The Heaven of Animals: Stories Read Free

alligator straddles an old kiddie pool. The pool’s cracked plastic lip strains with the alligator’s weight. His middle fills the pool, belly sunk in a few inches of syrupy brown water, his legs hanging out. His tail, the span of a man, curls against a length of chain-link.
    When he sees us, the alligator hisses, and his front feet paddle the air. His jaws open to yellow teeth and a throat the color of a turkey skin pulled inside out. Everywhere there are flies and gnats. They fly into his open mouth and land on his teeth. Others swarm open sores along his back.
    “What’s he doing here?” Cam asks.
    “Red was the Lizard Man,” I say. “Apparently.”
    We stare at the alligator. The alligator stares back. I consider the cage and wonder whether he can turn around.
    “He looks bored,” Cam says. And it’s true. The alligator looks bored, and sick. The jaws close, and his open eyes are the only thing reminding me he’s alive.
    “We can’t leave him here,” Cam says.
    “We should call someone,” I say. But who would we call? The authorities? Animal control?
    “We can’t,” Cam says. “They’ll kill him.”
    Cam is right. I’ve seen it before, on the news. Some jackass raises a gator. The gator gets loose. It’s been hand-fed and knows no fear of man. The segments always end the same way: Sadly, the alligator had to be destroyed.
    “I don’t see that we have a choice,” I say.
    “We have the pickup,” Cam says.
    My mouth says no, but my eyes must say yes, because before I know what’s happening, we’re in the front yard examining the bed of the truck, Cam measuring the length with his open arms.
    “This won’t work,” I say. Cam ignores me. He pulls a blue tarp from the backseat and unrolls it on the ground beside the truck.
    “He’ll never fit,” I say.
    “He’ll fit. It’ll be close, but he’ll fit.”
    “Cam,” I say. “Wait. Stop.” Cam leans against the truck. He looks right at me. “Say we get the alligator out of the cage and into the truck. Say we manage to do this and keep all of our fingers. Where do we take him? I mean, what the hell, Cam? What the hell do you do with twelve feet of living, breathing alligator? And what about the TV? I thought you wanted to take the TV.”
    “Shit,” he says. “I forgot about the TV.”
    We stare at the truck. I look up. The sky has turned from bright to light blue and the sun has disappeared behind a scatter of clouds. On the ground, one corner of the tarp flaps in the breeze, winking its gold eyelet.
    Cam bows his head, as if in mourning. “Maybe if we stand the set up on its end.”
    “Cam,” I say. “We can take the alligator or we can take the television, but we can’t take both.”
    .   .   .
    Electric-taping the snout, Cam decides, will be the hard part.
    “All of it’s the hard part,” I say, but Cam’s not listening.
    He finds a T-bone in Red’s refrigerator. It’s spoiled, but the alligator doesn’t seem to mind. Cam sets the steak near the cage, and the alligator waddles out of the pool. He presses his nostrils to the fence. The thick musk of alligator and reek of rotten meat turn my stomach, and I retch.
    “You puke, I kick your ass,” Cam says.
    We’ve raided Red’s garage for supplies. At our feet are bolt cutters, a roll of electric tape, a spool of twine, bungee cords, a dozen two-by-fours, my tarp, and, for no reason I’m immediately able to ascertain, a chainsaw.
    “Protection,” Cam says, nudging the old Sears model with his toe. The chain is rusted and hangs loose from the blade. I imagine Cam starting the chainsaw, the chain snapping, flying, landing far away in the tall grass. I try to picture the struggle between man and beast, Cam pinned under five hundred pounds of alligator, Cam’s head in the gator’s mouth, Cam dragged in circles around the yard, a tangle of limbs and wails. Throughout each scenario, the chainsaw offers little assistance.
    Cam’s hands are sheathed in oven mitts, a