YET YOU TURN TO THE MAN

The cat was dying too slow. The vet could end it but the vet was thirty miles away and the cat hated the car.

I called the vet. Could I get it—what he used? Could I pick it up and bring it home and do it to her—by syringe or pill or however one did?

Can’t let you have it, said the vet. He told me the drug he used was the same drug a person will drop in a date’s drink in order to rape the date later. I could go to jail, he said.

Well, I don’t plan on raping anyone, I said.

The vet said, Does your husband own a gun?

He did. At the end, he kept it on the bed next to him when we had sex. But now he was gone, and so was the gun.

I hung up the phone and went to the garage. There were tools—loppers, rakes, hammers, screwdrivers, saws. I picked up the rusted shovel and went to where the cat lay on her side in the grass, panting.

She was slightly slovenly, a little stupid. She’d been a bad mother. But she purred when you touched her and she had a pretty face. Now she trembled. Her fine fur was knotted in large, hard clumps. Every few minutes, one leg shot straight out, and the toes of the foot clutched at the air.

I lifted the shovel above my head and held it there. I pictured the person who could do this—someone stronger than I was. This person would hit the cat’s head—hard—with the flat back of the shovel. If a second hit was needed, or a third, fourth, fifth, this person—let’s be clear, this man—would ignore the blood. If the cat screamed or squirmed, the man would take no notice. He would calmly finish his task.

He is a practical man. He’d clean the shovel of blood with the dirt he’d dig to make a hole to put the dead cat in. If you cried for the cat, he’d tell you to stop being a dumb cunt.

The man’s presence means a plowed drive, a car that starts, a cord of firewood, a freezer full of dismembered deer. At night, there is a feeling some might call safety, yet you turn to the man even when it is the man of whom you are afraid.

But now he’s headed up where the work is rough—splitting rocks, cutting trees, gutting fish. With any luck, the work will break the man like I can snap a cooked chicken bone with one hand.

VAGRANTS

When we had no money we’d get in our car, and if it started and had gas enough, we’d drive until we came to streets unlike the one we lived on, where we’d creep along and gawk at the splendid order of affluence. We rolled the windows down to lean like dogs into the open air—so fresh there. We waved at all who passed. The wealthy are naturally suspicious and seldom waved back, but we didn’t grudge them so long as we were gazing ourselves full on their bounty.