The God of Animals

But the places we come from don't leave us as easily as we leave them.

That was the problem with getting used to people - you had to miss them when they were gone.

Marriage," she said quietly, "is the most expensive ticket to nowhere

This is the truth about things: If you take something that isn't yours, it will never belong to you. You can try to hold on to it, but somehow, it will slip through your fingers. If something wasn't meant to be yours, it won't be. No matter what you do to keep it, you will lose it.

What do you know about being sad?' 'I know you don't need a reason.

I had waited for the tears to stop before I called him, waited until my whole body was empty and dry, hard as a fist. But now I felt the sadness rising again in my chest.

I looked back and forth between them, feeling the heat of their anger, the unspoken words swelling in the air like smoke. Jerry took a slow sip from his beer and lit another cigarette. "You don't know anything about that little girl," he told Nona. "You're just jealous because Cap belongs to her now." I could see Nona's heartbeat flutter beneath her t-shirt, the cords tightening in her neck. "Her mommy and daddy might have paid for him," she whispered. "But he's mine." I waited for Jerry to cave in to her, to apologize, to make things right between them. But he held her gaze, unwavering. "He's not." Nona stubbed her cigarette out on the barn floor, then stood. "If you don't believe me," she whispered, "I'll show you." My sister crossed the barn to Cap's stall and clicked her tongue at him. His gold head appeared in the doorway and Nona swung the stall door open. "Come on out." she told him. Don't!" I said, but she didn't pause. Cap took several steps forward until he was standing completely free in the barn. I jumped up, blocking the doorway so that he couldn't bolt. Jerry stood and widened himself beside me, stretching out his arms. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked. Nona stood beside Cap's head and lifted her arms as though she was holding an invisible lead rope. When she began to walk, Cap moved alongside her, matching his pace to hers. Whoa," Nona said quietly and Cap stopped. My sister made small noises with her tongue, whispering words we couldn't hear. Cap's ears twitched and his weight shifted as he adjusted his feet, setting up perfectly in showmanship form. Nona stepped back to present him to us, and Jerry and I dropped our arms to our sides. Ta da!" she said, clapping her hands at her own accomplishment. Very impressive," Jerry said in a low voice. "Now put the pony away." Again, Nona lifted her hands as if holding a lead rope, and again, Cap followed. She stepped into him and he turned on his heel, then walked beside her through the barn and back into his stall. Once he was inside, Nona closed the door and held her hands out to us. She hadn't touched him once. Now," she said evenly. "Tell me again what isn't mine." Jerry sank back into his chair, cracking open a fresh beer. "If that horse was so important to you, maybe you shouldn't have left him behind to be sold off to strangers." Nona's face constricted, her cheeks and neck darkening in splotches of red. "Alice, tell him," she whispered. "Tell him that Cap belongs to me." Sheila Altman could practice for the rest of her life, and she would never be able to do what my sister had just done. Cap would never follow her blindly, never walk on water for her. But my eyes traveled sideways to Cap's stall where his embroidered halter hung from its hook. If the Altmans ever moved to a different town, they would take Cap with them. My sister would never see him again. It wouldn't matter what he would or wouldn't do for her. My sister waited a moment for me to speak, and when I didn't, she burst into tears, her shoulders heaving, her mouth wrenching open. Jerry and I glanced at each other, startled by the sudden burst of emotion. You can both go to hell," Nona hiccuped, and turned for the house. "Right straight to hell.

We would pay the bills. We would pretend to be high-class. This was compromise. This, I guessed, was business.

I had closed my eyes and seen a place I hadn’t known existed. There was no anger, no loneliness, no jagged icy fear gnawing at the wires of my body. For that one moment, the noise inside my head had turned still and silent. If hell was real and true and all around us, then heaven was too.

I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, the air moving through his lips, across his tongue, into his throat and lungs, then turning to silence as he held it there, thinking.

In my room, I looked around at all the pieces of my life, neat and tidy on their little shelves, my clothes and books and telephones, my shoes and hair barrettes, and tried to care about them. Mine, mine, mine. But they were only things, things that could have belonged to anyone.

People are much more dangerous than anything your mind can make up while you're sleeping." "Like people you can't trust?" "Yes," he answered and his voice was quieter. "They're the most dangerous." "How can you tell who they are?" I asked. "That's easy," he said, inhaling slowly from his cigarette. "They're the people who are the hardest to stay away from.

I just meant that dreams are sort of an opportunity. You can confront danger without actually being in jeopardy." "Oh," I said. Opportunity was a good thing, a chance, a promise--the gift of drowning every night and never being dead.