Ham

by Sam Harris

  The next day I made the mistake of sharing the saga with friends in journalism class, and Sheilah Nobles, standing stiffly in her calf-high, turd-colored leather boots and cowl-neck macramé sweater, leered at me through gigantic plastic-framed glasses that looked more like ski goggles than prescription eyewear. Then she murmured, “Rabbit Killer!” with a wicked, depraved snigger that grew into a howl and was soon joined by everyone in class, their mouths wide with laughter. Then the chanting began:

  “Rabbit Killer!”

  “Rabbit Killer!

  “Rabbit Killer!”

  Most of these kids were from families who regularly shot and ate rabbits, wore their pelts, and carried their sawed-off feet on key chains, but because it was sweet little sensitive me, I was now known as “Rabbit Killer” until I left home again, months later and for good, confident my work as a professional performer would supersede my reputation as a murderer. Still, when I received the token senior yearbook a year later, signed by all my classmates as a surprise, most of the personal notes started with “Dear Rabbit Killer . . .”

  Cooper was losing patience for my silent, agonizing trip down animal lane and I knew I had to get to a good story quickly.

  “And the next place I lived wouldn’t let me have a dog or a cat and I really wanted a pet, so . . . I got a snake!”

  “A snake?” Cooper asked with wonder. “Was it poisonous?”

  “No. It was a baby boa constrictor and his name was Joey.”

  “Joey the snake! That’s funny.”

  “All my pets’ names are funny. That’s part of why we have them. Because they make us laugh.”

  “Did he eat snake food?”

  Joey ate little white mice. I bought two and put them in a cage right next to the snake aquarium. In retrospect, it was a horrible thing to do—giving the furry little creatures a 24/7, up-close-and-personal, wide-screen view of their ultimate nightmare. I might as well have placed a giant stuffed hawk on the other side. In the blink of an eye, the mice population rose to fourteen, probably nature’s instinct to build an army in defense. Oddly, fourteen was the exact same number as was in the cast of the show I was doing. I named each mouse for a member of the troupe and every week, when I fed Joey, I would report, “Nancy is dead” or “Jeff was swallowed whole.”

  I obviously couldn’t share this either.

  “Yes, Cooper, I fed him snake food,” I said instead.

  I recalled when Joey seemed to slow down, which is hard to detect in a snake, and soon after died of pneumonia. Boa pneumonia. I’m sure it was my fault and that his aquarium must have been left in a draft or something. I thought creatures of the wild would surely be made of sturdier stuff. Like there aren’t drafts in Nicaragua or Peru or tropical rain forests?

  Desperate for a happy, uniting pet story to share with my son, suddenly I was questioning my love for, or at least my care of, all my pets. By the time I was sixteen years old, every creature I’d been associated with had fled or died or been abandoned or fed to someone else. Noni still lived with my folks but she was getting old, and at any moment could be walking seemingly straight but veer left into the street and get hit by a pickup truck. My parents would probably just get another dog and name it Noni, hoping I wouldn’t notice.

  “Let’s see, what other great pets did Daddy have? Hmmm . . . When I was in college and I shared a house with Uncle Bruce, we got a kitty,” I said to Cooper with a cheerful cadence.

  “Was it a boy kitty or a girl kitty?” he asked. “What was its name?”

  “Her name was Frances,” I said. “After Frances Farmer.”

  The actress who went insane. I couldn’t know how tragically fitting the name would be. We had her only for a day. Frances was a scrawny muslin-colored rescue with a dire but curable case of worms. I wanted to save her, and we were given a box of pills and instructions for her healing. We confined her to the laundry room and made a small bed of fluffy towels with kibble and water in reach before taking off for Musical Theatre Workshop at UCLA. When we returned, several hours and a medley from Guys and Dolls later, we found the pitiful pussy extended in a gruesome and heartbreaking frozen pose, covered in diarrhea, clenching the corner of a towel in her teeth, countable ribs barely rising. She was deeply comatose. We rushed her to the emergency vet. The doctor took one look at her and said, “What in God’s name did you do to this poor animal?!” We explained that we’d followed the prescription instructions. Frances was put on an IV but never regained consciousness.

  She was the Sunny von Bülow of felines and there was no choice but to pull the plug.

  “What did Frances do?” Cooper asked, eyes aglow.

  “Not much,” I said, and quickly moved on. “Then we got two more kitties. Their names were Shana and Esther.”

  “Shana and Esther are funny names.” Cooper laughed.

  “Shana means ‘pretty’ in Hebrew, which is practically Daddy’s second language, and Shana was sooo pretty.”

  “What does Esther mean?” asked Cooper, wide-eyed and hanging on every word.

  “Well, Esther is a Persian name from the Bible, who was originally called Hadassah. Hadassah means ‘myrtle’ in Hebrew, which is an equally funny but hideous name. The Book of Daniel has stories of Jews in exile being given names relating to Babylonian gods—for instance, Mordecai means ‘servant of Marduk,’ who was a Babylonian god. Esther came from the Proto-Semitic name ‘Morning Star,’ which comes from the Babylonian empire in 2000 BCE, not to be confused with the Chaldean empire or the Persian empire. Got it?”

  “Got it,” said Cooper. “Was Esther pretty too?”

  “No, she was a dog. I mean she was a cat but she was a dog.”

  “Which one was she, Daddy? A cat or a dog?”

  “She was a cat . . . but she was a dog. Not pretty. And since Shana was so beautiful, Esther sometimes got a little pouty and whiny and self-pitying.”

  I couldn’t tell him the truth: that Esther had committed suicide. One day when Bruce and I were sunning on our foldout rubber-ribbed chaise lounges, lathed in baby oil—which is like a wish for cancer—in the driveway of our small house, known as Tara, Shana was strutting around with her nose and tail in the air, in applause of herself. Esther, on the other hand, was glowering in the garden, jealous, a woman biologically wronged. She emerged and crept solemnly to curbside. Bruce and I watched. She looked to the left. Then to the right. No traffic. She remained still and focused. In the distance, the rumble of a truck could be heard approaching. Esther sunk low onto her haunches, waited until the truck sped directly in front of Tara, and then bound into the street—a clear choice for all to see—me, Bruce, and, most important, Shana. The truck never slowed and Bruce and I ran to Esther’s body, which spasmed, springing and bouncing off the asphalt like a demon-possessed wind-up toy, finally landing with a splat.

  Shana took a few steps toward the street, at first, we thought, out of sisterly concern. But when she turned heel and trained her puckered ass in Esther’s direction, we realized it had been for confirmation. She wanted to make sure the whiny hag was dead.

  I couldn’t share this part with Cooper either. Suicide stories are never good just before bedtime.

  Shana remained with us until I woke one morning to find our landlady, Pat Chiang, leaning stiffly over my naked body with an accusatory Asian glare, accentuated by strict eyeliner lunging to her hairline like black knives. This wasn’t the first time I’d been awakened in this fashion—she felt she could come and go as she pleased—but it was always a startling way to begin the day.

  Her accent was thick as hoisin and her voice scraped the air like chopsticks on a chalkboard. “Ma h-h-h-husband saw white cat in your guys’ window! No cat allow! ” she shrieked. “That Helen Funk in a-pot-ment in back have cat, I say no cat too! That Helen Funk, she a dirty woman. She have account at Kentucky Flied Chicken . . .” Pat Chiang paused, then added, inquisitively, “Your guys have pot parties?”

  We were forced to give Shana away and hoped the
new family didn’t have other pets with suicidal tendencies.

  Cooper caught me choking back a tear but I put on a smile, continuing with a good story at last.

  “My next pet was a dog. His name was Larry.”

  “Larry is my favorite name so far. I love Larry the dog,” Cooper said with glee.

  “I did too,” I said, relieved. “I had him for fourteen years.”

  Larry was a dog’s dog. A man’s dog. Scruffy and ragged. He was an old soul. My friend Delia gave him to me, and when Larry and I saw each other on the street for the first time, we ran together like slow-motion lovers in the movies. “He was the best pal ever. And then Uncle Bruce wanted his own dog and so he got a Yorkie named Ethel.”

  “Like Lucy’s friend?” Cooper asked. I was pleased at the reference.

  “Well, she was named after Lucy’s friend, but she wasn’t much like her.”

  Ethel was not an old soul. She was an idiot. She was in constant frenetic motion and always underfoot. She ran haphazardly into walls and furniture. When anyone entered the room, she choked and threw up from the excitement and then dashed to pee on their shoes. Ultimately, she was the reason I left Tara. “This house isn’t big enough for the both of us!” I declared to Bruce, though Ethel was only slightly larger than a field mouse.

  On a weekend trip to Big Bear in a car stuffed with five people and Larry and Ethel, I knew it would be a horror show and begged Bruce to get some doggy downers for Ethel from the vet. The dosage was based on weight, and Ethel didn’t fit into even the tiniest category, so I gave her half a pill. I swallowed the other half and another three or five. Somehow, I ended up with Ethel on my lap and an hour into the trip, I noticed she was strikingly still. I knew that Ethel was never motionless, even in sleep, her paws quivering as she dreamt of running into walls and furniture and vomiting and peeing on shoes. But now, draped across my lap, she was inanimate and her breathing was undetectable. When I lifted her tiny eyelids, I saw that her pupils had rolled back into her head. I didn’t want to alarm Bruce so I asked that we pull over to let the dogs pee and get some water. When I opened the car door and nudged her, Ethel fell onto the pavement flat, facedown, with an indistinct thud, her legs splayed symmetrically like a miniature bearskin rug.

  I didn’t know what to do. In a moment of subdued panic, I took a sip from my drive-thru Diet Coke and the liquid caught in that hollow place in the back of my throat like an emotion. The bitch was going to die and I knew Bruce would blame me. She needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but I couldn’t fathom how that was possible. Her entire head would fit in my mouth like a cupcake. I chewed on my straw and got an idea: straw-to-mouth resuscitation! I parted her black lips and found ample options to place the straw in the spaces where her teeth were missing—a result of too much Chinese food—specifically, General Tso’s Chicken.

  I tilted her head back and placed my pinky over her scaly, dry nostrils and blew several spurting breaths through the straw along with a few remaining drops of Diet Coke. Her golden chest rose. I located her sternum and slightly pumped it with my thumb, then alternated with the straw breathing. In a few moments, her eyes fluttered and her beady pupils returned to center. I’d saved her.

  I’d almost killed her but I’d saved her.

  This was yet another story I couldn’t share with Cooper. But I knew the next one was surefire fun.

  “A few years later, I got a pig! A Vietnamese potbellied pig named Lillian.”

  Cooper screamed with laughter. “A pig? A real pig? Was Larry the dog there?”

  “Larry the dog was there. He didn’t like Lillian very much, but he put up with her.”

  “Why didn’t he like her?”

  “Well,” I said, “she was a pig. Lillian wasn’t really a dog person. I mean a dog pig. She wasn’t really a people pig either. She made rash decisions. She was bossy and pushy and she bit choreographers.”

  It was true. Lillian bit five people in two years and they were all choreographers. She could sniff them out like truffles and she hated them. Lillian possessed an almost human opinion about nearly everything and I thought perhaps she resented that her stout frame would never allow her to be a real dancer.

  One day, I arrived home and the Nicaraguan housekeeper gravely and wordlessly gestured for me to follow her to the guesthouse in the backyard, where she lived. She showed me that Lillian had figured out how to open the sliding glass door, enter the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and raid its entire contents. Broken dishes and plastic wrap and empty Tupperware containers littered the floor. In the adjoining living room, Lillian lay at the base of a rough-hewn wooden altar that displayed a dozen burning Sacred Heart veladoras for the Virgin of Guadalupe. I wondered if she’d lit them herself. She was on her side, her bloated belly extending past the length of her stubby legs, which made it impossible for her to stand. Still, she appeared virtuous, saintly even, but for the sickly green foam that frothed from her snout and lips. The housekeeper pointed to a particularly ravaged, crumpled scrap of foil. “De puerco,” she spat with disdain. Lillian had eaten her own kind.

  “What happened to Lillian the pig?” Cooper asked.

  “Well, I realized she needed to be with other pigs, and people in show business were not enough. So I took her to a place called Hog Heaven, which was a special farm for potbellied pigs, and she was very happy.”

  She was very happy because the moment she arrived, she was eagerly surrounded by a small herd of male swine parading corkscrew pig penises that twirled and twisted like a power tool demonstration at Home Depot. She engaged in group sex within seconds. I waved, misty-eyed, calling, “I love you, Lillian!” She never looked back. She was, indeed, in hog heaven and the word “pork” had an entirely new meaning.

  “What about Larry the dog?” Cooper questioned.

  “After a long, long time, Larry got very tired and his body wore out. And then, when I met Papa and fell in love, we moved to New York and got Zach and Emma.”

  Zach and Emma were very old when Cooper was born. As a younger pooch, Zach was a handsome, brindle shepherd-Dane mix, and the best dog anyone could want, sweet and playful and solid. Emma joined us a year later when a neighbor, fiercely dedicated to rescuing basset hounds, asked if we could foster her for a day or two. She’d been in three different homes in the past month. Danny made me promise it would be temporary, but I knew the moment I saw her that she would be ours. She weighed sixty-five pounds and thought she was a lap dog, and we related. She arrived on Thanksgiving Day to a house full of friends, including Liza, who brought Lily, her cairn terrier. Lily knew Zach well and felt safe with him. Emma, on the other hand, was more volatile, and after dinner, when the turkey carcass was tossed into the trash bin, Emma positioned herself next to it and bared her teeth like a tigress, then attacked Lily by the scruff of the neck and shook her as if she were a stuffed dog toy.

  I made the excuse that Emma was a victim of the system and never knew where her next meal was coming from.

  I didn’t tell Cooper any of this, of course. Near-death Thanksgiving tales aren’t good before bedtime. But I did share that “Emma was fond of costumes.” I never understood people who dressed their animals, but I explained to him that she actually begged to wear strands of pearls and fur capes and a particularly alluring jeweled and beaded headdress that made her look like a canine Cleopatra. He thought this was a scream.

  “She was also quite famous on the Upper West Side,” I went on. “She could sense when someone was feeling badly and she would walk up to them and press her forehead against their legs until they felt better.” She was a healer. People we didn’t even know would see her in the park, approach reverently, and say, “Why, you must be Emma,” recognizing her miraculous aura. Or it might have had something to do with the Cleopatra headdress.

  I skipped the story about the time I opened the dog food bin and dozens of mice sprang out and scuttled into floor cracks and secret passageways in bubonic plague numbers. I considered various traps and decid
ed on the most humane—the kind in which the mouse is caught live to be released elsewhere. For three days I carried expensive little plastic containers of squeaking, claustrophobic mice to Riverside Park. But I couldn’t keep up. Finally, I broke down and bought glue traps, which turned out to be teeny-weeny torture devices. The little furry rodents nearly tore their little brown bodies from their little gray legs in desperation. The instructions said to “simply discard,” which meant tossing them in the garbage and leaving them to die of thirst and starvation. I knew I couldn’t do that.

  I picked up the first glue-padded mouse and slowly lowered it into the toilet bowl to drown the poor thing. Little bubbles pop-pop-popped to the surface and I sobbed, begging for forgiveness from the mouse, God, mankind, the entire animal kingdom. The next drowning was painful, but a little less so. The third was more brisk—just put it out of its misery. By the tenth mouse drowning, I was dunking the pests into the john like dipping ice-cream cones into sprinkles. It was an assembly line of death and I was the executioner who disengages for his own emotional survival as he indifferently releases the guillotine blade. My cold-blooded apathy grew into a sense of powerful purpose and I became drunk with it. I was the great protector and these disease-carrying vermin would contaminate my dog food no more! So long, little fuckers!

  Cooper probably would have liked that story, but execution tales before bedtime are never a good idea either.

  “A few years later we moved to Los Angeles and Zach and Emma loved it. They could run more and play more and it never snowed.”

  I flashed on the first winter Danny and I spent in Los Angeles. Zach could get anxious sometimes. His brow would furrow and he would look troubled. One night, what started as a worry became a full-fledged nervous breakdown. His eyes darted from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, and he began pacing in circles with a thin, inconsolable whine. Soon he was drooling dementedly and his big, sad eyes started rolling around, unfocused. It was three o’clock in the morning and he was clearly having a seizure. Danny and I rushed him to an emergency veterinarian. After a quick examination, the doctor took us aside and said, slowly, seriously, thoughtfully, “Is it possible . . . that your house . . . is haunted?”