Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart

“How long did all that take?” he said.

“Two months, give a week,” she said, “portal to portal.”

“That ain’t too long,” he said.

“Life rushes,” she said, and eased her hand up and unzipped his pants. “I’m tired of talking,” she said, watching her hand tour around in his trousers as if it were after something that wouldn’t keep still.

Curvo was off the highway ten miles on a gravel track that made a giant curve east and then north again and marooned the town, which was only a red clapboard building, two glass-bulb pumps, and a file of butchered outbuildings, with the desert open all around to every direction. He could see that all the outbuildings were cages of various sorts, patched in with coiled chicken wire to permit inspection from the outside. The largest coop, a square weathered shed built of sawed two-by-fours with the door removed and fresh chicken wire basted over the opening, had a newly stenciled sign that said zoo.

He stopped between the pumps and the building and looked out the woman’s window waiting for someone to come out. The building appeared to be a store, and the plate window was flocked with red fishing bobbers and plaquettes of leader line, and a pair of split cane fishing poles crossed corner to corner. A rooster crowed from down among the cages, and he heard it flap its wings as though it was trying to get away from something.

“Where is everybody?” the woman said, lifting her hair off the back of her neck. “Some kid works here — I seen his old flat-bed last week. Beep the horn.” She grabbed at the wheel, but he caught her.

“I’ll get out,” he said, taking a look back at the cages. “What’s your name?” he said.

“Jimmye,” she said.

“Jimmye what?”

“What’s yours?” she said, aiming her chin at him.

“Robard.”

“What is it?” she said.

“Robard.”

“That’s a damn poor name.”

“You’re real sweet,” he said, shoving the door to.

He walked down the row of cages, looking in each one to see if someone was squatting inside tending to whatever was locked up. In the zoo pen there was nothing but a few scraps of wrinkled cellophane and a gamy smell like something had just died inside. The second cage was a high four-poster frame built of creosote posts, covered with chicken wire and full of raccoons, two fat ones and eight or nine little ones piled into one corner. All the raccoons stopped and stood looking at him, then all at once went back to climbing the cage. In the third cage a maroon, black, and gold rooster had removed himself to the top branch of a fresno bole that had been dragged in from outside and gouged in the ground on the side farthest from the raccoons. It looked to him as if the coons were avid to get at the rooster, and were only waiting to find some tiny fault in the mesh that would turn the tide in their favor once and for all. The rooster was eying everything guardedly, his beaky head snapping from one little coon face to the next, in case one came squeezing through the wires, when he’d have a whole new set of worries.

The woman all of a sudden honked the horn and held it a long time so that the quiet in the yard was exploded. He grabbed a piece of dirt and flung it at the truck.

“What-in-the-shit!” the woman yelled inside the cab, her head erupting out the side, her mouth broke open. “Who’s bombing me?”

“Cut out that blowing. You ain’t helping nothin.”

“I’m hot as shit!” she yelled.

“We’re all hot,” he said, frowning and feeling desolated.

She ducked her head back in the truck and disappeared below the back window.

A latch snapped at the end of the row and a little girl in jeans let herself out of the last cage and walked up squinting in the sunlight, as if he were someone she was accustomed to. She drew her hair away from her ears, catching it high up with a rubber band, making her face look perfectly round.

“You got a mechanic?” he said, looking behind her to see if anyone else was coming up out of the cage. The girl was wearing a shirt with arrow pockets and mother-of-pearl buttons that belonged to someone bigger than she was.

“What’s the matter?” she said, her face arranging itself into a little frown.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking back at the truck, hoping the woman wouldn’t lay down on the horn again. “These here your animals?”

The girl surveyed down the row of cages as if she were trying to make up her mind. “Yes,” she said.

“They’re nice,” he said, taking another uneasy look at the truck and trying to think how to bring up getting her Buick worked on.

“You want to see Leo?” The girl cocked her head into the sunlight so that she could see him with one eye only.

“I seen him if that’s him,” he said, pointing at the rooster.

“That ain’t him,” she said, smiling slyly. “He’s back yonder.” She motioned behind her.

She walked back to the cage she had just come out of, past two box pens that were empty, and stopped outside the last one and pointed in at a big rufous-colored bobcat lounging in the dust, staring at nothing. The girl looked at the bobcat and then at him as if she was expecting a compliment. He studied the bobcat a minute, feeling a little cold commotion inside that had to do with wild animals and the suspicion of what one could do to you before you got turned around. At the bottom of the cage, almost at his feet, there was a big long-boned jack rabbit resting on its haunches, eying the cat quietly, its skinny ribs shoved against the wire so that tufts of fur gouged through in tiny hexagons.

He looked at the girl, waiting for her to say something that explained.

Leo began panting, and strings of thick clear spittle slid off his tongue into the dust. He seemed unconcerned with the rabbit, though the jack seemed intensely concerned with him, and stared at him, its skinny ears flicking around nervously and its nose testing the air as if it were gauging the seriousness of its predicament.

He stood back and stared at the rabbit, and didn’t say anything, though after a minute he noticed something about Leo he hadn’t seen before. The right back paw was missing at the low joint, the stub matted with thick reddish hair and sprawled behind the other one as if it contained the same big padded paw.

“What come of his leg?” he said, catching his knees and staring at the cat’s empty leg.

“Borned bad,” the girl said, looking at Leo the way he’d seen a salesman look at used cars. “Hillbilly give him to my dad in Missouri. Found him in a hollow log, starving.” She wrinkled her nose as if there were something nasty about it. She squatted on her heels and wiggled her fingers through the wires and called the cat, who rolled over onto his back and squirmed in the dust and stretched his forelegs straight up in the air. “C’mere, Leo,” she said, and the cat relaxed and looked at her with his head upside down, eyes half open and gleaming. The rabbit looked at her intently and squeezed back into the corner where she was.

“He thinks I’m calling him.” She giggled. “Don’t he wish.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he said.

The rabbit went back to measuring the distance.

“You see my coons?” she said, standing and walking up the row to where the coons were decorating the wires.

“I saw ’em,” he said.

He looked back at the rabbit and had an impulse to kick the gate open, but the cat bothered him, lounging in the dust, half awake, waiting for somebody to make just such a move. He followed the girl back up the row.

“Got the two old ones,” she said, “and the rest just come by themselves.” She looked at him as if she were waiting to see what he would say. “I’ll sell you one for sixty cents.”