The Heaven of Animals: Stories Read Free Page B

becomes two I s and then a pile of periods. I drape a length of tape over the snout, fasten the ends beneath the jaws, then run my gloved hands up both strands of tape, sealing them. Then I start wrapping like crazy. I wind the roll of tape around and around the jaws. The tape unspools, circling, a flat, black worm. When I step back, the alligator’s jaws are shut and my hands shake.
    “I can’t believe it,” Cam says. “I can’t believe you actually did that shit.”
    .   .   .
    The alligator’s one heavy son of a bitch. We hold him in a kind of headlock. Our arms cradle his neck and front legs. Our fingers grip his scaly hide. We sidestep toward the pickup, the alligator’s tail tracing a path through the grass. His back feet scramble and claw at the ground, but he doesn’t writhe or thrash. He is not a healthy alligator. I stop.
    “C’mon,” Cam says. “Almost there.”
    “What are we doing?” I say.
    “We’re putting an alligator into your truck,” he says. “C’mon.”
    “But look at him,” I say. Cam takes in the alligator’s wide, green head, his upturned nostrils and Ping-Pong-ball eyes. He looks up.
    “No,” I say. “Really look.”
    “What?” Cam’s impatient. He shifts his weight, gets a better grip on the gator. “I don’t know what you want me to see.”
    “He’s not even fighting us. He’s too sick. Even if we set him free, how do we know he’ll make it?”
    “We don’t.”
    “No, we don’t. We don’t know where he came from. We don’t know where to take him. And what if Red raised him? How will he survive in the wild? How will he learn to hunt and catch fish and stuff?”
    Cam shrugs, shakes his head.
    “So, why?” I ask. “Why are we doing this?”
    Cam locks eyes with me. After a minute, I look away. My arms are weak with the weight of alligator. My legs quiver. We shuffle forward.
    .   .   .
    I didn’t give Jack the chance to lie. I admitted guilt to second-degree battery and kept everyone out of court. I got four months and served two, plus fines, plus community service. Had that been the end of it, I’d have gotten off easy. Instead, I lost my family.
    The last time I saw Jack, he stood beside his mother’s car showing Alan his new driver’s license. They leaned like girls against the hood but laughed like men at something on the license: a typo. Weight: 1500 . I watched them from the doorway. Jack kept his distance, flinched if I came close.
    Alan had helped me load the furniture. With each piece, I thought of Jack’s body. How it hung between us that afternoon, how it swayed, how much like a game wherein you and a friend grab another boy by ankles and wrists and throw him off a dock and into a lake.
    Everything Jack and Lynn owned we’d packed into a U-Haul. I wasn’t meant to know where they were going. I wasn’t meant to see them again, but I’d found maps and directions in a pile of Lynn’s things and written down the address of their new place in Baton Rouge. I could forgive Lynn not wanting to see me, but taking my son away was a thing I could not abide.
    I decided I would go there one day, a day that seems more distant with each passing afternoon. And what would Jack do when he opened the door? In my dreams, it was always Jack who opened the door. I would spread my arms in invitation. I would say what I had not said.
    But, that afternoon, it was Alan who sent Jack to me. Lynn waited in the U-Haul, ready to go. Alan gestured in my direction. He and Jack argued in hushed voices. And finally, remarkably, Jack moved toward me. I did not leave the doorway, and Jack stopped just short of the stoop.
    What can I tell you about my son? He had been a beautiful boy, and, standing before me, I saw that he had become something different: a man I did not understand. His T-shirt was too tight for him, and the hem rode just above his navel. A trail of brown hair led from there and disappeared behind a silver belt buckle. His fingernails were painted black.