Adam Johnson - Emporium

But tonight is the kind you find only in Phoenix, only in July. The moon is rising over the Papago foothills like some distant drive-in movie, and I will forget about black eyes and roughed knuckles, will swing wide of the empty tiger pen as I roam the zoo’s dark paths in my zebra-striped golf cart. I have tonight’s list of the animals I’m to cull stuck to the cart’s visor, and beside me on the seat are my son’s dirty Converse sneakers, a temporary measure I know, a faint hope that tonight at least, he won’t get too far from the house while I’m gone. It would be dangerously simple to get in the habit of daydreaming on a job like this, to let myself ponder life amid a sleeping zoo, to speculate on the animals on that list, to keep looking at those shoes. I know that trap already, and tonight, I have decided, there will be nothing in the world beyond the cart, nothing but the luft of stale, warm air up my shirtsleeves and four more hours of dark. I will hum through the exhibits, roll through my list, and later, I hope, remember nothing.

In the distance I can hear a big cat scratching against chain link. From somewhere come the soft thumps of a great owl hovering in its small aviary, and I sink into the kind of feeling I used to get back when I was a police officer and would cruise through residential neighborhoods. I could meander through dark cul-de-sacs for hours, head back, one thumb on the wheel, only using cruising lights, as I passed homeowners’ neat lawns, their sprinklers snapping on to hiss in the dark, their security lights occasionally sensing my patrol car and shocking an upturned Big Wheel in the drive or an empty swing set. There would be nothing at all but the green glow of my dash gauges; beyond my windshield, the world became a series of dark houses that blended, and my mind would go blank.

I keep my headlights off now as I did then, but tonight, it’s because of the rabbits. They make their way down the empty Salt River bed from the city dumps, and the zoo is overrun with them. Pink eyes are everywhere, ears swiveling in turn, and the sudden sight of me racing through the zoo is enough that they can throw themselves into the bright lights of trouble. You can’t believe what they’re capable of. When they get into the Oasis, they’ll eat whole flats of hot dog buns at a time. They end up in trash cans, air ducts, gummed up in water pumps, or zapped in electric fences, and even if they find their way into a place like Sonoran Predators, it’s not good because they’re dump bunnies, raised on rotting food, full of worms.

I cruise into the night-scent of wet eucalyptus, roll through a funnel of bugs humming under a floodlight, and I stare straight on because I don’t want to get to know the animals the way some people would. I don’t name them or follow too closely their movements. Back on patrol, when I rolled past houses and through alleys, I never looked in those windows or wondered if the sons were in their beds, because if you let up out there, if you let your thoughts start to wander, there wasn’t one house you couldn’t picture without chalk lines in the drive or yellow tape across the door. This isn’t nostalgia, here, not the voice of an ex-cop with a wife and a boy and nine years on the force. My goals these days are less ambitious. I am a security guard now, lucky to get this job, and tonight, as the rising moon blues the asphalt before me, I am hunting only rabbits.

I’ve got a little Remington.22 semiauto, but it’s unwise to shoot at any distance in a zoo, so I’m driving around to check a set of heavy-mesh raccoon traps I put out on my first rounds. The zoo is nestled in Papago foothills that slope into the shallow pan of south Phoenix, which is where I used to patrol. Occasionally, through breaks in the trees, I can see the bright city grid expand below, and every streetcorner, every alleyway, comes back to me in the orange glow. I know these spots in my nightly rounds where my old life appears suddenly and all too bright, and so I have trained myself to look at my coffee in its little holder on the dash, at my hands on the plastic wheel, because it has happened before that I have seen silent red and blues out there, and it let myself wonder is that Ted or Jose or Woco out there running something down. Then it’s all too easy to start wondering about the runner, how old is he, what’s he running from?

No, I try to keep focused on the task at hand. Sometimes high school kids try to jump the gates and occasionally there’s a problem in the main lot because of the adult bookstore down the road, but other than that, it’s best to stick to rounds. Mr. Bern, the zoo director, is still a little leery of me, so we talk through Post-it notes. I come to work, peel my note off the guard shack, and do what it says without thought. Speculation won’t change the animals on the list. Dwelling won’t bring my son in from the parking lots and canal roads below.

I wheel the cart around in the soft mulch of the Petting Zoo and head uphill to an exhibit called Your Own Backyard, which contains species of lesser interest like donkeys and javelinas, animals most people forego because of the hike. At the top, it happens like it always does: the zoo gives way to a wash of Phoenix light, wavering unsteady in the heat. It makes you look, look away, then look again. At the highest point in the park, the zoo also is reduced; it is now only the tops of trees, a rising breath from the green, and for a moment I feel for these rams and sheep, to whom this dangerous city appears brilliant and alluring. From below, there is a faint call of lemurs, and the thought crosses my mind to turn the cart around, to check the trap in the morning, because honestly, I can stare out into that city for hours. But then I near the trap, and the sight makes me stop and set the brake. I turn the headlights on and grab the semiauto.

There is a full-sized dog in the raccoon trap, its bony haunches pressed against the gate, and this, too, is part of my job. It is wedged in so tight it can neither sit nor stand, and it is frozen there, silent, as if in midleap. Its gray fur juts through the mesh on every side, and the bridge of its nose and forehead are pressed flat against the far end of the cage so that it appears to be in deep contemplation of its paws below. I bend to look for a collar but there is none, only the slightest of quivering on its breath. I walk around the cage to view it from all sides, and the dog knows this is not good, that things have gone forever astray, but it is wedged in so tight its eyes can follow nothing but my shoes.

That this dog cannot fully see me is a small relief, though it is not enough to stop me from wondering if, when it happens, his body will have room to go limp, or whether it will behave as if nothing happened, and be just as hard to pull out afterward. The thought is neither sentimental nor cold. My snake was a Post-it note. So was my bird. But I already have a dog, and eventually you have to decide how much you can afford to care. A couple years on Traffic will teach you that. They put you on Traffic first, so you got used to such things. On Traffic, you’ll see pelvic wings unfold against steering columns. There’ll be breast plates you can see light through, dentures imbedded in dashboards. Stuff you need the kitty litter for. Kitty litter was standard procedure. The older cops said you could even get used to the sight of kids getting hurt, though I pretty much quit before that. Regardless, I lift my gun. The dog will be easier to get out after, I decide, and turn my back to the city lights as it stares at the old police shoes I have quit polishing.

This bothers me though, this dog staring at my shoes, so I swing around to the back of the cage and figure I’ll do it from there. But right away I know this is a mistake because I see its haunches and wonder how hungry a dog has to be to worm into a cage for rabbit feed. I see its tail jammed in the trap spring and start to think about my own dog for a moment, am bending down to loosen its tail even before I consider if this is best. I release the spring catch with my thumb, and the only reaction from the dog is a light trickle of urine. Standing, things only get worse for I am suddenly faced with that great bank of city lights.