Wyoming Read Free

most beautiful birds, like the ones around the pond at the racetrack in Hialeah. I’d like to be a dark pink flamingo with a really long, curvy neck.”
    “They’re elegant birds, baby, that’s for sure.”
    “If you could come back as an animal, Mom, what would you be?”
    “A leopard, probably. Certainly a big cat of some kind, if I had a choice. Leopards are strong and fast and beautiful They climb trees, Roy, did you know that? Leopards are terrifically agile.”
    “What’s agile?”
    “They’re great leapers, with perfect balance. They can jump up in a tree and walk along a narrow limb better than the best acrobat. Another thing about leopards, I believe, is that they mate for life.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “It means once a male and female leopard start a family, they stay together until they die.”
    “People do, too.”
    “Yes, baby, some people do. But I think it’s harder for human beings to remain true to one another than it is for leopards.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, all animals have to worry about is getting food, protecting their young, and to avoid being eaten by bigger animals. Humans have much more to deal with, plus our brain is different. A leopard acts more on instinct, what he feels. A person uses his brain to reason, to decide what to do.”
    “I’d like to be a leopard with a human brain. Then I could leap up in a tree and read a book and nobody would bother me because they’d be afraid.”
    “Baby, are you getting hungry? We humans have to decide if we want to stop soon and eat.”
    “A leopard would probably eat a flamingo, if he was hungry enough.”
    “Maybe, but a skinny bird doesn’t make much of a meal, and I don’t think a leopard would want to mess with all of those feathers.”
    “Mom, I need to go to the bathroom.”
    “Now that’s something neither a leopard nor a flamingo would think twice about, fll stop at the next exit, I need to go, too.”

Wyoming
    W HAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE, MOM?”
    “Oh, I have a lot of favorite places, Roy. Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico.”
    “Is there a place that’s really perfect? Somewhere you’d go if you had to spend the rest of your life there and didn’t want anyone to find you?”
    “How do you know that, baby?”
    “Know what?”
    “That sometimes I think about going someplace where nobody can find me.”
    “Even me?”
    “No, honey, not you. We’d be together, wherever it might be.”
    “How about Wyoming?”
    “Wyoming?”
    “Have you ever been there?”
    “Your dad and I were in Sun Valley once, but that’s in Idaho. No, Roy, I don’t think so. Why?”
    “It’s really big there, with lots of room to run. I looked on a map, Wyoming’s probably a good place to have a dog.”
    “I’m sure it is, baby. You’d like to have a dog, huh?”
    “It wouldn’t have to be a big dog. Mom. Even a medium-size or small dog would be okay.”
    “When I was a little girl we had a chow named Toy, a big black Chinese dog with a long purple tongue. Toy loved everyone in the family, especially me, and he would have defended us to the death. He was dangerous to anyone outside the house, and not only to people.
    “One day Nanny found two dead cats hanging over the back fence in our yard. She didn’t know where they came from, and she buried them. The next day or the day after that, she found two or three more dead cats hanging over the fence. It turned out that Toy was killing the neighborhood cats and draping them over the fence to show us. After that, he had to wear a muzzle."
    “What’s a muzzle?”
    “A mask over his mouth, so he couldn’t bite. He was a great dog, though, to me. Toy loved the snow when we lived in Illinois. He loved to roll in it and sleep outside on the front porch in the winter. His long fur coat kept him warm.”
    “What happened to Toy?”
    “He ran after a milk truck one day and was hit by a car and killed. This happened just after I went away to school. The deliveryman said that Toy was trying