The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page B

head, then pausing to look in the rearview mirror for traffic.
    People get killed on the highway. Years ago, my sister was nearly hit when she got a flat tire along the interstate. She had done everything right, crawling out the passenger-side door to avoid the highway traffic—a near act of God because she was nine and a half months pregnant and the size of a small army. She got to the trunk to pull out the spare and that’s when a semi came by and the wind shear nearly knocked her in a ditch. A passing motorist saw it—saw my sister in her tan wool coat that wouldn’t button over her belly anymore—so he stopped and changed the tire as my sister sat in the car, biting her lip, fearful that this stranger would help her and then pop her in the head with the tire iron. We were taught not to offer or invite aid because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have no choice but to trust that the man holding your tire iron, cussing at your old lug nuts, is a deeply kind human after all.
    I threw open the car door and stepped into the rain, quickly skirting around the car to the far side of the highway shoulder. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” I shouted in a singsong that I hoped could be heard over the rain. I continued walking inside the beam of my headlights, scanning the ditch as I walked, and seeing something that for a moment made my heart skip: a deadkitty that turned out to be a shoe. Ready to give up, I turned to walk back, and a movement by my car caught my eye; a hairy ball crept out from under the car. I got closer, shading my eyes from the headlights and wondering what the hell I’d do with the cat once I caught her, and a moment later, as I bent down to pick her up, I realized I was staring at a baby raccoon barely the size of a beer mug. “Shit!” I whispered as a semitruck plowed by, causing me to do a sidestep and tumbling the kit.
    “Hi, little fella,” I said, squatting down on my haunches and wringing my hands together like I was holding a bug, afraid to reach out for the animal. In my mind, although raccoons are cute and I love how they can walk around holding an ear of corn in their mitts just like small children at a picnic, they inhabit the general category of fearful creatures called “varmints.” Like rats, they carry diseases, have teeth, and show up when least expected, like when you’re moving a stack of old flower pots in your garage; they are vicious when cornered and run in packs like street thugs.
    “Where’s your mama?”
    The baby suddenly veered left toward the ditch and sped up, like it was drawn by some imperceptible voice shouting, “NO-O-O-O! Do not walk toward the human!” I stood up and examined the ditch near my car, where I could finally see three sets of eyes looking back at me: two smaller sets (kits) and alarger, meaner set (their mother), which spun me on my heels and sent me racing to the car. I jumped in, yelped, and slammed the door behind me.
    That was weird,
I thought as I clutched the steering wheel, sighing in relief. Then another monstrous truck drove by, shaking my car and causing me to panic. My neck muscles were tighter than piano strings and I had a headache. I just wanted to be home; to walk into the living room and see my housemates up late and studying by the fireplace, to chitchat for a few minutes before wandering off.
    I sighed and started the car. “Good luck, my friends,” whispering to the mother as I pulled forward along the shoulder. “Be safe.”
    I was on the road too much lately. I knew it, and I was glad it would soon change.

    At about the same time I purchased my new old house, I took a job as a State Hazardous Waste Inspector, which entailed popping in on various businesses to see how they were managing their chemicals. I’d check to see that they were abiding by the law, that acid wasn’t dribbling into the workers’ boots or out the back