A Piece of My Heart Read Online Free PDF

like something had just died inside. The second cage was a high four-poster frame built of creosote posts, covered with chicken wire and full of raccoons, two fat ones and eight or nine little ones piled into one corner. All the raccoons stopped and stood looking at him, then all at once went back to climbing the cage. In the third cage a maroon, black, and gold rooster had removed himself to the top branch of a fresno bole that had been dragged in from outside and gouged in the ground on the side farthest from the raccoons. It looked to him as if the coons were avid to get at the rooster, and were only waiting to find some tiny fault in the mesh that would turn the tide in their favor once and for all. The rooster was eying everything guardedly, his beaky head snapping from one little coon face to the next, in case one came squeezing through the wires, when he’d have a whole new set of worries.
    The woman all of a sudden honked the horn and held it a long time so that the quiet in the yard was exploded. He grabbed a piece of dirt and flung it at the truck.
    â€œWhat-in-the-shit!” the woman yelled inside the cab, her head erupting out the side, her mouth broke open. “Who’s bombing me?”
    â€œCut out that blowing. You ain’t helping nothin.”
    â€œI’m hot as shit!” she yelled.
    â€œWe’re all hot,” he said, frowning and feeling desolated.
    She ducked her head back in the truck and disappeared below the back window.
    A latch snapped at the end of the row and a little girl in jeans let herself out of the last cage and walked up squinting in the sunlight, as if he were someone she was accustomed to. She drew her hair away from her ears, catching it high up with a rubber band, making her face look perfectly round.
    â€œYou got a mechanic?” he said, looking behind her to see if anyone else was coming up out of the cage. The girl was wearinga shirt with arrow pockets and mother-of-pearl buttons that belonged to someone bigger than she was.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” she said, her face arranging itself into a little frown.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said, looking back at the truck, hoping the woman wouldn’t lay down on the horn again. “These here your animals?”
    The girl surveyed down the row of cages as if she were trying to make up her mind. “Yes,” she said.
    â€œThey’re nice,” he said, taking another uneasy look at the truck and trying to think how to bring up getting her Buick worked on.
    â€œYou want to see Leo?” The girl cocked her head into the sunlight so that she could see him with one eye only.
    â€œI seen him if that’s him,” he said, pointing at the rooster.
    â€œThat ain’t him,” she said, smiling slyly. “He’s back yonder.” She motioned behind her.
    She walked back to the cage she had just come out of, past two box pens that were empty, and stopped outside the last one and pointed in at a big rufous-colored bobcat lounging in the dust, staring at nothing. The girl looked at the bobcat and then at him as if she was expecting a compliment. He studied the bobcat a minute, feeling a little cold commotion inside that had to do with wild animals and the suspicion of what one could do to you before you got turned around. At the bottom of the cage, almost at his feet, there was a big long-boned jack rabbit resting on its haunches, eying the cat quietly, its skinny ribs shoved against the wire so that tufts of fur gouged through in tiny hexagons.
    He looked at the girl, waiting for her to say something that explained.
    Leo began panting, and strings of thick clear spittle slid off his tongue into the dust. He seemed unconcerned with the rabbit, though the jack seemed intensely concerned with him, and stared at him, its skinny ears flicking around nervously and its nose testing the air as if it were gauging the seriousness of its predicament.
    He stood back and stared