Free Trailerpark by Russell Banks Page A

relief.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe astronauts.”
    â€œYou didn’t believe that, the rocket to the moon? I thought you used to be in the Air Force.”
    â€œThat’s why I had so much trouble believing it,” she said and stood aside and waved him in.
    Inside, when his eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light of the room, this is what Merle saw: large, wood-framed, chicken-wire pens that were waist-high and divided into cubicles about two feet square. The pens were placed in no apparent order or pattern throughout the room, which gave the room, despite the absence of furniture, the effect of being incredibly cluttered, as if someone were either just moving in or all packed to move out. As far as Merle could see, the rooms adjacent to this one were similarly jammed with pens, and he surmised that the rooms he couldn’t see, the bedroom at the back and the bathroom, were also filled with pens like these. In each cubicle there was a pair of grown or nearly grown guinea pigs or else one grown (presumably female) pig and a litter of two or three piglets. Merle could see and hear the animals in the cubicles a short distance away from him scurrying nervously about their cages, but the animals nearer him were crouched and still, their large round eyes rolling frantically and their noses twitching as, somehow, Merle’s own odor penetrated the heavy odor of the room.
    Flora reached down and plucked a black and white spotted pig from the cage it shared with a tan, long-haired mate. Cradling it in her arm and stroking its nose with her free hand, she walked cooing and clucking over to Merle and showed him the animal. “This here’s Ferdinand,” she said. “After the bull.”
    â€œAh. May I?” he said, reaching out to take Ferdinand.
    Merle held the animal as Flora had and studied its trembling, limp body. It seemed to offer no defense and showed no response to the change in environment except that of stark terror. When Merle placed it back into its cubicle, it remained exactly where he had placed it, as if waiting for a sudden, wholly deserved execution.
    â€œHow come you like these animals, Flora?”
    â€œDon’t you like them?” she bristled.
    â€œI don’t feel one way or the other about them. I was wondering about you.”
    She was silent for a moment and moved nervously around the cages, checking into the cubicles as she moved. “Well, somebody’s got to take care of them. Especially in this climate. They’re really not built for the ice and snow.”
    â€œSo you don’t do it because you like them?”
    â€œNo. I mean, I like looking at them and all, the colors are pretty, and their little faces are cute and all. But I’m just taking care of them so they won’t die, that’s all.”
    There was a silence, then Merle said, “I hate to ask it, but how come you let them breed together? You know where that’ll lead?”
    â€œDo you know where it’ll lead if I don’t let them breed together?” she asked, facing him with her hands fisted on her hips.
    â€œYup.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œThey’ll die out.”
    â€œRight. That answer your question?”
    â€œYup.”
    Merle stayed with her for the next half-hour, as she showed him her elaborate watering system—a series of interconnected hoses that ran from the cold water spigot in the kitchen sink around and through all the cages, ending back in the bathroom sink—and her cleverly designed system of trays beneath the cages for removing from the cages the feces and spilled food, and her gravity-fed system of grain troughs, so that all she had to do was dump a quart a day into each cage and the small trough in each individual cubicle would be automatically filled. Because she had constructed the cages herself, she explained, and because she was no carpenter, they weren’t very fancy or pretty to look at. But the basic idea