I moved to the country with my parents when I was eleven. Then my dog died. She was old.
We had a new dog, but the cat lost her mind and attacked my new dog and my dad shot the cat. The first cat I ever had, the one I picked out from a litter that my third-grade teacher, who lived on the next street over before I moved, gave birth to. (Or maybe it was her cat…)
I had a bunny but it ran away. The meth addict neighbor bought it for me, then she released three others in her yard for her boys. She thought the horse fence would keep in something as small as a rabbit. My mom thought I put deodorant on the bunny, because of a weird misunderstanding. Dog Number Two would come in my room and eat her poop like candy (the rabbit’s, not my mom’s). Then she chewed her way out of the cage, probably had five dozen babies, and maybe got eaten by now.
Then it all started happening at once.
Meth Addict Neighbor decided she hated my mom and we couldn’t see Helpless Little Meth Baby anymore. He was almost two years old. He would run down the hill to our house and stay for a few hours, maybe every few weeks, before she realized he was missing. Sometimes his four-year-old brother would come down with him and ask for food. He would be in his underwear in wintertime too.
There was a long custody battle in which my mom testified about all the horrible stuff she (we) saw in those three years. Drunken Redneck Dad got custody of both boys, but for a long time it was agonizingly uncertain.
Cute Little Meth Baby was never ours, but we loved him and knew we could take care of him better. We still know it, and he still isn’t ours.
About the time Meth Baby was taken from us, my former horseback riding instructor died of colon cancer. She had been my first adult friend.
I had a baby wild turkey that had been abandoned by its mother in a posthole. This was right after both the baby incident and the riding teacher tragedy, and it lived twelve days. I shook it and poked it, desperately trying to make it get up, but it was too sick to move, so it just closed its eyes and died. When you’re still a kid, this is devastating. I had taken a CPR class recently and once had to “do CPR” and “clear the obstruction” when it tried to swallow a grasshopper longer than its head. I had been so proud to feed it to her, too.
Second Dog ran away, got caught in a coyote trap at the neighbor’s, and he had to “end her pain.” We didn’t find out until after the deed was done. My mom loved that dog because she killed snakes.
My neighbor across the street was moving away and he promised to give me his tiny goat, Rod. My dad, who hates goats, loved him because he looked like “Billy Goat’s Gruff.” This neighbor had befriended and probably had sex or did drugs with the Meth Neighbor. His next-door neighbor’s oldest son was kind of my ex-boyfriend. I don’t know if he knew of the deal or not. But then Rod escaped Mike’s house and visited “Ernie,” and Ernie shot him. “The stupid goat jumped into the bullet.” Yeah, sure, goats jump faster than bullets fly. I hate that kid.
I was in the local “Young Eagles” program as a teenager, in which kids got the chance to fly in a small plane for free. My dad had worked for a friend of the woman who organized it and flew for it, and Sadie took me up twice. Then I got a job covering the county fair for the local newspaper, as a “teen reporter.” I asked her to take me up over the fairgrounds for an aerial picture. She was so nice, she actually did it.
Then, right out of a noval, she died in a plane crash a few months later. A plane crash! She was a pilot—why didn’t she “help” the other guy with his pre-flight? Oh, the drama.
The last time I saw her, I was at the fair with Goat Killer, when I still thought he was a good person. She was wearing a polka-dot dress and bright red lipstick, and laughing at me for being with a boy. She looked so very happy.
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