down the canyon tacking Xeroxes to phone poles. If I could have written them in coyote I might have gotten an answer. Or at least a long, echoing, moonlit horse-laugh.
Once I was safe inside the house, I'd called the city out of sheer desperation and been referred to the county. The county had given me another number to call, and someone at that number had given me another number. I was running out of space on my doodle pad by the time I found myself talking to the right person.
That person's job was to dispatch other people to pick up dead animals.
When the horn toots summoned me, I slogged back down in the drizzle to see a tall young black man in a yellow rubber slicker standing in front of a long white truck. His expression was as bright as a sunny day, cheerier than an orange Life-Saver in a packet full of limes. He balanced a shovel upright like an urban graffito based loosely on American Gothic.
'Say what,' he said by way of salutation. 'So where she be?'
I took a protective pull off my coffee cup and pointed vaguely toward the bushes, stifling a petticoat impulse to hold my nose. He nodded, slogged up the hill, and started in. First, though, he paused and looked back at me.
'No snakes in here, is they?' He sounded serious.
'None,' I lied, without even thinking about it. 'I've lived here five years and never seen one.' I'd killed three with a hoe, right about there.
'I don't shine to snakes,' he said. 'Somethin' wrong when you can kill the front half and the back still lash around. Even when they all the way dead, I use the long shovel. The way long shovel. Sometimes, if they dead in the road and they ain't nobody watchin', I just run the truck over them four, five times to mash them into the asphalt. Then I jus' pretend they the dotted line and go home.'
'No problem. You're safe as milk,' I said, wondering who at the county I could call to get him picked up if a rattler bit him. 'Just follow your nose.'
The brush closed behind him and I repressed a twinge of guilt and tried to think about something else. Anything else. 'Wo,' he said, unseen. 'She be real ripe.' I heard some scuffling in the brush and the handle of his shovel emerged once or twice. 'Heeere, kitty, kitty,' he said. I concentrated on feeling inadequate.
He came out backward with something blond and unrecognizable lolling off the end of the shovel. An explosion of odor rolled toward me. The black man extended the shovel to the left and faced all the way right, toward me. 'I done developed this walk all by myse'f,' he said. 'Looks funny, but she works. Tell me if I gone hit a tree.' Arms left, head right, he marched down the hill.
'You do this all day long?' I said after the cat was safely stowed in the bowels of the truck.
He wiped the shovel on some dead grass while he considered the question. 'This ain't doodlysquat,' he said at last. 'Later, right before dinner, I got to unload the truck.'
I looked for a tree to sag against. 'No,' I said. 'Say it isn't so.'
'Four dollar thirty-fi' an hour,' he said, grinning. 'And unloading them ain't the half of it.'
'What in the world,' I said, against my better judgment, 'could you mean?'
'Well, they's a problem. See, sometime they get mixed up. Out come ol' Fluffy there and she got Fido's head. Then I got to sort them out. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you know? 'Cept in 3-D and Smellovision.'
My pulse pounded forcefully in my ears a couple of times before sanity prevailed. 'Wait a minute,' I said. 'Why do you have to sort them out?'
His smile widened. 'For burial. We take 'em over to the Permanent Pet Playground, Inc., y' know? Fussy outfit. These fuzzy babies going to be frisking around for eternity, they got to have the right heads and tails. Otherwise they going to be fightin' with theyself. I mean, wo. What gone happen when that big bugle blow in the sky, huh? How all these good folk seized up by the Rapture gone recognize they pets when they pets look like they been put together by a committee?'
I looked at him for a long moment. His face was as innocent as a Girl Scout cookie. 'I'm not sure,' I said, 'but I think you're full of shit.' He gazed at me genially. 'You want a cup of coffee?'
'Is the pope a polack?' He stashed the shovel carefully in the truck and followed me up the driveway.
I closed the door behind him and poured out the last of Roxanne's hour-old brew. He'd taken the slicker off to reveal an immaculate white uniform with the name dexter stitched into the pocket. It was hand-stitched, individual stitches leapfrogging each other over the pocket's surface. It looked like he'd stitched the pocket closed. He sat at what passed for a breakfast counter, sipped the coffee, and made a face.
'Wo, hot. But it taste good. Center slice from the loaf of life, y' know?' He blew on the chipped mug and surveyed the living room. 'I know every man's home supposed to be his castle,' he said, 'but you pushing it, don't you think?'
'You don't like it?'
'Sure,' he said, 'it's real sweet. I was just trying to figure if I'd rather live in it or under it.'
'That's because you haven't been under it.'
'Ain't nothin' there I haven't picked up.'
'How do you do it?' I drained the dregs in my cup. 'And, while we're on it, why?'
He had a knack of making his eyes glimmer, and he glimmered them at me then. 'You got a live boss?' he asked.
I thought. 'Not at the moment.'
'That's what I like,' he said, 'man who don't pick his words.'
'Okay, sorry. I usually do.'
'Me, I'll take a dead client anytime, huh? 'Stead of a live boss, I mean. Ol' Fluffy, y' know, she smell terrible, she done kiss the odor of sanctity good-bye for keeps, and she ain't no thicker'n a milkshake. But she ain't gone tell me what to do.'
'You mean you do this of your own free will?' I asked disbelievingly.
'Free will?' he said. 'That's quaint, y' know? I ain't heard no one say that since college.'
'College,' I said.
'Yeah. This philosophy professor. Must have weighed three hundred pounds on a good day, when he been skippin' potatoes, y' know? Man was fat. Always talkin' about determinism. Everything come from somethin' else, right? So if this clown know that, how come he's so fat? And, wo, could he smoke. If he know everything come from somethin' else, how come he don't know cancer comes from smokin' cigarettes? Enough to put you off education.'
'Jerry Ryskind,' I said.
'Wo,' he said, sitting bolt upright. 'Hey, the Bruins, huh? Fuck USC'
'In spades,' I said, regretting the expression instantly. He saw my expression and laughed.
'Skip it,' he said. 'Fuck 'em in spades and hearts and diamonds too. So you a Bruin too. You know ol' Jerry.'
'Philosophy 101,' I said. 'Many unfiltered cigarettes. Double-breasted suits.'
'Triple-breasted. On the way to quadruple-breasted, last time I seen him. He gain five more pounds, they gone have to put a pleat in the room.'
'I'm Simeon. Simeon Grist.'
'Dexter,' he said, pointing to the pocket. 'Dexter Smif. S-m-i-f. This be a terrible house,' he elaborated. 'Shame you don't got none of the advantages.'
'With your college education, how many negatives can you get into a sentence?'
'Five. Six, if I workin' at it. Hard thing is to stick with the odd numbers. If two negatives is a positive, then four is a double positive. Got to get past the last even number. 'I ain't got no idea,' well, you know and I know that that means I know something. 'I don't know nothing nohow,' right? That leaves some doubt in the mind, don't it?'
'It don't,' I said. 'Anybody can count to three.'
He slurped at his coffee. 'You wrong there. Somebody like you, got all the advantages despite this shit house, you can hit three without standing on tiptoe.'
'So you took philosophy.'
'Minor. It's a dead man's game. De hearse before Descartes.'
'What was your major, urban English?'
'The degree's in poli sci.' He gave me a slow grin. 'You want me to talk different?'
