Again

Earlier, when my son was with me against his will, only for a moment, there had been a lot of baying we had heard on the radio. I had called to him, “Come hear the cattle!” but then thought, What a lie! when my son walked back out. Those had not been cattle.

On the radio—on the same program—I heard this woman saying she was better off. I was all by myself then.

She said the animals she ate were better off too. She said, “They’re better off and so am I.”

She said, “Most people think only of the chops and the steaks. They don’t think about the ribs and the flanks and the neck.”

She said, “I’ll show you.” She had some man there asking her questions. She said to him, “Let me show you.” Then she was doing all this breathing, this gasp­ing. She said, “God, I hate this. This happens to me every time.” Then she said, “Come here, honey. Come here.”

She was trying to get a lamb to come to her, I think. It was small, I imagined, like a baby lamb. She said, “Honey.” She had to say it again. There was lots of wrestling that I heard.

She was wrestling with an animal which had ivory curls all over it, and gray, red-rimmed eyes, in my mind. She grabbed that baby lamb finally around the neck, her head on top of its head, I was thinking. She was hugging the baby, her pistol pressed into it some­where, while the baby twisted to get loose, and she said, “Honey,” again, and then there was this dull bang that I have heard, and the sound of falling down that I have heard.

It was at breakfast time when I heard the falling down, when I was caught next to the table I had set up for the breakfast. It was time for me to do what I do. I call.