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.