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

the shock of freezing snow after being plowed over by my beat-up Gran Torino, which I knew only as “my red car.”
    The next day I made the mistake of sharing the saga with friends in journalism class, and Sheilah Nobles, standing stiffly in her calf-high, turd-colored leather boots and cowl-neck macramé sweater, leered at me through gigantic plastic-framed glasses that looked more like ski goggles than prescription eyewear. Then she murmured, “Rabbit Killer!” with a wicked, depraved snigger that grew into a howl and was soon joined by everyone in class, their mouths wide with laughter. Then the chanting began:
    â€œRabbit Killer!”
    â€œRabbit Killer!
    â€œRabbit Killer!”
    Most of these kids were from families who regularly shot and ate rabbits, wore their pelts, and carried their sawed-off feet on key chains, but because it was sweet little sensitive me, I was now known as “Rabbit Killer” until I left home again, months later and for good, confident my work as a professional performer would supersede my reputation as a murderer. Still, when I received the token senior yearbook a year later, signed by all my classmates as a surprise, most of the personal notes started with “Dear Rabbit Killer . . .”
    Cooper was losing patience for my silent, agonizing trip down animal lane and I knew I had to get to a good story quickly.
    â€œAnd the next place I lived wouldn’t let me have a dog or a cat and I really wanted a pet, so . . . I got a snake!”
    â€œA snake?” Cooper asked with wonder. “Was it poisonous?”
    â€œNo. It was a baby boa constrictor and his name was Joey.”
    â€œJoey the snake! That’s funny.”
    â€œAll my pets’ names are funny. That’s part of why we have them. Because they make us laugh.”
    â€œDid he eat snake food?”
    Joey ate little white mice. I bought two and put them in a cage right next to the snake aquarium. In retrospect, it was a horrible thing to do—giving the furry little creatures a 24/7, up-close-and-personal, wide-screen view of their ultimate nightmare. I might as well have placed a giant stuffed hawk on the other side. In the blink of an eye, the mice population rose to fourteen, probably nature’s instinct to build an army in defense. Oddly, fourteen was the exact same number as was in the cast of the show I was doing. I named each mouse for a member of the troupe and every week, when I fed Joey, I would report, “Nancy is dead” or “Jeff was swallowed whole.”
    I obviously couldn’t share this either.
    â€œYes, Cooper, I fed him snake food,” I said instead.
    I recalled when Joey seemed to slow down, which is hard to detect in a snake, and soon after died of pneumonia. Boa pneumonia. I’m sure it was my fault and that his aquarium must have been left in a draft or something. I thought creatures of the wild would surely be made of sturdier stuff. Like there aren’t drafts in Nicaragua or Peru or tropical rain forests?
    Desperate for a happy, uniting pet story to share with my son, suddenly I was questioning my love for, or at least my care of, all my pets. By the time I was sixteen years old, every creature I’d been associated with had fled or died or been abandoned or fed to someone else. Noni still lived with my folks but she was getting old, and at any moment could be walking seemingly straight but veer left into the street and get hit by a pickup truck. My parents would probably just get another dog and name it Noni, hoping I wouldn’t notice.
    â€œLet’s see, what other great pets did Daddy have? Hmmm . . . When I was in college and I shared a house with Uncle Bruce, we got a kitty,” I said to Cooper with a cheerful cadence.
    â€œWas it a boy kitty or a girl kitty?” he asked. “What was its name?”
    â€œHer name was Frances,” I said. “After Frances