As I was sitting at home one day, which is what I do, I shook my head and then myself.
The world’s too pretty to spend it cooped up in a box, I decided. I was going for a walk.
So I walked
All
The
Way
Down
to the docks, where there was a little boat with a big catch. Huge nets were rolling up on its deck, thousands of feet long, and fish were spilling everywhere. But they were throwing most of them overboard.
“Sharks,” the captain told me. “Who wants a shark? Not me. Not most people. They taste bad, they look ugly, and they can tear your children apart just like that –” and here he twisted his hand a little just like that “- you ask me, preserving them’s brainless. Nothing but mindless eating machines, living to fill their bellies. You know anyone like that?”
And I didn’t know anyone like that, no; I didn’t know anyone like that.
The docks were meant to be bracing, I’d heard, but the air was so bracing it was trying to knock me over. Full of sea salt and fish guts and drying paint and crusted oil. Very aggressive.
So I walked
All
The
Way
Down
to the brush, where there was a white flock of fluffy round things with simple, stupid faces and kind little eyes. I skritched one behind the ears and it baa’d at me.
“Those are my sheep,” said a suspicious voice. I looked over and saw it came from a suspicious sort of man and was nothing personal. In his right hand was a gun and in his left hand was a scruffy, mangy sort of beigey animal with brown stripes on its back and too much jaw.
“Tasmanian wolf,” he informed me, with a sweep of his arm. “Tasmanian tiger. Thylacine. You name it, I’ve killed it. Hopefully this is the last one. You’ve got to kill them, you know. For the sake of the sheep. If you don’t kill them they kill the sheep and then we can’t kill the sheep either. Blood-suckers they are, blood-suckers with parasitic inclinations scavenging off our hard work. You know anyone like that?”
And I didn’t know anyone like that, no; I didn’t know anyone like that.
The brush was meant to be mysterious and wild, I’d heard, but the air was full of fleece and dung and I was starting to sneeze.
So instead I walked
All
The
Way
Down
to the plains, where there was wide open spaces and a big blue sky and a whole field of dead, dead, dead animals, each bigger and hairier than I was and deeply impressive in their appearance of grump, even after death.
“That’s my trophy get your own,” said a man who was also bigger and hairier than I was. He crawled out from behind one of the animals, brandishing a severed and half-bloodied skull. “Beautiful, eh? Something for the fireplace. These here are buffalo and if anyone calls them ‘bison’ I will punch them. You’ve got to shoot buffalo. They’re in the way. They’re useless, nobody decent uses them for anything important. We could put a cow here you know, if there weren’t any buffalo. A cow and maybe a man and maybe a mall. What do you think about that? You’d like it, I’d hope, because these are useless animals that live to eat and to make more of themselves and spread around their own manure. Know anyone like that?”
And I didn’t know anyone like that, no; I didn’t know anyone like that.
The plains were meant to be beautiful and airy but they smelled like blood and even more manure than I’d ever imagined, so I picked up my feet again and walked
All
The
Way
Down
to the park, where things were quiet if they knew what was good for them and I could get plenty of brochures. I sat down on a log next to a scenic trail and a scenic trail signpost and I felt pretty happy until BANG a gunshot went off to my ear. A man walked up to me, dragging a wolf.
“You with the park?” he asked me. I wasn’t, no.
“Damnit,” he said. “Shoot. Shucks. Shit. I’ve got to give this thing back to the park. It wandered off and it looked at my sheep, it did. That’s how it starts, the looking. Then comes the biting. Then comes the eating. Hard times, it is, when a merciless predator is given better housing and care then most of us. An ungrateful bastard in your own house making free with your possessions at your expense and you can’t do anything about it. You ever known anyone like that?”
And I didn’t know anyone like that, no; I didn’t know anyone like that.
The park was a little tense for my tastes, and the air was a little hazy with gunsmoke, and most importantly I’ve got to be honest with you: my feet were starting to ache something fierce.
So I walked. I walked back through the park and the plains and the brush and the dock and I walked
All
The
Way
Back
Home.
And I walked up to the door and I opened it and there was a man there, tapping his foot and frowning with his whole body.
“About time you showed up,” he said, and stuffed a sheet of paper into my palm. “You’re being evicted. You spend too much time paying too much attention to too many things that don’t matter and not enough to anything that does. You’ve got your head in the clouds and your butt on the ground, and now your feet’ll be out the door so you can have a matched set.” He shook his head despairingly. “Looking at things that aren’t even real, eh? Where would we be if everyone did that? You know anyone else who does that?”
And he walked out the door and was gone.
I was really tired, but since I was evicted I sat down on the stoop and not my bed. And as I sat there, I waited for someone to come across me and get me moving. To move in. To yell at me to get a job. To put out their garbage. To pass by on the other side of the street, doing something, going somewhere.
I waited all day long and all night and more.
But I didn’t see anyone like that, no.
I didn’t see anyone like that.