what meditation is all about. It’s a way of saying, ‘Back off, world. It’s time for me to be good to me.’ ”
“I like the sound of that,” the ewe said, and she looked at her baby, who was sitting upright with his legs folded beneath him, his eyes glued to her teats. “Tell me, though, is it hard, this… what did you call it?”
“Meditation,” the crow said. “And to answer your question, it couldn’t be easier. The first step is to close your eyes, good and hard, mind you, as peeking lets in bad energy that can seriously mess with your digestion.”
The ewe did as she was told.
“Now, there’s no set rule, but what the Orientals like to do is repeat what they call a mantra,” the crow explained. “The same line over and over, until it really sinks into your spirit. It sounds boring, I know, but it’s actually very effective.”
“What kind of a line?” the ewe asked. “Like poetry or something?”
“Well, I suppose it could be,” the crow said. “My own mantra is more of an affirmation, I guess you could call it. It’s sort of personal, but you’re more than welcome to use it if you like, at least until you come up with something of your own.”
“It’s not dirty, is it? I have the child to think about.”
“Of course it’s not dirty,” the crow said. “I can’t believe you would even ask such a question.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” the ewe said. “It’s just that, well, you hear stories…”
“And that means that all crows are filthy, does it? We’ve all got sex on the brain?”
“What I meant is that I’d love to borrow your mantra,” the ewe said. “That is, if I still can.”
The crow looked from the lamb to its mother, marveling that something so cute could grow to be so shapeless and ugly. It was just the opposite with birds, she thought. Nothing was more repellent than a chick, but then again, who needs looks when you’re too young and stupid to use them? Keeping one’s eyes shut would be a valuable skill for someone like the ewe, especially when it came time to mate. She pictured a ram heaving its battered, spindly legs upon her back, and then she shook her head to wash the image away. “I guess I’ll let you use my mantra, but just until you come up with your own,” she said, and she leaned forward to whisper it into the ewe’s ear. “Now I want you to put your head down and repeat that line twenty times. No, better make it thirty, after everything you’ve been through.”
The ewe did as she was instructed, and as she mumbled into the damp grass, the crow moved beside her and plucked out the eyes of the newborn lamb. One she ate right away, for it was delicious, and the other she set into her beak and carried back to her ungrateful children.
As for the ewe, she was still deep in meditation, her eyes clamped shut, repeating the code of thieves and charlatans and those who are good to themselves the world over. “I have to do what I have to do,” she said. “I have to do what I have to do.”
The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat
The white rat had been sick for as long as he could remember. If it wasn’t a headache, it was an upset stomach, a sore throat, an eye infection. Pus seeped from his gums. His ears rang, and what little he ate went right through him. Now came the news that he had pancreatic cancer, which was actually something of a relief. “Finally I can die,” he moaned to his new roommate. She was a female, also white, and had arrived only that morning.
The tank they shared was made of glass, its walls soiled here and there with bloody paw prints and flecks of vomit. “Well,” she sighed, wincing at the state of her new home, “I’m sorry to say it, but if you have a terminal illness it’s nobody’s fault but your own.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the white rat.
The female approached the water bottle, stuck her paws into the spigot, and began to wash them. “It’s nice to believe that these sicknesses just ‘befall’ us,” she said. “We blame them on our environment and insist that they could happen to anyone, but in truth we bring them on ourselves with hatefulness and negativity.”
The white rat coughed up some phlegm with bits of lung in it. “So this is
“Oh, I think that’s been proven,” the female said. “You might not have realized how negative you were being- maybe you were passive-aggressive. Maybe no one cared enough to point it out, but I have to call things like I see them. Just as everyone does to me, only in the opposite direction. ‘How come you’re always so sunny?’ they ask, and ‘Doesn’t your mouth hurt from all that smiling?’ Some interpret it as overexuberance, but to me it’s a kind of vaccine-as long as I’m happy and I love everybody, I can’t get sick.”
“Never?” asked the white rat.
“Oh, I had a flu once, but it was completely my own fault. Someone I mistook for a friend took to criticizing me behind my back-saying things regarding my weight and so forth. I got wind of it, and for all of three minutes I wished her ill. I’m not talking
“And what about your supposed friend, the one who said cruel things behind your back? If you got a flu, what happened to her?” asked the white rat.
“Well, nothing yet,” the female said. “But sometimes the body bides its time.” Her pink eyes narrowed just slightly. “I can bet that when something
“You sound pretty hopeful,” the white rat observed.
The female scowled, then smiled so hard the corners of her mouth touched her eyes. “Not at all. I wish her the best.”
The white rat slumped against the wall and put a hand to his forehead. “I can’t think of anybody I dislike. Then too, I’ve been alone since my last roommate died.”
“That’s another cause of cancer,” the female told him. “You need to get out, socialize. Storytelling is pivotal to our well-being, as are nonethnic jokes and riddles.” Food pellets dropped from a chute beside the water bottle, and she took a bite of one. “I heard somewhere that limericks can cure both heart disease
The white rat knitted his brow.
“They’re poems,” the female explained. “You know, like, ‘There once was a mouse
“Oh, right,” said the rat, and, silently recalling one about a prostitute and a dead cat, he chuckled. “And what about haiku? Are they good for curing
“I know when I’m being mocked,” the female said, “but that’s okay. You’re sick and are going to die. I, meanwhile, am perfectly healthy with good teeth and a positive attitude toward life, so joke away if it makes you feel any better.”
She’d just cracked open that smile of hers when the mesh ceiling parted and a human hand appeared. At first it seemed to be made of wax, that’s how rigid and opaque it was, but as it neared and pinned her to the floor, the female smelled rubber and understood that it was encased in a glove. Then came a second hand, this one bearing a hypodermic needle, and as the tip sank into her stomach, releasing its mad punch of viruses, the white rat settled against the wood chips and thought.
Most limericks, it seemed to him, involved a place. “There was a young mole from Des Moines,” say, or “In Yorktown there once lived a ferret.” He didn’t know where he was, though. It was a lab, obviously, but the location was anyone’s guess. With this in mind, he came up with the following:
