I can’t see the difference, but since I’ve already ascertained that it’s a bad idea to argue with August, I oblige.
When the cat sees me coming, he lunges at the door. I freeze.
“What’s the matter, Jacob?”
I turn around. August’s face is glowing.
“You’re not afraid of Rex, are you?” he continues. “He’s just a widdle kitty cat”
Rex pauses to rub his mangy coat against the bars at the front of the cage.
With fumbling fingers, I remove the padlock and lay it by my feet. Then I lift the bucket and wait. The next time Rex turns away from the door, I swing it open.
Before I can tip the meat out, his huge jaws chomp down on my arm. I scream. The bucket crashes to the floor, splattering chopped entrails everywhere. The cat drops off my arm and pounces on the meat.
I slam the door and hold it shut with my knee while I check whether I still have an arm. I do. It is slick with saliva and as red as if I had dunked it in boiling water, but the skin isn’t broken. A moment later, I realize August is laughing uproariously behind me.
I turn to him. “What the hell is wrong with you? You think that’s funny?”
“I do, yes,” says August, making no effort to contain his mirth.
“You’re seriously fucked, you know that?” I jump down from the flat car, check my intact arm once more, and stalk off.
“Jacob, wait,” laughs August, coming up behind me. “Don’t be sore. I was just having a little fun with you.”
“What fun? I could have lost my arm!”
“He hasn’t got any teeth.”
I halt, staring at the gravel beneath my feet as this fact sinks in. Then I continue walking. This time, August doesn’t follow.
Furious, I head for the stream and kneel beside a couple of men watering zebras. One of the zebras spooks, barking and throwing his striped muzzle high in the air. The man holding the lead rope shoots a succession of glances at me as he struggles to maintain control. “Goddammit!” he shouts. “What is that? Is that blood?”
I look down. I am spattered with blood from the entrails. “Yes,” I say. “I was feeding the cats.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? You trying to get me killed?”
I walk downstream, looking back until the zebra calms down. Then I crouch by the water to rinse the blood and cat saliva from my arms.
Eventually I head back to the second section of the train. Diamond Joe is up on a flat, next to a chimp den. The sleeves of his gray shirt are rolled up, exposing hairy, muscled arms. The chimp sits on his haunches, eating fistfuls of cereal mixed with fruit and watching us with shiny black eyes.
“Need help?” I ask.
“Naw. About done, I think. I hear August got you with old Rex.”
I look up, prepared to be angry. But Joe’s not smiling.
“Watch yourself,” he says. “Rex might not take your arm, but Leo will. You can bet on that. Don’t know why August asked you to do it anyway. Clive is the cat man. Unless he wanted to make a point.” He pauses, reaches into the den, and touches fingers with the chimp before shutting the door. Then he jumps down from the flat. “Look, I’m only going to say this once. August’s a funny one, and I don’t mean funny ha-ha. You be careful. He don’t like no one questioning his authority. And he has his moments, if you know what I mean.”
“I believe I do.”
“No, I don’t think you do. But you will. Say, you eaten yet?”
“No.”
He points up the track to the Flying Squadron. There are tables set up alongside the track. “Cookhouse crew got up a breakfast of sorts. Also put up some dukey boxes. Make sure you grab one, ’cuz that probably means we’re not stopping again until tonight. Get it while the getting’s good, I always say.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I RETURN TO THE stock car with my dukey box, which contains a ham sandwich, apple, and two bottles of sarsaparilla. When I see Marlena sitting in the straw beside Silver Star, I set my dukey box down and walk slowly toward her.
Silver Star lies on his side, his flanks heaving, his respiration shallow and fast. Marlena sits at his head with her legs curled beneath her.
“He’s not any better, is he?” she says, looking up at me.
I shake my head.
“I don’t understand how this could happen so fast.” Her voice is tiny and hollow, and it occurs to me that she’s probably going to cry.
I crouch beside her. “Sometimes it just does. It’s not because of anything you did, though.”
She strokes his face, running her fingers around his dished cheek and down under his chin. His eyes flicker.
“Is there anything else we can do for him?” she asks.
“Short of getting him off the train, no. Even under the best of circumstances, there’s not a lot you can do but take them off their feed and pray.”
She glances at me and does a double take when she sees my arm. “Oh my God. What happened to you?”