by Erin Lee
We rode in the cab of my husband’s tired pick-up to the vet that day. Rancher couldn’t even look at Samson. I couldn’t let go. I hugged him and tried force-feeding him pieces of a raw hotdog I’d snagged from the fridge on my way out the door. That dog looked at me, one eye puffy and swollen shut, as if to say “not a chance, lady.” He couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to believe it. His tail was wagging, telling me he was content to go along for the ride. I remember wanting to scream at him and Rancher. I wanted to tell my husband I wasn’t strong enough, demand he pull a U-turn and take Samson right on home to the ranch. I wanted to say, “He’s really not suffering that much. Let him stay with us a little longer: Die at home. In bed. Happy.” I said nothing.
I wanted to tell Samson this would be his last ride. “Stupid dog, this isn’t an ordinary ride! Eat the damn hotdog! It will make me feel better.” I know, selfish.
Rancher said nothing either. Even when he carried Samson’s body, wrapped in his favorite quilt from our bed, to the backyard, by the heifers’ barn, leaving his loyal friend only to find a shovel. Samson’s been buried in our backyard under our favorite cypress tree for eight years now; two months before the routine physical that changed everything. At least they’ll be together again. No one can tell me animals don’t have souls. I can’t imagine how he’d handle losing Rancher. They were best friends. Where Rancher went, Samson was sure to follow, always with a wagging tail and good intentions.
My husband? Not so much. He isn’t like either of us, Samson or me. He isn’t agreeable and he is even less selfish. No, my husband is a breed all his own. It would take me all day to find a word to properly describe him, but I’m not wasting our last hours together doing that. I’ll follow his lead, like I did the day we put Samson down, and pretend that everything will work out okay. Like when he taught me how to help with the ranch, I’ll be his silent partner. There will be plenty of time, the rest of my life, for tears and regret and telling the story, the other side of it, later.
I grip his shaking hand, look him in the eyes, and ask him what he’d like for breakfast—twice. I wonder if anyone else would understand his garbled response, not that it matters now. I hardly miss the grin that used to worm itself across his lips to thank me. It’s been months since that’s been around, and it’s hard to miss what you no longer expect. I rub his head, tossing a handful of coffee-colored hair, and get up from the tiny table in our dreary motel room. I need to focus on the mission at hand—making my husband his last real meal. Trying not to dwell, I am extra careful, skimming the pulp out of the orange juice and grabbing the biggest spoon to feed him. Lord willing, he won’t fight me. He does that, especially lately.
We’ve been here, on the West Coast, for six months now. You have to establish residency before you can move forward with the, well, the other stuff. I needed an excuse to get out. The Barneys were sniffing around and this is what he wanted—to die in the most humane way possible. He had no interest in hospice or any kind of “comfort care.” Rancher wanted to take his life, and death, into his hands and insisted it be that way. For me, it was convenient in that it got me off that property and away from prying questions.
Currently, Oregon is the only state where this type of medically assisted suicide is legal. The Death with Dignity Act was signed in 1997. Two years and a few acquaintances later, and it still doesn’t feel right. Aurora, Oregon is not our home. I can’t wait to get out of here and back to Texas. The fact is, we never really fit in here. As hard as we tried, it was clear to everyone in our tiny new town that we were here for the same reasons as so many dignity pilgrims before, to get residency and get out: Me in the pick-up, Rancher in a hearse. It’s the agreed upon plan, the one we decided on during a long car ride before he lost his...”pride.”
Pride. That’s the word he used. I’d call it “fight.” Doctors would write either term off as the “natural progression of the disease.” They’d go about their day, writing on clipboards and asking what the special was in the hospital cafeteria for lunch. I would know. I’ve heard it more times than I can count.
I’m not sure what it will be like returning south without him. I’m thankful that the boys got their own rooms. Soon, they will be knocking on the doo,r and Rancher and I won’t have much more alone time. It’s funny. I’m the one who always insisted upon having the kids around as much as possible. Now, as the man I tried so hard to save faces his final hours, I have never wanted to be alone with him more.
For better or worse, right? Honestly, now, I still can’t fully imagine him as anything other than my hardy rancher turned sanctuary keeper, out in the yard building an animal shelter from trees he milled himself. Although it’s been a long time since I’ve taken in that sight, it feels like yesterday. It’s how I see him and probably always will, even now, on the day he’ll die as I flip pages in a paper he can’t read. I mourn him now.
Vegan
Chapter Sixteen
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
In the end
I SIT IN THE FRONT row of the church we raised our sons in. It’s been so long since I’ve been here that they’ve replaced the pews and carpets—once a rusted orange, now turned beige. The center aisle I walked down to marry Rancher two decades ago is laced with a thick Berber carpet you’d be more likely to find in the private home of a Yankee than any house of God.
I tell myself this isn’t happening. But with Abraham’s hand over mine and Jacob’s head bowed to my left, there’s no denying it. I wonder if this is my penance. I do not claim to be perfect and don’t believe the deeds I’ve done—before and after people going missing—should go without consequence. If every tribe has codes, I’ve broken all of them. Darn near tore every one of them up. There isn’t a sin I haven’t committed. Max. All the animals. That frozen chicken.
I sit there, watching the priest as he gives a homily I have no interest in, reminding the lord I’m human. I repeat the rules I’ve made for my own type of religion. One thing the man dressed in a white robe on the altar and I have in common is that we believe Rancher is in a better place. I reckon it’s all that matters now. I mean, everything happens for a reason I suppose.
I’ve talked to the boys about this. Abraham believes it too. But Jacob is an atheist who believes we define our own fate and vanish when death comes. He was the one who pragmatically weighed the pros and cons of his father’s decision to end his life through assisted suicide. Thinking about it, there’s something brave about that to me—being in sole control of your eternal fate—and I wish I could believe it too. I don’t think I could get through life, or this, without believing in a higher power. For my youngest son, his father is simply no more. That’s not something I’m brave enough for. I am too human. I am too selfish. I need to hold on to the idea that someday Rancher and I will be reunited and that, when we are, he will forgive me my trespasses.
I rise as the rest of the congregation does, wondering how many people are here more to see the spectacle of it than to pay respects to Rancher. I want to turn around and scream at them and tell them they are the same people who threw eggs at our home, who left threatening messages, killed Henry, and wanted us out of town. I want to run up onto the altar and ask how they can believe that they are any more innocent than me—a cold-blooded killer. Because they aren’t. And I stand by that.
Every time they take a life just because it tastes good, every time they smile and ask “but what about bacon?” they are no different. We are all killers. We are all guilty. There is not a person in this church who doesn’t deserve to answer for their choices of killing the meek. Yet, somehow, we believe we will all have mercy and should. I’m not so sure.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Jacob clench his jaw. His profile is startlingly similar to Rancher’s. Somehow, he has given up meat too. I believe, in all of this, he is the one out of both my sons who will understand what I have done.
I might even
tell him someday, how I tried to save his father. I imagine he would say “good.” I imagine he would be glad I tried. The thing I’ve noticed about having no god is you are less inclined to judge, at least that’s true with Jacob. He would be happy I tried to fight for his father’s life. Or, maybe I’m lying to myself again—the same way we all are: the medicine men in South Africa peddling potions made of human sacrifice, the guy working from his garage to sell boxes of herbs to cure ALS, and the cancer-ridden woman eating raw eggs for breakfast in hopes of keeping her strength up. We’re all the same: Liars. Killers. Hypocrites. Sinners.
“Lord have mercy.”
Vegan
Chapter Seventeen
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.
Present day
LOST. IT’S NOT A DIFFICULT thing to be. It’s easy. A person who is your best friend one day can be a stranger the next; another wandering soul doing their best to pull free of a rush hour bottle neck. Don’t believe me? Hit the highway on a Friday afternoon in summertime. You can plug those coordinates right in but no matter how precise your GPS is, there’s no accounting for construction. The best you can hope for is a flash thunderstorm to make the half-cocked foreman with the bad back call it quits for the day.
Pass the exit signs to the state your high school sweetheart moved to and wave hello and goodbye. Trudge ten miles an hour by the prison that housed the inmate you faithfully wrote letters to for three years only to find out, on release day, you were simply a means to a well-stocked canteen.
Lost is something that comes in every form and too many ways to list. It’s not always the same as looking up and realizing you’ve gone five exits too far and there’s no U-Turn possible. Lost is also that moment when you don’t recognize who you are anymore—when you wake up at 6:32 a.m. to rub the sleep from your eyes and realize it wasn’t a nightmare. Your soulmate is gone. And you probably helped kill him.
Lost is the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you creep up to the mirror and, through a half-squint, face a fear you’ve worked tirelessly to outrun: That maybe there is no god at all. It’s the moment you realize you’ve given in to satiate an appetite you swore you had under control. Lost is running, glasses off and hair flying loose, down the hall to your empty marriage bed and praying for a final time that it’s just not possible.
“NAME PLEASE.” A FAT-faced woman with perfect teeth and a forced smile, who smells of peaches and mango, stares through an opening in thin glass out at me. She appears to be oblivious to the scratches—not only on the glass but all over my face. By the key-card badge that hangs from a lanyard around her neck, I can see hers is Reba.
“Regina A. Swansen. Gina for short,” I say in a mumble I wish wasn’t so flat. I smile at her, even though I’d rather be anywhere but here—the freak at the nuthouse in paper slippers waiting in a line for another cup of meds all for trying to save my husband and believing it my maker’s will. Why doesn’t she know my name by now? We’ve only been through this a million times. Must be protocol. Everything is protocol. I hate protocol. The other lady knows my name and doesn’t even ask.
Reba clicks her computer mouse three times. I can’t help staring at her through the crack. Her too-long purple nails make a clicking sound that makes me want to turn around and punch the life out of the girl behind me who can’t stop waving her hands in the air. I need fucking out of here.
I bring my own nails to my mouth, grateful for the blood still under them from last night’s picking spree on my thigh. It will ultimately get my privileges taken away. But right now, I don’t care. It’s not like I eat the shit they serve here anyway when I can help it. No one cares that I’m a vegan. They only know that now that I’ve had a taste of it, I can’t stop craving human flesh. Still, even with Rancher gone, I’m convinced there is some source for healing in it.
“Date of birth.”
I suck on my index finger, mumbling out the digits.
“Ah! A Virgo. Me too.” This time, though she’s told me this useless information before, her smile at least seems sincere.
I nod, deciding for the tenth time against telling her it’s only a guesstimate for legal purposes. There’s no reason to get into another family history with her. My history, the origin of my birth, my crazy story.
Crazy. Probably. Hell, at this point, I hope so. It’d be easier that way. If I could think of myself as insane like the rest of them, I might to able to live this way forever and forget all about the sanctuary and the animals, who will now be sent to slaughter because of me. Please, forgive me.
The woman behind me—Mollie—smacks me in the back of the head with one of her flailing arms. It takes everything in me not to throw her on the ground, rip the fucking thing off, and start gnawing on it just to show her what’s what. Some vegan I’ve become. If the people at P.E.A.C.E. knew, they’d drop that membership too. I’m fucking hungry and the fact that I’ve been standing in line for over twenty minutes for a med that won’t even touch me is helping absolutely nothing. Determined to at least make her calm down, I spin around.
“Cut. It. Out.” I spit the words out my teeth in short bursts.
“Oh, chill out! It was an accident. Why you always gotta be so mean?”
“Put. Your. Hands. Down.”
She sticks her tongue out at me and twirls in full circles, hands out perpendicular from her body, smacking the girl behind her in the chest.
“Ouch! Knock it off, freak!” the black-eyed teenage cutter behind her barks.
“Mollie. That’s enough. Do you need to go back to your room for a time-out?” Solomon, one of the only security guards I can tolerate in this place because he reminds me of Jacob, rushes over to the forty-something who mostly acts like she’s no older than three.
She crosses her hands over her chest in defiance. “Fine. I’ll be good. She’s mean!”
“Hands to yourself, please,” Solomon scolds her.
“I said I would!”
I have no idea what’s wrong with her. Frankly, I don’t care. It’s hard enough living in a place where the shrinks don’t know what to do with you, and you never even hear from the public defender the court’s assigned you. And it’s not like I can leave. I lie to myself and try to believe that God only gives us what we can handle. Then, more honestly, I admit to myself this is my purgatory. I need to get through it if I ever hope to see Rancher again.
“Gina? You want these?” Reba opens the Plexiglas window wider and holds out a paper cup with my usual eight colorful pills toward me.
“Yeah. Thanks,” I say, taking the cup and moving out of the line to the next window, where I’m greeted by the nurse who will watch me take them and make sure I swallow. I try not to roll my eyes as she counts them, hands me a plastic cup of water, watches me do my thing, and makes me stick my tongue out. With a purple plastic glove the same color as Reba’s nails, she runs her index finger along the insides of my cheeks. When she’s satisfied I’ve taken all the pills, she dismisses me.
It’s fucking humiliating. I was trying to save my husband. I should not need a “team” to help me take medicine. I shouldn’t need medication at all. Until Rancher fell ill, I was perfectly fine.
I’m not suicidal. I can assure you of that. Frankly, I’m not brave enough to face my maker yet. And so, for now, that’s the reason I’m here—in a holding pen waiting for my sentence and a lifetime of penance I deserve.
“Twenty minutes.”
I have no idea what Solomon is talking about. I ask him to repeat himself.
“Are you okay, Gina?”
I shrug. “I’m fine.”
Why does he even care?
“You sure?”
“Aren’t you a security guard?”
He smiles. “Sorry, word gets around.”
“What’s in twenty minutes?”
“Meeting. In the lounge. Kim’s stuff
went missing again.” He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head in the direction of Mandy, a girl who is convinced she’s a cat and has a pension for kleptomania.
“Fabulous. Can’t wait for that. Is it mandatory?”
He nods, judging me, I am sure.
What a waste of fucking time. Why can’t they just listen to me? Why don’t they see? I was just trying to save my husband. I didn’t believe he’d really quit on me. I’m not that crazy.
It is they, not me, who are lost...
I fall to my knees, there in the middle of the hall. I don’t care who stares at me. I got over the rubber necks long ago. I raise my eyes to the ceiling and fold my hands in front of my face. I squeeze my eyes shut. And for the first time in forever, I pray for all of us:
Forgive us Father, for we have sinned.
Vegan
Epilogue
ALL SOCIETIES, NO MATTER how tiny or significant, or from where they derive, have codes. There are laws contrived to keep tabs on things. Some are written and many are spoken. Others are just known—like wind that will come again after a hot summer’s day or even rainfall. But in every tribe, there are moral standards too. And in all groups, these boundaries are pushed and played with. It’s just the curse of human nature. That is, in our sins we somehow find salvation.
We’ve all heard the saying before: United we stand, divided we fall. But we’ve never considered before who “we” are. We’ve never defined “us.” Instead, we have focused on species, location, mental abilities and disabilities, or even religious differences, and made things a matter of “they” verses “us”—the ultimate battle for survival. And somewhere along the line, the people who hold God’s word to a literal meaning forgot the part about all his creatures being equal. And that is our biggest mortal weakness.