TAMER

What does this old panther do now? Today some fur came away in his hand as he scrabbled for the change stuck in his lint-boogered pocket—a fifty- cent piece and a good find. He palms it to the old man clumped in the doorway of The Alley. The fifty-center pleases both of them--real money and a good thing to pass along on a sunny afternoon.

He leans against the hot wall next to the bum, surprised to feel his tail still does a neat pirouette and settles around his ankles. The scent of dog shit floats up, laid down a minute ago by a slouchy, loose hipped old Lab. It glistens like a coiled slug as the dog ambles away, his patent nails scraping the sidewalk like the brush on a snare drum.

I am actually encouraged by this afternoon, the old boy thinks, looking at the house he owns just across the street. Although he’s not going home today, he thinks of earlier days when living still troubled his mind and he spent too much time in bed. This was after he took a sharp left out of the big field; quit the job, stopped smoking, then just stopped. He’d lie in bed until noon dozing, his hands folded on his chest. He says he never sleeps at night, just lies there. His wife amuses her friends, saying “as if he were his own sarcophagus.”

Later, he’d dress—always like a good lad—in decent gabardine trousers, a nice sweater, and sit at the cumbersome mahogany dining table, part of the heavy ensemble passed down from his Irish mother. This is the good time; shame’s still hanging out in yesterday, hours yet until today’s assignment. This is a grand time when a hangover feels like a stopover in Nirvana; the warm sense of suspension like when you leaned against the barrel centrifuge at Playland, before the bottom drops away.

Sometimes, when he does fall asleep, he’ll lope into the woods. Nosing around, scattering mice, crouching to pee on grumbling leaves; take a rabbit too scared to move along. But then, the misstep. A trap springs and staples his big paw to the earth. The sweet, dangerous prowl is over and he screams with surprise, then yowls outrage. The sound ricochets down the hall, into bedrooms, bringing the jungle down on all the sleepers’ heads.

But right now he’s browsing the cards, the cribbage board, and the dice cup with the green felt lining. He loves how the dice rumble and avalanche across the table; the sound the cup makes when it’s slapped down. The sun shines across the glossy sprawl of cards and the glass of wine. The evening widens; it seems infinite and endlessly companionable.

Meat

If you travel east from San Francisco toward Southern California, you’ll pick up Interstate 5 near Tracy. It is a dull, dull drive with just one way to counter the boredom—go 95 mph in the 70 mph zone. Driving like this does make the most of a dreary stretch; pacing and ducking, cutting in and out. It’s almost like an interactive video game with the flat countryside rolling past. Nothing else much happens, except that halfway to the Grapevine, the smell of an immense feedlot blooms and smacks you sentient.

Hundreds of cows, heads lowered, are jammed together along feeders near the highway fence. The lot is huge, a filthy stretch of acidy shit and dirt that flows to the eastern horizon and beyond. The beasts are caked to the knees with their own insides and though they have plenty of space, they do not lie down or nose the ground. Their hooves must be wet all the time, burning and festering. They feed at the long troughs, munching listlessly, but with a terrible doggedness on food their mouths, teeth, guts, do not understand. And they reek of disease.

Inhaling, my nostrils constrict like pinched soda straws and this condenses the stench. Everything in me recognizes and resists this smell. It is rank and full of sickness, with a dash of sweetness, like rotting flowers. Pretty soon, the cows will be packed into trucks and if you see them on the highway, it will be a speed-by glimpse of soft muffiny noses searching the air, eyes wild and bulging. When the trucks stop, the animals will be unloaded and funneled into a narrow, inescapable ramp. They’ll be mostly terrified in air laced with the smell of their own decay.

Here’s the dilemma—I like meat. At its most toothsome, it tastes spicy, bloody and dense, with a little bit of jungle, a whiff of groin. So, after driving a few miles beyond the buzzing smell of the feedlot, I’ll sever any connection with my appetite and what I’ve seen. I’ll begin to wonder how a chunk of cow might next arrange itself on my dinner plate, forgetting that almost all of it now tastes as dull and lifeless as a wedge of tofu.

But if I could be braver, more truthful about what I do and what I want, I’d meet my Ferdinand in his own sweet, green pasture, lure him with soft words, press my head against his dry, bristly throat and feel his heart thumping through hot flesh and hide. Could I be like a lover and slit its throat? No. But, could I be halfway like a Masai—nick the flesh just deep enough and drink, just enough. Each of us would be standing, still and taut—both of us throbbing with suspense and utter forbearance.

(Illustration by Sue Coe)