sugar on top, go to bed. Lay down.”
The lion slunk away from the door drooling and I was again left alone talking to Baby Leopold through the door.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“I’m not. Things have just changed.”
“What changed?”
It got quiet out there, the boy was sobbing so low the wind took it away. I heard the Land Rover’s horn and understood they’d been parked out there the whole time waiting to see what I’d do. His mother and father’s voice shouted in unison for him to hurry up. “Kyle ruins everything. Everything. Everything.”
The phone chimed the next afternoon.
Jane on FaceTime. “Let me see him.”
I turned the phone around and showed her our pal.
“Holy shit! How much does he weigh now?”
“More than me.”
“More than you, that was fast.”
“It’s been eighteen months.”
“Time flies when we’re having no fun. You look good, you been working out? Did you get a whip for that bad boy yet or what?”
“He’s so well behaved, no whip required.”
“I see that.”
I said he listened to commands. “He’s caught me three crows, a barn owl, a seagull, a chipmunk somehow.”
“Aw, he’s your buddy.”
“Very much so.”
She said she was glad she called, she missed me and was looking forward to seeing me in a few months. A reconciliation. “You gonna sic your lion on me?”
“Your lion too.”
I’d gotten strong. Happened little by little. At first I could barely make it up the wall but that changed after I took the challenge seriously. Each day I climbed a little higher. Handhold after handhold. Up the brick face I went. Soon my Leopold regarded me curiously from the concrete below. What are you doing there above me? Fingertips and outstretched toeholds. Chalk for better grip. Trust the anchor bolts. Muscles knotted and aching. Hands and shoulders ever enduring. Learn to trust myself. Finding places in the wall damaged a hundred years ago, when the place was a factory. Leopold followed me with his eyes. Mouth slack in a smile. Marveling at something he could not do physically that must have made him wonder, What else can this chimpanzee of mine do? I could toss him his twenty-five morning meatballs and he’d catch them out of the air or zigzag the laser pointer for him to chase when the pitch machine was down with a broken belt. I could shackle him to a lug in the floor and come out to meet the delivery men and tell them to leave the pallet of chicken out there at the end of the walk, come no closer! I exchanged a weak chain for a thicker chain. The old one had links stretched and stressed in thinning ovals. This one was hardened. This one five feet longer so he could meet new flowers—lick and piss on ’em. His mane in full splendor, I could comb it, wash and condition. I had the power to continue horizontal across the ceiling while he wondered if I was a spider. I touched the other wall and descended victorious after a year of trying. Leopold yowling as I returned to his earth.
My phone rang. Unknown number. I answered anyway. It was Baby Leopold. He’d just gotten his own cell phone for his fourth birthday and I was the first person he thought to call. “I’m honored. Happy birthday!” I sang the birthday song with the alternate crescendo, “You smell like a monkey and livvvvvvvvvve in a zoo.”
Snorting. Giggling. “I miss you, Kyle. Come to my house.”
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you come over? I don’t want a present, we can just hang out.”
“I can’t leave, I’m sorry. And you can’t come over but maybe I can explain why. Where are your mom and dad? It’s a big secret.”
“I don’t know. They left me with the clown. I can keep a secret. I won’t even tell the clown. I’m angry with you!”
“I know you are. Maybe this will make it all right. Swear you won’t tell? Not your parents, not the clown, not anybody.”
“I swear.”
“I got a lion.”
“No you didn’t.”
“It’s true.”
“You don’t.”
“You want to hear him roar?”
“Yes!”
I goaded Leopold until he rewarded us with a thunderous bellow that echoed off brick face and concrete.
Baby Leopold gasped in astonishment.
“Oh! Is he mean?”
“Yes. Extremely.”
“He eats kids?”
“He might. That’s why I keep a close eye.”
“Wow that’s so cool you do that.”
“You understand?”
“I do.”
“Well happy birthday again. Tell the clown he better take good care of you or else.”
“Else what? Oh! Oh I know!”
I looked into Leopold’s eyes and saw how depressed he was. It was dinnertime and eighteen pounds of chicken lie on the floor, of no interest. He had been looking at me differently. Like I could be food.
Did you know? A person with an apex predator as a pet needs to be on their toes. Just like all lovers must remain inventive to keep their needful beauties fulfilled.
I chained Leopold up and begged him to behave.
I walked out to my giant truck.
Drove out of town.
It’d been so long since I had.
I passed the old restaurant and they were Salvadorean now. I passed the road that led to Island Beach and kept going, thinking I could take Jane and Leopold there for a bonfire soon, if I could keep us all happy. Country roads pulled me along with leaves popping again on the outside world’s trees. The windows down. Wind in my hair and on my face. In love. My glorious life pressing in from all sides. In less than two weeks Jane was coming home and we’d all find permanent release together, one way or another.
I pulled down the livestock supplier’s lane.
The woman came out and said she was so thrilled to put a face to the emails. We shook hands like old war buddies. And then I asked what she thought a lion would cherish best for din din.
“Gazelle,” she said but didn’t have any.
We looked at the pigs for a while but they didn’t seem fun enough. Did she have some wild boar perhaps? We settled on a chubby billy goat, brown coat, two black horns, snowy beard.
The ramp up into my pickup almost too steep for him. “I thought these things climbed mountains?”
Exasperated she said, “Apparently not this one.”
I returned as dusk swept across town. Cruised through the abandoned amusement park. It was even more challenging to get him down the wooden ramp. Eventually I coaxed the billy with a trail of hay leading into the batting cage. I locked him in with a padlock on the gate latch and turned away. The place seemed cursed, abandoned for a thousand years. Even worse when that innocent creature began bleating. The wailing wind made it all the eerier.
Leopold had frightening eyes locked on me when I strolled in the door. He must have smelled the other animal on me.
“Want to go for a walk?”
His vicious glare softened. We hadn’t gone for a walk in over a year. And this was a night dark enough for misadventure. Absolutely moonless . Starless. I put his chain on. He gave a gentle hum of approval and purred. “Here goes nothing,” I said and brought him outside.
Big body vibrating.
“I got you a treat.”
Together we walked the path past Odin’s grave.
We made it without incident past the Putt-Putt course and now, locked in the cage where I’d first admired Jane, the young goat saw us and began to bleat in terror. I put two hands on the chain and braced myself.
Leopold froze and I could sense his blood was up. I gripped tighter on the chain yet, told him to sit.
He fell on his haunches but the purr became a steady growl. I unlocked the padlock and the goat was trying to escape but as far as he ran there was nowhere to go. I let Leopold off leash.
The slaughter of that poor animal was the second most impressive thing I’d ever seen in that particular batting cage.
Leopold smashed into his prey with his full weight, paws heavy, knocking the billy over on his side. The slow strangulation of clamped jaws began.
Life doesn’t last long for anything really.
I never was prouder of anybody.
Look at my Leopold showing off.
After the murder Leopold ripped the goat apart like it was made of birthday cake. I turned to look away from the sights and sounds of the massacre but my head kept snapping back. The breathtaking majesty.
While my lion ate, two problems materialized. My phone rang. A call from Baby Leopold which I let go to voicemail. Then another call from Baby Leopold. I silenced the phone.
And then a red car pulled into the lot and parked by the defunct arcade.
Teenagers with a twelve pack.
I slid farther into the dark.
I wasn’t sure what was worse, Leopold seeing them or them seeing Leopold.
They got out of the car and walked off into the graveyard of what had once been the driving range. Their bodies and voices faded beneath the elms and blended with the night.
Never mind them. This was too important to miss.
I took out my phone and filmed a home movie of my Leopold’s first real, natural feast.
For a brief moment he stopped ripping and tearing and looked up at me with pure love then continued on as if this was Christmas morning and he was opening his big present.
Then when the breeze got right I could hear the teenagers distant laughs and murmurs while Leopold went on joyfully devouring. Marijuana on the breeze.
Our noise carried over. I could hear the kids speculating about the strange sounds.
Goblins? Werewolves? Cops?
“There’s something back there.”
“I hear it too.”
A crunch echoed across the frosty grass.
Leopold broke the ribcage open and started to mess around with the entrails.
Now beers in hand the kids were walking back. Coming closer to where I stood—investigating.
“Where are you going?”
“There’s something back there.”
Leopold snapped the skull, brains burst out in a slop.
“What’s that sound?”
I was about to lose Jane’s cat again. My cat. And it was more than that. So much more than that and getting worse every second. I stopped recording the video and put my phone away. Told Leopold, “I’ll be right back.”
I caught the teenager coming through the lot, blinded them with my phone’s flashlight. Told them I was security and they better get moving before I contact their parents.
“It’s a school night,” I said.
They actually got in their car and left.
I watched their headlights disappear and then I looked back at Leopold in the cage and he was no longer lying across the goat. He was slowly circling.
And for a few minutes all was right and I was proud of myself and of Leopold and of the goat too.
We’d all done so well.
But then up through the trees I saw headlights on the wooded hill. A vehicle had pulled into the lot. The face of my condo illuminated by headlights. I couldn’t make any sense of how the children I’d just frightened had any idea where I lived but it made sense a moment later when the headlights swung away from the condo and I began to hear a little boy’s voice faraway at first, calling my name. Coming closer.
Baby Leopold had gotten dropped off by his parents and now he was coming down the path looking for me.
His parents had gone on vacation without him.
All Baby Leopold had to do was follow the sounds of the massacre. He was excited to meet my lion. He was running toward us calling my name. But when he got close enough to see his namesake, the reality made his little heart thunder.
I heard him gasp.
“It’s all right,” I said, stepping out of the shadows.
“He’s so scary.”
“Stay right there. Come no closer.”
“He’s looking right at me.”
Baby Leopold screamed, turned, and broke out in a run.
“Don’t run!”
Leopold heard the slapping of Baby Leopold’s sneakers and burst against the fence and the latch bent and he was knocked backwards. I blocked the gate with my body. Baby Leopold screamed. Leopold the lion leapt again and sent me flying and the gate twisted and broke loose and from the ground I saw Baby Leopold bumbling across the lot. Arms pumping. Legs like spaghetti. Leopold bounding after him, designed efficiently for the sole purpose of slaying. The baby wasn’t going to make it.
No chance.
And then the baby tripped and fell.
I screamed, “Leopold! No. Heel!”
But the lion kept charging. I couldn’t break his spell.
“Stop. Leopold!”
The lion came to the child and I saw his head drop and I heard the bloodcurdling scream of Baby Leopold as he met Leopold the lion face to face.
As we walked back home I had Leopold’s chain in one hand and Baby Leopold’s bloody hand in my other. The lion had kissed and nuzzled and licked the boy till his skin was raw and his terror had turned into acceptance and then by the time I was there, laughter because it tickled. They were both wet with goat blood and viscera but the only damage tonight had been done to the billy.
Maybe things would have gone different if my Leopold hadn’t just eaten, I figure, maybe not.
I could tell Leopold loved Leopold.
“Be nice to him and he’ll be nice to you, all right?”
“Can I ride him?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.”
My hand inadvertently hung near Leopold’s mouth and he bumped it with his snout to remind me he was there.
I rubbed his ear—the only spot on his head not gore-soaked. He rewarded me with his sandpaper tongue.
Baby Leopold kept saying the lion was silly.
That he’d never been scared. That I had to keep a secret too. I couldn’t tell anybody he’d seemed scared because he wasn’t. “I’m tough.”
“I know you are. Everybody’s scared though. It’s normal.”
“Mister Ravi says that.”
“Yes he does. He’s a smart man.”
Baby Leopold’s parents would be back in two weeks the child said. A bag of clothes and snacks sat on my front steps. They’d left us two hundred dollars for “pizza and juice boxes.” I wouldn’t be able to get the goat’s blood out of Baby Leopold’s overalls but the parents probably would never even notice. Still I’d try my best.
I figured something out just then. How I’d make it work with Jane and my Leopold. We would move to North Carolina like Ravi had once suggested. A person didn’t need a permit to own a lion there. Any fool could. When Jane achieved rank she’d get a job at Camp Lejeune. She’d break people down so she could build them up stronger. It was her gift. We would live somewhere north of Pumpkin Center up near Hofmann Forest and we’d all be so deliriously happy together as Jane advanced her career and helped others the way she had helped me, I would play matchmaker with lions and antelope. Leopold would take a lioness and start his own little pride and when the time was right Jane and I would have a little pride of children of our own on our compound full of lions.
We went around the back of our condo and hosed down Leopold with the garden hose. Steam radiating off him. The blood ran into the flowerbeds and made crimson mud. Probably it’ll make everything beautiful this summer.
Baby Leopold let Leopold lick the last of blood off his face and hands and then said he was a big boy and not to baby him. He led the lion inside the condo all by himself.
I stayed outside. I stood out in the fresh night air and through the crack of the door I saw the child pulling on the lion’s mane and for a split second I felt my old fear return. But my Leopold didn’t even flinch.
The child hoisted himself up on the lion’s broad back.
And I heard him singing a little song in his high-pitched voice. Not a song, I understood, as it looped back so soon, but my mantra, which he’d heard me mutter so many times in our cramped little room. His nursery. “It’s okay, it’s all right, brightest day, darkest night.”
They were fine, already friends.
I lingered outside, scrolling on my phone till I found the clip. That glorious masterpiece of a massacre.
I sent the video to Jane. The goat devoured, torn limb from limb, a mess of crimson and white and body opened up letting the soul loose.
LOOKY LOOKY WHAT I FED OUR KITTY 
Bud Smith is the author of the novel Teenager (Vintage) and the short story collection Double Bird (Maudlin House), among others. He writes from Jersey City, New Jersey.
Illustration: Rae Buleri
