Large Animals in Everyday Life by Wendy Brenner Read Free Book Online Page A

bed, not wanting to remove himself from the wanton crumble of sheets.
    Keep your mind on the oysters
! he told himself furiously.
    He unloaded all ten cartons by himself, as no one appeared to greet him. Each weighed fifty pounds, and when he was finishedhis heart pounded with resentful diligence. If Betsy Murphy had come along, she could have helped. She was a girl in Human Nutrition whose short, strong body he’d often appraised, but he could never quite find time for her. Always Maura was there, surprising him, phoning at odd hours, blocking out more solid individuals. He stood by the locked warehouse doors, puffing in what he pictured as a cloud of his own foolishness.
    A bald man in a blue jumpsuit finally threw the doors open and shook Pat’s hand in both of his, apologizing steadily for being late. “You’re the guest of honor,” he told Pat. Pat began to feel better. Together they hoisted the wax-sealed bushels onto dollies and began wheeling them inside. “You must be tired,” the man said.
    â€œI’m all right,” Pat said. The plant was only weeks old and the corridor’s whitewashed cinder-block walls gleamed with promise on either side of him.
    â€œWe’ll just get these babies into the holding room, and then get some coffee,” the man said.
    â€œAre you Dr. Roland?” Pat said, remembering his instructions.
    The man laughed loudly, throwing back his head. “Oh, no, no,” he said. “I’m no one.”
    â€¢ • •
    The oysters furrowed and trembled, wondering. They felt themselves being moved closer to the source, but the source seemed unusual, unfamiliar. This was not the source they remembered. It was not in the oysters’ nature to be suspicious, but their milky flesh curled a little. They waited, curling and subsiding. Waiting was the same as existing, for them.
    â€¢ • •
    The man who had invented the machine that measured the screams of fruits and vegetables was tired of waiting. He wastired of getting up every day and drinking coffee out of the same cup and waiting for purpose to come back into his life. No one had cared about his machine for years. No one cared if a tree cried when you cut it. This was the kind of thing people had cared about in the seventies. In the seventies, the man had lived in a wood-frame house that sat jauntily on stilts at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico like some happy mantis sunning itself on the beach. His smart young wife had cooked him simple, whimsical food, grits with wacky garnishes, while he worked on his important machines. His baby daughter Deenie crawled around as if motorized, her strange cries filling the airy rooms with promise and egging him on to new inventions, finer tunings. Clouds flew by overhead, hurrying to their satisfying consummations.
    When had it all evaporated? It was impossible to trace. The house had long ago blown down in a brief, peevish storm too small to have been given a name. He lived now in a mildewy walk-up with his daughter, who was now a fat nurse, while his wife studied the classics in some stifling, snowbound state up north. Deenie, who could not seem to get a promotion or a boyfriend, came home from the hospital late each night and sat through one silent, reproachful beer with her father before going to bed. He stayed up later, letting the TV’s false light harass his eyes, wondering what was now expected of him. Was he just supposed to sit here, waiting for people to care again, or was his purpose something else? The days rolled by, paying him no attention.
    â€¢ • •
    The man who had invented the machine that recorded and amplified the sounds of insects eating the insides of fruits and vegetables rode his stationary bicycle and whistled a happy tune. Agricultural and Food Science departments at universities all over the country were clamoring for his machine, and large corporationshad fought one another for purchasing rights to the