Read Online Ham by Sam Harris - Free Book Online Page A

would let his dog chase cars? Noni had, indeed, been run over several times, suffering broken bones and hemorrhages and everything but death. As a result, she had a noticeable limp and always veered to the left. She had to aim right to go straight. I didn’t want to portray myself or Cooper’s grandparents as irresponsible, or as people who kept their dog in the freezing garage in the winter with a metal pan of ice-capped water. If Noni was thirsty, she had to lick her water like a Popsicle from November to March.
    I changed gears.
    â€œOne time I found a baby bird that had fallen from its nest and broken its wing. And Nanaw and I mended the wing and made a nest in a shoe box and fed it oatmeal and worms until it was big and strong enough to fly away. When living things can’t help themselves, we help them.”
    â€œWhat was the baby bird’s name?” Cooper wanted to know, hoping it was also funny.
    â€œUm, Harold. The bird’s name was Harold.” I paused for a giggle. “And every year Harold returned to our house and sang on our windowsill.”
    Now I was just making shit up.
    I flashed on the number of creatures who hadn’t made it. And the animal cemetery across from our house under a streetlight at the top of the woods. Dozens were buried there. Not only family pets—any creatures, critters, varmints, or strays that we found—birds, squirrels, rats, snakes, an opossum, an armadillo. Anything dead. If the area were ever excavated, one would think the Pol Pot of the animal kingdom had stormed Sand Springs.
    I held a funeral for each animal and was obsessed with ceremony. There were songs and eulogies and robes draped from bedsheets. Tears were shed. Memories of beloved pets were shared and unfulfilled lives of strangers were mourned.
    â€œWe never knew his name. But this snail brought happiness to our neighborhood.” I’d gathered other snails and placed them at graveside, and when they drew themselves into their shells, I imagined them weeping.
    Flowers were laid and crosses were planted. I decided the armadillo was Jewish so I built a crude pine box, chanted the Mourners’ Kaddish, tore my shirt, and sat shiva.
    I fast-forwarded.
    â€œWhen I was fifteen and I moved to my own apartment, I couldn’t have a pet and I was so sad.”
    But I did have a sort-of animal mascot. I lived in a nondescript suburb of St. Louis off I-44 that had no road signs or any indication that it existed. You had to live there to know it was there. Driving home from work, I often missed the unmarked turnoff and had to backtrack, slower, to find the narrow gravel road that led to my tiny apartment. A couple of weeks into the summer, as luck would have it, a dog was run over on the shoulder of the highway at that exact intersection, and the carcass became my landmark: Dead dog—Turn right. The dog was never removed, and as it rotted in the equatorial heat, the corpse finally decayed into a discolored oily spot, which I still relied upon as my marker: Dead dog oily spot—Turn right. If not for the poor animal, I might have gotten lost, run out of gas, and wandered on foot along I-44, only to be hit by a car and become a discolored oily spot landmark for some other geographically challenged traveler. I was glad the dog was dead.
    I skipped that story.
    I also skipped the one about the winter I returned to Sand Springs and, late one night, skidded on a sheet of ice in front of our house, unsuccessfully avoiding a cute little cottontail bunny. I sprang from my car, slipping and sliding, and found the poor thing panting its last pants, the steam of its body heat rolling up like a funeral pyre, all eerily lit by the glare of my headlights. I lifted the limp ball of sticky fur and placed it gently in the snow as if that would help. It sank into the drift and its crimson blood seeped into the ice like a carnival snow cone. The rabbit died almost instantly, probably hastened by